Tag Archives: Historical Methods

These last set of readings were on the topic of the history of digital media. Always Already New by Lisa Gitelman provided an interesting perspective by problematizing the ability to conduct a history (or, histories) of new media. She sets up problems with dealing with technology through a discussion of the Hubble space telescope. After the launch of Hubble and after it had reached its desire location in space, NASA did a test and it was discovered that the mirrors were ground incorrectly and the images came back distorted (there’s a great documentary about this and its repair, narrated by Leonardo  DiCaprio). Anyway, Gitelman talks about the fix of Hubble as “need[ing] glasses” (2); she problematizes this as Hubble was glasses in itself, so it’s like the glasses the glasses were wearing. She compares Hubble to glasses in that Hubble didn’t itself see; we (humans) saw what was in space through the technology (lenses) of Hubble.

She also talks about records providing a unique problem, otherwise unheard of until that time, a medium that only machines could read. Carvings, people could read; hand-written word, people could read; typed words of a book, people could read; telephones, people could hear. However, with the phonograph and it’s vinyl record, a person could not “read” a record, a device was required to play the new media object.

In Chapter 4, she talks about problems with conducting historical new media research. Something that I thought was especially intriguing was her analysis of the problems with web histories. In talking about the history of the first mention of “the internet” in The New York Times, she uncovers an error: the search engine will bring up an entry from 1854, even though the internet was not actually discussed in 1854. The entry will pop up because of an error in tagging. The article says “the interest,” but it comes up as “the internet,” thus creating a problem in when “the internet” was first discussed in print. Other errors she discusses are file not found errors, formatting errors, and private vs. public errors.

In Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage, geographical concerns are discussed. The most interesting analysis provided, to me, is the analysis of place. What is place in a digital world? In talking about place-making in digital contexts, Champion and Dave say, “our idea of place is identifiable as a locus between environmental features and personal or physical preferences” (339).

The last interesting idea brought up from this reading is in “Geo-Storytelling” by Refsland, Tuters, and Cooley, whereby they explore the concept of GPS locators in media. They note, “[l]ocation-aware wireless devices will hypothetically permit an immersive experience in which users will be able to borrow layers of digital information encoded to a particular place” (410), however, they also are quick to note how this same technology can be used nefariously, to track users.

MASTERS OF DOOM (David Kushner)

This reading was surprisingly interesting. Before reading them, I expected to not be interested nor find anything relevant in these two readings, but I was pleasantly proven wrong about that.

The readings from Masters of Doom were very interesting in the way they were written. Throughout the readings for this class, many of the authors have stressed how important it is to remember that historical writing is telling a story. These readings by Kushner tell a story, an interesting story.

I think he does a great job of marrying historical information with storytelling. At times, I wonder where he gets his data from, for example when he’s telling stories from the viewpoint of Romero. He doesn’t mention that he interviewed Romero and he doesn’t state the information as being universal, as things every player sees or hears or experiences. He very much tells the exact response of Romero in these moments (mainly game-play); which leads me to wonder how much liberty he took in those moments.

The most important discovery in this reading is finding a writing style I really enjoy reading. I plan to buy Masters of Doom (and any other books written by David Kushner) to get more acquainted with his writing style.

THE VIDEO GAME EXPLOSION (Mark J.P. Wolf, ed)

First, as a non-gamer, I found the video game timeline before the readings useful. Most of the video games I am aware of were referenced in the timeline. I’m familiar with a few arcade games, like Street Fighter, and the major releases from my childhood, like Super Mario Bros.; so the timeline provided gave me a good contextualization of the field.

I am more and more leaning towards exploring the field of film music, so this article on “Sound in Video Games” by Eric Pidkameny was insightful because a lot of the considerations in video games are also important in film music — diegetic versus diegetic music, the affective nature of music, the narrative qualities of music to tell things that the storyline doesn’t or can’t.

Additionally, as someone interested in various textualities (intertextuality, paratextuality), Martin Picard’s chapter “Video Games ant Their Relationship with Other Media,” was interesting when thinking about adapting video games for other media and the para/intertextuality of video games and film or television.

OFF THE RECORD (David Morton)

These readings focused on recording culture. The “Introduction” provides an overview of the historical development of recording technology. “High Culture, High Fidelity, and the Making of Recordings in the American Record Industry” talks more about the cultural development and acceptance of the recording technology. An interesting part of the introduction is its early emphasis on mechanical recording was not for mass media or entertainment purposes, although a majority of the research is on the music industry and the production of records. The introduction also provided the development of recording technology from Edison’s phonograph, to Smith’s  telegraphone, to wax cylinder recordings, to record discs.

To me, the most interesting section of the introduction is “Recordings, Culture, and the Culture of Recording,” because it provides me with a solid starting off point for a project I have been trying to get started for like a year now. The section discusses records as “cultural artifact[s]” (7) and suggests theorists such as Adorno, Benjamin, Barzun, McLuhan, and Boorstin to understand recording culture. He asks the question: “What, then, was the relationship between music, performance, business, and technology” (7)? Which, is close to the relationship I am interested in between vinyl records, film music, affect, and business/industry.

