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Week 11 - Druck

Besides reviewing the readings from last week about Queer(ing) Convergence Media, we were mainly assigned to watch the German version of Skam, which is called Druck. Watching Druck, I could not help comparing it with Skam. First of all, the story of Druck looks more realistic than Skam. As we discussed in class, Skam tells the story of coming of age in a Utopian society, which may be due to the socialist society of Norway. Besides, the architecture of the city in Druck makes the film bleaker. In Druck, the buildings are made of concrete, and the apartments are not as fancy as they are in Skam. I was wondering if it is related to the nationalism and depiction of a progressive society in Skam. As we discussed in class, German’s are always more cautious in the expression of nationalism because of their dark fascist history. The architecture of the school reminds me of prison (that may be due to my unfamiliarity with the school system in Europe), but the school beckons Foucaultian panopticon, particularly in the scene when the gym instructor outs David.

Technically and aesthetically, I argue that Skam was superior to Druck. In addition to the superior utilization of cinematography techniques and directing capabilities, the narrative, particularly the chain of cause and effect, was better formed in Skam in comparison to Druck. For instance, the displacement of the weed in the first episode makes more sense in Skam (hiding it in a jar at a friend’s house to come back and collect it later) in comparison to Druck (placing it in the Muslim girl’s backpack). Doing so in Skam, the narrative shapes the Muslim girl’s personality better and depicts her as a smart girl who intentionally takes the weed to initiate a helpful and supportive friend role for Isak. Although the first couple of episodes in the Druck ushers a more romantic relationship between the two leading characters in comparison to Skam (the looks, the gestures, the tone of the voice, etc.), it is unable to maintain this relation in the future episodes.

The other comparison that shows how Druck falls behind in forming a quality narrative is the “complex issue” with David and Even. No signs are provided beforehand for David’s transness, and the creator of the show plays this wild card toward the ending of the season, while the audience can pick up the bread crumbs of Evan’s bipolarism in Skam. David’s awkward behaviors throughout the season are justified by his transness toward the ending of the season, while those awkward behaviors are not proper signs for his transness (the example of him leaving Mateo’s apartment without any notice, or staying after the party and cleaning the dishes). Considering these malformed narrative moments of awkward behavior and playing the wild card of transness toward the ending of the season, one may argue that the creator of the Druck wants to show that trans folks live their lives as other people do. I argue that if that is the case, these awkward behaviors should either not be included in the show (presenting David to us as a character that has no awkward behavior as other characters don’t), or be made more specific for the problems that trans folks may experience in their real lives.

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Week 10 - Queer(ing) Convergence Media: The Case of Skam

This week’s readings focused on Skam, the Norwegian teen drama web series. The readings discuss how the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) created Skam as an attempt to win over the teen audience, particularly teen girls. They talk about Skam as an example of transmedia storytelling where it was broadcast on NRK’s website through short video clips and “came up during irregular hours that were not announced in advance.” These short clips alongside the text messages, characters’ social media posts, etc. were brought together into “complete episodes with variable length, which were published on NRK’s website.” Based on these characteristics, the authors of “Combining New and Old Viewing Practices” piece, divided their focus group interviewees into two major groups and analyzed their opinions about Skam. They argue that the real-time viewers watched the contents chronologically and often “on the go” on their “mobile phones.” They contend that the real-time viewer followed Skam because of “sense of reality” and “focus,” and discuss several reasons to elaborate on why the series fragmented distribution method helped the participants to experience a more “real” narrative. However, as we discussed in class, the authors of this article ignore the importance of the date and time stamps inscribed on the screen and their relation to the releasing time/date of fragmented clips to the creation of the sense of “reality” for the real-time viewer. This reading also studies the traditional viewers who watched the whole episode on the weekend and claims “coherence” and “anticipation” as two essential components leading to this style of watching the series. Another significant factor for traditional viewers could also be considered as the sense of community and arranging “Skam evenings.”

On the other hand, following D. W. Winnicott, the authors of “Coping with Shame in a Media-saturated Society” piece argue that Skam functions as a “transitional object” for the teen audience in the media-saturated society by providing them with a “potential space” where they can learn and cope with the challenges of such society. They claim that besides the transmedia distribution of this web series, Skam’s narrative playfully blurs the role of the audience, actor, friend, and user, rendering the boundaries between reality and fiction fluid. They see this fluidity of reality and fantasy as “benign and even productive.” In other words, they argue that “the kids will be alright if we let them.” The authors' arguments resonate well with the utopian and aspirational depiction of Norwegian society in the series as well as the absence of parents and adults in it. It seems that Skam implies Norwegian society could reach this Utopian society if we let the kids be themselves. It is evident in the racist/dysfunctional biology teacher (whose head is placed in the upper off-screen space as we have in children cartoons and animations) scenes and the dysfunctional/inefficient doctor who confusingly uses poems

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Week 9 - Race/ Masculinity/ Queerness

This week’s readings had a historical approach to the intersection of race, gender, and queerness. Richard Dryer argues how in the study of racial imagery, white people historically have been seen as “people,” while the rest have been “raced” or othered. He calls for making whiteness “strange,” for the existing approach to whiteness “secures a position of power.” Dryer’s argument reminds me of Hamid Naficy’s argument and impossible to speak without an accent. Thus, ass cinema’s could be considered as “accented cinema.” This approach challenges the old school categorization of seeing Hollywood cinema as the “norm” or as in William Brown’s terms, “capital-cinema,” while deeming the rest as “non-cinema.”

Siobhan Somerville, on the other hand, traces the interrelation of race and queer in post-Victorian America. She explains how the late nineteenth-century and the early twentieth-century discourses of race formed the foundation of a science that was used by sexologists to pathologize homosexuality in America. One of the most prominent examples of these methods, she argues, was the methodologies of comparative anatomy where the scientists repeatedly “located racial difference through the sexual characteristics of the female body” such as comparing the shape of their genitalia and being as intrusive as comparing their labia, hymen, clitoris, etc.

