The Frame

Videos for my Harlem Renaissance class

On February 21, 2007

I’m posting some videos here for the interest of the other members of my Harlem Renaissance class. Thought it would be easier to maintain one post rather than multiple links to the multiple videos. Feel free to pass by and ignore if you’re not in the class–or not, it’s up to you.

The Colbert Report: Stephen Colbert’s guest, Debra Dickerson, claims that Barack Obama is not, in fact, black. Interesting counter-position to the editorial we read for class. (Obviously Stephen plays it for laughs, but I think Dickerson does a fair job of making her point despite him.)

–

a video by a high school student. She’s interviewing black teenagers on racial perception, and includes a recreation of the famous doll experiment from the 1950s.

–

30 Rock – This NBC sitcom focuses on a Saturday Night Live-type sketch comedy show, the Tracy Jordan Show. In this clip, Tracy and the only black staff writer (nicknamed Toofer, I don’t know why) are working on writing a sketch together, but they clash because of their different racial experiences.

30 Rock – Tracy vs. Toofer

–

30 Rock – In another episode, Jack (the, uh, I’m not sure what he is–he’s the boss, but not of the whole network–programming director, maybe?) wants Tracy to entertain an important client, but Tracy resents that role.

30 Rock – Tracy the Entertainer

Rewriting the Oscars

By Jandy

On February 21, 2007

In Film

Kristin Thompson gives her picks for Oscars from 1928 to now.

Rethinking the Oscars is a favorite pastime every year about this time, and Thompson’s got a lot of really good alternates. It’s interesting to note that most of her picks (up until recent years, anyway) are from directors who were either “rediscovered” by French critics of the New Wave (Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Anthony Mann, Samuel Fuller) or came out of the New Wave tradition (Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, sort of Michelangelo Antonioni), or are genre films (musicals, films noirs, westerns, thrillers), which the Academy traditionally hates and were resurrected by the New Wave critics. It just goes to show what a watershed period the New Wave was in film history. In other words, many of the films she chooses would never have been considered by the Academy, because genre films and the directors who directed them (Hitchcock and thrillers, Ford and westerns, Fuller and crime films, etc.) weren’t considered prestigious enough for the Academy. You can also see the Hollywood/foreign film disconnect, as many of her choices are from France, Italy, Japan, etc.

Anyway. I was going to post my own list, but I actually think she’s got it pretty well covered. I might keep Mrs. Miniver over The Magnificent Ambersons (but I would really need to rewatch the latter before committing to that), Casablanca, West Side Story (though she’s probably right…I just LOVE WSS), Chariots of Fire (again, because I LOVE it), Schindler’s List (Groundhog Day? Really? I like Groundhog Day, but not vs. Schindler’s List), and American Beauty. A lot of the 1970s and 1980s ones I can’t comment on, not having seen either the winning film or her alternatives. I might also keep Lawrence of Arabia because it’s gorgeous, but I have to admit that Jules et Jim is pretty excellent. I’d need a rewatch on Liberty Valance.

In addition to being a good alternative Oscar list, it’s also (obviously) a really good list for building film literacy. I’m going to go add the ones I haven’t seen to my Netflix queue. (Speaking of Netflix queues, if any of y’all have Netflix accounts, let’s be friends! faithx5 AT gmail DOT com is my associated e-mail address.)

My new perspective

By Jandy

On February 19, 2007

In School

Okay, it isn’t really a NEW perspective. I’ve been utilizing this perspective on and off since I started grad school, but I’m now embracing it even more fully. The perspective is this: School is for learning. That’s it. Simple, right? But oh-so-helpful when most of the people around you are driven not only to learn stuff, but to produce and publish original research at an alarming rate, even as first-year students. Now, I have no problem with this; a lot of people want to do that, and they want the job that it will get them. I neither want to do it, nor do I want the job it would get me. And trying to compete with people who DO want those things stresses me out. So I’m vowing right now not to do it any more. If I start to try, stop me.

This new contentment in the face of a paper that’s due tomorrow (thirteen hours and counting) came out of a conversation with a fellow first-year grad student is also no longer sure this is what she wants–in fact, her thoughts on the subject are remarkably similar to mine, up to and including the probably intention of going into library science after the English degree. We came to grad school to learn. I certainly have no pretensions of being able to say ANYTHING new about nearly anything, especially not European Romanticism when I’ve had exactly four weeks of graduate study in Romanticism (in this class) and roughly two weeks of undergrad study on Romanticism in a survey course, and especially not when my professor is, like, incredibly knowledgable on the subject. So I’m going to learn all I can and not worry about whether or not my essays are publishable.

The last two weeks studying for this paper, I’ve read two or three full books on the sublime (my chosen topic, which is fascinating, but HUGE), plus bits and pieces of ten or twelve other books, plus Kant. KANT, people! I don’t know whether I’m overwhelmed by how much I struggled with Kant, or pleased by how much I was able to eventually comprehend. (It does get easier after reading six different commentators telling you what he’s saying.) And I have learned A TON. It’s not everything, it’s not even probably enough, and it certainly isn’t as many original sources as I’d like (except for Kant, because hey. I can now say I’ve read Kant, and that’s worth something, right? Even if it wasn’t ALL of Kant? Right? Never mind…), I still sort of feel like I’m drinking from a fire hose, and I feel like that though everything in my essay is TRUE, it may not be significant because I haven’t read everything out there on the subject. But you know what? I know a hella lot more about it than I did two weeks ago. And I’m considering that a plus.

