man with a movie camera / i-be area

Game, narrative, database

Game studies
the study of games is now an academic discipline, asserting an
identity as a field of endeavor separate from media studies.
Raessens argues that with the rise of computer games, culture
undergoes a "ludification" where identities are formed by play.
Games are as important to understand as film, television, and
for some demographics their influence (particularly on notions
of self) may be greater than traditional media.
Ludology vs narratology
in studying computer games, researchers have operated from
two competing paradigms--those who study games as a form of
play (ludology) and those who study games as a form of
storytelling (narratology).
Raessens argues that it is possible to study games integrating
these approaches.

Narrative
as you know stories have a beginning, middle, and an end.
Most Hollywood films, and many plays follow a three-act
structure.
Most narratologists argue that all stories follow a sequence or
structure.
Narrative is an elaboration of cause and effect.
LUDOLOGY--studies the elements and dyamics of play within a
game structure
1. Narrative begins with a setting of
the scene and introduction of
characters in an initial situation, a
state of relative equilibrium.
2. It then proceeds to a disruption of
this equilibrium, with the
emergence of some sort of catalyst.
(antagonist)
3. An exploration of the causes,
implications or consequences
follows. Various attempts at
resolution build toward a climax, a
high point of tension, bringing
revelation or catharsis.
4. It ends with a resolution in a new
state of relative equilibrium.





Plot vs Story
Plot are the details that the (film, book, novel, play, game) gives
you about the story. Plot describes everything presented to us. Story
is what the view/user/reader creates out of the plot. Story is the
viewer's imaginary construction of all events in the narrative.
The total world of the story action is called diegesis. Includes
events presumed to have occurred as well as those depicted.





Narration is the plot’s way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects. The moment-by-moment process that guides our in building the story out of plot, involving the range and depth of story information.

In Birth of a Nation, the narration is unrestricted: we know more and see more than the characters in the film. In Singin’ we know unlike the characters that the Jazz Singer signals the onset of the era of the talkies. We also know that Cathy is at the same party as Don even though neither of them knows. Suspence is created by the revealing of this fact to the both of them. Akin to third person, omniscient narration in novels.

In films that are narrated via a voice over of one of the lead characters, we tend to know only as much as the lead character. This kind of narration is restricted. Akin to writing in the first-person in a novel.

Further increases when the point of view shot is taken from the perspective of the narrator, or if we hear sounds from his or her perspective. Perceptual subjectivity.

When we hear the character’s thoughts, an internal voice that different from the outward narration that frames the shot, this is mental subjectivity. Can also be accomplished through dream, hallucinations, fantasy sequences. 8 ½ is a prime example of this. Though one can argue that through this plethora of depicting the subjectivity of the director, we get to objectively view him, much more so in a film that might deploy an unrestricted narration with the guise of an objective camera.


Dziga-Vertov—Man With a Movie Camera could also be called Woman with Editing Equipment working with the database of footage

Always already the making of the itself.

Kino-eye
Vertov wrote "I am kino-eye, I am mechanical eye, I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it." And he boldly asserted: "My path leads to the creation of a fresh perception of the world I decipher in a new way a world unknown to you."

The camera is superior to the human eye and it reveals the world and its details to us.

(Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious”)

But also the camera fuses with the human become a cyborg hybrid long before Donna Haraway wrote The Cyborg Manifesto.

The db is a structured collection of data (that does not at least overtly tell a story)

All film is db; film are shot out of order according to production schedule not screenplay; editor assembles it into a narrative

The algorithm—the creation of a narrative in a computer/video game
Dziga-Vertov uses an algorithm to lace together MWAMC—it does not follow traditional narrative logic

The db logic is pervasive in new media—reverses the paradigm/syntagm hierarcy.

Sentences and outfits are syntagms the result of paradigmatic choices. The db makes visible the paradigm, prioritizing the pull down menu rather than the sentence

The db exists materially (or its visible) and the narrative only exists virtually in the connections or links that the user/viewer makes

Film has privileged the narrative but not necessarily in its production phase (in pre and post the demands of narrative are privileged and then reconstituted). It exists at the intersection between database and narrative
MWAMC is “perhaps the most important example of a db imagination in modern media art.”
We see the editing room with the shots organized in shelves, according to no visible hierarchy.
Three levels:
the sequences of a cameraman shooting film
the audience watching the finished film
the film itself, consists of footage shot by Dziga-Vertov and edited by his wife—shot in three places but meant to to portray the progression of a single day in a single location.

