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Keyword Definition

Selfies

Unfortunately these days the term selfie has been given a negative connotation. Selfies are photos that people take of themselves, usually with the intention to post on some form of social media. Many internet users, specifically an older demographic, tend to criticize selfies for being shallow, superficial, and of no useful necessity. There is often a misunderstanding that selfies are a modern invention when in truth, they have been around for centuries simply through different mediums and with different given names.

The Origin of the Selfie

It is not certain who exactly coined the term, but the Oxford Dictionary dubbed it the “Word of the Year” in 2013. Despite the term being relatively young, the concept dates back centuries. Self-portraits have existed well before iPhones and Snapchat. One could argue that the act of recording one’s own image has always been commonplace, but the medium has changed over time. However, if we are to say when the first “selfie” as we know it happened, we must thank the early photographers. A self-portrait taken by a man named Robert Cornelius is recorded as one of the first people to photograph themselves. This photo dates back as early as 1839.

Anyone familiar with Russia’s lost princess, Anastasia, would remember that she was one of the first young people to take a selfie. She even sent this photo to a friend, proving that the need to share photos with friends was common even in 1914. If one looks at the photo, they can see it is not unlike a common mirror selfie one would post to Snapchat today. If Anastasia were alive today, she would have most likely had posted that photo to a social media site.

Many have laid claim to posting the first selfie, but sources have mixed answers on this. Some say it was a group of friends in Australia, some say it was a drunk man, and Paris Hilton adamantly insists that it was her. All leads are inconclusive (Bellis).

Selfies as an Art Form

As I mentioned before, selfies are a type of self-portrait. According to an article titled Art at Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie, selfies are structurally sound and should be considered an art genre of their own. This makes sense to me, as selfies are a form of expression and more or less have a set of rules in the way that are meant to be presented. This article says that while selfies are not exactly portraits, they are very similar. The fact that they are not exact does not stop them from being their own genre. Selfies have similarities that give them a copy-able format, and an identity in the art world. They are a very present act, it is impossible for the process to be an accident. For this reason, creators know that the results will be instant and the photo will be viewed quickly by many. The act of a selfie is a performance piece, allowing others into a small fraction of our live through self-expression. There was a moment in this article that I adored basically calling selfies a “folk art” created by and for the people. Having the tunnel vision of only thinking of the present, it is hard to see how selfies contribute to the grand scheme of things. However, it is incredibly useful to have these moments of vulnerability recorded for future use. Who knows what the future could say about our culture looking back? (Saltz).

Forms of Selfies

Typically, selfies posted online have a very formulaic format. The camera is no more than an arms length away, the arm a significant feature in the photo. For many, the inclusion of the arm is what makes a picture inherently a selfie. For the most part, these types of selfies will have the subject’s face looking to the side, working with their angles. This is the generic selfie in which the subject expresses their mood, location, and whatever clothes can be seen from the top angle (normally just the torso). These will often be taken alone and be close-up enough that the main focus is the subject, but the viewer can still see where they are. Group selfies are a form of expression as well, often with the vision coming from the one asking for the photo. The intention here is to show off who the subject is with and where they are sharing this moment together. Performance selfies are selfies deliberately made to entertain and come with a wide variety of examples. From the Selfie Olympics that were made to see how wild the circumstances of the selfie could be, to the #followme movement which featured a girlfriend guiding her boyfriend through beautiful scenery, to outfits of the day in which the subject showed off their complete outfit in a mirror (Frosh).

Selfies Today and Tomorrow

Selfies have evolved over time, especially with the power to manipulate them. The shift of social medias also has a huge effect on the way they are taken. Apps such as Instagram and Snapchat made filters a very important tool for the medium. So much so that if a picture isn’t using one, the user is proud to caption it #nofilter. Since the rise of apps like Snapchat, selfies have had even more room to become art. The paint feature allows the user to draw anything they want on their pictures. Filters allow users to play around with their image and express themselves accordingly. With the recent update, Snapchat has taken a hit from their user base. Many find their favorite medium of expression is inaccessible and clunky. It will be interesting to see in real-time how this affects selfie culture in the future. Perhaps filters will become a thing of the past. Only time can tell. While the method and style of the selfie may change, its label as a genre will remain.

Works Cited

Bellis, Mary. "Who Invented the Selfie?" ThoughtCo, Jan. 30, 2018, thoughtco.com/who-invented-the-selfie-1992418.

The Gestural Image: The Selfie, Photography Theory, and ...www.bing.com/cr?IG=6638D05751FE43888716FF5AEAFE0331&CID=26CA2810247A63A533C2238B25D562E7&rd=1&h=oSfBtke7XFmEMZJC8G95vlpIUO1wM8ikqGp_YLu4574&v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2fijoc.org%2findex.php%2fijoc%2farticle%2fviewFile%2f3146%2f1388&p=DevEx,5068.1.

Saltz, Jerry . Art at Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie. 26 Jan. 2014, www.cam.usf.edu/InsideART/Inside_Art_Enhanced/Inside_Art_Enhanced_files/6D.Art_at_Arm%27s_Length_%282014_article%29.pdf.

-SA

#keyworddefinition

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Tool-Tipp: SeoTagMonster

Die passenden Keywords im Online Marketing zu finden, damit tun sich viele schwer. Dabei ist es abhängig von den Keywords, ob ein Produkt Erfolg hat - oder eben nicht. Das Problem hierbei ist, wenn man es gewohnt ist im Internet zu arbeiten, dass man ganz anders die Suchmaschinen benutzt, als jemand, der wirklich gezielt nach etwas sucht. Hier müssen wir umdenken. Aber genau das ist das Problem, was viele haben. Nach was suchen die Leute? Wie benutzen die Google und andere Suchmaschinen? Benutzen sie die Spracheingabe? Oder tippen sie auf die alte herkömmliche Weise? Fragen über Fragen! Es gibt wahnsinnig viele Tools im Internet, die einem die passenden Schlagwörter ausspucken. Doch diese sind meist sehr teuer und haben viele Funktionen, die man vielleicht gar nicht unbedingt braucht. Meinen Beitrag hier beziehe ich auf das Kindl- Business. Denn wie in jedem anderen Business, das im Internet stattfindet, sind auch hier die Keywords von unheimlicher Bedeutung. Ohne passende Schlagwörter lässt sich auch das beste Buch nicht verkaufen. Wenn man es ganz nüchtern betrachtet, sind der Inhalt und das Cover nur zweitrangig. Ausschlaggebend für den Erfolg eines Buches sind in der Tat die Keywords. Kann man versuchen, die passenden Keywords selbst zu finden, immer wieder neue auszuprobieren und zum Schluss entscheiden, welche denn davon funktionieren - und welche nicht. Es gibt aber auch noch eine Abkürzung. Ich selbst nutze für meine Kindl Bücher ein Tool namens SeoTagMonster. Dieses Tool zeigt mir alle relevanten Schlagwörter an, mit denen ich meine Bücher taggen kann. Bevor ich aber weiter das Tool eingehe, muss ich noch dazu sagen, dass man es nur nutzen kann, wenn man eigene WordPress Installation hat. Denn das SeoTagMonster ist eigentlich dazu konzipiert, Keywords für einen Blog zu finden. Doch warum das Tool nicht für seine eigenen Zwecke nutzen? Das SeoTagMonster sucht die passenden Keywords zu meinem Stichwort heraus. Dabei bedient es sich nicht alleine an Google, sondern auch an Bing, YouTube und Amazon. Somit bekomme ich die allerbesten Schlagwörter heraus, nach denen häufig gesucht wird. Diese kann ich mir dann wiederum in meinem Beitrag kopieren und von dort aus dann nach Amazon Kindle. Natürlich ist das ein kleiner Umweg, aber für einmalig 39 € kann man dies gern in Kauf nehmen. Man kann es als Vor- oder auch Nachteil sehen, dass hier zu den Suchergebnissen keine Zahlen stehen. Sprich, du wirst nicht sehen, wie viele Personen nach einem bestimmten Keyword suchen. Hier ist dann selbst Mitdenken gefragt. Aber ich denke, das sollte nicht schwerfallen, denn du weißt schließlich am besten, was dein Buch beinhaltet.   Ich nutze das Tool inzwischen seit eineinhalb Monaten und kann eine Steigerung meiner Verkäufe sehen. Bei Büchern, die ich nicht auf Keywords optimiert haben, finden nahezu keine Verkäufe statt. Bei jenen Büchern aber, bei denen ich das SeoTagMonster im Einsatz habe, kann ich eine zunehmende Steigerung der Verkäufe sehen. Aus diesem Grund kann ich wärmstens empfehlen, weil es wirklich deine Arbeit erleichtert und du den Einsatz recht schnell wieder rein hast (bei mir war es nicht einmal ein halber Tag).   Wer mehr über das SeoTagMonster erfahren möchte, der sollte einmal auf den nachfolgenden Link anklicken. (Wie bereits erwähnt, es ist auf Webseiten konzipiert und darum diese Seite auch dafür ausgelegt. Ich selbst nutze es hauptsächlich für das Kindl- Business) Achtung:  Wenn man die Webseite das erste Mal besucht, gibt es einen Rabatt von 10€, das heißt, ihr bekommt das Tool für 29€. Das Angebot ist zwei Stunden gültig und läuft danach ab!  

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[makingmediameta]

Keyword Definition: Motivational Posters

Motivational Poster: an image with accompanying text intended to influence a viewer’s attitude or behavior, particularly to motivate a viewer to reach a particular level of performance or display a particular characteristic through the use of emotional appeal.

“Hang in there, baby!” 

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” 

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

Motivational posters can be seen everywhere from the classroom to the work place to your very own phone. These posters can be physical or digital, but they all display a quote (like the ones above) set against a photograph or illustration. The purpose of these posters is to influence their audience’s attitude or behavior, often to achieve a particular level of performance. Motivational posters are so ingrained into American society that certain motivational designs and quotes have undergone thousands of remakes and parodies—take for example the image of the “Hang in there, baby!” cat above which was remade in a Simpson’s episode! Yet even though motivational posters may seem cliché, they have not always been the norm, especially in regards to motivating employees in the workplace.

Seiders, Motivational Aesthetics, and Mathers & Company

Prior to the twentieth century, advertising and propaganda depended largely on text and written rationale, following a Victorian tradition that largely distrusted images as a form of persuasion. Magazines rarely featured pictures, except those that elucidated complex technical issues explained in the articles. At the turn of the century, image began to take on a more important role in American society, especially the use of posters. Posters had previously been considered an irrelevant, feminine medium, but in 1915, the U.S. National Safety Council began a nationwide poster campaign, followed by the U.S. government’s propaganda campaign during WWI (Gray, 77). These campaigns began to legitimize the use of posters as a professional medium.

Following the war, the business community adopted the same illustrative practices to promote efficient work environments that the national government had use to promote “national service and patriotic sentiment” (Gray, 78). Seth Seiders’ Mather and Company was the first private company to create a nationwide poster business in 1923, capitalizing on the dawn of the humanist approach and industrial psychology, which were both being implemented by managers in the workplace. “New literature proposed that management should take into account the worker's emotional needs, aspirations, and desire for ‘fellow feeling’— meaningful relationships with workmates—in its effort to win over the worker's allegiances, mitigate industrial conflict, and increase efficiency” (Gray, 79).  Seider saw this new movement as an opportunity to market posters and pamphlets that appealed to worker’s emotions in a way that created a positive environment, motivated workers to improve efficiency, and “advertise(d)” the behaviors which managers expected from their employees (Gray, 80). Seiders’ business contributed to a new culture of visual education in which image began to supercede text as the main form of advertising and public information dissemination in the twentieth century (Gray, 80),

“At the height of its success in the late 1920s, Seider claimed that (Mathers) was supplying over 40,000 firms… (whose) customer base stretched from coast to coast in the insurance, commerce, transportation, cannery, communications, banking, sales, coal, and rubber industries,” according to an article about Seider’s business practices by David A. Gray (Gray, 77). The posters themselves embodied artistic movements of the turn of the century, and incorporated bold colors and images accompanied by instructive text (see example below). This developed the start of what Seider called motivational aesthetics, the combining of motivational texts or quotes with appealing images.

