Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” From Braudy, Leo, and Marshall Cohen. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 727-741.
Originally Published in 1991
Argument
Williams examines the excess qualities in pornography, slasher horror films, and melodramatic weepies, placing them together as "body genres."
Features of body genres include:
1. spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion
2. focus on what could probably be best called a form of ecstasy: pleasure, fear, or sadness.
3. The bodies of women function as the primary embodiments of pleasure, fear, and pain
Williams turns to psychoanalysis to further explain these body genres. Feminists have described pornography as fundamentally sadistic, weepies as masochistic, and horror films as oscillating between masochistic and sadist poles. Williams offers a more complicated structure of Film Bodies:
Pornography
Bodily excess - sex
Ecstasy - orgasm
Presumed audience - men
Perversion - sadism
Originary fantasy - seduction
Temporality of fantasy - "on time!" - subject and object meet each other at perfect time
Horror
Bodily excess - violence
Ecstasy - shudder
Presumed audience - adolescent boys
Perversion - sadomasichism
Originary fantasy - castration
Temporality of fantasy - "too early!" - female victim expects lover but is caught by slayer
Melodrama
Bodily excess - emotio
Ecstasy - tears
Presumed audiene - girls, women
Perversion - masochism
Originary fantasy - origin
Temporality of fantasy - "too late!" - quest to return to origin of self, desire to possess ideal connection is tinged with melancholy of loss
Connections
Monday, May 9, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
Ewen - Captains of Consciousness
Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
Argument
Ewen moves from an analysis of capitalist control of production to the spread through advertising of the dominant hegemonic ideology of mass consumption as beneficial to all.
Their success was somewhat limited in the 20s, but following World War II a consumer culture developed full bloom.
Connections
Early, Ewen draws on Thompson's essay on time to show how capitalists attempted to control industrial culture and discipline. Gradually, they looked for broader means of social control, finding it in advertising.
Ewen is on the Adorno/Mancuse - Culture Industries side of cultural studies (Stuart Hall would have just been starting to emerge). He focuses on how the advertising industry produces a consumer culture without allowing for much agency on the part of the consumers themselves. It's a good prequel, historiographically speaking, to Franks' Conquest of Cool. Actually, Franks is two steps ahead since he complicates both Ewen's position and that of the British Cultural studies experts, such as John Fiske.
There is a relationship to Marchand, too. Marchand explains how advertisers attempted to promote modernity and civilization, believing the goods (here he is like Franks) they were hawking to offer a genuine benefit to consumers. Ewen, more cynically, sees the civilization ideal as something of a ruse that suggests consumption is the key to social improvement. This has echoes, too, of Lizabeth Cohen, and the idea that purchaser consumers would lead America to prosperity.
Essentially, Ewen is making an Althusser-ian argument that advertising serves as an ideological state apparatus. He might dispute Althusser's assertion that education is the strongest ISA.
Argument
Ewen moves from an analysis of capitalist control of production to the spread through advertising of the dominant hegemonic ideology of mass consumption as beneficial to all.
Their success was somewhat limited in the 20s, but following World War II a consumer culture developed full bloom.
Connections
Early, Ewen draws on Thompson's essay on time to show how capitalists attempted to control industrial culture and discipline. Gradually, they looked for broader means of social control, finding it in advertising.
Ewen is on the Adorno/Mancuse - Culture Industries side of cultural studies (Stuart Hall would have just been starting to emerge). He focuses on how the advertising industry produces a consumer culture without allowing for much agency on the part of the consumers themselves. It's a good prequel, historiographically speaking, to Franks' Conquest of Cool. Actually, Franks is two steps ahead since he complicates both Ewen's position and that of the British Cultural studies experts, such as John Fiske.
There is a relationship to Marchand, too. Marchand explains how advertisers attempted to promote modernity and civilization, believing the goods (here he is like Franks) they were hawking to offer a genuine benefit to consumers. Ewen, more cynically, sees the civilization ideal as something of a ruse that suggests consumption is the key to social improvement. This has echoes, too, of Lizabeth Cohen, and the idea that purchaser consumers would lead America to prosperity.
