Hot and Cold Media Is the Message in the Global Village of the Guttenberg Galaxy

Eisenstein Diagram

Here are the 'notes' re: the taxonomy of Hot and Cold media. Below is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 'Conference' program from 1977 where McLuhan discusses and responds to audience questions on his main theoretical ideas. If we don't get to watch and discuss this in class please watch it on your own:

That James Dean vs That Daydream Nation Look: Taylor Swift covered by Ryan Adams and Gendered Media Spaces

Here's a nice press review of the discourses surrounding the Ryan Adams/Taylor Swift operation. I've also included a few articles from the past past, mainly Taylor Swift profiles from mainstream magazines like The New Yorker and New York Magazine. Make sure you all read the Tavi Gevinson article linked to at the bottom of the post in .pdf format. I've also included a recent article from The Atlantic about authorship in pop music and the strategies of record companies to downplay the 'outsourcing' of pop hit manufacturing. Enjoy.

Ryan Adams’s 1989 and the Vindication of Taylor Swift

Ryan Adams’s 1989 and the mansplaining of Taylor Swift

No Blank Space, Baby: Taylor Swift Is The Soul Of Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams isn’t revealing something ‘good’ about Taylor Swift’s ‘1989.’ The album was already great.

Platinum Underdog: Why Taylor Swift Is the Biggest Pop Star in the World

You Belong with Me

How Taylor Swift made teen angst into a business empire.

Taylor Swift Is Confusing

Haters Gonna Hate: Listening to Ryan Adams’s “1989”

The Reinvention of Taylor Swift

Flavorwire Interview: Talking Taylor Swift With Tavi Gevinson

JUST KIDDING, LOVE SUCKS

NOTES ON TAYLOR SWIFT

The complete version of this article by then 16-year old Tavi Gevinson published in The Believer in 2013 is below in PDF. Tavi Gevinson started the Style Rookie blog when she was 12. Rookie Mag below is a treasure of 'readings' of Tween/Teen culture from a non mainstream perspective --with all of its exhilaration and limitations.

Tavi Gevinson, JUST KIDDING

Rookie Mag 

Why must we hate the things teen girls love?

Hit Charade: Meet the bald Norwegians and other unknowns who actually create the songs that top the charts.

Beats 1 Ryan Adams interview about '1989' with Taylor Swift call in 'surprise'

Text and Context: Political Economy and Reception

David Croteau & William Hoynes, "The New Media Giants: Changing Industry Structure"
Janice Radway, "Women Read The Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context"

Sut Jhally, "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture"

EXTRA READINGS:
Stuart Hall, "Encoding-Decoding"

Textuality: Semiotics

To complement the other readings, here are three different discussions of 'semiotics' and semiotic analysis and their use for cultural studies and the analysis of media representations. These are not required readings if you have encountered 'media semiotics' before. I would however suggest, to those of you who are encountering 'semiotics' for the first time, to treat these readings as required readings: your work in class, your ability to grapple with the other required readings and your final project would certainly benefit from a familiarity with the concepts presented here.

Mieke Bal, Semiotics for Beginners
Scott McCloud, from Understading Comics: Chapter 2, Semiotics
Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: Introduction + The Cinema

Cinema/210 Reading Schedule

Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson (USA, 2012)

Here's the updated reading schedule for Intro to Film. This is based on the 11th Edition of Bordwell & Thompson's Film Art; International Version. If you have previous editions or the US version you can compare the chapters with the Table of Contents of the 10th Edition that you can find here -click on the 'Look Inside' banner. Make sure you do not use a textbook that predates the 8th Edition.

Ritual vs Transmission?

from Kenneth Anger's 'Scorpio Rising'

Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

James Carey, "A Cultural Approach to Communication" from Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989)

**Reading Media Theory Table of Contents for Presentations**

Construction and Performance I: Privilege and Representation

Power, Privilege and Discrimination

Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"

Cultural Studies & Representation
Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture"
Sanjukta Gosh, "'Con-Fusing' Exotica: Producing India in US Advertising"

Ideology and Hegemony
Stuart Hall, "The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media"
James Lull, "Hegemony"

all readings (except the online Peggy McIntosh) are from Dines and Humez (eds), Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader; 2nd Edition(Sage, 2003)

Welcome to Fall 2016

PUNK! Attitude

Post-Rock, Subcultures and the End of Authenticity

The prompt for your second short paper is linked to in the previous post. Paper is due on Friday. Enjoy.

Assuming that at this point you should be on your way to completing the Garofalo textbook, here are the final readings for the session --readings in bold are required; readings in italics are (highly) recommended.

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

On 'co-optation':
Thomas Frank's "Commodify Your Dissent" 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 --nb. skip the initial Sara Cohen article.



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"

Pop Music. Second Short Paper.

Paper Prompt here. Enjoy.

For Those About To Rock: Return of the Aura

Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart

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

-Keightley, "Reconsidering Rock"

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. Reebee Garofalo's article on Soul ("Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement") is required.

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.

AC/DC, Let There Be Rock (1977) 

Reverend Bon tells you all about it. As you can see the 'aura' is back around Angus' head.

The In-Between Years (or The Empire Strikes Back)

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

Readings:
Keightley, "Reconsidering Rock"

nb. You will not be responsible for this reading for the midterm. We will discuss the issues and concepts raised in it after the exam. I do however urge you to read it as it offers a lot of points that would help your review of material that will actually be covered on the midterm.

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

R'n'R or Trasubstantiated 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

Whitey's Lindy Hoppers: Something Wild

This is the Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug, the Suzie-Q. The clip is an excerpt from H.C. Potter's Helzapoppin' (1941).
More Lindy Hoppers doing "The Big Apple" in 1939 at this link here. Enjoy.
(In this clip the dancing starts at the 2:15 mark.)



from Jonathan Demme's Something Wild; The Feelies play David Bowies's "Fame" and Jeff Daniels dances with his eye on the 'Other' for cues.