My Cultural Diary - Week 9

Identify a celebrity to investigate

Arnold Schwarzenegger

- What is the image of your chosen celebrity?

He is an Austrian-born American former professional bodybuilder, actor, model, businessman and politician. He went to win Mr. Universe award at age of 20 and Mr. Olympia contest a total of seven times. He is worldwide better known as a Hollywood action film icon and as well as a major sports icon.  Some of his top films are Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator, Commando and Predator.

Reference link

- What do they represent?

He made a new international audience for bodybuilding and gym memberships worldwide swelled by the tens of thousands inspired by him as he proved himself a major sports icon. Reference link

- What is the narrative of your chosen celebrity?

 The key narratives that I have found for my chosen celebrity are that:

 “The amazing story of uber-star Arnold Schwarzenegger is a true "rags to riches" story of the penniless immigrant making it in the land of opportunity, the United States of America.” Reference link

- What attitudes/ideologies are exposed here? (gender, class etc)

“With an almost unpronounceable surname and a thick Austrian accent, who would have ever believed that a brash, quick talking bodybuilder from a small European village would become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, marry into the prestigious Kennedy family, amass a fortune via shrewd investments and one day be the Governor of California!” Reference link

Reading Response to "Fan Cultures Between ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Justification’, Fan Cultures" by Matt Hills

The Focus on this reading is the ethnographies of fandom and the author is trying to differentiate between knowledge and justification explosion in fan studies and also explains that how these are accepted as cultural facts by ethnographers.

The key point that I have found for this answer are:

“Fan justifications are accepted as cultural facts by ethnographers rather than being subjected to further analysis.”

“Work on fandom has formed a key part of the move towards valorizing active audiences, and this use of the fan has resulted in an extremely partial and limited examination of fan practices.”

“Fan- ethnography has typically been limited by its view of the real as matter of discourse and articulation, or by its one- sided accounts of fandom either as a social coping mechanism [bacon-smith 1992] or a valuable ‘interpretive community’ [Jenkins 1992; Amesley 1989]”

“Autoethnography aims to create a partial ‘inventory’ of the ‘infinity of traces’ deposited within the self by cultural and historical processes.”

“Autoethnography also displaces the problems of assuming that the ‘real’ is always primarily discursive.”

“Autoethnography is contracted to psychoanalytic and ideological approaches, since there are viewed as approaches where theory is imposed on experience.”

My Cultural Diary - Week 7

I have chosen to look at Liverpool to see how the city is represented.

I have chosen to look at website www.liv.ac.uk and how Liverpool is represented in timely research undertaken by The University of Liverpool.  Reference Link 

The University of Liverpool discovered the fact about its home city through an original study. Through their research they argue that Liverpool “a century ago Liverpool was regarded as the ‘second city’ of the British empire’ – though subsequently it gained a reputation for militant politics in the face of economic adversity.” They also state that “Liverpool is proud to be European Capital of Culture 2008.” Reference Link 

 The city’s changing fortunes and multi-faceted identity make it an interesting case study – as does the fact that it was first captured on film in 1897 – just two years after ‘moving pictures’ were first shown in public. Since the footage was shot for the pioneering Lumière Brothers, it was faithfully preserved – offering the potential to investigate how Liverpool’s form and identity have been portrayed in moving images over the course of a century.

 Reference Link 

The research also states that Liverpool was first captured on film in 1897. The research further notes that “The footage was shot for the pioneering Lumière Brothers, it was faithfully preserved – offering the potential to investigate how Liverpool’s form and identity have been portrayed in moving images over the course of a century.” Reference Link 

Some more facts that are described in the research about Liverpool states that “Liverpool had achieved the world’s first fully enclosed wet dock system, creating 140 acres of docks and 10 miles of quay space – and the world’s first elevated electric railway, a mass transit system which ran all along the waterfront.” Reference Link 

I think that this representation of Liverpool is very original. Almost all cities in the UK are of high importance because of their history but the fact the each city has got its own reputation increases its importance to study each city in the UK in details. I love Football and the Football clubs in the UK are my favorites. Liverpool Football Club is most winning club of the 20th century and one of the most successful clubs in the history of English football. This fact made me to think to select Liverpool as a research that how media texts represent the cities.

Reading Response to "Postmodernism and 'The Other Side' " by Dick Hebdige

This reading looks at Potsmodernism and Hebdige talks about the word Postmodernism and what it’s supposed to refer to for example he notes that postmodernism can be referred to as the 'buzzword', because it has so many distinctions and at some points Hebdige refers to Jean-François lyotard tendencies.

“Jean-François lyotard (1986a) has recently used the the postmodernism to refer to 3 separate tendencies: (i) a trend within architecture away from the modern movement’s project ‘of a last rebuilding of the whole space occupied by humanity’, (ii) a decay in confidence in the idea of progress and modernization (‘there is a sort of sorrow in the zeitgeist’) and (iii) a recognition that it is no longer appropriate to employ the metaphor of the ‘avant-grade’.

