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.