Textual Analysis Weekend

Black and white teenagers listen alike to rock music on the radio and attended clubs to hear it, together. Rock ‘n’ Roll’s roots helped accustom white teens to black music through the lenses of white, male vocalists—a normalcy to ground these drastic changes in race relations. The stars, like Elvis Presley—know for his sexual and riveting performances—began to blur the line between different forms of music and more importantly, black and white music.3 Rock ‘n’ Roll music was a blend of these two different cultures, demonstrating the enormous consumer power of this emerging youth culture and giving it the power to unite an entire

Director Sut Jhally, in his documentary film, “Dreamworlds 3: Desire, sex, and power in music videos”, analyzes the issue of how women are portrayed in the music world. Jhally, in his film argues how music and media has become a proud industry when it comes to advertising women, all for the benefit of popularity and record sales. Jhally believes these videos both inform and misinform our culture about our dominant attitudes regarding femininity masculinity, sexuality and race. He uses an empathetic tone in order to appeal to pathos, the feelings and experiences in women when he presents video clips that are somewhat offensive to watch as proof that women have become a common necessity shown in music videos. Often presented as being sexually aggressive and submissive, being objectified by men. He also intentionally wants to try to stir up emotions as he introduces song lyrics of women being called inappropriate names and images of women being fondled by men throughout the film. Sometimes, aggressively without consent.

Richard Van Camp's, The Lesser Blessed, contains elements that classify the novel with both Indigenous and Modern genres. Featuring both genres in a text can lead to contradicting themes that form a binary. This binary has the potential to limit the extent readers can connect to the story, suggesting the presence of a barrier. Barriers hinder the readers' lack of understanding or relatability to either Indigenous or Modern works of literature. This paper will serve to analyze how Richard Van Camp deconstructs the binary by having the sides work together rather than against one another. Furthermore, this paper will discuss how by breaking down the binary, Richard Van Camp is allowing his novel to be accessible to all readers.

Popular music is often one of the best lenses we have through which to view our own cultural orientation. Many of the artistic and experimental shifts in popular music have mirrored changes in our own society. For instance, the emergence of Elvis Presley as a public figure would signal the start of a sexual revolution and the growth in visibility of a rebellious youth culture. Similarly, the folk and psychedelic music of the 1960s was closely entangled with the Civil Rights, anti-war and social protest movements. In this regard, we can view popular music as an artifact through which to better understand the time and place in which it is produced. In light of this, the state of popular music today may suggest troubling things about our society.

John Fire Lame Deer was a Sioux Indian tribal leader, medicine man, rodeo clown, and storyteller amongst other things. A selection from his autobiography Seeker Of Visions: The Life Of A Sioux Medicine Man titled “Talking to the Owls and Butterflies” is a short piece regarding nature and man’s relationship with it. The piece was intended to make an impression on white people in order to help salvage what is remaining in the environment. Lame Deer reprimands the “white world” for its negative outlook towards nature and the treatment of animals, he converses how man has changed and reshaped nature in order to make it more profitable. Stating that Caucasians have gone and altered animals in order to create

Some may say music is just music; a song is just a song. However, music plays an enormous role in our psychology, because a single song has the ability to bring about many kinds of thoughts and emotions in the listener. Music is subtly one of the main factors in which people identify with certain groups and establish their belonging in society. It shapes people’s perspectives on how the world functions and the roles they play within it. Music can function the same way in a culture; it can reflect many of the culture’s values and ideologies. Music can have many effects on culture and the people’s idea of who they think they are within that culture. Music can serve in a way that promotes cultural identity and pride, yet it could also play a

Music has been a long standing form of expression for hundreds of years. More recently however, it has become a way for artists to make social commentaries on the society they live in. During the 1970s, Punk bands and Ska bands emerged in England and rose to become a major source of social commentary through their upbeat music. Specifically looking at music from The Stranglers, The Specials, and The Clash, it is clear that lyrics clouded with anger and passion can be best communicated through upbeat sounds and melodies. Each of these groups communicates a need for radical change in society; but each one goes about this in a different way. Through the songs, “I feel like a Wog,” by The Stranglers, “A Message to you Rudy,” by The Specials, and “White Riot,” by The Clash, these bands point out that there is a common enemy in Society. They are forcing the mainstream to realize unpleasant truths about the culture that they inhabit. The future of England was unknown, and these songs were written during a time where people were worried about their place in the world. Faith in the system was dying and these bands gave way to a future generation to improve upon society that will present a more positive and equal multicultural Britain. Through the music it is clear that multicultural Britain was complicated; there were tumultuous times that these bands were commenting on, which pitted races against each other but also brought them together in fighting back against suppressive societal

I felt the same way after reading the article. I'm also unsure as to how similarities would play a part in swaying another person’s point of view. However, when discussing the example you provided, similarities seem rather imperative to the quality and overall relatability of the conversation. If a man tried to act like he could relate to me from a female perspective, I’m sure I would laugh initially out of sheer disbelief, if I ever come across a man that has the audacity to speak on a subject in which they’ve had absolutely no firsthand experience, I would undoubtedly discontinue the conversation because at that point nothing good could come of it.

