Welcome To Fall 2014

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.

Towards a Third Cinema

 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?
Michael Chanan, "The Changing Geography of Third Cinema"

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

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Theory, Psychoanalysis and Gender

"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.

Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976)

Still from Kathryn Bigelow's Zero-Dark Thirty (USA, 2012). Jessica Chastain as subject and image.

Cinematic Specificity, Art and Theory: Montage and Realism

On Montage:
Vsevolod Pudovkin, "On Editing" from Film Technique
Sergei Eisenstein, "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" + "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" from Film Form

On Realism:
André Bazin, What is Cinema, Vol. 1
(nb. please only read the essays at pg. 9 and pg. 41: "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" + "The Virtues and Limitations of Montage" (aka Montage Interdit).

On the 'art cinema' and modernism in film:
Bordwell, "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice"
from Poetics of Cinema

Welcome to Summer I

Welcome to Summer I: for this session the blog is exclusively dedicated to the COM210 Intro to Cinema Aesthetics class. Please check back often to find readings, bits of information from across the network
, clips and other sorts of film related goodies.

Mark Fisher Presents "The Stuart Hall Project", a film by John Akomfrah

Tuesday, 22 April 6:30-9:00pm Aula Magna Guarini Campus 

One of the key thinkers of the post-war period, Stuart Hall (1932-2014) was a leading figure of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. In the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Centre and in remembrance of his recent passing, John Cabot University will screen John Akomfrah’s documentary, The Stuart Hall Project, which is a tribute to the intellectual work of a thinker who had a huge influence on political, cultural and academic debates for over six decades.

John Akomfrah: On essays, identities and Stuart Hall from Frieze on Vimeo.

The film will be presented by Mark Fisher (Department of Visual Culture, Goldsmiths, University of London) who will also outline an intellectual biography of hall.  Mark Fisher is a well known and respected author and theorist. He writes regularly for frieze, New Statesman, Sight & Sound and The Wire, where he was acting deputy editor for a year. He is the author of the much acclaimed Capitalist Realism (Zero Books) and the forthcoming ghosts of my life. As Simon Reynolds has said: “Mark Fisher is our most penetrating explorer of the connections between pop culture, politics, and personal life under the affective regime of digital capitalism. The most admirable qualities of Fisher’s work are its lucidity, reflecting the urgency of his commitment to communicating ideas; his high expectations of popular art’s power to challenge, enlighten, and heal; and his adamant refusal to settle for less.” Prof. Fisher is a member of the faculty at the Department of Visual Culture, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Punk Attitude & Hip Hop Culture

Michael Eric Dyson, The Culture of Hip Hop (from Forman & Neal (eds), That's The Joint! The Hip Hop Studies Reader (Routledge, 2004))

PUNK: Attitude (2005) by Don Letts; Watch it on YouTube.

TV After TV: Global Media Trade, Formats and Channel Branding

Brennan, "A Political Economy of Formatted Pleasures"
Torre, "Reversal of Fortune?: Hollywood Faces New Competition in Global Media Trade"
from Oren & Shahaf (eds), Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders (Routledge, 2012)

Chap.1: "Deregulation, Differentiation and Niche Targeting: The Emergence of Branding in the Cable/Satellite Era"
Chap.2: "From Channel Brands to Service Brands: US Television Enters the Digital Era"
from Catherine Johnson, Branding Television (Routledge, 2012)

Bonus Article:
"Why HBO Passed on The Walking Dead" from Mother Nature Blog.

Also, if you are interested in the intersection of technology, creativity, production practices and televisual style make sure you follow Ben Consoli's GO Creative Podcast (and Blog). The last three episodes, for example, have seen Consoli interview the DP for House of Cards, have an in depth conversation for with Shane Reynolds, a true one-man band/jack of all trades who produces, shoots and edits his work all on his own for the Travel Network, Nat Geo and others and with Chris Manley, the cinematographer and DP for Mad Men. Great insights on how network pressures, studio concerns with the bottom line line up with technological possibilities and stylistic choices.

Medium Specificity and Representation

 Lily Allen, "Hard Out Here"

Keith Negus, "Popular Music: Between Celebration and Despair" 
Van Zoonen, "Gender, Representation and the Media"
Corea, "Racism and the American Way of Media"

Desjardins, "Cinema and Communication"
Thomas, "Myths in and About TV"
*Articles are from Downing et al (eds), Questioning The Media: A Critical Introduction (Sage, 1996)

Defined Lines, the Blurred Lines parody

Project-Unbreakable by Photographer Grace Brown 

Article on the parallels between the Blurred Lines lyrics and Project-Unbreakable here.

Post-Rock, Subcultures and the Implosion of Meaning

Assuming that at this point you should be on your way to completing the Garofalo textbook, here are the reading assignments for the next couple of weeks:

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.



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?"
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"

Audience Heatmaps: Assessment, Interactivity, Analytics and Chatter*

The Audience Response Heatmap from Bluefin

*Now better and improved with Toby Miller's most recent blogpost "TV is Dead" chock full of nice links and statistics about TV consumption.

Andrejevic, The Twenty-First-Century Telescreen
Marshall, Screens: Television's Dispersed 'Broadcast'

McChesney, What it the Elephant in the Digital Room? from Digital Disconnect

The following are good background readings about network and transition era audience assessment methods. They also offer a good reflection and analysis of the ways in which audience assessment are used in developing a political and regulatory environment for media systems in general and television in particular. Refer to John Gertner's epigraph in Chapter 6 of The Television Will Be Revolutionized:

"Finding out whether ''C.S.I.'' beats ''Desperate Housewives'' is just the beginning. Change the way you count, for instance, and you can change where the advertising dollars go, which in turn determines what shows are made and what shows then are renewed. Change the way you count, and potentially you change the comparative value of entire genres (news versus sports, dramas versus comedies) as well as entire demographic segments (young versus old, men versus women, Hispanic versus black). Change the way you count, and you might revalue the worth of sitcom stars, news anchors and -- when a single ratings point can mean millions of dollars -- the revenue of local affiliates and networks alike. Counting differently can even alter the economics of entire industries, should advertisers (thanks to the P.P.M.) discover that radio or the Web is a better way to get people to know their brand or buy their products or even vote for their political candidates. Change the way you measure America's culture consumption, in other words, and you change America's culture business. And maybe even the culture itself."

Link to the complete Gertner article from The New York Times Magazine, "Our Ratings, Ourselves" here.

Meehan, The Blame Game
Meehan, Don't Blame The Viewers

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

Signs, Meaning, Power

Articles related to our discussion on signs, meaning and culture and their intersections with the construction of identity, desire and power. Enjoy.

Kellner, "Advertising and Consumer Culture"

Sut Jhally, "Image Based Culture"

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

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.

Media, Culture and Society Study Guide

Busy?

Study guide here. We will use some class time to go over it in class on Tuesday. Enjoy.