Chapter 1 talks about the cultural influence on the recording technology. It especially stresses the impact that classical (high culture) music had on the development of technology. Many of the advances in recording equipment and practices had the goal of recording classical music in high fidelity. The chapter goes on to explain how strange this is, considering that popular music (at that time, that meant jazz and swing music) was what was financially successful, as that was the music sold for jukeboxes; whereas classical music only accounted for a fourth of the sales. However, as technology developed, it was always tested and improved with classical music in mind — setting up recording horns for classical orchestras, is one example from the chapter.

The chapter discusses the improvements made to phonograph recording (such as different cylinders and discs to record on, the use of recording horns, and the strength of the material of the recording discs, as well as the adoption of tape recording as the step before the master cut was transferred to disc. The chapter also covers the implementation of multiple recording tracks so elements of the song could be recorded separately — singers from instruments or different sections of instruments in an orchestra.

“THE COLOR OF NITRATE” (Paolo Cherchi Usai)

This chapter talked about different coloring techniques during the silent film era. It opens up using The Lonedale Operator as an example. The key information from this article is understanding the different methods of coloring film in the silent era. They are as follows:

• Hand coloring – “color was applied directly onto the print” (23).
• Tinting – “a method of applying color to the surface of the film without alterning the physical structure of the emulsion… the entire picture is colored uniformly, and the area around the perforations is also colored” (25).
• Toning – featured “a more sophisticated range of color variations…. the print was immersed in a chemical bath that substituted a colored compound for the silver in the emulsion. This dyed only the darker areas of the image, leaving the rest of the gelatin completely transparent” (26).

The chapter ends discussing the importance of film restoration in archives. Usai notes that much of the colored silent film has been lost and that the film only has a lifetime of 100 years. The film becomes sticky and degrades to the point that it is unwatchable and is lost. One of the manuals cited in the section talks about how a black and white print of the film should be made before colorizing it, in order to aid in archiving it.

FIFTIES TELEVISION (William Boddy)

These readings discussed the challenges television faced to change in the 1950s. One challenge was the duration of programming: 30 minutes versus an hour. Astonishingly, one hour programs were viewed as unviable because people couldn’t be expected to sit in front of their televisions for extended periods of time. Additionally in 1948 a report “endorsed the common belief that programs should be limited to thirty minutes in length” (67). An element that seemed particularly shady in this discussion was said by Bernard Smith in a 1948 issue of Harper’s, saying, “[t]hey will accept a much poorer level of entertainment in their own homes than they will demand if they have to leave their house or apartment to attend a public performance” (68). Thus, suggesting tv should be lower quality than film, a trait that tv has spent a good deal of time overcoming.

Another challenge/debate was whether to bring in film material to television. One reason against this would be that at the time film programming was expensive and this hurdle would need to be overcome in order to use it for television. People also thought that the advertising-format of television was not strong enough to support the expensive process of filmed programming.

Once it was accepted as a viable format in television, filmed content, that is, it was lesser content. Newsweek reported that “everyone who could buy or borrow a little drugstore movie camera announced himself as a TV-Film producer” (71). Even more shocking, CBS was in talks with Lucille Ball about making a television program but the network backed out after Ball insisted on a filmed program.

RUTHLESS CRITICISM (Robert McChesney)

This reading explored the challenges of developing the broadcasting system in the 20s and 30s. Initially, the early system was celebrated. But after broadcast historians such as Erik Barnouw began publishing, this preconception was challenged. McChesney says, “[w]hen historians abandoned the presupposition that a network-dominated, advertising-supported broadcasting system was the only rational choice for a freedom-loving and democratic society, and then scrutinized radio’s early years, a different picture emerged” (222).

Overall, the article leaves me with a feeling of sadness over what broadcasting could have been or should have been versus what it ultimately became. It emphasizes how powerful networks are in broadcasting, very few companies own a majority of the channels/airtime. Which means fewer gatekeepers in content. Fewer people are in the position to decide what content gets aired, thus controls what messages people receive.

“SELLING AMERICA TO THE WORLD” (Peter Miskell)

This article discusses an US-owned film distributer in the UK, United Artists. First, the article acknowledges that the United States’ greatest export is its culture — film and television. US-based production companies began making films to sell to international markets — quota quickies — as a way of gaining more profit. These films were specifically targeted to international audiences and were of less quality than the Hollywood counterparts made for US audiences (the core market). Here, the goal was to make something for moderate costs that would gather moderate success in foreign markets. Miskell notes that the UK audience became the target international audience for US-media products as the cultural gap was closer than that of countries that English wasn’t their national language.

In the end, Miskell notes that after initial success in the 30s, UA began to decline in the 40s. The initial success was due to “hit films” (767) which enjoyed higher box offices than average. Their decline wasn’t so much due to lower production values of these films or the films not being popular with international audiences, Miskell suggests the problem was “[p]ersonality clashes and management failures” (773).

