Líderes da convenção de Seneca Falls (1848)

 

Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) e Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)

Ver mais informações aqui (https://www.biography.com/news/seneca-falls-convention-leaders)

TPC para 4 de maio: cultura hip-hop

Escolha uma de duas perguntas:

1. Partindo da curta apresentação deste vídeo, discorra sobre a modalidade da cultura hip-hop que mais o(a) atrai (breakdance, graffitti, rap... ou até o vestuário), justificando e oferecendo exemplos.

2. Discuta até que ponto o "sampling" como método de composição e/ou o "rap" como estilo musical desenvolvem uma proposta alternativa de apropriação e afirmação de identidades criativas e culturais.

Análise da letra (com vídeo) de "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (MVG)

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” is the opening theme of Bob Dylan’s fourth album, Bringing it all Back Home (1965), and it marks a transition from folk music and more obviously engaged lyrics (protest songs) to rock’n’roll rhythms (in fact a comeback, since this was Dylan’s starting point) and open-ended verse indebted to nonsense, surrealism, beat poetry. The fact that the song was made a film clip for Dylan’s British tour documentary Don’t Look Back (directed by D. A. Pennebaker) with Allen Ginsberg in the backdrop, reinforces the latter influence, as well as the word “Subterranean” possibly alluding to Jack Kerouac’s 1958 beat-novel The Subterraneans, though this word may also generally be interpreted as a cue for the “underground” atmosphere of the 60s hippie culture in the US.

The fact that the song lyrics start “in the basement” reinforces the underground message, and the introduction of a character “mixing up the medicine” suggests the process of codeine distillation for drug intake that was generalized among the “hip” youth of the time. The lyrical subject, in turn, places himself on the sidewalk, while he “thinks about the government”, an understatement about the street protests that objected to US politics of ethnic oppression (the Civil Rights movement), wars of power display (Vietnam) and competing world ideologies (the Cold War and the repression of Communism within the US). The next couplet of the first line continues in the political vein, conveying to a certain extent a continuity with Dylan’s formerly engaged career. Certainly, unemployment (“laid off”) and social welfare (“paid off”) are evoked, but they are compounded by a dissonant allusion to the figure of conspiracy, the spy, with the words “trench coat” and “badge”, triggering nonsense and a sarcastic tone that, throughout the song, will mark a disruption with Dylan’s previous more linear punch-lines.

The second stanza introduces a phrase, “Look out, kid”, a sort of warning to the youth of his time, which will weave a refrain with variation in every other stanza, remindful of the making of “the blues”, a genre indicated in the song title, though subverted in its content. The development of the phrases that follow this warning, “it’s something you did”, “don’t matter what you did”, “you’re gonna get hit”, “they keep it all hid”, points to a growing menace to youth’s carelessness vs. the plot of society. This crescendo accompanies a bi-part structure, where the first 3 stanzas mainly thematize rebellion against the establishment, whereas the last 5 gradually point to an ironic conformity. The latter, still, is dubiously first conveyed by another piece of advice, in the fourth stanza, “Better stay away from those that carry around a fire hose / Keep a clean nose”, where we mark a reference to the police strategy for clearing away demonstrators, through high-pressure water hoses, and another reminder against drug addiction, “keep a clean nose”, whose ambiguity and truth-value is meant to sound puzzling through the preposterous rhyme of “hose” and “nose”.

This kind of ambivalence pervades the poem, since the imperative formula, which may point to the structure of protest calls or banners (at once emphasized and undermined by the film clip where Dylan exhibits handwritten loose phrases from the song, but in a desynchronized manner and sometimes subverting the original sense), is twisted through humor and absurdity. These last two traits are also particularly evident in the most enigmatic of the stanzas, the third, where the character Maggie might or might not be growing illicit plants but persecution is a sure thing that arises from the paranoia of tapped phone lines and the haunting figure of the D. A. (District Attorney).

Two couplets are worth mentioning for conveying ideas that Dylan has clung to throughout his career: the image of the “blowing wind” as a mystery of nature to be deciphered by the hip individual – “You don’t need a weather man / to know which way the wind blows” – and the punch-line “Don’t follow leaders”, echoing the former protest songs where the villains were political and religious leaders (e. g. “Only a Pawn in their Game”, sung in 1963 on the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom). However, the straightforwardness of this indictment, in the tradition of self-reliant Emersonian idealism that Dylan favored, is again thwarted by the dissonant follow-up “watch your parkin’ metters”, short-circuiting intelligence in a way that marks Dylan’s allegiance with the contradictory revelations of the Beat poets and their predecessors, among them Walt Whitman. Indeed, Dylan’s shift from the position of the “I” to that of the “you” throughout the song is also very Whitmanian, and a sign of his poetics of adhesiveness, in this case with the troubled “kid” being addressed.

