Alexander Lavigne, Courtney McGuinness, Mikayla Nogueira, Chelsea Villavicencio

LCS 270 - Introduction to Cultural Studies

May 3rd, 2019

SLD #9 - Lipsitz Chapter 10 & Epilogue, Final Exam Review

 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

Lipsitz - Footsteps in The Dark: Chapter 10

Dialogic
● No form of culture exists in isolation; there is a dialogue, as there is much complexity in
culture.
● Culture plays a central role in society and is in dialogue with the forms that came before
it.
● The dialogic critique can be applied to popular music and can function as a historical
archive.
Clip from short documentary from Keepintime: Talking drums and whispering vinyl pt.2
● Shows the dialogue between 2 generations
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqNekrOjk1w

Diaspora
● The dispersion and mixing of cultures.
● How can popular music be seen globally?
○ The diaspora allows us to see global dimensions and complexity of American
music.
● This transcodes overlapping histories
○ Seen in overlap of different sounds, blending of communities, different dance
styles and music genres

Electronic Dance Music

● In the 1970s & 1980s, black teenagers from Detroit’s deindustrialized neighborhoods and
used their bedrooms, basements, and garages in creating the music that became known as
Detroit techno.
○ Global movement of African American music styles
■ Cultures in dialogue with each other
○ Reclaiming Detroit as a public space
● Deindustrialization
○ Destroyed almost all of the public venues where Black teens had previously
danced and listened to music.
○ Computer-generated automation and outsourcing led to factory shutdowns.
○ Appropriated computer technologies to transform themselves from consumers
into producers.
○ George Clinton: Worked with blues, pop, dance, jazz, and performance imagery
that blended remnants 1960s-era Black Power imagery.
○ Kraftwerk: Minimalist and mechanical music
■ Pg. 245: “The stiff mechanical sound and light melodies that Kraftwerk
created... may not sound anything like North American rhythm and blues
to most listeners, but in fact Kraftwerk’s art originated in an effort to blend
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

European harmonies and melodies with African American rhythm and

blues.”
● “Detournement” - A repositioning and revaluing of aesthetic objects by assigning them
new roles and meanings.
○ Pg. 238: “In the 1970s and 1980s, Black teenagers from Detroit’s de-
industrialized neighborhoods used their bedrooms, basements, and garages in
creating the music that became known as Detroit Techno. The economic
devastation wrought by deindustrialization in Detroit destroyed almost all of the
public venues where Black teens had previously danced and listened to music. At
the same time, computer-generated automation and outsourcing led to factory
shutdowns in mass-production industries. The teenage founders of techno,
however, appropriated those very computer technologies to transform themselves
from consumers into producers. They deployed computer sequencers and digital
synthesizers to make a “new” recombinant music assembled from fragments of
their tape and vinyl music collections. They used their knowledge as consumers to
become producers of a specialized music that the industry’s decision makers did
not invent - a homemade hybrid that mixed hip hop rhythms, rock and funk guitar
riffs, Eurodisco melodies and harmonies, electronic effects and “break beats.”
○
● 1980s: Containerization had a devastating impact on industrialized Detroit.
● Deterritorialization: Transformed vibrant and lively urban neighborhoods into block after
block of abandoned hours and storefronts.
○ Pg. 241: “The deterioration of public transportation increased social isolation, and
budget cuts undermined the services that citizens needed from firefighters and
police officers. Cutbacks in youth service programs and the closing of small
businesses left young people with few spaces for congregating, communicating,
and collaborating on shared projects. Factory shutdowns and capital flight
eliminated entry-level jobs, disrupted economic support networks, and left
precious little funding for discretionary spending on activities like music and
dance.”
○ Early venues were empty factors that became clubs for underground DJs.
■ DJs reclaiming Detroit as a public space
○ Young people turned to art as a release from the monotony of the low-wage
service jobs available.
○ Juan Atkins, Carl Craig & Derrick May.
■ Major pioneers in EDM
● Juan Atkins is the “godfather of techno”
○ Black people used bottleneck guitars, mouth harps, and electric guitars to imitate
sounds.
○ Strip clubs: Developed the conventions of techno - the beats, volume, and lyrics.
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