Obviously, these readings follow the topic of the week, the audience; as such, they focus on ratings, uses and gratifications, and reception.

To me, an interesting facet of this set of readings is how the Richard Butsch reading acts as a bridge between the other two.

It does this in three ways:

1. By discussing the gendered-viewing of media
2. By discussing the transformation of media technologies into home furniture
3. By discussing how the audience becomes a commodity to be “sold” to advertisers

The first point, the gendered-viewing of media, really angered me as I was reading the two readings that dealt significantly in the topic; that is, the Butsch reading on radio and Lynn Spigel’s reading on television. I think anything that shows the objectification or promotes the submission of women right now in the political climate we are currently in is like rubbing salt on an open wound. In the Trump-Era, it’s hard to hear about the objectification and completely neglecting or overlooking women as valid people. But, I digress.

The Butsch reading talks about radio and how men became threatened when radio became user-friendly for everyone. They felt as if their masculinity took a hit when radio magazines began “talking to” or catering to a female audience and when radio sets were being sold in complete sets instead of by individual parts that needed to be put together. Radio magazines that were welcoming to women, by running articles to the female audience, soon began objectifying women — switching from considering women as audience members to bait for the male audience members/readership. I find it astonishing that men could have been so insecure and sensitive that opening radio to everyone could have been perceived as threatening.

The Spigel reading likewise talks about the gendered-viewing of television; however, never suggesting it as being a threat to manhood or masculinity. She talks about how televisions were “sold” to women; by appealing to their affinity to nature and as a piece of home decor.

With that said, both the Butsch and Spigel readings discuss radio and television sets in terms of how they became parts of home decor. This part was particularly fascinating to me. Butsch talks about how after the novelty of radio wore off, women wanted a more aesthetically pleasing radio, that is, one complete set that didn’t feature wires going off in multiple directions. While, Spigel talks about how once television sets were a benefit to a home, eventually they became something people wanted to render invisible, so much so they they didn’t even want them near windows.

An additional interesting aspect of the Spigel reading is the discussion of television in terms of architectural moments. First she talks about the television’s purpose in suburbia; that is, bringing the world into the suburban home. Later, she talks about the modernist movement, which sought “the erasure between public and private space” (8).  After WWII, Spigel says people wanted to “merge” the private and public spheres by having open floor plans which featured “large picture windows,” “glass walls,” or “continuous dining areas” (9). In this vein, during this time, televisions were “placed in rooms with panoramic window views, or else installed next to globes and colorful maps” (9).  Later, she talks about how people wanted to hide them, keeping them away from windows or hiding them behind large venetian blinds.

The third theme that bridges the readings is that the audience becomes a commodity to be “sold” to advertisers, bridging the Butsch reading with Stavitsky reading.

The Stavitsky reading is all about the social scientific research regarding audience ratings. The article, overall, paints a very gloomy picture around the field of audience research by discussing how it is driven by economic interests. He talks about how the majority of this research was done for economic reasons (what shows to put on the air, at what times, what should get funded, etc.) or social reasons which leads to political interests, such as the research about educational television.

The Butsch reading discusses how audience research was important to know how to sell things to those listening to the available programming. These marketing tactics applied to radio sets themselves as well as products from program advertisers.

The last thing that stood out to me worth mentioning was in Spigel’s chapter; when she talks about the direct objectification of women. I found the women’s tension with television as the object of male gaze problematic because it suggests that women are no more than an object to be looked at, in real life, not just in the cinema as Laura Mulvey suggested. The most upsetting aspect was the discussion about women changing the television channels and how tuning knobs needed to be moved to the top instead of the bottom of the set because it was unattractive to watch her change channels otherwise, as if wives were private Vanna Whites who needed to conduct these simple tasks with unnatural grace and beauty. The entire section described women not as people but as objects; as the chapter was written by a woman, I find her non-critical view/discussion of this unacceptable.

NAZIMOVA’S VEILS (Patricia White)

I started thinking about readings in the terms of ‘what kind of history is this telling?’ In the case of Patricia White’s chapter, it is approaching history from a biographical as well as industrial lens. Biographically, she details the life and career of Alla Nazimova. White obviously concentrates on Nazimova’s portrayal and involvement in the production of Salome, however she also talks about Nazimova as a person and actress. So, a major point of analysis in the chapter is Nazimova’s queering of Salome. Many film critics cited in the chapter talk about the weirdness of her production of Salome due to casting gay actors as well as her own identity as a lesbian. As a person, they discuss her in terms of orientalism, talking about her conflicting identities of being Jewish and Russian. Industrial-wise, White talks about Nazimova’s career as an actress and director. She also talks about Nazimova’s Salome in contrast to other productions of Salome. Finally, she talks about Nazimova’s Salome in terms of film history and film reception; noting that it wasn’t accepted as a hollywood film, but it could be appreciated as an avante-garde film.

