Welcome to the 2009-2010 Academic Year

Welcome back to those returning and to those here for the first time. You will find readings, clips, discussion material and more. Check back regularly. Friday is also 'Weekend Tunes' day.

Returning September 1st

Hello all. Returning September 1st. In the meantime here's a summer song for all.

The Boat That Rocked

Something for you to do on what is looking to be a rainy weekend.

The Boat That Rocked, Richard Curtis' film about the British Pirate Radio Stations is playing at the Metropolitan, the movie theater in Via del Corso, near the Piazza del Popolo. The film is in English (with Italian subtitles). Of course the film is directed by the guy that did Four Weddings and a Funeral so like Xan Brooks says in The Guardian, it's more 'born to be mild' than anything else, but it's nonetheless a good example of how pirates, with hindsight, can be cuddly and cute.

A light hearted take on some of the issues we discussed at the beginning of the session and like I said it's something to do --it keeps you out of the rain if it rains or it gives you some air conditioned respite from the heat if the sun's out.



Review in The Guardian here. Video review here.

The Democratic Right To Know

McKenzie Wark, A Hacker Manifesto (Ver. 4.0)

James Boyle from The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
Link above is for the whole book which Boyle made available through the Creative Commons License. You should read Chapter 6: I Got A Mashup.
If you don't want to download the whole book you can find a link to the annotatable online version of the chapter here.

Matt Mason - We Invented The Remix

Henry Jenkins - Interactive Audiences? The 'Collective Intelligence' of Media Fans

Aoki, Boyle and Jenkins - Bound By Law?
This is a comic book on copyright. Don't be fooled by it's form: it's a great read and I strongly encourage you to read at least the first 15 pages.
You can also find it free on-line from its publisher --crazy, huh?-- Duke University and The Center for the Study of the Public Domain in a variety of formats. You can also 'remix' it and you're encouraged to translate it. It's all here.

From The Cultural Resistance Reader: please have the articles in Section Seven read. The following articles from Section 8 are also required: Jordan on 'Reclaim the Streets'; Jason Grote on 'Revered Billy' and Ricardo Dominguez's 'Electronic Disturbance'

Bonus:

This is an old post from the blog where you can find a link to download Girl Talk's latest work, Feed The Animals.

Bonus reading for those interested in reading more on Jamaican music:
Dick Hebdige - from Cut'N'Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music

True Norwegian Black Metal

From VBS.TV - True Norwegian Black Metal - a portrait of Gorgoroth's Gaahl.

Subcultures I

Please complete the readings in Section III from The Cultural Resistance Reader. I will be assigning those from Section IV tomorrow in class.
Don Letts' Punk: Attitude in on reserve in the library for those of you who did not see it in class.

Here are the Dick Hebdige chapters from Subculture: The Meaning of Style

Chapter 6 : Subculture: The Unnatural Break
Chapter 7 : Style as Intentional Communication
Chapter 8 : Style as Homology

Towards A Third Cinema

Of all African film directors, Sembene is the first to confer value to images."
--Med Hondo

Fernando Solanas & Octavio Getino, Towards a Third Cinema
Med Hondo, What is Cinema for us?

If you are interested in reading a brief outline of the life, ideas and struggles of Ousmane Sembene: OUSMANE SEMBENE: THE LIFE OF A REVOLUTIONARY ARTIST

Cultural Resistance Readings I

Reading assignments for the first two weeks:
in Duncombe Cultural Resistance reader:
for the material covered in Week 1: Introduction + in Part Two: Williams, Marx&Engles, Gramsci, Benjamin + in Part Three: Baudrillard, Bey
for the material covered in Week 2: Part Three: Scott, Kelley, Reed

Extra Readings:
Hesmondalgh - Alternative Media, Alternative Texts?
Hans Magnus Enzensberger - Constituents of a Theory of the Media
John Downing - Radical Media in Italy

Steven Wright - A Love Born of Hate: Autonomist Rap in Italy

Filmography for Final

Here is the complete list of the documentary films screened in class since the midterm which you are responsible for. I have also included a couple of titles which we only saw excerpts of but which are nonetheless important.

This is the link for the pre-midterm 'filmography'.

Resisting Surveillance

Articles on Resisting Surveillance:

David Lyon, "Resisting Surveillance" from Surveillance After 9/11
John Gilliom, Resisting Surveillance

Documentary and Reality TV

Rodney King Video

Final article on the intersection of documentary film and Reality TV (Susan Murray, "I Think We Need A New Name For It: The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV") here. Enjoy.

Documentary History III + Paper Assignment

Find the list of films and the guidelines for the paper here.

Readings:

From Jack C. Ellis & Betsy McLane's A New History of Documentary Film
English-Language Documentary in the 1980s: Video Arrives
English-Language Documentary in the 1990s and Beyond: Reality Bytes

Carl Plantinga, Gender, Power, and a Cucumber: Satirizing Masculinity in This Is Spinal Tap
Sheila Petty, Silence and Its Opposite: Expressions of Race in Tongues Untied
Julia Lesage, Feminist Documentary: Aesthetics and Politics

Pop Music Readings

Assuming that at this point you are (basically) all done with the Garofalo textbook, here are the reading assignments up to the end of the semester:

On 'co-optation':
Thomas Frank's "Commodify Your Dissent" here.

On Jamaican Music:
from Dick Hebdige, Cut'n'Mix here.

On Gender:
from The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock:
Sara Cohen, "Popular Music, Gender and Sexuality"

Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, "Rock and Sexuality"
Simon Frith, "Afterthoughts
"Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
Find these articles here as a single PDF file.



On 'sub-cultures':
Here are the Dick Hebdige chapters from Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Refer back to the Punk: Attitude film screening.


On sampling, mash-ups and the 'postmodern turn':
Andrew Goodwin, "Sample and Hold"
E Ann Kaplan, "A Postmodern Play of the Signifier?"
Negativland, "from Wired: Negativland Interviews U2's The Edge"

Also, to clarify (or further obscure) 'postmodernism' please help yourself --in case you have not encountered it in your other studies-- to Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

Surveillance, Reality TV and Celebrity Culture

Here are the readings for this week's discussion. Tie the readings to our initial discussion on Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure.

Vincent Pecora, The Culture of Surveillance
Nick Couldry (from Media Rituals), Live Reality and the Future of Surveillance
David Samuels, Shooting Britney
(also find this in html format here directly from The Atlantic Monthly website. nb. includes slide show on 'The Celebrity Hunters' not in the pdf file)

A couple of extra readings for those who are thinking of working on these issues for their final papers:

Nick Couldry (from Media Rituals), Mediated Self-Disclosure Before and After the Internet
Mark Andrejevic, The Webcam Subculture and the Digital Enclosure

Paper Assignments: Pop Music and Film

Here are the final paper assignments for the Pop Music and Intro to Cinema classes. Server problems seem to have been resolved so check back for readings in the next couple of hours.

Second POP MUSIC paper assignment.
Second FILM paper assignment.