Horan, Elizabeth R. “Technically Outside the Law: Who Permits, Who Profits, and Why.” The Emily Dickinson Journal 10.1 (2001): 34-54.

Offering what seems to be significantly an economic outlook on Copyright intentions, Horan claims that incentive is the motivating reason and concern for creators to create and for that creation to serve the public good after a limited time (28 years). Similar to Carol Ou and her article on control over new technology, Horan presents us with examples to make her point about the increasing difficulty of controlling content. In this case she offers the example of Emily Dickinson’s writings to moot the point even recalling radio programs as an earlier obstruction to copyright control.

In describing Copyright incentive a new perspective was given me. Writers and artists of all kinds create because of the knowledge they of copyright protection. This may not be their primary reasoning, but perhaps at times it could be especially when their main motive is to gain monetary success.

 

This is a short article from the New York Times about the student uprisings in Paris during May 1968 and their lasting effects on French culture and psychology. The title alone, “Barricades of May ’68 Still Divide the French” says a lot about the content, namely that the uprisings were not wholly supported by French society, and that there is a distinct split in between how they are remembered in French society; the Right calls them “the events”, while the Left calls it “the movement.” The article cedes that youth revolt was common throughout the West, but that France was unique in its potential to foment a political revolution, with 10 million striking workers. The article notes how the desire behind May ’68 was unfulfilled, as the right is now in power. It quickly summarizes a chronology of the events, namely that the student uprisings spread out from Nanterre University to the elite Sorbonne, and eventually to the workers of the nation. A former participant in the uprisings says, “the revolution was social not political,” and that while students spoke of revolution they never intended to carry it out. The article also lists the social transformations that French culture has undergone since 1968, and claims that the “anti-authoritarians of the time were fighting against a very different society,” in effect disabling the notion of any future social revolution.
    The article provides a useful historical context for the ramifications of the uprisings in 1968, as well as a critique of, essentially, the ambiguity of Vigo’s conclusion to “Zéro de Conduite.” If Paris in May 1968 was a realization of a theory of anarchist pedagogy, its final results were disappointing, because the nation now has a conservative government. The end of Jean Vigo’s film offers an apparent victory, but no steps further than that, something that many anarchists love to do, while not realizing the damage to the credibility of their movement. Perhaps it is for this reason that the protestors of Paris spoke often of revolution in romantic, lofty terms such as the surrealist rebellion presented in Vigo’s film, but in actuality, never attempted to complete that vision because the vision itself was incomplete, a simple specter of the meme that revolution had become in the collective consciousness of French society. Regardless, the article is valuable to my thesis because it challenges the apparent victory of subversive creativity over entrenched power structures, because power always adapts, whereas visions of the revolution have remained anachronistic.

full citation: Erlanger, Steven . "Barricades of May ’68 Still Divide the French - New York Times." The New York Times. 30 Apr. 2008. 30 Nov. 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/world/europe/30france.html?_r=2&oref=slogin>.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1123809?&Search=yes&term=jane&term=ginsburg%2C&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Fq0%3Dginsburg%252C%2Bjane%26f0%3Dall%26c0%3DAND%26q1%3D%26f1%3Dall%26c1%3DAND%26q2%3D%26f2%3Dall%26c2%3DAND%26q3%3D%26f3%3Dall%26wc%3Don%26Search%3DSearch%26sd%3D%26ed%3D%26la%3D%26jo%3D&item=5&ttl=2136&returnArticleService=showArticle