Stuart Hall’s Cultural Identity and Diaspora focuses on the current issues of identity, cultural practices and cultural representations. He analyses the visual representations of Afro-Caribbean’s and challenges the notions of identity from African and European places. Hall then goes on to explain how Caribbean cinema has chosen to both, refute and embrace European influence. He presents two different forms of thinking about cultural identity. In the first position, Hall defines ‘cultural identity’ in terms of one, shared culture, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common. The first model uses “stable, unchanging and continuous frames of reference and meanings’ to present the idea of shared culture, history, and ancestry rooted beneath ‘more superficial imposed ‘selves’” (Hall, 223).

On the other hand, some already well-established musicians do seem to diversify. However, the ways that they choose to do so are not always approved by the critics. Thus, for example, the recent work by Coldplay and Beyoncé's named Hymn for the Weekend has made a lot of fuss. As soon as their music video for this song was released, “they were immediately accused of cultural appropriation” (NPR, par.01). In the video, Beyoncé, who is a black woman from the USA, and Coldplay, which is a band of four white men from Britain, are shown in the Indian surrounding – “the men are participating in the Hindu holiday Holi while Beyoncé is depicted as a Bollywood star” (NPR, par.05). At first sight, one may see nothing wrong in it – just a bright and lively

After all we are all human, the fact that we are different at roots does not make any of us less human than the other; we should all be treated equally. Regardless the main intention of what this video is about, this is a very fascinating music video that

In his seminal text, Cities of the Dead, Joseph Roach traces the legacy of Afro-diasporic history through embodied performance in Black communities as a way of understanding how performances in these communities invokes ancestral memory. This process, he argues, produces a restoration of cultural and religious practices in which these ancestral customs resonate through, and within, the bodies of modern descendants of African slaves in the Americas (Roach 3-6). This “restoration of behavior” can root itself in any number of cultural forms, from music to dance to song. What is most crucial is that the replication of ancestral bodily practices produces a new form of cultural behaviors that are at once grounded in the past, but shaped by the present day (Roach 25-31). In Theater of War’s Antigone in Ferguson, the appropriation of Afro-diasporic cultural and performative traditions transforms Black bodies into articles for mass consumption and showcase. I will argue that these actions produce an un-restoration of blackness that decenters and undermines Afro-diasporic cultural practices and Black performative traditions. It is important to recognize that the critiques contained in my arguments relate to the artistic motivations behind this endeavor, and not of individual Black performers or members of the production. While it is essential to critique modes of neoliberal artistic creation that exploit bodies of color for white gain, it is equally as essential to recognize the therapeutic potential of a project like Antigone in Ferguson for many Black individuals, on a personal level. Any critique that fails to consider this aspect is no less paternalistic than the neoliberal motivations at work in this project.

Science fiction movies often depict the consequences of failing to slow the damage to the environment in the science fiction movie, The Day After Tomorrow, the weather on earth begins to do strange things. The ice caps start to melt and break, tornados rip through Hollywood, and tsunamis flood the coast. Jack Hall, a climatologist, explains global warming and the melting of the ice caps is to blame for this weather. He predicts the North Atlantic current will shut down, and the northern states will see the next ice age. The vice president dismisses his claims until his predictions come true in the following days. Eventually, the air in the north gets so cold that people seem to freeze within seconds resulting in a nearly unsurvivable ice age where people in the north must stay inside near a fire to survive. The dystopian future depicted in the movie The Day After Tomorrow reflect societal anxieties about earth’s changing climate.

Hinduism, the prevalent religion of India can be complicated yet attractive to westerners due to its seemingly other-worldly gods, practices, and views when seen from a typical westerner’s point of view. This can explain the attractiveness for these artists to use India as a backdrop to their music videos but if the artists knew the meanings behind the many Hindu characteristics shown, would they be hesitant to release the video in retrospect, in fear of offending someone that truly identifies with Indian culture? Both videos show children throwing colored chalk at one another. This is common practice during the Holi Festival, a celebration originating in Southeast Asia pertaining to the Hindu religion. The Holi Festival is the “day to end and rid oneself of past errors, to end conflicts by meeting others, a day to forget and forgive.

Gangnam Style, a K-pop single by Korean musician Psy was released in July 2012 and became an instant sensation all across the world. The popularity of this song and dance went viral, however, there is an prominent issue with the stereotype of asian males. Gangnam style is a a great example and representation on the emphasis of how established stereotypes of Asian males remain and continue in the media, particularly in Western media. In a personal opinion, Gangnam Style is such a success due to its Asian stereotype that is depicted as being fascinating and almost comical. The song has little English words and many people in the world do not understand a single word of the lyrics, let alone the meaning of it. The reason I picked this topic is because it’s safe to say that almost everyone in the world knows, or has heard of this song and I don’t understand why, and I can only come to conclude that it is due to this racist, yet evolving stereotype of the Asian male represented in its music video. Gangnam style isn’t just another well-known song, to me, the music video is a little offensive and makes me wonder if people actually realize how unpleasant and discriminating the music video is. This topic may be extremely different from my previous topic choices such as Tiger moms, but as the days went by, I was concerned and felt more and more repulsiveness to how this particular song managed to achieve such success in the global market and mainstream popularity within the entire