Mosby’s Great Performance Company

The next significant evolution in motivational posters was in the 1980s and 1990s with the introduction of Mosby’s Great Performance Company. This company had its start in the health care industry, but eventually developed motivational posters whose main purpose was worker incentive. These posters are recognizable by their photography images framed by a black border with a motivational quote or word written in the bottom center. These posters were a result of trends in “foreign competition, corporate downsizing, new emphasis on quality, and racial and gender tensions,” but were targeted towards manager performance rather than hourly workers like posters in the past, introducing a new definition (Smithsonian Libraries). Today these posters are some of the most recognizable in the motivational aesthetic canon.

Motivational Posters Outside of the Workplace

Motivational posters are also frequently used in classrooms and educational settings for the same purpose as when they are used in work environments; to influence behaviors and attitudes. The behaviors that increase efficiency, collaboration, and productivity in a company are the same ones that create a harmonious educational environment. A differentiation must be made, however, between motivational posters used in educational settings and educational posters. Educational posters’ purpose is to educate by presenting new or complicated information in an easily accessible and visually appealing way--similar to an infographic-- whereas a motivational poster is focused on behavior and attitudes. Both educational and motivational posters fall under the larger category of visual education and are similar mediums, but they differ in the messages that they deliver.

Motivational posters have been proven to encourage healthy decisions like taking the stairs or buying healthier beverages when placed in strategic locations, operating in a manner similar to propaganda by encouraging public consciousness (Tay). Additional evidence of motivational posters’ relationship to health will be discussed in more detail later in the article.  

Online Motivational Posters

With the dawn of the internet, and especially social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, motivational posters have taken on new form as digital images. These images may not be physical “posters” per say, but they do fall under the same categories of motivational aesthetics.. Images from the Internet have the ability to be downloaded, printed, shared, viewed, commented on, liked, and displayed on desk tops, lock screens, or any other digital platform that you can think of, changing the way in which motivational posters are viewed and interacted with.

The format of motivational posters online varies greatly, but the majority still adheres to the traditional motivational text/image format. Dennis Tay analyzes what he considers the previously unexplored area of online motivational posters in his article “Metaphor construction in online motivational posters.” In his sample of 900 online motivational posters selected at random from the three top-searched online results for “motivational posters,” only 4.8% relied on visuals alone (Tay, 110). This statistic reinforces the importance of text/image combinations when distinguishing motivational posters from other online images. Tay also brings up the topic of demotivational posters, a subset of online images produced in a style that parodies traditional motivational poster formats but that include negative text. (Tay, 110).

Newer forms of media circulating on the internet are memes, humorous images, videos, or pieces of text that are copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users. Often memes take the forms of images with text written over them, in a similar aesthetic approach as a motivational poster. However the differences between the two forms of media lie in their messages and purposes; memes are intended to connect audience members to one another by allowing them to share in a joke, feeling, or emotion while a motivational poster is intended to influence attitudes or behavior. Some memes are intended to influence attitudes and behavior, but because they extend beyond this purpose and have their roots in humor, they cannot be categorized with motivational posters.

“Do They Really Work?” Societal Effects of Motivational Posters

It is difficult to determine whether or not motivational posters achieve their attended effect of improving the workplace environment. Studies of motivational posters focus on their history or content, but not specifically on their overarching societal effect. Yet since motivational posters have continued to be used in the workplace for close to one hundred years and have evolved to such a degree, they must be making some sort of impact.

In the author’s opinion, the power of motivational posters lies predominantly in their appeals to emotion. Pathos is one of the strongest rhetorical devices, and since motivational posters typically invoke idealized images and text, they play into this rhetorical strategy. They can also satisfy the emotions of the manager or person who puts them into place by allowing the person to feel as though they have done something to improve the lives of their employees or audience, resulting in positive reinforcement for the action.  Motivational posters powers also have a basis in psychology. In the book Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation : The Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance, authors Sansone and Harackiewicz discuss how it takes a balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to optimize both performance and experience (Sansone & Harackiewicz, 3). Too much extrinsic motivation can dissuade or eliminate intrinsic motivation (Sansone & Harackiewicz, 3). Motivational posters are classified as extrinsic motivation because they are displaying a message that is external to the viewer. However because of the text’s motivational nature, posters can also inspire intrinsic motivation by empowering the audience into feeling that their life is in their own hands, they have an internal locus of control.

Despite their name, motivational posters do not always motivate viewers in a beneficial fashion. Online motivational posters are frequently used by health and fitness bloggers in a recent trend called “fitspiration,” a combination between “fitness” and “motivation.” Images with tags like #fitspiration or #fitspo, a.k.a. fitspiration content, is defined by researchers Lea Boepple, B.A. and J. Kevin Thompson, PhD as “content promoting fit/healthy lifestyles…includes objectifying images of thin/muscular women and messafes encouraging dieting and exercise for appearance rather than health, motivated reasons (Boepple & Thompson). Oftentimes this content takes the form of traditional motivational posters, with text overlaid against an image of a lithe, young woman. In a content analysis of fitspiration websites by the same authors plus Ata and Rum, the authors analyzed the images and text found on these websites shared many of the same qualities as pro-anorexia or “thinspiration” websites which have been linked to poorer body image and higher likelihood of disordered eating (Boepple et. al.). In a similar study published in Cogent Social Sciences in 2016, Hefner et. al. found that fitspiration images on microblogs like Instagram and Twitter were related to disordered eating symptomology because of their encouragement of dieting and restrictive eating (Hefner, et. al.) From studies such as these, we can the particular way in which motivational posters combine image and text to influence our attitudes, behaviors, and even our health.

Motivational posters have evolved in style and persuasiveness since their introduction to the American workplace in the 1920s, but their messages and purpose remain largely the same. With the rise of new technologies, motivational posters have transcended physical forms and found new relevance as digital images shared throughout the Internet. Whether they are used seriously or parodied, motivational posters affect the social world in a manner that is unique to its particular medium by combining text and image to influence attitudes and behavior.

 Works Cited

“American Enterprise Exhibit: Posters.” The National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Libraries, americanhistory.si.edu/american-enterprise-exhibition/new-perspectives/work-incentives/posters.

Boepple, Leah, et. al. “Strong is the new skinny: A content analysis of fitspiration websites.” Body Image, vol. 17, 2 Apr. 2016, pp. 132–135. Social Sciences Citation Index, eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=3dc002a5-79ba-46e2-9393-9632c60eb20f%40sessionmgr4008&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=000377728500016&db=edswss.

Boepple, Leah, and J. Kevin Thompson. “A Content Analystic Comparison of Fistpiration and Thinspiration Websites.” International Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 49, no. 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 98–101. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=9f0fe3ef-5043-48fa-861a-18cb1a6804a5%40sessionmgr120&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=112198047&db=pbh.

Gray, David A. “Managing Motivation: The Seth Seiders Syndicate and the Motivational Publicity Business in the 1920s.” Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 44, no. 1, 2010, pp. 77–121. Art and Architecture Source, eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=1f6f3a9c-5d78-478e-9a9c-292c71c23366%40sessionmgr102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=505319260&db=asu.

Harackiewicz, Judith M., and Carol Sansone. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation : the search for optimal motivation and performance. Academic Press, 2000. UF data base, eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=fbd0552f-7ccc-4ba4-9ba5-3c89933557b1%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=ufl.020328511&db=cat04364a. (ebook)

Hefner, Veronica , et al. “Mobile exercising and tweeting the pounds away: The use of digital applications and microblogging and their association with disordered eating and compulsive exercise.” Cogent Social Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2016. Directory of Open Access Journals, doaj.org/article/e70a44e9c39043e9921f92aa6e50bf62 .

Tay, Dennis. “Metaphor construction in online motivational posters.” Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 112, Apr. 2017, pp. 97–112. Science Direct, www-sciencedirect-com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/science/article/pii/S0378216616305665.

-RE

#keyworddefinition

[makingmediameta]

Keyword Definition: Contemporary Dance

Define Dance...

When people think of the word ‘dance’, they probably think of pretty, skinny, and very flexible girls who move to different types of music. Ballet and Contemporary probably being the most boring to watch for some people, simply because the movements are slower and the music isn’t as exciting. Hip-Hop, Jazz, and Tap are most likely appeal to more people because the tempos are faster, and the purpose of the dances is to get the audience more hyped. Dance, however, can be defined in different ways. The ability to dance is defined as leaping, skipping, or hopping with “measured steps and rhythmical movements of the body, usually to the accompaniment of music” [1]. The definition, however, does not explain or describe dance as a medium. It is much more than the leaping, hopping, or skipping. The terms alone do not explain fully what the dancer is doing. Dance as a medium is an imitation of emotion, and is interpreted as, “representing, symbolizing, expressing, or signifying an action, character, emotion- or even its own formal elements.” [2]. 

Contemporary Dance: The History and Today

Almost every single dancer who started off in beginners ballet when they were toddlers, have heard their dance teacher say that “every dance there is came from ballet.” Ballet is where all technically trained dancers learn well...technique. From the first pirouette, to sauté, and plié, young dancers learn how to both say and execute the proper terms. Around the 1980s, some dancers wanted to branch out of the strict technicality of ballet, and use “unconventional dance styles that were gathered from all dance styles of the world.” [3]. This started a new realm of expressing emotions and finding the limits that humans can move.

  In this video is Martha Graham. She is one of the first to popularize Contemporary Dance and lived from 1894-1991, and her work is compared to that of artists such as Picasso and Stravinski. In this video she, explains the narrative and symbolism behind the choreography and as you watch you can really see where the story pulls through. 

As you watch contemporary dance, it is difficult to see a story through the movements if you do not know what to look for. In the earlier days, emotion wasn’t as easy to detect as it was today. Back then it was all about body positioning so you knew what emotion was being conveyed. For example, if a dancer was lower to the floor in their movements, it meant there was a sad or lonely emotion. If the dancer was extended upwards and their arms were in the air, then the dancer was portraying a happy or free feeling. Today, more emotion is expressed on a dancers face, and movements are more unconventional and seemingly random. A dancer now moves naturally to the music. This helps an audience more so now because they need to understand the, “meaning not only produced through narration and the physical communication of emotions...but also through a withholding of movement conventionally considered dance and through experiences thus created,” [4]. Movements in dance today are now closely related to personal experiences, and therefore people can relate to them because of the narrative that they tell. 

In this video, we have a dance from Fox’s TV Show So You Think You Can Dance. We first see the choreographer of the dance explain the narrative of the dance and the roles of the two characters. The narrative, or story, is all about addiction and the people who are addicted to them. In today’s society it is very relative because we live in a world where people have access to drugs and alcohol, which destroys families and causes pain no matter if it is affecting the person doing them or the people surrounding them. Here the male dancer is representing the addiction, and the female dancer is symbolizing the person who is addicted. Their movements are very unconventional and many of them are expressed on the floor. A lot are also with the female being on a lower level than the male, which could represent dominance and power over submission over weakness. Notice, that the fashion expresses the story as well. The female is wearing blood red and torn garments, while the male is very precise and crisp with matching red in parts of his costume as well. Comparably to the first video with Martha Graham, the female dancer is wearing nonrestrictive clothing so she is free to do more movements. This kind of dance, on these TV shows, are known as commercial contemporary dance, in which they are very “emotive, dramatic, and virtuosic,” [5].

Take a Bow

From the way Martha Graham started out with the new movements of contemporary dance, to today with popular shows spreading the different styles of dance, with contemporary being the most popular, “dance has a history which is worthy of study in order to enhance knowledge and understanding of the past and the present,” [6]. Dance is a narrative in which we can infer stories from the both the past and the present. 

Notes

[1] [2] Jessica Simon, 2018.

[3] Dance Facts, 2018

[4]Yvonne Hardt, 2011, 39.

[5] SanSan Kwan, 2017, 42.

[6] Alexandra Carter, 2004, 2.

Work Cited

Carter, Alexandra. Rethinking Dance History: A Reader. London; New York: Routledge, 2004. UF Catalog. 18 Feb 2018.

“Contemporary Dance- Ballet Dance.” Dance Facts. Dance Facts. 2018. 18 Feb 2018.

Hardt, Yvonne. “Staging the Ethnographic of Dance History.” Dance Research Journal, 43(1): 27-42.

Kwan, SanSan. “When is Contemporary Dance?” Dance Research Journal, 49(3): 15-38

Simon, Jessica. "Dance.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. WordPress. 2018. 18 Feb 2018.