     In her article entitled "Casablanca", Kristi M. Wilson touches upon many aspects of the film’s content and production. She begins by summarizing the film and continues on to sing its praises by illustrating all of the awards and nominations that it received at the time of its release. The article also lends insight into the sentiment of production studios, like Warner Bros., at the time that the film was produced. Since most Americans resisted the idea of U.S. involvement in the war in Europe at the time during which Casablanca was set, Jack Warner has been credited as declaring war on Germany early, not only with Casablanca, but also with even earlier films like Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). Wilson goes on to say that at the beginning of the war, a time when opposition to the Nazi regime was not common, Harry and Jack Warner were of the few Hollywood moguls who were anti-Hitler. In fact, 1934 marked the year that Warner Bros. became the first studio to shut down business and leave Germany. It wasn’t until the years 1942-1945 that Hollywood began producing feature films that grappled with the subject of war and were aimed to promote the nation’s support for the Allied war effort. Information concerning the political beliefs of Warner Bros. is essential to a thorough analysis of Casablanca as a vehicle for propaganda. The political messages of the film - anti-fascist and pro-war effort - can be traced back to the origins of its creation, the studio. This serves to highlight the propagandistic undertones of the film.
    At the end of the article, Wilson describes Casablanca as a film that has endured the test of time as it has resonated throughout American culture. Over the years, there have been songs, commercials, magazine advertisements, and book titles that show traces of the film’s influence. For this reason, the film’s ability to permeate into contemporary American culture long after its release, Casablanca can be seen as a ‘cult object’. An interesting and relevant example that Wilson sites is how Humphrey Bogart’s character is said to have triggered skyrocketing trench coat sales. Bogart’s ability to influence the American audience, even if it is in terms of fashion, demonstrates the tremendous power he has over public opinion; a power that is particularly useful in conveying political messages.

 

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This article claims that homophobia was displaced in Hitchcock's films from an issue of national security to a condemnation of women's sexuality in the domestic sphere. The article further asserts that the knowledge that men acquire in the film is the result of their ability to suppress and manipulate women. Essentially, Hitchcock was a force in Cold War culture.

 

In the case of Blackmail, Frank doesn't gain any knowledge from his suppression and manipulation of Alice. If Alice's feminist gaze had been verbalized or if Frank had let Alice express herself without the threat of shame or judgment, the entire premise of the film might have been averted. It might be the case that Crewe's murder is a result of the male suppression of Alice. Perhaps the film is meant to serve as a warning that the suppression and manipulation of women is something to be feared.

While this class has extensively discussed the relationship between copyright and culture in the United States, it has only briefly touched on copyright on an international scale. The infringement of intellectual property rights is in many cases more widespread abroad, where the United States and its copyright industries experience difficulty enforcing copyright laws. The United States Trade Representative has proposed an Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement which includes the United States, the European Union and other developed countries. I am interested in exploring the consequences and limitations of this agreement and whether it will effectively curb international piracy and change the culture of copyright infringement.

     This article takes a much more anthropological perspective and focuses on the user side of illegal music download sites in Ukraine. Haigh discusses the differences in the music and movie market in Ukraine compared to that of the West. She also talks about the financial limitations of Ukrainians and the limited use of the Internet I that country. She draws parallels between modern norms of illegal fire sharing the heritage of the Soviet Union and its copyright regime.
    This article supplies a crucial perspective for my argument – the motivations of populations to download illegally from the Internet and infringe copyright. The financial situation of Ukrainians is particularly important because it is clear that they cannot afford legal copies of the pirated material. The ACTA and other multinational authorities should be cognizant and offer alternatives to illegal sites in order to give incentives for the users to switch to legitimate materials. This also means that the legal sources should be affordable for the native population. The article also touches on the perception and attitude of Ukrainians toward the western legal copyright framework. This links back to the sentiments of the natives evoked by their life within the Soviet Union. Ukraine is a proud nation and in its history it has been constantly conquered and re-conquered by foreign powers, which imposed their own rule on the population. Ukrainians feel that when the WTO and the US are allegedly trying to protect their intellectual property rights, in effect they are acting just like the USSR and attempting to coerce Ukraine to follow western models even when they are not suited for the needs of the country. This attitude is echoed throughout most other eastern European former Soviet satellites and republics.

 

 

"All members of a culture that practice music are expected to be abelt to engage with music in culturally appropriate ways" (1: Cross 2008)

"Introduction
In this paper I shall make a number of claims about music. I shall claim that music,
like language, is a fundamental part of the human communicative toolkit. It is
unique and specific to humans, but music is not "natural" while language is
symbolic; music and language are both equally symbolic and natural domains of
human thought and behaviour. I shall propose that music - musicality - underpins
the intellectual and social flexibility displayed by modern humans. As a corollary of
this, I shall claim that many of the most important abstract concepts that frame and
give meaning to human interaction - such as social justice, that aspect of morality
which is concerned with the achievement of equity in human relations - have their
roots in human musicality. I am not proposing that without music there can be no
social justice; I am simply submitting that without musicality the flexibility in
managing social relations that characterises modern humans and that constitutes the
matrix within which abstract conceptions such as social justice can take form is less
likely to have arisen."