As we discussed throughout the semester, American dream builds upon the notions of white patriarchal heteronormativity assuming whiteness, heterosexuality, etc. as “normal.” Heteronormativity is preoccupied with happiness, and therefore, forces queerness toward the heteronormative happiness. It raises the question that what if the queerness is not about happiness, but it is about being in-betweenness instead of being happy for being either a man or a woman, being the in-betweenness, the kind of in-betweenness that we see in Striking Vipers?

An unpopular opinion: I find Striking Vipers as a racist and the homophobic film although I appreciate the depiction of queerness through VR in this episode of Black Mirror. Despite the significant representation of queer in-betweenness in this episode, the Foucaultian network of power and forces render this episode possible creates implicit hierarchies of power relations where heterosexuality is considered above the homosexuality; where the homosexual relation is only possible for the black male characters through the creation of virtual heterosexual relation; Where in Somervillian theory of recapitulation, black mature adult men are at the same stage (or even inferior to) non-white women.

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Week 7 - Queer Temporality

Scholarly works around the notions of queer temporality and queer time often question the theories of linear and progressive time and temporality. Linear temporality is ontologically shaped by heteronormativity— the linear progress of the first kiss, sexual awakening, monogamous marriage, etc. The authors of this week’s readings also remind us that all these narratives of linear temporality and progress are tied to capitalism and how queerness problematizes them. In this regard, José Esteban Muñoz builds upon Bloch’s concept of no-longer-conscious to critique the capitalist naturalizing idea of the “present” and “not-yet-here.” Moreover, Jack Halberstam argues how time is defined according to the logic of “capital accumulation.” Criticizing the drawbacks of Harvey’s theory, Halberstam argues that queer subjects in post-modernity “will and do opt to live outside of reproductive and familial time as well as on the edges of logics of labor and production.” He brings in cases such as avers, club kids, HIV-positive barebackers, rent boys, sex workers, homeless people, drug dealers, and the unemployed to exemplify people who opt out of heteronormative time/space by living outside the logic of capital accumulation.

On the other hand, Michel Foucault argues what makes homosexuality “disturbing” for the capitalist heteronormativity is the homosexual mode of living, not the sexual act of homosexuality such as sodomy, oral, or anal sex. In other words, He contends that the capitalist heteronormativity is disturbed by the coupledom and the friendship of the homosexuals— particularly men— particularly when this way of life makes the homosexuals happy and expresses lasting love and friendship. In this regard, he equates being “gay” with developing a way of life, which is opposed to the capitalist heteronormativity, and not identifying with the physical or psychological traits and characteristics related to homosexuality.

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Week 6 - Desire, Disability & Queer Bodies

Amongst this week’s readings, Nicholas Mirzoeff introduces the notion of “silent screen” in his study of the deaf in the Sixteen Century in Turkey. He argues since, as the hearing look at the deaf, the deaf look back disrupt or confirm the image produced, it “depicts neither the deaf themselves nor the view of the deaf seen by the hearing but the product of the interaction of the two looking at each other.” Thus, the existence of deafness requires at least two people; “one with hearing and one without.” Reading Mirzoeff’s argument made me question his approach to the ontology of deafness. If we accept the silent screen, doesn’t the mere definition of such phenomenon also create the seeing of hearing, particularly for the one with hearing who becomes able to distinguish their sensorial difference?

In his discussion of the AIDS and the queer politics, Douglas Crimp, warns the social and political activists regarding the social and political disavowal of AIDS for those most influenced to acknowledge the inadvertent costs of this action. He argues that “by ignoring the death drive, that is, by making all violence external, we fail to confront ourselves, to acknowledge our ambivalence, to comprehend that our misery is also self-inflicted.” The “self-inflicted misery” resonates well with the assigned film, Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo, in opposition. This film opens with a gay orgy in a club and follows the story of the two gay men, one of which probably got AIDS by having sex with the other one during the orgy. Although we see several scenes of these two men arguing with each other and worrying about the results of his HIV test, they bond and form a friendship and a coupledom. They don’t see this illness as misery but as a cause that brought them together. They have casual sex in the beginning, argue with each other, hang out, etc. even before they know each other’s names. The illness and their homosexual sexual act form a homosexual way of living through friendship, coupledom, and leading to happy bonding. This film reminded me of Foucault’s arguments about the significance of the homosexual way of living rather than the homosexual act itself.

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Week 5 - Gothic & Camp: Queer Aesthetics/Queer Media

Discussing queer gothic, George Haggerty sees the uncanny structure of the gothic as its feature that makes defining this term difficult. Excess is considered as the marker of gothic and Camp in this week’s readings. However, fantasy as a component of Camp or bad taste is only implied in some readings such as in Haggerty’s piece. Haggerty claims that “the act of incest is political because it defies the attempt of society to control desire.” I argue that “incest” could be seen as a form of fantasy—sexual fantasy in this regard—in censored and limited cinemas such as those of Iran. For example, in the commercial cinema of pre-revolutionary Iran known as Film-Farsi, the themes of fatalism and the mistaken identity open up a space for taboos and play a role to imply the incest love or erotic desire although the incest relation never happens and is always halted by making the identities known. Such themes which appear in the “bad” and “cheap” cinema of Film-Farsi could be linked to the fantasy of taboos.

Susan Sontag’s canonical article about camp was amongst this week’s readings where she recounts 58 notes for camp. Sontag sees the love of unnatural in the form of artifice and exaggeration as the essence of Camp. In relation to the queerness of the Camp, Sontag argues, “while it’s not true that Camp taste is homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap.” She sees homosexuals as the vanguard and the most articulate audience of the Camp. Despite recounting this affinity between homosexuals and Camp, she also reminds the reader that Camp taste is much more than homosexual taste. In this regard, however, Thomas Meehan asserts that although in the Dictionary of Slang and Uncommon English, Camp is defined as “pleasantly ostentatious,” this term evolved from this meaning to “homosexual” and then to the current meaning. By the same token, Fabio Cleto discusses representational excess, heterogeneity, and the gratuitousness of reference as the essence of camp’s fun and exclusiveness which “both signal and contribute to an overall resistance to definition, drawing the contours of an aesthetic of ( critical) failure.”