The abovementioned appearance of the poet Allen Ginsberg in the song’s promotional clip points moreover to Dylan’s aspirations as principally a “word player” and a (song-)writer in his own right. Such a claim is made blatant by the stress on words throughout this clip, which marked the modern era of music videos and is justly said to have been an inspiration for rappers and hip-hop performers alike. Dylan’s preference for open-ended rhetoric, arguably a trademark of most of his career, is fully displayed in the song’s last line, my favorite, where deadpan humor, or sarcasm, prevails, subverting the commonsensical grudge against delinquency, through non-sense and a surrealistic vein bound to blow things up: “the pumps don’t work, ‘cause the vandals took the handles.”

Bob Dylan and the Macrosystem (30s to 1965)

1926 - National Broadcasting System begins regular radio broadcasting
1929 - Wall Street Crash
1930s - Dustbowl (the dirty thrities)
1933-1937 - New Deal (Frank D. Roosevelt): Relief, Recovery and Reform; Roosevelt's New Deal "Farm Security Administration" (FSA) project and documentary photography
1939 - Radio Corporation of America demonstrantes television at New York Wrold's Fair

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
1939-1945 - 2nd World War
1940 - "A Grapes of Wrath Evening" with Woodie Guthrie; Folk Protest Movement

1941 - US enters 2nd World War (Pearl Harbor)
Bob Dylan is born (Robert Zimmermann)
publication of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (by James Agee and Walker Evans); cf. The Dustbowl and the FSA photographs' program: https://www.lightstalking.com/photography-new-deal/https://www.lightstalking.com/photography-new-deal/
1941-5 - Television technology diverted to radar
1942 - beginning of Manhattan Project
1945, August - atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office and is followed by Harry Truman
1948 - Alan Lomax (folklorist) edits The People's Song Book (left wing protest of the Folk Movement would subsequently be tuned down by McCarthyism
1950-1956 - McCarthyism (Eisenhower) and "Cold War"; mid 1950s - television sets enter family homes (movie attendance dropped, radio changed its focus to recorded music, the print press had to specialize)
1955-1968 - Civil Rights Movement
1955 - American involvement in the Vietnam War (lasts until 1973)
1956 - Chuck Berry's rock'n'roll thrives with "Too Much Monkey Business"

1958 - revival of Folk; Moses Ash and Pete Seegers' magazine Sing Out!
(new folk is arguably more idealistic and individualistic, while the 40s folk was more tuned with materialist orthodox communism) 
1959 - Dylan enrolls in the Univ. of Minnesotta and is acquainted with Beat Literature 
1961-1963 - JFK
1961 - Bob Dylan reaches New York in search of Woodie Guthrie; Greenwhich Village apprenticeship

JFK is elected president and faces the Bay of Pig's Incident (worse crisis of the Cold War); he also promises "The New Frontier" as his internal Government
1962 Bob Dylan's first album, Bob Dylan
1963 Newport Folk Festival and Dylan's hit song "Blowin' in the Wind" in The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1q9zea
1964 - Bob Dylan's third album The Times They Are a'changin
with "The Ballad of Hollis Brown"

... and Another Side of Bob Dylan (featuring "It Ain't Me Baby")

Beyoncé and the Hoodie - HW for April 27

Consider Beyoncé's concept album Lemonade and Troy Patterson's article "The Politics of the Hoodie". Write about one of the three topics:

- the role of the "hoodie" in Beyoncé's album

- semiotic interpretation of the video "Formation"

- text-analysis and/or semiotic interpretation of any of the album's themes

TPC - 21 de Abril: Análise de vídeo "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

Considerando a letra de "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (1965) de Bob Dylan, veja o videoclipe (um dos primeiros do género, produzido para um documentário de D. A. Pennebaker, Don't Look Back em 1967) e produza uma análise tendo em conta parâmetros estudados em aula.
Sugestão: faça pesquisa sobre as referências contextuais.