Albert Music Hall. Traditional musical gatherings of the NJ Pinelands. An evening of live country, bluegrass, and pinelands music each Saturday night at 7:30 PM. Year round

This project is intended to collect the digital bibliography for my final paper in Peter Decherney's Internet Policy and Culture class. The paper will focus on the disparity in technological resources between Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and their more affluent, traditionally white-majority counterparts. In addition to examining this disparity, the paper will examine what is being done to bridge this gap, including administrative actions, public advocacy, and government intervention. The paper will take a particular interest in the pending renewal and evolution of the Higher Education Act, first passed in 1965, whose recently proposed amendments aim to reduce this electronic disparity. The topic of the paper is "Bridging The Digital Divide in Higher Education."

For this project, I have chosen to investigate Ousmane Sembene's 1975 film Xala. The film raises a multitude of issues pertaining to post-colonial African government and culture. Sembene largely criticizes the incompetence of the new governments, using the sexual impotence of the film's main character as a metaphor. For the research portion of the project, I sought to answer the following closely-related questions: How have post-colonial African peoples navigated the dichotomy between tradition and modernity in the realms of gender, sex and womens rights? Is it even beneficial to think about this subject as a dichotomy? Not all of my sources pertain directly to this, but the majority lean heavily in that direction of thought.

Meehan, Eileen R., Mark Phillips and Janet Wasko, ed.  Dazzled by Disney?: The Global Disney Audiences Project.  London; New York: Leicester University Press, 2001.

 

The chapter entitled “United States: a Disney Dialectic: A Tale of Two American Cities” includes results from a study that looked at two American towns – Athens, Ohio, and Tuscon, Arizona.  The results from this chapter are part of a larger study that aimed to look at perceptions of Disney in different cultures.  This chapter focused on the United States, and focused on college students’ analysis of the Disney brand.  The two cities are different markets in that Athens has less access to Disney films and products, while Tuscon has easier access.  Despite these differences, the study found that respondents in both cities found Disney to be ever-present in society, and recognized Disney as an important part of a person’s upbringing and family life.  Older students found that as they thought about the future, they saw themselves as having families and children, and thus Disney would come back into their lives.  Respondents saw Disney as invoking ideas of love, romance, and fantasy, and happiness.

 

This chapter is useful in looking at Cinderella as a place where children learn about romantic ideals, since the study finds that people believe Disney to be a pervasive and important part of culture.  If this is the case, then it is possible that the pervasiveness of Disney may result in a child placing an emphasis on what they learn from a Disney film.  Since college students find that Disney conveys notions of love and romance, then this means that they recall these ideas, and have come to recognize Disney as being a purveyor of particular morals, thoughts, and beliefs, including those about love.  A child may thus come to find Disney films to have these same beliefs, and these values may be perpetuated over time with increased access to the ever-present Disney brand.  

 

 

Hodson, Joel C. "Chapter 1: Lowell Thomas and the Origins of the Popular Legend of Lawrence of Arabia." Lawrence of Arabia and American Culture: The Making of a Transatlantic Legend. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995.

This article relates the crucial role Lowell Thomas had in perpetuating the legend of T. E. Lawrence and his exploits in Arabia. Although the author, Joel C. Hodson, acknowledges that even without the American reporter’s aid Lawrence would have garnered a reputation as a war hero, nevertheless it was Thomas who breathed the fire of legend into the Englishman. After spending July 1917 to March 1919 in Europe and Arabia, as a war correspondent to several American newspapers, although in name only, Thomas returned to America. Through a series of lectures and slide shows, and the publication of several biographies, Thomas exaggerated the adventures of Lawrence in the Arabian front, painting him as a figure more of legend than of history. Nonetheless, Hodson remains critical of some of the conniving reporter’s actions. It is clear that Thomas’s government-sanctioned mission of war propaganda was quickly forgotten in his personal desires for commercial success and lasting fame. As a result of these more selfish motivations, Thomas fabricated many stories of Lawrence’s campaign, and even claimed involvement in several battles of the Arab Revolt and a train demolition led by Lawrence’s Bedouin.