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Week 4 - Queer Hauntings

In addition to several readings, two classic films were assigned this week: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Robert Wise’s The Haunting. These two films both had subtle queer hunting (at least that was the case for me!). Discussing these films in class, we also talked about the ways the familiarity with the codes (particularly social and historical codes of queerness) would help the audience to notice the queer hunting even more. Watching these films, the other important issue that drew my attention was how in the American films, hunting ghosts are often women while the physical dead monsters are often men. In addition to the queer hunting, the queerness as excess also was omnipresent in these films, particularly in Rebecca. Casting handsome, masculine, and powerful Laurence Olivier as a man who was controlled by Rebecca, and as a heterosexual man who fails in marriage are some examples. Houses also play a crucial role in creating a space for queer hunting, particularly in a Rebecca where Joan Fontaine’s character does not have a name while the majestic house owns a name which is referred to over and over throughout the film.

Amongst this week’s readings, Ussher’s piece got my attention. Reading this piece, I was thinking to myself that patriarchy never ceases to amaze me. Interesting for me was how women historically are labeled as witch, hysteric, mad, and diagnosed and pathologized with borderline disorder or PMDD. Right after reading this piece, I stumble upon John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight episode on Bias in Medicine where he draws attention to: how women were educated to refer to their period as “the curse” in the 50s; how women historically were seen as hormonal man, thus male body was studied as the proxy for all bodies; and how even in 1990 (can you believe it, 1990!), the National Cancer Institute published an article on the impact of diet on estrogen metabolism and its links to the breast and uterus cancer where all of the subjects were men.

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Week 3 - Historicizing Queerness: Love Between Women

Although this week’s readings were pioneers of historicizing love between women, the generalization that they assume makes me uncomfortable. Authors study a limited “artifact” mostly as the form of letters written by women for their women lover/friends and generalize the results to all women of the time. For instance, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg studies letters of mostly white, educated, bourgeoise women of the American Victorian era and makes claims about all women of that time era. For example, she talks about the times that the homosocial society of the time made it possible for the women to move to their friends’ or families’ house for several months when their husbands went on a trip. What about the maids who did not have a wealth of indulging such situations? What about the illiterate women of the time who were not educated enough to write letters to their lover/friends? Are we going to ignore them and many other intersectional women and only focus on privileged women and generalize the results to all women of the Victorian era? These arguments also highlight the question of if the scholars can ignore their personal prejudice and the “found artifact” pitfall in their research.

The Watermelon Woman (1996) film, on the other hand, made me question the limits of cinema—as we know it— in reproducing the black aesthetics. As discussed in class, the film in some parts was not authentic enough or in other words was not “black enough.” Despite the facts that such arguments in the class were mostly based on the content of the film—and partially based on some aspects of mise-en-scene such as costume, setting, etc.— it made me think if it is possible to acquire authentic black aesthetic through historically established white cinema? For instance, considering the limitation of the film stock—which is widely known through the history of Shirley card— in the authentic representation of the darker skins, is it possible to achieve authentic black aesthetics through the cinematic medium as we know it or do, we need to make some drastic changes in it? As Audre Lorde points out “ The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.”

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Week 2 - “Doing” Queer Media

Jackie Stacy criticizes the hegemonic approach to women spectatorship, particularly toward the Hollywood cinema of the 40s and the 50s, that assumes female and women spectators as passive audiences, not active ones. In opposition to these existing approaches, she studies the letters of the women audiences of the 40s and 50s Hollywood cinema to question the hegemonic discourses around the notion of singular identification, and offers diverse identifications. In this regard, she categorizes identification into two main categories of cinematic identification fantasies and extra-cinematic identification practices. The identification fantasies are sub-categorized under: devotion and worship of the star while recognizing the unreachable difference; fantasies of traversing the difference and the desire of becoming the star; enjoying stars’ feminine power; and escaping from the real world via identification fantasies. The identification practice is sub-categorized under: pretending to be the star; focusing on the resemblances between themselves and the star; imitating stars’ gestures and behaviors; copying stars’ physical looks and appearances; and the role that capitalism and consumption play in the process of copying the appearances. Despite all the interesting points included in this piece, it reads like a text that remains in the discursive and categorization level and does not delve into the reasons behind these identifications. As discussed in class, this may be because of the pioneer status of the text.

In the Doty’s piece, what draws my attention is the rhetorical dilemma that the author discusses about the notion of queer and queerness and partially defining it as everything that is anti-, contra-, or non-straight. However, I argue that even a straight person can identify as queer. First, the question would be the notion of being straight and heteronormativity because the nuances of these tropes highly depend on culture. For example, if we move beyond the Eurocentric view, the act of two men holding hands may not be considered as queer as it is perceived under the Eurocentric view. In addition, if in a culture, heteronormativity and straightness are highly interwoven with patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny, then even the pleasure that a liberal man from that society may feel while facing a powerful woman (physically or otherwise), could be seen as apposing to this specific culture’s hegemonic heterosexuality, therefore could be categorized as queer. This example, to some extent, resonates with what the author points out as “heterosexual, straight-identifying people can experience queer moments.”

As a comment on a conference at NYU, Audre Lorde criticizes the ignorance toward the intersectional nature of feminism. Seeing the differences between women (race, sexual orientation, wealth, etc.) not as a drawback but as a potential force to oppose the patriarchal divide and conquer strategy, Lorde reminds the reader to appreciate these differences and the consequence solidarity as a force of change because “the master’s tool (in this case the patriarchy and heteronormativity) will never dismantle the master’s house.”

