Defining Culture: Hansen & Yudice

UNA V: Pragmatism, Progressivism in US culture at the turn of the 20th century

1. Pragmatist Interventions?

Pragmatist proponents at the turn of the century: Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), John Dewey (1859-1952)

-We’re at the end of the 19th century (after the emergence of black face minstrelsy and investment in print culture increasing): it’s the period of public sphere industrialization (newspapers have been professionalized and now serve as entertainment; along with them we have novels and the penny press: cheap stories to buy for a dime and dispose of ==>New media (media modernity) is born: telegraph, phone, and radio

-While Pierce and James are credited to have outlined much of the philosophical project

of Pragmatism, Dewey is also recognized as a major educational (and social) reformer

who was driven by his firm belief in democracy: “Democracy and the one, ultimate,

ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous”. Like Transcendentalism before it, Pragmatism shifted the emphases dominant in European philosophical discourse (and really opened up philosophy as a discipline; see: functional psychology)

“Pragmatism”, William James (1907)

-He defined it using a three-question summary of its basic tenants, essentially asking (1) what actually is true, what the meaning of something is and how does that meaning matter? In a way, the label of pragmatism summarizes it as a school of thought and what it is about: the pragmatic effects of thought! ==>It poses an intervention into philosophy! By ‘the history of thought’ in this sense we mean the specific approach to pondering the questions of experience and truth; these questions concern what the meaning of something is and how can we even understand its meaning. According to this movement, we can accomplish this via (2) the ‘cash value’ of an idea: this is a very goal/use-oriented way of thinking about it (that’s fundamentally who a pragmatist is, they’re concerned mostly with the outcomes)

-(3) This leads to experience being seen as both subjective and intersubjective: this opens up (pragmatist) thought to its communicability (with scientific and political implications); pragmatism then comes with its own political theory of democracy, as it invents a language of goal-orientation and a world of inter-subjective provability (=what these truths signify even beyond the experiential realm, asking whether they make sense in democratic terms as well)

-(4) It invites a mis-reading of its philosophical skepticism along the lines of “does anything go?” (if I deem it to be true =as long as it’s in the real world); Does it automatically matter to pragmatists?==>This train of thought has also been coined as anti-intellectual: an arguably defensive response by thinkers who ponder questions beyond their actual effects

-(5) Pragmatism provides a method/tools to find answers, not answers themselves: it hinges on the question of how these truths matter to us in terms of actual experience; (6) this shifts the focus of grand philosophical concerns towards how these become relevant pragmatically (in our lives) ==>To the pragmatists, it only matters what we can know in terms of how it affects the world (= does it matter how much we can know if it can’t affect the world we live in?)

Pierce, “How to make our ideas clear”

-it’s certainly a strange and counter-intuitive way to phrase it: ‘the consequences of something are the conception of the thing they’re the consequence of’, meaning we experience objects of the world as such only through their effects. Because of that, the effects give us opportunity to derive knowledge of the world; in order for us to understand them, these effects have to influence or impact our life in the real world!

==>With this theory, Pierce tackles central epistemological questions, which revolve around:

-(1) the possibility to gain knowledge of the world around us

-(2) the truthfulness or the likeliness of truth of said knowledge

-He only finds these questions relevant if they have an effect on our real world: it might just be another formulation of the cash value of an idea, but it actually does engage the philosophical tradition; it becomes a question of ‘did we know the thing is the object of a thing in and of itself, or do we just have an experience of it?’

Pragmatism summary

-late-19th century philosophical ’movement’ (rather heterogeneous ideas moving through groups)

-the ‘cash-value’ of an idea as the central tenant

-applicability to experience (vs the more grand philosophical concerns of empiricism and idealism and metaphysics – which talk about what can we know as subjects of the world: 2 answers, one rooted in our internal ideas of things, and the other influenced by the scientific method – only by measuring things through it can we understand/know them, empirically)

-communicative quality of ‘truths’, with an emphasis on scientific knowledge production (we must be able to share truths through communication specifically)

-from an outside perspective (western European perspective) on US American culture, the emphasis on ‘cash’ and pragmatics might be striking (and lure us to oversimplify the complexities of this train of thought: is US culture of thought based on this pragmatist school? yes and no!)

2. Progressivism (and its cultural entanglements)

-The basic idea is that progressivism forms as a result of the long processes from Enlightenment ideas to the industrial and technological revolution(s) of the mid- to late 19th century

-In the US it inspires a period we refer to as ‘the progressive era’

-US culture begins to obsess over the idea of technological progress (of the future, here think utopia and science fiction)

-Central concerns of progressivism: moving society forward into a better future (crisis of industrial, corporate capitalism – like rapid growth of cities – and urbanism: the question of the social as the major concern)

-New media environment of transmission media, also the development of urban spheres: there’s new modes of transportation – like those of steam engines

-Increasing awareness of socio-economic stratification (questions of gender, ethnicity, class in terms of social progressivism)

An example of this cultural entanglement: “Standard Oil Trust” cartoon depiction in Puck Magazine, 1904

-it depicts “standard oil” as a corporation through the image of an octopus, wrapping its tentacles around entities of of power: this is the largest monster nationally! There’s similar depictions of other corporations as octopuses ==>Even though it’s a water animal posed on land, it’s still menacing: this represents the menacing force of companies, no matter how unexpected their power and influence is! The larger idea lingering behind that: anti-monopoly sentiment, as these corporations try to monopolize whatever they touch, same with telephone corporations like AT&T (telegraph/phone corporation, fusing of two communication modes in one via the corporation model, meaning major conglomerates/trusts that become menacing now, with the turn of the century and new technological advancements)

Jacob Riis, “How the Other Half Lives” (1890)

-it’s essentially a photo book: the images are ambiguous, they are often used by social reformers that were ambiguous in terms of their stances in relation to poor workers and immigrants: they do serve to illuminate upper middle class people, who have no idea how the cities and poor people actually look like, what conditions they live in, etc.; we’re not certain as to whether these images are portraying the subjects sympathetically, whether they gain power or agency… Riis is one of the early pioneers of photographic journalism, an innovation in how social life depiction, raising awareness of stratifications along socio-economic lines, etc.

The Culture of Social Progressivism

-Specific topics and concerns began circulating widely, esp., as abt, about capitalism+its effects

-Typically the focus was either on the greed of the corporations (as the benefactors of capitalism) or the working class and working poor (as the victims of capitalism)

-New modes of reporting: journalistic ‘muckraking’ as a way to investigate the ills of capitalist production and politics (journalists sneak into the capitalist factories and observe the poor hygienic conditions of workers, uncovering conditions through investigative journalism/reporting as a new crucial form at the 20th century)

-Photojournalism emerges, which has to do with the technological possibility of taking pictures somewhat easily without them having to be staged and lit specifically

-In literature, Naturalism is the new mode indicative of social progressivism: the issues of the individual with society are being pondered and problematized (a famous naturalist novel called “The Octopus” about a corporation takes a cartoon octopus as the primary inspiration, Frank Noris creates a story based on that idea); social reformist writing emerges (à la Jane Addams)

-Political cartoons (their focus is now capitalist benefactors and political corruption)

-Social reform as a goal to improve what we would now call “social equality”

Jane Addams, ‘A Function of the Social Settlement’ (1899)

-Central tenants of educational reform! She is a famous female reformist of the day, playing a major role in these “social settlements”, putting them into writing/ cultural form: this stems from a desire to make society more equal and not based on a heritage of privilege (which she sees in American education); she advocates for reforms, asserting ‘we need to think about these issues constructively and methodically’

Another entanglement: “Beneath” the American Renaissance

-Post- civil war and before late 1800s ==> American literary renaissance in wiring!

-Social and class awareness become highly visible in the progressive era and accordingly effect cultural production (which itself becomes self-aware off the high and low culture split); at the same time, the formation of mass cultures codevelops ==>The “beneath”, lurking, menacing forms of popular culture to these higher art critics

3. Sensationalism and/or towards the culture industries?

-These are examples of dime novels, they typically focus on detectives/the “wild west” ==>They usually have a lot going on and have to “tickle” you so that you experience what is at stake: lively, colorful, action-driven

-Billy the kid: during the progressive era, he becomes an inspiration for these novels (he is an American folk hero like Robin Hood almost –without giving to the poor; a young guy who roams the frontier, influencing the imagination of American working writers

Joy Wiltenburg (2004)

-He encapsulates Sensationalism in “True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism”: it was invented in the 19th century as a pejorative term to denounce works of literature or journalism which aimed to arouse strong emotional reactions the public (senses as the key site of stimulation)

CULTURE VI: Birthplaces of US-American Popular Culture: Page, Stage, Screen

1. The Popular Page

-This is the so-called “renaissance of American popular culture”, associated with mass culture, entertainment, the culture industry specifically in the context of the German “Frankfurt school”, which consisted of some of the first serious academics to think critically about popular culture at the time, 1930s: they called it the the industrial production of culture the “culture industries” (something we now consider quintessential/to some extent dominated by US corporations)

-We’re right at the turn of the century (industrialization of the public sphere): it’s about the mass production of media, also about the notion of modern consumption (binge watching, losing oneself in consumer culture) which has a connotation of drug use ==>To this point, the exponents of the Frankfurt school are some of the first to critically analyze mass culture, calling it somewhat dangerous even

+This cultural moment of industrialization stands side by side with Pragmatism

-An important aspect (temporally) of the Popular Page is profitability: the reason why we binge watch now is because it’s profitable for the companies which produce the shows/movies; profit margins are significant, regular people provide companies with low cost resources to make these shows! Sensationalist novels also need an audience, which needs a larger audience as well ==>Literacy rates actually increase due to a change in education, which is set off by the professionalization of the US education system; consequently, people learn to read, and the marketplace for sensationalist novels increases!

Mass printing and the professional press

-From the mid-19th century on, so-called wire service journalism came to define print journalism: the premise was concise and immediate (national) news; the invention of the telegraph: established both the immediacy and costs of news ==>This professionalization is then owed to this invention: it constitutes a technological revolution for the time, with a dramatic impact on communication in terms of speed and scale; the news beforehand were much more local! This is key, as it’s immediate and now; there’s another actor who profits from it: network providers, the competition among them increasing as a result of news-worthy stories being discovered faster

-the first yellow press media tycoons emerged – William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, etc.

-Newspapers also redefine journalism (like the New York World, 1860-1931): this template became the formula of modern news outlets/magazines like the UK Sun, the New York Post – daily newspapers that are shiny and flashy for the time (people were hooked)

-The newspapers and emerging journals also captivated audiences through serial publishing, especially with regard to fictional “mysteries” and comic strips: it’s a revolution which combines political and sensationalist appeal; serial publishing becomes popular in the 19th century (true crime novels are read through a serialization process: who done it-s, often containing religious connotations and/or anti-institution claims)

-And, once again: dime novels and “pulp” magazines started to circulate widely in the urban centers (characterized by long arch-s of sensationalist storytelling)

True crime: more of a newer genre, it regained traction mostly in the first or second decade of the 21st century; it was characterized by a focus on the body and on the non-rational: gender was key now, as Enlightenment ideals always had notions of the rational political individual but it was usually a man ==>Therefore when someone was considered irrational it was usually in reference to a minority or women (the gendered logic of modernity) ==>The general outcome of the notion of the rational self is a gendered notion

-Why was sensationalism considered to be “bad”? Because mostly women would be drawn to it and it was thought to be able to “corrupt their minds” (for example, Joy Wiltenburg (2004) talks about sensationalism’s possibly-dangerous effects)

Pat Garret, The authentic Life of Billy the kid (1882)

-(1) The text highlights the inherent tensions in the professionalization of “entertainment culture” in the U.S.; it also presents (2) the simultaneity of the quest for authenticity and its uneasy relationship with excitement or the “sensational”, which produces one of the crucial tensions and templates for mass-scale U.S. cultural production (and mediated storytelling). This authenticity is translated in a way that’s rhetorical/vehement, aiding the text in establishing proximity and relatability: he takes us to imaginary west-centric places in nature (the prairie) where exaggeration is claimed

==>The self awareness of the genre! It  knows readers are thinking that it exaggerates (this text says “I’m authentic" basically). It also crafts a theory of a person’s morality, delineating a morally-ambiguous kid: we see the “atypical heroic split”, as the kid becomes a tragic hero (a complex figure) on the one hand, while also being ‘spectacular-i-zed’ (nothing but death could stop him). This is a folk story that influences popular culture (through media). We also see a presence of tensions (flaws which build complex characters) ==>His unruliness can be a slippery signifier, as it can be viewed as both negative and/or heroic: this tension is often found in such narratives!

