Queering Texts: Popular Culture and LGBTQ+ Representation

We will be screening Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's The Celluloid Closet (USA, 1996) on Tuesday, November 27 @7.30pm in GG1 Guarini Campus. 
This is a required screening for CMS 360.

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

Alexander Doty, "There's Something Queer Here"
Susan Sontag, "On Camp"
Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"

bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze"

Reccomended Readings:

Fred Fejes, "Advertising and the Political Economy of Lesbian/Gay Identity"
Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, "Representing Gay Men on American Television"
Bruce LaBruce, "Pee Wee Herman: The Homosexual Subtext"
Richard Dyer, "Judy Garland and Gay Men"

"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

The screening of ENJOY POVERTY will be on Monday November 26 @6.30pm in GG1 Guarini Campus. Please look for readings related to the screening in the post below.

This is mandatory viewing for ALL students in COM 470 Advanced Communication Theory.

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

In the clip below the scene discussed in the first pages of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism.
from Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaròn, US/UK, 2006)






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)

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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."

Screenings: EPISODE III: ENJOY POVERTY by Renzo Martens @6.30pm on Monday, November 26

Screening will be on Monday November 26 @6.30pm in GG1 Guarini Campus.
This is mandatory viewing for ALL students in COM 470 Advanced Communication Theory.


"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"

An Art of Tensions: Narrating, Reporting and Adapting

from Glyn Dillon's The Nao of Brown

Happy Thanksgiving to all.
For those who decided to go on Thanksgiving break early you are required to watch the first hour of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis before class on Monday. The DVD is on reserve in the library (either Netflix or Amazon Prime or both might also carry it in their catalogue).

Ann Miller, Narrative Theory and Bande Dessinée from Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip (Intellect, 2008)

Hillary Chute, "'The Shadow of a Past Time': History and Graphic Representation in Maus"

Amy Kiste Nyberg, "Comics Journalism: Drawing on Words to Picture the Past in Safe Area Goradze" from Duncan& Smith (eds.), Critical Approaches To Comics: Theories and Methods

Pascal Lefèvre, "Incompatible Visual Ontologies?": The Problematic Adaptation of Drawn Images" from Gordon, Jancovich & McAllister (eds), Film and Comic Books

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 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

How To Read Comics II: An Art of Tensions

Here are some articles that you are warmly advised to integrate in your papers:

from Jason, Lost Cat

Groensteen, "The Impossible Definition"
Hatfield, "An Art of Tensions"
Beaty, "Autobiography as Authenticity"

Two sample analyses of comic art and auteurs:

Hignite, "Jamie Hernandez's LOCAS"
Kannenberg, "The Comics of Chris Ware"

à la Queneau...Excercises in Style:
Madden, Excerpts from "99 Ways To Tell A Story"

How To Read Comics I

 "To say that Nancy is a simple gag strip about a simple-minded snot-nosed kid is to miss the point completely. Nancy only appears to be simple at a casual glance. Like architect Mies Van Der Rohe, the simplicity is a carefully designed function of a complex amalgam of formal rules laid out by the designer. To look at Bushmiller as an architect is entirely appropriate, for Nancy is, in a sense, a blue print for a comic strip. Walls, floors, rocks, trees, ice-cream cones, motion lines, midgets and principals are carefully positioned with no need for further embellishment. And they are laid out with one purpose in mind - to get the gag across. Minimalist? Formalist? Structuralist? Cartoonist!"

Nancy 're-mixes' by James Benning.

How To Read Nancy by Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik.
Ernie Bushmiller, Selected Nancy Sunday Strips

Please keep up with the readings in the Duncan&Smith Power of Comics and start working your way through the rest of Understanding Comics. You should be reading Watchmen, Maus and Jimmy Corrigan.

Structuralism 101

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

Below are some very basic intro articles on Semiotics and the media for those that need a refresher/recap:

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

The Social Construction of Race, Part Deux

nb. I guess the wind took this week away along with all the trees of Rome so please be advised that the screening for Ava DuVernay's 13th is cancelled. We will reschedule the screening for next week. Same time (7.30pm), same place (actually it will be in GG1) on Tuesday and I will confirm in class. In the meantime, so that we don't fall behind on our schedule, please begin with the readings below as we investigate the political economy of 'black television' and look to questions of representation and power in relation to race.

This is the bulk of readings for the 'discourses of race' section of the course as we wade through it this week. 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. The Herman Gray article is also important. The other articles you can use for your papers, if relevant and/or to expand on our class discussion.