            Joel Hodson’s article serves as an interesting piece of commentary on the effect that fabrication can have on the formulation of great public figures. It works as an interesting point of comparison between the methods that figures like the reporter, Thomas, and later the director of Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean, must utilize in order to dramatize history’s heroes. It seems that without the involvement of persons like Thomas, Lawrence's legend would not persist with the strength it has today. Perhaps this is why Robert Bolt, the writer of the screenplay for Lawrence of Arabia, chose to include the figure of the reporter within his film. It seems that life, just like film, needs its writers in order to create myths out of men.

In this novel, author Christian Messenger analyzes the numerous factors that account for America’s love of The Godfather saga. By both objectively assessing the text of Puzo’s novel, and allowing himself to emotionally dive into it, Messenger offers a unique outlook on the effect of this work on American culture.

By looking at the time with which The Godfather was created, it is easy to see why it became such a phenomenal success. America was in a time of change. It had just gotten over the age of the Vietnam War and its many sociological consequences, just as the very power structure of the family and the country seemed to be changing everyday. Unsurprisingly, the release of the novel and shortly after, the film drew in massive numbers of fans who were ready and willing to believe in this sort of old-world philosophy of morals and business.

Once again, the idea of family is brought into sight. This would be the core of the story that would bring so many admirers back time and time again. The fact that audiences today still find an emotional connection to the film, as Messenger states, demonstrates that The Godfather holds a definitive plot in the recent history of American culture. Modern viewers are touched by the significance of family values in all that drives us. Messenger remarks that at points in the story, one is tempted to actually cheer for the cold-blooded murder of the enemies. The image of the family is so deeply rooted, that audiences take sides with the Corleone’s in their struggle for power.

This now famous article by Malcolm Gladwell is known for first coining the term “cool-hunters” to refer to fashion industry detectives who scour the streets for new trends, as seen on cutting-edge urban hipsters. Gladwell also notes that the 1990s marked a new era, in which what was cool was no longer determined by couture houses, but by elusive street hipsters whose style changed whenever the fashion industries began to introduce similar styles into their newest lines. The result was a new type of participatory culture – where style was controlled by “cool” people outside of the corporation, whose privileged social knowledge still granted them power as an elite group, even though they were spread across the globe and had no formal connections to the industry.

Yet as the fashion industry became better and better at copying trends it observed on the street, those on the cutting edge became more and more elusive, because “the act of discovering cool is what causes cool to move on.” Thus, Gladwell posits fashion as a bottom-up process which incorporates trends and ideas developed by different groups throughout the world. He characterizes the fashion crowd as existing in five groups: innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and laggards. Coolhunters seek out the innovators in the hopes of being the first to feature a trend, as such success would boost their company’s image and sales. Seeking out innovators is easier than searching for innovative items, since trends change so quickly. 

Gladwell constructs his argument based on interviews with cool-hunters, as well as his own experiences traveling with cool-hunters “on the hunt”.  He adopts the persona of a knowledgeable fly-on-the-wall, providing insightful commentary of all he recounts. Gladwell’s believability is evident through the lasting adaptation of the term “cool-hunter”, as well as the article’s frequent use in the classroom setting (such as “Media and Popular Culture”, a class at the Annenberg School of Communication). While Gladwell was among the first to describe fashion in this way, his ideas are firmly rooted in postmodernism. The world of fashion, constructed from the opinions and ideas of cool folk from around the world and reassembled by the fashion industry for mass market appeal, epitomizes a highly regarded aesthetic innovation ultimately driven by capitalism. At the same time, the world Gladwell describes is poised on the brink of a postmodern capitalist economy and the new (post-postmodern?) blogosphere. If the fashion industry in 1997 (the time of this article’s publication) was driven by an elusive cool crowd whose styles were forever changing, the democracy of blogging tools ten years later has demystified this crowd, capturing and detailing their style through photographs featured on fashion blogs accessible to all.