-(3) The individual vs the system and society/the rest (remember: Transcendentalism is a philosophical driving force of US culture, a major narrative, a template for US culture and media!)

-(4) Intercultural complexities, specifically in regards to the US Southwest as an imaginary and quintessential trans-cultural space (Billy The Kid was even able to learn Spanish: “quien es?”) ==>He defeats the impediments presented by a dangerous region! We also have depictions of Native American culture (which Billy adapts to) ==>Imaginary landscape

-(5) The urban audience and the rural imaginary: for example, there’s always a certain tension to the frontier myth (people build themselves the more they become urbanized)

-(6)The anxieties pertaining to rapid modernization, as well as the notion of “the folk” (or the people); someone is always left behind (a certain class is left behind, just like now: Bernie Sanders/Trump talking points of the middle class being forgotten by the left, they talk about “the people”); we’re also in the early stage of modernization (telegraph, skyscrapers, faster transport…), and Billy the kid is exactly like these folk heroes (for example, he gets shot, etc.) ==>He’s one of us!

The comic strip: “Little Nemo in Slumberland” by Winsor McCay: a comic about a dreaming child, it takes us into his dreamscape through drawings and comics; it (1) bespeaks the fascination with dreams and their psychological significance: this bleeds into the fascination with psychoanalysis started by Freud, the notion that dreaming now becomes an item of interest; we then have a quasi-Freudian burgeoning engagement and fascination with dreams

-These dreams are also (2) testaments to contemporary architecture and the built environment; with race and identity (and belonging); and the larger moral concerns of life (slavery, race, etc.). (3) Aesthetically: these comic strips draw reflexive attention to the page as a material entity (to their own nature as media, a book thinks of itself as one) and to reading as a visual practice (if even through the juxtaposition of un-cohesive absurd elements next to each other; e.g.: when objects increase, so do the panels!)

-(4) Serial, yet episodic, adventures: a lot of these early experiments of mass media are serial ==>We now see hyper serialization through franchises of movies or cinematic universes (you have to have watched the first iteration to understand the newest one); in serial storytelling there’s also this constant tension between telling an episodic story and the need to connect them and create an overarching story/a serial arch (=true for both written and visual media)

-(5) Laboratory of cultural concerns of the time (and widely popular because of that; it holds its place in the archive of American popular culture now) ==>A lot of these popular texts that are self aware-ly popular dive into deeper topics (including modernization, what’s happens at the time, the zeitgeist). Also part of the comic strip:

-New York Herald (1905-1911) and 1924-1927

-New York American (1911-1914)

2. The Popular Stage

-We’re in a moment of coming into more conventionalized forms of entertainment

-(1) Vaudeville and Blackface Minstrelsy as lasting cultural forms and idioms;

-(2) Vaudeville is a syncretic form of “polite” entertainment, meaning family-friendly and having  mostly-appropriate language, a kind of pot-parade of different kinds of performances and traditions: magicians, musicians, puppeteers, ventriloquists, dancers, “freaks”, celebrities, actors, film clips and so on all share the stage (these morphed into today’s celebrity culture (skits, in-street interviews, etc.)

-(3) Before the first wave of nickelodeons (storefront cinemas) appeared roughly at the beginning of the 20th century (around 1905; early tv apparatuses: kinetoscopes…)

-(3) Traveling shows such as P.T. Barnum’s Barnum and Bailey Circus aka P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, also Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome and Wild West Shows like Buffalo Bill

-(4) Performance and travel as crucial markers of this entertainment ecology (either wagons or performance troops became the stages, the media; even blackface minstrelsy becomes a big part of this entertainment circuit, very much akin to late night shows of today, though in the form of racist performances of cultural otherness)

-Freak-shows are actually still a major vehicle of modern entertainment industry (in your face, staged outstanding people for the purpose of entertainment; with Barnum it becomes a very successful model) ==>There was something appealing in witnessing weirdness at the time (or cultural otherness of any way); "making a murderer” is a freak show (that’s also why it’s been criticized, making freakish ridicule of rural white people) ==>It’s part of a larger practice of exposing otherness

3. The popular Screen and Celebrity Culture

Holywood’s Golden Age, or Classical Hollywood Cinema and Early Narrative Film

-(1) Classical Hollywood, ran between 1910 and 1960s; refers to narrative style and aesthetics of Hollywood film; (2) Silent media/film (1894) to “talkies” (sound media, mid-1920s)

-(3) From D.W. Griffith to The Jazz Singer (movie that’s significant because it’s about blackface and features it, pairing it with a piano man, 1927) and Citizen Kane (1941)

-(4) Studio Era: refers to roughly  the same period but alludes to the production, distribution and exhibition of logics (which were typically all integrated into five big studios/conglomerates – and three small ones)

-Ownership and corporations, meaning capitalist structures, kept and informed movie aesthetics and their very own functioning: (5) MGM, Paramount, Warner, RKO, Fox (“big five”); Columbia, Universal and United Artists (“little three”) ==>Very few media conglomerates!

-New Hollywood means new talent (new directors daring to shoot experimental films such as Jaws, Easy Rider, etc.); these conglomerates also had typical aesthetic marketing tools (Studio Markers are on there, reoccurring elements and aesthetics…)

DW Griffith’s “Birth Of A Nation”: it’s powerful and important but also extremely blatant in its portrayal of blatantly-racist, anti-black sentiments (though it’s lauded and broadly celebrated) ==>In terms of film technique it’s important, though at the same time there’s an inherently racist machine informing Hollywood: he’s known now as a racist innovator, while Charlie Chaplin is known as a comedic hero (his style is dependent on the media apparatus — in this case it’s film, a medium in which comedy was not yet easily achievable at the time)

Star System and emerging celebrity culture

-(1) Studios create stars and bind them contractually, they also (2) produce “serial” movies in accordance with the star personas (‘you become the studio’s artist’, they decide your film opportunities ad roles, serializing your ‘type’; think, for example, Cary Grant, but also Chaplin)

-(3) Joan Crawford illustrates the transition from Vaudeville to screen: dance films and musicals formative for early popular sound film – “flapper” (aspiring dancers: this trope was popularized further as there was a growing demand for dance numbers), “woman in distress” (figure of woman hero), and “romantic heroine/love interest" (a successful and lasting formula to be a female lead; it doesn’t matter who they are, rather it’s important that they present their emotional appeal)

-(4) Specifics of politics of gender and sexuality put in place (Rock Hudson as a famous example of a “closeted” queer male lead: he’s the quintessential male lead but has to remain “closeted")

-(5) Continuing success of the system up to antitrust lawsuit in the long 1960s – think: New Hollywood

Contemporary franchise (or universe) system

-trans medial franchises with recurring actors, types, stars

-politics of gender, sex, and race

-adapted to current media ecology and marketing strategies (social media marketing is based on stars having their own accounts, movie releases and voice-overs: different trans-medial bases)

-competing broadcasting ad niche-casting logics today (there’s an abundance and availability of media, leading to the diminishing necessity for the conglomerates to cater to the largest scope of audience possible; this means producing content that everybody can find something familial in becomes less important, determining a changing media reality)

For the exam specifically, you don’t need to know about self.-reflexivity, celebrity culture (but yes about pragmatism, sensationalism), naturalism (but Orson might ask about it)

John BonJovi -Bless of Glory (look it up on YouTube)

04/12/2024

Tutorium time

Culture at the turn of the century in America

-Pragmatism: “a philosophical school of thought concerned with what truths are”; the James reading explains it as an attitude from looking away from things and focusing on the consequences; it’s based on the “cash value” of ideas, so their effects in the real world ==>Different effects brought about by ideas: we conceptualize objects based on their real world consequences; just like James with the squirrel running around the tree – it doesn’t have influence on the real world, so it’s useless

-There’s also a focus on the communicability of truth – since it’s meant to influence our environment, we need to be able to tell people about it ==>The rise of scientific papers as a means of communicating ideas! This language of communication of truths is well compatible with democracy (governing country based on ideas): pragmatism is much more of a method rather than a theory on set of truths – meaning “thinking about what actually is true”

-Is pragmatism strikingly American? It arose in the American climate of trying to move away from ideologies, and going into the factual side of things – after the Civil War; this cash-value orientation could be seen in cultures of developed capitalist systems; Jane Addams for instance focused on education as a means of bringing about innovation

-Was pragmatism anti-intellectual? They stopped thinking about the meaning of things, shifting rather towards understanding their impact on the real world; there’s a an element of experience and epistemological thought which might have made it appear to some as anti-intellectual – “things that actually matter”, that you can demonstrate, are “more important” because they have an impact on our lives ==>Disinterest on different perspectives about the nature of things

Progressivism/progressivist era: social school of thought emerging from Enlightenment ideals and industrial revolutions; again, it’s a very future-oriented, reformist movement, characterized by a focus on overcoming social/urban crises, the cost of industrialization in cities ==>They wanted to use technological innovations to craft a better society – before and during the Progressivist era cities doubled in population, which created problems like development of urban slums and bad conditions; in progressivism there’s a growing awareness of urban inequality and the role trusts/corporations play in such inequality ==>We see this in cartoons of octopuses (like the one of the wire trust, 1899)

-This movement in regards to culture: because of innovations, we see a rise of journalistic forms, such as muckraking; these were often reformist journalists, utilizing new techniques to investigate extreme poverty and corporation involvement in urban problems; photojournalism (flash photography made taking picture easier and more accessible); rise of cartoons (their criticism of capitalism and government) ==>Activist and reformist forms of journalism

-Jacob Riis: danish immigrant, severe poverty for substantial time before getting a job as a photographer; he took pictures of poverty-stricken city areas to expose the capitalist exploitation of the working class ==>his photos became widely popular. In his pictures, we see exhausted working-class people, treated like cattle; it feels a little exploitative as well – as these are real people living in horrible circumstances, like the tenement buildings and flophouses of past centuries: let’s showcase how bad it was!

-almost all of these people are migrants living in urban slums; what’s even more striking is that the inability to perceive them as human beings is transformed through touching photography, forcing people to see what’s going on in the city they live in, even with the exploitative nature of picture-taking of people like this); “Now that we have innovations, people can broadcast these happenings to society”!