Essentially, Ewen is making an Althusser-ian argument that advertising serves as an ideological state apparatus. He might dispute Althusser's assertion that education is the strongest ISA.
Frank - The Conquest of Cool
Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Argument
Addressing the typical historiography of 60s advertising and fashion which posits that industries co-opted countercultural youth values merely to sell products, Frank argues that advertisers and fashion designers were not cynical co-opters but, more complexly, believed and enthusiastically embraced countercultural ideals: namely, non-conformity.
On another level, Frank explicitly takes Cultural Studies and John Fiske to task, arguing that the trend toward focusing merely on reception and consumption ignores a more complex story on the production side.
Specifics
Led by the agency DDB (Doyle Dane Bernbach, particularly Bill Bernbach) and its groundbreaking Volkswagon ads, advertisers adopted frankness, self-deprecation, and anti-conformist tactics. They did so, Frank demonstrates through advertising archives, because they were anti-conformists themselves. The advertising agency was exactly the kind of stifiling bureaucratic office that was under attack in anti-conformist business literature, most notably Whyte's The Organization Man. Advertisers yearned for greater creative leeway, and saw the countercultural movement and critique as an argument for greater freedom at work.
Examples of Ads
Alka-Seltzer: "That's a spicy meatball!" self-consciousness about the fact that ads are artificial as a way to sell Alka-Seltzer.
Cola Wars: "The Pepsi Generation" v. old school Coke
Anti-obsolescence: ad for VW model for years 51-61. Same car. Ironically, obsolescence was key to men's non-conformist fashion boom of 60s, and continues to drive the essence of the fashion industry.
Conclusion
"The sixties are more than merely the homeland of hip, they are a commercial template for our times, a historical prototype for the construction of cultural machines that transform alienation and despair into consent. Co-optation is something much more complex that the struggle back and forth between capital and youth revolution; it's also something larger than a mere question of demographics and exploitation.Every few years, it seems, the cycles of the sixties repeat themselves on a smaller scale, with new rebel youth cultures bubbling their way to a happy replenishing of the various culture industries' depleted arsenal of cool. New generations obsolete the old, new celebrities render old ones ridiculous, and on and on in an ever ascending spiral of hip upon hip. As adman Merle Steir wrote back in 1967, "Youth has won. Youth must always win. The new naturally replaces the old."" (235)
Argument
Addressing the typical historiography of 60s advertising and fashion which posits that industries co-opted countercultural youth values merely to sell products, Frank argues that advertisers and fashion designers were not cynical co-opters but, more complexly, believed and enthusiastically embraced countercultural ideals: namely, non-conformity.
On another level, Frank explicitly takes Cultural Studies and John Fiske to task, arguing that the trend toward focusing merely on reception and consumption ignores a more complex story on the production side.
Specifics
Led by the agency DDB (Doyle Dane Bernbach, particularly Bill Bernbach) and its groundbreaking Volkswagon ads, advertisers adopted frankness, self-deprecation, and anti-conformist tactics. They did so, Frank demonstrates through advertising archives, because they were anti-conformists themselves. The advertising agency was exactly the kind of stifiling bureaucratic office that was under attack in anti-conformist business literature, most notably Whyte's The Organization Man. Advertisers yearned for greater creative leeway, and saw the countercultural movement and critique as an argument for greater freedom at work.
Examples of Ads
Alka-Seltzer: "That's a spicy meatball!" self-consciousness about the fact that ads are artificial as a way to sell Alka-Seltzer.
Cola Wars: "The Pepsi Generation" v. old school Coke
Anti-obsolescence: ad for VW model for years 51-61. Same car. Ironically, obsolescence was key to men's non-conformist fashion boom of 60s, and continues to drive the essence of the fashion industry.
