Cultural and Critical Studies 2012 Abstracts
Faculty
Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the Speculative as Public Memory • Phil Chidester, Illinois State University • By at once making direct and intentional intertextual references to 1968’s The Planet of the Apes and taking significant departures from that template work, The Planet of the Apes (2001) remake and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) prequel forge a powerful transcendent argument about America’s ongoing racial struggles. In doing so, the films also establish the original as a vital and influential example of the speculative as public memory.
“They dangerously confuse the concept of personhood and citizenship:” An analysis of media representations of immigrant women and families in the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007 • MaryAnn Martin, Independent • As a predecessor to many similar laws passed nation-wide in recent years, news discourses surrounding the passage and implementation of the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, or HB 1804, are one site to investigate the relationship between representations of immigrant women and families and definitions of citizenship and the nation-state. This study examines representations of immigrant women and families in two state newspapers, the Oklahoman and the Tulsa World.
From breaking to traditional news: How journalists craft resonance through storytelling • Victoria LaPoe, LSU; Amy Reynolds, LSU • Through qualitative content analysis of breaking and traditional news coverage of the balloon boy hoax, this paper expands on research that explores how journalists craft resonance through storytelling. Scholars haven’t applied resonance to breaking news, yet it is an important context in which to study resonance – news values and routines differ, and the impact on audiences is greater. Because journalists apply different news values and storytelling techniques in breaking news, this storytelling context heightens resonance.
Death in Waikiki: The Significance of the Geo-cultural Context in News Media Framing • Ann Auman, University of Hawaii • This study applies a “geo-cultural” frame to determine the significance of culture clash in 15 stories and 767 reader comments in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about a death in Hawai‘i days before the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November 2011. Symbolic language in stories influenced reader conversations, with culture clash in second place after discussions about the facts of the case in which a federal agent allegedly fatally shot a “local” man.
Framing as Media Ritual: Fox News Network Covers the Bristol Palin Pregnancy • Frank Durham, University of Iowa; Lee Hye-Jin, University of Iowa • This study analyzes how the Fox News Network (FNN) devoted its coverage of the 2008 Republican Party Convention to reframing the teen pregnancy of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s daughter in a positive light. By contrasting the frames that were used to discuss Bristol Palin’s pregnancy with the historical-cultural frame of “teen pregnancy” associated with the Reagan-era “Black welfare queen,” this critical text analysis of relevant FNN transcripts treats the re-framing process in terms of media ritual.
Empowered Leaders and Alone in Community: Stories of Romanian Roma Health Mediators • Adina Schneeweis, Oakland University • This article presents the stories of nine Romanian women, Roma health mediators who work in communities to build bridges between Romani patients and the public health system. The women narrate stories of successes in their profession, of discrimination, of empowerment, and of identity shifts towards hybridity and contextual alliances. Although a sense of entitlement makes sense in the context of much responsibility and power on the women’s shoulders, speaking for their ethnicity may become problematic, this study suggests.
“Makmende is so powerful he showed us who we truly are:” Kenya’s Collective Reimaging and a Meme of Optimism • Brian Ekdale, University of Iowa; Melissa Tully, University of Iowa • In this paper, we explore the Makmende meme that rose to prominence in Kenya in 2010. We argue the original video triggered a moment of nostalgia and participation among young, urban Kenyans who pride themselves as technological innovators. Further, we claim their participatory playfulness created a meme of optimism through which they collectively reimagined a patriarchal hero who could lead the country toward political and economic stability at home and cultural and technological dominance abroad.
“Where Buzz is Born”: South-by-Southwest, Blogging, and Media Conduction • Robert Peaslee, Texas Tech University; Stephanie Miles • This study seeks to develop the theoretical framework of media conduction (Peaslee, 2011) by examining the interactions between bloggers and readers in the context of the 2010 South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival. Media conduction refers to the transfer of information along a “circuit of power” represented by individuals’ access to a valuable commodity – in this case the artists and unique festival experiences accessible at SXSW – and the resulting flow of information to those with less access, both within and outside the social space of the festival.