MANHATTAN NICKELODEONS (Ben Singer)

This article was interesting to me because it talked about socio-economic research in film history. This article questioned the two common paths for understanding nickelodeon theaters. The traditional view was that only lower-income people attended movies because white collar and the more affluent were above going to the movies; while the revisionist view claimed that the middle class frequently attended movies. Singer’s article really shows what a complex question this is. I like that he approached his historical analysis transparently; that is to say, he was constantly revealing the caveats to any of his questionable findings. The key findings of the chapter are as follows: “The nickelodeon boom” wasn’t as much of a boom as commonly thought. In fact, many theaters failed. Singer suggests that nickelodeons had about a 50% chance of surviving the first year. He also questions the idea of a primarily middle class audience, if not completely obliterates it. Previous research was based on the analysis of four locations in Manhattan; which turned out to not be as middle-class as previous reports suggested. Many were working class neighborhoods with “lower white collar” workers, where white collar workers existed at all. He also found that the placement of nickelodeon theaters had to do with population density more than any other factor. They were located in populated areas with high foot traffic. The chapter does a great job at showing that this research question is not straight forward and requires extensive analysis of population data and business records.

CINEMA AND WIRELESS IN TURN OF THE CENTURY POPULAR IMAGINATION (William Boddy)

This article tackles the comparisons as well as contrasts between media in terms of research and reception. Most importantly, the article emphasizes the idea that a medium doesn’t all of a sudden pop up from no where. There are precursors and technological advances that lead to the big ones. For example, television rose from radio and photography. An interesting challenge Boddy brings up, that I hadn’t considered before was that cinema comes from a more privileged position due to the wealth of primary sources; while with early radio, recordings just don’t exist. Some of the readings from a few weeks ago that dealt with radio got me thinking and wondering why radio isn’t as researched; this chapter explained that question for me. In part, it’s a data issue.

“BEFORE SHE WAS A VIRGIN…” DORIS DAY AND THE DECLINE OF FEMALE FILM COMEDY IN THE 1950s AND 1960s (Dennis Bingham)

This article is interesting for two key reasons. First, I find it interesting the Doris Day herself dismantled her own image, by penning an autobiography to set the record straight. The autobiography tarnished her good girl, pure image and in it, she critiqued her own movies. Second, it is interesting by establishing her role in comedy. The article says that in her films she is considered a comedian or a funny woman, yet she delivers her funny lines straight and it is often the men around her who are funny, telling jokes at her expense.

VAUDEVILLE: THE INCARNATION, TRANSFORMATION, AND RESILIENCE OF AN ENTERTAINMENT FORM (JoAnne Stober)

In this book chapter, Stober discusses the history of vaudeville. She talks about the changes vaudeville experienced as an industry and art form, trying to legitimize itself and bring in higher clientele or more affluent audiences. However, what I found the most interesting was its connections with cinema. First, I found it interesting that vaudeville and cinema were linked as joint programs. And then, I was surprised to see that the coming of sound cinema is what brought the decline of vaudeville as “[t]he adoption of an all-filmic program meant that the live character once lent to the exhibition was vanquished, therefore rendering exhibition practices and programs seamless and homogenous from milieu to milieu and city to city” (143).

GROOVE TUBE (Aniko Bodroghkozy)

This reading was really great. I flew through it. I’m going to have to get this book so I can read the rest of it. I really responded to her way of approaching history; she mixes her own personal account with a historical cultural analysis. The beginning of the article is about how she was fascinated by the idea of hippies based on the representation of them on television; but came to discover that the reality and the televised representation were two separate ‘realities.’

Chapter 1 was about how television created a counter-culture in the 60s. She starts out talking about Howdy Doody and how this particular show contributed to the hippie counterculture that pushed back against the baby boomer adults. Bodroghkozy suggests that Howdy Doody accomplishes this by showing children disrespecting adults and by featuring adult villains who were out to get the youngsters. The chapter also talks about how children of the 60s and 70s grew up much more quickly than previous generations because they had access to the reality of the world faster than previous generations. Television showed children/teenagers that adults were human and were capable, even prone, to making mistakes. Similarly, the television became a dominant location for children to obtain knowledge; which took some power away from adults and made children less subordinate. It covers how television showed the realities of life and the world to the hippie generation, which led to the counterculture of war resistance and anti-capitalism.

ONE NATION UNDER TELEVISION (J. Fred McDonald)

This set of readings from the book One Nation Under Television offered a historical account of the rise of television through a technological, industrial, and cultural perspective. In it, McDonald talks about key inventors, scientists, and business people who helped develop radio and television to make it popular; with a key focus on Sarnoff (for obvious reasons). McDonald also discusses the rivalries and partnerships between stations that influenced the technological development of television as well as impacted the regulations that surrounded it. I particularly found the spectacle surrounding the rise of television to be interesting; reading film studies books, they tend to emphasize the spectacle of film, but I’ve never read of the spectacle of tv until this book by McDonald. In it, he talks about the spectacle of touring television around the country so people could experience it. They would demo it in department stores and have live performances. A positive of this reading is it taught me a lot about the technical and industrial side of television that I didn’t know; however, I am much more interested in the cultural viewpoint, such as with Bodroghkozy’s writing.

