1CSCL Review KEYWORDS culture cultural studies critical discipline (inter) discipline theoretical discipline interpretive discipline text practice consciousness high culture low culture homology subject subjectivity subject position interpellation inter-textuality theory sign signifier codes signified author reader consumption representation identity production weak bodies strong bodies intelligible bodies practical (useful) bodies agoraphobia anorexia bulimia cutting body practices hysteria politics poetics materiality historiography Names- Where did you get that name? - name changing to avoid conflict - black father, white mother, and an arabic name changes who you are (Malcolm X power) - no economic impact, Freakonomics (do names decide a person s successful career?) - you might change your name &amp; your friends/family understand, but for the rest of the world your name is open to interpretation What is needed to understand a name? Immigration history, family history, sexuality, power (who named you mother or father), literary history, literary theory reader response theory , sociology of ethnicity, critical race-has an explicit politics, geography, and psychoanalysis Meanings- are made up of USED words - are assigned - cultural studies tries to challenge them - are arbitrary, not fixed - lots of words come from/has meanings from history *Notes: Difficult to describe something w/o words: shows how trapped we are in our own language. There s no private language (have to get someone else to go along w/ it) Irish- were looked at as dirty, savage, black people - was not okay to name child Irish name, now it is very common Megan etc. How Irish Became White Cultural Studies- new humanities - binds and separates Culture- exists in mind not in body, it is what we know: mentalistic concept - is a construction, every image is an argument - can be understood through the practices of human beings, texts - changes through time and varies from place to place - it both bonds us and separates us from one another - culture is politics playing out our individual collective consciousness - largest single component of the human brain 3 Focuses- RHETORIC- argues us into the ways we believe and live POWER- folds us into large, historical conversations &amp; struggles over ideas and places in society. Power constructs us &amp; culture DESIRE- direct what and who we love &amp; shape process of making &amp; reproducing culture *Note: power s application mayn t be universal (rap power exists only in AA communities) Men in Black- What makes a man? Truck, gun, push wife around: Edgar, redneck man, could be looked at a punishment for pushing around his wife-feminist view, homosexual invasion? - Metamorphosis: alien taking over body - NRA quote pry from cold dead hands - position of urban v. rural life - cow in yard (unreal portrayal), 60s truck turquoise, unpainted farmhouse, Carharts, big guy, alien (cross-culture, alien/human misunderstanding), bug slime, robotic voice w/ miscomprehension, crown air-freshner, clink , beaded seat cover, turban, draped clothing, dark skin - Racist: turban guy so disgusting even alien won t ride w/ him or his stuff (w/o him air = fresh) Consciousness- could lead to Iraq, need to change things - everything that makes me me - the way we see the world Discourse- the way you fall into your culture - formation pulls together through discourse Representation- process of the way things are encoded (chick flick? Country song?) *Text = formal features, author = intentions, reader = reception Marx- how you make your money, class matters it follows the money - pay attention to class difference, who can buy, money, and power William Wordsworth- Tintern Abbey: poem, romantic - nature is vanishing (industrialization) but still taking in beauty - place is in ruins: old, spooky, nostalgic, looking back - why do you want to look at when nature is leaving? - farmers do not have speculative view - turns land into romantic fantasy about ruins - Never miss the water until the well runs dry Hummer- ad gets to the point to Teach Cabbies Respect (Racism towards Somalis) - 2nd ad: Links in ad are constructed: veggie eating = weak masculinity BUT there s no relation bet. the two until it s linked intentionally - Intertexual link bet. menu, diets, women s magazines Subject- self, being subject to someone - we are subject to roles such as class, race, gender respond to things Subjectivity- what (pic/image forcing you to take position) - socially constructed (not naturally found) Interpellation- How (how