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Week 1 - Historicizing Queerness

In his seminal book on sexuality, Michel Foucault traces the rise of repression of the sex to the Seventeenth century and sees this bourgeois order as an integral part of capitalism. He argues that “[i]f sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression.” In this regard, Foucault sees our eagerness of speaking of sex as an opportunity to speak out against the repressive bourgeois and capitalist power. In the discussions regarding the policing of sex, Foucault draws attention to the significance of discourse of “population” as an economic and political issue. He argues that the importance of population for the politician as manpower, wealth, labor capacity, etc. prompts the politicians to regulate the birth rate, thus regulating sexuality and sex only in the context of heteronormativity.

On the other hand, Ronald R. Butters reviews the early example of the usage of the word “gay” in 20th century America. He mainly argues against the hegemonic assumption that sees Cary Grant’s ad-lib in Bringing Up the Baby— where he says “I just went gay”— as the cornerstone in popularizing the term gay as homosexual. The author disagrees with this existing argument and accuses the scholars who believe in such narrative, of projecting their own 80s socio-cultural situations to the subject of study while ignoring the sociocultural background and situation of the time. Butters suggests that instead, Grant’s ad-lib conveys the now-obsolete meaning of going wacky or crazy. Reading this piece made me wonder, even if that is the case, why being wacky and crazy via wearing women’s closing is equating with being gay? Why Grant jumps up and suddenly is energized— or as one would say acts crazily happy and carefree in for a short moment which is stereotypical of homosexual male— when he utters that he has gone gay?

The week’s assigned screening, Different from Others, is an appropriate historical example of Prussian paragraph 175 in the context of forcing queer people to the edge of suicide in the Foucaultian term to control of the birth rate and regulating sexuality for the purpose of heteronormativity. In this film, the filmmaker astutely and implicitly connects the protagonist’s queer behaviors to those of the age of ancient Classicism by making use of the Greek and Roman art in the background, via costume, and mise-en-scene in the big picture.

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Week 14 - Multiple Disciplinary Approaches to One Media Topic

This week’s readings revolve around privacy and technology.

Burman

In her article, Pocketing the Difference: Gender and Pockets in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Barbara Burman explores how the pocket can be situated as a significant gendered object in nineteenth-century Britain. Describing the history of pockets, she discusses “tie pockets” as forms of pockets established in the eighteenth century in various forms for women of all classes.” She points out how the pocket is a sign of the gender-based expectations and social and economic roles that “if the household was at the heart of the woman’s tie pocket, a man’s set of integral pockets carried the prerequisites for a day spent in the public world of work.” Citing Kowaleski-Wallace, she reminds the reader that for women, “to be pocketed” would “negate the charm of the female hand” on display and disrupt its potential for certain sorts of “cultural participation.” Burman points out that the pocket offered a woman a private space where she could “conceal or treasure communication of a personal nature.” She argues how the visibility of the pockets “transgresses or breaches the boundary between the body and the social world.”

Gregg

In her chapter in Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online, Melissa Gregg explores the ways technology, particularly the internet, has altered the notion of intimacy for couples. She brings coins the notion of “presence bleed” and defines it as “where the expectation of professional availability presents new dilemmas about the appropriate spaces and drivers for intimacy.” To elaborate on this notion, she brings in the example of someone who is “catching up on e-mail and other administrative labor at times when her partner’s preferences took precedence.” Arguing that the professional women may “feel valued pursuing job-related tasks beyond necessary requirements when their options for fulfillment are limited in the home,” she compares this “guilty pleasure” with that of the adultery. Points out that “the mundane pedagogy of intimate surveillance reveals less about our capacity to be desirable and more about the changing nature of social belonging.” Gregg links the anxieties about adultery to the anxieties about security and argues that it is about “understanding who can be counted upon to deliver something that may never remain the same but is expected to be in the absence of more sustaining relationships.” She also contends that virtual friends assist and alleviate “the pressure on partners when work and other commitments prevent them from acting as the sole source of intimacy.”

Gershon

In her article, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Media Switching and Media Ideologies, Ilana Gershon explores media switching as a part of technology in breakups. Interviewing mostly college students about their breakups, particularly the way they used new media to end romantic relationships and friendships, she argues that people are reflecting upon “emerging and multiple moral imaginations about what constitutes proper and improper use of new technologies.” She discusses two salient features of American break up narratives: the break up narrative that “belong to a genre that labels as disconnection a series of ambiguous conversational exchanges in which participants are often uncertain about the end result” and the break up narrative which “engages with the ambiguity at center of these entextualized conversations by venturing their own analysis of other people’s intentions.” Gershon argues that “different social groups can have overlapping but not identical media ideologies.” She concludes her argument pointing out that particular media are used in the narrative of break up by American “for the utterances they repeat, in part because the actual utterances have a particular ambiguity at their core.”

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Week 12 - Audience Reception

This week’s readings revolve around audience reception.

Doty

In the first and second chapter of his book, Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture, Alexander Doty asserts that queer readings are not alternative readings and explores the “potential for combining queer cultural history and cultural practices with established critical and theoretical models.” Considering queer readings as not “wishful or willful misreadings,” he argues that this kind of readings results from the “recognition and articulation of the complex range of queerness that has been in popular culture texts and their audiences all along.” He brings in critical and theoretical frameworks such as auteurism and authorship, in order to “develop a variety of distinctively queer-inflected approaches to discussing mass culture.” Pointing out that queer readings often stand outside the relatively “clear-cut and essentializing categories of sexual identity,” Doty argues that one might identify themselves as a lesbian or a straight woman yet “queerly experience the gay erotics of male buddy films” such as Red River and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Considering the fact that both Arzner and Cukor were homosexual, he argues that the claims of old fashion authorship would be both simplified and complicated when it comes to these two directors.