This project seeks to explore how fashion blogging has democratized the fashion industry by granting both fashion fans and the fashion industry access to the same information at the same time and by allowing fans to adopt and modify trends introducted online.

This article discusses how memes catch on (or don't) and their impact on culture. The first approach is looking at history as either a narrative or a science. The narrative must be plausible, but not predictable, to be interesting. So too is culture. The things that catch on don't follow a formula per se, but in retrospect they aren't completely out of the blue. The second approach is a comparison with evolution. In this view, it is the glitches that move things forward, not just the formula. The good will continue, the bad will be cast off. However, the line between good and bad is blurry at best, and the very nature of parasitic things like memes is to trick the hosts. The article gives the example of a person with a sweet tooth. If the candy tastes good enough to make the person forget about its negative impacts, it will persist, furthering both the good and the bad qualities of candy. Memes are selected unconsciously and consciously. Even in the case of meme-engineering, in which someone tries to create an idea that will catch on by mimicking what is popular, nothing can be predicted for certain. It doesn't necessarily matter how good an idea is (although it helps), but rather the unpredictable pull of many natural and cultural forces that decides the fate of a meme. Cultural evolution is thus not a direction, but a trend, and not necessarily a very definite trend.

The article touches on a lot of different possibilities, but its tone makes it easy enough to read and digest. The nature of taking the side of unpredictability is that no firm conclusions will be drawn, but the article still discusses numerous possibilities. The question Dennett repeats is "cui bono?" or "who benefits?" He doesn't give an answer, or perhaps the answer is that even if one could measure the benefits, they wouldn't necessarily inform anything beyond that.

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance was established in 1972 by nine Philadelphia cultural institutions to coordinate historical and cultural activities for the Bicentennial Celebration. Today, with a membership of over 300 non-profit arts and culture organizations.

As I am getting older, my affinity for shoes and bags is growing with my years. It is not necessarily the name, but the style and the feel, the look of bags and shoes that draw me to spend more and more on fashion. I spend time flipping through catalogues and websites, walking through stores, just appreciating the things I will never own for the financial burden of a shoe and bag obsession has caused a dip in my credit at a young age. However, the abundance of knock-off's for name brands, being sold at much more affordable prices, pose an obvious threat to the fashion aesthete. Just because they look the same, are they same? Who would know? Is the quality the same? The color? Because one brand creates a cute patent leather pump with a rounded toe, and soon after another is selling a shockingly similar shoe, has there been an instance of fashion fraud? Where are the fashion police, the crusaders of all things good and just? Who says what can be determined as having artistic integrity and or intellectual creativity? The moment an idea comes to one's mind, should they file for some sort of protection? The thought process and intellectual property law forever obscure the lines for all concerned about legal protection. Regardless of the medium, intellectual property law is a dynamic field and asks its noble followers to help untangle the messy web of ambiguity. Where do our thoughts and individual creativity meet at the crossroads of copyright and protection? In the fashion industry, one of the world's fastest growing entities as well as large supplier of creative material, intellectual property law and copyright are a new development in the protection of designs and details, sweaters and stitching. Whether in sketch form or in skirt, from the drawing board to the boardroom, fashion copyright is complicated. Can it be protected? When does an instance of 'substantial similarity' become imitation or worse, chargeable theft? Can the line be drawn? If copyright law is extended to include protection for fashion design, will the world of fashion be forever affected? The blurriness in the fashion design industry resulting from the almost counterintuitive cycle of fashion profits spurred by piracy makes it incredibly difficult to decide. Ultimately, copyright protection for fashion design is necessary and without protection, piracy will continue to hinder the progress of creativity and production as well as cause a discontinuity in what can be considered organic artistic thought.

 Mencken, Jennifer. A Design for the Copyright of Fashion." Diss. Boston College of Law, 1997.            

    http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/articles/content/1997121201.html#fna

 

"A Design for the Copyriight of Fashion" was written by Jennifer Mencken in 1997. The essay, though short, covers some very important topics in regards to fashion copyright and protection of designs. The introduction considers that becuase the fashion industry is one of the largests and has no boundaries, economically or socially, it is hard to contain.