culture discourse hits you w/o you knowing it) - what happens, process - walking, thinking, doing, we re interpellated when we respond to anything &amp; evrything Disciplines- how school works, ways of doing knowledge - how knowledge is organized - all knowledge is political Circulatory- breaks down the questions asked - how does it work? - who is buying something/who is not? Images- constructs us - it hails us into subjectivity and offers us a subject position from which to look whether we like the image or hate it Signifier- actual sign, ex: how you wear your hat - at work in culture - what make us want to act a certain way Rhetoric- reinforces a thought, cultural practice, rewarded, argues us into being The Body and Politics of Representation Made up Meanings (imagery)- country and city hicks and rednecks , farming, trucks, treatment of women, woman s place , guns, NRA, houses, housekeeping, immigrants, cabs, SUVs, black men, pimps, music, nature Subjecting Bodies- how culture gets inside us - ex: Ronnie Specter s dream/Ronnie Specter s body, how love songs subject us and form docile bodies , Ja Rule, Jet, girl shirt, Pierre Bourdieu s idea of the habitus Women- see the world through male perspective Mapping Bodies- how shapes are constructed and valued Reading Bodies- the body and the reproduction of femininity <a href="/keyword/wuthering-heights/" >wuthering heights</a> - relationship of white girl with dark man, she is lured away by rich white man even though she s in love w/ Heath (dark guy) -Heath angry: why can t he have fair skin &amp; hair, money: male beauty &amp; rich Paradise (Phil Spector)- romance is constructed, there is no such thing as soulmate -Culture make things up, including us: interpellates us through tiny message -After Pump up the volume, in 1.5 yrs college smokers increase 20% Bordo- female body is site for reproduction - creaky voice (OC, Laguna Beach) powerful, rich, white girls - how bodies reveal and reproduce cultures and how we might resist - power feminism, is when men tell you that you look good: doesn t exist: NOT GOOD Medium- means of transmission, women are wearing or inhabiting signs Symbolic Forms- suggestion, consonent with what follows, of how to read Metaphor- one way that meaning is coded, x is y Text- readable, complex sign system Intelligible Body- doesn t exist: it s a platonic/ideal/impossible body - men s clothes in inches, women s clothes in codes: women s intelligible standards is undefined: harder for women to know when she looks good (&amp; looks = power) -women self development is an endless project, pursuit w/o a terminus -double binds: sexy &amp; deadly (Bordo) - ghetto, preppy, loser, farmer, there is one for all of us *PMS spread in US/Euro but not Asia: why? Practical Body-how to make body into intelligible body Body Practices- body sizes and shapes, rebellious conditions - picking pretty - anorexia or amphetamines/speed matters - salad with dressing on the side matters - shape is a pursuit of without a terminus Mentor- breast implant marketer - Taylor and Amber - did not feel like a woman until she had implants, didn t come with puberty, becoming wife, becoming mother, -every woman will be envious - women in ads are identical -femininity defined as breasts: reduce themselves to breasts -pleasure being looked at greater than pleasure for feelings - subject to what men want * If I ve got breast, I m a woman even though I lose sense of my nipples *Can t f*ck your way to freedom: women can t use sexuality to make men drool &amp; call that power feminism *Traditional role of women in film: gap w/ reality: erotic objects for men The Vanitas- Sex Sin Death, The female nude discursive formation - genre in art, way of putting symbols together - hourglass - tree of knowledge of good &amp; evil (like pandora s box: don t open it): putting yourself before God - sin is sexy, sex is sinny *Eve made sin universal: nudity &amp; sin *Discursive formation: a bunch of things pulled together because they relate (ex: Robin wear clothes like the woods but not for the woods) Zonite- selling to females telling them they smell *Carbolic acid rinse vagina: not good for body *No deodorant 1950s: everyone smells thus no one smells *product/technology creates the condition DeBeers- wistful men, envious women (left hand) - right hand rings sold to women to tell the world you are taken by you - Diamonds are Forever, campaign to be buried with diamonds The Female Nude- naked is not nude - Baldung was first to bring in sex, sin, death - fall of Adam and