The other key points that I have found in the readings are:

“The degree of semantic complexity and overload surrounding the term ‘postmodernism’ at the moment signals that a significant number of people with conflicting interests and opinions feel that there is something sufficiently important at stake here to be worth struggling and arguing over.”

“If the unity, the boundaries and the timing of modernism itself remains a contentious issue,, then postmodernism seems to defy any kind of critical consensus.”

 “ ‘Critical’ alternative (the one favoured by foster) postmodernism is defined as a positive critical advance which fractures through negation (i) the petrified hegemony of an earlier corpus of ‘radical aesthetic’ strategies and proscriptions, and/ or (ii) the pre-Freudian unitary subject which formed the hub of the ‘progressive’ wheel of modernization.”

    

Cultural Diary - Week 8

This week’s online lecture describes different areas of fandom and at the very first part it states the difference between Pathologised Fandom and Idealised Fandom.
Accoeding to lecture pathologised fandom is a common sense discourse around fandom while idealized fandom is the counter to pathologised fandom and is also known as oppositional discourse.

The examples of pathologised fandom are the geeky male fan, violent male football fan and screaming girls.
The lecture also describes the difference between cult fans and mainstream stream audiences. Cult fans are intentionally seek out of media texts and are less popular because very few people have knowledge about this type of fans.
Mainstream stream fandom is the situation when people are fans of popular media texts.
The example of mainstream stream fandom is twilight fans which is particularly associated with young women. The lecture also describes that there more research is going on this and there is opportunity to do a research on this.
The lecture also says that fan communities give the opportunities and the potential benefits for fans to come in a social and cultural network and discuss their views and share their love for fan object.
Shipping is the fan practice of supporting fictional romantic relationships. In this situation the fans supports fictional romantic relationships between characters who are already romantically involved in the media text.

Reading response - Stuart Hall: Notes on Deconstructing “The Popular”

In this reading the writer Suart Hall express his personal view that he feels difficulty in explaining the terms ‘popular’ as well as ‘culture’ and he explains that by combining the two terms together he difficulties can be appealing unspeakable.

The key points of the readings are:

“Transformations are at the heart of the study of popular culture.”

“Transformation is the key to the long and protracted process of the ‘moralisation’ of the laboring classes, and the ‘demoralisation’ of the poor, and the‘re-education’ of the people. “

The selected period by Suart Hall is 1880s-1920s because he believes that its is one of real test cases for the revived interest in popular culture.

I have looked online to find some articles for the better understanding of the reading and I have found an article in this link:

The key points that I have found important related to the readings are:

“Hall has argued that there is no fixed content to the category 'the people,' that popular culture is the site where 'the people' are constituted, and that popular culture is thereby a site of struggle.”

Suart Hall explained three definitions for the term popular culture. His third divination is that popular culture is about the survival of cultural traditions. The other definitions which include mass consumption and the explanation that popular culture is everything can be related to the third definition

Week 5's Reading. The Mistakes of the past?Visual narratives of urban decline and regeneration. David Parker and Paul Long.

The reading explains the transformation process around Birmingham and also explaining that greatest rebuilding and development programme are playing important role in these process which existing among the towns and cities of Europe.

Visions of the city

This part of the reading explains that visual material like plans, models, newspaper commentary, paintings, photographs, websites are playing important role in showing visions of Birmingham.

The changing city skyline is also explained in the reading and its says that photographers and visual artists plays important role in this matters.

The Key points that I have found under this heading are:

“Successive generations of urban imaginary find architectural realization in cityscapes.”

The image of the city

The key point under this section is the definition of urban imaginary by Edward Soja:

“‘our mental orcognitive mappings of urban reality and the interpretative grids throughwhich we think about, experience, evaluate and decide to act in the places, spaces and communities in which we live’”

Another key point is that:

“The built form of a city is one tangible expression of the social imaginary”

Images of Birmingham

The Key points that I have found under this heading are:

“Birmingham offers a rich example of how the narrative of Britain’s post-war decline was powerfully expressed through visual imagery.”

This part of the reading gives example of the four main landmarks as a result of which Birmingham built an environment of post-war developments. These landmarks are Bull Ring Shopping Center, The Rotunda, the Post Office Tower and the Central Library.

Utopian visions of Birmingham

The Key points of the readings are:

“The early plans for what became post-war Birmingham the sense of hope and ambition is tangible.”

 “There is a confidence in the capacity of organized interventions to reshape space and secure a better future.”

‘The mistakes of the past’

The Key points that I have found under this heading are:

“Birmingham, as the nation’s motor city, became renowned for pushing its pedestrians into underpasses.”

“The design of the city centre reflected organizational rather than human priorities.”

Youthful nostalgia?

“At a crucial moment in Birmingham’s history their work speaks to the ambivalence felt by many local residents as the place they once knew becomes unrecognizable.”

The new image of the city?

The Key points that I have found under this heading is:

“The more strident the dominant narrative of regeneration becomes, the more devalued are the

necessary narratives of negotiation adopted by local residents without the

resources to aspire to the new urban imaginary’s scale of ambition.”

This part of the reading focusing on explaining the modern development of the city and how Birmingham's  regeneration changed as a result of that developments.