Crowdsourcing, user-generated content

Final

COM203 Fall 2012

FINAL ESSAY – Due 18 December 5pm

Answer one question in a full essay of at least two typed pages. Use quotations from your reading; cite all sources, use MLA style. If you plagiarize, you fail. Requirements: Double space, using 12 pt type and Times New Roman, one inch margins. Your grade goes down one full grade if your essay is shorter than requested. Hand in to my mailbox in the Media Culture office.  No email attachments. Remember you cannot successfully answer these questions by repeating my lecture notes; you must know the readings well.

1 Discuss the importance of narrative, play, meta-communication, and gender identity in videogames. Refer to all of our reading about play and game theory (Caillois, Bateson, Burrill, McGonigal).

2. Discuss the usefulness of the term “convergence culture” to describe the contemporary mediascape. What does Henry Jenkins mean by this term? What does he mean by the black box fallacy? Relatedly, what do the terms “transmedia storytelling” and “remediation” mean? Apply these terms to discuss a particular example of contemporary media.

Exra credit: In no more than one page explain Umberto Eco’s theory of “how culture conditions the colors we see”?

convengence etc

googlezon




Convergence Culture: "Welcome to c c, where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways." (2)

vs divergence

Henry Jenkins at Google

joshua green

Remediation--new media consists of the recontextualization of old, or already-existing media. The constant remix of older media; think of the use of sampling in music--contemporary music recorded digitally relies upon older analog recordings in order to provide it with relevance, to refer back but at the same time to make it sound contemporary.

http://www.technorhetoric.net/6.1/reviews/blakesley/glossary.html
paul miller aka dj spooky the sublimal kid


transmedia storytelling--a narrative that moves across different forms of media (matrix comic books, movies, fan fiction) see http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html


"Bricks and mortar still matter" the physical realm, one's actual place in a territory.

bricks and mortar vs clicks and mortar

a business that has a physical presence (a store you go to) vs a store like Amazon. com that you can only visit virtually.


Black box fallacy--all of media is not going to be obtained from one central device.
see http://chrisstephenson.typepad.com/chrisstephenson/2007/04/the_black_box_f.html


user generated content

crowd-sourcing


lev manovich


the man with a movie camera


ryan trecartin

http://psych.hanover.edu/krantz/art/figure.html

http://www.psychologie.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/figure_ground.html

goffman and play

Performance and Erving Goffman—

1. The distinction of two modes of communication - expressions we give and expressions we give off.

The expressions we give is the concretely intended and conscious form of expression, as epitomized by verbal communications using language. Expressions we give off is the non-verbal, presumably unintentional, form of communication that is not concretely expressed in speech but nevertheless have efficacy in communicating, consciously or unconsciously, some things about the person expressing it. It is important to keep in mind that, while expressions we give is always intentional, expressions we give off does not necessarily have to be unintentional in turn and, in fact, people are capable of manipulating them as well. 

We present a social Front that is related to our job, our caste, our gender, our social class

First there is the setting

Then there is the personal front divided into appearance and behavior

The effective front is one that has coherence, a unity of appearance, behavior, and setting so that the meaning of the performance is clear. Goffman uses the example of the Mandarin in the Chinese city

Yet eh front is also “a collective representation” and when a social actor takes on a role “the front has already been established for it.”

Social fronts are employed in hospital in keeping of the ranks between drs, nurse, anaestologists, etc, especially quite often the tasks involved are overlapping. Social fronts reassert the credentialism of the larger culture. We perform our advanced degrees as well as our social inheritances.

Dylan uses the setting of the hotel room to perform his role as petulant artist; Kennedy uses the meeting hall to perform the incoming President. A role he redefines and uses his telegenics to extend his image.

Dramatic realization

Example of the baseball umpire. He will emphatically call a strike even though there may be a moment in which he discerned if it was a strike or a ball. Violonist, prize fighters, and others whose work is in public are given to dramatic realization making sure that their tasks are visible, readable. But it “involves more than merely make invisible costs visible.” Favors expression over action.

We all know people who do little work but call attention to how hard they are working—they make a show of it. Projecting competency rather than inhabiting it.