■ Pg. 243: “At the same time that the long fetch of feminist women’s
activism in the city bequeathed to them a new space for performance and
dance, the historical decline in work opportunities in nightclubs, social
halls, and school dances drove techno artists to sell their music in the most
misogynist of places - strip clubs. These seedy venues remained among
the few commercial venues in the city that still needed a steady supply of
music. The centrality of strip clubs to the commercial opportunities
available to techno artists clearly influenced the generic conventions of
techno: its beats, volume, and especially its lyrics, which often consist of
seemingly endless repetition of demeaning slang expressions for parts of
women’s bodies.”
■ Pg. 244: On the other hand, this link between sexuality and space also
entails the creation of communities capable of accepting more diverse
understandings of sexuality… In these clubs, gay artists and patrons
displayed a style of leadership that shaped techno in definitive ways…”
● Feminist women’s activism in the city led women to a new space for performance &
dance - the strip clubs. Early techno reinforced misogyny.
● Link between sexuality and space - gay artists displayed a sense of leadership.
○ Pg 244. “DJ-T1000 eulogized Collier on the Internet as the first person to
champion Detroit techno and as a great champion of our music in the great black
music tradition. When it was black & gay, before it became fashionable and
suburban.”
○ Techno and turntablism enables us to imagine a compelling history of music
revolving around the history of percussive time.
○ Techno’s spatial imaginary also encourages us to ask how music creates audio
spaces that influence cognitive mapping and cultural morphology.
● Accordion: Imitated sounds and structures of the harmonica.
○ Example: Edward Maya & Vika Jigulina - Stereo Lover
■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Z3YrHJ1sU
■ Lots of sounds of the harmonica

Lipsitz Footsteps in the Dark - Epilogue

● History makes our distant past a part of our proximate present.
○ Theme that history reflects in today’s music (African heritage in American
popular music)
○ “Ocean waves crashing on the shore, sound waves generated by instruments and
voices, and wads of fads, fashion, style come and go quickly. Yet long waves of
history expand time and space. They make the distant past part of the proximate
present. They connect people and places across boundaries and barriers of all
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

kinds.” (263)
● Most written history presents the story of the past from the perspective of the victors.
○ Reduces the diverse activities of humans over centuries to a small number of
wars, elections, scientific discoveries
○ Clusters time into memorable fragments based upon these criteria
● 9/11 & the Iraq war
○ Societal betrayal - reason for war undercover
○ Toby Keith wrote music in response to 9/11
■ Purpose: gratify militarist masculine bravado onto family allegiances and
obligations
■ Concept of masculinization of country music
■ Expressed the views of the American way held by the Clear Channel
corporation
● The Black Eyed Peas: Where is the Love?
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsRMoWYGLNA
○ Offered an Anti-War message
○ Where is the Love is linked similarly to Footsteps in the Dark
■ Both songs display the potential to link private desires with public issues.
■ Songs raise suspicions about how much we can know and a fear of
knowing at the same time.
○ Power of popular music to bring memories, perspectives, and critiques from the
past into the present
○ “The song mixes private desires with public issues urging its listeners to look
beyond surface realities to learn truths that are kept undercover.” (265)
● RUN DMC & Aerosmith: Walk This Way
○ Run DMC used Aerosmith’s Walk This Way as an inspiration for their music
● The Dixie Chicks: Banned on country radio
○ Banned because Natalie Maine (Dixie Chicks member) criticized President Bush
regarding the war in Iraq at a concert
■ Maines told audience she was not proud of being from the same state as
Bush
○ After this, Clear Channel corporation tried to ruin their reputation
○ “Banning the Dixie Chicks and using country music stations to promote the
military adventures of the Bush administration required more than censorship; it
also entailed an effort to re-masculinize commercial country music.” (269)
■ Dixie Chicks hit a large number of middle-age suburban women (received
continued support despite Clear Channel efforts to ruin them)

