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)

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.

Popular Music: Music Becomes A Thing

Readings Week 1&2:

in Garofalo, Rockin' Out:
-Introduction + Chapter 1: Tin Pan Alley

in Cambridge Companion:
-Introduction + Chronology
-Theberge, "'Plugged In': Technology & Popular Music"
-Frith, "The Popular Music Industry"
-Frith, "Pop Music"

from Durham & Kellner (eds), Media & Cultural Studies: Keyworks
-Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

from Frith & Goodwin (eds), On Record
-Adorno, "On Popular Music"
nb. You can find this essay together with "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" co-written with Max Horkheimer --an essay which if you have not read should definitely do so-- here.

from Even Eisenberg, The Recording Angel: Music Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa
-Eisenberg, Chapter 2: Music Becomes a Thing

Grimes, "Genesis" Live Session for KEXP

Welcome To Spring 2017

Final Study Guides.

COM 470 Advanced Com/Media Theory -- here.
CMS 360 Race and Gender in Film and TV  -- here.
COM 210 Intro to Cinema --here.

Post-Classical and Post-Modern

To clarify (or further obscure) 'postmodernism':

Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"
As you read it relate it to the screening of Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep and be prepared to discuss the film in terms of its postmodern qualities.

Queering Texts: Popular Culture and The Oppositional Gaze

Alexander Doty, "There's Something Queer Here"

bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze"

Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"

Richard Dyer, "Judy Garland and Gay Men"

Susan Sontag, "On Camp"

Bruce LaBruce, "Pee Wee Herman: The Homosexual Subtext"

"I'm A Rebel"

"I Know You Are But What Am I?"

Fatal Strategies & Slackers: Withdrawing or Accelerating?

Matthias Leupold, Im Kino / In the Cinema, Part II Berlin GDR, 1983

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

Additional Recommended Baudrillard Readings:

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

The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow.

Please read the section 'Disciplines and Sciences of the Individual' in Part II, particularly the first four segments (from "The Body of the Condemned" to "Panopticism")

Foucault, "The Repressive Hypothesis" from The History of Sexuality, Vol. I

Faster! Faster! Faster!


#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (Srnicek & Williams)
Steven Shaviro, "What is Accelerationism?" from No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism

Bonus:
Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation (Laboria Cuboniks)

+

What About 'Today'?

Christian Fuchs, "Participatory Web 2.0 as Ideology" from Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies

McKenzie Wark, The Hacker Manifesto

"Every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death"
"Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy."

Enjoy Poverty!

"Enjoy Poverty: Disclosing the Political Impasse of Contemporary Art" in Art Papers

-an interview with Renzo Martens

Paul O'Kane, "Renzo Martens: Episode III" review in Third Text, 2009

T.J. Demos, "Poverty Pornography, Humanitarianism and Neo-Liberal Globalization: Notes on Some Paradoxes in Contemporary Art"

Bonus Interview from the "Africa is a Country Blog" here.

Bonus Reading:

Susan Sontag, "Looking At War/Regarding the Pain of Others"

LGBTQ+ Representation in Film and Television

Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, "Representing Gay Men on American Television"
Diane Raymond, "Popular Culture and Queer Representation: A Critical Perspective"

Susan J. Hubert, "What's Wrong With This Picture: The Politics of Ellen's Coming Out Party"
Fred Fejes, "Advertising and the Political Economy of Lesbian/Gay Identity"

Alexander Doty, "Modern Family, Glee, and the Limits of Television Liberalism" 

The 'Post' Archipelago: A Brief Intro

Young Jacques Derrida's English Comp Essay
Note the teacher's comments. Do they still apply to Jacques' adult writing? Read 'Différance' below to find out.

Some introductory readings to the various 'posts' that we will be reading in the next weeks. Having just concluded our discussion of structuralism, here is some material to bring us towards the post-structuralist theoretical framework. Remember that a good exercise for us is to read the theories in their original form. As you read get a sense of the language, of the rhetorical processes, of the way the argument proceeds. I am including here, in addition to the Roland Barthes essay on "The Death of the Author" also a brief introduction to poststructuralism, postmodernism and postcolonial studies (the pdf has these entries in alphabetical order but please read them in the order above). I've also included Derrida's 'Différance' --this is a bonus reading but I would urge all of you to tackle it in order to get that sense of the language mentioned above so that we may talk about it in class. Enjoy.

"poststructuralism"; "postmodernism"; "postcolonial studies" entries
from A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory; 2nd Ed. (Wiley-Blackwell)
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" from Image/Music/Text

David Harvey, "Postmodernism" from The Condition of Postmodernity

Jacques Derrida, Différance

Women's Cinema, Women in Cinema: Visual Pleasure, Narrative and Feminism + Third Cinema

To accompany the screening of Agnes Varda's Vagabond:
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
Make sure you have this read by next class. We will continue discussing Godard's Masculin/Féminin in relation to the ideological critique of the institutional mode of representation put forward by the various cinematic new-waves as well as Vagabond as a feminist text that takes off on that critique but adds sexual difference and the representation of gender to its concerns. Laura Mulvey's essay should be a key to navigating these concepts.

Take a picture of her.

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

Race and Gender Final Paper Assignment

Final Paper Prompt here. We will talk about this during the next class. Good times.

Structuralism 101

"Structuralist Theories" from Selden et al. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 3rd Edition (Prentice Hall, 1985)

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. 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.

Kristal Brent Zook, "The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television"
Robin R. Means-Coleman, "Black Sitcom Portrayals"
Herman Gray, "The Politics of Representation in Network Television" from Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness (University of Minnesota Press, 1995/2004)

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"

Please watch this 'incomplete sentence' vaudeville routine by Mantan Moreland & Ben Carter from the Charlie Chan movie The Scarlet Clue (Phil Rosen, 1945)

Below is Sarah Jones' 'Your Revolution' (with DJ Vadim) from Def Poetry Jam's Season 1 (2002)