-Under progressivism, America becomes aware of corporation exploitation of the lower classes ==>Growing demand to reform it; we have a split between low and high culture, with an apparent role of sensationalism – meaning a literary/cultural movement characterized by its focus on non-rational elements in order to bring about physical/emotional responses in viewers; It was used by critics at the time as a pejorative term to denominate “low-brow” cultural expressions

The popular page: at the turn of the century, we see rising literacy rates in America ==>Growing literature market, the development of the “Dime novel” and “Pulp” magazines, because people can now read and buy: literary entertainment was now readily available. Because of innovations, we see wired journalism ==>People don’t need to travel to know about what’s going on in the world: wiring/telegraph companies become super relevant in news-spreading. Because of advancements and rising literacy rates we also see the development of serial publishing and cliff hangers – capitalist logics of print that become apparent as the market for it increases

-A big moment/inspiration was “Billy The Kid”: very appealing to “Dime” novel audiences, as it represented an escapist outlet and representation of the “Wild West hero” ==>He was a criminal, and yet in reading his story you start to regard him dearly because of the author’s sympathetic way of narrating his story – a peculiar tension; “you can judge him and love him at the same time”

==>He becomes a staple of American culture, esp. with his figure of a sleazy “hero” who works against the establishment – an average guy who “skirts” the rules sometimes. The function of the emphasis on the story: peculiar form of escapism – you enter his life, it’s like the author putting forth investigative journalism ==>This authenticity adds an extra sensationalist element: “these are average people being able to read a story of an incredible life”

-Billy the kid’s relation to transcendentalism: his anti-establishment appeal – going to the West and “making your way independently”, he also goes into nature ==>The fascination with this character “fits nicely” into the progression of American culture/philosophy: he could be seen as a representative of the transcendentalist legacy

-We see a lot of Vaudeville acts (ranging forms of family-friendly entertainment: pupeteers, ventriloquists, comedians, singers… often traveling shows/wild west shows); In the 19th century rural American landscape, it was traveling troops: as cities developed, theaters gained traction; in the Lewis reading, we see contrasts with Britain, where urbanization had already been under way and had led to a massive development of theatre shows; this takes place later in America (in the cities), with a progressively diminishing number of traveling shows as the cities grow

-Role of “otherness" in such shows: blackface minstrelsy, ridiculing black culture through its twisted showcase – not that distant: Judy Garland did it (because black people weren’t allowed on film); we see it in 21st century media, it’s not gone. Also freak shows: showcasing differently-born people, showed as entertainment

-The popular screen: 1910s were the beginnings of Hollywood classical Cinema; from silent movies to talkies, revolutionary for both movie industry and how people saw films – no more orchestra/instrumentalists in the cinemas; rise of Hollywood/celebrity systems – through contractual binding of stars by movie conglomerates. Consolidation of the politics of gender and sexuality in film (women: objects, gays: don’t exist); later, movement from broadcasting to niche casting (people were catered to specifically, certain sectors appealed to by movie corporations, movie companies had a specific audience in mind)

-Does progressivism differ from socialist visions of social reform? How? So progressivism sees social reform happening through technological progress, where socialism sees equalitarian ideology as a motor of social reform (they were necessarily anti-market not just anti-capitalist like progressivism; Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant who invested in steel and became a massive industrial American giant; very much thought that the wealthy should use their money to invest in the betterment of lower social conditions through education funding for example ==>He wasn’t a socialist, he was a billionaire and that was good because he could help people (he wrote)

-He wrote a thesis on his thoughts, “the gospel of wealth”; he put all of his money in trusts and to this day his foundation is funding social/educational projects): progressivism wasn’t a revolutionary movement like socialism, rather it believed in technological advancement to progress society (just gifting people is not enough) ==>It was during the progressivist era that social reform legislation regarding education and food safety was passed – spurred on by progressivist mentality

Pragmatism vs rationalism/empiricism: rationalism tries to make everything make sense – justifying things, finding theoretical meaning and reasons of things, whereas pragmatism isn’t concerned with the reason or meaning of things, rather real world consequences; empiricism would measure and use scientific method to make sense of things: these were theories on people’s assumptions of the world; pragmatism is instead a method of measuring the world – it doesn’t have dogmas about ideas, etc. rather it’s a way of knowing the world

-What created this split in high/low culture? The proliferation of literacy rates – before it was a higher class trait, now more people could read ==>This lead to the division of literature into high and low class literature (the former for more educated bourgeois types who could afford books on books; journalism made it more apparent that there was a real world out there: this changed culture – for example with the creation of the first magazines like “Harpers Bazaar”, a middle class journal

-Vaudevilles were seen as stupid by critics: they just focused on visual elements, no morals or anything about it  that could have inspired people to improve themselves ==>Moral concern, seen as “empty entertainment that could corrupt the masses”, “this is bad for people” – meaning the watching of “unimportant” ventriloquist performances

-There’s also a critique of this form of performance as “non-pure”, as “bad art”; it “drove people mad”; Shakespeare is a good example, as today it’s the entertainment of the elites, whereas in the Gilded Age, Shakespeare plays were available and catered to most people! ==>This illustrates why such a divide between low and high brow culture is so silly – Shakespeare is a universally-beloved artist, yet he was popular and accessible everywhere at the time, he was probably viewed as low brow culture at a certain time – like pop culture today which is viewed badly

-The West as the only new place to be settled that is left ==>It makes the genre of Billy The Kid, there’s a fascination with what is happening in the West because it is so unknown and transcendentalist – “wild”, nature, settling of society; what makes the “Wild West” so appealing even today is exactly this, fascination with a an “unsettled” place

CULTURE VII: Power, Protest, and Identity in Postwar American Culture

1. Reconstruction, Lynchings, and the Long Civil Rights Movement

Reminder: Reconstruction

-The Reconstruction refers to the era that follows the immediate post- civil war period (1863-1877/1890s); from 1863 to 1877: “federal reconstruction”: the federal government (which mostly represents the union and the northern states) is still very involved in its activism and implementation of the Civil Rights Act in the southern states (that had seceded from the union), it tries to protect all citizens with the law (which would later become the 13th amendment, at the time this act was vetoed by Andrew Johnson but it passed nevertheless, 1866)

-After the reconstruction (from 1877 to 1890s) we deal with “local reconstruction”: grassroots organization, state-specific reconstruction; backlash was generated specifically against the forces of reconstruction, which identifies an ongoing ideological crisis/conflict: institutionalization in opposition between the Freedmen’s Bureau (provided an infrastructure for freed slaves – now citizens – to be represented in the politics, as they required infrastructural help – as formerly marginalized – to overthrow pre-existing power structures) and the so-called Black Codes (state-based legislation which regulated the lives of people racialized as black; for example, “water fountains for whites”, etc.)

-From 1865 to 1869, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were passed: this arguably completed the promise of the Declaration Of Independence and the Constitution; slavery was explicitly abolished (13th Amendment), citizenship was established universally (14th Amendment, refuting citizen-discrimination based on racial belonging, etc.); the 15th amendment guaranteed voting rights for all citizens notwithstanding race, religion etc. (not yet pertaining to women though)

-Later stage, from 1890s to 1950s: continuing mostly (but not only) visible legal battle over certain laws/amendments and the extent to which they have to be guaranteed as part of federal/state law; southern states continue to battle over “restoration” or “reconciliation” of the former Confederate states (up until the 1950s/Civil Rights Movement). Different compromises emerge, eventually we have a longer-lasting compromise of sorts, the Compromise of 1877 (end of the reconstruction in the South and victory of the Republican abolitionist candidate): its symbol is the supreme court case of Plessy vs Ferguson (1896), where the notion of “separate but equal” was conceived of; races could be separated on the state level, legally and publicly (public transportation, white/black sections) ==>This circumvented the guarantees of the amendments that were intended to guarantee the same rights for all citizens (“it might be separate but it’s still equal”, giving the appearance that white people and black people had the same rights!); this informs much the 20th century to come and the effects linger today

Lynching and the KKK

-The local backlash was also not just a question of the law or the Black Codes; this all comes to pass in close correspondence to a terror regime that inflicts violence against black people structurally and infra-structurally:

-(1) there’s a time after 1877, once federal reconstruction interest in favor of westward expansion vanishes and modernization begins, when backlash against the reconstruction begins to form both legally/politically and in the Southern communities themselves, which organize actively and aggressively, forming anti-black, anti-Jewish racist militias: (2) the Ku Klux Klan, which considers itself as entitled to be the gatekeeper of white identity/citizenship, promotes anti-black and anti-Jewish violence and racist ideology.

-There’s no silent withdrawal from political activism by black politicians in the South, rather it’s often because of (3) intimidation and violence that black people have to fear for their lives and tread mindfully and carefully, as racist white Southern organization is grassroots, its power became very grounded and pervasive; an ‘instrument’ it used was ‘social policing’: the “Panopticon” (a watch tower assuring inmates are always feel seen), camera technology ==>Social behavior is always policed, as white people are everywhere in the community, anyone can be and is potentially involved; policing against black political participation is always present and pervasive

-(4) Lynching became its most brutal/violent but theatrical/visible form, as a brutal spectacle, as a “social event”: in Southern communities, black people were publicly murdered by self-entitled “Lynch mobs” – through word-of-mouth it became a kind of public holiday with picnics/watchings of these murders for entertainment purposes. This is precisely why we have a photographic repository of these moments (at the end of the 19th century, photography becomes a medium of journalistic communication, sometimes even sent with postcards between white families as “fun reminders” of “what happened a fortnight ago”: the publicity of this becomes mind boggling but it speaks to its power).

-This backlash and lynching was a brutal social reality: racism and its infrastructures are formative and have a long-lasting impact on society and governmental structures (functional) ==>(5) How to address lynching, how to address a racism that so openly aspires to kill and mutilate black lives and bodies

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931): African American journalist and activist, she’s one of the people who collected a lot of these images of lynchings and investigated lynchings, raised awareness; co-founding member of NAACP, also of 19th century black feminism, also a primary early social historian of the phenomenon of lynching: “Southern Horrors: Lynchings in all its Phases” was published in the 1890s

The Long Civil Rights Movement

Dowd-Hall, Jacqueline, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the  Past”: “remembrance is always a form of forgetting”: this represents the tension between the two, and the purpose behind foretelling to sidelining certain historical subjects and events: these are all-important decisions in how we write the history of the movement!

Her proposal is to create a more mindful and comprehensive history of it; she juxtaposes the stories of post-WW2 events like bussing and Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Malcolm X's activism, M.L.K. Jr.'s murder, as well the rise/drama with the 1965 Civil Rights Act and then the story of decline…; Dowd-Hall proposes to think about it all as a protest/an ongoing struggle: makes sense, esp. in the context of Black Lives Matter (our age of social protest) ==>Why not conceive of this as part of a longer history of struggle (“I have a dream speech”, etc. as individual elements in a much longer trajectory)?; let’s expand it all the way back to Reconstruction and, for example, anti-lynching activism of the 19th and early 20th century

2. Writing protest: from the Harlem renaissance to Baldwin, Lorde and Beyond

-(1) Harlem Renaissance: period of highly visible African American literary and artistic production in the United States (and beyond) in the 1920s and early 30s: at the cusp of modernism, with philosophers and social figures/intelligencia like (2) Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, etc.

