Harry Potter and Participatory Culture

Harry Potter fan art from holytaco.com

We will finish our regular class meetings with a discussion of the increasing importance of participatory culture and the advent of online communities. As a point of departure we will look at the trans-media narrative of Harry Potter and consider its various extensions into fan narrative. As a reading assignment for this week try to read any fan ficiton from the Harry Potter universe. Also try to read some of the blog kept by Henry Jenkins one of the most important living critics of media and an important theorist about the growth of participatory culture. For example, read his recent post on Samba Schools and participatory culture. His blog his available at the following link:

http://www.henryjenkins.org/

Next week I will be meeting you indivdiually for your final evaluation conferences. Please remember to post on your blog any responses to works you have read this semester and, very importantly, for your final blog entry revise a previous post to represent your writing for this semester in one selected document. Be sure to complete the online course evaluation.

Media and the Body

Art show poster from the Savannah College of Art and Design

This week we are discussing issues around the interaction between media and the body. The reading for this week is Oryx and Crake,  a novel by Margaret Atwood.  In this novel a post-human future is considered and described as well as the transition to that future.  In the 21st century a post-human future seems not only inevitable but even imaginable as a near term reality. Perhaps a post-human evolution is the only way we can adapt to the large changes humans are making in the environment. Please bring your notebook computers to this week's class as we attempt a few in-class research and response projects to look at current aspects of the body and its relation to media. We will look at some of the ways the body has become a medium.

The writing assignment for this week will be to post an image that you think summarizes some aspect of the relationship between media and the body. Write a post of approx. 350 words describing and/or commenting on the relationship you have observed.

Media History, Media Production, Media Culture

To alter Wittgenstein, we 21st century humans live in media like a fish lives in water.  Media is environment, and like all environment it is dynamic, changing and evolving. The study of the history of media generally and the history of invidual media suggests certain patterns to the evolution of media. Today we will consider the circumstance of the American Cinema, its history, technology, production, fan culture, auteurs, social history, etc. In short, the complex intersections on which indivdual works are situated. We will talk about how to describe works in terms of this situation. We will consider the idea that the study of media is the study of a series of cultural events and how media itself frames our perception of those events. We will be led to describe the optic of media and examine the terms and frameworks of our description.

This week's reading was Nathanael West's Day of the Locusts. We will take some time in this week's class to discuss the novel and the myths and realities of Hollywood, the film industry and the medium of the movies with an eye to considering what the study of movies and of individual films can tell us about the study of media in general.

For additional reading one can read an early example of American cultural criticism, Gilbert Seldes Seven Lively Arts.

The Hunger Games

Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth star in the Hunger Games Movie

Reading Assignment: For this week read the novel, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Required Movie: Metropolis dir. Fritz Lang

Service Learning Project at the Broach School

I will see you Tuesday morning at the Broach School, 3005 26th St. W. in Bradenton. From the School you go North on U.S. 41 until you get to Cortez Road in Bradenton. At Cortez Rd. take a left and go West. Get in the right lane and go until you get to 26th St. which is beyone the Home Depot which will be on your right. At 26th Street turn right and go North until you come to 31 st. Ave. the Broach School is between 31st Ave and 30th Ave. on the right. You can park in the parking lot of the catholic church across the street. Their are very few parking spaces at the school.

You should get there by 9:00 a.m.. You will be able to leave by 11:00 a.m. to get back for your next class.

You will be working with small groups of kids from the school with whom you will collaborate in the context of your media project. Please post your project idea on your blog before you come to the school. Afterwards, please relate on your blog how it went and post some documentation of the project you did with the student.

The school number is 751-2525 if you get lost.

Pattern Recognition

Cool as defined by Charles Schultz

The reading for this week is a novel by William Gibson entitled Pattern Recognition. This title reflects the central tool of media studies, or pretty much any studies, which is observing a pattern and through consideration and reflection, advancing a reading of the pattern observed. In the novel the protagonist is a "cool hunter," someone hypersensitive to emerging cultural patterns she is able to make a living by spotting the next "cool" thing.  I am interested in what you say about this novel and whether it remains sufficiently interesting or has it become too predictable and dated in its technology and social references. Remember to blog about anything you read to document your performance.

As an writing assignment I would like you to provide me a  blog about something you have observed as an emerging cultural pattern and a reading of its significance or interest to you or us.

Please remember to post your own design for a page to be added to The Medium is the Massage that would reflect contemporary media realities. If you have not read this book yet, do so, it will not take that much time and is worth the insight it provides.

In class we will consider the rules for "cool," the manner of hippness, and the nature of the "avant garde" and the culture of "fashion."

We will discuss some of the ideas of the media theorist, Stuart Hall.

Some cool hunting links:

http://www.geekologie.com/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-12/bret-easton-ellis-how-charlie-sheen-is-giving-us-what-we-want/

Fairy Tales and Ideology

This week we are discussing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. You will find copies of this and other Oz books on the course resources page. They are also available online if you search. Please read it or another Oz book before coming to class. We will be discussing ideology and specifically how ideology is embedded in the Wizard of Oz in all its various forms. I hope to introduce some of the ideas about media and cultural production advanced by Gramsci and members of the Franfurt School. The 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz will be used to expand the discussion. 

For this week you should have posted your platonic dialogue on the subject of media before class. You can use any medium to present it. For next week, write a fairy tale for a contemporary audience that embeds your own ideology.