Idealization

Performance “will tend to incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of the society.”

A performance highlights the common official values of the society – and in this, has aspects of ceremony. That of Brahmins in India who has obligations to show grace and purety (but gamble and drink privately). WASPs at debutante balls or auction houses versus at a family dinner.

p.38—Goffman argues “the ignorant, shiftless, happy go-lucky manner” of blacks in the South is a put on, used in interactions with whites.

But Goffman fails to see “whiteness as performance”

Similarly he is quick to point out the american college girl “play down their intelligence” when in the presence of datable boys. But does not see the idealized beformance deployed by college boys that plays up their intelligence or athleticism. That is the male gender performance is unmarked just as white cultural performance is unmarked by Goffman.

He also sees the beggar begging (what we now call homeless) as a public performance of abjection but the “scenes that beggars stage seem to have declined in dramatic merit.” Surely these performances of destitution in U.S. cities has intensified.

Maintenance of Expressive Control

Example he uses

Minimal unmeant gestures or verbal gaffes that are inconsistent with the social front

A false front is also possible through Misrepresentation—an unauthorized performance, a masquerade.

Certain kinds of drag performance reveal themselves as drag; others atttempt realness

There are gradations of misreprentations. And as in the law, intent matters.

For Goffman” to be a given kind of person, then, is not merely to possess the required attributes, but also to sustain the standards of conduct and appearance that one’s social grouping attaches thereto.” A status “is a pattern of appropriate conduct, coherence,, embellished, and well articulated.” Its not a material thing.

Caillois

With bataille, and othes started college de sociologie, (leiris was part of this) wayward social scientist influenced by surrealist movement—but had broke with it in part because the surrealist lauded the individual not the collective—interested in the sacred, the sacrilege, ritual.

Agon—the debate between antagonist and protagonist posed before the chorus, contest. Important for the Nietzschean left—the contestation of ideas as generative. Crista Acompora

Alea—aleatory (structuring chance in the creative process) from latin word for dice

Ilinx—vertigo, perception-changing, urge toward disequilibrium, a voluptuous panic

From Greek word for whirlpool. The joy/risk in losing balance. Suspension of inevitability

Mimicry—imaginative role-play, make-believe (as if). Examples remarkably include insects. “inspire fear in others”

Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia—camouflaging, chameleon-like behavior; phobias, obsessions, compulsions, or excessive anxiety.

Of Mimicry and Man-- Homi Bhaba—the menace of colonial mimicry; its threat (and imbedded hostility) to the colonial endeavor to have the native imitate the ruler.

Children imitating adults (repeating their words)

Jean Rouch Les Maitres Fous

Paris is Burning—

Mimicry and Ilinx rely upn distinctive performances of the body in their execution. Agon relies upon distinctive training; virtuosity, strength, strategy. Alea perhaps a separation from the event, a faith in its outcome.

Paidia to ludus—games placed on a continuum from chaos to order, from improvisation to rules, from impulse to calculation, uncontrollable fantasy to discipline. From throwing rocks to baseball.

Cf the distinction between regulative and constitutive in Searle’s speech act theory—though he is referring to events in language he uses examples from sport/games –american football/chess are constitutive—the rules create the game vs regulative where the rules regulate behavor that pre-exists ie eating—every human being that can eats but regulative rules govern the process (use of various cutlery, hands, etc) or driving a car where the legal rules, signaling, stopping, are regulative.

My favorite line: on kite-flying—“the player accomplishes a kind of auscultation upon the sky from afar.” Auscultation is form of diagnosis that involves listening to the organs of the body—didn’t think of kite flying in that way more about the proximal and the distal—a distance conquering – but the idea of projecting presence is there.

For Caillois certain combinations of agon alea ilinx and mimicry are possible :

Horse racing—for the jockeys (and the horses) there is agon

As part of the spectacle, the audience simulates behavior; for the better there is alea (if not also agon, related to betting and horses/jockeys)

There are also forbidden relationships between the categories—vertigo (ilinx) destroys –or neuralizes-- agon (skill). So are simulation (mimicry) and alea. If one submits to alea, there is no opportunity to deceive chance by way of disguise. You come as you are.