Review
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

Cluster One: Introduction Key Concepts -- Classic Texts/ European Philosophies

● Cultural studies approach to media literacy

○ Analyzing culture as it is situated within society & its conflicts
○ Multiperspectival, multicultural, and critical
○ Ideologies are naturalized into society so that we do not realize they are
there
● Ideology: Dominant ideas and regulations of a society that present themselves as
normal
● Install us into society, reflect interests of dominant social groups
● Marx & Engels - German Philosophers
● Provided base to understanding ideology in society
● Superstructure & Base
○ Superstructure: realm where all cultural activities take place
○ Base: Whatever is produced in the superstructure always reflects the
interest of the dominant group of the economic system
■ Particular economic system of a given order
● The Ruling Class
● Antonio Gramsci - Key Terms
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

● Ideology: Dominant ideas & regulations of a society that present themselves as

normal
● Subaltern: Oppressed, excluded, exploited, and marginalized social groups
● Hegemony: Domination by consent
● Civil Society: Hegemony in schools, libraries, press, religion, etc.
● Horkheimer and Adorno
● Frankfurt School - Mass-Mediated Culture
● Culture Industry (1944)
○ Everyday life is subject to manipulation from film, radio, ads
○ Audience is reduced to spectator with no control over cultural
environment
● Divide between high & low culture
○ High: Shakespeare
○ Low: Mass/Popular culture
○ Louis Althusser
● Ideologies reproduced unequal powers in society
● Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA)
○ Where consent (hegemony) is developed
■ Churches, schools, family
○ Subject is born through ideology
■ Interpellation: Process by which we acquire consciousness through
ideology
● Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA)
○ Ruling class becomes ruling class through RSAs
■ Police, military, government
■ Raymond Williams
● British Cultural Studies
○ Mass movements for change and optimism
● Resist manipulation within the realm of culture
● Art as Practice

Cluster Two: US Cultural Studies approach to Media literacy

● Cultural studies approach to media literacy

○ An analysis of culture as it is situated in society and its conflicts
● Political economy approach
○ Nature & effect of production and distribution of media texts
○ Corporate ownership, manipulating functions, and commodification
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

● Douglas Kellner - media literacy has to be

○ Multiperspectival, critical, and multicultural
● Diagnostic Critique
○ Social Horizon: The historical context and setting of production and
distribution of media text
○ Discursive Field: Competing forms of knowledge
○ Figural Action: Close reading of central characters and how they represent
discourse and social allegories
● Dual Optic: Media texts are contradictory in nature
● Deconstruction
○ Post modern + Modern
○ Mode of reading the gaps and silences, and what is unsayable and
marginalized in texts
● Horror Movies
○ Poltergeist
○ The Exorcist
○ Transcodes the social anxieties of the time such as public health, the
environment and the American lifestyle
● Bell Hooks
○ Significant figure in media literacy
○ Feminist scholar
○ African American
● Central Concern:
○ Cultural appropriation and racial appropriation
○ Mainstreaming of black popular culture
○ Mainstreaming of multiculturalism
○ Appreciation vs. Appropriation
● Intersectionality: Key concept of race, gender, and sexuality
● How is Bell Hooks influenced?
● Madonna: Looking at Madonna as a media text
○ Beloved figure among feminists
○ LGBTQ Community and AIDS crisis
○ Fashion:
■ Feminist artist and musician
■ Created her own fashion
■ Transgressive reinvention
■ Reinforces conformism and consumer society
■ Highly complex artist
○ Gender is a performance
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

