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Exporting content

Since I need to reuse some of the same assignment posts, I will be archiving your content here over the summer break. If you would like access to all the fabulous content you’ve created this semester, then please export your Pop Academy blog content to your own blog site by July. I recommend a free site like WordPress.com or Blogger. When logged in, please scroll to Tools in your Dashboard and select Export. Click Download Export File. You will then be able to save the XML file that downloads and then import it based on the guidelines of your own blog site. WordPress.com is of course the easiest since it’s basically the same format as what you’ve been using here.

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Study Guide for Final Exam

The final exam will not function like the mid-term, in that there will be no multiple choice questions, only essay questions. You will be allowed to use your notes but NOT the readings. Questions will interrogate your understanding and application of the following theories:

Post-structuralism

Feminism

Critical race

Postmodernism

You should be familiar with how the authors applied, built and questioned critical theory in their particular pop culture texts:

The Real World

Talks shows

Jennifer Lopez

Run’s House

Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood

Science Fiction

The Daily Show

The Colbert Report

Paris Hilton

Tattoo culture

Revisit each assigned article to identify the key critical theoretical arguments and how the authors further our understanding of popular culture texts today. Define key terms and think of applications in other contexts (for example, comparing Paris Hilton to Snooki or Run’s House to The Game). You should be able to make connections across readings.

Review your notes on class examples, such as raunch culture, Jersey Shore, Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, Chappelle’s Show and Community.

Skim back through classmates’ blogs for fresh ideas and jot down your own reflections/comments in your notebook.

You will be allowed ONLY your notes, an essay blue book and a pen/cil. Bring all three items on exam day, please, as I will not have extras.

The 4 p.m. section exam is scheduled for Tuesday of exam week at 2 p.m.

The 5:30 p.m. section exam is scheduled for that Thursday at 5 p.m.

Each section will have two and a half hours to complete exams.

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Blog Assignment 10: Postmodernism Redux

For your final blog post please examine the postmodern approach of Jeffrey Sconce (2007) in his analysis of Paris Hilton and  Sonja Modesti’s (2008) look at tattoo parlors as postmodern spaces. While you should look closely at the practice of postmodern theory, other theories and concepts we’ve discussed on the blog are surely at play, so feel free to include those in your posts. Due by 11:59 p.m., Monday, April 11, with comments due by class time April 14.

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Blog Assignment 9: Postmodernism

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Blog Assignment 8: Critical Race Theory

Please excuse the sound of my puppy chewing on his bone in the background of this audio clip of critical race theory relevant to next week’s readings. (In the clip I refer to readings you don’t have but the ideas might be helpful as you craft your post.) Ah, the joys of working from home. The essay by Adilifu Nama (2009) does a fantastic job summarizing Black representation in the science fiction film genre. The essay by Debra Smith (2008) makes black fatherhood in reality TV the focus of critical analysis. Be sure to reflect on both in your blog post, due by 11:59 p.m., Monday night, March 28, with comments due by class time Thursday, March 31.

Gray, H. (2000). The politics of representation in network television. In H. Newcomb (Ed.), Television: The critical view (6th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

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Shaking up race discourse via parody and satire

Saturday Night Live  (Season 1!!!): Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase, Word Association

Saturday Night Live, White Like Me

Chapelle’s Show, The Racial Draft

The Daily Show, Black is In

Saturday Night Live, The Blackness Scale

The Daily Show, Race Card is Maxed Out

The Daily Show, Mark Twain Controversy

The Daily Show, Deadliest Snatch

Chris Brown on Good Morning America via The View

CNN coverage of Chris Brown on GMA

Actual GMA interview with Chris Brown

Please be prepared to take notes and/or tweet (whichever you prefer) during these in-class viewings. For example, you’ll want to take note of how the clips work for and/or against the idea of the discourse of a post-racial society from today’s readings and essentializing race and the other concepts from next week’s readings. We may not get to view all the clips listed here, but feel free to view on your own.

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Blog Assignment 7: Hybridity in Feminism and Ethnicity Studies

Both articles for Tuesday, March 22, discuss the idea of hybridity. While one essay examines talk shows and the other Jennifer Lopez, try to work in references to both readings in your post (due at 11:59 p.m., Monday, March 21 with comments due by class time Thursday, March 24). You might discuss pop culture genres similar to the talk shows in Cragin’s article. For those of you who watch American Idol, how has Jennifer Lopez’s hybrid star image changed, if any, since Shugart’s essay was published in 2007? Happy blogging.

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Blog Assignment 6: Post-Structuralism

Althusser identifies the difference between Repressive State Apparatuses that rule by force (fascist governments or police states for example) and those Ideological State Apparatuses (religion, education, media, etc.) that interpellate us into cultural discourse who identify with the narrative at hand. Ideology, according to Althusser, can only function because we allow it to. We often don’t question the policies and people in positions of power in these social institutions. As such, we’re always already limited by the ideologies fostered by the courts, schools, newspapers and so on. How then, if Althusser is explaining ideological structures, can he be positioned as a post-structuralist? In short, because he encourages us to question the liminal space of these shifting structures, and moreover, our own role in accepting the identities formed by these structures, he’s considered part of the post-structuralist movement with folks like Derrida and Foucault.

Foucault, above all, is concerned with power, but not in the way that we’ve typically discussed it. He doesn’t see power as negative force that represses us like in the RSAs and ISAs. He sees the potential of the productive in power structures in that we can resist. Power is inherent from all angles, above, below, sideways. It can be explained as a web or a panopticon, among other metaphors, that de-centers and destabilizes relations of hierarchy and control. Foucault uses discourse to explain the multi-vocal nature of power that encourage some thought and limit others. Discourse, whether textual, imagistic, or rhetorical, produces power. We, then, produce power, as well as receive it. How do these power relationships take place in our daily lives? How are we both limited by yet resist ideological representational structures of popular culture? Let’s use sports as our example this time. Think of images of the body and athleticism in a sport of your choice–or you could pick a particular athlete. How do power forces mold this athletes’ body or the bodies of that sport in general. How do athletic bodies resist these pressures? What is the impact on/relationship to spectators at home or in the crowd? Use your individual blog and Twitter to respond. Original posts due by midnight before March 15′s class, with comments due by March 17′s class. *Remember that you have the Consuming the Fractured Female reading, which you can tie into your blog post since in that article women’s bodies are the point of (post-)structural analysis.

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Blog 6 Prep

Since I’ve been reading your writing all term, it’s only fair you look at a sample of my own pop culture critique. For your sixth scheduled blog post, you’ll be reading an essay on the Real World where I examine the construction and consumption of femininity on the long-running MTV reality series.  Since I use post-structuralist and feminist theories (along with other critical theories in the rhetorical and media studies literature), I hope this article provides an example of how to combine different approaches of critical theory. Please do not hold back in your analysis. I won’t take points off if you disagree with my analysis. In fact, I encourage productive dialogue on the subject. See the next post for a more specific lead-in to your assignment.

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News and Structuralism

While a a bit kitschy, this YouTube Foucault mash-up is helpful for introducing his concepts of the self, power, and surveillance society:

Given the sad events related to identity, suicide and privacy at Rutgers University last year, let’s try to learn from it and theorize from this week’s readings in ways that might improve the discourse.

Early ABC News coverage offered a basic summary of Clementi’s suicide, while a follow-up story by CBS News for their Sunday Morning brand framed his death as a mental health issue. This address from Ellen DeGeneres is another, more compassionate approach Also, LGBT activist Sherry Wolf shares suggestions for learning from Clementi’s senseless death.