-LA

#keyworddefinition

[makingmediameta]

Keyword Definition: Narrative/Narrative Poetry

       Many people do not recognize narrative as a medium itself. However, the narrative form is frequently used in day to day conversations: such as the retelling of stories, social media, press, etc. This paper will be focusing on the definition of narrative and how it connects to narrative poetry medium. A narrative is a story with a spoken or written account of connected events. It is a description of related events, real or imaginary, presented in a sequence of written or spoken words, still or moving images, or even both. In plain terms, it is basically a form of retelling, using words, of some event that happened, also known as a story. Narrative poetry is a form of writing that mainly focuses on the narrative throughout the entire work.

      Narrative poetry is an example of using the narrative within another medium. It connects the narrative writing style in the form of poetry, thus narrative poetry. Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often making the voices of a narrator and characters, and it is also a form of communication. The story is usually written in metered verse and does not always have to follow rhythmic patterns. Poems that make up narrative poetry may be short or long, and the story it relates to may also be complex. Narrative poems typically include epics, ballads, idylls, and lays. Some narratives take the form of a novel in verse, and shorter narrative poems are often similar in style to the short story. Many poems are narratives, but also, many narratives are poems. “Most poems before the nineteenth century, and many since then, have been narrative poems. The range of narrative poetry is enormous; it includes the entire epic tradition, primary and secondary, oral and written, as well as medieval and early-modern verse romances, folk ballads and their literary adaptations, narrative verse autobiographies” (Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry, 12). Poems were known to have the narrative aspect in its stories, hence it became a popular form of writing. It became a well-known form of writing and many commonly used it in their poetry. However, many people today do not consider narrative as part of poetry.

      Not all poetry is included in the narrative poetry category, but that does not mean that all poetry is not narrative poetry. There are many poems that include the narrative form within their stories and plot. It can be seen that “the majority of the world’s literary narratives are poetic narratives” (McHale, 12). Just because not all of them are centered around the narrative form, it is not acceptable to exclude all of poetry completely. Because of the great complexities of narrative and poetry, narrative poetry deserves to be recognized as its own medium. People underappreciate the value of narrative poetry and what it can teach.

      One of the first things that comes to mind when thinking of a narrative is a novel or short story. They have become the focus of narrative stories, and many people start to forget that other forms of poetry also use the narrative in their writings. Hartsock explains that the definition of “narrative literary journalism is true-life stories that read like a novel or short story” (22). He also mentions that reading novels or short stories results in “social or cultural allegory, with potential meanings beyond the literal in the broadest sense of allegory’s meaning” (ibid). Over time, novels and short stories have become more popular today that the numerous other forms of narrative poetry have started to be forgotten.

      Narrative poetry can also be used as a teaching tool because poetry can be a powerful medium for literacy and technology development. Narrative poetry is a common type of poetry used today, but it is not widely recognized as popular. Many authors use this form of the narrative, and it is important to consider how common it really is and should be recognized as a beneficial technique in poetry. I think that the definition of narrative poetry has changed over the years based on sociocultural influences. The basis of the poetry remains the same, but like anything it changes over time. A while ago, poetry was only considered for pleasure reading, but now it is used as a teaching tool. Poetry can be seen to have an “important role in improving literacy skills and [there are] a variety of ways to make poetry teaching effective” (Hughes, 1). It has become a useful tool in helping students understand poetry and the English language.  

      Contemporary narrative theory suggests that narrative poetry is no longer commonly recognized as part of poetry today. Many readers and audiences do not pay attention to the aspect of narrative in the poetry. There is only the focus on ‘poetry’. The narrative continues to be used in numerous mediums, however, poetry is not considered a medium that contains narrative. The contemporary narrative theory is almost silent about poetry, for it seems to neglect poetry entirely. It does not mention or consider poetry when discussing narratives. The narrative aspect of poetry is starting to be forgotten in today’s era.

      Another problem with narrativity and poetry is modernism. It is believed that modernism creates a problem with the long poem. According to McHale in “Weak Narrativity: The Case of Avant-Garde Narrative Poetry,” modernism interdicts narrative modes of organization and submits the long-poem genre, for example, to a general lyricization. As a result, this form of the long poem lacks any continuous narrative. Instead, it is made up of lyric fragments strung together in sequence. He continues to discuss that the narrative, while not utterly banished, becomes the invisible "master-narrative" which is not present anywhere in the text but ensures the text's ideological coherence (162). However, in postmodernism there is more narrativity in poems than with modernism, but there is still a difference. McHale continues to argue that it is problematic to identify the narrative in poems. He says that readers have trouble “determining what belongs with what, of reassembling the scattered narrative fragments; and the text refuses to cooperate with us in the task, as it might have done by indicating relevant continuities (coreference) of space, time, or agent from fragment to fragment” (ibid). Even though it may be hard to determine exactly what the narrative is trying to convey, it does not lessen the significance of poetry using the narrative form.

Works Cited

Hartsock, John C. A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Modern Narrative Form. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, c2000., 2000.

Hughes, Janette. "Poetry: A powerful medium for literacy and technology development." 2007, file:///C:/Users/crazy/AppData/Local/Temp/Hughes.pdf.

McHale, Brian. "Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry." Narrative, vol. 17 no. 1, 2009, pp. 11-27. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/nar.0.0014.

McHale, Brian. “Weak Narrativity: The Case of Avant-Garde Narrative Poetry.” Narrative, vol. 9, no. 2, 2001, pp. 161–167. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20107242.

-KK

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Keyword Definition: Memes

Memes

When we look at memes, we don’t really consider much about them aside from their comical content. Memes as popular culture knows them are all over Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Many times, we neglect to acknowledge the cultural significance of memes, and we also fail to see the range of things that are considered to be ‘memes.’ The term ‘meme’ is a kind of umbrella term for ideas and images.

History of the Meme

Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s most prominent evolutionary biologists, first coined the term “meme” to describe the evolution of ideas. Dawkins wrote that memes expand and diffuse, in a broad sense, through imitation. “Uniquely among animals, humans are capable of imitation and so can copy from one another ideas, habits, skills, behaviors, inventions, songs and stories” (Blackmore, 1999). Memes were able to travel wordlessly before the formation of written language. Mimicking the behaviors of others was enough to transmit ideas. This worked for building fires, shaking trees, and carving arrows. For the majority of human history, memes were transmitted by word of mouth. Most recently, they have found themselves expressed on solid substance, such as on clay tablets, cave walls, and sheets of paper. Memes can be fashions, legends, skills, etc. Technology, specifically the Internet and computers, has changed the meme landscape faster than ever before. The Internet is responsible for facilitating the diffusion of ideas, images, catchphrases, etc. and making them more globally accessible than ever. Internet image memes have their own history. The limited scope of these kinds of memes in the early 2010’s has drastically expanded by 2018 to include references to television, videos, Vines, music, celebrities, and even stock images. It is difficult to imagine what there isn’t a meme about. It is understood among mostly millennials that utilize social media that one specific meme maintains its prominence for about a month until a new one is popularized. Examples of these memes would be Salt Bae, Caveman Spongebob, and Surprised White Guy.

Kinds of Memes

Dawkins explained that memes come in different forms. Ideas can arise uniquely or show up several times, or it may dwindle and vanish (Gleick, 2011). For example, the belief in God is an ancient idea that has manifested itself in a smorgasbord of ways, such as animism, polytheism, monotheism, and deism (to name a few). Tunes and catchphrases can diffuse across different cultures, often taking decades or even centuries to spread to the ends of the earth. To exemplify, Confucian principles have traveled all the way from Asia and have grown in popularity along Western society. Images can gain popularity and significance across cultures as well. An incredible example of this would be the Mona Lisa. With the growth and spread of the Internet and related technologies, memes have been created, circulated, and built upon. It is important to note what a meme is not. The number seven is not a meme, nor is the color purple. A balloon on a string is not a meme. Gleick notes, “Memes are complex units, distinct and memorable—units with staying power.” Once a meme penetrates society, it has the potential to gain momentum and spread. In the context of Internet image memes, the process of a meme gaining utmost popularity is called “going viral.” When memes are talked about in casual conversation, it is most likely that they are referring to Internet image memes, which have also grown in sophistication over the past decade.

Meme Meaning Morphing

Today, when a meme is referenced, most people think about a funny picture or video that relates to a scenario. There are countless different internet memes that regularly saturate social media timelines. Milner states, “They’re used to make jokes, argue points, and connect points” (Milner, 2016). Millennials are the ones who primarily utilize memes on social media platforms in a humorous way. A more recent trend in the meme community that has gained momentum is self-deprecation. One of the more popular meme trends has to do with hypothetically engaging in suicidal behaviors to dramatically toy with the idea of dying as a result of one’s circumstances. For example, someone may tweet a statement lamenting the current state of life and post a picture of bleach in a drinking glass to imply that they would drink the deadly chemical to escape the trials of living. Sterelny writes, “… it is fruitful to view cultural evolution through the meme’s eye… human cultural activity is the phenotypic effect of meme lineages expanding through time…” (Sterelny, 2006). By looking at memes and their affect on society, we are able to see how ideas, images, and catchphrases can gradually morph humankind. It is argued by many that the use of memes during the 2016 election had a huge impact on who was chosen as the candidates in the primaries. Painting Bernie Sanders in a certain laidback light lacking seriousness gave Hillary an upper hand in being chosen to represent the Democratic party. On the other hand, memes about Ted Cruz being the Zodiac Killer made him a less serious candidate to the public and lessened his appeal. The spreading of ideas and images has, over thousands of years, moved us into a more “civilized” society. Memes are responsible for the creation of laws and societal structure, and without the transmission of memes, life as we know it today would cease to exist.

Works Cited 

Gleick, James. “What Defines a Meme?” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Magazine [Online], May 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-defines-a-meme-1904778/.

Sterelny, Kim. “Memes Revisited.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 57, no. 1, 2006, pp. 145–165. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3541656.

 Milner, Ryan M.. The World Made Meme : Public Conversations and Participatory Media, MIT Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ufl/detail.action?docID=4714221.

Blackmore, Susan J. The Meme Machine. Oxford [England: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print.

-CD

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Keyword definition argument: Memes

What in the Meme?

In this digital age, memes need no introduction, or so you would think. They are ubiquitous on all platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Ifunny, Facebook, etc… you name it! These platforms allow memes to be easily distributed among the masses. We are all familiar with them, but how would you define them? Their ambiguity stimulated my curiosity to find out what others had to say.

Memetics

The word meme originated from the Greek mimena, meaning “imitated thing.” Richard Dawkins coined the word meme as an analogous term for gene, meaning cultural unit of transmissible information. But why? Kate Distin’s The Selfish Meme, illustrates Dawkins’ beliefs on how culture evolves and that memes serve as cultural selection (6). In addition, Dawkins proposes that clothes fashion, ideas, or catch-phrases could all be considered cultural units of information or a representation. This is the oldest classification of memes. Memetics, or the study of memes as cultural replicators, is another term coined by Dawkins analogous to genetics. Selection, replication, and variation are key elements in which a meme must undergo to successfully transmit its narrative, thus evolving culture. Distin suggests that “Selection means that some replicators are favoured, survive and propagate” (68). For example, theories that are collectively accepted or trends that are eventually disposed of. Next, Distin examines replication, “the transmission of memetic content will be facilitated by such standard cultural methods such as imitation, teaching, and everyday communication (69). Finally, Distin mentions that “variation, such as mutation and recombination, are subject to certain biases and limitations, determined by what exists and its assembled organization” (70). Not only are memes replicated, but they are also altered depending on who stumbles upon the meme due to their personal agenda. Many disagree with the meme hypothesis, because there is a lack of empirical data governing the evolutionary process of cultural units. However, I believe the theory makes logical sense and the author makes a valid argument highlighting the correlation between cultural and biological evolution.

Freedom of Expression

The internet undoubtedly changed the meme scene. The rise of social media allows us to broadcast memes on a broader scope. Thus, more people are likely to encounter memes, alter, and replicate them. This will go a long way to ensure memetic survival. Numerous applications and sites such as Canva and Meme Generator facilitate the process of constructing memes. Most memes are shared between friends to insight laughter. However, the creator of a meme has the freedom of expression to post anything they want while considering their invisible audience and any copy right infringements. That is, the fact that anyone at any given moment can encounter your meme because of their capacity to go viral on the internet. Although the content used in memes are replicated, one must be weary of using those images without crediting its source. Sean Rintel claims that most common replicated memes in the early 2000's were based on image macros, or a picture with superimposed, bold text. This template is widely used for images that "are usually striking representations of an action or emotion, often taking the form of a human, anthropomorphized animal or object" (Rintel 257). Crisis memes refer to images that offer satirical or macabre content as "responses to challenging events based on thematic and structural templates of popular image macros" (Rintel 266). Memes are generated each second responding to social and political crisis in a humorous way. Crisis memes offer comic relief because we live in a time where it is socially acceptable to mock disastrous situations. Otherwise, people would not constantly expel and share crisis memes with one another.

