The Social Construction of Race, Part Deux

This is the bulk of readings for the 'discourses of race' section of the course as we wade through it this week and next. There will be two chapters from bell hooks' Black Looks: Race and Representation which I will post over the next weekend so as to not give the impression that I'm burdening you all with too much reading. Fair warning, then. Please have these articles read in the order posted. Pay particular attention to Zook's article on the Fox Network as it invests that political economic perspective that is so well dramatized in Bamboozled as well as the Means-Coleman article on 'black sitcoms' which is a good example of textual analysis.

Also, a couple of posts back you can find a 20 minute segment of a Sarah Jones performance as well as a radio piece/interview by and with her. Make sure you have watched/listened to this material as we will be referencing it in class.

Kristal Brent Zook, "The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television"
Robin R. Means-Coleman, "Black Sitcom Portrayals"
Donald Bogle, "Workplace Dramas, Ensemble Casts 1990s Style"
Chyng Fen Sun, "Ling Woo in Historical Context: The New Face of Asian American Stereotypes on Television"

The Social Construction of Race

This a short introductory article on race and the media. As we conclude screening Bamboozled and discuss the film Ash Corea's "Racism and the American Way of Media" is a good summary of the issues raised in the Spike Lee's film and those that you will be reading about in greater detail with the next group of articles. As a bonus, a classic article by Stuart Hall.

Ash Corea, "Racism and the American Way of Media" from Questioning the Media
Stuart Hall, "What is This 'Black' in Black Popular Culture" from Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies




Clip from a 1949 film, Hollywood Varieties, where actors Glenn Vernon and Edward Ryan apply blackface make-up while on stage and reminisce about 'the good ol' days' --as they say-- of ministrelsy.

Modernism, Art Cinema and Antonioni

This is an initial batch of readings regarding modernist cinema and (European) art films. Specifically theoretical and historical readings are accompanied by specific analyses and readings of the films we are screening in class. We are taking on Antonioni as our object of analysis and the readings will relate to L'avventura, Il Deserto Rosso and Blow Up.

Bordwell, "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice" from Poetics of Cinema
Sitney, "L'avventura" excerpt from Vital Crises in Italian Cinema
Marcus, "Antonioni's Red Desert: Abstraction as the Guiding Idea" from Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism
Godard, "Jean-Luc Godard Interviews Michelangelo Antonioni" from Cahiers du Cinema #160, November 1964
Chatman, "Blow Up: Questioning the Seen, Questioning the Scene" from Antonioni or, The Surface of the World

Sarah Jones and the Aural Characteristics of 'Blaccent'

As a bonus to this week's entry into the issues of race and the media and as we finish watching Spike Lee's Bamboozled here is a segment from this week's Studio 360, a radio program on WNYC/NPR. The piece is centered around Sarah Jones and her reflections on the cultural characteristics of 'voice' and 'accent'. As The New Yorker wrote of Jones, "she is ... a sort of multicultural mynah bird, lays our mongrel nation before us with gorgeous, pitch-perfect impersonations of the rarely heard or dramatized." You can also download the mp3 of the segment here.



Sarah Jones is also well known for a couple of spoken word/rap pieces from some years back. Her performance of Blood was one of the highlights of Lyricist Lounge, Vol. 1, a seminal hip-hop anthology from 1998 which featured The Roots, De La Soul, Q-Tip, Mos Def and Talib Kweli among others (the more obviously identity based/political anti-bling fringe of the hip-hop movement). Her Your Revolution is a more specifically feminist inflected invective backed by Russian turntablist DJ Vadim. Find both linked below.

Sarah Jones - Blood (from Lyricist Lounge Vol. 1 on Rawkus Records, 1998)
DJ Vadim featuring Sarah Jones - Your Revolution (from DJ Vadim, USSR - Life From The Other Side on Ninja Tune, 1999)

Finally, since we're on the topic here's a great Sarah Jones performance where you can appreciate what she does with voice, language and accent. This was part of the TED Talks and recorded in February 2009. One thing to reflect on is the way in which voice and accent signify and what can be said of the use of accents as a source of comedy and/or as a source for critique.



Finally here's a video of Jones performing Your Revolution live on stage for Def Poetry Jam.

Intro to Mass Media Study Guide

Hi. Study Guide here.