○ Modernist
○ Deconstructivist
○ Emerged around the time of MTV
■ Visual artist
■ Interested in creating art that can function as a vehicle for change
to social constructedness of gender, race, and sexuality

Cluster Three: Application of Media Literacy in American Popular Music

● The Blues Women

○ Ma Rainey - “Mother of Blues”
■ Prove it on me Blues
■ Provides alternative model for African American women
■ Challenges domesticity
○ Bessie Smith
■ My Man Blues
○ Billie Holiday
■ Strange Fruit
■ Pioneer of Jazz but drew inspiration from Ma Rainey and Bessie
Smith
● Post-slavery era after emancipation
● During the era of slavery: Spirituals
○ Functioned as a vehicle for social critique and a coded form of resistance
○ Spirituals were performed collectively, religious, and a coded form of
resistance (conveyed desire for freedom from slavery)
● Blues: Central imagery of the experiences of African Americans post-slavery
● New form of freedom for the Black community
● Ideology of Domesticity
○ Sense of self, identity, worth
○ Relies on success of your children
○ The blues challenges this
○ Not reduced simply to motherhood
● Sexual Agency:
○ Embracing sexual acceptance
● Maintaining a connection:
○ Nommo: Naming those forces that may harm you/the unspeakable
○ Call and Response: Collective experiences, participation, requires a
communal response, creates a sisterhood
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

Blues songs address the following:

■ Love
■ Sexual Agency
■ Feminist Consciousness
■ Protest Consciousness
■ Patriarchy
■ Sexism
■ Feminism
■ Jim Crow
■ Civil Rights Movement
■ Racial Segregation
■ Imprisonment of Black Bodies

Footsteps in the Dark.

● Isley Brothers & Ice Cube

○ Ice Cube pulls inspiration from Isley Brothers in the song It was a Good
Day
○ “Ice Cube’s use of “Footsteps in the Dark” on his 1992 song “It Was a
Good Day” makes explicit the implicit link in the Isley Brothers’ song
between the personal experiences of everyday life and the collective
reckoning with the hurts of history.” (xii)
● Application of the dialogic to reading popular music
○ Applying dialogic to popular music allows us to see how it could function
as a historical archive
○ Transcodes historical trends

● Transcodes the history of Civil Rights.

● An acknowledgement of the pioneers, building on those who came before them.

● Miami Based Sound
○ Diversity in Florida
■ Who Let the Dogs Out - Trinidadian song, Bahamian song, south
Florida song, and Canadian song all at once
○ Caribbean Sound - Junkanoo carnival music
● Teen Pop: Boy Bands
○ New Kids on the Block, N’Sync, Backstreet Boys
● Proliferation of Teen Pop
○ Containerization, Mass Consumption, Passive Consumers
○ Reduced to sameness (looks and sound)
○ Less emphasis on talent and more on marketing
○ Teen pop is manufactured to reduce the audience to passive consumers
 SLD #9: Chapter 10, Epilogue, Review

● The Fugees: Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Pras Michel

○ Hip hop album The Score which blended hip hop, soul, salsa, Jamaican
reggae, and Haitian rara
○ Contains memorable, compelling, and socially conscious lyrics
● Rara: Kanaval music
○ Performed during Haiti’s post-carnival period
○ Dissolves distinctions between artists and audiences
○ Lyrics express social criticisms in coded forms, meaningful to insiders but
not to outsiders
○ “Rooted in performative orality, rara lyrics move rapidly from solemn to
silly, from serious to salacious.” (30)
● Repository of collective memory of African revolt against slavery, as well as
police brutality

● Jazz: Asian & African blended cultures

○ “Just as Asia has played a role in the history of Africa, diasporic Africans
have found a fertile field for musical expression in Asia, especially
through Jazz.” (46)

Film Screenings:

○ Stuart Hall: The Origins of Cultural Studies

○ Money for Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music

○ Bell Hooks: Cultural Criticism & Transformation

○ Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood, and American Culture

○ Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class