Popular Culture in the Classroom  

Popular culture unifies a myriad of people. Sharing your favorite gifs, or moving images, and viral clips with others develop stronger bonds. Most people will agree that memes are made and shared to evoke laughter, and this could still be accomplished in a classroom setting. Eager and enthusiastic, Ciro Scardina, uses his avid love for popular culture to form a better relationship with his students. He believes that "the meme is a beautiful tool to explain a concept and for students to express their knowledge on a topic and flex their critical-thinking skills" (13). That concept could be anything ranging from a simple math equation to a historical statement. Although there are hardly any articles written about memes in an educational setting, I do agree with this claim because I can recall learning from memes in school. It seems to be a widely-used tactic, yet hardly commented on. My tenth-grade English teacher had memes posted around the classroom. For example, one was centered on the Willy Wonka image macro with the written text: "Oh, I didn't know conversate was a word." The Willy Wonka meme is a sarcastic approach to ridicule the concerning topic, using the word "conversate" instead of converse." For one to understand the meme, they must understand the misuse of converse. My teacher had shown us the meme, and then told us that the misuse of conversate is her biggest pet-peeve, and that instruction was so unique that I will never forget it. As a student, structured text becomes repetitive and boring. On the other hand, memes have become a subtle way to learn. Students utilize their critical thinking skills without noticing. Because of this, memes have become desired teaching tools for students with shorter attention spans. Memes are learning made fun. Scardina also mentions "Popular culture is a reinterpretation of everyday life and experiences, and the meme is the visual symbol of this reinterpretation" (14).

It now seems clear to me what memes are. A meme could be any media sharing a message that gets passed along to others. Memes can go viral and be viewed by anyone in the world thanks to social media. Dawkins introduced memes as songs, art, or ideas that are judged based on how easily they are passed down from person-to-person, evolving culture. This concept seemed to stay intact in all sources of information I gathered. Dawkin's definition is more scientific than most because he based his meme theory from evolution. The internet has made sharing memes an everyday part of life because they are always found on our social media feeds. The main difference between memes before and after the internet is the structured format that came with meme generators. Meme generators have caused memes to look a certain way. For example, image macro with the superimposed text. The structure gives the memes away; people know that the content will be silly or satirical whenever they encounter this structure. Because of this, it is safe to say that memes are considered popular culture. People generate memes pertaining to all kinds of situations, appealing to almost everyone. Sharing memes create a rich bond between people because it creates a sense of familiarity and unity. This could even be accomplished in a school setting because the students will trust that their teachers care about their culture and create a better learning environment because of it.

Works Cited  

Distin, Kate. The Selfish Meme. Cambridge University Press, 1827.

Rintel, Sean. "Crisis memes: The importance of templability to Internet culture and freedom of expression," Australian Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 2, no. 2, 2013, pp. 256-261.  

Scardina, Ciro. "Through the Lens of Popular Culture," Teacher Librarian, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 13-16.

-MB

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The Problem With Music

Music, like art, is often a term governed by intuition rather than reason. However, philosophers have been struggling to come up with a definition for music; one subset of questions seeks to define what music is after it is objectified for study, while other lines of intrigue delve further into the necessary and sufficient conditions required to call something “music.” Questions of the former category might ask: does music lie in the performance? Is music the tangible artifact on which notes are written? Or, does music exist independent of both the physical and performative aspects associated with the concept? For the purpose of this definition, however, we will assume that music is the aural phenomenon we observe during a performance of some fashion.

           Additionally, this definition will primarily focus on “pure” music- music without accompanying words or lyrics- as opposed to what we might refer to as a “song.” Andrew Kania argues that this distinction and limitation is important, because “the solutions are likely to be more easily evaluated” (Kania, 3). This is the case because pure music seemingly presents the most complex problem to philosophers and scholars alike; music without linguistic context is much more challenging to understand than its lyric-endowed counterparts. Indeed, if we can explain the phenomenological aspects of music in its pure state, it stands to reason that we can therefore explain and define music in its impure state.

           Kania begins his essay explaining that music is most often defined as “organized sound,” but this is not a particularly useful definition as it is oversimplified and overly vague (Kania 4). Typically, philosophers attempt to define things in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. For example, in order to be a bachelor, it is necessary to be a man. This, however, is not sufficient because one must also be unmarried in addition to being a man. Philosophic inquiry into music has two primary necessary conditions: tonality and aesthetic properties. However, Kania thinks that these conditions are merely striking aspects “of an unavoidably vague phenomenon,” that struggle to refute many obvious counterexamples (Kania 5). Indeed, those who endorse the tonality condition have trouble defending their position from examples of non-tonal percussion instruments like the snare and bass drum. These instruments make music in an acutely classical sense of the word, yet they fail to meet to tonality condition. As for those who assert the necessity of the aesthetic, poetry is the most common counterexample. It possesses aesthetic qualities often communicated via sound, yet poetry is not considered to be music.

           Some philosophers are also concerned with how music is able to evoke certain images, impressions, words, or emotions without any textual accompaniment and whether or not the answer will have any bearing on the actual definition of music. Many turn to semantic theory in order to better understand how aesthetic properties are at play within pieces of music. In her essay titled Music as a Representational Art, Jenefer Robinson claims that meaning is placed in music “when [composers] affix a program to a piece of descriptive music” (Robinson 180). Consequently, music is able to evoke certain emotions or communicate ideas because of a textual item which precludes the performance of said composition. However, this still does not answer why we may feel sadness or joy when listening to a piece of music without first reading a title, but Robinson asserts that music “generally sounds more like other music than what it supposedly depicts” (Robinson 178). This helps explain why we are able to recognize when a particular composition is melancholic or when another is happy. For example, it would make no sense to cry during a performance of Grainger’s Country Gardens considering its upbeat tempo and major key. Indeed, we use prior musical experience as a reference point and build a library of knowledge to decipher what we hear and how we should react to this music. Musical understanding, like spoken language, often relies on external references to help guide in the conditioning required to intuitively grasp what sad music sounds like as opposed to happy music. As a result, different interpretation and conditioning is often nonexistent within the microcosm- this is to say that, within a given culture, fundamental understandings about music rarely differ. For example, most, if not all, would say that a minor chord is “sad” while a major chord is “happy.” However, Irving Godt argues that “different cultures have different ideas about music” (Godt 83). This notion of cultural relativity holds that our definition of music may not exactly be the case in other cultures where quarter-tones and the like exist regularly within the music. Consequently, the purpose of this definition is to primarily describe Western Music.

           Some scholars form more complex definitions in an attempt to incorporate aspects of both aesthetic properties and tonality; below, I have included Godt’s definition to serve as a reference- it is as follows:

“Unwanted sound is noise. Music is humanly organized sound, organized with intent into a recognizable aesthetic entity as a musical communication directed from a maker to a known or unforeseen listener, publicly through the medium of a performer, or privately through performer as listener. As far as I know, ethnologists have never found a human society that does not make music.” (Godt 84)

In the above definition, the canonical “music as organized sound” claim is clearly made and narrowed down in an effort to exclude natural/background noise. Other notable features that are relevant to this definition include an emphasis on intent, aesthetic properties, and musical communication. In many definitions of art, intent is necessary in order the establish that animals like chimpanzees do not create, at least in the paradigmatic sense, art. Which is to say that art is a uniquely human phenomenon, and therefore, it makes little sense to extend works of art to other species that are not capable of realizing art. “Musical communication” refers to the condition of tonality, and as we can see, Godt’s description still falls prey to easily conjured counterexamples such as common percussive instruments.

           However, Godt’s definition does little to clarify what is meant by a “recognizable aesthetic entity.” Does this mean that music can only be classified as such if it shares similar aesthetic characteristics to music? Others, like Monroe Beardsley, contend that defining a word such as music is “not at all to ‘legislate’ what creative artists shall do” (Beardsley 177). Even still, the avant-garde will continue to push the boundaries of what is considered music; this is a common trend across many disciplines of art. John Cage’s 4’33 is a commonly cited composition that pushes the boundaries of what is to be considered music, and so it seems as if younger generations are driven by impetus to create what they will invariably call “music” even as it flies in the face of all existing definitions of the term. In turn, what we intuitively know to be music now may not be the same in 20 years.

Works Cited:

Alperson, Philip. What Is Music?: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Music.      The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.

Beardsley, Monroe C. “The Definitions of the Arts.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 20, no. 2, 1961, pp. 175–187. JSTOR, JSTOR,            www.jstor.org/stable/427466.

Godt, Irving. “Music: A Practical Definition.” The Musical Times, vol. 146, no. 1890, 2005, pp. 83–88. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30044071.

Kania, Andrew. “The Philosophy of Music.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 11 July 2017, plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/.

-JM

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Video Essay

Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time on the internet is probably familiar with the concept of the video essay. The University of Notre Dame’s ReMix-T defines video essays as “written essays that are read aloud and mixed with a stream of images, sound, or video.” The video essay has definitely received more traction in the past decade; however, although many scholars consider it a new form, the video essay has, as scholar Andrew McWhirter puts it, a “distinctive prehistory that lies beyond contemporary moving-image culture and deserves particular consideration.” (369) I always thought the video essay was a recent argumentative form; however, upon closer research, I have discovered that the concept of the video essay has been built around its lesser-known predecessor, the essay film. It is important to clarify that the essay film is still around today; yet, a comparison and understanding of the history of these two terms gives a greater context for how the video essay has come to be.

Essay Film: The Precursor

Before the video essay ever became a common form of argument, filmmakers and essayists alike were creating essay films. Unfortunately, the history of the essay film is not so easily understood; it is not entirely known where or when this form of essay popped up.  According to an article from Dazed, the essay film emerged “not long after the Lumiere Brothers recorded the first ever motion pictures of Lyonnaise factory workers in 1894.” (Yeung) However, essayist and film critic John Bresland claims that Chris Marker’s 1982 film Sans Soleil and 1955 film Night and Fog (trailer shown above), are some of “the first great film essays of our time,” (181) implying that he either does not agree with Yeung, or does not believe the essay film formed its identity until the latter half of the twentieth century. What may have lead to this discrepancy is the fact that the essay film is as difficult, if not more so, to define as the video essay. Phillip Lopate, in his 1992 essay for The Three Penny Review, describes the essay film as a centaur: half film, and half essay – two different animals combined as one. The essay film, as McWhirter describes it, is “a detailed continuum between two different registers: the explanatory, which is analytical and language-based, and the poetic, which is expressive and battles against language with a collage of images and sounds.” (371) These two registers are so diverse and distinct in and of themselves that it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what elements make an essay film different from a documentary or a narrative film, both of which the form takes from.

Compared to other genres and forms of film, the essay film never became a substantially popular genre; while it certainly had and still has an identity, Lopate calls it a “cinematic genre that never existed.” (19) Why did it never fully take off? Lopate gives a couple of reasons for this. The first is that there are commercial consequences that need to be taken into account; just as essays “rarely sell in bookstores, so essay films are expected to have little popularity.” (22) In the film-making sphere of the western world, the narrative film became the prominent genre of film; a majority of scholarship was dedicated to examining the narrative film, leaving forms like the essay film to be left in the avant-garde or indie category. Lopate also claims that essayists and writers may not be too familiar with film and directing, and filmmakers may not be too familiar with crafting essays. In the twentieth century, film-making was not accessible to everyone; it required the right equipment, the right people, and the right amount of money.  Ultimately, creating and consuming essay films was nothing short of an ordeal. However, Lopate would have never realized that this concept of a centaur would flourish in the twenty-first century.

Part Two: The Rise of the Video Essay

If there is one word to describe the advent of the video essay, it would be ‘Digitization.” Technological advances have permeated nearly every facet of our lives, and the way we communicate, share ideas, make and interpret art, and access information have completely changed. It is this transformation that has allowed the video essay to form from the essay film. The rise of the Internet has given video essays a way to shine, and solves the issues that Lopate notes for the essay film back in the nineties.

