This is the page for: Understanding English & American Pop Culture
(Course-related content will appear here in reverse chronological order: the newest things at the top of the page, and older posts toward the bottom.)
Panel Discussion Schedule
Folks,Here’s the schedule for our class’s Panel Discussions from 13 May to 10 June. I’m still working on figuring out exactly which readings I will assign you, but that should all be clear within the next week or two.13 May: Madonna — a modern flapper? Preparation for Audience:
- readings: from Flapper. (To be distributed.)
Participants:
- Myung Jaeho
- Hanna Kim
- Eunjung Kim
20 May: Do Some Still Like It Hot? On Marilyn Monroe, Two Generations LaterPreparations:
- Watch “Some Like It Hot” and one other Marilyn Monroe feature film.
- Read up on Marilyn Monroe & see some of here photographic representations online
Participants:
- Areum Jo
- Sora Moon
- Hoonil Choi
- Mijung Jang
27 May: SF as a Foreign LanguagePreparations:
- Readings (to be distributed)
- Watch The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Fifth Element
Participants:
- Lomanova Daria
- Perfilyeva Anna
- Hanol Kim
- Tao Sheng
3 June: Does Korea “Need” a Beat or Hippie Generation?Preparations:
- Readings (to be decided & distributed)
Participants:
- Sejin Shon
- Heera Lee
- Shin Whan Kim
- Cho Jae-eun
10 June: Heroism and Other Discourses from the World of Comic BooksPreparations:
- Watch Iron Man 2 and Kick Ass
- Readings (to be decided, but will include excerpts from Superman’s original comics, and from Men of Tomorrow)
Participants:
- Nara Han
- Young Soo Ha
- Da Young Lee
Plans
Folks,
We were supposed to spend today discussing:
Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” (lyrics here):
… and Bessie Smith’s “You Got To Give Me Some” (lyrics here):
And then turning to the readings you did on the Harlem Renaissance, from this book (you can get book info from this page at Amazon). We were supposed to follow that up on Thursday with a discussion of the chapters I gave you from Satchmo Blows Up The World.
However, having lost my voice, it seems we’ll have to change our plans. Please check out the Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith songs and be ready to talk on Thursday about them. (I think my voice should be back by then.)
We’ll continue on to the “Harlem Renaissance” and the “Jazz Ambassadors” next week, and continue on to a new reading I’ll be giving you Thursday!
See you soon!
Wanna Hear Langston Hughes?
There are a number of videos featuring his voice on Youtube. Here’s where you can see some of them.
A Crash Course in the History of Jazz (and some other African-American Music)
Here are some videos I intend to use during my lecture this Tuesday. I’m putting them here so you can refer to them later on:
“Traditional” African Music & Dance:
“Traditional” European Music & Dance:
European Musical Instruments as “Limiting Technology”:
Two Lineages of Fusion:
Trans-Racial Crossover:
Depression Era to 1950s — Smaller Ensembles, More Improvisation and Virtuosity:
Davis wanted Jimi Hendrix to play with him in these days, but contracts and other obligations prevented it. He did help with arrangements on Hendrix’s album Electric Ladyland, though.
Standards:
See also Dinah Washington’s treatment of the same song.Vocal Jazz and Its Offspring:
And after a process we will discuss, we arrive at Michael Jackson taking over the pop music world (for a while) back in the 1980s. And the most interesting non-official Thriller video on Youtube, as little present for you:
I’m going to leave it up to you guys to trace the patterns, connections, and influences into hip-hop and more recent pop music, since I’m sure some of you know a lot more about that than I do.
Comments on Beluthahatchie
Sorry for the delay. I had a problem with my scanner and had to use the office scanner today. Here’s hoping at least some of you get to see it beforehand. (Though if not, we can move the discussion to Thursday.)
Here are Andy Duncan’s comments on the background for his story “Beluthahatchie,” from the back of the story collection:
-  Background on “Beluthahatchie� (.zip archive of .jpeg scans of two pages)
Duncan’s comments on the story begin near the end of the first column of the first scanned page. If you’d like to know more about him, there is a collection of interviews with him linked from the publisher’s website, here.
For Next Week
Folks,
Here’s the plan for next week:
On Tuesday, for the first hour,we will be talking about the European phenomenon of enslaving Africans, but also of putting Africans (and other non-Europeans) on display. I’ll be drawing on Strausbaugh’s book — from which I gave you an excerpt — but also from a few others, including The Black Culture Industry by Ellis Cashmore, Where Dead Voices Gather by Nick Tosches, The Wages of Whiteness by David R. Roediger, and The Slave Trade by Hugh Thomas. Controversial or not, I recommend all those books for a deeper understanding of what we’re talking about. (And about which I, too, am still learning.)