White

In the third chapter of her book, Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability, Patricia White explores horror genre and ghost film and how these films particularly haunting films are passim with “eerie lesbian overtones.” She argues how these films were unleashing “an excess of female sexuality” under the masquerade of “family romance.” She asserts that these excesses of female sexuality “cannot be contained without recourse to the supernatural, or indeed the unnatural.” Considering the ghost or more abstractly, “the haunting,” as an appropriate medium to exploit questions of visibility, she argues the association of the disembodiment of horror with femininity and particularly with lesbianism. To support her argument, White bring the example of Rebecca, where she points out that Rebecca stands for “more than self-image and rival or maternal object for the heroine.” as well as being the “object of the heroine's desire as well as that of Mrs. Danvers's-and indeed this triangulation is a condition of representability.” Comparing the heroine of The Uninvited with Rebecca to elaborate on the notion of “the canny lesbian,” she argues that these to heroines “oscillate between the two poles of female oedipal desire-desire for the mother and desire for the father.” She concludes her argument pointing out that “telepathy, to lesbians and gay men as actual readers and viewers, has always been an alternative to our own mode of paranoiac spectatorship.”

Anderson

In the second chapter of his book, Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920s America, Mark Lynn Anderson explores psychoanalysis and fandom in the Leopold and Loeb Trial and its impact on the cinema of North America. Bringing the examples of Rope, Compulsion, and Swoon to support his argument he contends that “the filmic reappearance of this story is not a simple repetition, but one that serves different purposes at different historical junctures.” He emphasizes the significance of the “repeated cinematic recalling” of this story pointing out that it influenced the reinvention of a “decisive development in modern criminal law” and recreation of a “popular memory that can articulate and contain present anxieties about human sexuality.” Refuting the argument that “homosexual stands behind the criminal,” Anderson argues that these stories point to a “mythic operation that both constructs a specific homosexual subject who supports the criminal through his desire for him, and connects the film to other epistemologies and discourses about celebrity identity and mass audiences.” Discussing the ongoing alterations in the “popular understanding of male homosexuality” in the 1920s, he points out how homosexuality was linked with criminal behaviors. He criticizes Freud for connecting the object choice of female homosexuality to “a masculine need to search for mother.” Anderson argues that the “compulsive nature of star worship” was more suited to “women and children” whose affections were seen as “less sexual and therefore more innocent than the desires of adult males.”

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Week 10 - Industry/Fans in the Digital Age

This week’s readings revolve around the notions of industry/fans in the digital age.

Andrejevic

In his article, Watching Television Without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans, Mark Andrejevic explores how online viewer activity doubles as a form of value-enhancing labor for television producers. He argues it happens in two major ways by “allowing fans to take on part of the work of making a show interesting for themselves and by providing instant (if not necessarily statistically representative) feedback to producers.” He points out how the new media altered the passive forms of media consumption, and producers embraced this new active fan culture. Dismissing Jenkin’s utopian online fandom, he argues how “creative activity and exploitation coexist and interpenetrate one another within the context of the emerging online economy.” He supports his argument mentioning how “the promise of interactivity as an incitation to participate in the work of being watched” is exploited by producers to result in a free labor. He elaborates on the nature of gendered “free labor” with different example such as mentioning that almost 87 percent of the responses to his first survey were from “women.” Andrejevic also points out how producers exploit board and devise marketing strategy for TV shows to takes advantage of interactivity to create fan communities and build viewer loyalty. As a result of these strategies, he argues “the show is no longer the final product but rather the raw material to which value is added by the labor—some paid, some free—of recappers and forum contributors.”

Busse

In her chapter in The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, Kristina Busse explores the ethics of studying online fandom. In the introduction section placed prior to Kristina Busse’s chapter— the introduction was not assigned as reading this week— the author states that “there is no true method or one clear ethical stance one should adopt when studying fan cultures.” This statement is the digest of Busse’s chapter where she discusses the difficulties of creating a universal list for ethics of studying online fandom. She begins her argument with a brief explanation of how a utilitarian approach to online fandom studies may harm fans. She mentions fans’ fear of legal and moral prosecution to support her idea how an academic essay may expose all its members to potential harm. She encourages the reader to get an informed consent whereas she explains that it may be a difficult to get one. She explains how online fandom study could be considered as people or text and discusses its features as layered publics. In the end, she warns the reader about the limitations and exclusions caused by potential hard permission rule. She also reminds the reader bout acafans’ possible effect in the online fandom community and considers self-awareness and autoethnography as the solution for it.

Askwith, Lundin, and Romano

In the “Industry/Fan Relations: A Conversation” chapter in The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom Ivan Askwith, Britta Lundin, and Aja Romano discuss how their own identities as fans influenced their works. Romano considers the fact that fans are sick of “being marginalized and shamed for doing their thing” as the reason behind “deep-seeded fandom etiquette that says you don’t ever interact with creators.” Lundin states how “scary!” it was for her to come out on Twitter as a fan by changing her username to her full name. Creating analogy to LGBTQ community, the use of the term “coming out” for identifying one as a fan by Lundin emphasizes the fact of being marginalized. Responding to Romano’s argument “fans are somehow driving and controlling narratives to a degree that wasn’t previously possible,” Askwith distinguishes “fans driving a narrative” from “fans driving (or forcing) an industry decision.”

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Week 9 - Fan Love—Historical Approaches

This week’s readings study the historical approaches to fan love.