Mencken's essay discusses the reasoning behind not protecting designs and talks about the process from thought and conviction to pen and paper, and eventually, to the showroom and the streets. She briefly cites the ability for some fashion designs to be protected under Common Law, however, that angle is now since moot. Though the article was published in 1997, almost ten years ago, most of the information remains pertinent. Mencken discusses patents versus copyright and trademarks verus monopolies on fashion.

She continues to argue for the "Implementation of Fashion Design Copyright." She identifies that there is a "conceptual separability of fashion's artisict elements from the functionality of clothing." She cites the Copyright Act of 1976, allowing the line to be cast that fashion design is almost similar to writing, in respects, to protection. Conceptual separability versus the creative process is a major discussion in the paper.

She closes with a discussion on the scope of copyright and the "requirements for implementation." She says, " In creating a copyright system which recognizes the expressions of designers, many old fears, such as burdening the consumer and creating a marketplace monopoly, resurface. With tens of thousands of designers churning out work, it is easy to foresee chaos. How far does the copyright extend? For how long? What would constitute infringement?"

She closes with a discussion on the effect of copyright in fashion on the industry. She concludes that copyright on fashion should be a decision of the designers rather than the people who purchase their creations.

This article is particularly important to my thesis and argument for my paper as it attacks and answers questions about how copyright in fashion can and will affect the industry. This article is also important as it plays devil's advocate and expresses the concern with copyright and fashion and how the lack of copyright can be seen to have not affected the economic aspects of the industry.

smithsonian again scores big in the cool and useful offering by a cultural institution category. listen and weep.

"International electronic journal that brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a thorough rethinking of the relationship of form to content in academic research, focusing on ways technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures social and cultural relations."

            In this novel, author Christian Messenger analyzes the numerous factors that account for America’s love of The Godfather saga.  By both objectively assessing the text of Puzo’s novel, and allowing himself to emotionally dive into it, Messenger offers a unique outlook on the effect of this work on American culture.

            By looking at the time with which The Godfather was created, it is easy to see why it became such a phenomenal success.  America was in a time of change.  It had just gotten over the age of the Vietnam War and its many sociological consequences, just as the very power structure of the family and the country seemed to be changing everyday.  Unsurprisingly, the release of the novel and shortly after, the film drew in massive numbers of fans who were ready and willing to believe in this sort of old-world philosophy of morals and business. 

            Once again, the idea of family is brought into sight.  This would be the core of the story that would bring so many admirers back time and time again.  The fact that audiences today still find an emotional connection to the film, as Messenger states, demonstrates that The Godfather holds a definitive plot in the recent history of American culture.  Modern viewers are touched by the significance of family values in all that drives us.  Messenger remarks that at points in the story, one is tempted to actually cheer for the cold-blooded murder of the enemies.  The image of the family is so deeply rooted, that audiences take sides with the Corleone’s in their struggle for power.   

Orr closely examines Memento's film fabric as well as its broader cultural implications, presenting it as the result of a natural progression in a decade marked by the transformation of classic film noir into a low-budget identity noir. Nolan's dis-linear identity noir opens a black hole of perception, making the audience share the same amnesiac quality with the beleaguered, lost protagonist. This creates an intensifying suspicion of what the truth is and whether it actually exists. Orr deconstructs Memento as an intersection of popular film genre and experimental montage, discussing Nolan's mise-en-scene reduction to pure image. The author examines the narrative loop of the film as a subject to disorientations, playing forward and backward in time without a serial return to the present. Orr juxtaposes this approach to the fast-forward culture of today, calling it a perverse culture of the rewind. that plays on electronic culture's fatal flaw of .impatience with the slowing image. Nolan makes this perverse reverse dependent on the art of simple montage, creating a protagonist strikingly independent of electronic paraphernalia Leonard does not use the tools of the contemporary investigator, such as bugs, camcoders, computers, or mobiles, but is instead reliant on text and image. This, Orr argues, makes him a fable for the information age, his lack of memory storage both a match and a metaphor for the disaster bound to strike if all the world's electronic technology were to crash. Leonard is thus reduced to pure hard copy, from the tattoos covering his body to the multitude of notes lining his inside pockets. In this respect, Nolan.s protagonist becomes the antithesis of the Kubrickian cyborg monster, a de-programmed humanoid whose retrograde amnesia mirrors this technological retrograde evolution.