Eve - he is saying Eve is beautiful and gorgeous - courting evil Nude- is to be seen, put on display Scophoilia- pleasure of looking Origination of Sin- nudity=sin, revealing things Material Circumstances- any advertisement, artistic production, cultural practice, and so on will be motivated by the material (business or economics) conditions in which they occur. Here = the need to find a new market for a product whose (hidden, occulted) use had been eliminated by people s experience during WWII Formal Elements and Structures- we read the shape, sounds, words, meanings, patterns, and color: all reps in our text or practice to see how its form means History-meanings &amp; uses always change over time, so we need to know the history of a text/practice Distribution Pornography- never works, there is always a lack of the real person in flash &amp; blood Gerome Slave Market painting- dark man controlling white woman for sale Ingres Turkish Bath painting- peep hole to look in forbidden area of fair skinned women with other women Bronzino-Venus &amp; cupid kissing: pornography never works: it s always going to be a painting &amp; not real peop Bourgereau painting- 4 women pulling/pushing man with hooves into the water Forbidden- sights, parts, and acts - legs, breast, thigh are words that some people can t even use for a turkey, because of the sexual connotations of the words for some Fatal Attraction-fear of women cutting head, turn off music, take away from men after marriage Power- creates us and who we are - dynamics, generative - rule breaking gives us power (euphemism: saying something w/o saying the actual word on TV) A &amp; F- not as straight as we think - billboard in NYC - lighting plays up gym socks - push the limits and are doing what you are not aloud to do Reading History: Theory and Practice Controlling Question: How does the ways our past is represented (the poetics of history) and who the writers of history are (the politics of history, determines what we know and how we use that knowledge) *There s no direct access to history Underground- get out of system of production that keeps us dumb, dull senses - music, art, protests, websites (RAW, non-conforming) - interpellates us to be different Psalm 137- Jewish Passover song - song of exile to take back Jerusalem - dasheth thy little ones against the rock - Maus uses it to make perfect speech - Bible is most quoted along with Shakespeare, John Bunyan, and <a href="/keyword/alexander-pope/" >alexander pope</a> in US writing History- is narrated from ONE pt of view: selection &amp; emphasis - is chaos and needs to be spun Understanding Genre- Maus created new genre Graphic Novel - guide and determine historical interpretation Understanding Writer s Subjectivity- told mother is dead, constant terror of his father, honor his father, mental hospital, mini-mouse when with his father Understanding Material Ways- conditions of production and consumption to determine how we see the world (books, raw magazine, college education, higher speed DSL) Historiography- expand ability to describe visual rhetoric History through Maus-Partial Truths Genre- graphic novel Medium- Consensus Press and Alternatives Material Systems of productions and consumption- Who buys books? Who surfs the web? Owns media? How do the writers subjectivity determine the work? How does the work argue (rhetorically) for a view of the world? What s at stake in that argument? Maus- Art s and Vladek s story - What paradigm organizes the graphic novels? - How does Art s subjectivity (nuttiness) matter? - father can t see his own son the hipster - all is there for a reason, nothing is missed in Spiegelman s drawings - theme of parents/children, father protects children/son - Present = white box w/o border, past = colored box w/ border - Art spins this story much more like a novel (diff. than reality) - 2nd book better drawn than 1st Examples from Maus - father is a murderer of (Anja) because he got rid of her diaries - he searched for medication, for her nerves - the spa was for depression but they called it a honeymoon (ONE 15) - [Lucia s] family was nice, but had no money (ONE 23) - Okay-I promise Art lied (ONE 32) - first time they saw the swastika was on way to honeymoon, then it starts to turn up everywhere (moon) (ONE 38-39) seriousness (past) mixed w/ humor (present) (ONE 100) - Mother suicide story: prisoner on the hell planet: text within text - you murdered me, mommy (ONE 108) - German threw kid in wall, shift in time, themes: take care children, taking away kids in