Davis

In the first chapter of his book, Obsession: A History, Lennard J. Davis explores the origins of mental illnesses particularly mania and obsession. Examining the etymology of the term “obsession,” he begins his argument tracking the religious roots of obsession linking it to demons. He points out while demonic possession as the reason behind the obsession and mania continued popularly into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was gradually replaced by accusing the nervous system as the cause. Thus, “in a span of less than a hundred years, the new cause of the mass obsession in Lancashire was not the devil but nerves.” He reminds the reader that by the eighteenth century the term “hysteria” was no longer “postulated the cause of the disease as being the strangulation of the uterus,” as the result, it was no longer applied solely to women. He points out the major shift in the eighteenth century from a view of madness where it becomes to be considered as a “phenomenon afflicting a few poor souls to one that is seen as endemic to the culture.” As a result, he argues, obsession becomes “both the symptom and the cause of mental disease. It becomes the method by which disease is observed, and the disease itself. In addition, it becomes something the culture at large both wants and fears.” Citing Dr. Samuel Johnson, Davis points out that “all humans are to a degree mad in this new and partial way.”

Cavicchi

In his article, Fandom Before ‘Fan’: Shaping the History of Enthusiastic Audiences, Daniel Cavicchi explores fandom before mass communications media. Bringing the example of religious-minded music lovers of 1850s urban concert culture, the unruly kranks of post–Civil War baseball, and the weeping readers of Charlotte Temple in the 1830s, he argues that beginning with the history of fandom is more useful than starting with use of the term fan. He uses the history of disease to discuss fandom and admits that such analogy may seem farfetched but also reminds us that “fandom, until fairly recently, has been negatively characterized as form of pathology.” Comparing the history of fandom with history of disease, he points out that fandom similar to disease “entails identifying, connecting, and interpreting a discrete circumstance over time, which has itself existed as the result of repeated identifying, connecting, and interpreting.” Comparing the aforementioned music lovers to modern pop fans, Cavicchi argues that none of the music lovers themselves “a fan,” but the actions of “music loving, and music fandom are similar.” He argues that similar to the modern pop fans, these music lovers were attempting “to re-create their favorite concert performances by collecting and playing sheet music for the pieces performed.”

Hansen

In her article, Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship, Miriam Hansen explores the female spectatorship though their admiration of the classic actor, Rudolph Valentino. Building upon Freud without the detour through Lacan she examines the redemption of scopophilia in the case of Valentino. She argues that Valentino occupies the “position of primary object of spectacle, this entails a systematic feminization of his persona.” She addresses the notion of ambivalence in female spectatorship while arguing that Valentino’s character while “enforcing patriarchal hierarchies in its organization of the look, also offers women an institutional opportunity to violate the taboo on female scopophilia.” Hansen points out that Valentino’s films had “notoriously weak narratives and would probably fail to engage any viewer if it weren’t for their hero’s charisma.” She also argues how the “sadistic aspects of the Valentino persona” helped out in advertising him “to female audiences as the he-man the menace.”

Jenkins

In the introduction and the first chapter of his book, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Henry Jenkins explores the stereotypical gender qualities of different kind of fans and the notion of textual poaching. He argues although these groups welcome any other “ranks” but they are “largely female, largely white, largely middle class.” Describing the etymology of the term fan, he points out that stereotypically fans are considered as “emotionally unstable, socially maladjusted, and dangerously out of sync with reality.” He points out that “comic fans and psychotic fans” are often portraited as “masculine” while “eroticized fan” are portraited as “female.” He even delves more into the gender segregated fans arguing that the “sport fans (who are mostly male and who attach great significance to real events rather than fiction) enjoy very different status than media fans (who are mostly female and who attach great interest in debased forms of fiction).” Elaborating on the notion of poaching, Jenkins explains how fans “cease to be simply an audience for the popular texts; instead they become active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings.”

Razlogova

In the preface and the fourth chapter of her book, The Listener's Voice: Early Radio and the American Public, Elena Razlogova explores the significance of the audience in the experiences of early radio. She argues that “audiences were critical components in the making of radio, the establishment of its genres and social operations” particularly during the Jazz Age and the Great Depression. She contends that the listeners “imagined personal connections with radio characters, and expected scriptwriters, actors, and sponsors to heed their advice.” She points out how by wartime it became harder for “radio personalities to convince listeners that their individual testimonies mattered” because the broadcasting industry relied mainly on “scientific management of audiences. Ratings and surveys of specialized markets shaped production choices.” Razlogova Also mentions the success of the radio shows in the thirties whose writers “invented serial radio genres in collaboration with listeners.” Thus, this kind of relationship, Razlogova argues, “created bonds of reciprocity between writers and audiences. It conveyed to writers the authority to contest network and agency decisions, and to listeners the authority to direct writers’ narrative choices

[historiographynavid]

Week 8 - Race & Erasure

This week’s readings revolve around the notions of race & erasure.

Beckman

In the first chapter of her book, Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism, Karen Redrobe Beckman explores the existing anxieties against the increasing feminist in the nineteenth century British empire and how vanishing repeatedly occurred in response to various types of corporeal excess. Pointing out the debates about the “surplus woman problem” and distinguishing disappearance from vanishing, she argues that the “spectacle of vanishing both reflects and refutes Victorian anxieties about female surplus.” She asserts that in the aforementioned era the “discourses of gender and imperialism” become increasingly “intertwined with each other around the idea of vanishing in important and interesting ways.” Citing Robert Malthus’s radical ideologies about the “population,” “human redundancy,” and “abject poor,” Beckman elaborates how the “idea of vanishing” emerges as “spectacle” through the ideologies such as considering the “body as excess.” Discussing the weakening power of the British empire over its colonized territories such as India and the flourishing early British feminism, she relates the increasing popularity of the spectacle of vanishing lady to the decrease in control over colonized territory of India and flourishing early British feminism. Comparing the British spectacle of vanishing lady with its French counterpart, Beckman argues that “unlike Frances, the vanishing lady initially possesses a body. The male magician makes this body vanish, and, though it often returns at the end of the trick, the female body seems to lie completely in the hands of the magician, or so the trick would have us believe.”