“Coloured TV”: The 1960s Conferences and BBC Television Programming • Darrell Newton, Salisbury University • This institutional case study examines how the BBC polled West Indian community leaders on ways the Television Service could help to quell racial tensions exacerbated by increased immigration from the West Indies. According to documents examined at Caversham, audience research reports conducted during the 1950s and 60s helped to initiate broadcast policies, underscoring their importance as historiographic resources..
“Reading” The Apprentice: Culture and the Manufacturing of Reality • Sharon Terrell, University of South Alabama • This study examines the six original seasons of the reality television series The Apprentice as a postmodern, cultural artifact that may provide a guide to ideological beliefs through Trump’s paradigm of living. Grounded in Burke’s (1967) theory of literary content representing “equipment for living,” and Brummett’s (1984) consideration that televised content is literature, the theory then evolves to “televised discourse as equipment for living.”
Pakistani women as objects of fear and ‘othering’ • Bushra Rahman, University of the Punjab • The study employs Said’s concept of Orientalism and van Dijks concept of socio-cognitive processes to analyze the framing of Pakistani Muslim women in the news magazine Time from 1998-2002. A critical discourse analysis of the selected articles of the magazine follows Fairclough’s and van Dijk’s guidelines.
Putting Music Videos (and You) to Work: How Vevo turns Publicity and Participation into Profits • Heather McIntosh • Music videos used to represent an industry-related promotional expense. Through Vevo, a multi-media, multi-platform distribution outlet, music videos become a form of revenue through content monetization via licenses and copyright, through the labor of user participation, and through the data mining of user interactions. Through Vevo, users get access to their favorite music videos, but ultimately, the music industry controls the content, the access, the participation, and the profits.
Participation beyond Production: Reception and Ritual in the Study of Activist Audiences • Jennifer Rauch, Long Island University, Brooklyn • In an era of social media technologies, instrumental goals such as networking, organizing and information sharing hold great sway over the study of activist culture. Researchers often conceptualize activists’ media use as participation in message production and dissemination while overlooking practices related to reception and interpretation—i.e., activists as audiences.
If I Were a Belle: Performers’ Negotiations of Feminism, Gender, and Race in Princess Culture • Rebecca Hains, Salem State University • Hundreds of women have earned a living performing as Disney Princesses on Disney property or on stage, embodying their characters for weeks, months, or years at a time. Considering the cases of women who have played a) the role of Belle from Beauty and the Beast or b) her generic counterpart, Beauty, at children’s birthday parties, this essay investigates performers’ negotiations of princess culture’s problematic aspects, with special attention to race, gender, and feminist conscience.
A News Negotiation of a State’s “History”: Collective Memory of the 2011 WI Protests • Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Sandra Knisely, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Mitchael Schwartz, The University of Wisconsin-Madison • This essay seeks to tell the collective mnemonic story of the 2011 Wisconsin protests as it was forming at the anniversary in February and March 2012. In particular, the paper explores how online interactivity encourages new kinds of remembering and how journalists and citizens might turn those memories into some kind of cohesive narrative.
The Complexity of Immaterial Production: Toward a Political Economy of Crowdsourcing • Ruben Ramirez, University of Puerto Rico, School of Communication • The phenomenon of crowdsourcing has been critiqued for its exploitation of a new type of productive subject, the “worker-consumer,” contributing to a political economy of immaterial production that places the producing audiences of the web within traditional notions of labor, production, and exploitation. I argue that these notions are not only insufficient for a critique of crowdsourcing but that they obscure the material conditions of production that underlie networked capitalism beyond collective intelligence.
Student
Apotheosizing Jobs, mythologizing America: Consumerism and the liberalist media in China • Zhengjia Liu, The University of Iowa; Daniel Berkowitz • When covering foreign news lacking in geographic proximity, journalists bring resonant cultural meanings to an otherwise little understood occurrence. In this study, we analyzed the “Steve Jobs fever” in the Chinese liberalist media. The media anthropological approach allows us to understand the society’s consumerist culture, which is associated with other on-going cultural themes, such as nationalism, technological progress and liberalism, and also indicates the rise of the bourgeoisie class.
Construction of Minnesota Muslim Identity: A Critical Analysis of Twin Cities Media • Ruth DeFoster, University of Minnesota; Natalie Hopkins-Best, University of Minnesota • In this paper, the authors examine the ways in which Minnesota Muslim identities and communities are constructed in Twin Cites newspaper coverage of Muslim communities in Minnesota. The authors use critical discourse analysis of 90 articles published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, loosely centered around four recent high-profile issues or events pertaining to the largely Somali-American Muslim community in Minnesota, finding several common themes and discursive practices present.
Urban or Rural? An Analysis on the Stereotypical Media Depictions of Phoenix Guys in China • Li Chen • This paper analyzed the stereotypical media depictions of Phoenix Guys in China, a group of people who are members of the city middle-class but were raised in underdeveloped rural areas. The purpose of this study was to understand how media, especially television series, convey dominant cultural ideology through constructing the stereotypes of Phoenix Guys.
Ain’t 3-D Women Hot?: The Female Body in Three-Dimensional Film, Avatar • Jungmin Kwon, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign • Film is an object of sight. And the female body has always been seen in movies. Seeing is how film makes good on its claim: physical reality. By enhancing this reality through technological development, the female body is better seen as an object of male gaze. This development of cinematic apparatus enriching physical reality seems to peak with the reemergence of 3-D movies, triggered by the megahit Avatar (2009).
Signifying AIDS: How Media Uses Metaphors to Define a Disease • Ammina Kothari, Indiana University • This paper employs a semiotic analysis to examine how the Tanzanian media employs metaphors and related imagery to report on HIV/AIDS. My analysis indicates that the use of war metaphors, accompanied by photos mostly featuring men, vivifies the HIV/AIDS epidemic and valorizes the stakeholders who engage in battling the “virus.” These stakeholders include government officials, international donors and heterosexual men and exclude women and other disenfranchised groups, such as homosexuals and the elderly.
The Voice of Capital: CNBC and the Representation of Finance Capitalism • Aaron Heresco, Pennsylvania State University • In the wake of financial disasters, how is it that capital is able to so quickly repair itself and its image? CNBCs Rick Santelli famously blamed the recent economic crisis on “losers who can’t pay their mortgage” – a speech that gave rise to the Tea Party and set the stage for austerity discourses through much of the past three years. A culture congealed around the crisis, and that culture was framed and shaped through business news sources such as CNBC.
“Metro’s very own West Side Story”: Gangs and Metaphor in Contemporary Canadian Newspapers • Chris Richardson, University of Western Ontario • For half a century, Canadian journalists have turned to West Side Story to describe the activities of youth and street gangs. While knowledge of these groups has changed significantly, the allusions have not. Employing a theoretical framework based on Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and symbolic violence, this paper outlines what is at stake in this metaphorical language, highlighting the problematic assumptions journalists are making about both their readers and the individuals they cover.
Sociology After Society: Emile Durkheim and “The Walking Dead” • Bryan Carr, University of Oklahoma • This paper contends that The Walking Dead, one of the most popular examples of the zombie genre, represents a specific sociological worldview and cultural context. Using the classical lens of Durkheimian theory, representations of totemism, anomie, and other concepts are found within the text of the program. Using these program elements, the author argues that The Walking Dead and similar post-apocalyptic media provide unique and important opportunities for pedagogy and media literacy.
The Structuration of Crisis Management: Guiding a Process of Repair • Erin Schauster, University of Missouri • Crisis communication, in response to a threatening event, is intended to both inform and persuade. However, the approaches to crisis management may be contradictory at times. Structuration is the theory of enabling and constraining features of an organizational environment or situation in which action can have unintended consequences. Through a rhetorical criticism of press releases issued by BP in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the enabling and constraining features of crisis management are presented.
Myth Interprets the Bandung Conference: The Black Press’ Narrative of the Other World • Jinx Broussard, LSU; Ben LaPoe, LSU • This article examines African-American foreign reporting and interpretation of the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in 1955. Because the black press accomplished a major milestone it its history by fielding twenty-eight correspondents overseas during World War II to provide a narrative and fashion an image of the black troops on the warfront, this paper wanted to determine whether the medium continued to cover international affairs after the war and what the narrative meant.
My Gun Dirty, My Brick Clean: Postmodern Representations of New York City in Late-Night Cinemax Series • Pietro Calautti • This paper examines the recreation of New York City as a postmodern simulacrum in two late-night series, Life on Top and Lingerie, that began broadcast on Cinemax in 2009. Looking specifically at the first seasons of each series, totaling 26 episodes together, the elements of pastiche present reconstruct a hyperreal New York, in the process imparting a tourist gaze upon the audience.
The resurrection of Yamato Damashii in the Japanese postwar memory • Jaehyeon Jeong, Temple University • An anime film Space Battleship Yamato defines the resurrection of Yamato Damashii as fundamental to the restoration of Japan. Yamato Damashii—an emperor-centered-worldview—is demonstrated through the revival of Bushido and the ritual of Mizusake. It is represented as a cultural heritage and functions as a monumental history as well as contributes to social integration. The stress on Yamato Damashii naturalizes individuals’ sacrifices and conceals the violent power of the nation-state.
The Victim and the Trickster in the Other World: Myth in CNN’s Coverage of the Rwandan Genocide • Sally Ann Cruikshank, Ohio University • This study examines coverage of the Rwandan genocide on CNN. It analyzed CNN’s coverage from the perspective of myth, using three master myths, the Other World, the Victim, and the Trickster. Evidence of all three myths was found in CNN’s coverage. CNN routinely depicted Rwanda as a dark and forbidding place, while Rwandans themselves were portrayed as Victims or the Trickster. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Islamic Awakening or Pro-Democracy Movement: How Iranian and U.S. Governments Framed the Egyptian Uprising • Esmael Esfandiary • In this paper, framing theory will be used to illustrate the frameworks through which top U.S. and Iranian leaders try to portray recent Middle Eastern revolutions, specifically in Egypt. This will show how both leaders try to define the reality within their own political narratives in order to secure their regional influence and interests for the future.
Pre-9/11 stains on Pakistan’s character: American and British newspaper coverage of the Kargil War of 1999 • Sagar Atre, Ohio University, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism • The U.S.-Pakistan alliance has always been tumultuous, especially after the death of Osama bin Laden and the drone strikes last year. This study analyzes the coverage of the Kargil War of 1999 between India and Pakistan in two American and two British newspapers and finds that the mistrust towards Pakistan was subtly present in the Western press before 9/11 and before the discovery that some Islamic fundamentalist organizations in Pakistan were active allies of Al-Qaeda.
Queer as a Football Bat: Hegemonic Gayness and Homophobic Narrative in Out Magazine’s ‘Sports Issue’ • Robert Byrd, University of Southern Mississippi • Out magazine featured a shirtless Michael Irvin on the cover of its August 2011 sports issue. The former Dallas Cowboy is clad only in leather football pads and chinos that are strategically tugged by his thumb to reveal the waistband of his briefs—not your typical sports photograph. This paper analyzes the stories and photographs from the Out sports issue to discuss the hegemonic gayness, which includes issues of masculinity and race, portrayed to the readers of a national gay and lesbian magazine.
Heteroglossia, Polyphony, and Unfinalizability: Examining a White House Press Briefing Through the Theories of Mikhail Bakhtin • Sarah Cavanah, University of Oklahoma • Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin described the ideas of heteroglossia, polyphony and unfinalizability as a response to the limitations of systematic approaches. Heteroglossia can be summarized as voices within voices, polyphony as finding truth through the expression of many voices without synthesis, and unfinalizability as the idea that utterances do not ever end. A White House press briefing is used as an opportunity to explore how these concepts appear in a non-literary communicative event.
Environmental Policy and Public Participation: How ‘Election Day’ Democracy Defines NEPA • Ritch Woffinden • The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires Federal agencies to prepare an environmental analysis that integrates the input from stakeholders impacted from major land-use proposals and emphasizes that the “public” should act as consultants in these decisions. Using critical theory the researcher examined the Colorado Roadless Rule (CRR) which exemplifies the participation of stakeholders over federal land use. Print media was used as a discursive space to understand the participation process of the CRR.
“The Kids Are Not Alright”: The Symbolic Functions of Children in Anniversary Memory of September 11 • Carrie Isard, Temple University; Carolyn Kitch, Temple University • This analysis of American journalism commemorating the September 11 attacks identifies the main themes of news narrative a decade later, focusing on one type of symbolic news character—children—through which the event’s lasting meaning was explained. Ironically, the most coherent, and therefore “useful,” memory story about September 11 emerged from the accounts of children who cannot remember the event, whereas older children with memory of their own trauma disrupted journalistic attempts at narrative closure.
The Battle for Constructing Meaning of the 2008 Korean Candlelight Protest • Wooyeol Shin, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities • This study examines how the past events were used by the three Korean conservative newspapers to influence the construction of the protesters’ identities in their news coverage of the 2008 Korean Candlelight Protest. This study found that the conservative newspaper used several past events – such as the 2002 Korean Candlelight Protest, the 2002 Presidential election, and the Roh Administration – as frames for describing the “real” identities behind the current dilemma, the 2008 Korean Candlelight Protest.
Madame C.J. Walker: Educational practice, media and culture • Loren Saxton • This analysis considers Madam C.J. Walker, a self-educated businesswoman during the early twentieth century, as an exemplar of how African Americans conceptualized and attained alternative forms of education. It will examine how newspapers, as cultural artifacts, positioned and characterized Walker as a means to construct conceptualizations of self-educational practice. Ultimately, this study finds that Walker’s coverage, as both a medium and message, produced conceptualizations of self-educational practices as political activism, social agency and entrepreneurship.
“Pure F***ing Armageddon”: Theorizing the Transgressive in Black Metal Subculture • John Sewell, Georgia state University • “This essay examines black metal, the extreme variant of heavy metal subculture associated with Satanism, church-burnings, suicide and murder. Linkages of black metal with crime are often understood by participants as denoting authenticity. Still, black metal’s transgressions are primarily symbolic. Black metal provides a realm for carnivalesque inversions, its transgressive enactments often simulacra. Delivering the abiding abiding “truth” of death itself, black metal symbolically annihilates the self, all the while providing an experience of transcendence.
Illusory Empowerment: Representations of Korean Women in Television Series, All-American Girl and Lost • Jiwoo Park, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • This paper investigates Korean female representations, Margaret Kim (Korean-American) in All-American Girl (1994) and Sun Kwon (Korean) in Lost (2004), in relation to media constructions of nationality, femininity, and family. While both are important representations of Koreans on American television, research shows that empowerment for both is illusory. This paper explores the history of Korean female representations on American TV, questions shows’ claims of authentic Korean(-American) experiences, and argues that “Koreanness” is equated with “Asianness.”
Who Are Journalists? Presentation of self on the microblog “We Are Journalists” • Michael Clay Carey, Ohio University • Using Erving Goffman’s (1959) notion of a theatrical “presentation of self” as a framework, this textual analysis explores the overarching images that emerge in the self-portrayals of journalists who blog at the Tumblr microblog “We Are Journalists.” Journalists complain about the industry and discuss their work and professional motivations on the microblog. The analysis found major themes of self-presentation that aligned closely with cultural and ideological icons common in literature on the industry.
Mutiny on the Bay: Investigating the Presentation of the Scott Olsen Police Assault on the Websites of San Francisco Bay Area Local Television Stations • Sean Leavey, Rutgers University • In the fall of 2011, the Occupy Wall Street protests emerged, becoming a global movement. In the US, the Occupy Oakland demonstrations witnessed instances of police violence, most notably in the injury of Scott Olsen, an Occupy Oakland supporter and former US Marine who was struck by a police projectile. This paper investigates the presentation of the Olsen injury, on the websites of five major local television stations in the San Francisco Bay area.
Analyzing News as Myth: An Analysis of the Basement of Horror Story • Kathryn Beardsley, Temple University • This paper assesses the way American news media narrated Linda Ann Weston’s kidnapping and torture of four cognitively-disabled adults. The paper focuses on the myth and stereotypes that journalists drew upon to explain the how and the why of the victims’ captivity. The paper argues that, although myth and stereotype were journalistically useful for quickly narrating the chaotic details of the case, they also problematically reinforced discriminatory cultural narratives about black womanhood and cognitive disability.
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