-It happens in Harlem: it’s associated with the notion that it’s a “hip” place where artists live and mingle; (3) jazz was used as a popular backdrop and as entangled with the art and literature of the time; it’s also characterized by the “white patronage” system/practice, where white people (that had substantial financial means) were interested in contributing and financing black art of the time (modernism as well), which went hand in hand with social progressivism: a permeating, general idea of uplifting the nation and social clubs/structures to make sure that those left behind also get chance to contribute to society meaningfully and creatively – an important notion that black artistry, creativity should contribute to the American project; (4) the return of soldiers to Harlem

-(5) Political aspirations of the literature and art: it’s a time of tension, as debates ran wild between the nature and quality of literature and art – how it pertains to race and black people, to what extent it should be political ==>A continuing debate, comprising the long cultural arc of the Civil Rights Movement (questions like “does black performance and art always have to be political?”). (6) General cultural and ideological pervasiveness of leftist thought in the 1930s (and the simultaneous backlash, paranoia regarding it)

James Baldwin

-An (1) outstanding literary figure of the 20th century (essayist, novelist, writer of short fiction), he was (2) celebrated in the 1960s (a period of peak visibility int terms of media reporting about the Civil Rights Movement) and has recently been ‘rediscovered’ in the cultural landscape (Peck, documentary from 2016, “I Am Not Your Negro”; also a number of biographic texts are being published: renewed interest in Baldwin – makes sense when thinking abut 2010s, with the global rise of BLM following incidents of police brutality in the U.S.). Among the most well known texts of his are (3) “The Fire Next Time”, “Go Tell It on the Mountain”, “Giovanni’s room” (2 collections of short stories and a novel, though many other publications)

-What made him standout specifically was the fact that he was a (4) chronicler of the psycho-social pressures at the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion and thus a trailblazer in many ways (his interest in the psycho-social dynamics of race and how it shapes the US psyches: someone like Ralph Ellison of “Invisible Man” fame, Baldwin was more invested in the specific post-Freudian sexual dimensions: the tension between a longing for racialized bodies/fetishization with simultaneous brutal hatred of the same (same topics we still think about today, the simultaneity of fear and fascination - minstrelsy as well)

-He (5) wrote and published throughout the 50s until the mid-to-late 70s, meaning right during the heydays of anti-war activism and the period we (too frequently) limit the Civil Rights Movement to:  an initial spark, or movement of movements (it inspired other social activism movements like anti-vietnam war protests); furthermore, (6) Whiteness and Blackness emerge as crucial and interrelated themes in his oeuvre

Passage: “Going to Meet the Man” (1965)

-He tackles questions of race, sexuality, belonging, which are interrelated in this first opening paragraph (this was outrageous in literary terms, original, and thought-provoking for the time)

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

-She was a (1) writer, feminist, womanist, activist, poet, and former visiting professor at our institute; she was also (2) another early “theoretician” of overlapping, interrelated layers of identity (and of potential discrimination); of what we now call “intersectionality” (Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in 1989 – before that, with Baldwin and Lorde, it’s an idea that was already pervasive in the Black theorization of the world, it became a term with Crenshaw). Additionally, she was an (3) important figure in the nascent movement of “Afro-Germans” as a mentor of a variety of Black German activists (in the 1980s)

-Her work (4) “Coal” (a volume of poetry, 1976) introduced her to a broader audience; she’s also (5) one of the post-1960s activists who internationalized the struggle for Black  liberation and Civil Rights (again, beyond the United States: there was a global map of civil rights protests for people racialized as Black; there’s a contradictory and complex beginning of it in the 1950s/late 20th century, with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa/Nelson Mandela, Negritude (Black French anti-colonial Civil Rights movement that became a global intellectual tradition), Afro-Germans in Germany (with a first spark in the 1980s, though different  than FR and SA)

Lorde makes the case for intersectionality by citing Simone DeBeauvoir, specifically urging Black feminists to be mindful of their intrinsic homophobia/white feminists of their exclusionist logics when it comes to race: call to be mindful beyond one’s own standpoint in society

Black Feminism, Womanism, and Black Ontology (today)

-(1) Feminism vs. Black Feminism vs. Womanism: the trajectory of black feminism and womanism has continued till today, it’s important for NA studies (+we’ve seen a renewed interest in the continued legacy of Black feminist thought); (2) as feminism underwent a inner recalibration from within (a second to third wave from 80s to 90s), Black and queer feminists articulated a variety of critiques pertaining to to second wave ideas and started to take on leading roles (what the significance of Blackness is for a deeper critical understanding for the second wave of feminism; for example, with Judith Butler, “how does queerness complicate the seemingly straightforward cause for female political inclusion within the second feminist wave?”)

-Intersectional positions like this made obvious how feminism itself was limited to mostly-white middle class women fighting for their own rights; at the same time, it was conceptually limited, as it presented a limited understanding of what a woman is; these debates continue today, with public figures who identify as feminist but whose feminism is criticized from an intersectional perspective. (3) Womanism: often used synonymously with Black Feminism, but is also often considered to be more spiritually inclined (something both invested in racial uplift and feminist critique from a Black vantage point), with questions posed like “what a woman is”, Black femininity is here often spiritualized and read as inherently spiritual, but it’s also (and counterintuitively so) more intrinsically connected with Marxism and anti-capitalist articulations of feminism

-(4) Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas hearings (Supreme court nominee) in 1991: galvanized the discourse about Black feminism, as there is deemed to be a complication/complexity between feminism and Blackness that needs to be addressed. (5) More recently, arguably, academic and public discourses on “Blackness” have emphasized its foundational role as a category of experience, of being in the world; i.e. as an ontological subject position (Sagia Hartman, Christine O’Sharp)

3. Sounds and Practice of Protest: The Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, and the Protest-Song (as Genre)

The Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam

-These groups are often read as representing the more radical positions/wing of the Civil Rights movement, (1) they were founded as early as the 1930s (NOI) and in the 1960s (BPP); (2) they rose to prominence/national visibility in the 50s and 60s: Malcolm X gathers crowds and becomes the national spokesperson for the NOI with a buzz (a heightened national visibility)

-(3) They’re often (mis-)interpreted/narrativized as “radical” counterforces, a form of resistance to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s alleged approach of non-violent protest, esp. with their uniformed and militarized activists: (5) Malcolm X’s “by any mean necessary” juxtaposed with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” ==>Martin Luther King Jr. had a specific interest in grassroots-organizing in the North/South, characterized by a turn towards Marxism/an awareness or need for social(-ist) democratic project for Black people

-(before M.L.K. Jr.’s murdered) Malcolm X falls out with NOI due to his conversion to traditional Islam: he changed what used to be more radical notions – consider the ‘Open Carry’ idea of the BBP and the Myth of Yacub (“blue eyed devils”) of the NOI; we must consider why we call the BPP-demands for black organization and armament against police brutality as radical!

The Nation of Islam: it was a US religious and political organization founded in the 1930s by Wallace Fard Muhammad in Detroit; it’s an ideology, a spiritual outlook and a social program: a complicated “beast”, as it did not prioritize religion per say, rather it also organized and helped Black people understand how racism affects their livelihood; when it’s claimed as radical, it’s usually in reference to their open-armament policies/Myth of Yacub in the founding of NOI statement (essentially, it was claimed that “all White people are the sons and daughters of the blue eyed devil”: a racial ideology loosely inspired by Islam and Black Nationalism)

-Its legacy and ideals informed a lot of 80s/90s rap – Busta Rhymes, the Wu Tang Clan, Wakeem ==>Conscious rappers in the early 90s are inspired by it; it was popularized in the Northern States through Malcolm X who gathered many people, as well as Mohammed Ali and his-public notoriety at that time that helped the movement gain momentum. It’s therefore part of the longer Civil Rights movement that continues after the 60s; it was later infiltrated by the FBI in the 1970s, later broken up into factions

Protest Music: Genres, Trajectories, Developments

-Some contexts galvanized political songwriting! in the US there’s a through-line between (1) Post-War protest movements and the Anti-Vietnam War cultural climate that coincided with an increasing interest in and the professionalization of pop music (as a business): in the 60s we had a fragmented recording industry that became professionalized in the 70s (with the Beatles, Philly Sound, the Rolling Stones, other great producers of the 60s and early 70s)

-(2) Fanzines emerge, various record labels, distributors become professionalized, pop radio increases its influence (thanks in part to radio receivers that were now built into the cars themselves; this as well the professionalization of music was indebted to the technological change, innovation and progress in the 60s: there was money to be made through pop radio, potential income! (3) Songs begin to reflect, stir, and engage the political and social concerns of its day: (4) think early 60s/70s: Northern Soul, Stax and Motown (first major black owned label), but also the genealogy within folk music to acoustic pop (Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan: acoustic pop! With Bob Dylan, political music come to the fore, as well as the typical 1960s anthems, notions of “times are a changing”, also Beat music, Rock & Roll meets Blues, etc.)

-(5) Ultimately, pop music provided a realm to articulate and further explore countercultural sentiments and practices (drugs, sexualities, pacifism, etc.) ==>Many songs are psychedelic, like the Beatles, other more specifically-critical and outspoken anti-war songs that become popular in the 60s/anthems for the Civil Rights Movement (repurposed as political songs by the audience, which is what makes a protest ultimately). (6) Finally: New Hollywood cinema of the late 1960s; The Graduate, Easy Rider (guitar riff), Bonnie and Clyde (all accompanied by iconic and unforgettable music and scores); also, an origin point of African American protest music is a recording of Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit”

Protest Music and/as Pop Music

-(1) It generally navigates music as “authentic” expression of self and in combination with the needs and expectations of the entertainment business. (2) This genre also interacts with this tension differently: some of pop music is gleefully ad shamelessly entertaining and some of it generally aspires to express personal/political concerns (people often position these notions of authentic artistic expression in opposition to “selling catchy tunes”). (3) So-called protest music is self-consciously political in aspiration and thus responds to socio-political contexts (frequently: during perceived political crises, war, etc.); some songs just become protest songs without being conceived that way (just become politicized) but usually they directly address political concerns (an actually-political message).

-Additionally, (4) protest music is inter-generic (goes across genres) and had its first mainstream heyday during the 1960s (and in response to Vietnam); (5) since the late 1980s, Hip Hop culture and rap music generally have taken up protest music in the context a continuing Civil Rights battle (in and post- 2016 there were also a bunch of feminist anthems with women stating they claim their own bodies, disillusioned with having an anti-abortion President; also his “grab them by the pussy” line). Some other examples include: Public Enemy “Fight the power” (1990), P!nk “Dear Mr. President” (2006, partly in response to the – second – war in Iraq);

-also, Deloria & Olson on Formation(s), 2016, by Beyonce: videos often add a layer to the songs; in Formation specifically, references to images rich in significance, Black culture/resistance)

Conclusion: A Note on ‘Doing Identity’

-What we find in regards to what’s at stake in the Civil Rights movement: our (1) identities are always “being done”, it’s a permanent process, always under construction in the social spaces they take shape in (where they become “legible”: it doesn’t matter who you think you are, but what you appear as; race, gender, sexuality: these are all legible, interpretable identity categories, that go beyond professions or hobbies, agendas…)

-(2) This does not mark a new phenomenon of an alleged era of "identity politics” but defines being part of a social world; it’s a right-wing term that’s supposed to belittle the nature of it/make it sound dangerous: all politics is identity politics! It just used to be exclusively white-owned politics because they owned all the political/social capital ==>As soon as other people started to participate and bring their identity into this political process, it became this smudging term!

