Transcript Slides - Elizabeth Losh

CAT 1: Media Seductions
Overview
Elizabeth Losh
http://losh.ucsd.edu
Who was Rasputin?
Why is his name associated with seduction?
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin
1869-1916
Theories of Seduction
• How does seduction replace or
supplant other explanations of
human behavior?
• Who gets seduced? Women,
children, the innocent, the morally
weak, the seemingly righteous, the
masterful yet compromised
• How are they seduced? Powerful
rhetoric, psychological warfare,
emotional appeals, deceptive media
experiences
Media Influence
Research usually focuses on media influence
as a contemporary problem best understood
by psychologists, sociologists, cognitive
scientists, or educational specialists
Media Influence and Policy
When is media influence a concern of the state?
Media Influence and
Culture, Art, and Technology
Today’s Thesis
The study of media influence is often assumed to
be a subject only for empirical researchers in the
social and behavioral sciences. However, I argue
that ideologies about media influence have a long
and complex history that goes back to the debate
between Plato and Aristotle about culture, art,
and technology. Often we’ll be talking about
genres that actually impact us physically, such as
melodrama, horror, and pornography, but we’ll
also be talking about the cognitive effects of
media and considering how media make us think
as well as feel.
Concern about Deception, Delusion,
Imitation : The Platonic Legacy
Consulting Primary Sources
Plato in the Gorgias:
Rhetoric vs. Philosophy
‘
cosmetics vs. gymnastics
Plato in the Gorgias:
Rhetoric vs. Philosophy
‘
pastries vs. medicine
Plato in the Republic:
The Allegory of the Cave
Plato in the Republic:
The Theory of Mimesis
Plato in the Republic:
Theatre and Imitation
The argument for banishing poets
Plato in the Phaedrus:
Writing as an aid to forgetting
‘
Nicholas Carr similarly argues in The Shallows
that the Internet is an aid to forgetting
Plato in the Phaedrus:
How can authorship be verified?
‘
Boney M.
Boney M. Lip Synching
Frank Farian
Plato vs. Aristotle
on Rhetoric and New Media
Aristotle in the Poetics:
Theatre and Catharsis
The argument for an education that includes being
exposed to the arts and new media
(He also thought a good education should include
rhetorical training.)
Negative emotions could be purgative as they
inspire pity and fear
How Sontag Explores Pity and Fear
through Photojournalism
“Samar Hassan screamed after her parents
were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2005”
Theories of Media
Marshall McLuhan
Hot media – film
provide complete involvement
without considerable stimulus
(appealing to one sense);
perception of sequential, linear,
and logical arrangements.
Cool media – comics
provide little involvement with
substantial stimulus;
perception of abstract patterning and
simultaneous comprehension of all parts.
Genre and Media
Melodrama
Abolitionist melodrama
Nazi melodrama
Genre and Media
Horror
Gothic novels of the
eighteenth century
Horror comics of the 1950s
Body Genres
Linda Williams, U.C. Berkeley, Department of
Rhetoric
Sweat, tears, and other bodily
responses
Horror – too soon!
Melodrama – too late!
Pornography – perfect timing!
A Clockwork Orange
The Satanic Verses
Advice from Erasmus
(1466-1536)
Use “an appropriate little sign” to mark
“occurrences of striking words, archaic or
novel diction, brilliant flashes of style, adages,
examples and pithy remarks worth
memorizing.”
Fall Quarter: Critical Reading
“What constitutes a ‘text’?”
“How can an artifact or source be analyzed?”
“Why is the same object of study approached
differently in different fields?”
Synthetic Reading
Applying critical lenses from one text to another
Application not comparison and contrast often
at work
The Reasonably Priced Books
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador, 2004.
$10.40
Austen, Jane. 2004. Northanger Abbey: A Longman Cultural
Edition. Pearson Education, Inc./Longman. $11.81
Richards, Jeffrey. 1997. Early American drama. New York:
Penguin Books. $11.15 *
McCloud, Scott. 1994. Understanding Comics: The Invisible
Art. Harper Paperbacks. $13.54
Rushdie, Salman. 2008. The Satanic Verses: A Novel. Random
House Trade Paperbacks. $9.09
Carr, Nicholas. 2010. The shallows: what the Internet is doing
to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton. $9.18
Plus: Access to a Netflix Account!
More about CAT
http://cat.ucsd.edu
Culture may mean learning about class,
language, ability, gender, sexuality,
race, nationality, and religious identity
in many different contexts
Art includes film, music, the performing
arts, folk art, craft, and design
Technology encompasses many kinds of
technological innovations
Interdisciplinary Faculty in CAT
Guillermo Algaze – MacArthur award winner from the department of
Anthropology who teaches about history and culture from primate
tool-use to Mesopotamian colonization
Kelly Gates – Communication professor who studies new media
technologies, science and technology studies, and cultural policies
around surveillance
Martha Lampland has a Ph.D. in Anthropology and an appointment in
the Sociology department; she studies political economy, history,
feminist theory, science studies, social theory, and the symbolic
analysis of complex societies
Elizabeth Losh – A rhetorician who directs CAT and teaches in three
departments at UCSD: Communication, Literature, and Visual Arts.
Her first book, Virtualpolitik, is classified under “New Media,”
“Political Science,” and “Science, Technology, and Society”
Emily Roxworthy – A professor in Theater and Dance who studies the
history of Japanese internment camps and designed a video game
with the help of the Supercomputing Center
Overlaps
Important Questions
In the twenty-first century, how do we shape the world,
and how does the world shape us?
What ethical questions are raised by designed objects,
environments, and interactions?
How do cultures manage change?
Why does the historical context of a given technology or
commodity matter? How far back in time should we
look? Which factors should we weigh most heavily?
How do we understand media on a global scale?
How is sensory experience mediated?
What forms of production and consumption do we take for
granted in contemporary life?
How do new solutions sometimes create new problems?
The “Media Seductions” Course
Website
http://losh.ucsd.edu/courses/CAT1.html
Writing as a mode of learning: three assignments aimed at
critical reading on the Spanish Civil War Archive, 50s Horror
Comics, and Rushdie’s Satanic Verses
Assignments and Drafts Due in Lecture Not Section
Information literacy beyond Google: databases like the
Perseus Project, the Electronic Text Center at the University
of Virginia, Underground and Independent Comics from
Alexander Street, ARTStor, JSTOR, or ProQuest and local
digital collections like the Spanish Civil War Archive
A final examination: work on your note-taking skills!
The Resources of a Research University
Faculty Experts
Archival Collections
Research Institutes
Your Discussion Section Leaders
Edward Sterrett
Visual Arts
Chuk Moran
Communication
Brian Lindseth
Sociology
Joe Bigham
Music
Tara Zepel
Visual Arts
Ways to Participate
• Talk in section!
• Raise your hand in lecture!
• Come to office hours! (Thursday 3:30-5:30 in
Pepper Canyon Hall 249)
• Come to the evening Q&As in the Residence Halls
• Ask CAT faculty to coffee with a prof!
• E-mail me your ideas and links!
([email protected])
• Suggest song titles!