The video essay, like the essay film, is comprised of language, images, and audio; and just as the unobjective and singular voice of the director / writer is so important in the essay film, it plays a major role in many video essays. Yet, despite these similarities, the digital age has allowed the video essay to excel as a form; searching for “video essay” in the YouTube search bar brings up over 2.5 million results. How did this happen?

One of the biggest changes to the form of the visual essay is the apparatus that records the visuals and audio. Film requires a shutter to convey motion; it is mostly viewed in dark movie theatres, and Bresland argues that it is “this nocturnal portion that stays with us, that fixes our memory of a film in a different way than the same film seen on television or on a monitor.” (183) Video, on the other hand, is digital; our culture experiences video in a very different way than film. We capture video with “small, light digital cameras,” and consume it on “mobile devices, on planes, as shared links crossing the ether.” (Lopate 184) Going to see a film required effort and money; now, anyone can access just about anything at little to no price.

This not only changes who consumes the visual essay, but who creates the visual essay. As mentioned before, making an essay film requires a lot of money and a lot of manpower. All it takes for someone to create a visual essay now is a camera, a free editing program, and a YouTube account; anyone can “shoot an edit video, compelling video, on a cellphone camera.” (183) The essay film may not be as effective for, or even advertised to, the mainstream movie audience; now, this general audience can now be a part of the academic conversation by watching these video essays wherever they go. It is also important to note that this shift in audience also changes how the essay is written. A majority of video essays are written in colloquial language rather than scholarly language, so that anyone, regardless of their academic background, can understand the argument. Lindsay Ellis’ video about Stranger Things and It, shown above, is a good example of how the video essay is approached very differently. This also explains why many video essays are short in length, whereas many well-known essay films are the length of a feature film.

Furthermore, this access to the internet has changed how we present our ideas in a video essay. Until the creation of VHS tapes, there was no way to really “own” a film; a scholar would not have access to movie scenes and clips the way we do. This access has led to many video essays utilizing clips for examples and synthesis; this has become so convenient and commonplace in modern video essays that McWhirter iterates that, “while the essay film might take anything as its subject, the video essay itself only has the subject of film at its center.” (371) As the form evolves and gains popularity, this focus on film could definitely change.

Ultimately, the essay film and the video essay are two very different forms, with very different audiences and formation of content. However, as the video essay gains in popularity, it is crucial to understand the prehistory of the term, and how changes in technology and society impact the success and structure of the form. I had never even heard of the essay film before writing this; yet, I believe it is important to have an understanding of the form, as it definitely provides context to how current video essays both differ and coincide with its precursor. And as the boundaries of the video essay continue to be explored, it has never been more important to be familiar with its roots.

- CR

Works Cited

Bresland, John. “On the Origin of the Video Essay.” Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time, edited by Carl H. Klaus and Ned Stuckey-French, University of Iowa Press, 2012, pp. 180-184.

Lopate, Phillip. “9. In Search of The Centaur: The Essay-Film (1992).” Essays on the Essay Film, vol. 48, 2017, pp. 19–22.

Mcwhirter, Andrew. “Film Criticism, Film Scholarship and the Video Essay.” Screen, vol. 56, no. 3, 2015, pp. 369–377

“Video Essay.” Remix-T, University of Notre Dame Kaneb Center, learning.nd.edu/remix/projects/VideoEssay.html.

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Evolution of the term “Cinema” with the advancing Film medium

    The birth of film has not been able to be traced to a specific date or person but the coming about of film is most notably known as being in 1895 when short films were publicly screened in Paris, France. The early 1900’s brought about new film techniques such as lighting and cinematic effects that were able to be added to a film on one reel in order to enhance the simplicity of viewing for the audience. The year of 1927 brought about the advancement of films with sound which changed the whole creative process of filmmaking. Film and cinema were terms that started to be used interchangeably in the United States during the early 20th century but this was not the case in other countries such as France, who’s film medium experts clearly stated that cinema and film were not to be used interchangeably. The birth of the digital world sparked a lot of controversy over the term cinema and whether or not we should be considering cinema and film as one in the same.

     The term cinema has many different meanings associated with it. The medium that consists of movies can presently best be defined by the term film, but it has also been called cinema. At one point the term film was associated with movies that were geared more towards an artsy crowd interested in the technical side of creating a movie and people who are more interested in movies that tend to be found in the independent category. Cinema was used to define the movies that were being created for mainstream movie theatres and people who were more interested in the entertainment side of a movie rather than the technical side; These are the movies that are made for the box office profits. Stephen Prince, in his article, “The Emergence of Filmic Artifacts: Cinema and Cinematography in the Digital Era,” talks about how for the hundred years of cinema’s existence it was considered a “photo-mechanical” medium. This meant that the images that were incorporated in a movie were able to come to life by using a darkroom and a film processing lab, “fixed in analog form on a celluloid surface, and then trucked around the country for exhibition” (Prince, 25).

     The birth of a digital world changed this definition tremendously. Cinema now incorporates the digital technologies associated with the creation of a movie. These advances include cinematography, editing, creation and incorporation of sound, postproduction, and how the product is showcased. The first feature film to be produced digitally was Windhorse, which was shot in Tibet and Nepal in 1996. After this film was produced digitally, George Lucas produced Star Wars: Episode 1-The Phantom Menace, which was the first film that incorporated footage that was captured using high-definition digital cameras. The change and advancement of film in a digital age has changed all the processes in which film is edited in terms of color correction. “In regard to color timing and the control of many other image variables, digital methods now offer filmmakers greatly enhanced artistic powers compared with traditional photo-mechanical methods” (Prince, 27).

    The digital advancement has played a large role in how special effects are used in films and how these special effects affect how the viewer perceives the images they are seeing that were created with such effects. “[…] But it seems likely that the viewer who encounters special effects, with their fantastic, digitalized creatures, is led to frame the image, to contextualize it cognitively, in different terms than images that appear more naturalistic” (Prince, 28). Then digital tools available in regards to digital grading are so advanced that film grading simply can’t keep up and is not able to compete with digital grading. With digital grading, filmmakers are able to import their filmic creations into programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro, After-Effects, Photoshop, etc. in order to edit their images and take advantage of digital postproduction. “Digital-imaging methods […] usage is reconfiguring the process of film production, how things get done, when, and by whom” (Prince, 30). These changes are instrumental to the film industry and the professional cinematic environment.

      In the book, “Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film,” written by, Richard Barsam and Dave Monahan, they talk about the differences between film, video, and digital technologies. They state that even though there has been an advancement in video and digital technology, film remains the dominant form (Barsam and Monahan, 462). Their argument is that the phasing out of film stock is not due to its inability to perform but rather because of its high expense and difficulty to edit in postproduction. Because of this, digital technology is becoming the definition of the film medium and a core aspect of the cinema definition. The replacement of digital technology has taken away film’s past definition as an analog medium that “stores images on a roll of negative film stock” (462). With film, as in film stock, becoming a less viable way of creation, the definition of film has become hazy and ambiguous. When you take away the film stock definition of film, film is able to be used in place of cinema which results in an adaptation of the definition of cinema.

       In Peter Kiwitt’s article, “What is Cinema in a Digital Age? Divergent Definitions from a Production Perspective,” he addresses why there is no simple definition that can be arrived at when trying to define what cinema is. “Studies perspectives tend to emphasize looking back from reception for meaning rather than forward from conception toward making, and so their language, interests, and conclusions can be different from those of production perspectives” (Kewitt, 4). There has been much controversy over what the true definition of cinema is. Even the dictionary gives cinema a very broad and rather vague definition. The Oxford English Dictionary gives cinema a definition as, “films collectively, esp. considered as an art-form; the production of such films.” The definition of cinema has been assessed by many expects in the varying fields involved in the film medium. What appears to be a main factor in the constant changing or rather, adaptive, definition of cinema has to do with the significant image digital adoption and advancement has had on the medium. While experts such as Stephen Prince proclaim that the film medium in transforming radically, he also claims that at the end of the day, movies will continue to tell stories whether they use celluloid or digital video. “From sound to color to widescreen to digital, with evolutions from “MTV editing” to the photorealistic performance capture of Avatar(2009), innovation after innovation, at its core, cinema remains cinema” (Kewitt, 6). By defining cinema only by theatrical exhibition or technology of film, we leave out important aspects of the film medium and cinematic aspects that help mold the very existence of cinema. This disconnect has always been apparent according to Kewitt but with the advancement of digital technology, the disconnect is even more apparent because there are even more aspects of film and cinema to be interpreted than there was when film generally was seen as referring to film stock or art.

 Works Cited

Barsam, Richard Meran., and Dave Monahan. Looking at Movies: an     Introduction to Film. W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.

 Kiwitt. “What Is Cinema in a Digital Age?Divergent Definitions from a      Production Perspective.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 64, no. 4, 2012, p. 3., doi:10.5406/jfilmvideo.64.4.0003.

 Prince, Stephen. “The Emergence of Filmic Artifacts: Cinema and Cinematography in the Digital Era.” Film Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 3, 2004, pp. 24–33., doi:10.1525/fq.2004.57.3.24.

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Keyword Definition: Haiku

     The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a haiku as, “: an unrhymed verse form of Japanese origin having three lines containing usually five, seven, and five syllables respectively; also : a poem in this form usually having a seasonal reference — compare” (Merriam-Webster). Haikus have long been recognized as a medium for persuasive and descriptive communication. This form of poetry’s origins trace back to Japanese culture, however over time, it has become an internationally utilized medium whose definition has been transformed over time and across cultures. While Haikus have remained a medium for argumentation and storytelling, what defines it has transformed in terms of meaning, purpose and overall structure.

     In its original context, Japanese haikus had very specific guidelines. “Traditional haiku uses concrete images to convey an experience or sensory perception typically taking place in one of the four seasons” (Welch 54). In it’s transformation into an international medium, modern day form has stripped the haiku of its need and requirement for a specific type of content. While a subject regarding nature and one of the four seasons was a staple for a traditional Japanese haiku, it is merely an unrequired possibility for current day work. With regard to English haikus, for example, the medium is still inspired by its origins being that, “since there is no real tradition for English Haiku, it must borrow from its Japanese origins” (Kiuchi). However, on the other hand, there is still a full transformation made between traditional Japanese haiku, and the new-age English Haikus. “English haiku poets tend to vacillate between reliance on the Japanese tradition when it serves their purposes and rejection of the same tradition when it does not” (Kiuchi).

     Another difference was created in the disconnect between traditional haiku and one of its newer definitions was the structure of the words and lines in the poem themselves. Welch discusses in his article the way that haikus have been drafted over time and between cultures. While all haikus are restricted to the parameters of 5-7-5 syllables for the entire poem, the interpretation of what that means and how it ultimately effects this medium is valuable. However, the main difference here is not merely the language difference and the way that tampers with the entirety of the process. This is because now, it is commonly held that those parameters are regarding English syllables. That it not quite the same in Japanese, though. Since the two languages are so similar, this is not as simple as mere translation from one form of the medium to the other. With the traditional Japanese version of this structural style, the Japanese culture uses sounds instead of syllables. This is significant because Japanese sounds do not necessarily correspond with English syllables.

     A lot of the debate that has revolved around the transformation of the definition of haikus has been centered in how these changes affect the motivation of the work in this form. In American Haiku: New Readings, it says, ”Instead of emphasizing a descriptive definition or list of rules for writers, several scholars have attempted to examine motivations (purposes or inspirations) for writing haiku in English” (Kiuchi). No longer is a haiku able to be simplified to a structured that deals primarily with nature, nor is a haiku as limited as it once was. Now, then, the goal becomes finding what defines haiku in a modern and global setting. What is the general force that drives haiku?

      Being that haiku is now a medium that has been adopted throughout a variety of cultures, it is now the case that the driving force behind most haiku can be tied back to the current culture that the writer identifies with. “In this sense, haiku writers that belong to a certain group, Romanian, African, American, or European, can be regarded as forming a particular culture” (Drobot). This form of influence doesn’t only make itself apparent in the change to the inherent definition of the medium, itself, but also the final poem that this idea creates. The point highlighted in Drobot’s piece is that due to the types of limitations that are present in haiku, many haikus around the world run the risk of being similar. The distinction, then, between all there poems that may be similar, by definition, are not based in the information and inspiration that are culturally driving them, creating new types of patterns. “The patterns come about partly through convention, but also through revolutions caused by great masters, who rejected the style of haiku that came before, gave new directions to the discourse, and provided key examples which many others emulated” (Stibbe).