-(3) See here, for example, David Roediger’s “The Wages of Whiteness” (1991, a good place to conceive of the history of whiteness necessary to understand the history of the civil rights movement). Finally, (4) politics have always been and will always be identity politics (thus: no real use for the term; also “tread carefully when you use these loaded terms!" :/)

LYNCHING, AUDRE LORDE, JAMES BALDWIN, NEW HOLLYWOOD, BLACK PANTHER PARTY, NATION OF ISLAM, KU KLUX KLAN, IDA B. WELLS, NORTHERN SOUL, RECONSTRUCTION, NINA SIMONE, ’STRANGE FRUIT’, INTERSECTIONALITY, THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, WOMANISM, DOING IDENTITY, POWER

23/01/2025

CULTURE VIII: TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN ART AND U.S. POPULAR MUSIC

-Segway: we previously talked about popular/protest music in the context of the Civil Rights Movement; now, we’re talking more about art and music history in the context of ‘high art’, (at the intersection of the history of ideas and a cultural history ‘by the book’: the trajectory of US art in the 20th century; it’s important to talk about because the 20th century is often considered the “US-American Century”, partly due to the changing power dynamic in the art world in this century; a major shift occurs with the center of the art world moving from Paris to New York, or at least we witness a new balance between the two occur in this century.

Recap: Protest Music and/as Pop Music

-As pop music becomes more business-oriented or professionalized in terms of business in an entertainment industry, in the course of the 20th century gigantic publishers/transnational media publishers (Universal) are created, hosting major labels: these are facilitators of audio-visual entertainment labels, hosting artists, etc.

-At this point, the tension between music and business becomes more apparent (“rap music’s insistence on keeping it real" is essentially a nod towards authenticity by creators of AA music, a response to this awareness of the studio gangsters); record labels then recruit people to pretend to be something they know will sell in the music market: “The Authenticity Effect” ==>The business side becomes more and more apparent (for example early Bob Dylan performances don’t demonstrate it well, though in his later ones, one may question whether he stays authentic to his folk roots when he uses electric guitar, cause that’s not folk anymore! Remember the transition from folk music to acoustic pop)

-This effect is especially apparent in protest music (when does it sell, when is it “en vogue” and when isn’t it? Are record labels in line with the cause, or do they do it just because it’ll sell?); an example of this is “we are the world”, where mega-stars respond to the AIDS pandemic in Africa: is it an authentic cause? at what point does it become a bandwagon for profit?

-In the overall process of cultural visibility (not dominance) of US cultural production that markets itself as specifically US-American, pop music looms large in the 20th century: we witness the “Mcdonald-ization” of the world (we should be skeptical of it) ==>These terms refer to general (pop) cultural practices, idioms that the US was particularly successful in exporting: this is US “soft power”, used esp. in the second half of the 20th century/cold war era. US pressured foreign states with soft power in order to sway them in favor of “jumping the fence”, crossing from Soviet (socialism) to US-Western (liberalism) forms of societal organization ==>The rise of pop music was strategically deployed to make people more pro-American!

1. Modernism, Modernity, Modernization (or towards modern art)

The notion of “Planetarity”, Susan Stanford Friedman in “Planetarity: Musing Modernist Studies.” “Modernism/modernity” (journal)

-She affirms that it makes more sense to think of modernity in the plural, as different kinds, meaning different temporalities and regionality-es as to its application. She further writes that Modernity is (1) “…Europe’s Enlightenment…”:

it’s a shortcut of what we think it is (we tend to be “euro-centric” so it’s easier for us to conceptualize it and harder to disassociate from it, but this is just one version of modernity!

In fact, there are alternatives:

Yoruba: Modernity is also “…Europe’s brutal colonialism…” ==>It’s a writing back, a mirroring of what modernity in Europe has meant for  Africa and its nation-building projects; Europeans superimposed their idea of a country on Africa, leading to chaos and brutality, wars caused by  European-imposed borders that don't reflect the true spread of African civilizations! Bengali: “Modernity is Bengal’s Renaissance…” ==>It’s another translation from a similarly post-colonial lens; the Bengali make sense of their identity as modern in relation to the colonizing British forces! Spanish: “Modernity is Latin America’s métissage…” ==>Latin American definition of modernity claims to be a mixture of colonizing and colonized cultures (the former having committed atrocities and injustices in both political and cultural terms): it’s hard to position them in a binary matrix!

-Chinese: “Modernity is China’s project for the future…” ==>A future-oriented vision of modernity from the Chinese perspective! Arabic: “Modernity is the Arab world’s rebirth…” ==>Modernity here is entangled with a specific religious discourse based on Islam, its engagement with humanism and scientific progress; also its fusion of modernist rationalism with the heritage of the past! ==>”Modernity has no single meaning, not even in one location; globally and locally, modernity appears infinitely expandable”: it’s based on different modernities, therefore we have to be mindful of its planetarity/universality!

Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, “The Name and Nature of Modernism,” Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930 (1976): “Modernism is the one art that responds to the scenario of our chaos; it is the art consequent on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle’ , of the destruction of civilization and reason in the First World War, of the world changed and and re-interrupted by Marx, Freud, and Darwin, of capitalism and constant industrial acceleration, of existential exposure to meaninglessness or absurdity”

-Modernism is a cultural and artistic movement that responds to modernity, it’s marked by a different set of moments, interventions and/or developments: one is in the sciences, particularly in the field of physics with Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle” which affirms the limits of our understanding of sub-atomic movement: “the more you know about its mass and speed the less you’ll know about its location”, meaning the more you know about that particle, the less you know about the others ==>Uncertainty remains! Even in this sense then (pertaining to modernity’s belief in the scientific method), in the course of modernity such claims and beliefs come to their limits!

-Furthermore, we cannot overestimate the impact that WW1 had on the trust in humanity’s future! ==>Even if some parts of the world were undoubtedly less affected, they were entangled by it nonetheless (it might have caused people to stop and consider their role in the world)! Add to that Freudian psychoanalysis and Darwinist theory, we arrive at the disillusioning of most theories on the human existence! Additionally, capitalism (during the 19th and 20th centuries) made people grow progressively disillusioned with such optimisms: the notion of doing things quicker for profit even at the expense of nature and workers facilitated an existential exposure to the meaninglessness and potential absurdity of human existence – these were ingredients for a modernist response!

-How do artists respond to such conditions of human life? In 1913 we have the Armory Show: if not the birthplace of modernist avant-garde culture, it signaled the first step/crucial moment in the movement towards a modernist pervasiveness; it was an exhibition (brought to NY, Chicago and Boston) where outrageous European artists (such as Duchamp, Picasso…) exposed people to their creative world through their European forms modernist art (often representing everyday life and objects), like Cubism ==>This facilitated the transatlantic bridge between Paris and NYC, in a way pressuring American artists to contribute to the scene, determining the birth of  “American” modernism!

Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” (1912)

-This was a new cubist abstraction: people who expected more figurative/realistic paintings were in for a shock! The Armory Show actually encapsulated the shock value of the modernist break from artistic tradition: we have this move towards everyday objects and life as inspiration for art; for example, the tendency of the quest for the sublime in traditional pre-modernist painting like the landscape variety is now flipped by modernism!

-We have a response to Duchamp’s painting in a New York paper: a cartoonish, so-called “The Rude Descending a Staircase”; this is a response to the art show, lampooning and not knowing what to do with it ==>The reviews were really mixed, a lot of ambiguous response (which you find in modernity itself)

‘Make it New’ …?

The intersection of the three words:

-1) Modernization: a process of social and cultural change  due to technological and industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries (we typically refer to any process of socio-cultural change using this term precisely due to these changes and innovation; modernization is not necessarily limited to modernity though, rather it describes the process of becoming more modern)

-2) Modernity: individual and collective experience of the process of modernization (meaning the time period in which this heightened modernization takes place). 3) Modernism: cultural and artistic/aesthetic expression of the (in response to) the experience of modernity (by creative  individuals). Additionally, the term “modern” is not necessarily contemporary in literary/cultural studies (we’re now in late-stage modern or post post modern probably). A way in which modernism responded to modernization is by incorporating, focusing on the idea of making things new ==>Modernization in their artistic expression!

“The Modern City: Lancaster Street Sign", Painting by Charles Demuth (1930)

-It’s representing something that’s quintessentially modern: an office and an industrial factory with a huge street sign/modern advertisement/label for the corporati
on; we see the presence of cubist shapes: it’s not realistic, rather invoking a weird sense of perspective, an artistic abstraction that emphasizes the experience of visualizing the world, what it means to look at things ==>We have a rearrangement of the building itself through shapes: it’s a play on visuality, on form; This exactly how modernism responded to the newness: with an acknowledgement of the ambivalence of having to deal with the new facets of modern life!

Duchamp, Fountain (1917)

-it’s essentially a urinal that he put in a museum; the wording of “fountain” evokes its artistic viability, associating it with classical fountains as a quintessential sujet in art since the Renaissance/classical age ==>Duchamp claims this is a fountain, to be considered as part of such a tradition, though he takes it to the absurd and creates a parody, making us reconsider what art really is: is it just something that’s put into a museum? It makes us consider the longevity of modernist aspirations! People who have no appreciation for art like this would probably say that such artistic expressions don't necessarily take talent, rather daringness (anyone can do it); but of course the question is: would anyone else have dared to call this a fountain and put it into a museum? ==>This is why it constitutes a radical break in artistic tradition

Modernist art as umbrella term

-Meaning (1) it encompasses a variety of artistic styles and modes (‘-isms’) that intersect and overlap in productive ways; (2) Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Art Deco, Precisianism, Objectivism, Abstract Expressionism, Vorticism, Surrealism: these are all different ways of operating within the modernist outlook. (3) These artifacts and artworks can be modernist by medium/material, subject matter, or style (and a combination of all that); (4) what modernisms share is the sense of rebellion against realism (as an emblem of rational, enlightened early “modernity”): this is the quintessential tension! ==>We can therefore conceive of these modernisms as a response (if they did so collectively it would be more of a realism; a modernist realism continues to exist, and was almost a predecessor of modernism proper/avant-garde modernism; it’s the complication these -isms pose to realism that really binds them together)

-By Realism we mean a sincere attempt by these artists to depict our meaningful experience of being in the world, potentially in the most accurate and realistic style; all these isms complicate that mode, esp. with surrealism and absurdism: in Absurdism, the art comments on the absurdity of the endeavor of depicting realistically because in that case everything becomes a matter of perception, which cannot be really trusted!

2. Modernist Painting in the US

Clement Greenberg wrote about it extensively, asserting that (American artists in this style) “their works constitute the first manifestation of American art to draw a standing protest at home as well as serious attention from Europe, where, though deplored more often than praised, they have already influenced an important part of the avant-garde.”

“The pictures of some of these Americans startle because they seem to rely on ungoverned spontaneity and haphazard effects; or because, at the other extreme, they present surfaces which appear to be largely devoid of pictorial incident.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946)

-He becomes a cornerstone/mentor to many modernist-movement representatives (forming the “Stieglitz circle”, which included Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, and Georgia O’Keeffe); he’s a photographer:

his photo of Marsden Hartley (1916)

-Photography became part of the modernist aspiration, holding a peculiar place in realism: Photographic realism becomes perceived as something that might be trusted, but enters a tension with painting

Georgia O’Keeffe “Black Mesa Landscape” (1930) and her photograph by Stieglitz (1918)

(she was his muse)

-Her art is often described as feminist-modernist art: we have a complication of form and a play on perception; the bottom half of the picture is of a fleshy color: this seems to be an artistic commentary on the beauty of female genitalia/female bodies or could just be a landscape ==>Interrogating both feminist inspiration and landscape art (as a potentially male endeavor); where is the sublime to be found here? Is it just a depiction of female beauty, or a complication of landscape art viewed through a feminist perspective?