But combinations of alea and vertigo are possible as are agon and mimicry. Games of chance can provoke elation and ecstasy (as well as misery) . Competition are always already spectacle, and by nature necessitate a form of restored behavior. This is me at a basketball game acting like everyone else there.

In play and games, agon and alea are regulated by rules; mimicry and ilinx enlist improvisation, which is not subjugated to regulation.

In agon, the player relies on will, in alea she renounces it. In mimicry the awareness of make-believe is presupposed, while vertigo erases awareness.

(however in possession like and ecstatic states vertigo and mimicry is on the level of the unconscious. For caillois it is in the realm of the sacred.

The pursuit of chance and vertigo is not generative, creating nothing that can be developed.

Agon and alea, which can be seen as opposite (the latter dependent upon fate/beyond the self, the former dependent upon skill and determination hence the self) combination favors one.

Similarly in mimicry and ilinx—even as mimicry involves expertise and rehearsal and ilinx privileges spontaneity  and submission, they combine—in artmaking. Games of simulation lead to the arts of the spectacle. Energized by vertigo. But the status/myth of the  troubled artist is perhaps related to the countervailing forces of ecstasy and anxiety embedded in the taxonomy of play.

Playing and reality winnicott cf freud fort/da

A theory of play and fantasy – Bateson --- the playful nip denotes the bite, but it does not denote that which is denoted by the bite.”

Dogs etc, spin the bottle,

Play enframes, spatially, creates zones of generative activity where statements are paradoxical  and metacommunicative, and neither true nor false, but govern the activity within the frame.

Jenkins—narratology vs ludology

Game designers create spaces not stories. They are narrative architects:

1.     not all game tell stories

2.     some games aspires to narrative

3.     narrative analysis is not prescriptive (it doesn’t redesign the game)

4.     experience is not reducible to story

narratologist don’t suffer from “cinema envy”  if there are stories, those stories illustrate and define the contours of the space itself.

Games fit into a tradition of spatial stories—hero’s odysseys, quest myths, travel narratives, picareques, science fiction, stories that eschew character development and are pre-occupied with world-making.

Voyage to Purilia—Elmer Rice

Suggesting that games in terms of narrativity in space may owe more to the subgenres of the novel than to film

“Environmental storytelling creates the preconditions for an immersive narrative experience in at least four ways”

1.     spatial stories evoke pre-existing narrative associations

2.     provide a staging ground for narrative

3.     embed narrative information within mise-en-scene

4.     provide resources for emergent narratives

But spatial stories are held together be a telos. By a destination and a sense of progression. If gaming involves mapping, it also involves journey.

Accordian structures—some moment/places offer possibilities for expansion, others are restricted

Distinction between plot and story. The story can involve a past of characters.

McKenzie—Jenkins middle ground is slanted toward narratology – it emphasizes story and game stories as disctinct (though he uses film and literature) rather than an emphasis upon event or experience (or player performance)

Juul Game Time

There is the time that it takes to play the game -- playtime

There is the experience of time within the game – gametime.

Further there is event-time –the time of events happening in the game world in realtime games.

To play a game is to interact with the game state. The game state is the state of the game at the given time.

To play a game is to create maps (ie space) by way of the relationship between playtime (the duration of playing a game)  and event time. Mapping is a projection onto the game world. “the process of claiming that what the player does is also something in event-time; a projection of the play-time onto event-time.”

One acts in an actual world and a fictive world simultaneously but temporally in two different realms. This activity creates space.

Analogy plot/story  the player not the designer creates space; by way of mapping which is the relationship between two temporal realities. The interaction of temporal realities is that which gives the game dimensionality; it is that which provides depth to flat surfaces.

Flow is mental state of enjoyment when immersed in an activity, which also creates the experience of subjective time.

Hours condense; minutes become elastic

Cc Williams, and broadcasting

In a game a state of flow is related to difficulty and virtuosity, and progression avoiding repetition and frustration (Juul, suggested that frustration can also be motivating)

Play as Communication
PLAY / FRAME
what is true here
----------------
\ is not true \
\ here \
\ \
----------------
play / fantasy
through play and fantasy, the child gains an identity. by
pretending to be another, one learns how to become one's self.
through fantasy, one begins to define reality. the playground is
a laboratory of self-exploration. games are serious work.

play is
a concept and a word in all languages--Huizanga.
the concept's diverse significations are usually covered by two
or more distinct terms. In English, we have play, game,
contest--each term contesting for primacy in our lexicon.
What are the various meanings signified by the word "play"?