Brown

In the first and the second chapter of his book, Who Owns Native Culture? Michael Brown explores how the historians were trying to collect and store invaluable artifacts from the Hopi Indians against Hopi Indians wishes to protect their religious and sacred artifacts as well as the infamous Australian flag copyright and case of Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, where the locals like to say that “Darwin is closer to Singapore and Bali than to Sydney.” He points out how the historians’ persistence of archiving and circulating these artifacts serves as a “constant reminder of Hopi subordination” where their act is justified by “high-minded appeals to free speech and the importance of the public domain.” Describing the formation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), he points out how NAGPRA protected Hopi Indians and received backlash from museums. Citing Edward Shils, he argues that in the intersection of the mass societies and Indigenous societies, “all parties must define boundaries beyond which public scrutiny is deemed disruptive and improper.” Brown points out how any legal reference to “native title” was a “red flag for the state and federal governments” in Australia. He elaborates on the existing concern about the recognition of community rights in art in Australia because it might have the “perverse effect of making it more difficult to honor the copyright of indigenous artists.” Mentioning how the Harold Thomas— an Aboriginal artist who designed the Aboriginal flag— benefited economically and politically from the flag copyright, Brown concludes his argument reminding the reader that the case of the Aboriginal flag is an “unusually frank expression of broader indigenous efforts to use copyright law to control key symbols of native identity.”

Nakamura (2014)

In her article, Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture, Lisa Nakamura explores the archives about women of color’s labor in the digital industries to form effective oppositional strategies. She argues that it is evident from the history of digital devices that “the burden of digital media’s device production is borne disproportionately by the women of color who make them.” Focusing on Navajo women, she argues how this people were often portraited by magazines as “uniquely suited by temperament, culture, and gender as ideal predigital digital workers.” She points out Navajo women’s labor was often exploited by being considered as “labor of love,” who produced circuits as “reproductive labor of expressing Navajo culture, rather than merely for wages.” She argues how the new notion of “the Navajo as Industrial produced a complicated identity whose formation relied on the idea that the tribe could be modern, even hypermodern, precisely as a result of being distinctively Indian.” Criticizing the Oriental view, Nakamura reminds the reader how Navajo women were understood as “docile, flexible, and natural electronics workers,” and Latinas, Asian, African American, and Indian women were perceived as “ having nimble fingers and passive personalities.”

Nakamura (2013)

In her chapter on Cyberrace in Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online, Lisa Nakamura explores 1990s internet as a “curative to racism” and new media technology as a “perfect realization of the utopia of an ideal society composed of unique individuals.” She argues that the oxymoron nature of the term “Cyberrace” became a useful strategy for computer industries and political regimes which were “struggling to get users to invest in, purchase, and believe in the technology.” She argues that only after the vanishing of the term “cyber” in the midst of stock market crash of 2001, and alongside with rise of dot-com, cyberspace becomes a site of discussion for racial identity. She claims that the web 1.0, or “cyber” space, “conceptualized the Internet as an alternative reality, a different place in which one could exercise agency and live out fantasies of control. This control extended to all aspects of personal identity, including (and especially) race.” Per Nakamura the Web 2.0 “neither posits a postracial utopia based on racial abolitionism online nor envisions racialized others and primitives as signs of cosmopolitan technofetishism, it does make claims to harness collective intelligence by allowing everyone to participate in a more or less equal fashion.”

[historiographynavid]

Week 6 - Class & Archival-Based Feminist Film Historiographies

This week’s readings revolve around the notions of class and archival-based feminist film historiographies.

Peiss

In the sixth chapter of her book, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Kathy Peiss explores women audience of New York cinema theaters in the early 1900s. She points out how the early films were trying to “legitimize a heterosocial culture.” Considering the cheap theaters as “impromptu social centers,” she argues the attraction of the foreign language theaters for immigrant men and women. She asserts that regardless of their income, approximately sixty percent of all workingwomen were going to the movies. Peiss points out how the movie going changed the women’s participation in public when the film “moved from the arcade's kinetoscopes to nickelodeon screens.” She argues that producers and exhibitors made enormous profit out of women’s active and widespread participation by different avenues such as targeting the shows to the “ethic composition of the audience.” Peiss remarks how the theaters become public sphere for women where they can “visit friends” and mothers can attend without being forced to wear dresses. She also makes it clear that how despite inclusion of women in the demography of the audience, some producers “mocked self-styled New Women” and produced film which “undercut feminist demand, not simply through the direct criticism, and humor, but by refashioning the socially appropriate behavior and norms that governed gender relations.”

Enstad

In the chapter five of her book, Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Nan Enstad explores working women's relationship to the movies in the early 1900s. She focuses on adventure serials such as What Happened to Mary and Hazards of Helen because these films “had roots in dime novel formulas” and were also “aimed at working women.” pointing out the struggles of the newly fledged cinema, she argues how the producers relied on consumers “to guide them in creating the plot” of films such as What Happened to Mary various methods such as holding  “promotional contests.” Enstad mentions how many young girls “fantasize” about being in me movies, a fantasy which was not far-fetched in that era when many films were being made “on the streets all around working women.”

Stamp

In the introduction and the first chapter of her book, Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture After the Nickelodeon, Shelley Stamp examines the participation of the women audiences in the public spheres of early cinema theaters. She argues despite the fact that many films of that era were striving to attract the female audience with “stories aimed directly at women's interests and advertising campaigns that specifically targeted female moviegoers,” women's integration into motion picture culture was “neither as smooth as exhibitors might have hoped, nor as uniformly associated with cinema's uplift as subsequent historians have claimed.”  She points out that it could be implied from the elements such as “white slave films, sensational serial dramas, and women's suffrage photoplays” that women's patronage was also built with “subject matter like sexuality, action-adventure stories, and feminist agitation not normally associated with a ladylike gentility.” Stamp contends that the polite and dignified audience that the film producers and exhibitors had in mind was not possible but providing family friendly and safe public spheres in the theaters; creating a public sphere that is “attractive to the entire family, and safe for their children.” Pointing out the countless advertisements for women's beauty products claiming to improve everything from hair, complexion, and eyelashes in the early movie fan magazines like Motion Picture Magazine and Motion Picture Classic, she argues fan culture increasingly catered to young women in the early 1910s.