THE MOUSE MACHINE (JP Telotte)

Oddly enough, what I found the most interesting about this reading was the stuff about the technology at Disney parks. The entire section about the Disney theme parks was incredibly interesting. It offered a viewpoint I hadn’t considered before (what goes unseen at the Disney parks in order to make them function in seeming perfection) as well as offered a viewpoint on Disney products that seemed accurate, fair, and not overly negative, which was nice to see. With all our readings in animation, I have begun to develop an extraordinarily negative viewpoint of Disney as a mega-corporation, however this reading shows that there’s a good side.

An approach that I found useful was when Telotte talks about how Disney parks are popular for people worldwide, even though it is a very Americanized phenomenon, that is to say, focuses on American products, ideals, and life. Yet, Telotte tells the story of fans from Denmark who go to Disney and can enjoy the parks whike “form[ing] and sustain[ing] their own cultural identities” and by exploring “what they see as being Danish through a process of contrastive validation to what they perceive as being American” (4-5).

The chapter about Disney and television was interesting because, at first, it convincingly discussed Disney in terms of it’s innovation and ability to adapt with changing media forms. But what I particularly found interesting was near the end of the chapter when Telotte talks about the science fiction/”science-factual” (112) programming. The thing that stood out to me was the obsession with accuracy. In adaptation studies, for example, fidelity isn’t typically considered a worthwhile path; however, when Telotte talks about Davy Crockett, fidelity becomes interesting. From the readings in animation, it has been a common theme that Disney has a history of backtracking. Yes, she’s latina; wait, no she’s not. Yes, she’s a princess, wait, no she’s not –for example. But with, Davy Crockett, first Disney approached the story with historical fidelity, but when they meandered away from that accurate historical account; and backtracked by saying they weren’t following the historical account, but the mythical, folkloric one. It’s fascinating how often Disney gets away with backtracking such as this.

RALPH, FRED, ARCHIE, AND HOMER (Richard Butsch)

This article talks about class representations in television; specifically how television frequently portrays blue collar men as “buffoons.” I feel like this article provides a cop-out. In it, Butsch provides the multiple reasonings as to why stereotypes such as this remain and occur as frequently as they do. Butsch talks about risk and how networks fear that which is different, so often similar series are developed. He talks about advertising pressures; that shows must keep their advertisers happy so they keep advertising with the station. He talks about the intense scheduling of creating a television show, saying how quickly series and episodes need to be churned out that there isn’t simply time to create more complex and unique characters because scrips have to be developed in a matter of days. He also talks about how repeated stereotypes makes casting easier. And, then, Butsch talks about audience expectations.

The Social Construction of American Broadcasting: 1912-1922 (Susan J. Douglas)

Much to my surprise, I found this chapter very interesting. Having read Media and the American Mind by Daniel J. Czitrom and Tube of Plenty by Erik Barnaouw for MCMA 550 last year, I knew a lot of the beginning technological bits covered in Douglas’ chapter; such as the importance of amateur radio and the impact war and military use had on the technology. However, something that did stand out to me was the gendering of radio use. Operators and users were expected to be male and when it came time for war, the men were trained to become part of the Signal Corps; while women were seemingly only involved or trained enough so that they could teach the boys how to do their jobs.

I was surprised to see Douglas spend a page and a half entertaining occult and supernatural aspects of radio. Of course, Czitrom points out in Media and the American Mind that people both feared and were awestruck of the telegraph in the beginning due to its esoteric and occult nature; I find it interesting how with the introduction of new media, people find supernatural meaning to assign it.

My other interest in this article was the competing reasons people seemed to be interested in radio. First, it seems that people saw it as a way to learn and celebrate the differences of people throughout the country. Where someone could learn about a different region and a different way of life than the one they knew.

Then, the article turns and talks about all the ways radio was expected to unify and homogenize the nation through controlling the entertainment culture. Douglas talks about the potential (and preferred) used of radio to include: educational purposes (people could tune in to hear a Harvard lecture), musical performances (hoping for the broadcast of more high culture selections such as opera, instead of the popularly broadcast jazz music), better politics (more informed voters and more responsible and credible politicians), and religion (people could tune in to listen to sermons who could not attend actual services). This homogenization in the article is approached in a non-nefarious way that doesn’t seem as if Social Control was the goal; to turn the population into brainwashed masses. It did seem that these goals were to improve society and give people opportunities otherwise not available to them; however, these ideas when coupled with capitalism are easily muddied and abused.

Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (William Barlow)

This packet of readings covers various aspects of black radio: from a survey of the history of “racial ventriloquy” and minstrel shows, to the business aspects of station acquisition such as governmental policies and regulations, to key figures in the history of black radio (such as James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Cathy Hughes), and finally black public radio (including college stations, NPR, and community radio).