Homo Ludens
Huizinga asserted that the human is a playing animal and that
play is a universal feature of how human beings express and
communicate. Huizinga: " Play is a thing by itself. The playconcept
as such is of a higher order than seriousness. For
seriousness seeks to exclude play, whereas play can very well
include seriousness."
Play is serious business as well as frivolity. Seriousness is
always stern. The work of play is always communicative.
Children remember this; adults forget.
Huizinga privileged the ludic (playfulness) impulse. Almost as if
it is encoded in our DNA.

All statements within this frame
are untrue.
I love you
I hate you

-------------------------
\ ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN \
\ THIS FRAME ARE UNTRUE \
\ I LOVE YOU \
\ I HATE YOU \
--------------------------
play/not play
this is play
this is a map--an actor in love on the stage lies and tells the true in the same moment.
play creates a frame around
itself--it defines space--it creates its own map, distinct from the territory
this is not play
this is a territory




the nip vs the bite
Bateson;"The playful nip denotes the bite but it does not denote
what would be denoted by the bite."
thus in play if A = B and B = C, it does not mean that A = C. the
playful nip is not the same as the bite, even though they share
a signification. in play, a simulated punch at the schoolyard is
not a real punch.

A frame is metacommunicative. It
is communication about
communication. What is true
inside the frame may not be true
outside it. A message within a
frame gives the receiver
instructions on how to act within
the frame.




frames
Every communicative message
defines the set of messages
about which it communicates --
Bateson



figure/ground
the ground is as important as
the
figure.

Caillois

Ludus (structured) to paidia (loose spontaneous)

Caillois argues that we may understand the complexity of games by referring to four play forms and two types of play. The four forms are:

• Agon, or competition. E.g. Chess is an almost purely agon game.
• Alea, or chance. E.g. Playing a slot machine is an almost purely alea game.
• Mimicry, or mimesis, or role playing. acting
• Ilinx (Greek for "whirlpool"), or vertigo, in the sense of altering perception. E.g. taking hallucinogens, riding roller coasters, children spinning until they fall down

Paper on Paris is Burning

Due 4 December

Describe and analyze how the film Paris is Burning foregrounds issues of race and gender. Use the term "representation" as defined by Stuart Hall. Refer to Judith Butler's theories of gender performance. At least two pages.

Take the time to meet with Brian before you hand in the final version of the paper. Remember it is required for each student to meet with Brian during the semester.

Kilts/Drag

Gender

GENDER

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm


The distinction between the sexes is significant in
Jacques Lacan's theory, though not in the same way it is in
Freud's. This is what Lacan talks about in "The Agency
of the Letter in the Unconscious," on p. 186. He has
two drawings there. One is of the word "Tree" over a
picture of a tree (187)--the basic Saussurean concept, of
signifier (word) over signified (object). Then he has
another drawing, of two identical doors (the
signifieds) (188). But over each door is a different word:
one says "Ladies" and the other says "Gentlemen."
Lacan explains, on p. 191:


"A train arrives at a station. A little boy and a
little girl, brother and sister, are seated in a
compartment face to face next to the window through
which the buildings along the station platform can be
seen passing as the train pulls to a stop. 'Look,'
says the brother, 'We're at Ladies!' 'Idiot!' replies
his sister, 'Can't you see we're at Gentlemen.'"


This anecdote shows how boys and girls enter the
Symbolic order, the structure of language,
differently.

In Lacan's view, each child can only see the signifier
of the other gender; each child constructs its world
view, its understanding of the relation between sfr
and sfd in naming locations, as the consequence of
seeing an "other." As Lacan puts it (742), "For these
children, Ladies and Gentlemen will be henceforth two
countries toward which each of their souls will strive
on divergent wings..."

Each child, each gender, has a
particular position within the Symbolic order; from
that position, each gender can only see (or signify) the
otherness of the other sex. You might take Lacan's
drawing of the two doors literally: these are the
doors, with their gender distinctions, through which
each child must pass in order to enter into the
Symbolic realm.

Men and clothing and gender difference

(Joan Riviere Femininity as Masquerade
Gender Trouble Judith Butler)

Story of Narcissus and Echo (ad of Echo cologne)

The new man of the 90s. well groomed. Into himself.
A sex object. And loving it.