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"

This is the  '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)

Searching for Culture, Creativity and Resistance in Comic Books II: Fans

Jeffrey A. Brown - Ethnography: Wearing One's Fandom
Brian Swafford - Critical Ethnography: The Comics Shop As Cultural Clubhouse
Joli Jenson - Fandom as Pathology
John Fiske - The Cultural Economy of Fandom
 
Henry Jenkins - "Super-Powered Fans": The Many Worlds of Sand Diego Comic-Con
you can also access a copy of the Boom: A Journal of California printed version on Slideshare here.

Searching for Culture, Creativity and Resistance in Comic Books I: Art

Chris Ware, Panels from "Wingnutz"

Bart Beaty - "Searching for Artists in the Entertainment Empire" from Comics Versus Art

The Social Construction of Race I

As we watch Spike Lee's Bamboozled* and discuss the film, Ash Corea's "Racism and the American Way of Media" is a good summary of the issues raised by Lee and those that you will be reading about in greater detail with the next group of articles. As a bonus, a classic article by Stuart Hall.

*Through Bamboozled please reflect on the mechanisms that Lee describes (through a satirical register) as well as how he narrativizes the power dynamics at work inside the (fictional) CNS network. How does he convey the conversion of aspects of African-American culture into a commodity within the context of a white-owned and controlled corporation? Also, as Delacroix is 'permitted' to move up in the corporate entertainment ladder by becoming show runner and head writer of a 'variety' show, what are the conditions that he needs to submit to? How does the white construction of black culture play into what he is being asked to conform to? In the end, what is the price that Delacroix has to pay according to Lee?
Finally, what does Spike Lee say about the way in which Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show's genealogy in minstrel shows and blackface performance (along with the accumulation of historical artefacts) has become an empty gesture, a comedic ploy that removes the complexities of history and society and keeps racial hierarchies intact? What forms of contemporary popular culture do you think Spike Lee would consider to be operating through the same mechanisms today?
That's a whole lot of questions. Enjoy.

Ash Corea, "Racism and the American Way of Media" from Questioning the Media
Stuart Hall, "What is This 'Black' in Black Popular Culture" from Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies




Clip from the 1949 film Hollywood Varieties where actors Glenn Vernon and Edward Ryan apply blackface make-up while on stage and reminisce about 'the good ol' days' --as they say-- of minstrelsy.

Construction and Performance II: Masculinity

Eminem, Lose Yourself

Jackson Katz, "Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity: From Eminem to Clinique for Men"

Gail Dines, "King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity"

Claire Cain Miller, "Many Ways to Be a Girl, but One Way to Be a Boy: The New Gender Rules"
from The New York Times, Sept. 14, 2018 

"Beneath the cobblestones, the beach": Theory, Situationism and Cultural Resistance

Hans Magnus Enzensberger - Constituents of a Theory of the Media (1970)

Extra:
John Downing - Radical Media in Italy

Marco Tullio Giordana's I cento passi (The One Hundred Steps, 2000) will be screened on Thursday, October 11 @7.30pm in GK1.3 (Guarini Campus)

How To Talk Like A Situationist

Guy Debord - Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organization and Action (1957)

If you are interested in reading more of the Situationist International's documents, manifestos and screeds (they are always fun, engaging and inspiring) you can find an excellent selection in the anthology edited by Tom McDonough and published by MIT Press titled Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents. Modern day situationists have made the book available here. Of course all of the Situationist documents are also available online at the Situationist Online Archive which is a true treasure trove of material. There are many other sources for Situationist materials freely available online, a direct result of the 'proto-free culture' approach the Situationist International always promoted.

Zap! Crumb! Splat!: Underground Comix + Alternative Visions

Sabin, "Going Underground" from Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art
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Sabin, "Alternative Visions" from Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art

Danky & Kitchen, "Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix, 1963-1990"

(please note that the images included in these chapters are offensive, crude, anarchic and sometimes disturbing as comix are known to be; also, be aware that the files are quite big and might take a little time to load)

Fantagraphics released a 6 volume 'Complete Zap Comics'. Find a 60 page excerpt chock-full of comics by many of the artists that have graced R.Crumb's publication here in PDF format (nb. it's a big file, wait for it to load). Included are also an introduction by Crumb himself and a 'For Adult Intellectuals Only: A Zap Oral History' by Patrick Rosenkranz.

The library has the actual box set if you are interested in checking out the look and feel of those irreverent books that Crumb was selling in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco out of a baby carriage at the dawn of the hippie era.