The most useful aspect of this reading, for me, was the introductory chapter that talks about minstrel shows. Many readings I have read over the last few semesters talk about African American stereotypes that are based on minstrel or vaudeville shows without much explanation of what these racist stereotypes mean. They are based on the idea that readers already know the characteristics of these stereotypes, so it has been hard to find that more introductory information. So, in that aspect, this chapter was invaluable because it provides the very necessary descriptions that I have been confused about such as the Jim Crow figure, Coon, and Interlocutor (2-4).

I also found it interesting that the racial ventriloquy went both ways: whites pretended to be black and African Americans pretended to be white. While, the first instance was purely in the name of mockery and oppression; the second example had to varieties, one to mock and one to allow them to fit in and acquire jobs they otherwise would not have access to.

Chapter 13 talks about the development of black radio ownership. Two staggering quotes from the chapter are in the first page: “The first two black-owned stations in the country were established in 1949” and “in 1970 only sixteen of the country’s eight thousand radio outlets were black owned.” 16/8000+, that is a shocking statistic. The chapter talks about key figures, movements, and media advocacy groups that helped changed regulations and policies involving broadcast ownership.

Chapter 14 describes key owners of black broadcast companies that helped pave the way for others. The chapter talks about James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Percy Sutton, and Cathy Huges. James Brown and Stevie Wonder are, obviously, musicians who bought stations. Percy Sutton was a lawyer who, as a child, dreamed of owning a radio station in order to “talk…about all the discriminatory things–about the injustices I saw all around me” (267). Cathy Hughes was a radio manager/producer turned professor at Howard University. She established a successful college station at Howard and eventually left and found her own success when running her own broadcast company, Radio One.

Chapter 15 talks about various forms of black public radio from college radio stations, to NPR, and community radio. Black public radio stations suffer from funding issues due to structural restrictions that determine what stations get funded/subsidized.

The Radio Reader (Michele Hilmes & Alexander Russo)

Hilmes’ chapter, Rethinking Radio, talks about the struggles radio studies went through in order to become a legitimate field of study. She talks about radio being swept under the cultural rug while film and television studies thrived. Film and television was seen as the mature media; while radio was seen as a defunct technology that acted as a stepping stone to get to the arrival of the paired-visual/audio media. Additionally, radio was seen as low-culture; film and television had ascended to higher culture status. However, in the 1980s, radio finally became studied in media departments. Hilmes notes, “radio now began to be perceived as part of the social glue that held America–and other nations–together” (10). She ends her chapter suggesting possible paths for the study of radio; paths including radio aesthetics and the everyday social function of radio.

Alexander Russo’s chapter, A Dark(end) Figure on the Airwaves: Race, Nation, and The Green Hornet, acts as a political analysis of the radio program The Green Hornet. The two most interesting maneuvers made by Russo in the article are discussing the political function of the show and its use of orientalism. Politically The Green Hornet functioned to critique excessive government power. Instead, the show “advanc[es] the argument that individual action, not collective action, is the best way to achieve these goals [redressing social ills]” (262).

The show invokes orientalism in several ways. The main character of the show is white and his sidekick is asian (first Japanese and when that becomes politically risky, they change his nationality); this sets up an automatic othering. Kato is other to Reid. By using this orientalism, it allows the writers to give Kato more mystical qualities associated with yellow peril (264). Thus, Reid has access to the hidden knowledge of the orient (through Kato) in order to fight crimes. In this way, initially, the show sets up an us versus them binary between Reid and Kato: Reid is western, Kato is oriental.

However, later in the show Kato’s orientalism is bifurcated. Kato is established as specifically not Japanese. Kato is asian, and thus not white, but he is also not Japanese; which distinguishes him from the real life enemy of America. Which, in essence, offers a situation of dual othering.

COMMUNICATION IN HISTORY (John B. Thompson and Ulrich Keller)

Thompson’s chapter talks about the development of periodical, printed news. Early news consisted of announcing events and conveying political news (113). He suggests that, initially, there four types of communication networks: (1) Religious networks controlled by the Catholic church, (2) political networks, (3) commercial networks, and (4) local networks (113). From the 14th through 16th centuries, communication was changed by the development of a post service and a printing service. Thus, printed news surfaced in the mid-16th century (114). He says that most early newspapers (or periodicals) focused on international news, so people could learn what was happening in other places. In the mid-1600s, newspapers (at least in Britain) began running local news stories. Early newspapers had to deal with censorship and tax issues, both were efforts put forth by the government to run newspapers out of business. Thus, the article describes the struggles of the original independent press (116). This makes the reader understand and appreciate what slow progress led to the free press we enjoy now.