Today’s metrosexual

Selling health and beauty aid products w/out challenging assumptions of masculinity and legimitzing male on male looking.

Plural masculinities
--defined by era
-class
-race
-age
middle class masculinity vs. working class.
In terms of clothing, speech, movement

Masculinity is a necessary fiction. A story that gets retold. That relies on its opposite femininity for organization (its other)

Assertive power versus self-absorption vs. passive sexualization

Styles of the new man

Street style—related to color, light black male (in England)
Tough, but indulgent

Italian American
White but dark complected. Adorned, unshaven, well-dressed gangster

Conservative Englishness (in American terms POlO-y

Tommy Hilfinger attempt was to related street style with Conservative style





VISUAL PLEASURE—

Mulvey etc.

Subjectivization

Being looked at as defining self

Desire to look

Desire to be looked at (w/desire)


Identification—desire to be(come) the other person. (replacing person—hint at violence in such a construction)
Vs. desire to have the person—object choice—as sexual yearning

Scopophilia—pleasure (sexual) in looking

Narcissism—relectance to “graduate” to object choice, reversion to (image) of the self

Spectatorship—techniques of looking

Farm Security Administration Photography of the Depression

gordon parks

walker evans

walker evans

dorothea lang

Dorothea Lang

gordon parks

dorothea lange

Robert Hemmig

Representational Paradigm --representing the social

Dominant Representational Paradigm
Representing the Social

paradigm--according to Thomas Kuhn (not Saussure) -- in science theories, practices, training methods, and professional organization cluster together forming a Paradigm. Paradigms "offer a complete system whose elements define the very structure and content" of knowledge.

A paradigm contains a world view--"set of statements which define its subject-matter, lay out what constitutes the role of the scientist, and at the same time offer scientists working within the paradigm interesting puzzles about the natural world to be solved" (Hall 78). [cf Foucault's notion of discursive formations]

Paradigm-shifts occur when no new puzzles to solves, anomalies arise that can't be answered by using the theoretical basis of the paradigm, and a new group of emerging researchers emerge. "Familiar things" can be then seen "in revolutionary ways" (e.g. the linguistic shift in humanities research sparked by Saussure prompted a new paradigmatic way of looking at communications)

In the essay “Representing the Social” on French postwar photography (in the Hall book), the author Peter Hamilton uses the term “dominant representational paradigm.”He uses the term to define a shared “photographic approach” that “offers a certain vision of the people and events that it documents” (76).The author suggests that there are six elements to French photojournalism of this period (universality, historicity; quotidienality, empathy, commonality, monochromacity). He also discerns 10 themes (the street, children/play, the family, love/lovers, Paris, clochards [homeless people], fairs and celebrations, bistrots [popular restaurants], housing, work/craft).

http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/archives/003154.html


http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/archives/StreetphotogrpahyDoisneau.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sauer-thompson.com/junkforcode/archives/003154.html&usg=__Cehj-WOPs0ztD_ZM9ws9hjuHDBI=&h=550&w=496&sz=30&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=lQ1m9uAcOFMqtM:&tbnh=133&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3DRobert%2BDoisneau%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=610&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=Robert+Doisneau&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://helenafrithpowell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/henri-cartier-bresson13.jpg

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=1280&bih=610&q=cartier-bresson&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g4&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

com/images?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=610&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=willy+ronis&aq=f&aqi=g4&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/cartier_bresson/images/boy.jpg

http://tingkelly.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/artwork_images_424175658_232693_henri-cartier-bresson.jpg

dorothea lange
walker evans
carl mydans
arnold eagle


James Van Der Zee
Gordon Parks

Roy DeCarava

Carl Van Vechten

Cultural Studies Birmingham School

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Representation/Stuart Hall/Birmingham School

General introduction on the centrality of representation to Cultural Studies, and the connection between global culture and representation.

