Hot and Cold Media Is the Message in the Global Village of the Guttenberg Galaxy

Eisenstein Diagram

Here are the 'notes' re: the taxonomy of Hot and Cold media.
+
Ben Reynolds, "The Printing Press" + "Industrial Production"
from The Coming Revolution (Zero Books, 2018)


Below is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 'Conference' program from 1977 where McLuhan discusses and responds to audience questions on his main theoretical ideas. If we don't get to watch and discuss this in class please watch it on your own:

Monopolies of Knowledge and Space/Time Bias

Harold Innis, "The Bias of Communication" from The Bias of Communication (University of Toronto Press, 2008; orig. 1951)

Art & Folk

The virtuoso instrumentalist and composer as superstar: Franz Liszt.

Good interview on WNYC's Soundcheck with Tim Blanning author of The Triumph of Music, a 'social history' of musicians in the west and how they went from being considered merely servants to being 'stars'. This is an excellent example of metacontextual musical knowledge. Required listening.

Download entire interview mp3 here.

I Want My MTV

Sunil Manghani, "The Pleasures of (Music) Video"
from Arnold et al (eds), Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media (Bloomsbury, 2017)

Mathias Korsgaard, "Defining Music Video"
from Korsgaard, Music Video After MTV: Audiovisual Studies, New Media and Popular Music (Routledge, 2017)

The TV and Media Industry Podcasts

The Business; Hosted by Kim Masters, Saturdays on KCRW
The Spin-Off; Hosted by Joe Adalian & Mike Schneider on KCRW
(nb. while The Spin-Off is currently off the air and not updating, the archives are still up and contain a treasure trove of information and reflections on the state of television)
Media Business Matters with Amanda Lotz and Alex Intner

Bonus Podcast:
On The Media; Hosted by Brooke Gladstone & Bob Garfield, Fridays on WNYC

As we said in class, please subscribe to The Business and Media Business Matters and listen to new episodes regularly throughout the semester. Episodes are 30 minutes each so easily digestible. In any case definitely do listen to the opening 'News Banter' section in The Business but stay on for the in depth interviews with industry people (producers, showrunners, directors, writers, media executives, etc.). This is  a chance to hear talk about film and television that goes beyond the gossip platitudes or faux-criticism that we usually get about the media. Host Kim Masters asks the right questions in regards to deals, arrangements, finacing, etc. and Amanda Lotz and her co-host dig deep into the industrial and infrastructural transformations of the media industries.

In addition to the new episodes here are some past episodes that can complement your readings and our discussions in class in these first weeks of the semester.
(In addition to KCRW's website you can find The Business on iTunes, Spotify and Google Play)

from The Business:
The Year in Film and Television: 2015 Edition (from Dec. 28, 2015)
The Year in Film and Television: 2016 Edition (Dec. 26, 2016)
Lessons Learned: Industry Insights from Memorable Guests (from Oct. 9, 2017)
Mega Banter Year In Review 2017 (from Dec. 25, 2017)

from Media Business Matters listen to the Media Business Year in Review episode as well as the episodes on
-Open TV and the Creative Possibilities of Internet-Distributed Television
-The Business of YouTube and Social Media Entertainment
plus the in-depth interview with Amanda Lotz herself about her new book We Now Disrupt This Broadcast

Ep 47 Author Interview: We Now Disrupt This Broadcast

Alex Intner and Amanda Lotz

 

Download

from The Spin-Off:
Summer 2015's TCA's: Streaming Media Boom & Networks as Brands (from Aug. 13, 2015)
Fall TV Fails to Excite; New Faces in Late Night (from Oct. 1, 2015)
TV Development Trends and Behind-the-Scenes Drama (from Oct. 28, 2015)

The Evolution of Streaming and a Late Night Check-In (from Nov. 17, 2015)
The Year That Was Peak TV, Tackling Tough Social Issues (from Dec. 23, 2015)
Cord Cobblers and What TV Can Learn from 'Making a Murderer' (from Jan. 20, 2016)
The Year in Television (from Dec. 21, 2016).

As a bonus check out some of the bloggers mentioned in this Complex article:
The 25 Best TV Bloggers.

Finally, remember that the treasure trove about everything TV is Twitter. If you are on Twitter you might want to start following the various hosts of The Business and The Spin-Off and branch out from there (see who they follow, who they retweet, etc).

TV: The Idiot Box, the Electronic Babysitter, the Toaster with Pictures, "Drug of the Nation, Breeding Ignorance and Feeding Radiation"...

Raymond Williams, "The Technology and the Society"
originally in Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form

Michele Hilmes, "Cable, Satellite and Digital Technologies"
P. David Marshall, "Rejuvenation: Television"

Enjoy some tunes about TV below:

Communications: Ritual vs. Transmission? Works vs. Acts? Message vs. Text?

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)

**Reading Media Theory Table of Contents for Presentations**

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 2019

UPDATE: COM 470 Advanced Media Theory Final Study Guide + Race and Gender Study Guide

After the wise and profound words of Father Guido, words which are so perfectly comforting during exam crunch times, here is the much agonized for study guide:

COM 470 Study Guide

CMS 360 Race & Gender Study Guide

Final Reading Quiz Readings Recap

The reading quiz on Wednesday will include basic questions based on the following articles (assigned since the midterm):

Bart Beaty - "Searching for Artists in the Entertainment Empire" from Comics Versus Art
Jeffrey A. Brown - "Ethnography: Wearing One's Fandom"
Brian Swafford - "Critical Ethnography: The Comics Shop As Cultural Clubhouse"
Charles Hatfield, "An Art of Tensions"
Bart Beaty, "Autobiography as Authenticity"
Ann Miller, Narrative Theory and Bande Dessinée from Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip (Intellect, 2008)


What I am primarily interested is your ability to synthesize the following points:

a) The relation of the comics medium and the comics form to the realm of culture, creativity and artistic production.
b) The role of fans in the legitimation of comics.
c) What Hatfield means when he defines comics as an 'art of tensions'.
d) Elements of Narratology.

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)

+

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