Doherty creates a social, historical and cultural context to better understand the production environment in 1946, of which The Best Years of Our Lives could be considered a consequence.  Wyler, himself a veteran of the war, sought not to create a classical, heroic depiction of decorated servicemen’s celebrated and joyous return home, but rather, an honest film with rife with social and cultural implications.  Rather than giving audiences an idyllic and glorified portrayal of the return home, he recreated the difficult readjustment of veterans back into their “normal lives” at home.  That the film was met with wild success is a testament to Doherty’s argument that the postwar American audience found a deeper meaning in film, and sought it as a tool not to escape from, but to address social problems.

 

This book examines the portrayal of the war at different stages in books and movies of the time, and draws a correllation between the movie and the purpose it was considered to serve.  In the essay “New Heroes: Post-War Hollywood’s Image of World War II,” Philip Landon strives to characterize the common war film of postwar period.  He claims that “war films of that time shared a myth essentially similar to the western,” films that lacked critical acclaim due to their uniformity and generic context in portraying the war.  As Paul Fussell wrote, “Hollywood shared the mass media’s aversion to examining the actual horrors of the War’s mechanized battle fronts.”  The attempts of these war films were not to push any limits as far as conventions, depth and complexity of story, and level of provocation, but rather sought to create a “mythic hero remarkably well-suited to the mood and circumstances of post-war America,” as it was perceived by the studios.

This observation raises an interesting point touched upon in the biography of Samuel Goldwyn. During the war, Hollywood naturally made heroic war tales to instill sentiments of hope and pride in American citizens. However, Hollywood generally tended to apply this same belief to the immediate post-war period, Goldwyn included. Any actual dramatic portrayal of the war and its negative effects was considered a risky bet, especially casting a real-life double amputee with hooks for hands. But as the ARI analysis and the film's wild success both demonstrated, Americans were no longer disillusioned about the war, and in some way, shape or form, were seeking an outlet for this. The war had profound and negative effects on their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons who brought these effects home with them. The ability of The Best Years of Our Lives to translate the true-to-life experiences of returning veterans from all ages and socio-economic levels to film was groundbreaking at the time, and was what the American public wanted to see.

 

This book examines the life and political career of the 33^rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman.  Born in Missouri, he went off to serve as a captain of artillery in World War I.  Upon his return, he began his career in politics and quickly rose to great local and state popularity due to his "reputation of honest and efficiency as well as for party regularity."  His political shrewdness caught the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, searching for a new vice presidential candidate to replace Henry Wallace in the 1944 election.  After Roosevelt died in April of 1945, Truman assumed the presidency and was initially preoccupied with foreign policy: the Allied conference in Potsdam  and the conclusion of the war in Europe.  But perhaps the issue that took precedence at the time, and remained a major point of political debate the year after (1946, when The Best Years of Our Lives was made), was the decision in August to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.  Though Truman maintained till his death that he made the decision solely on the basis of ending the war, preventing an invasion of Japan and saving American lives, the book explores alternative beliefs that Truman had alterior motives, such as preventing participation of the Russiancs in the Japanese defeat, as they had pledged to do at the Yalta conference.

The decision to drop the bomb was initially greeted with great acceptance by most Americans, who were relieved to see the surrender of Japan, the end of the war, and the return of the troops.  Soonafter, however, people began to question the morality of leveling an entire city and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians with a single bomb.  People began to question if dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a good decision, if perhaps the US should have warned Japan of the awesome power their new weapon was capable of, if it should have been dropped on a military base rather than a city.  This debate was very much alive and well during 1946, the year of The Best Years of Our Lives, and this social commentary is very much interjected into the film.  For example, upon Army Sergeant Al Stephenson's (Fredric March) return home, his son promptly asks him if when in Hiroshima he saw the damaging of effects of radioactivity on survivors of the bomb.  The film is not a sterotypical, patriotic postwar film for many reasons, and its ability to recognize domestic debate over foreign policy is one reason for that; its discussion of complex issues lends it a layer of intellectualism.  At that point in American History, and still to this day, the American conscience has not been able to completley accept the decision to use the atomic bomb.