I. Representation
An Old View (which Stuart Hall will subvert): Representation as re–presenting
Represent is defined as “present” or “depicted.”
Re–present means “there already,” and presented through the media. Media re–present—this notion suggests the idea of media giving meaning
For example, political figures represent us, or stands in for us
Still there is a “gap of representation”: the difference is between “true” meaning and how that “true” meaning is represented

Reflective approach
Intentional approach

Contructionist approach


A New View: Representation as constitutive
Question: “Do events in the world have one essential, fixed, true meaning? Or, are events distorted in some way that we can measure?” Meaning here includes an events history and context, as well as expectations for the future.
For example, there will never be one interpretation of Northern Ireland—there is no “true,” fixed, single meaning for the meaning of the events surrounding Northern Ireland.
What is the “true” meaning of something depends on what people make of it.
There is no real meaning until something has been represented and the representation is different with each audience (each listener).
The process of re–presentation enters into the event itself, and helps constitute it.
Representation is part of the object—is constitutive of it.

Culture as Primacy


Culture is the way we make sense of or give meaning to things.
How do meanings constitute the events of experience?
If we shared no concepts with others we could not build a social world.
Cultures consist of maps of meaning. They are frameworks of intelligibility, things that allow us to make sense of our experience and a world that is ambiguous until we make meaning of it. So Culture is ways of making meaning without which we would find the world unintelligible.
(Culture is not just the values we were born into?)

Conceptual Maps—are a matter of classifying the world—they are the basis of culture (shared conceptual maps).
How are things and experiences classified and conceptualized differently? Example: “chair” belongs to category because similar to other chairs, but also different—this is complex.
“The capacity to classify is a basic genetic fact of being human.”
The particular system of classification used in society is a learned behavior
To become human is to internalize the shared conceptual maps of one’s culture. Culture, then, is a system of representations, part of our shared maps.
Concepts allow us to store, refer to and think about objects not “out there” in the world or not available to our senses any longer.
Concepts are not just mirror images of what is out there but are interpreted through who we are as an individual in society.


Language and Communication—Suppose we share the same conceptual maps and have the same systems in our head—how do we know we share these meanings? We can only know if we confirm it through communication through language.
Communication and language complete the circle of representation.
1. Shared conceptual maps (=cultures)
2. The way different languages (digital, music, nonverbal/gestures, or any sign/symbol “system”) gives sign to the meanings we share, in a form to communicate
Language externalizes the meanings and makes them available and accessible (which closes the circle of representation).

Reality and Discourse


Discourse and Foucault
Group of statements which provide a language for talking about – a way of representing the knowledge about – a particular topic at a particular historical moment.

Discourse is exclusionary and generative. It defines spaces and the ways in which these spaces are discussed. Relate to academic and professional realities.

Discursive formation.
Knowledge/power. Power as circulatory not as static object.
Regimes of truth. As opposed to absolute truth.

Question: Does this mean there is no existence outside of language?
Answer: No. There are lots of “things” besides meaning.
Consider two statements, which sound the same but are very different:
1. Nothing meaningful exists outside of discourse (T)
2. Nothing exists outside of discourse—there are no objects outside of discourse (F).
As far as meaning is concerned, you/we need discourse to make meaningful sense of it.
Ex: A football only exists within a set of rules of a game. The football as object is meaningful only within a specific (language) game.
The question of discourse and framework of intelligibility is about people giving meaning to things.
If meaning is constitutive then you have absorbed the whole world into language. Without language meaning could not be exchanged. Language in the broadest sense includes the different media and other sign/symbol systems.


IDEOLOGY—Foucault’s critique—marxist assumption that prevailing ideas reflect the economic base and the ruling class. For Foucault power/knowledge formations are contested and in flux, and don’t correspond to class interests in simple ways.

HEGEMONY—Gramsci notion that particular social groups struggle in many different ways, including ideologically, to win the consent of other groups and achieve a kind of ascendancy in both thought and practice over them. Hegemony assumes both contestation as well as dominance.

II. IV Ideology and Power Fixes Meaning
Does that mean that meanings are just floating around, that everything means a 1,000 different things? You get a proliferation of meaning—jouissance—an excess—to the pleasure of the image. Yes and no. The meaning can never be fixed, but if you want to say, even provisionally, “I sort of think it means this,” you have fixed it. You have privileged the meaning (given privilege to a certain meaning) for the time being, but not forever.
Meaning depends on a certain kind of fixing (using power). On the other hand, meaning can never be fixed permanently. We are looking at a practice, which is always subverted. The purpose of power when it intervenes in language is precisely to absolutely fix an interpretation. That what we used to call ideology does to meaning: I can tell you what the meeting in Northern Ireland means . . . .” Ideology means to fix meanings.
Power and ideology attempts to fix the meaning
of images and language

Because the fixing of meaning cannot be guaranteed it can be unfixed, it can be loosened and fray.