Like a Prayer - Madonna (1989)

HW for April 15: Madonna and Postmodernism

Marilyn (1926-1962) vs. Madonna (1958)

In the article in the anthology, pp. 173-198 of the anthology, find keywords / concepts related to popular culture and postmodernism, and briefly explain their meaning.
Alternatively, you can comment on two of the following:
- What makes Madonna a postmodern icon?
- Construction of Madonna's hybrid appeal
- Examples of Madonna's employment of pastiche (often an exaggeration, with unabashed graphic explicitness, of what we saw before as "quotationalism")
- Examples of Madonna's acts resulting in "de-differentiation" (similar to our previous concept of hyper-ironism)

Sobre o filme Joker (2019) e os comics

Um artigo interessante aqui: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/joker-ambiguous-meaning-comic-book-references-explained-1245680

And a video composition:

The Killing Joke - I'll go Looney

and a mash-up video:

TPC - 30 de Março

Ler o artigo da atologia p. 177-183, Uricchi, "The Batman's Gothic City" - comentar em relação com representações (ou relativa ausência delas) do sub/mundo urbano em The Killing Joke de Alan Moore.

Projeto Final - instruções

1. Tema Que histórias nos conta a cultura popular, que narrativas nos incute? 
Em pares de trabalho, deverá ser escolhido um formato, artefacto ou ícone de cultura popular (diferente do da apresentação em aula), para análise, polemização ou trabalho criativo sobre a sua narrativa.

Para um resultado gratificante, há que pensar profundamente em que consiste a cultura popular, que sentidos emana, e como o objeto escolhido se integra num conjunto mais amplo de padrões, valores e ideias culturais. O desafio é de ir além da observação superficial e aplicar ideias, terminologia e teoria comentadas nas aulas. Para isso, o vosso artefacto deve ser relacionado com um tema circunscrito, que deverão identificar claramente, juntamente com o seu contexto cultural relevante.* Aconselha-se a leitura das páginas “Writing about Popular Culture” e regras de citação na antologia (p. 15-23). Porém, para um trabalho consequente deverá ser feito um plano (ver abaixo) e esse plano deve ter uma tese que indique a vossa perspetiva sobre a narrativa 

O projeto pode, contudo, assumir várias formas: pode ser um ensaio (até 2500 palavras, excluindo bibliografia), um vídeo, documentário, colagem, poster, ensaio fotográfico, palestra filmada (vlog), entrevista, ou outra coisa que explore crítica e criativamente aspetos de cultura popular. Se for “outra coisa”, o par deverá anexar uma explicação escrita, apresentando-o e/ou justificando o seu enquadramento (c. 2 páginas). Os projetos serão discutidos, através de trocas de rascunhos entre grupos de alunos, numa fase intermédia.
Notem bem: devido à situação excecional em que vivemos, os trabalhos podem ser individuais, mas só se forem trabalhos de índole criativa. Os trabalhos mais convencionais - ensaios académicos - deverão obrigatoriamente ser feitos em pares.

2. Plano. O plano do trabalho não deverá exceder 2 páginas e deve incluir 
a) título (ainda que provisório)
b) tese: que indique a vossa perspetiva sobre a narrativa do artefacto escolhido. Note que a tese deve vir parcialmente indicada no título (Ex: Barbie, um modelo feminino em reformulação; ou Barbie, um modelo feminino a superar; ou Acessórios da Barbie e Classe Média Americana)
c) Tópicos e subtópicos (por frases ou palavras-chave, ver mais aqui: https://bcourses.berkeley.edu/courses/1357555/pages/b-dot-6-2-topic-and-sentence-outlines-which-type-of-outline-is-best-for-the-assignment?module_item_id=13261248
d) Bibliografia Anotada (2 a 5 itens - ver post em baixo)

2. Prazos
3 de Abril: Plano e bibliografia anotada de trabalhos finais (quem tiver dúvidas sobre pertinência do tópico/artefacto escolhido, deverá corresponder-se com a professora a fim de obter esclarecimentos antes desta data). Este é um requisito também previsto par trabalhos criativos (com as necessárias adaptações)
15 de Abril: aula reservada a discussão dos planos com a professora
até 29 de Abril: troca e revisão de projetos entre grupos
4 de maio: entrega dos trabalhos finais