 

Chapter 9 of this book analyzes Wartime Romances during World War II. The chapter's introduction, followed by a series of personal accounts, paints a picture of romantic life in the early to mid 1940s in the United States. It is one in which the war intensifies relationships of all kinds, leading to quick and hasty marriages which did not always end happily. It describes the immediate draw the uniform had on women, its glamour and romanticism, its honor, sense of duty and pride. The book also deals with the Homecoming of troops in chapter 12. Once again, through personal account of returning servicemen and their families, men came back home changed, permanently altered. They were eager to leave the service, but unable to detach from it and their many war experiences and memories.

This book certainly helps create a social and cultural understanding of America during and immediately after the war that puts elements of The Best Years of Our Lives into proper context. The relationship between Fred and Marie, married for only 20 days before he left for the war, serves as a perfect example of hasty marriage during wartime. Also, the idea of the glamour, prestige and romanticism of the uniform serves as the sole basis for Marie's attraction to Fred. Her dismayed and crestfallen reaction to Fred's assumption as a civilian role is the beginning of their marriage's end.

In addition, the detailed insight this book provides into the soldiers' unexpectedly complex and painful readjustment to life back at home and inability to abandon thoughts helps one understand the internal tension veterans experienced up their return home. It clarifies the grounds for many men's conversion into civilian life, which all too often included adultery, alcoholism, ostracism and alienation. The ability of The Best Years of Our Lives to capture these feelings through the stories of the three protagonists is one of many reasons it received so much critical and box-office success at its time of release.

 

"map plots "the history of 20th century music on the London Underground map devised by Harry Beck in 1933." Lines are renamed for music genres such as soul, reggae, pop, rock, jazz, hip-hop, electronica, and classical. Includes an article explaining how the map was plotted and many reader comments. From the Guardian Unlimited, the online companion to the British newspaper The Guardian." (via LII)

Director John Whitesell literalizes tropes of gender and racial identity confusion in his Big Momma's House 2, which meditates upon the nuanced difficulties of existing in society as an obese African-American woman, while in reality being a skinny black man. Martin Lawrence plays Malcolm "Big Momma" Turner, a humble FBI agent whose passion for national security motivates his subtextual fascination with cross-dressing as a 250+ pound, festively patterned muumuu-sporting woman.

To appeal to a wider audience, Whitesell has ingeniously pitched Big Momma's House 2 as mind-numbing comedy, pregnant with redundantly inappropriate and awkward quips and gags. However, Big Momma House 2's purportedly feather-light farce grapples with many a complex and politically-charged question regarding the role racial minority cross-dressing plays in contemporary American culture.

Martin Lawrence's dual identity as an ambitious young sharp-shooting National Security agent, driven by his unremitting patriotism to go incognito as an elderly corpulent female, provokes comparisons between his two radically different personae. In doing so, it raises an interesting question: how does our society corner successful young black men into performing absurd self-caricatures in order to be embraced by mainstream culture?

By challenging us to laugh at our own violent and repressive racial and sexual stereotyping, Big Momma's House 2 instigates important cultural conversations regarding America's deep-rooted societal prejudices: have these bigotries really evolved since the Civil Rights Movement, or have they just been transformed and made less recognizable?

The film suggests that if we can allow ourselves to reflect openly and honestly upon these questions and anxieties, instead of displacing them onto a grossly caricatured 250+ pound African-American woman, perhaps we can also preclude the culmination of a Big Momma's House trilogy.

An important feminist compilation.

This website has a decent amount of information about blogs and the internet. Shirky has a varied and long background and has been on the forefront of emerging media. The website is very up to date and is a good place to find out about the different forms of open source media and their influence upon culture.

Book about how films make stories and how those stories fit into culture. Focuses on editing and shot composition, but also on the ways they fit into culture through values and context.

A book by Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson about Nike Culture and cultural icons.

McAllister writes of the differences between popular and commerical culture; popular culture being authentic while commerical culture is made to be popular.  He argues in a world where consumers are being bombarded with advertisements, companies are now coming together in the practice of synergy to promote their products in every which way.  People are no longer consider consumers as they are mislead by the continually change of popularity.