-A crucial question that becomes important in the context of the modernist avant-garde: what is the role of women in the heyday of white male western movement of the avant-garde; it may be complicated through both a “planetarity” and a feminist dimension (referring to how the white male western viewpoint was unconsciously accepted as the perspective of the art historian in a specific moment of artistic production)

Linda Nochlin (1971)

-She presents a critique, a debate about art for art’s sake, what kind of art is popularized and accepted in the art world and what kind is cherished as artistically aspirational and worthy of our eyes; these are the processes of canonization that need to be complicated from a feminist vantage point!

Gerogia O’Keefe “Hibiscus with Plumeria” (1939): we can see the complication of this as feminist art, specifically (perhaps) of  the female body/labia that can often be found (arguably) in her work, even if she herself has always insisted that that’s not what she goes for, it’s often hard to trust artists’ comments on their true intentions

Paul Strand “Wall Street, NY, 1915”: This is a modernist photograph that informs us about the tension between abstract expressionism (O’Keeffe) and the photographic arrangement (here): it’s manifested as a tension between the flatlines and perspectives in the image; also the juxtaposition of the sizes of these cube-o-us shapes (modernist architectural signifiers)  against the individuals going to work/lunch/at a busy time on Wall Street; the modernist sujet is present, so is the modernist medium (photography); on one hand, we may even see here how this photographic mode becomes the quintessential mode of realism; it (the photograph) also it alludes to modernity via its sujet and composition (in its use of particular perspective)

Charles Demuth, ‘I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold’ (1928): it’s a painting that pays homage to a poem by William Carlos Williams “The  Great Figure” (1920) ==>Trans-medial/trans-artistic project of modernism avant-la-lettre (Artists inspire artists)

-We see this radical break from a more traditional modernist past in the U.S. exemplified in abstract expressionism, which becomes the quintessential U.S-American art form which Clement Greenberg calls “American-Type Painting” (1955) or “Action Painting”

-Perhaps the most famous one is by Jackson Pollock, ‘One’ (1950): it’s  these vast canvases that are “action-painted”, asking us what goes into the creation of creating artwork, what is painting and what is a form(how is it composed)? It has everything to do with abstracting and expressing the abstraction (which is hard to find); a more classical motif or sujet in this context is the expression of a felling, desire, a vector kinetic energy ==>We can see these things but not maybe a concrete figure doing something

Clement Greenberg’s comments on abstract expressionists:

-“[…] – that the conventions not essential to the viability of a medium be discarded as soon as they are recognized… […]’: as soon as something becomes conventionalized as a specific mode, it becomes old/established and needs to be once again made new! ==>Minimalism is a way to get to the essence of things, seeking out the purity by reducing the medium to itself!

-The transcendentalists had also thought about it: what is an American history of ideas and how can American thought impact the history of ideas? We studied the Hudson River School landscape painters who worked on developing an American sublime; now, these modernist artists want to put their mark on the longer tradition of art-making, achieving it through abstract expressionism!

-The Final modernist medium that’s important is Photography: architecture, urban photography,  etc. are very modern mediums with modernist aspirations; but also fashion photography, a crucial element of modern culture that is at the intersection of low and high pop culture (fashion weeks & reporting about its attendants: neatly sandwiched between the high art world of fashion and popular culture) ==>The aspiration of fashion photography is to be artistic and do justice to modern fashion, it becomes an important element in modernist and modern culture (think of Vogue and popular photographers, portrait/front cover, fashion, and even celebrity photography cater to the wider public: a credible medium!)

Adolf de Meyer (Vogue, September 1920)

3. Toward Postmodernism

-If modernism always needs to “make it”, it runs out of steam! At a certain point, it can’t move forward (it loops); what happens then? Postmodernism!

-The relationship, rupture and/or transition from modernism to postmodernism (or postmodernity in relation to modernity): in a modernism proper, we find a search for order and pattern, a meaningful existence (even though this progressively comes under scrutiny), whereas with postmodernism we see a total acceptance of the disorder of the world! We can also think of postmodernism through its intricate relationship with modernism, which remains the crucial word in this new term (many modernisms even share interests and sentiments with postmodernism)

-A way to differentiate the two is that postmodernism has a different relationship with popular culture: an important step to this new movement is Pop Art and the transitory figure of Andy Warhol (whose artistic representation of pop culture becomes the staple; in literature as well, entering the world of the arts with a certain vehemence). In this new relationship towards mediatization, pop culture becomes very meaningful and marks the difference between the two movements; Modernism also engaged with the every-day, but through the professionalization of pop culture (popular music, etc.), whereas postmodernism finds a very different sujet and inspiration than modernism proper

Dominic Strinati: “Postmodernism is said to describe the emrgence of a social order in which the importance and power of the mass media and popular culture means that they govern and shape all other forms of social relationship. The idea is that popular cultural signs and media images increasingly dominate our sense of reality”: for example, MTV is the quintessential postmodernist cable network channel because of the way it was entangled with popular culture, becoming a popular cultural form itself!

Frederic Jameson “Postmodernism or, the cultural logic of Late Capitalism”: he is one of the original fore-thinkers of postmodernism (a postmodernist himself)

-He believes there’s a new economic formation that coincides with postmodernism: if modernism  is the artistic response to modernization/industrialization, then postmodernism is the response to the change towards a post-industrial, service-oriented and media-based reality that began in the 1950s ==>Deindustrialisation or the service-sector economy! Financial capitalism becomes more apparent and entangled with neoliberal logics! ==>All of this happened becomes more apparent in the late 70s, through the 80s and so on (coinciding with postmodernist visibility)

Late-capitalism: he links it with postmodernism; think of Trump and what he represents on this cover with McDonalds burgers at the White House, preparing to host a reception ==>Mcdonaldization & Trump “aesthetics” combined into one, almost artistically, a sort of post-modern bricolage or pastiche! Trump is also not just the president but a brand, possibly more significantly so

-Jameson theorizes postmodernism as a logic of late capitalism, explaining the symptoms of postmodernism as cultural dominant: “one might illustrate the end of modernity, or the beginning of postmodernity, at the point when the radical stylists of modernism no longer appear disturbing or shocking”, meaning the pressure of modernism to make something new because of its conventionalization hinders it in achieving the radicalism it strives towards! Jameson says that when this conventionality is artistically reached, that’s when postmodernity begins; “The modernist notion of style is predicated upon the idea that the creations of unique individuals were granted authenticity by virtue of their very originality. Pastiche as repetitive imitation is founded upon a copy or imitation of an original and not itself grounded in an original.”

Warhol and Pop Art: homegrown American postmodernism: characterized by the insistence on repetition as the modus operandi (of postmodernism); (1) pastiche and repetition (the comic book aesthetic, Campbell soup cans, popular icons of the day, etc.): is it an affirmation of the  commodity culture, of commercialism, an anesthetization of it? We also have an (2) affirmation or acknowledgment of inauthenticity/love for the artificial (what does it even mean being original? isn’t citation and repetition the mode of the day?). There’s also a (3) losing fear of kitsch and imitation (it’s irreverent, more playful) and a (4) moving beyond the modern feeling  disillusionment (Insults of humanity turn into playful hedonism, nihilism, in an acceptance of the pervasiveness of late stage capitalism and its aesthetics)

Andy Warhol, ‘Brillo Box’, (1964), the mall as a postmodernist locus etc.

+Martin Lüthe wont ask us the 2nd question of the 3rd question; also 4th question he wont ask; he will ask the first question, the second question and the first question of the last question + what is the relationship between Pop Art and postmodernism

Key Terms: Abstract expressionism, Modernity, Modernization, Modernism, Postmodernism, Late Capitalism, Pop Art, Competing Modernities

24/01/2025

Culture IX: From small screens to smaller screens; the U.S. and TV

1. Evaluations, brief recap, and segue (from U.S. American Art in the 20th Century)

Andy Warhol, 1964, “Brillo Box”: consider it in the context of the longer art-producing tradition in the US; he used everyday objects that carried a pop cultural element; the Brillo pad: it defamiliarizes the object, making evident that a major element of this pad is not its use but its permanent business of self marketing, it’s its own advertisement: consequently, it’s not about using it necessarily, rather its “walking advertisement” function! ==>Whatever we consume we advertise (same with fashion brands, “logo-mania”: the person wearing the product, even if it’s fake, is a commercial)

Modernity to Postmodernity: the “Brillo box” represents a transition from high avant-garde modernism to the logics of postmodernism: in the engagement with these everyday objects and pop culture, we can differentiate the two movements, where postmodernism engages in the playfulness of objects and brands; an awareness of being in the heavily mediated age and having fun “while we’re at it” in art making! Another aspect is the US economic transition: the optimization of industrial production towards it being a service of the economy

Kara Walker, Slaughter of the innocents (2017)

-It demonstrates the different temporalities of modernity: Andy Warhol’s a white man (a hegemonic position in the art world of the 60s, this privilege allows play), but we also have artists like Kara Walker, a postmodernist who is contemporary (2017) due to her temporality: she’s an African American woman who works in the 90s. Her work is characterized by these highly-stylized cut-outs, making up huge pictures with shadowy figures that we read as racialized bodies, presenting instances of violence, oral fixation and sexual violence depiction ==>She’s one of the first high art-artists that visualizes the sexual, violent horror of slavery in her artwork, using it through this aesthetic technique

Allison Hewitt Ward, 2017

-This is more than play, as politics is involved: we see here an engagement with art criticism through the politics of emancipation; the artist carries out a deep dive into the historic nature of American pop culture ==>Even in postmodernist art, it’s not all play, as moments of political activism (specifically relating to POCs, queer, women, who don’t have the privilege of interrogating playful or less serious images) can be found in art

2. Small screen culture

-How does TV matter?

Lawrence Grossberg (1992): “Television programs, music videos, movies, CDs, and fashion

merchandise […] contribute language, codes, and values that become the

material milieu of everyday discursive formations”; he’s one of the founding fathers of cultural studies in the UK. He affirms that it’s exactly because things happen on TV – which we talk about – that make it worthy of our attention – true for fashion as well as, we always think about what to wear; the relationship between different media forms becomes important in that transition from avant-garde modernism towards post-modernism, and the ascendance of TV as a mass media proper arguably defines the second half of the century, serving as a marker of American culture itself: “in 1991/92, the average American watches 6 hours of TV a day”

Theoretically: in analyzing TV proper, the most important split is that between production and reception; for example, reception used to be “passive” – the housewife watching soaps while ironing in the morning ==>She wouldn't blog about/articulate this content! What is being produced are the aesthetics, visual codes, narratives ==>These are affective elements which determine reception (calculated), how the product(s) then makes us feel  (reception)

-Encoding: aesthetics and narratives are put into TV shows! Then there’s decoding, which has become more complex these days (the bottom line or underlying message we deduce). Producers aim to garner big audiences, to encode advertisements/commercials in their media, and figure out how to cater to different kinds of audiences!

-TV and Post-TV: there’s the neoliberal economics of TV production; reality TV shows are examples, they’re neoliberal as their workers don’t earn much, even pretending not to work there sometimes and claiming different intentions, like the quest for love (Love is blind), showing their houses (Cribs); professionals with no unions (writers and actresses) don’t have stable incomes (in such neoliberal contexts), but they represent people who’re looking for a partner: these are portrayals, neoliberal production practices (global identity, self-improvement, Second Screens)

Media history (asks why does media and its content change over time) and media ecology (what trans media networks do, media forms find themselves embedded in) David Foster Wallis: aware that 90s fiction writers write for TV audiences, they must be aware of TV’s importance; they may therefore create literature with an expectation of how TV works! (TV shows are now for example aware of being in direct competition with Tik Tok and YouTube, often trying to create viral moments to attract audiences: today we have a different media ecology from the 80s, when competition was based on TV time slots among programs and channels)

Mittell, Television and American culture (2009)

He has 6 ways to conceive of TV as an entity, “important reminders”

-(1) TV as a profitable industry, (2) TV in the US as part of democracy and the democratic public sphere (news journalism); different media landscapes are used in countries to influence the democratic process as well. (3) TV as a unique creative form (the aesthetic part: why it deserves our attention! Wallis found a lot of inspiration in TV, as it helped him find a creative voice); (4) TV as a mirror (producer) of our world – think about national identity: does it contribute to constructing it? In the US certainly so: televised rugby matches and "super bowls" are expressions of national identity, just like anthems and flags, flyover planes). (5) TV as a part of our everyday life (watching TV as practice); (6) TV is a technology (and back then still: “the central screen”).