Conclusion
"The sixties are more than merely the homeland of hip, they are a commercial template for our times, a historical prototype for the construction of cultural machines that transform alienation and despair into consent. Co-optation is something much more complex that the struggle back and forth between capital and youth revolution; it's also something larger than a mere question of demographics and exploitation.Every few years, it seems, the cycles of the sixties repeat themselves on a smaller scale, with new rebel youth cultures bubbling their way to a happy replenishing of the various culture industries' depleted arsenal of cool. New generations obsolete the old, new celebrities render old ones ridiculous, and on and on in an ever ascending spiral of hip upon hip. As adman Merle Steir wrote back in 1967, "Youth has won. Youth must always win. The new naturally replaces the old."" (235)
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Althusser - Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” 1969
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm
Argument
Here goes...
While the state repressive apparatus operates through force or the threat of force to enforce the ideology, there are several ideological state apparatuses that operate to reproduce the means of production by ensuring the state subjects are instructed and reinforced in the ideology. The ISAs are church, education, family, legal, political, labor-union, communications, and cultural. They operate first by interpellating citizens, hailing them and thus establishing them as subjects, subjects who answer to the calls and demands of the ideology. Education has replaced religion as, coupled with the family, the dominant ISA in modern societies.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm
Argument
Here goes...
While the state repressive apparatus operates through force or the threat of force to enforce the ideology, there are several ideological state apparatuses that operate to reproduce the means of production by ensuring the state subjects are instructed and reinforced in the ideology. The ISAs are church, education, family, legal, political, labor-union, communications, and cultural. They operate first by interpellating citizens, hailing them and thus establishing them as subjects, subjects who answer to the calls and demands of the ideology. Education has replaced religion as, coupled with the family, the dominant ISA in modern societies.
Jenkins - Convergence Culture
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
Argument
convergence - "...the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want." (2)
It should NOT be understood as merely a technological process, but rather as a cultural shift of consumers being encouraged to seek out new info and connect dispersed media. It occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their interactions with others.
The book explores how collective meaning-making in popular culture is being used for more than just fun: it is effecting the operations of religion, education, law, politics, advertising, and the military.
The black box fallacy - the belief that eventually all media will flow through one black box (or handheld device).
Argument
convergence - "...the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want." (2)
It should NOT be understood as merely a technological process, but rather as a cultural shift of consumers being encouraged to seek out new info and connect dispersed media. It occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their interactions with others.
The book explores how collective meaning-making in popular culture is being used for more than just fun: it is effecting the operations of religion, education, law, politics, advertising, and the military.
The black box fallacy - the belief that eventually all media will flow through one black box (or handheld device).
Terkel - Hard Times
Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.[Originally published 1970]
Argument
Terkel offers an ordered collage of oral history to give a sense of various perspectives of the Great Depression. He moves from farmer to laborer to executive to criminal to transient worker to small business owner to politician to Brains Trust to historian (Christopher Lasch) to Radical movementist (Gerald LK Smith, member of Share Our Wealth, associate of Huey Long, anti-semite, racist, and future founder of the America First Party) and so on. We meet personalities from all parts of the political spectrum, with various thoughts on Roosevelt, the New Deal, and the resonance of the Depression. Some offer the expected memories of a dismal age of poverty, while others reminder the decade more fondly.
Early in the book, Terkel includes accounts from the offspring of Depression Era children, who not that their parents speak of the Depression as something they could never understand, and thus their inability to understand makes them inherently naive. Terkel also highlights a quote by a movie executive, who recalls the 1929 stock market crash as "Like a thunderclap." But even this memory is later undermined by a poor migrant farmer who has no memory of the crash at all.
Hard Times is inherently about memory. The introduction accepts that the accounts may not necessarily be true, but it is WHO the memory belongs to that is so interesting and significant. It is also being remembered FROM the 1960s, THROUGH the 50s and World War II.
I was also struck by Terkel's updated 1986 prologue, which compared the Depression to the moment in America: though the stock market and business seemed to be booming, farms were failing and unemployment was rampant in the cities.
Argument
Terkel offers an ordered collage of oral history to give a sense of various perspectives of the Great Depression. He moves from farmer to laborer to executive to criminal to transient worker to small business owner to politician to Brains Trust to historian (Christopher Lasch) to Radical movementist (Gerald LK Smith, member of Share Our Wealth, associate of Huey Long, anti-semite, racist, and future founder of the America First Party) and so on. We meet personalities from all parts of the political spectrum, with various thoughts on Roosevelt, the New Deal, and the resonance of the Depression. Some offer the expected memories of a dismal age of poverty, while others reminder the decade more fondly.