     Haikus are a huge part of the history and effectiveness of communication through the broader medium of poetry. Throughout history, the definition of what a haiku is has been transformed from something only recognized by Japanese culture as a way to describe nature, into a medium used globally as a form of communicating and connecting to the empathy and persuasive appeal of those who read them,

 Works Cited

“Haiku.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/haiku.

Welch, Michael Dylan. “Even in Seattle: An Introduction to Haiku Poetry.” Raven Chronicles, vol. 24, Jan. 2017, pp 52-65. EBSCOhost, url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hus&AN=124518157&site=eds-live.

Kiuchi, Toru, et al. American Haiku: New Readings. Lexington Books, 2018.

DROBOT, Irina-Ana. "Intertextuality or Imitation in Haiku Writing?." Scientific Journal of Humanistic Studies, vol. 7, no. 13, Oct. 2015, pp. 48-50. EBSCOhost, lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=111803514&site=eds-live.

Stibbe, Arran. "Haiku and Beyond: Language, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World." Anthrozoos, no. 2, 2007, p. 101. EBSCOhost, lp.hscl.ufl.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.174640615&site=eds-live.

-HK

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Keyword Definition: Graffiti

Introduction

Graffiti has been a part of the human story since the dawn of mankind. Its history stretches all the way back to the first etchings and scratches produced on cave walls by the earliest men and women. Mirriam-Webster defines graffiti as “pictures or words painted or drawn on a wall, building, etc. (Mirriam-Webster).” Graffiti, however, is much more than just pictures and words; no one definition can capture the essence of its ever-changing nature. For many, it is an art form, allowing them to express themselves in a vibrant medium with no restriction. For others, it has become a form of political protest, a form of fighting for what one believes is right, and for others still, it has become a narrative through which people tell their stories and the stories of those they want people to know about. This changing and shifting definition of graffiti is reflected in the sociocultural shifts of society today. As the times have changed, the meaning, purpose, definition and use of graffiti have changed as well.

The History of Graffiti

When thinking of graffiti, one may have thoughts that flash to images of vibrantly colored, unstructured, words composed of big block letters on a building wall or park bench. However, as common a form of graffiti this may be in our current society, “…[this form of graffiti[ seems to have appeared in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, and by the late 1960s it had reached New York and was born on the subway trains (Blazeski, 2016).” Before both Philadelphia and New York ever formally existed, graffiti existed within the caves of ancient peoples, scrawled across the wall in primitive pictographs and scratches. One example of the earliest known forms of graffiti is the “Cueva de las Manos…located in Santa Cruz, Argentina…The painting dates from 13,000 to 9,000 BCE (Blazeski, 2016).” The piece depicts multiple hands sprawled across a wall, each hand surrounded by red, brown and white colored dyes in an unordered, unstructured manner. Ancient peoples were not the only ones who created these pieces. The ancient Greeks of Ephesus created the first “modern style” example of graffiti to date (Blazeski, 2016). A stone containing the etched images of a foot, a heart, a woman, a jug of wine, and a number was found on the main street in Ephesus and is fabled by locals to be an advertisement for prostitution (Blazeski, 2016). Additionally, the Romans created graffiti of their own on public buildings. One example is a satirical scene – the earliest known depiction of Jesus – that is found near Rome, Italy. It depicts Jesus being nailed to the cross with the head of a Donkey – a portrayal that seeks to mock Christians. In this respect, we see that even the earliest civilizations defined graffiti as a mechanism for political statements as well as a mechanism for creating a narrative – as can be seen in the Cueva de las Manos.

Coming to the more recent history of graffiti, we see the modern style of the art form – the use of spray paint – emerge in the ‘70s in New York City. This emergence started with the artist Taki, who used his tagline “Taki 183” to tag subway trains, and soon after, flocks of artist began to do the same. Taggers began to use more color and design to make their tags the most unique and stylish. However, in the ‘70s, “…John Lindsey, the mayor of New York at that time, declared the first war on graffiti in 1972 (Blazedski, 2016).” By the 1980s, graffiti became difficult to create on public entities and those who were caught, received legal sanctions. Today, society has become somewhat accepting of graffiti – more cities have come to accept the colorful display it creates in their cities. Others find it to be an eye-sore, an illegal use of public architecture. The controversial nature of graffiti itself and what it has come to be defined as is integral to the understanding of this keyword. This controversy is seen in the discussions of whether graffiti is an art form or not, whether it acts as a political statement, and whether graffiti can be used to convey a narrative.

Art or Vandalism?

One of the main pillars of the controversy surrounding graffiti centers around the notion of whether graffiti is considered art or just a variant of vandalism. “From the viewpoint of many of those who consider graffiti to be vandalism, all graffiti is vandalism regardless of a piece’s artistic value (Gomez, 650).” These people believe that the presence of graffiti lends itself to criminal activity, is done by criminals, shows that the neighborhood it is occurring in is in decay and that those who create graffiti should be legally sanctioned. Additionally, these individuals point to the unwanted nature of graffiti on public buildings and the costs associated with the removal of these pieces. Moreover, they state that because graffiti is associated with crime and those who commit it, “[it] incites fear because its opponents mistakenly believe that because gangs use graffiti, any graffiti necessarily brings about increases in gang activity, violence, and crime (Gomez, 654).” From this perspective, we see a complete negation of graffiti as an art form in any capacity. Individuals who possess this opinion emphasize the need to create more artistic outlets for artists to create publicly – such as the erection of murals and public art projects. Those on the other side of the debate, however, view graffiti as having the utmost “…artistic merit and should be exalted as such (Gomez, 655).” The notion that graffiti is art has been legitimized by the art community itself. “Recognition by the art world and inclusion in galleries and auctions is one way that graffiti art is legitimized as ‘real’ art (Sanchez).” Additionally, proponents of graffiti argue that the need for artistic expression overrules the demands of the public and private entities they create upon. In this regard, graffiti is seen as an art form that must be allowed at all costs, no matter the negative social ramifications it might produce. Personally, my definition of graffiti falls somewhere within the middle ground of this debate. I believe that graffiti is beautiful artwork that must be preserved for the cultural relevance and artist talent that it presents. However, I do recognize the fact that graffiti is normally created upon public and private entities that can be very costly to remove. I believe that graffiti is an art form that must be protected and recognized for the beauty it holds. However, I think that the defacing of public and privately-owned property is not something to condone and this could be rectified through the designation of public art spaces throughout communities.

Graffiti as a Political Statement

Since its inception, graffiti has come to be seen as a political statement, through which artists express their revolt against the “establishment.” As Troy Lovata and Elizabeth Olton state, “individuals or groups may use graffiti as a tool of protest, to communicate subversive opinions and experiences (25).” One instance of graffiti as a political discourse can be seen in “hip-hop” graffiti. “This highly stylized form of nongang graffiti writing – which includes the ‘tagging’ of subcultural nicknames on city walls and the creation of large illegal murals…has today fanned out intro large and small cities across the United States…(Ferrell, 78)” The creation of this graffiti was meant to disrupt the ever-encroaching gentrification of urban neighborhoods. Spaces became highly policed, curfews were enacted, and ordinances enforced that physically, culturally, and emotionally stratified cities. “The writing of hip hop graffiti disrupts this orderly latticework of authority, reclaims public space for at least some of those systematically excluded from it, and thus resists the confinement of kids and others within structures of social and spatial control (Ferrell, 79).” In essence, hip hop graffiti proved to be a direct defiance of the established norms of society, a political statement that served to defy those in power and empower those who were subjugated. A similar instance of graffiti being used as a political statement can be seen in the creation of feminist murals and war cries being painted upon the walls of Mexico City. Here, “[sixty-four] percent of women in the city [report] having been [victims of sexual harassment] while riding public transport…(Villatoro, 2017)” In a public display of solidarity, “women spray painted machetes against harassment and messages underlining consent as definitive – No es no (Villatoro, 2017).” Additionally, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, an American artist, took to the streets of Mexico City to paint multiple murals of strong women coming together to tell men enough is enough and that they have no right to assault any woman anywhere. This public display of resistance and political pressure spurred on action in the Mexico City community. UN Women and the government began an initiative that targeted men and aimed to put the burden of solving the issue on them. This example shows how graffiti can generate political statements which turn into visible action. In my own opinion, I believe that graffiti is one of the most powerful political tools that the public has at its fingertips. The painted image can unite where words fail and can inspire change where laws cannot. Defining graffiti as a political statement is a testament to the influence it has on modern culture and the enormity of the message it seeks to convey.

Graffiti as a Narrative

The topic of graffiti being used as a narrative has been debated time and time again. For those who are opposed to the idea of graffiti being able to convey a narrative, graffiti is just illegal scribbles and scrawls on public and private walls; it’s an eyesore composed of poorly arranged block letters that have no central meaning, no story to tell. The opposition, however, presents a strong counterpoint. They assert that graffiti has become a way for individuals to tell their personal stories as well as the stories of others who they wish to share. This story telling can be seen in the images created by these artists. An artist who has become the epitome of a story-teller through their art is Banksy. “Using striking stencil art and profound imagery…Banks puts social and political issues in our face.” (Johnson, 2018) The art he creates is open to interpretation by the viewer and allows the viewer to construct their own narrative about the image itself. One image created by Banksy features a small girl with her hand outstretched to a red heart balloon as it flies away with the accompanying text “there is always hope.” “While the image may symbolize loss, the text clearly tells us that no amount of loss can eliminate hope.” (Johnson, 2018) The point of the piece is to make people think about what is being conveyed and the artist is trying to present you, the viewer, with a story that is occurring within the image itself. I believe that images are some of the best narratives as they make the viewer construct their own narrative. Images have no verbal constraints on what is supposed to be understood, it is left up to the interpretation of the viewer.

Works Cited

Definition of Graffiti. Merriam-Webster, 2018, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/graffiti. Accessed 14 Feb. 2018.

Blazeski, Goran. The history of graffiti from ancient times to modern days. The Vintage News, 17 Nov. 2016, https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/11/17/the-history-of-graffiti-from-ancient-times-to-modern-days/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2018.

Sanchez, Noel. Graffiti: Art Through Vandalism. http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall07/Sanchez/about.html. Accessed 13 Feb. 2018.

Lovata, Troy, and Olton, Elizabeth. Understanding Graffiti: Multidisciplinary Studies from Prehistory to the Present. Left Coast Press, Inc., 2015.

Gomez, Marisa A. “The Writing on Our Walls: Finding Solutions through Distinguishing Graffiti Art from Graffiti Vandalism,” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform vol. 26, no. 3 (Spring 1993): p. 633-708.

Ferrell, Jeff. “Urban Graffiti Crime, Control, and Resistance,” Northern Arizona University vol. 26, no. 1 (Fall 1995): p. 73-92.

Villatoro, Jose Miguel Larios. Twitter, Graffiti, and Femicide. Harvard Political Review, 16 Sep. 2017. http://harvardpolitics.com/culture/twitter-graffiti-and-femicide/. Accessed 14 Feb. 2018.

Johnson, Brianna. 15 Life Lessons From Banksy Street Art That Will Leave You Lost For Words, 17 Jan. 2018. http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/15-life-lessons-from-banksy-street-art-that-will-leave-you-lost-for-words.html. Accessed 13 Feb. 2018.

- AG

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Keyword Definition: the Zine

The zine is a medium widely renown for its ability to express individual thought in an unconventional and often subverting manner. Zines can be described as makeshift booklets that can be composed of multiple mediums, such as drawings, pictures, and poetry. More frequently than not, a zine is made to pronounce a personal statement from its maker or team of makers. As stated in Mike Gunderloy and Cari Goldberg Janice’s book The World of Zines, zines tend to be created “for love rather than money, and focus on a particular subject” (Gunderloy and Janice 2). It is due to this passion and purpose within the creative minds of zinesters that this medium has been so thoroughly applied in the creation of modern art. Although the origin of the zine is slightly debated, mostly due to the inconsistency of its very definition by zine creators as well as zine scholars, art historians consider its use to have begun during the Dadaist art movement in Europe amid the 1910s and 1920s when artists promoted collaborations of art and upcoming art shows using self-published leaflets. However, the medium of the zine has served multiple purposes throughout the 20th century and into the present day. According to Susan E. Thomas in her article “Value and Validity of Art Zines as an Art Form”, zines have been used in subjects such as “fandom (science fiction, celebrity, and punk rock), anarchist politics, hobbies, and feminism (the riot grrrl period in the 1990s)” (Thomas 27). Due to the wide range of applications of the zine medium, defining what is considered a zine has been tricky for those who study this mode of expression. As defined by Richard A. Stoddart and Teresa Kiser in their work “Zines and the Library”, zines can be “loosely defined as self-published magazines” (Stoddart and Kiser 191). Even though this definition may sound vague, because of the history and apparently endless scope of applications for the medium, it seems to be the most accurate.