The Yes Men Strike Again

See the Rachel Maddow report on yet another wildly successful Yes Men hoax this time involving the US Chamber of Commerce and the revelation that the CoC was reversing its position on climate change policy and was promising to immediately cease lobbying against the Kerry-Boxer bill.The fake news conference was preceded by a fake on-line press release (Find that here.)

Note that the url to the press release is www.chamber-of-commerce.us while the real CoC website is at www.uschamber.com. Look around and you can see how The Yes Men operate in setting up fake corporate and government agency websites as part of their jamming tactics.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More media repercussions. Here's FoxNews giving the news live on the air and then immediately retracting the story. Who said Fox does not fact-check?

European Parliament Debate

Judith Sargentini, Dutch member of the European Parliament for the Greens, pleads in the plenary session for a directive on media concentration in Italy.

(Not A) Study Guide for Race and Gender

Read on here for study/exam tips (in reality it's not much as per the post title but I guess it's better than nothing --at least it looks like one).

'Free' or 'Pirate' Media?

Below is Hans Magnus Enzensberger's "Constituents of a Theory of the Media" where he discusses the concepts of 'emancipatory vs. repressive uses' of the media while offering a radical critique of traditional progressive conception of public/state media in favor of the 'new media' potentials of 'free' media.

Roger Chapman's article is a comparative analysis of the two main British 'pirate' radio stations, Radio London and Radio Caroline and how they differentiated themselves on the basis of their attitude to commercialism and their mission.

Finally John Downing writes on 'radical media' in Italy covering a number of activist situations and their use of new communication technologies by political movements during the late '60s and early '70s. This last article will be the clearest contextualization of Marco Tullio Giordana's I Cento Passi.

Something to think about in relation to I Cento Passi is how Peppino Impastato's attempts at carving out a space for communication and direct political action (a public sphere within the confines of a small community dominated by organized crime and their ties to the political realm) is dramatized in the film --from traditional political rallies to 'free radio' after navigating dadaist street theater, pamphleteering, film screenings and be-ins. Think specifically of the characteristics of RadioAut --programming, control, voice, 'mission', etc.


Enzensberger, "Constituents of a Theory of the Media"
Chapman, "The 1960s Pirates: A Comparative Analysis of Radio Caroline and Radio London"
Downing, "Radical Media in Italy" from Radical Media

Signs and Meaning

Following the screening of Jhally's Dreamworlds 3 here are two articles related to our discussion on signs, meaning and culture and their intersections with the construction of identity, desire and power.

Sut Jhally, "Image-Based Culture"
Scott McCloud, "Semiotics" from Understanding Comics

Additional reading on 'media semiotics':
Jonathan Bignell, "Introduction + Cinema" from Media Semiotics

New Media: The Internet as Technology

Jeremy G. Butler, "The Internet and the World Wide Web"
P. David Marshall, "The Internet: The Multi-Media Accessible Universe and the User"
Bolter & Grusin, "The World Wide Web" (from Remediation)

Feminist Film Theory: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

"Woman as image, man as bearer of the look"
Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
You can also find it in html format here.

New Media: Gaming

Pac-Man Skull

These are two articles on videogames and their history. Use them in conjunction with the screening of Game On: The Unauthorized History of Video Games screened in class. Check back soon for the articles on The Internet and the WWW.

Bolter & Grusin, "Computer Games" (from Remediation)
P. David Marshall, "Playing Game Cultures: Electronic Games"

Construction and Performance II: Masculinity

Jackson Katz, "Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity: From Eminem to Clinique for Men"
Brian Locke, "Here Come The Judge: The Dancing Itos and the Televisual Construction of the Enemy Asian Male"
Gail Dines, "King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity"

Transitions: After Realism I

Here are the readings to contextualize the screenings of the so-called 'transition' period: from Rossellini's Voyage To Italy to Fellini's Il Bidone. This should also provide you with ample material to help you think through your first short writing assignment.

Laura Mulvey, Vesuvian Topographies
Pierre Sorlin, Fourth Generation
Millicent Marcus, Fellini's La Strada: Transcending Neorealism

Please remember that in the Bazin collection of articles in the previous reading post there are a number of readings related specifically to these same films. The link is here. For your paper an important source for thinking is the Kracauer chapter on 'the found story' as well as the Abercrombie, Lash and Longhurst article on 'popular representation'.

Enjoy.