3. Orientações formais (para os ensaios ou explicações/memórias descritivas de trabalhos criativos)

Folha de rosto: Logotipo da Universidade, Nome do Aluno, Professora, Disciplina, Título do projeto e Data
Formatação: tipo 12, dois espaços
Citações, referências e bibliografia: aconselho o estilo MLA que é o explicado na vossa antologia, p. 26-28. Podem ver outras indicações aqui: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html
(poderão também usar outro modelo, desde que sejam coerentes)

Dimensão máxima: 2500 palavras (excluindo bibliografia, para trabalhos convencionais) ou 800 palavras (para memória descritiva de trabalho criativo)

4. Bibliografia Recomendada

Na vossa antologia (pp.201-223) têm um exemplo de um ensaio bastante esclarecedor sobre tópicos de Cultura Popular / Pós-Modernismo, dedicado a Madonna e a alguns dos seus artefactos na área da música pop.

Arranz, José I Prieto, "The Semiotics of Performance and Sucess in Madonna”, The Journal of Popular Culture. 45(1), 2012., pp. 173-195

Livros Generalistas sobre os nossos tópicos

Pop Culture

Ashby, Leroy, With Amusement for all: a History of American Popular Culture since 1930. Kentucky: Kentucky University Press, 2006.

Cullen, Jim, ed. Popular Culture in American History. Maiden: Blackwell, 2009.

Maasik, Sonia  and Jack Solomon, ed.. Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 7th ed.  Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011.

Petracca, Micahel and Madeleine Sorapure, eds. Common Culture: Reading and Writing About American Popular Culture. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007. (teacher has it)

American Cultural Studies

Bigsby, Christopher, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Burgett, Bruce, and Hendler, Glenn. Keywords for American Cultural Studies . New York: New

York University Press, 2007.  [ask the teacher]

Usar a ligação VPAN para aceder
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/, pesquisar no Google Scholar, https://scholar.google.pt/schhp?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

+ poderão usar qualquer artigo da nossa antologia

* Conselhos / Advice

1) you should apply the semiotic methods you have learned in this class, and which include image analysis, text and/or discourse analysis.  As such, those writing papers/essays, should try to substantiate at least one of your topics / main ideas with detailed analysis of one example of visual symbology, or textual parallelism - or analysis of other kind of codes, like aural aspects (related to listening) or kinetic (related to movement). Close, careful and critical detail is essential in order for you to develop nuanced readings and interpretations, to bring out the defining characteristics of your artefact, and to demonstrate your awareness of the forms, patterns, textures, resonances and, very importantly, ideological assumptions (race, gender, religion, age, class, sexuality, politics...). This might not be easy to do at length in a short essay as this, and you will have higher-order elements to analyse (e. g. plot, character, context) but try just once: for example: does a movie add or omit lines to a crucial dialogue? in which way does this change tone, appreciaton of characters, point of view?

2) Do not forget, if writing a paper, an introduction, a conclusion, a clear decision on voice (1st person singular or plural, 3rd person), division in subchapters (if applicable) and articulation of your own ideas / opinions. Use sentence connectors.

Bibliografia anotada / annotated bibliography

What does an annotated bibliography look like?
An annotated bibliography starts with the bibliographic details of a source (the citation) followed by a brief annotation.
As with a normal reference list or bibliography, an annotated bibliography is usually arranged alphabetically according to the author’s last name. An annotated bibliography summary for each entry should not be more than 80 words. Summary should inlude an evaluation (why the work is useful) and/or an explanation of value (relevance of the citation for the research paper)  

Purpose of an annotated bibliography
Depending on your specific assignment, an annotated bibliography might:
review the literature of a particular subject;
demonstrate the quality and depth of reading that you are processing;
exemplify the scope of sources available—such as journals, books, web sites and magazine articles;
highlight sources that may be of interest to other readers and researchers;
explore and organise sources for further research.

Questions to Consider 
What topic/ problem am I investigating?
What question(s) am I exploring? Identify the aim of your literature research.
What kind of material am I looking at and why? Am I looking for journal articles, reports, policies or primary historical data?
Am I being judicious in my selection of texts? Does each text relate to my research topic and assignment requirements?
What are the essential or key texts on my topic? Am I finding them? Are the sources valuable or often referred to in other texts?