Keller’s article talks about early photojournalism. The first news photographer is speculated to have been in the late 1800s, because earlier photography wasn’t an economical option. Keller suggests that photojournalism is an act of teamwork, as it involves the photographer, editor, and director (162). He identifies the Spanish-American war as the first war that was described in photographs (165). He says that most early papers still used drawings to illustrate their news stories (168). Like the previous article talked about the progress of printed communication, this article talks about the progress of photojournalism and emphasizes the technological determinism involved.

HOW MEDIA BECAME NEW (Lev Manovich)

Manovich opens his article describing the “media frenzy” caused by the invention of the daguerreotype. It first recorded architecture but then people wanted to be photographed by a daguerrotype. He notes that some early technology succeeded (like the daguerrotype) and some failed (like The Engine) (320). He also said that computers and modern media came about at around the same time (320). Mass society was dependent on machines: “Mass media and data processing are complementary technologies, they appear together and develop side-by-side, making modern mass society possible” (320). Mass media and data processing technology crossed paths with the development of cinema. The article focuses on tracking the development and crossed-paths of these two technologies.

THE BLACK PRESS (Robert S. Levine and Todd Vogel)

“Circulating the Nation” explores the development of the black press. Levine says that “Appeal” was the first series of articles penned by an African American that had massive influence (17). The series of articles instructed slaves to “kill or be killed” (17); calling for an uprising. By publishing the trio of articles, the author, David Walker, reached a national audience in print. Thus, Levine suggests that Walker’s articles in “Appeal” gave rise to the black press. Walker  [after “Appeal”] “came to understand the importance of print to the creation of a black nationalist consciousness” (21). He joined MGCA in order to fight against the group of people seeking to create a white nation, ACS. It was suggested to Walker that black people were not welcome. The ACS published a paper to forward this mission of creating an all-white country by sending the black people back to Africa. The black response to the ACS is a sort of oppositional reading as the ACS published how great Africa was in order to send the people they thought didn’t belong in the country, thus othering them; yet the black people used it to create a sense of community and pride. It became important for the development of a black press so that their ideas could be heard in opposition to the ACS (22). Thus, the Freedom Journal was born.

Levine identifies the importance of the black press by framing it in terms of Habermas’ “public sphere” — by saying, “[w]ithin Walker’s dialogical model, then, which is not all that different from Habermas’s imaginings of a productive and rational public sphere, black newspapers, and the Appeal itself, participate in a national conversation” (29). The importance of the rise of the black press is, of course, a matter of representation and acknowledgement. Making sure people get to speak for themselves and are able to build a community that allows for discourse.

Vogel’s article describes the role of the black press for “redefining their [African Americans] role in the nation” (37). It allowed the African American people to fight back against subjugation and marginalization and fight for their place in society.

NEGLECTED NEWS: WOMEN IN PRINT MEDIA (Maria DiCenzo and Leila Ryan)

This chapter talks about Women’s suffragist print media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. DiCenzo and Ryan stress throughout the chapter that women’s print media had a dual role of first, talking to the general public to explain what  women were up to and were fighting for  and second, to rally the women together to keep them informed of the suffragist movement (239). They open the article by expressing their surprise that even though women were in the news and were making news that little attention has been paid academically to these types of publications in this time period. They say, “[t]hese print media are crucial to gaining an understanding of the scope and activities of a women’s public sphere at the turn of the twentieth century because they were instrumental in shaping opinion and establishing and mobilizing large- and small-scale activist networks and reform campaigns” (240).

An interesting goal of the chapter, I thought, was that they didn’t seek to examine the differences between the women’s publications at the time or how they differ from social reform publications of today; but were interested in finding the connection between these publications and similar ones of today. They also note that these publications are so important because they provide “articulation of feminist ideas through a range of print media came to influence attitudes toward women’s roles in public life” (240-1).

They also emphasize that these publications not only allowed members of the movement to have conversations with each other, but they established a “relationship with authorities and the general public” (246). Additionally, they say that these publications cannot only be thought of as propaganda, saying that such reductionism isn’t an accurate portrayal of these publications at all. Instead, they say, “alternative media [including these women’s publications] provide information about and interpretation of the world which we might not otherwise see and information about the world that we simply will not find anywhere else” (246-7). Indeed, they not only discussed issues directly related to the movement, but also general news items that related to women’s concerns such as the “women and children first policy” during the Titanic shipwreck.

Another interesting thing that I found about this chapter is that they suggest not viewing these alternative movements (such as suffragists) separately, but to consider them together “because such a move emphasizes their collective resistance to increasingly monolithic commercialized media systems…” (353).

HISTORY WRITING AS CRITIQUE (Joan W. Scott)

The thesis of this book chapter is that “[t]he object of critical history-writing is in the present, though its materials come from the archives of the past; its aim is neither to justify nor to discredit, but to illuminate those blind-spots Barbara Johnson referred to… that keep social systems intact and make seeing how to change them so difficult. This kind of critical history-writing serves the interests of history in two senses: it opens doors to futures we might not otherwise have been able to imagine and, in so doing, gives us ever more material for the writing of history” (35).

I found three things about this book chapter particularly interesting/useful.