-Two moments that define the beginning and the end of TV hegemony: the moon landing – televised event, people couldn't be there at the launch, therefore they had to trust the TV medium to see that Apollo had landed in 1969: people were flocking to the TV! Public viewings were already a “thing”: in Germany, people would go to their family members’ houses – and 9/11 – everybody was watching CNN that tragic day in 2001: in terms of a transnational TV events, it was almost the beginning of the end

1960s: TV comes into its own

the story of professionalization

-We have the (1) diversification of genres, (2) daytime/night time TV and (3) the creation of specific genres that’ll be the building blocks of American TV success story (translated into different countries, in western Europe for example) the essentials: Sitcoms, Soap Operas, and Murder Mysteries (also, a prominent inclusion of police: CIA, NCIS, FBI TV show offshoots etc.). Additionally, (4) the era of the episodic form and the water cooler conversation: broadcasting!

-This was a practice and an ideal: the ideal is to reach the maximum amount of people possible, as they represent the market share; this is consensus programming, when sitcoms come in, restriction of graphic violence – which will change in the 80s – nothing too controversial, rather mass appeal notion of broadcasting is emphasized here ==>This leads to people talking about shows at work, next to the water cooler for example!

-In the U.S., the notion of channels as corporations is much more pervasive since the beginning, becoming evident in the 80s with private Television – which had a lot more channels (US) compared to (1) western Europe, where a subordinate commercial model was mixed with a public-service model; the (2) Soviet Union abstained from a private-sector enterprise, rather creating state-regulated public channels. Most countries (3) since the 1980s experienced a deregulatory fervor both in this sector, and in terms of policy-making in capitalist democracies & international organizations ==>(4) Elements geared towards public viewing and achieving certain ratings and audiences start appearing in modern TV: we see a new communication infrastructure!

Also in the US we see (5) rapid technological innovation (for example, satellite signals, etc. were not available in Germany in the 80s)

Back in the US …1980s to 1990s

-we see a major ideological production change from (1) broadcasting to narrowcasting (as it’s considered more valuable to have a target audience rather than reaching everyone, with the possibility of maximizing advertisement-related profits through target audience-catering); the biggest split is age demographics: generational audiences! For example, Fox News know their audience: baby boomers today still get news from TV).

-At this point in (2) private cable TV, audience determination was all the rage: the new currency, because you know how and to whom you should market something in the most effective way ==>Private cable TV stations mushroom! (3) There was a shift from VCR technology towards digital technology; also we had a transition (4) from the digital video disc (DVD) to the world wide web

3) Complex TV,  Reality TV, Second Screens, and Contemporary Post-TV

-You need a certain bandwidth, a certain speed for the internet to run HD TV programs effectively: we’re in the era of narrowcasting or niche-casting, finding an even narrower pocket to market to

-TV Studies: Lynn Spiegel “Make Room For TV” (meant literally: there was an interior design change that TV produced, it makes a difference to have a screen, more importantly than even watching it ==>TV changed the living room! People would gather around the TV/fireplace, families would talk and interact etc. (now we’re in the era of independent screen-watching, less interacting among family members)

-Amanda Lotz: “The Television will be revolutionized" (meaning the revolution will not be televised, it’s a poem); Maria Sulimma “Gender and Seriality”; Jason Mittel “Complex TV: the poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling” (addresses high-end expensive TV programming, featuring at least one old-school Hollywood TV actor returning to the big screen)

-(1) How can television shows produce understandings of the world? (2) What issues are addressed; what themes are negotiated? What issues are excluded (trans, gay world, queer life, African American life representation not being practiced until Bill Cosby, which was revolutionary for everyday African American life)? (3) What discourses are generated? What do TV shows contribute to ongoing discussions about various “meanings” within expressive culture? (4) How is (social) identity created and/or contested?

Post network and Post-TV era

-TV in the post-network era is no longer primarily in the hands of three national networks, which struggle to reach audiences successfully (NBC, CBS, ABC, broadcasting, roughly 50s-70s)

-In the 1980s, was we move towards the post-network era, “multi channel transition” (Lotz) towards niche-casting and special interest takes place; the status of the TV screen has changed: we think about the notion of the second screen, computers/phones, meaning everything is more  in flux (we’re in a post-TV era)

Mittel on Complex TV, 2014

-“Jumbo-chronology”: refers to that feeling of confusion we experience when we don’t know where in the story we are; it’s a way of opening a TV Show. It can also be the title of a show (for example in “Lost”): it’s therefore a story telling device of sorts;

-the opening shot and the soundscape are important, ensuring a show works and so that people don’t get frustrated (it’s all integrated); TV story-telling has become different now though, this “jumbo-chronology” is considered a relic by now; now there’s communities of people watching together on the internet (subgroups on reddit and other sites), therefore more complex audiences ==>Consequently, the expectations of production and audience determination have significantly become more complex

Defining complex TV (important for exams)

-(1) Thanks to recent changes in the production culture and the technological affordances of televisual media, a new poetics (of story telling) has emerged (complex TV)

-(2) Shows are entangled in intertextual webs of meaning-making (para-textual orientation) and they thus tell stories differently (jumbled chronology, narrative disorientation – like Lost –, complexity) – new trans-generic conventions have emerged, like sad romcoms, “dramedies”, etc.

-(3) Recursive feedback loops and audience engagement (audience online actively take part in the story telling: trans-media events in TV; “Lost” is a good example, as this TV show’s producers and co-creators admitted to looking at discussion boards and theories, noticing that people had thought of better narrative complexities and shamelessly admitted to this)

-(4) Serial storytelling now trumps episodic storytelling (consider here the poetic crisis of the sitcom genre): the reason we binge watch is the cliff-hanger! We keep watching for hours, sometimes never even finding out the mystery of it all! ==>This shift is important (you wanna know how it’s gonna end)

-Some shows explore diverse racial representation: “Black-ish” (African American culture), “Reservation Dogs” (Native American life), “Orange Is The New Black” (diversity, gender and sexual representation). Furthermore, sitcoms disappear from typical programming, progressively being replaced by (arguably) reality TV; there’s basically no sitcoms anymore, at most replaced by semi-similar “equivalents” like “The Office”, etc. (“Friends”-type shows basically “disappeared”)

Culture X: Media Convergence and Contemporary Conservatism(s)

Example exam question: how would you define complex TV?

Reality tv (not gonna be in the exam)

Exemplary normative definitions point to there being a big stigma attached to the genre (therefore we have many definitions of it); it’s supposedly ‘unscripted’, private lives are transformed into public spectacle (this definition already carries a judgement – spectacle)

-another one criticizes it for its sensationalist features: commercialized, emotive way of telling stories (same vane of criticism applied to early cowboy movies); cheap antics, high emotions: these are normative, meaning they may bring a certain judgement with them

2012, Misha Kavka: reality TV has transformed programming schedules, branded satellite and digital channels, created a celebrity industry in its own right, turned viewers into savvy readers of – not to mention potential participators in – the mechanics of television production; Kavka’s saying the online buzzing, the second screen logic is indeed a contributing factor in the success of these shows

-Now we have a potentially complicated relationship between online fame and these reality shows; for example, the Kardashians: it’s hard to say whether their success is really owed to their tv show, the success of their lawyer father, their social media presence, etc. but they’re known for being proper celebrities, not primarily known for singing or dancing but for being known! This cuts through their reality TV shows and online presence, influencing younger generations who aspire to be like them

Reality TV and post-TV in TV Studies

-(1) They have different formats, and therefore different kinds of storytelling (e.g. gamedoc, talent contests, etc.); (2) some of the key issues raised by reality television shows (e.g. voyeurism, surveillance, audience participation and agency, desires and needs…; we can think of reality TV as a genre containing various genres). (3) What are the aesthetic and narrative features/ techniques of reality television shows, and what are the implications? (They pick urself-help notions like in the “make-over” format, etc.)

-(4) How can we relate formal features of reality TV shows and their modes of storytelling to subject matter and politics? (the bachelor(ette) etc. have a “cult-ish” feeling and are probably not very enjoyable for the participants, with techniques such as confessionals representing avenues for airing out the borderline psychological violence they experience during filming; induced alcoholism, locking out of hotel rooms… Is there a deeper meaning to reality tv?)

-(5) How do we explain the simultaneous “success” of complex narrative TV and reality TV formats (as crucial elements of “TV” in the digital now)? We could say the ratings, but not really! (6) What is the cultural significance of reality television shows (e.g. participatory nature of the programming)?

-In terms of aesthetics, how do we define them? Tell me it’s reality TV without telling me it’s reality TV; some identifiers: camerawork (camera angle/positions, movement and distance), masks (attachments to the camera that cut off parts of the frame, e.g. iris-in or iris-out), shots (framing/ratio – meaning the shape, size and length of the film image – depth of field, color), editing (relating the images)

-There’s also a kind of “slick”, white, digital aesthetic that characterizes a lot of them; certain narrative devices used (like the confessional, a quasi narrative setting ==>A new narrative device then, one that’s almost religious, absolving-like; also acting is actively being practiced here: suspension of disbelief hides the fact that these people are constantly surrounded by cameras, often in quite an intruding manner (zoom ins, etc.); also, they constantly up the ante in terms of  drama

Renee Sgroi, 2006

-There’s an investment in US culture: a heavy wedding imaginary (often at the end of Hollywood movies/shows, altar or pregnancy represent a happy ending); for example, “Love is blind” tells us an important story of a heavily-mediated age that makes love hard to find: we swipe left and right and everything is superficial; but if love is blind, why don’t we look at each other? Love has been corrupted by postmodernity forces, here’s a way to find true love! ==>It’s a story many are invested in! in reunion shows esp., they treat it like the answer to our problems of love; they insist on the righteousness of the show itself!

Talent shows

-(1)Even though these shows perform a “non-scripted-ness”, they (re-)produce more or less conventionalized narratives and emphatically perform their own “authenticity” (“authenticity effects”); for example, in “The Voice”, contestants often don’t necessarily look like what they sing like: these shows insist yet again on their righteousness! It’s also the idea of storytelling: often pop stars don’t sing their songs, “so let’s show some authenticity”

-(2) Think here: the unlikely hero, the timeliness of the voice of Jordan Smith, different ways to “read” Jordan Smith; (3) the (tough) competition as legitimate structure and the focus on the individual achievement, being judged as naturalized (meta-judging: are we judging the judges? ==>We see the importance of the meritocracy narrative in American pop culture: no matter what you look like, music business is biased against “ugly people” “so we’ll show the songs interpreted by powerful and not necessarily conventionally beautiful or attractive people!”

