Welcome To Summer I 2011

Welcome to Summer I: for this session the blog is exclusively dedicated to the CMS 315 European Mass Media class. Please check back often to find readings, bits of information taken from the internet together with breaking news and current issues that we can use for class discussion.

Interactive Audiences

Final readings on Interactive Audiences. Please refer the Baudrillard to Linklater's Slacker and Marshall to the changed 'nature' of digital media audiences:

Baudrillard, "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media"

Marshall, "Forms of Interactivity: The Disappearance of the Audience"

The following readings are not required but if you have not encountered them before I strongly urge you to read them particularly if you are planning on writing about 'new audiences'.

Jenkins, "Interactive Audiences? The Collective Intelligence of Media Fans"

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, "Constituents of a Theory of the Media"

Psychoanalysis and Spectatorship: Visual Pleasure

"Woman as image, man as bearer of the look"

Otto Preminger's Laura (1944)

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

(Final) Popular 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:
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.

The Ramones, "Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio?" Live in Rome, 1980



On sampling, mash-ups and the 'postmodern turn':
Andrew Goodwin, "Sample and Hold"
E Ann Kaplan, "A Postmodern Play of the Signifier?" (Fixed Link Now)
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"

There will be two further articles specifically on hip-hop culture and post-Napster music industry.

The Democratic Right To Know

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

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 Feed The Animals.

Did I mention that the following Jenkins article is something that you should read?

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

Convergence Culture & Resistance

Map of the Internet, circa 2003 (Source The Opte Project)

Required readings:

Jenkins, "Worship at the Altar of Convergence"

Marshall, "Forms of Interactivity: The Disappearance of the Audience"

Himanen, "From Netiquette to a Nethic"

(includes Linus Torvalds' Preface to The Hacker Ethic, "What Makes Hackers Tick?")
Wark, "The Hacker Manifesto"

The following are recommended readings that some of you might have already encountered in other classes. If you have not, I highly encourage you to read these as they provide a wealth of contextual information and integrate many of the concepts that we are at present discussing in class particularly in relation to the 'new' mediated environments that surround us.

Manovich, "Principles of New Media"

Jenkins, "Interactive Audiences? The Collective Intelligence of Media Fans"

Lessig, "Building Blocks: Commons and Layers" + "Commons on the Wires"

from The Future of Ideas

The Audience Strikes Back

Williams - The Audience Strikes Back: New Audience and Reception Theory

Adorno - Culture Industry Reconsidered
Hoggart - The Uses of Literacy
Wertham - Seduction of the Innocent

Ang - On the Politics of Audience Research
Hall - Encoding/Decoding
Morley - The Nationwide Audience

Fiske - Undertanding Popular Culture
De Certeau - The Practice of Everyday Life

For Those About To Rock: Return of the Aura

Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart

Here are a couple of articles to integrate Keightley's Reconsidering Rock article. The first Frith article is required; the second article is a highly recommended read. Enjoy the Lester Bangs reviews from Creem and Garofalo's article on Soul.

Simon Frith - "Rock and Popular Culture"
Simon Frith - "The Magic The Can Set You Free": The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community
Paul Clarke - "'A Magic Science': Rock Music as a Recording Art"
Lester Bangs - Various Record Reviews from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Reebee Garofalo - Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement

Also, here is Andrew Chester's "For A Rock Aesthetic", Richard Merton's response, "Comments" and Chester's response to the response, "Second Thoughts on a Rock Aesthetic: The Band". It's all here at this link --the whole epochal exchange in one handy location.

Please read in 'Rocking Out' up to and including Chapter 8.
Let There Be Rock: Reverend Bon tells you all about it. As you can see the 'aura' is back around Angus' head.
AC/DC, Let There Be Rock (1977):

Co-Optation and The Implosion of Meaning: Slackers

Every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death.

From Section Seven on "Commodities and Co-optation" please read:

Theodor Adorno, "On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression in Listening"
Richard Hoggart from The Uses of Literacy
Malcolm Cowley from Exile's Return
Thomas Frank, "Why Johnny Can't Dissent"

The Hoffman ("Revolution for the Hell of It") and Rubin ("Do It!") you can read 'for the Hell of it'.