As a somewhat modern medium, the zine has had a history of constant artistic evolution and change in purpose. When looking at the zine as a true artistic medium, it can be understood that the elements that define what is a zine are present in early 20th century experimental art movements, such as Dadaism. Due to the independence of the artists in these movements, artists “such as Francis Picabia (391), Marcel Duchamp (The Blind Man), and Kurt Schwitters (Merz), are viewed as art zine influences because they self-published” (Thomas 31). Self-publishing, then, and in agreement with Stoddart and Kiser’s definition, can be thought as a defining feature of the zine. Yet, most people involved with the medium recognize the beginning of the zine as being in the 1930s and 1940s, a time when fans of science fiction started compiling short stories and sometimes accompanying illustrations into short booklets. These booklets were referred to as “fanzines” and from them the current term “zine” is derived (Stoddart and Kiser 191). However, these fanzines do not resemble what is known today as the zine. Although they are self-published, they tend to lack the quantity of mediums held within them and the DIY (do-it-yourself) sentiments that mark the zine of today (Stoddart and Kiser 192). As the zine moved through the 1960s and 1970s, it became more recognized as a medium in underground subcultures as a way to self-express and share expression with others. At this time, the zine expanded its reach into the, although experimental, popular art scene in the United States and had many notable contributors, such a Andy Warhol (Thomas 31). Later on in the 20th century, the zine became a staple in avant-garde music scenes. In these spaces, musicians, such as Kim Gordon, Daniel Johnson, and Billy Childish (Thomas 32), would create and sell zines involving their artistic visions within music and applying them to the zine format. As the zine continued to persist into the current day, it became an outlet for socially oppressed or underrepresented groups, such as people of color or LGBTQ+, to spread personal, political, or social messages within their communities. Now, the zine can be found in online formats and new technologies have made it easier than ever before for zinesters to scan and spread their work (Gunderloy and Jance 157). Many promoters of the zine medium consider this latest development to be critical in stamping the zine as a relevant medium which should be used to study truthfully the climate and sociological facts of the present day.

Due to the intricate history of the zine, many creators and scholars have debated its definition. While some apply the term zine to absolutely anything self-published, including Benjamin Franklin because of his use of an independent printing press (Stoddart and Kiser 191), others are more skeptical about what defines a zine and tend to relate the term to what is understood as the modern zine with existent features such as multiple mediums and purposely unedited work. Depending on the purpose of a work, too, zine makers and those who study the zine tend to have disparities in which works are zines. Some consider DIY informational leaflets or promotional pamphlets to be separate art forms from the personal zine made simply for self-expression. As a result of the complex history of the zine and its fluid application as a term used to describe works with many differing purposes, the definition of a zine has become less and less elaborate to some and more specific to others depending on the purpose and time of a work. What is agreed upon, however, is that all zines must be self-published works. It is this key feature that remains within all definitions of the zine and which is at the heart of their creation.

No matter when one considers the birth of the zine to be or what elements one considers are necessary for a work to be considered a zine, it can be understood that the zine is a critical medium in tracking social history. Without self-published mediums, what is left for historians to study about the contemporary age is filtered through corporate media and what remains for social-based studies may not be entirely accurate. The zine has allowed entire underground subcultures to form and political movements to spread. Zines give a voice to those that mainstream media ignores. When it comes to the medium of the zine, it should not be ignored. Countless zine enthusiasts and scholars are pushing to bring more zines into academic spaces and libraries. It is necessary for this art form to be preserved if society is still to value the emotions, opinions, thoughts, and ideas of the individual.

Works Cited

Gunderloy, Mike, and Cari Goldberg Janice. “The World of Zines.” By Mike Gunderloy, www.goodreads.com/book/show/842163.The_World_of_Zines.

Stoddart, Richard A., and Teresa Kiser. “Zines and the Library.” Library Resources & Technical Services, American Library Association, 1 July 2004, www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-120352893/zines-and-the-library.

Thomas, Susan. “‘Value and Validity of Art Zines as an Art Form.".” Art Documentation, www.academia.edu/2081504/_Value_and_Validity_of_Art_Zines_as_an_Art_Form._.

-Briana Sabataso

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24-Hour News Cycle

Unless a pinch of research has been done, the term 24-Hour News Cycle is typically not communicated in regular discourse. It is a truism however to state that the 24-Hour News Cycle is ubiquitously recognizable for each and every technologically modern individual, in this present age. Turn on the TV, there it is. Tap a social media app – Twitter, Facebook, etc. – and there it is. Open any online news site and there it is. Quite literally, the 24-Hour News Cycle is the omnipotent, dynamic, ever-changing God of both the congregation and the dissemination of information.

The 24-Hour News Cycle is usually referred to for its perpetual presentation through mass media companies like CNN and Fox News, especially their around-the-clock, rotating television news briefings and analysis. Regardless of how it’s seen, the 24-Hour News Cycle, as defined by David A Logan, is “a beast with a voracious appetite for both quantity of ‘content’ and speed of delivery” that stresses journalist to be first, rather than right. [1] In other words, the 24-Hour News Cycle is a conceptual term describing the phenomena, created at the inception of the internet due to an explosion of information dispersion and accessibility, where consumers of news are continually craving updates on their news.

Some consider the 24-Hour News Cycle (with online news sites, social media, the blogosphere, and so forth) to be an innovative, revitalizing, and resourceful way to present news in the modern age. Defenders of the internet age of information cite examples in the diversity to which a story can be presented: most notably through multimedia stories, up-to-date crisis reports, discussion boards at end of news articles, and more forms of interacting with stories. Opposers to the 24-Hour beast tend to focus on the myopic issues of the machine: with an increasing amount of pressure assigned to posting the first story, verifying information is completely disregarded at times.

While there may be benefits to the 24-Hour News Cycle in its ability to construct and guide interaction with stories, the dangers of the machine are too immanent and threating. The 24-Hour News Cycle is not something that can be erased, but for the sake of verisimilitude, it should be changed.  

From Birth to Beast: Origin of the 24-Hour News Cycle

Traditional newspapers, a rarity in the modern age, was once the hotspot of news consumption. Consumers of news would purchase a daily newspaper that would report the previous day’s current events. Given that newspapers were cycling information in a 24-hour time-period, they essentially had up to an entire day to “reach conclusions about the veracity and, just as importantly, the significance” of yesterday’s stories. [2]

With the emergence of the television and massive corporate mergers like the Cable News Network (CNN) providing a constant supply of news twenty-four hours of each day, seven days a week, a paradigmatic shift of news consumption occurred. Logan highlights one of the first momentous coverage moments of the 24-Hour News Cycle, the Persian Gulf War of 1991. A constant newsfeed of on-the-ground reporters covering the munition lit sky of Baghdad for “seventeen uninterrupted hours” [3] sparked the change.

Networks who reported news at the time noted CNN’s genius as their coverage created an entertainment event; one that brought in viewers out of curiosity and kept them entertained and mystified through trepidation. Other networks like Fox News began to follow in the footsteps of CNN. At its core, this moment constructed one of the foundational characteristics of the 24-Hour News Cycle: creating a parade out of a crisis – the spectacle always captivates attention.

With the birth of a new news machine, the 24-Hour News Cycle was only further reinforced through the internet. It is without question that the internet created new norms, cultures, practices, and methodically altered all aspects of modern society in general. The internet multiplied the 24-Hour News Cycle by creating more facets of news and information: accessibility to primary sources, sites that summarize news, second-by-second reporting of events, blogs, chat rooms, and so forth. The internet also provided all these outlets on an unprecedented global scale.

Impact of the 24-Hour News Cycle

Ethan Zuckerman, in his journal about international journalism, notes that the internet and the 24-Hour News Cycle produced a new cultural habit among users. He notes that older users of the internet expect information to be dispersed a bit slower, but younger users, because of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, expect a “continuous communication” stream. He notes that Facebook gave form to the trend of publishing “status updates” and Twitter intensified this trend with its emphasis on pithy, almost gratuitous, status updates. [4]

The need to satiate a continually present appetite for news can be seen in criticisms of CNN’s reporting, or lack thereof, of the street protests in Tehran on June 13, 2009. CNN reported the protests, after other networks, only four or five hours after it occurred, yet CNN was criticized by thousands of Twitter users for its slow reporting. Hashtags like “#CNNfail” were used to chide the network. [5] To most reading this now, this may seem appropriate. Yet, compared to the daily newspaper days just decades ago, the expectation is quite alarming.

The alarming issue arises with the space of time allotted for CNN to report proper, journalistically verified, truthful statements. As aforementioned, newspapers in the past were given an entire day, at the very least, to verify the truth. CNN was, in this moment, given less than five hours, not only to obtain information, but to verify it, draft a report, edit it, and publish it. The trend of constant checking places pressure on journalists, as Logan mentioned, to report first and verify later.

Logan exemplifies this in his account of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and its erroneous reporting. Monicagate was, by its very title, intriguing. A story that could not be missed. When will another president ever be caught in an adulterous act? This level of interest allowed an email to avalanche a disaster of journalistic reporting. As Logan notes, a single internet columnist, Matt Drudge, sent a mass email to many renowned journalists with the subject line “A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!” Drudge’s findings were immediately mentioned on multiple networks, respectable newspapers like The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times copied the story, attributing their findings from “’sources close to the investigation.’” Within a day, multiple news outlets were reporting this singular finding from an individual who claimed to have learned of the affair through a specific tape. Among other misreports, it was introspectively discovered more than forty percent of the reporting from news outlets had not been factual (as no one verified the source), but rather “analysis, opinion, speculation, or judgments.” Another 12 percent outright repeated other news outlets without fact-checking, and some respectable outlets even posted the story without maintaining their two-source rule. [6]

Monicagate’s reporting errors, among other things, shows a tripartite of issues: (1) it allows misreporting to occur widespread and often, which can potentially lead to damaging public and private entities through libel; (2) it is journalistically unprofessional as a news outlet’s obligation is to report the unaltered truth to the public; and (3) it creates a precedence to allow journalists to disregard their proper practices (verification, cross referencing, primary sources, etc.) so they may report mistruths as they come and adjust them later.

It’s Not All Bad: benefits of the 24-Hour News Cycle

Zuckerman cites Edward Said in specifying the old phenomena (since post-colonialism) of a desire to “control mediated narratives of [one’s] experiences.” [7] The internet and 24-Hour News Cycle culture allow this infinitely. Never have there been more interactive experiences with the news.

George Lăzăroiu reinforces this point in his book, Hyperreality, Cybernews, and the Power of Journalism, where he argues discussion boards, multimedia content, hyperlinks, and more act as complementary pieces to aid interaction, understanding, and overall experience. He follows:

News content is dynamic in an online environment, which enables better representation of events and process in real life. News in an electronic, digital environment can be customized, or personalized, in a way not possible in other media. Younger audiences value the diversity of news perspectives made available via the Internet. [8]

Generally, Lăzăroiu focuses on the benefits of the evolving 24-Hour News Cycle through online news as mentioned above. However, he does add a quasi-contradictory disclaimer at the beginning of his book. He acknowledges that traditional print newspapers are seen as a “serious news medium” whereas things like television or online news are regarded as “less serious.” In stating this, he chooses to focus on the idea that the entertainment dimension must be considered when interpreting the 24-Hour News Cycle and online news. [9]

Pulling It All Back

For as beneficial as the 24-Hour News Cycle could be, the implications outweigh the benefits. That is not to say it should dissipate. It simply needs adjustment.