The relative openness of the meaning makes change possible.
This is a postmodern playfulness, which insists on a relative openness for meaning.
Meaning can only be changed because it cannot be finally fixed.
You bet your life. The attempt to fix meaning is why power intervenes in representations at all. That is what THEY want it to do. They want the relationship between the image and a powerful definition of it to become naturalized. So that that meaning is the only one it can possibly have. When you see the image you will assume a certain meaning, certain characteristics, you will assume certain political consequences: black man = violent = criminal = barbaric.
That is what ideology tries to do, that is what power in signification is intended to do—to close the interpretation of language, to close meaning, to stop the flow of meaning.

Contesting Stereotypes: Positive Images
There is an enormous amount of work to be done in media studies in the area of stereotyping.

Stereotyping fixes the meanings that are given to groups.
Every time you see this image (of a Blackman), these are the limited range of characteristics, which will be assumed and be implicated in the image. That is how a stereotype works. People have assumed what this is doing. Actually, it is a powerful way of circulating in the world a very limited range of definitions of who people can be, what they can do, the possibilities in life—these are the nature of the constraints on them.
The limited images of Black men affect how the society perceives Black men in the “real world.”
Images produce knowledge about the world. The image (text) is producing, not only identification, it is producing knowledge–what we know about the world is how re–represent it.
So the struggle to open up stereotypes is the struggle to increase the diversity of things—what subjects (people) can be—of the possibilities and identities, which people have not seen, represented before.
Converting stereotypes means increasing the diversity of images in the media [and outside the media].
Diversity opens up new possibilities of identity.

The Politics of the Image.
As you may know, there have been a number of different strategies with respect to the fixing of the image by ideology and power. The most common is the positive image. You have a field of stereotypes which you try to intervene in. You intervene to re–present the negative image of the group in a more positive way, to reverse the stereotype. However, there is a problem to reversing stereotypes. If it were as simple as putting positive images (of Blacks and women) in the place where negative images were before—if you could somehow maintain a positive regime of re–presentation in place of the stereotype you had before. But our actual practice suggests to us that it is just as impossible to fix bad representations and almost impossible to fix good ones.

Contesting Stereotypes: Taking images apart.
The politics of the image has to take a very different and much less guaranteed route; it has to go inside the image, because stereotypes are actually very complex things. It has to occupy the terrain, which has been saturated by fixed and closed representations. It has to try to use the stereotype and turn the stereotype against itself. To open up the practice of representation itself, as a practice, because what closure in representation does most of all is it naturalizes the representation (hides it) so you cannot see that anybody ever produced it—this is just the way the world is, how it looks—it is what reality is.
The very act of opening the practice of representation poses questions like:
Where do images come from?
Who produces images?
How is meaning closed down in images?
Who is silenced in the production of images?
We have to go into the power of the stereotype and subvert it, open it up, and expose it from the inside. We have to shift the disposition within which is circulates. There is no way that is guaranteed—there is no guarantee the image won’t be pulled back to its stereotypical form. We have to open stereotype by integrating them and making them uninhabitable—we have to destroy their naturalness and normality.
A type of stereotype—fetishism—is a fixing of sexual imagery regarding race and gender, a feature of negative stereotyping. You have to ask if you really want to intervene or whether you want to leave the stereotype alone when it is so contaminated by stereotypical uses. Or whether you want to go in the natural fetishism itself because of the secret power it has. Stereotypes get stabilized for a reason, not just a joke, but because it has very powerful powers of identification and fantasy.
If you want to change the reality of the viewer of the image you have to intervene in the powerful exchange between the image and its psychic meaning, the depths of the fantasy—the collective and social fantasies— We invest images with in order to expose and deconstruct the work of representation which stereotypes are doing.

(Summary)

What is at stake in representation?
New knowledge, new identities, new meanings. To attempt to keep representation open is a way of constantly wanting new kinds of knowledge, new identities, and a new diversity of meanings which have not been foreclosed by the systems of power which are in operation in the world. So there is no other way of thinking than by what is represented.