-(4) And then: the affective power of the audiovisual performance (aesthetics, effect); (5) the slickness of the production of it all! (the judges being so perfect and slick, polished: none of the grit of analogue media for example like a movie from the 90s ==>A “digital flatness” of sorts)

Make-over reality tv

-a genre that deals with self-improvement; a neoliberal gesture of it always coming down to you: it’s never about the makeover itself, rather about finding yourself; there’s structures in place that impede on your health, body, mind ==>Ultimately, it always comes down to the individual and the question of wanting

2. Media Convergence and Media Theories in/of the Digital Now

The app-ification of the digital now

-(1) we live in the midst of media change and, thus, media changes debates; (2) these often intersect with and amplify inter-generational conflicts over politics, culture and the meaning of life. (3) These new technological advancements determine new affective regimes and new economic logics (in-app, in-game purchases) and the monetization of big personal data (they mobilize emotions, move capital, mobilize data). (4) Trans media corporations and its generational logics (who owns and watches TV these days? TV is struggling hard!); (5) media literacy as the crucial individual challenge for our generation (media literacy: consciously using media is the real challenge for us; it’s not necessarily attention spans rather it’s about how consciously and to what degree of a reflective manner you use news media and other types of it – there are, of course, climate change and late neoliberal capitalism as meaningful structural contexts to this “issue”)

3. Contemporary Conservatism(s), ‘Broligarchy’, and its Media Ecologies

How did we get here? Our news cycle feed seems absurd! The technology alliance: “tech bros” with Trump ==>What’s happening? We’ve been in this moment since 2016; there’s more complacency: we can’t be politically depressed for 10 years; after the surprise of 2016 election, now it all feels like a reiteration. 4 ideas, complimentary among them

-(1) “The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order”, Fraser/Gerstle, 1990: established that the period between 30s and 80s was relatively homogeneous in US politics, with low-level agreements on how government should function no matter the 2 party ideological divisions (has to do with the transition from industrial capitalism to the service-based economy).

-(2) “Conservative revolution”: a discursive idea that conservatives began to aggressively establish conservative identity as permanently under attack (“someone convinced a bunch of people they were permanently under attack!” :/ and those aren’t minorities, rather straight white conservative men, who advocate for male aggression and the return of male identity in economics)

-(3) This new conservatism shifts the discourse away from the complex crises brought about by a globalized, neoliberal capitalism towards more “immediate” and more “intimate” issues as political (to get more people out to vote; some of these “intimate” issues may not even be on the ballot, like Queer people in the military for example; the extent to which they’re being successfully deployed in the US is arguable)

-(4) Changing media ecologies, which help to: a) create large scale media skepticism (cross-generationally, distrust that’s heightened, which enabled protests such as January 6th :/) while also b) allowing for a feeling of community, intimacy, and belonging (in the so-called “bubbles”)

“The intimate public” as a theory of contemporary American political culture

“Something strange has happened to citizenship. During the rise of the Reaganite right, a familial politics of the national future came to define the urgencies of the present. Now everywhere in the United States intimate things flash in people's faces: pornography, abortion, sexuality, and

reproduction; marriage, personal morality, and family values. These issues do not arise as private concerns: they are key to debates about what ‘America’ stands for, and are deemed vital to defining how citizens should act. In the process of collapsing the political and the personal into a world of public intimacy, a nation made for adult citizens has been replaced by one imagined for fetuses and children.”

Consider these “issues”…

-late term abortion, “pizzagate”, The access Hollywood tape, the pee tape, Gender neutral bathrooms, Lgbtq+ in the military, DEI hirings and the fires in L.A.

Two perspectives on Trumpism and the Trump Moment: (1) Apolitical Conservatism:

-This notion was invested in understanding how Trump could even become the leader of this party, how Republicans made peace with making Trump “king”; one answer was published by “Publius Decius Mus” (pseudonym of the authors of the federalist debates): they wrote about the “Flight 93 Election”(in reference to a highjacked plane on 9/11 brought on the ground by passengers) for an inside audience, a strategic paper for his Republican colleagues; what he witnessed in 2016 was this type of election, writing “charge the cockpit or you die”: there are no guarantees unless one, “defeat is certain if you don’t try”

==>With Trump at least you’ll see a conservative future! It was coined as the “do or die election”, a narrative they needed to rally around Trump and elect him. Publius Decius Mus defines Trumpism as secure border policies, economic nationalism, and “America-first” foreign policy; the tone “alleged buffoon” is Trump, who’s more prudent than all these virtue-based Republicans; he  thinks the election was a test if there was any virtue at the core of the U.S.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: “Between the world and me”, (2) “the First White President”

-He calls Trump “the first white president”: the idea is that Trump, has to be thought of as so, as he was voted into office only in response to the liberal presidency of Obama; “he has no ideology but white supremacy” he says; “Trump is something new, his existence as president hinges on the fact there was a black president before  him” ==>A rhetorical tactic, but the idea is to be persuasive (his success hinges on his permanent criticism of Obama)

Incompatible discourses: Coates vs Anton

-People never make it to real political discourse: this is often called polarization or bubbles, and we have to come to terms with it, ensuring there’s a common ground in terms of what politician speak about

Key terms: Intimate public sphere, A-political, conservativism, Reality TV, Complex TV, Broadcasting, Narrowcasting, Media ecology, Media history, the flight 93 election, Trumpism and the first white president, Broligarchy (=it resembles the gulded age, rich white men in a cpaitalist society, they’re bors becaue of their silicon valley backrgoudn; also connection with the makeover reality tv dimension (mark Zuckerberg), The rise and fallof the new deal order, Convergence culture and digital cultures, Small screen(s), TV and post-TV (post-Network)

29/01/2025

Tutorium time

From small screen to smaller screens & media convergence and contemporary conservatism

Quick recap on the shift from modernist to postmodernist art; reflection on postmodernist art: strong reflection/blur between art and ads, understanding we’re living in an age of massive importance culturally of advertising; art accepts a playfulness and increased “mediatization” of our lives; we get Andy Warhol “Pop-Art” – in order to be able to play with ads and art, you require privilege of time and money meaning “you gotta be white”, the so-called politics of play

(Second half of 20th century)

-Small screen culture: 50s, 60s, 70s ==>TV as mass media, used in the everyday; practices of TV as mass media: the idea of gathering (family in front of TV), people get info from TV (not much choice: everyone watches the same shows because of a lack of variety, people talk about the same shit, the “water-cooler conversation”); TV as a passive medium: has to do with what degree of participation and control people have (woman irons shirts and passively consumes the info TV is passing on to her; different to active medium)

-Relationship between TV production/reception and our background: Stewart Hall – things influence this relationship, like someone’s background, political ideology ==>This may influence how someone interprets the info received from the TV (who we are matters as to how we understand it); Mittel: different functions of TV

-TV as a profitable industry: it makes money; it’s part of the democratic sphere – influences people’s politics; it gives people info but is also there to criticize (someone outside of politics gives their opinion on policies), it’s a medium that gives platform to political debate – newspapers as well are part of this democratic sphere; as a creative form – has specific aesthetics; it narrativizes specific topics compared to different mediums – through canned laughter, etc. you can now hear sounds in TV as well as imagery), TV as a mirror of the world/producer of national identity : TV reflects our societies, our values and ideals; also think of the coronation, rugby matches/national anthems with fly-over planes; creates associations with things in the lives of people in a country – contributes to the creation of national feeling; TV as everyday life (housewife watching while ironing, etc.: activity of the daily), TV as technology (it’s an invention, arising thanks to the development of 20th century innovations)

-In the 50s and 60s TV is growing and coming into its own: we see the professionalization of the TV industry: massive influence of the big 3 networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), in charge of everything we see on TV at the time; they would pay TV producers to make shows that they would then broadcast; the rise of program genres: sitcoms, soaps and mysteries: the episodic narrative form (each episode has a standalone story;) era of broadcasting and consensus TV (nothing controversial, no nudity ==>Everyone can watch; appealing to everyone)

-Multi channel period: due to specific technological innovations! they give us more powers as consumers: remote control, video recorders (we can watch shit later), private cable systems (don’t need to rely on the big 3, rather wider view/choice of TV channels/programs you can watch==>more competition for the networks); we see a fragmentation of TV broadcasting ==>Narrowcasting becomes a thing; Lotz says on the role of TV in polarization: “it depends on whether TV mirrors reality or shapes it”

-From broad to narrative niche: we’re in the post TV /post network era (late 90s-mid 2010s): Private TV stations grow in popularity – HBO, with cuss words, extreme violence, no gov. control, etc.), digitalization of technology (dvr to dvd, to web), stand-alone status of TV as a medium, complex TV and reality TV

-Complex TV – what is it? Mittel explains it like this: “it redefines episodic form, transforming it into narrative form”: serialization of programs (complex TV doesn't have a chronology that’s set, doesn't have a stand alone story in one episode, rather episodes are intertwined and interconnected, making the series complicated! The tension isn’t resolved at the end of the episode anymore, the narrative continues; jumbled chronologies, intertextuality; these are not bound to a genre btw); also chronology and flashbacks – how the narrative is created; also audience engagement – interaction between fans on blogposts and forums and TV shows/creators; Changes in technological affordances of television – TV can afford to cater to a specific audience

Reality TV – same era approximately as complex TV: Controversial, unscripted TV shows (un-scripted-ness), cheap to produce and really sensationalist (high shock value, focused on emotional manipulation of both audience and participants, focused on affect; you physically feel something when watching the show (goosebumps or smth); also very market driven (cheap but huge audience). Also logic of second screen: people want to discuss what’s going on TV (secret lives of mormon wives, constant engagement with these second-screen audiences, such as through reddit blogposts read on TV and shit)

-they produce different narratives as well: makeup shows – you’ll embrace yourself and be beautiful in the context of society; talent shows – meritocracy; if you’re good/talented you’ll win ==>societal narratives attached to reality TV; Suspension of disbelief – idea that for one moment the audience is in total belief of what’s happening, such as someone being filmed from behind opening a door: it feels like you or the audience doesn’t even acknowledge or know that it’s all being filmed); The ethics of reality tv – 16 and pregnant, talked about because it was scandalized: they put teenagers on TV without paying them; consent is abused!!

-Beyond the TV era: Application

-the role of apps and social media in our everyday sphere; new effective regimes! Mobilisation of emotion – it drives interaction with content, “if it doesn’t peek your feelings, why would you respond?”; Most apps don't get their profits form ads, rather it’s the sale of personal data and in-app purchases; Intergenerational conflicts – “grandpa doesn't understand the value of Tik Tok, as his entertainment was tv” ==>Disparate forms of media usage between generations leads to misunderstandings among generations; rise of media competition: TV now has to compete with social media to remain semi-relevant; importance of media literacy – “NY time has an advice column, someone said their 9 year old son has YT shorts that told him humans and dinosaurs coexisted: how do you understand what’s true and false?”; “Why are we so scared of Tik Tok?

-Contemporary conservatism: the construction of conservative identity being constantly attacked (“the left wants to take away our freedoms, wanna change everything gay, trans is bad and everyone”); for example, the “15-minute cities” – wherever you live, everything you need should be at a 15 minute distance walking or cycling; this was a super controversial topic, because people were saying: people want to take away your cars and freedoms ==>It was framed as an attack

-Intimate public sphere: the idea that political culture and discourse in the US is becoming more and more centered on the infant: abortion, pornography have now become THE core of the political debate; The Trumpian attacks on trans rights (military exclusion), etc. ==>These are initmate issues that are now at the center of discussion; disdain and distrust of traditional media, fragmentation into “bubbles” – establishment news being seen as “propaganda”

How did we get here?

WHAT MAKES COMPLEX TV DIFFERENT FROM OTHER FORMS OF TELEVISION?