And to link this (directly!) to contemporary Korea — a Youtube video by a very angry man. The question is — do you think he has a right to be angry?:
In our second hour on Tuesday, we will be talking about Andy Duncan’s story “Beluthahatchie.” I’ll be uploading a scan of Duncan’s comments about the story, so please check back. By the way, here’s the cover image of that book, which I tried to show you in class. As the guy on that webpage comments, it’s “one hell of a train” — har, har. I expect a lot of questions, ideas, and participation. In the meantime, you might find it helpful to read about this guy.On Thursday, we’re going to talk about the chapter from the Strausbaugh book that I gave you to read. Be prepared to discuss, as this is intended as a class discussion, and not a lecture. (I will have some questions for you, as well as some media I’d like to show you, maybe, but the bulk of the classtime will be yours to talk through. I’ll try to intervene only to steer the conversation, clear up any misconceptions, and clarify things.) Just a thought: it would be a good idea to prepare a paper for the discussion, listing any questions, or ideas, or problems you had with the text, to help you participate in the discussion. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on the subject of blackface minstrelsy. Bonus points for those who can find a way to link it to popular Korean entertainment today.
(And no, I don’t just mean the Bubble Sisters. I said Korean entertainment today. Or as recently as this. Or this. EDIT: Or even this. )
But then again, and I warn you now that you might find these clips offensive: there’s this … and there’s these guys. Or, hell, there’s this website.
(Before you get too mad about the latter clips, remember: these are User Created Content clips on the Internet, not major media entertainment. Also. it might be useful to think carefully about who it is being mocked in each of those videos and pages I’ve linked: is it a whole race, or a group within it? Do you think the racist images or stereotypes intelligible, even if you are offended by them — I mean, do you think the mockery involves offensive exaggeration and generalization, or the wholesale manufacture of traits?)
How you might feel about the whole set of the videos above — those depicting Koreans, and those from the Korean media too — needs to be part of the question of what is going on in cross-racial mockery, appropriation, and imitation… which is at the heart of our discussion of the genesis of American popular culture.
Finally, looking ahead, next week we’ll be discussing blackface minstrelsy more, after watching the Spike Lee film Bamboozled.
Stuff to Look At…
Folks,
Here’s some stuff to look at, which will help make our next class a little more comprehensible to you in general.
First off, we’re going to finish off discussing the pop culture samples you chose for analysis. We already talked about Desperate Housewives and Harry Potter. If you have more to say about those examples, please note it for class: I’ll ask if anyone has a question or comment, and then we will go on to the other two samples: Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, and the Pirates of the Caribbean film series.
Here’s the video for Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean — we can analyze the video as a “text,” as well as the lyrics (and even the music), so have a look:
Also, this article will be useful for those thinking over the idea of pirates (a popular figure in American culture).
And with that, we’re going to turn to the roots of American popular culture, specifically prior to the 20th century. We’ll be checking out some older traditional “popular culture” and it will probably seem a little bit alien to you, so have a listen to some of this stuff:
First, if you don’t know “The Blue Danube” by Strauss, then please listen to this track, courtesy of Youtube:
… and, for contrast, a sample of traditional Zimbabwean music and dance:
Think about the differences and the similarities involved in these kinds of music, and the dances associated with them. We’ll be talking about this in class.
Please also give a look to some other videos and MP3s which will be of some importance, listed below. While we cannot directly access music from before about the 1920s, looking at stuff that’s available today can tell us about the past. So check out the following…
“Dog and Gun� (mp3) by Bradley Kincaid, from the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music. (Though lyrics are notoriously changeable in folk songs, this version is pretty close.)
Branford Marsalis’ recording of the prison work song “Berta, Berta”, here:
… which was “resurrected” by August Wilson in his play, “The Piano Lesson”:
Please also have a look at Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” (lyrics here):
… and Fred “Mississippi” McDowell (with his wife Annie McDowell) doing “Get Right Church” (one version of the lyrics here, but there are many versions of this song):
… and a few more recent versions of the same song, including one by Reverend James Cleveland:
and another (much more recent, by some random guy out on the internet) this time using a banjo, and in a more “folksy” style:
I’ll also be giving you a story (by American writer Andy Duncan) to read next week, and while I don’t expect you to finish it for Thursday, we will be talking about it.
Terminology
I’ve gotten some questions about the terminology discussed in class. Next time, if you’re fuzzy on something, please be sure to ask in class. I got tied up all day, so it was hard for me to get this posted until Wednesday evening, and I have an appointment so this is going to be quick and, I fear, a bit sloppy. In any case, a clarification of terms I discussed:
- anxiety: simply put, this is the feeling or experience of discomfort which a society has regarding something — its own attitudes, its history or politics, its status in the world, or whatever. For example, King Kong can be argued to be “about” (or to “encode”) American social anxieties of the time it was made, regarding the status and position of blacks in America (as an imagined “threat” to white women and to social order, as social “underdogs,” as victims and underdogs who summoned up feelings of guilt, and as symbols of America’s brutal, racist history). When a society is anxious about something, it tends not to want to “talk about it” directly (ie. to confront the object of the anxiety directly) but also tends to feel an overwhleming need to represent it in indirect ways — in metaphors, for example.