So my new perspective is that school=learning and learning=good and whether or not the professor is totally entranced by my essay is, given my goals for this phase of my life, somewhat irrelevant. Not that I’m saying we shouldn’t do our best…just that our best can be somewhat qualified by our goals, and my best doesn’t have to look like the best of someone who’s gunning for a PhD and a tenure-track position in a few years. And I’m okay with that. And knowing that has kept me wonderfully stress-free even while reading all these books over the past few weeks, because suddenly my motivation wasn’t to quickly find all the right information to feed into my topic, but to learn as much as I could and gain as wide an understanding as I could before narrowing down my topic (which I did today). I know a lot more now than I would have if I’d done it the other way. And I’m rambling. Because being stress-free doesn’t mean I’m not tired at 2:30 in the morning.

(Rambling side-note: it’s much easier for me to be stress-free about papers when only the professor is reading them, like this one. My next paper is a seminar paper, meaning the whole class will read it before class, and I will read it in class, and we will discuss it. This scares me a whole lot more, because grad students are scarier than professors. I do not know why this is. They are not scary in one-on-one situations; they are my friends. But in class? Reading my paper? Scary. All this side-note to say that in two weeks, if I start stressing out, remind me of this post, and that I’m not competing with the other grad students, even with my seminar paper.)

Blogs and 18th Century Periodicals

By Jandy

On February 16, 2007

In Books and Reading

Occasioned by this post over at Mumblety-Peg (especially the comment that blogging is a poor medium for expressing ideas), and encouraged by the many dozens of pages I’ve been reading in 18th-century literary and aesthetic culture (for a paper I should be writing now instead of this), a few thoughts on blogging as a continuation of 18th-century periodicals. With the caveat that I am nowhere near an expert on 18th-century periodicals.

The 18th-century really saw the beginning of what we now call magazines, in the form of journals published periodically by the members of various literary circles. The most well-remembered periodicals of the day are Joseph Addison and Richard Steele‘s The Spectator, Samuel Johnson‘s The Rambler, and Steele’s The Tatler, but there were many, many others–often by a group of friends, but sometimes by individuals. These periodicals concerned themselves with contemporary politics, culture, literature, and personalities, and took the various forms of essays, opinion pieces, reviews, satires, and personal narratives. And many of the essays were published anonymously or pseudonymously. In fact, a good bit of scholarly work in this area has been done simply trying to ascertain who wrote various anonymous reviews in these periodicals.

The periodicals at this time also introduced the now-ubiquitous “letter to the editor,” giving anyone and everyone the chance to respond to the published essays. Later issues might respond back to letters to the editor–in fact, sometimes the letters were actually written pseudonymously by the publication’s authors! In addition to this direct conversation with readers, the periodicals were in constant conversation with each other, publishing essays that responded to essays in other, often opposing periodicals. Sometimes individuals used periodicals to carry on debates in an open-letter format.

I would submit, along with many academics specializing in 18th-century literature, that blogging today is not qualitatively different than the 18th-century periodical culture. You have nearly personal publishing by individuals or small groups. You have readers with the ability to respond, either directly via comments or indirectly via trackbacks to their own blogs, and writers (usually) willing to return responses. You have interaction between different publishers/writers. You have coverage of any topic under the sun. You have the possibility for anonymity/pseudonymity. The difference between blogs and 18th-century periodicals seems to me to be almost entirely quantitative rather than qualitative–the barrier of entry is much lower, which does lower the signal to noise ratio, I’ll certainly grant you that. But though blogging’s open-access, open-ended format may encourage bad behavior and low-quality self-expression, it doesn’t necessarily mean that blogging can’t be an extremely useful tool when these very same qualities are used well.

Just think, the Joseph Addison of the 21st century could be blogging right now, and 200 years from now, academics will be placing his (or her!) blog alongside The Spectator in the periodical canon.

Note: A lot of this post (okay, most of this post) is based on a post made by the psuedonymous academic of BitchPhD; it’s basically a reprinting of a paper she presented at the MLA Conference this year, specifically about the connections between pseudonymity in the 18th-century periodicals and in blogging.

See also: John Holbo’s posting about his MLA paper from the same panel. A draft .pdf of his paper “Form Follows the Function of the Little Magazine” (an ambitious and exciting view of what academic blogging could be) is here.

Grey’s Anatomy (spoilers) & The Office (not really spoilers)

By Jandy

On February 15, 2007

In Television

Okay, Grey’s is seriously killing me here. I may have to stop watching (after next week, of course!) so I can get them all in one dose again. ‘Cause this waiting a week between episodes? BLOWS.

What exactly is Meredith’s issue at this point in time? I mean, not the freezing in Seattle’s bay, but the reason she didn’t swim out? She seemed to go under on purpose. And I still love Izzie. And Alex is growing on me every episode. And I would TOTALLY notice if Addison weren’t there.

And The Office tonight was directed by Joss Whedon! aka He Who Created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And it was awesome. There was more heart than usual, even from Michael. And there was, yep, a vampire motif. I *heart* Jim. But Pam and Roy back together? *thunk* Jim? Pam? Constantly dating other people when we all know you need to be together? Not conducive to my personal happiness.