Hastie

In the first chapter of her book, Cupboards of Curiosity: Women, Recollection, and Film History, Amelie Hastie explores the personal collections of the American film actress, Collen Moore. She examines Moore’s scrapbooks to redefine the collection as a “memorializing and historicizing text.” Arguing the “historicizing function” of the collectables through their materiality, she points out that these objects “embody both history and fantasy, and they lend a materiality to that history and fantasy. Thus, explicitly set in relationship to one another through the structure of the collection, the narrative they tell becomes richer as it builds between objects.” Hastie deems Moore’s dollhouse as a “nostalgic remnant of a particular time and place: Hollywood of the 1920s.” She reminds the reader that a significant element in Moore’s publicity was the “marketing of inexpensive products connected to her identity as a movie star and a regular person,” and concludes that the recollective value is embedded in the “concrete objects themselves.”

[historiographynavid]

Week 5 - Archives & Media Research

This week’s readings revolve around notions of archives and media research.

Derrida

Jacques Derrida’s seminal paper on archive, Archival Fever: A Freudian Impression, explores the existing power relations in archiving. He argues that politics have decisive effect on archiving since those who are in power decide what should be archived. He points out that “the documents, which are not always discursive writings, are only kept and classified under the title of the archive by virtue of a privileged topology.” As the result of these power dynamics, minorities are often ignored in when it comes to archiving. Discussing fragments, he argues that archive is heterogenous and incomplete instead of being homogenous and complete. Thus, he notes that since “the archivization produces as much as it records the event”, having a perfect and complete history, collection, or archive is almost impossible.

Prown

In her chapter, The Truth of Material Culture: History or Fiction? Jules D. Prown explores artifacts in the cultural context. He uses the term “artifact” to discuss the “objects made or modified by humans.” Coming from art history background, Prown calls the shared style of the clusters of objects in a particular time and place as “cultural daydream” which is “expressing unspoken beliefs.” For him artifacts are personal items as well as being haunted by history. He assumes two different approach to discuss the relationship between art and artifact as being “inclusive and exclusive.” Studying a teapot as an artifact, he draws attention to the similarities of this teapot and female breast. He points out that the earliest human experience of “ingesting warm liquids,” is as “a baby feeding from a mother's breast,” which is formally similar to the above view of the aforementioned teapot. Prown argues that “not all belief can be retrieved,” because an “artifact is embedded in its culture and embodies some of that culture's beliefs.”

Marcus

In her article, The Theatrical Scrapbook, Sharon Marcus explores some theatrical scrapbook to study the compilers and the contents that are being compiled in these scrapbooks. She argues that a scrapbook offers invaluable information about its compiler’s taste in performers, plays, and genres of performance. In other words, she considers theatrical scrapbook as “pedagogical tools as well as aids to research.” She asserts the significance of the study of these scrapbooks stating that they “teach us about key areas in theatre studies such as national, gendered, and racial performance.” Discussing the acceptable behavior of two theater performers toward scrapbook compliers when even they received terrible reviews, Marcus argues that the scrapbooks teach us that “audiences adored (as they still adore) genres that critics despise and scholars neglect, such as light musical comedies, religious spectacles, and military shows.” Comparing the close-up photos of the performers with the cinematic close-up, she argues how these close-ups enabled the compliers to feel “more intimate with a star’s image than they could ever feel to the actual star onstage.” Pointing out the importance of the TRI scrapbooks because of including many items about Sarah Bernhardt that were not reproduced elsewhere, she concludes her argument stating that “scrapbooks offer traces of the experience of theatregoing, turning encounters between live bodies into scraps of text and image that each album recombines into a provisional unit.”

Langford

In her chapter in, Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, Martha Langford explores the notion of “speaking the album” while considering the photographic album as a “repository of memory.” She considers “speaking the album” as discovering the album’s ordering principle not as the supplement of photographic and textual reading. She argues that the “separation of the album from its community casts it into an unnatural silence.” Thus the “contents, structure and presentation of a photographic album are the vestiges of its oral scaffolding.” Advocating the viability of the past in the future, she contends that in the study of an album one must “shift from the absolute solidity of material culture to a state of in-between, fully realizable only in performance.” Langford points out that the we will observe the compiler of the album as a “highly specialized curator of photographs and photographic experiences” when we bring in different sources of the photographs.

Lothian

In her article, Archival Anarchies: Online Fandom, Subcultural Conservation, and the Transformative Work of Digital Ephemera, Alexis Lothian explores “subcultural fandom.” She defines "subcultural fandom as an “established groupings of media fans whose norms and expectations around production and discussion of fan fiction, art, and remix video the OTW has sought to represent.” She examines how fans may feel discomfort when they are being studies by the scholars and suggests some ways to honor fans’ discomfort such as looking at the ways “fan culture’s online practices exceed the OTW’s archival model.” Quoting Derrida, “archive always works … against itself,” Lothian extends this doubling of destruction and preservation to the paradox of digital storage’s enduring ephemera.

De Kosnik

In third chapter of her book, Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom, Abigail De Kosnik explores the politics of preserving queer fan works. She points out how numerous users “suffered takedowns of their content without warning” because of the restrictions of social media. Considering the fact that the majority of fan fiction communities members are women, she argues that OTW and all of its projects, including AO3, were created by “women coders” to archive fan fiction archives which are “archives of women’s culture.” Calling the “queer archives” as the “safe spaces for nonheteronormative practice,” De Kosnik argues that society benefits when, “rather than seeking to suppress or eliminate minoritarian, marginalized, and nonmainstream cultures, it strives to perpetuate these cultures.”