Aus; psalm reference: happy shall he be, that taketh &amp; dasheth thy little ones against the rock Is psalm intertextual &amp; creates Vladek s memory? - images more pwrful when not shown explicitly: imagination much more pwrful (ONE 131)- Mala mad @ Vladek: jerk, can t see anyone else at all: miserly Jew (TWO 11)-What animal should Francoise be? (TWO 42)-Mini-art w/ interviewers (TWO 78)-Vladek extremely thoughtful (gets job teaching Eng, tinman, shoemaker), remember things in great detail (shoe pic) (TWO 134) - Gypsy: photo: fake/set up - last page description: honey moon BG, Richieu, Tombs - Positioning of lived happy after w/ reader s knowledge of Anja s suicide: Vladek LIED Miscellaneous -Ape Escape 2: Humans take role of monkey catcher (how to become what game asks you) to catch monkey thieves. Superiority of humans over nature? -Grand Theft Auto: does it ask you to steal &amp; commit violent crimes? -There is a physical world (for ex: stem cells does something: but whether if it s right/wrong, positive/negative, we attribute to it) -Nature is not a natural fact (Thomas Moran sketched nature of US &amp; then painted them back @ NY: power of memory &amp; imagination: he romanticized the paintings) -We don t have control over our bodies, our uniqueness. We re heavily subjected by culture: we believe we re all not the same but we ARE -fiction or truth makes NO difference: it doesn t matter if the ads are real, the job/advertising/interpellating is done -Thanksgiving: drumstick, 2nd sights, dark meat, white meat VS breast, leg: Victorian constraints &amp; forbidden sights Case Studies 9.14 How things mean: watches, Nature, cities, SUVs, boomer music, black men. How our stuff &amp; our behavior subject us &amp; set our relations to one another. Subject &amp; subject position &amp; why it matters so much 9.21 You are your playlist: the image constructs us, interpellates us, hails us into subjectivity &amp; offers us a subject position from which to look whether we like the image or not. We construct the image when we interpret or use an image, our actions construct it. Play on words (playlist vs. playboy). Power, controlling women, leashes, chokers: dominate, taking over 9.26 *Romantics: how we learned to love &amp; love the woods (and beaches, oceans, mountains, rainbows ) -never miss the water till the well runs dry (industrialization, urbanization) -reliable sentiments: solitude, adventure, the wild, self-discovery *The answer machine for the call of the wild: needs car to answer to nature -allusions: answer machine: not there; thus need to answer to the call Mini Lecture 9.14 -Definitions are often not concrete, thus we often need examples to illustrate -Different cultures have different knowledge (and also shared knowledge) -We re all the same (even though we think we re unique individuals ) -High smile area people (animated) will know you re alien if for ex. you re from a low-keyed area -Homology: studying of things in world that have similar signifieds -How &amp; can you change consciousness? (drunk goes to church, change) -Even when we were born: we were born to world already filled w/ discourses (Robin s yellow duck toilet, Baptism, mother, etc.) -Canon camera: sepia tone button: built into the camera is nostalgia (other examples include old looking furniture, cars ) -Everything we make &amp; do means something: forms us -Ideology (only what you believe) vs. conscious (what you believe &amp; already know) -High (prestige) &amp; low (vernacular) culture -It makes a difference what culture signs you re wearing (suit vs. shirt) -World isn t the way Marx talked about: US doesn t make anything, world = more complicated -Tahoe 271: GM truck: Somewhere bet. practical and Who s your Daddy? -Power, control, ownership, street fights, sexual connotations, male dominance, racism, violence, thug life -Truck goes out of ghetto &amp; into nature (photo shopped) 9.26 -whosyourdadyinc.com: licensing company: brand empire -Some questions to ask: representation (genre), identity (who uses it), production (network? Label?), consumption (how/where do you listen?), regulation (download illegally? Is it obscene?) 10.17 -We re not as straight as we think: it s really wonderful to look at beautiful men: but A&amp;F makes it harder to look @ men &amp; harder to be gay -Over &amp; over A&amp;F put beautiful men in ads: forbidden: keep system in power: they re doing what you re not allowed to do -All cultures limit access to &amp; uses of the body (in ways it s necessary: we don t sleep w/ everything)