The 24-Hour News Cycle, by its design, places a dangerous amount of pressure on journalists and news centers alike to publish stories. Especially in a competitive, corporate mass media market that exists for journalism today, emphasis on the first story instead the most truthful story is concerning. Even if stories can be adjusted, personalized, and so forth after the original post, the myopia of publishing allegations as pseudo-truths to be seen as in-the-present-second truths should outclass the benefit it can provide. It anything at all, maybe CNN had it right. Maybe just a few hours are needed to compromise. Verify the truth yet be timely.

- JH

Notes:

[1] David A. Logan, 2000, 201.

[2] ibid., 202.

[3] ibid., 203.

[4] Ethan Zuckerman, 2010, 69.

[5] ibid., 68.

[6] David A. Logan, 2000, 206-208.

[7] Ethan Zuckerman, 2010, 67.

[8] George Lăzăroiu, 2009, 43-44.

[9] ibid., 19.

Works Cited

Logan, David. “All Monica, All of the Time: The 24-Hour News Cycle and the Proof of Culpability in Libel Actions.” 23 UALR L. Rev. 201 (2000): 201-221.

Lăzăroiu, George. 2009. Hyperreality, Cybernews, and The Power of Journalism. [electronic resource]. n.p.: New York: Addleton Academic Publishers, c2009., 2009. UF Catalog, EBSCOhost.  

Zuckerman, Ethan. "International Reporting in the Age of Participatory Media." Daedalus 139, no. 2 (2010): 66-75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20749825.

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Vignette

The term, vignette, is a relatively common literary feature that has currently found itself in a bit of a quandary. “Vignette” has (unfortunately) taken on a relatively ambiguous meaning as a consequence of the surprising lack of scholarship regarding its characteristics, markers, and use (both past and present). Clarifying the term, then, requires a bit of detective work. The origins of the term are a useful point to craft predictions about the potential meaning of the term. From that point an analysis of some of the modern uses can help to refine that prediction and an analysis of competing terms for similar mediums can aid in chipping out the remaining facets.

The French term from which vignette is derived, vigne, is medieval in origins. Vigne was a term to refer to “a running ornament (as of vine leaves, tendrils, and grapes) put on or just before a title page or at the beginning or end of a chapter” (Webster). This, seemingly useless (at least for our purposes), description actually lends quite a bit to base a prediction. The embellishment the term vigne characterized, after a bit of thought, has two obvious characteristics: (1) the embellishment was highly detailed and (2) the embellishment did not lend much, if anything, to the actual content of the story. From this a working definition can be derived for the child-term, vignette: “a highly-descriptive piece with minimal content.”

Before diving into a conversation of the characteristics of a literary vignette, it is helpful to look at a vignette in another medium – photography. Vignetting is a process in photography, specifically portrait photography, of “lightening [the image] here and there, giving it a heart of depth in one place only” (Seymour 242). Similarly, vignetting is also a process to center focus in paintings to a particular detail of the piece (ICASSP). The definition of this process in the visual arts seems to line up with the earlier prediction, the “heart of depth” mentioned here is uniquely suitable to the earlier proposed classification of “highly descriptive.” However, what this process in photography seems to add is an element of focus, i.e. vignetting should draw attention to a particular aspect or detail and elaborate on that aspect or detail. In this, our definition derived from the origins was lacking – it spoke only to form and ignored the question of subjects. Therefore, the definition should be modified slightly: “a highly-descriptive piece about a particular aspect or detail with minimal content.”

At this juncture, the definition seems possibly oxymoronic. It certainly, at least, raises the question of how something could be both highly descriptive yet also have minimal content. To disambiguate the potential conflict, it is certainly useful to look at a medium similar to the vignette that yet has independent enough characteristics to retain its own identity – such as flash fiction. Flash fiction, similar to the vignette, is a relatively short literary medium typically “below 300 words” (World Heritage Encyclopedia). However, what distinguishes the two is their content: flash fiction, “unlike a vignette, often contains the classic story elements: protagonist, conflict, obstacles or complications, and resolution” (World Heritage Encyclopedia). This therefore is a working stand-in – a definition within the definition – for the word “content” within the greater definition that’s been proposed for the term vignette throughout this paper. A vignette, with this consideration in mind, is “a highly-descriptive piece about a particular aspect or detail without the typical plot elements characteristic of a full narrative.”

This definition seems to put into words what a vignette is rather than what had before been a feeling of what a vignette ought to be. In the vein of what it ought to be, take for example Noretta Koertge’s words:

“If one is writing a vignette about a dearly beloved Volkswagen, one will probably play down the general characteristics which it shares with all VW's and focus instead on its peculiarities—the way it coughs on cold mornings, the time it climbed an icy hill when all the other cars had stalled, etc” (Koertge).

Koertge’s description iterates that the vignette should zoom in on the particular aspect or detail of the subject and that it ought to illuminate the subject with startling clarity and description. Koertge’s feeling of what the vignette ought to be, then, seems to line up nicely with the proposed definition, “a highly-descriptive piece about a particular aspect or detail without the typical plot elements characteristic of a full narrative.”

The vignette is a highly-important literary tool with an irreplaceable function. It allows the author a reprieve from the typical macroscopic view where details often fall by the wayside. The vignette is the author’s invitation to the reader, calling them to zoom in on the minute and the mundane, to see new life in what is so often taken for granted and to appreciate, if only for a brief moment, the true beauty of the ordinary.

References:

“Flash Fiction.” Project Gutenberg, World Heritage Encyclopedia, central.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Flash_fiction.

Koertge, Noretta. “Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos.” Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos, edited by Robert S. Cohen et al., Springer, 1976.

Seymour, R A. “Vignette Photographs.” The Illstrated Photographer: Scientific and Art Journal, vol. 2, 21 May 1869, pp. 242–245. Google Books.

Smithies, Michael. Village Vignettes: Portraits of a Thai Village. Orchid Press, 2003.

"Transfer of Vignetting Effect from Paintings to Photographs." 2017 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2017 IEEE International Conference on, 2017, p. 1957. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1109/ICASSP.2017.7952498.

“Vignette (Literature).” Project Gutenberg, World Heritage Encyclopedia, central.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Vignette_(literature).

“Vignette.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, 6 Feb. 2018.

-JK

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Keyword Definition : Rap Music

Rap Music

Modern definitions of Rap Music tend to focus on the key structural components of the music itself. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary defines Rap as “A type of popular music of US Black origin in which words are recited rapidly and rhythmically over an instrumental backing” [1]. This method uses the signature vocal style and emphasis on lyrics to assign music to the genre. Indeed, these are key elements of Rap that have propelled it to the for front of American culture. Through out history, music has been used to tell narratives, weave stories, and convey ideas to large audiences. However, in recent decades, Rap music has emerged as the preeminent genre for these purposes. This is largely do to the fact that unlike most genres, Rap places almost all of its emphasis on its lyrics. Notice how the Oxford definition uses the term “instrumental backing” to describe the beats used in Rap. The word “backing” heavily implies that the instrumental part is of minimal importance compared to the spoken words. This could rarely be said about the beautiful guitar work common to rock music, or the beats used in modern day pop and EDM (electric dance music). In these genres, even when the vocals are the focus, it is often because the lyricist is singing in a way that is pleasing to the ear. In contrast, Rap artists usually employ a style of spoken word, focusing on the content of the lyrics themselves over their sound. This commitment to lyrical merit naturally leads the genre towards storytelling and narrative focus. A prominent example of this concept is the Eminem song, “Stan”[2]. In the song, Eminem raps a heart breaking story about the suicide of an obsessed fan, over a simple beat, focusing on themes of depression and abuse. Despite the heavy content and relative lack of audio that would be traditionally considered beautiful to the ear, the song has received over one hundred and forty million listens on the streaming site Spotify. Keep in mind, “Stan” was released eight years prior to the launch of Spotify.  Clearly, the lyricism and vocal style of rap music are heavily entrenched and defining of the genre. However, rap music has a colorful history, and in the past would not have been defined in such a structural manner.

Origins of Rap

Rap music originated in the 1970’s in New York City, a product of the fusion of African American culture with that of recent Caribbean immigrants. The resulting mix was referred to as Hip Hop Culture, and the music that came out of it as rap. The music at this time would barely be identifiable as rap today, and was characterized by it’s Dance Hall and Disco influences. It began as the sound of the New York party scene, but as it moved into the 80’s, became more and more politically charged. Young African Americans used the music as an avenue to express their discontent with their status and experiences in American society. Cheryl L. Keyes explores these themes in her 2002 book, Rap Music and Street Consciousness. She begins by explaining the origins of Rap and its ties to traditional African storytelling, as well as the influences of Caribbean culture on the genre. She then moves to commenting on the political and socioeconomic history of African Americans in New York City, before tying the two ideas together. In Keyes’ eyes, Rap at this time was used as a form of communication between African Americans. Commenting on the lyrics of the music, she writes “Here one learns about the ghetto, how to survive in it, and how to combat unwarranted economic and social oppression from mainstream society. A major requisite for survival in the streets is learning how to communicate effectively” (Keyes 29). She points to prominent artists of the time such as Grand Master Flash as examples of those whose songs contain themes of anti-oppression and lessons about living in poverty. Additionally, while musing about her discoveries while investigating the genre, Keyes proclaims “…..I realized that this music is grounded in the aesthetic and ideology of urban street culture” (Keyes xii). This point is especially important because it emphasizes the interconnection of Rap music to this local, hip hop culture at the time. Although today Rap music has become a global phenomenon spanning a variety of different cultures, in the 1970’s and early 1980’s it would have been impossible to define the term without focusing on its interconnectedness to New York Hip Hop culture as well as it’s emphasis on socioeconomic commentary.

Evolution of the Media

Throughout the 80’s, Rap gained popularity and entered what is commonly referred to as the “Golden Age” [3]. This period was marked by constant innovation and incorporation of a multitude of styles, such as Jazz, and was exemplified by artists such as A Tribe Called Quest and Big Daddy Kane. However, it remained concentrated in the New York Hip Hop scene. The first major deviation from this style came in the late 80’s, with the emergence of a new subgenera, Gangsta Rap. This movement came from the West Coast, and was centered around LA.  In his book Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap, Eithne Quinn comments on some of the signature features of this style. Talking about common elements, he claims “selling drugs, endorsing St. Ides (a brand of alcohol), and producing gangsta rap. All are construed as socially irresponsible but income generating necessities” (Quinn 6). Gangsta Rap continued the New York tradition of socioeconomic commentary, however, as outlined by Quinn, it did this by embracing and glorifying the criminal activities the artists believed were necessary for survival in their economic bracket. This, along with the mounting gang violence in Los Angelas led to the genres label as Gangsta Rap. Quinn notes that the subgenera “communicates through commodities” (Quinn 7), emphasizing its obsession with items such as 40.Oz beers or fancy cars. Additionally, the genre heavily emphasized fighting back against or even violence towards authorities, stemming from the artists reaction to intense discrimination and police violence towards African Americans. This sentiment was fueled by incidents such as the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD, and was clearly exemplified by songs such as N.W.A.’s “Fuck The Police”[4]. The 90’s saw this subgenera become the dominant form of Rap in the United States, which led to controversy due to its often violent nature. To define Rap in this era, you surely would have referenced these “gangsta” and controversial features.

Rap in the Modern Day

Rap as we know it today emerged in the late 90’s and into the twenty first century. The main event that distinguishes the modern era of rap is its appropriation by other cultures. No longer is it confined to African American communities of lower economic status. Instead, it is listened to and even made by people of all socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Bakari Kitwana addressees this in his book, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop. Analyzing the consumption of Rap by all cultures, he writes “Most hip-hop kids-white, Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American- are taking from popular culture what they find useful, fashioning it to local needs, claiming it as their own and in the process placing their own stamp on it.” (Kitwana 3). Through this process, Rap has gained influence from countless cultures and has developed numerous subgenera, focused on varying themes. It is no longer possible to define rap by its ties to one specific culture or use of certain particular themes. Instead, one is left simply to point to it’s core elements, it’s African American origins and use of distinct vocal style.

-JC

Notes

[1] Oxford English Dictionary

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMhN-hfMtY

[3]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/arts/music/hiphops-raiders-of-the-lost-archives.html

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5fts7bj-so

Works Cited

Keyes, Cheryl L. Rap music and street consciousness. Univeristy of Illinois Press, 2004.

Quinn, Eithne. Nuthin But a "G" Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap. Columbia University Press, 2010.

Kitwana, Bakari. Why white kids love hip-Hop: wangstas, wigger, wannabes, and the new reality of race in America. Basic Civitas, 2006.

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