First, it taught me the distinction between critique and criticism. Quoting Barbara Johnson, Scott says, “[a] critique of any theoretical system us not an examination of its flaws and imperfections. It is not a set of criticisms designed to make the system better. It is an analysis that focuses on the grounds of the system’s possibility” (23). Thus, the article continues to emphasize how critique leads to change,

Second, it clarified the misuse of “deconstruction.” She mentions that it is commonly used as a synonym of analyze or investigate. But, Derrida, when using the term deconstruction, “meant locate [the text’s] blindspots…” (26).

Third, she identifies Foucault as a good example of how to conduct historical critique. She notes that just because you may question his subject of study, his methodology is still useful.

MEDIA MANIFESTOS (Mark Poster and Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth)

Poster’s article starts out talking about how the relationship and histories between humans and machines have changed. Marx discussed it in terms of the Industrial Revolution, but at the time this article was written, another change was occurring. Machines were processing information instead of humans.

Poster opens the article with a quote about changing history.  It began as oral narratives and as he later investigates, history became mediated. His article seeks to focus on the history between humans and machines, as he thinks most history comes from a humanist lens. He suggests these machines are objects of culture.

He talks about modernity being concerned with cultural objects, tangible objects. He insinuates that we now live in a post-modern, networked world where anyone can create, edit, and distribute cultural objects. New media, Poster thinks, requires a new approach to history.

While Ermarth talks about the failed enterprise of culture, or suggests “a sense of cultural failure” (50). She suggests adapting/adopting new approaches to history. She suggests replacing the conventional approach to history with a “discursive tradition.” She explains that the way in which we understand anything is through code(s), and that codes, like languages, differ (60). She also discusses that we don’t function within a singular code which we use to understand our world, but we have multiple codes (60). The discursive tradition also repositions facts and positivist views, and expands explanations beyond causality. In this methodology, there are plural pasts (63).

ALTERNATE WORLDS AND INVENTED COMMUNITIES (Wulf Kantsteiner)

This article was fascinating because it approaches history in a way I never would have considered — through virtual worlds. In doing so, his approach speaks to the ideas Joan Scott posed in the first article, by “open[ing] doors to futures we might not otherwise have been able to imagine.”

Kantsteiner’s article opens with a discussion of utopia and dystopia. Ideas of utopia began in 1516 with the publication of Thomas More’s novel. Most explorations lie within the possible. However, the fall of communism acted as a roadblock to free-flowing utopian fantasies (131). Another problem, he suggests, is that it became harder to speculate about scientific advancements.

He suggests video game culture will change the way in which we approach history. He says, “video games offer for the first time the opportunity to interact with alternate universes…” (136). He also talks about the ability virtual technology has to create or recreate worlds and allows people to make memories that are shared with others in the online environment (141). This ability to create virtual collective memory helps build online communities of people with shared memories and experiences.

He also talks about the utopias of these fabricated online worlds. In the WWII game, Wulfenstein, the gamer can explore a US heroism (142). As someone who’s played the game, I can say that it offers an alternate history in that you are in the world and setting and period of WWII but it replaces the horrors of the war with supernatural horrors with blood and gore common to shooter games. He also discusses Second Life. He suggests that online worlds give the users more control than they have in regular life.

READING BETWEEN THE LINES (Dr. Leigh)

“Reading Between the Lines: History and the Studio Owner’s Wife” leaves me with two important take-aways: (1) the importance of following clues in historical research and (2) the importance of telling the stories of women in film history.

I really like the comparison of film historians to CSIs. If this course has drilled anything into my consciousness, it’s the hard work that goes into historical research. This article emphasizes how you might go into a historical research project with a goal, but you need to follow clues and adapt because the information you find (or don’t find) will lead you to your next clue.

The article/book chapter also emphasizes the importance of studying women’s film history. Using the woman in the article as an exemplar, Antonia Nikolaevena Khanznonkova, it took digging through many clues to uncover the important role she played in Russian silent cinema.

WORKING IN THE ARCHIVES (various authors)

One of the (side) projects I’m interested in working on, either for my paper for this class or at another time in the future, is tracing the representation of vampires as tricksters through art, literature, and film. To do that, I would have to find art work depicting vampires and then learn how to interpret them. While Helena Zinkham’s article deals with photographs and not paintings, it is the closest article so far to dealing with this, so I found it the most interesting in the packet of three articles in this reading.

First, she talks about how “[p]hotographs provide a vivid connection between the present and the past that can inspire new interest in old subjects and also improve understanding of diverse peoples, places, and subjects” (119). She suggests that they are valuable primary sources for research.

She then talks about how and where to find photographs for your research. She says that many photographs have been digitized, but even more are either physically in an archive or uncatalogued somewhere in what she calls “off line collections” (120). She then goes through several resources for finding photographs, such as using online searches or trying subscription databases. Then, she talks about how to interpret the photos you find. She first talks about how to read photographs and then explores finding similar photographs and providing historical contextualization.