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'
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"
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.
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) : Let Reverend Bon tell you all about it. As you can see the 'aura' is back around Angus' head.
Find here Chapter 6 from Nichols' Intro to Documentary. This is where he lays out his taxonomy of documentary film in a more concise form. You have already encountered this in the early articles by Nichols you read at the beginning of the semester (here) however this is a good review for you. At this point you should also be done reading the Ellis/McLane book up to and including Chapter 15: English Language Documentary in the 1970s. At this point and in view of the midterm our run through the main post-war documentary forms should be complete up to the 1980s and the advent of video and you should be familiar with it all: Television Docs, Social Realism and British Free Cinema, Cinema Veritè/Direct Cinema, the Deconstructed Structural documentary of the Dziga Vertov Group and the militant documentary movements of the 'newsreel collectives' of the late sixties and early seventies in the US. Please watch the interview with Jean-Luc Godard below. It is a good introduction to his way of thinking in the early sixties and in the procedures of the work he did with Jean-Pierre Gorin and the Dziga Vertov Group. He speaks of Tout Va Bien, a 'fiction' film he made with Jane Fonda and Yves Montand, as a more politically effective reflection on the political struggles in France compared to a straight documentary film like Coup Pour Coup by Marin Karmitz. Tout Va Bien is the film at the origin of the short Letter To Jane which we will be screening and discussing in class.
-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
Find the assignment for the midterm presentations on subcultures here.
JFA - Low Rider (Live in 1984)
JFA was a hardcore punk band from Phoenix, AZ identified as one of the seminal 'skate punk' bands in the US. Low Rider is a cover of a 1975 recording by WAR, a rock band with a multi-ethnic line-up. Low Rider is a celebration of another particular subcultural style from LA involving the cultural practice of certain specifically Chicano groups of hydraulically hot-rodding classic American cars.
The 'Odessa Steps' sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925) referred to in the "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" article above.
In the Cultural Resistance Reader read the short chapters in Section IV on "Subcultures and Primitive Rebels" --we will be discussing the subcultures profiled there as case studies.
Extra Readings: Dick Hebdige from Subculture: The Meaning of Style
Chapter 6 : Subculture: The Unnatural Break Chapter 7 : Style as Intentional Communication Chapter 8 : Style as Homology
Below you can find Joris Ivens' The Spanish Earth (1937) a different kind of 'bugler' film. The embedded video is the first section of the film. For the rest click on the image and watch it as part of the YouTube playlist:
The files and other media linked to and made available on this site are strictly for educational purposes and their use is therefore justified by the doctrine of fair use under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107. If, however, you are the legitimate copyright holder of the material found here and have --for whatever reason-- reservations about the FAIR USE of your so-called property I will gladly remove it. Files remain on-line for a very limited time period. If you find a dead link on old archived posts you're out of luck. You could try emailing me at peter [at] kinoppete [dot] org if you're desperate.
Three articles to accompany your reflections on the formal and ethical aspects of Roger & Me including Pauline Kael's notorious trashing of Moore.
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