Sample entries for annotated bibliography

Zinman, Toby Silverman. “‘In the presence of mine enemies’: Adrienne Kennedy’s An Evening with Dead Essex.’’ Studies in American Drama, 1945-Present 6 (1991): 3-13.
Zinman analyzes the play in terms of “presence” and absence” of the characters, but as he says, not in as complex a manner as they are used to in the theories of Lacan, Saussure, and Derrida. He contends that the real subject of the play is absent (Essex) and that Kennedy has not found “a satisfying way to present absence on stage” in this play (12).  The article was interesting, but I’m still not sure what a satisfactory absence would be.

Mitchell, Jason. “PMLA Letter.” 1991. 23 May 1996.
<http:10/28/2008/sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu/-jmitchel/plma.htm>
Mitchell protests the “pretentious gibberish” of modern literary critics in his letter to PMLA. He argues that “Eurojive” is often produced by English professors to show that their status is equal to that of math and science faculty. His sense of humor makes this letter a great read.

Were the first comic book heroes more empwering than later on?

Comment on:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/saladinahmed/how-the-comics-code-killed-the-golden-age-of-comics

Superman, 1939

Captain America, 1941

Wonder Woman, 1940

TPC - 25 de Março - Se eu fosse um Super-Herói

Pensem no vosso super-herói preferido ou naquele que queriam ser. Porque os escolheram?
Como é que essas razões podem - ou não - ser conflituantes com uma análise das inculcações ideológicas associadas à figura e despertas pela leitura das pp. 168-183 da antologia?

Walt Disney - controvérsia

- Ariel Dorfman recorda os tempos em que, no Chile, publicou o livro, posteriormente censurado, Para Ler o Pato Donald (1972)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/05/ariel-dorfman-how-we-roasted-donald-duck-disney-agent-of-imperialism-chile-coup

e veja-se ainda o trailer sobre o império cultural de Walt Disney (Mickey Mouse Monopoly, 2001):

Cartoons and Comics

Shared Characteristics:

Caricature: art that exaggerates physical experience (the animus - one reason for anthropomorfization)

Speech (ballloons or bubbles appear more often in comics)

Written commentary or caption

Comics are “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” (Scott McCoud, Understanding Comics, 1994)

Images - Visual Conventions - Narrative - Popular Appeal

The Yellow Kid, 1895, by Richard F. Outcault.

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel): 1904-1991

Walt (Walter Elias) Disney: 1901-1966

American Popular Culture 1900s-1950s - the Macro System and the Media Systems

MACRO

1914-1918 - 1st World War
1917 - US involvement in the War

1920-1933 - Prohibition
1929 - Wall Street Crash
1933-1937 - New Deal (Frank D. Roosevelt)
1939-1945 - 2nd World War
1941 - US enters 2nd World War (Pearl Harbor)
1942 - beginning of Manhattan Project
1945, August - atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1950-1956 - McCarthyism (Eisenhower) and "Cold War"
1955-1968 - Civil Rights Movement
1961-1963 - JFK
+/- 1960-1973 - Vietnam War

Mass Media

turn of the century: Sunday funnies develop, bringing on Sunday comic supplements (Yellow Kid by Richard Outcault in 1895; Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay in 1905)
1920s to 1950s - pulp fiction: e. g. Black Mask magazine (1920-1951) and Astounding Stories (sci-fi; 1930s and still running)

1926 - National Broadcasting System begins regular radio broadcasting
1931-1968 - Hays Code
1938: creation of Superman and beginning of the Golden Age of Comic Books
1939 - Radio Corporation of America demonstrates television at New York World's Fair
1941-5 - Television technology diverted to radar
1940s-1950s - Classic period of American film noir
mid 1950s - television sets enter family homes (movie attendance dropped, radio changed its focus to recorded music, the print press had to specialize)
1954-2000s - Comics Code Authority

TPC 18-23 de Março

Ler os excertos de How to Read Donald Duck (142-159), escolher uma figura de Walt Disney que tenha sido da vossa preferência e procurar re-avaliá-la, usando (ou contestando) os pontos de crítica e desconstrução de Ariel Dorfman e Armand Mattelart.

Trabalho para aula 11 de Março

Nos comentários a este post, podem

1) indicar um excerto de meia página à vossa escolha e proceder à sua análise.

e/ou

2) comparar o excerto desde o final da p. 173 "a forked vein began to swell in Spade's forehead" até p. 175 "the son a bitch" com o que se passa neste excerto do filme The Maltese Falcon, realizado por John Huston, entre os 50 segundos e o minuto 2: