Örebro-Stanford Cross-Cultural Rhetoric Workshop Rhetoric B meets Rhetoric of Consumer Culture Led by Anders Eriksson & John Peterson April 16, 2008 WGLN.

Örebro-Stanford Cross-Cultural Rhetoric Workshop

Rhetoric B meets Rhetoric of Consumer Culture Led by Anders Eriksson & John Peterson

April 16, 2008 WGLN Workshop

EXAMPLE: Annie Leibovitz photo of Chris Rock

Al Jolson in Blackface, singing “Toot, Toot Tootsie”

• http://youtube.com/watch?v=FTSgoDATSYA&feature=related

http://www.markstevengreenfield.com/

Mark Steven Green, artist responding to Blackface

Tavis Smiley Show about BlackFace or Minstrelsy

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1919122

• EXCERPTED from Minstrel Music: The Sounds and Images of Race in Antebellum America

• Richard L. HughesIllinois State University

    • [….]  Of course, race, the most explosive issue of the antebellum period,

lay at the center of minstrelsy. Although black minstrel performers existed before and after the Civil War, most of the composers, performers, and members of the audience were white. The characters, and supposedly their dialect, appearance, and behavior, were black. Sometimes, especially in the early years, white audience members believed that they were watching black performers. As a result, playbills for minstrel shows began to include illustrations of performers with and without blackface. (see document #7) More common was the perception that white performers portraying blacks were "accurate" and that songs were "full of real Negro atmosphere."2 Despite the fact that most performers and many composers had little if any experience with either the South or slavery, minstrelsy centered on a romantic portrait of southern plantation life. The surviving images and lyrics from the thriving minstrel business reveal demeaning caricatures that reduced African Americans to childish (or inhuman) figures contented with slavery and an opportunity to, according to one song, "Sing for the White Folks, Sing!“[….]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmueller/2401596484/

“Disco is Dead” (photo from flickr)

Promotional Poster, “Saturday Night Fever” (1977)

Excerpted from “In Defence of Disco,” academic article, 1979by Richard DyerAll my life I’ve liked the wrong music. I never liked Elvis and rock ‘n’ roll; I always preferred Rosemary Clooney. And since I became a socialist, I’ve often felt virtually terrorized by the prestige of rock and folk on the Left. How could I admit to two Petula Clark LPs in the face of miners’ songs from the North East and the Rolling Stones? I recovered my nerve partially when I came to see show-biz music as a key part of gay culture, which, whatever its limitations, was a culture to defend. And I thought I’d really made it when I turned on to Tamla Motown, sweet soul sounds, disco. Chartbusters already, and I like them! Yet the prestige of folk and rock, and now punk and (rather patronizingly, I think) reggae, still holds sway. It’s not just that people whose politics I broadly share don’t like disco, they manage to imply that it is politically beyond the pale to like it. It’s against this attitude that I want to defend disco (which otherwise, of course, hardly needs any defence).

I’m going to talk mainly about disco music, but there are two preliminary points I’d like to make. The first is that disco is more than just a form of music, although certainly the music is at the heart of it. Disco is also kinds of dancing, club, fashion, film – in a word, a certain sensibility, manifest in music, clubs, and so forth, historically and culturally specific, economically, technologically, ideologically, and aesthetically determined – and worth thinking about. Second, as a sensibility in music it seems to me to encompass more than what we would perhaps strictly call disco music, and include a lot of soul, Tamla, and even the later work of mainstream and jazz artists like Peggy Lee and Johnny Mathis..[….]

Abstract of academic book review

• Abstract of Review of "Drugs and Youth Cultures: Local and Global Expressions.“Kleiman, Mark School of Public Policy and Social Research, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, US Addiction Vol 102(1), Jan 2007, pp. 167-168

• Reviews the book, Drugs and Youth Cultures: Local and Global Expressions by Philip Lalander and Mikko Salasuo (Eds.) (2005). This book uses a mix of ethnography and cultural criticism to describe youth drug cultures in the Scandinavian countries. It provides an account of the way participants in the Danish techno-culture define themselves against what they see as the sexualized, commercialized and violent disco culture. It also provides two separate but parallel accounts of backpacking and its relationship to drug use; it also provides accounts of how immigrants in Sweden and Norway adopt 'gangster' lifestyles. Three final essays provide media-critical perspectives on various Nordic drug scenes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

• Database PsycINFO ISSN 0965-2140 Electronic ISSN 1360-0443

“Wardrobe Malfunction”

Stills from the half-time show at the 2004 Super Bowl

Apologetic Jackson says 'costume reveal' went awryFCC to investigate incident at end of halftime show(CNN) --Singer Janet Jackson apologized Monday to anyone who was offended when her right breast was exposed during the halftime show Sunday at the Super Bowl."The decision to have a costume reveal at the end of my halftime show performance was made after final rehearsals," Jackson said in a statement."MTV was completely unaware of it. It was not my intention that it go as far as it did. I apologize to anyone offended -- including the audience, MTV, CBS and the NFL."MTV produced the halftime show, which was broadcast by CBS. Both had issued their own apologies.On Monday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell ordered an investigation of the incident.An estimated 140 million people were watching the show when at the end, pop star Justin Timberlake popped off part of Jackson's corset, exposing her breast.Powell told CNN he was not convinced the incident was an accident."Clearly somebody had knowledge of it. Clearly it was something that was planned by someone," he said. "She probably got what she was looking for."Jackson spokesman Stephen Huvane said the incident "was a malfunction of the wardrobe; it was not intentional. ... He was supposed to pull away the bustier and leave the red-lace bra."[….]Powell said MTV and the CBS network's more than 200 affiliates and company-owned stations could be fined $27,500 apiece."I think it's all of their problem," he said. "The law allows you to reach many of the different parties." He said he would like to see the enforcement penalties strengthened to 10 times their current amount."We all as a society have a responsibility as to what the images and messages our children hear when they're likely to be watching television," he said."I don't think that's being moralistic, and I don't think that's government trying to tell people how to run their businesses. I don't think you need to be a lawyer to understand the basic concepts of common decency here.“[….] Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/02/02/superbowl.jackson    SAVE THIS | EMAIL THIS | Close   Check the box to include the list of links referenced in the article.   © 2008 Cable News Network

Excerpt from Brigham Young University Law Review Article on FCC Ruling Regarding Indecency of “Wardrobe Malfunction”

• The Law and Economics of Wardrobe Malfunction • by Keith Brown and Adam Candeub*

BIO: * Keith Brown is an economist at the Center for Naval StudiesAdam Candeub is an Assistant Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law

•TEXT [*1463]  I. IntroductionMichael Powell, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2001 to 2005, will likely be most remembered for his controversial indecency enforcement actions against Howard Stern's radio show and Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction." n1 This legacy is probably deserved. In addition to these high-profile enforcement actions, Michael Powell imposed a higher total fine amount in 2004 for broadcast indecency than the amount imposed during the previous ten years combined. N2

Many have alleged that Powell's enforcement actions were politically motivated stunts made on behalf of powerful special interests. n3 Some have argued that the enforcement actions have had a chilling effect on free speech in broadcasting. n4 A few have even maintained that the FCC has used its licensure power to discourage owners of television and radio stations from challenging its indecency  [*1464]  actions in court n5 - a Byzantine maneuver that allows congressmen and FCC Commissioners to continue using the indecency enforcement publicity that courts might otherwise stop.

The FCC's enforcement process itself creates these problems and suspicions. First, because the FCC does not monitor the airwaves but instead relies upon citizen complaints to initiate enforcement, n6 particular interest groups can dominate enforcement even though indecency regulations are supposed to reflect "contemporary community standards." n7 According to a recent FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, 99.9% of indecency complaints in 2003 were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group with  [*1465]  links to conservative political and religious organizations. n8 As this Article demonstrates, increases in the number of FCC indecency actions have almost always been in response to political pressures emanating from interest groups[….]

Abstract from academic journal

• Abstract This study provides a select thick reading of how the moral contagion that followed the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during the broadcast of the 2004 Super Bowl moved into the commercial realm. It is framed by an assessment of how the Super Bowl was “super-cooled” by the “moral panic” that followed the Jackson incident. Super Bowl commercials, usually “celebrated” in postmortems of the broadcast, came under closer moral interrogation. To understand the cultural fallout and “cooled environment” that ensued, a critical approach that blends concerns over “communicative dirt,” the characterized reader, and ethical criticism is used in the analysis of four commercials that were “banned” from the 2005 Super Bowl broadcast. Conclusions focus on dynamics of moral contagion in the Jackson incident and its likely impact on moral contours of the public sphere in light of changed notions of “banned” texts in the internet era and selectivity in processes that lead to cooling.

Super-Cooled Sports Dirt: Moral Contagion and Super Bowl Commercials in the Shadows of Janet Jackson, Wenner, Lawrence A. , Loyola Marymount University , Television & New Media, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 131-154, May 2008 ISSN 1527-4764, Database Communication Studies: A SAGE Full-Text Collection

YouTube clip, “Malfunction”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5RZ4oIsusQ&NR=1

http://www.flickr.com/photos/caroline_bonarde/542366074/

Justin Timberlake, photo from flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yyzphoto/246067118/

Janet Jackson, photo from flickr