Early in the book, Terkel includes accounts from the offspring of Depression Era children, who not that their parents speak of the Depression as something they could never understand, and thus their inability to understand makes them inherently naive. Terkel also highlights a quote by a movie executive, who recalls the 1929 stock market crash as "Like a thunderclap." But even this memory is later undermined by a poor migrant farmer who has no memory of the crash at all.
Hard Times is inherently about memory. The introduction accepts that the accounts may not necessarily be true, but it is WHO the memory belongs to that is so interesting and significant. It is also being remembered FROM the 1960s, THROUGH the 50s and World War II.
I was also struck by Terkel's updated 1986 prologue, which compared the Depression to the moment in America: though the stock market and business seemed to be booming, farms were failing and unemployment was rampant in the cities.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Thompson - "The Concept of Cinematic Excess"
Thompson, Kristin. “The Concept of Cinematic Excess.” From Braudy, Leo, and Marshall Cohen. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 513-524
Argument
Films consist of various types of structures (based in the various cinematic elements) that combine to create a narrative. "Outside any such structures lie those aspects of the work which are not contained by its unifying forces - the 'excess.'" (513) A film can never make every physical element fit perfectly into its desired portrayal, and it is one of the jobs of the critic to deal with the tension between the coherent elements and the excess.
Russian Formalism is important because of the way they approached the realization that excess could intentional roughen form. But excess is difficult to talk about because viewers are naturally intent to find some connection or function for any singled out element.
Excess is counternarrative. It is also counterunity. Excess implies a gap or lag in motivation. Observing excess depends on skill and training in viewing film.
But rather than focus on the tension between excess and unity, Thompson suggests excess may be used to understand the structures of narrative itself. Excess shows that all narrative is arbitrary, NOT logical. Thus the entire narrative can come under question, in terms of its structures.
Four Ways the Material of the Film Exceeds Motivation
1. While narrative may justify the presence of a device, it doesn't specify a particular form an element can have.
2. There is no specific length of time a device needs to be on the screen. (Cinema devices exist through time.)
3. Some devices may become redundant if they function for virtually the same connotation repeatedly.
4. A motivation may justify a device which is then repeated, thus making it outweigh its original motivation.
Types of Excess (From Ivan the Terrible)
-composition of visual elements within the frame
-Repetitive shots
-Costume texture, color, and shape
-The way things happen
-Style
-Problematic or unclear elements
-Props
-Sound
Argument
Films consist of various types of structures (based in the various cinematic elements) that combine to create a narrative. "Outside any such structures lie those aspects of the work which are not contained by its unifying forces - the 'excess.'" (513) A film can never make every physical element fit perfectly into its desired portrayal, and it is one of the jobs of the critic to deal with the tension between the coherent elements and the excess.
Russian Formalism is important because of the way they approached the realization that excess could intentional roughen form. But excess is difficult to talk about because viewers are naturally intent to find some connection or function for any singled out element.
Excess is counternarrative. It is also counterunity. Excess implies a gap or lag in motivation. Observing excess depends on skill and training in viewing film.
But rather than focus on the tension between excess and unity, Thompson suggests excess may be used to understand the structures of narrative itself. Excess shows that all narrative is arbitrary, NOT logical. Thus the entire narrative can come under question, in terms of its structures.
Four Ways the Material of the Film Exceeds Motivation
1. While narrative may justify the presence of a device, it doesn't specify a particular form an element can have.
2. There is no specific length of time a device needs to be on the screen. (Cinema devices exist through time.)
3. Some devices may become redundant if they function for virtually the same connotation repeatedly.
4. A motivation may justify a device which is then repeated, thus making it outweigh its original motivation.
Types of Excess (From Ivan the Terrible)
-composition of visual elements within the frame
-Repetitive shots
-Costume texture, color, and shape
-The way things happen
-Style
-Problematic or unclear elements
-Props
-Sound
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