Signs, Meaning and Power

In preparation for 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)
Keith Negus, "Popular Music: Between Celebration and Despair" (from Questioning The Media)

Fatal Strategies? Retromania and Remix Culture

Matt Mason, "We Invented The Remix"

Henry Jenkins, "Photoshop for Democracy"

McKenzie Wark, The Hacker Manifesto

Popular Music Paper Assignment Numero Deux

Paper Assignment for Popular Music: find it here.
   

The boys play tracks from LPs, the girls 45s: from Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Participatory Culture and Collective Intelligence

Jenkins, "Worship at the Altar of Convergence"

Jenkins, "Spoiling Survivor"

from Convergence Culture

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

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

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

from The Future of Ideas

Himanen, "From Netiquette to Nethic"

from The Hacker Ethic

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?"
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"

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.

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.

Manovich, What Is New Media?

This is the complete chapter from Lev Manovich's The Language of New Media. Reflect on the qualities that he identifies as pertaining to 'new media' as we integrate our encounters with the technologies and changed social contexts of digital converged media.

Manovich, What Is New Media?

COM 220 Media, Culture and Society Study Guide

Busy?

Here is the study guide. We will use some class time to go over it in class on Tuesday. Remember that the Midterm has been moved to Thursday, March 8.

Popular Music Paper #1

Find the assignment for the first short paper here. Enjoy.



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

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

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

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

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

Audiences and Advertising

Ang, "The Nature of the Audience"
Gandy, "Tracking the Audience"

Kellner, "Advertising and Consumer Culture"

Eileen Meehan on how the media and the rating services blame the victims:
Meehan, Chapter 1: Why TV Is Not Our Fault
Meehan, Chapter 2: Why TV Is Not Our Fault

Article Compilation articles on audience assessment and its problems.

The PBS/Frontline Documentary THE PERSUADERS is here.

Nussbaum, "What Would Tina Fey Do For A SoyJoy?"

Emancipatory Uses of the Media

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE SCREENING OF I CENTO PASSI WILL BE ON MONDAY, FEB. 27 @8pm in GKG3

Here are the new readings:
Hans Magnus Enzensberger's "Constituents of a Theory of the Media" is one of the fundamental articles envisioning a new use for media technologies by political movements during the late '60s and '70s, emancipatory tools for political mobilization and social change. Use Marco Tullio Giordana's I Cento Passi and the story of Peppino Impastato and Radio AUT as a way to contextualize and visualize the historical moment in which Enzensberger is writing.

Something to think about in relation to the film 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) 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 in relation to Enzensberger's article --programming, control, voice, 'mission', etc. Does the 'network' and the resultant digital media culture of today finally deliver on those expectations?

Enzensberger - Constituents of a Theory of the Media

Extra Readings on Old vs. New Media Conceptions:

Michael Crichton - Mediasaurus (1993)

Jack Schaefer - Reflections on Mediasaurus

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE SCREENING OF I CENTO PASSI WILL BE ON MONDAY, FEB. 27 @8pm in GKG3