Return to Section Three, "A Politics That Doesn't Look Like Politics" please (re)read:

Adolph Reed, Jr., "Why Is There No Black Political Movement?"
Jean Baudrillard, "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media"
Hakim Bey from TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone
Simon Reynolds from Generation Ecstasy
+ the account of 'a lynching in 1920'

The complete version of Baudrillard's "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media" is here.

Additional Recommended Baudrillard Readings:

Jean Baudrillard, Requiem for the Media
Jean Baudrillard, The Implosion of Meaning in the Media from Simulacra and Simulation

Also, and finally, here's the chapter from Cold World: The Aesthetics of Dejection and the Politics of Militant Dysphoria by Dominic Fox on Black/Death Metal: "A Sermon in the Name of Death"

Study Guides: Pop Music + Cultural Resistance

Here are the study guides as promised. Some of you already got copies in class but just in case.

Popular Music and Mass Culture here.

Cultural Resistance here.

The In-Between Years.

The Folk Revival:

The Kingston Trio - Tom Dooley
Pete Seeger - Turn Turn Turn!
Joan Baez - Silver Dagger
Bob Dylan - Masters of War
Lyrics here.

Surf & Hot Rod Combos:

The Beach Boys - Surfin USA
Dick Dale & The Del-Tones - Miserlou
Link Wray & His Ray Men - Rumble (Outtake)
The Stingers (Jack Cole) - Mustang

Uptown R&B from Motown/All songs by Holland-Dozier-Holland:

Martha & The Vandellas - Nowhere To Run
The Four Tops - Reach Out I'll Be There
The Supremes - You Can't Hurry Love
Marvin Gaye - How Sweet It Is

Girl Groups/Phil Spector Wall of Sound/Songs by Weill & Mann:

The Ronettes - Be My Baby
The Crystals - Then He Kissed Me
The Crystals - Da Doo Ron Ron

Cynthia Weill & Barry Mann songs NOT produced by Phil Spector:

Lesley Gore - It's My Party

The Wall of Sound in full-effect:

Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep, Mountain High
The Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling

Covers

Pat Boone - Ain't It A Shame
Pat Boone - Bluberry Hill
Pat Boone - Tutti Frutti
Elvis Presley - Tutti Frutti
Elvis Presley - Shake, Rattle and Roll
Bill Haley & The Comets - Shake, Rattle and Roll
Gale Storm - Why Do Fools Fall In Love
Bill Haley & The Saddlemen - Rocket 88

Old habits are hard to die:

Pat Boone - Stairway To Heaven

Whither goest thou, America?

from The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock:

-Straw, "Consumption"
-Star Profiles I (Elvis, The Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix, The Stones, JB, Marvin Gaye)
-Keightley, "Reconsidering Rock"

-Middleton, "Pop, Rock and Interpretation"
-Street, "Rock, Pop and Politics"
n.b. The Middleton and Street are highly recommended readings but you will not be responsible for them for the midterm. We will discuss the issues and concepts raised in them after the exam. I do however urge you to read them as they offer a lot of points for review of material that will actually be on the midterm.

In Garofalo you should read up to and including Chapter 6.

"I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?" Jack Kerouac

Rock'n'Roll, or Transubstantiated R'n'B?

Elvis Presley - That's All Right, Mama + Blue Moon of Kentucky
Bill Haley & The Comets - Crazy Man Crazy
Fats Domino - Ain't That A Shame + Blueberry Hill
Little Richard - Tutti Frutti
Chuck Berry - Almost Grown + Little Queenie
Bo Diddley - Pretty Thing
The Chords - Sh-Boom
Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers - Why Do Fools Fall In Love

Pop Music Paper #1

As promised find the assignment by clicking here. (LINK IS FIXED)



Eddie Kirk, "The Grunt" (Fortune 7", 1958)