- trauma: as with personal trauma, a social trauma is the effect of a painful, shocking, or distressing event that has a deep impact on a society and its outlook. Traumas often give rise to specific anxieties — for example, 9/11 and the immediate aftermath was a trauma that created new anxieties (or deepened old ones) about terrorism, government control, and religious extremism. Examples of other traumas specific to South Korean society include the partitioning of Korea into North and South, the Korean War, the assassination of Park Chung Hee, the Kwangju Massacre, and the 1997 economic crisis. Each of these events has generated specific anxieties, and each (arguably) has had an important influence on the literature and popular culture of South Korea.
- trope: a familiar, common, or recognizable structure, theme, or feature of a genre or of stories in general (in literature or cinema alike). For example, the vampire trope is recognizable to us, because we all know the traits of vampies (what kills them, what their powers are, and so on). Another kind of trope is a common theme, such as, “Boy Meets Girl” or “The Underdog Overcomes Impossible Odds,” or “The Cop Must Give Up His Gun and Badge and Go It Alone” or “If You Have Sex, You Will Die” (as in many horror movies).
- cliché: this is a trope that is used in a lazy way, or in a way that is so predictable as to be insulting to the audience. It has a negative connotation, so that sometimes familiar tropes are called “cliché” simply because the speaker dislikes the trope. For example, many feminists would say that the “Smart Girl Learns To Become a Pretty Girl” trope is a cliché. Not all tropes are necessarily clichés, but most clichés are, by necessity, familiar enough to be tropes, or part of tropes. (For example, one cliché in cop/army films is when the soldier or cop says angrily, “I didn’t sign up for this sh*t!” and disobeys orders. This is part of the individualistic “Cop Disobeys Orders and Goes It Alone” trope, of which one form is the copy giving up his gun and badge.)
Another way of saying this is: tropes are conventional structures we see in a kind of story. (Wikipedia has a great list of Fantasy Tropes and Conventions, for example.) A cliché is a trope that is so overused as to become predictable, or insulting, or annoying — it’s basically a trope that someone has decided he or she does not like. Therefore, cliché is a personal value judgment describing a particular trope.
- discourse: whatever I write here will not make this idea easier to understand, but the basic point is this: a discourse is the set and structure of ideas which form a kind of hidden “story about the world” (or about people, or about life, or about nature, or whatever) which can contain tropes, anxieties and the traumas they originate from, and more. If you think about tropes, anxieties, and the rest as lego bricks, then they build two stories: there’s the obvious story — like, a love story, or a story of colonization, or a murder mystery — and then there’s the deeper story about the world that is hidden inside the story.
For example, to say that a text contains a “Eurocentric discourse” is to say that, whatever the story it seems to tell on the surface, there is a deeper story embedded in it which claims that European people and culture are best, that non-Europeans are somehow inferior or in need of “help” (ie. Europeanization), and so on. A sexist discourse is one where there is a deeper set of assumptions and tropes or anxieties that support them, which suggest that one sex (often, but not always, male) is better than the other, that one sex or another has limited mental or social capabilities, and so on. A colonialist discourse is one that supports colonization of other societies, often by the society in which the text was produced. Because discourses are deeply embedded in narratives (stories) they often contradict the overt story. For example, a novel that argues, overtly, that men and women are equal can still have a sexist discourse embedded in it. (For example, while King Kong seems designed to make its audience feel sorry for King Kong, and by extension for African-Americans, the film also definitely contains an unarguably racist (and sexist) discourse… among others.)
I think that’s all the major terms we discussed. I hope this helps! If not, please ask me in class next time!
Two Pages
This is a clarification for students in two of my classes: Business Across Cultures, and Understanding English and American Popular Cultures.
I have mentioned, or will mention, how we will conduct discussions in class. My explanation confused at least one student, who emailed me, so here goes:
When we are going to have a class discussion, I will usually ask you to write a “Preparation Paper”. There may be several things I ask you to think about: for example, a company, a group of people affected by that company, and an article discussing both. (Or, for example, two films and an essay discussing one of those films.) You can list off information you found in your own research, note questions you have about the assigned reading or viewing, and list questions you would like to ask the class or panel discussion participants.
You are expected to write the Preparation Paper and bring it to class for the discussion, but not to hand it in. Rather, you will keep it, and when you go home, you will write your “Response Paper” which will sum up your thoughts on the discussion, highlight what you agree and disagree with, note a few questions which you think were raised by what was said, and so on.
Then, you will staple the Preparation Paper and the Response Paper together, and hand them in. Note: they MUST be stapled. (I will throw away any Preparation or Response Paper that is not accompanied by its opposite, and if they are not stapled, I will throw them away even if I receive both. Folding corners is not an acceptable substitute to staples.) The completed Preparation/Response Paper is due the next class after a discussion.
I hope that makes everything clear for you. If not, let me know!
Student Information Sheet
Here’s a copy of the Student Information Sheet, in case you need a copy: