Words of the semester

This is my second semester at Claremont Graduate University in the cultural studies program. I'll be finishing up my second master's degree this fall and hopefully moving into the PhD right after. My former degree in theology and culture gave me a very different take on cultural studies, thus I learned much about the discipline last year, learning about such key ideas as the culture industry, understandings of the bourgeoisie, subaltern studies, and many other concepts. I though it'd be fun to list those special key terms that continually come up this semester and have guided my research.

1. Cultural capital: my thesis focuses on fan studies, specifically fanboy culture, and the idea of cultural knowledge attained that provides various groups with power and status keep appearing everywhere I turn.
2. Authenticity: through studying Digital Storytelling and other forms of media that focus on portraying groups, the idea of something being "authentic" provides me with new ways to analyze not just non-fiction but fiction as well.
3. Diaspora: sure I'd heard the term before but my Transnational Media Theory course provided deeper insight into its use.
4. Double consciousness: D.E.B. Du Bois coined phrase provides exciting possibilities for my future studies on various groups and migration but also can be used for my specific focus in superhero studies, examining the duel role of a costumed hero and an "everyday" person moving through life split between two opposing identities.
5. Reappropriation: like the work "juxtaposition," I was just really excited to learn how to use it in a sentence.
6. Agency: understanding the role media texts play in people's lives, moving past simple explanations of escapist consumption.
7. Hybridization: I'm still working on what it means exactly in reference to idealized understandings of the effects of globalization, but its use continues to intrigue me.
8. Participatory culture: I've already learned about active reading and the more I read by Henry Jenkins and John Fiske help me understand this idea of engaging culture and making it a more active, rather than passive, part of daily life.
9. The Lesbian gaze: I've heard and read about the male gaze, but learning hot to distinguish between a lesbian and transgender gaze in cinema was new and incredibly helpful for understanding how the camera function in film.
10. Visual culture: I didn't know the phrase existed before this semester and I continue to want to know more about it. I did an video essay on an aspect of visual culture at the beginning of the semester and I'm a little bummed because I really would've loved to write more about it.

A fanboy waxes academic

So lately, I've been rather excited about the future of many things superhero related. First, off they just released the first image of Thor in the Marvel Comics movie scheduled to hit theaters next year. I love the character because of his relationship to my favorite superhero team the Avengers (featuring such characters as Iron Man, Captain and America later on starring my favorite line up in the New Avengers: Buck Barne's Cap, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Spider-Man, and Hawkeye), but I've also respected their choice on approach. Rumor were that the role of the Norse god of thunder would be done by a WWE star, but they chose to go a very different direction. The film large features a British cast with Thor cast as an Ausie actor. Further, Kenneth Branagh, known for his Shakespearean film directing and acting is overseeing the project. The film will also tie into the crossover universe they're creating between other Avengers character films like Iron Man, Hulk, and Captain America, all leading up an Avengers film. Now, they've cast comic book film familiar face Chris Evans as Cap in his solo film and my jury's still out on this choice. However, many of my concerns were appeased after he provided a hysterical performances in the Vertigo/DC Comics film The Losers that came out last weekend. Here's a link to my review on the film for my newspaper job. Let's hope he can buff up and be serious as the star spangled hero who's captured my heart (even though I never consider myself a patriotic person...I'm still fleshing that one out).

This all then leads me to some news about this universe I'm more excited about, Marvel's choice of Joss Whedon to direct The Avengers. Whedon may seem like an odd choice to many since his only feature film job was the 2005 film Serenity, based on his canceled TV show Firefly. This is the man behind such wonderful cult following endeavors as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel (to of my favourite TV shows), and the webisode experience Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. He also has history with Marvel Comics, writing for the series The Astonishing X-Men, along with writing continuing comics volumes for his TV shows. All that to say it's exciting to see someone direct this film with a personal investment in the characters and Marvel Universe.

This is all very exciting to discuss for two reason. First, May 7th will mark the third comics film this year with Iron Man 2 (The Losers and Kick-Ass came out over the past couple week). Second, I've been finishing up my thesis on fanboy culture. As you can probably tell, I approach the subject with great bias and it's been a challenge to address that bias in an academic way. I've spent so long trying to take first-person out of my paper writing and leave it to blogging and film reviews (even with film reviews, I waited over a year to use personal pronouns, allowing myself time to develop an audience that would be OK hearing my me personally in such a setting). My thesis has been both fun and exhausting, trying to determine what research to use and when to back off the scholarly works and tell the story myself. I'm proud of the direction it's taken and plan to try to publish it. Without providing too much spoilers for it, I'm taking up the challenge of determine what fanboys like. By collecting and categorizing user responses to superhero films I attempt to understand how fanboys (myself included) interpret popular superhero films. The project began with the questions of how do fan communities oppose popular film texts they find insulting. The project morphed into something very different as my sample group showed less signs of resistance to the media production system (somewhat to my dismay because I greatly hoped to find that fanboys (I do addressed the gendered use of the term as well) resisted the idiocy of Transformers 2 as much as I did). Instead, I learned more about what constitutes a good superhero film for the group. I'll leave it at that for now and simply close with, "It's a good time to be a fanboy though I do hope he does get a little smarter."

702: It's Just the World We Live In

We're back with another original video. This one's called 702. The premise is a zombie horror-comedy mockumentary that questions the nature of objectivity and journalistic involvement in a post-apocalyptic setting where the end of the world makes critical analysis through say film a rather fleeting endeavor. I've always wanted to make two films, a documentary about the house I live in and a zombie movie. I never thought that I would just merge to two ideas together and go from there.

Here's how it all came together. I proposed an idea to a three other classmates and then we started writing. We went through several drafts before filming. Here's a link to the first draft I created, and here's a link to the second draft Saralyn created based on our brainstorming. And even during shooting, the process was very organic. My roommates just sat in front of the camera and talked. I also had a bad spill out of my attic, fracturing my ankle-caught on video and in the film. After that happened, we had to rewrite some parts and pass off my lines to other people who could still walk. It was difficult to keep a 12-person crew focused and quiet during shooting. We also had trouble finding a day that worked for everyone. Luckily, my two roommates who had to get to work decided to call in and say they couldn't make it.

The editing process was pretty enjoyable as well. Unlike the video essay, where I tried great a very tightly edited package, there weren't as many cuts here and that made things dramatically easier. Since I was stuck on a couch for several days after the great fall, I started editing earlier. I approached it by thinking about a mix of documentary styles and viral videos, thus the final product was a mix between a heartfelt exploration of place and something more akin to Cloverfield or Quarantine. We had some challenges with footage since we ran out of time to do reshoots and some shots didn't fully show everything going on (people running, fake blood, etc.) but the final product was very raw and looked great to me. I also found another challenge in choosing music. I didn't want to use any music that I couldn't get copyrights for, thus the music in the film was either created by me (three songs), a bluegrass song made by my friend, another acoustic song made my another friend, and, during the credits, a rock song performed by Nick Maldonado's band Destroy the Runner, the fine gentleman who got someone to cover his shift and drove up from San Diego to play the lead zombie in the film.

We went into the project to create a piece that questions the nature the documentary and, really, the point of higher education when people are dying. However, the final project did so much more as the interviews revealed some fascinating things about representation. Horror-comedies often critique their own form and we do that here too. We have some cliche moments: Elliott saying "I'll be back" and then getting killed first; the final showdown where several people die; the angry locals at an outsider who caused the problem in the first place; and the issue of representation. As in most horror, women usually remain in subordinate roles, either by dying first or relying on male leads to protect them. Here, we stay with that by having two girlfriends/fiances already dead prior to the incident with significant others with nonchalant responses to their permanent absences. Further, the death of the female documentarian solidified this view. This gender issue was not intentional prior to filming. One story about Bryan having to mercy-kill his fiance was actually rooted in a real dream he had but the story Roy tells was just something that he jokingly said (with his actual girlfriend in the other room) during filming. Even though no as visible in the film, we also had two female zombies (no intentional but more based on who could show up for the day). The other unintentional representation came after my injury. Anyone in a wheelchair or with a crutch dies first in these films and, well, I needed to because my actual ankle was the size of a softball and I couldn't run to the care, thus I died early in the final showdown so I wouldn't cause the swelling to grow.

I'm very proud of the final project and it's given me new energy to start doing more writing and filming like this. Welp, with that said, hope you enjoy the movie and be sure to pay attention to the credits, there's a few easter eggs in them.

Worst/Best Week Ever

This past week was one a tough one. I had the normal routine for the week - preparing lectures, doing class readings, meeting with the student newspaper staff, etc. - but this week, everything hit at once. Paper due Tuesday, rough draft of thesis due Wednesday, not too bad. Then...Friday came. The day start relatively early (especially for me), with a meeting at APU at 8am, about the nature of the role and nature of the student newspaper on the college campus. I had to leave the meeting early at 9:10am to head to Monrovia to present at the Christians on Diversity in the Academy conference. When I first sent in a proposal for this conference, I thought I was requesting the usual 15ish minutes slot to present on my research but when I was accepted, I found out I had an hour (bring it on). My session was titled "It's Just a Movie: An Oppositional and Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Reading Film." I provided an approach to viewing film for people without a film background that would allow for an appropriate use of the medium that considers film technique important along with a greater attentiveness to issues of representation and ideology. Here's a link to my PowerPoint presentation.

After the conference, I returned home to prepare filming for a class project. It was quite the event. There's four of us involved in the project with 9 people involved in shooting. I won't give away the details of the content of filming just quite yet but say we had a lot of fun doing it. We filmed from about 12:00pm to 4:30pm. We got a lot of great stuff and a bunch more we didn't plan on getting. We did have a few interesting set backs however. We filmed at my house and when I attempted to get out of my attic, I thought it would be appropriate to just jump out, not realizing I was falling about 8 feet. Most of the weight landed on my left foot. I thought I broke it. We had to revamp a bunch of the shots we were filming because I couldn't walk without a limp and in fact can barely stay on my foot. Sure it was a damper on the day but the film footage we got was so fun.

Back on the foot. Luckily, I didn't break it-just a bad sprain. As the day went on, my leg got worst. The roommates took care of me and busted out the frozen vegetables and icing tools. I couldn't move for the rest of the day. As the swelling got worse, I couldn't put any weight on my foot. Suddenly, a phone ringing or the need to go to the bathroom became a chore only resolved by hopping on one leg. I ended up using crutches for the rest of the day. I was a little worried at night because my bed isn't close to the ground but I found a way into it. I kept the leg elevated and wrapped, planning to go to a doctor, but then I woke today and I can move the leg more and put some weight on it. That's a nice twist I think. Anways, this week=crazy. Friday=crazier.

I'm online!

So for those of you who don't know, along with adjunct teaching journalism, desktop publishing, literature, and writing compoistion and attending Claremont Graduate University for my second master's degree, I also write film reviews the Beverly Press in Los Angeles. It's a local newspaper for the Wilshire, Hancock Park, and West Hollywood area with about a 12,000 a week run. For people that subscribe to our paper and the Los Angeles Times, it's actually distrubted with that paper every Thursday. Well, the website just got a new template that's more user friendly. In the past, PDFs of the weekly paper were there for upload and now individual stories can be accessed. It's nice to have a direct link online to your work. Only one of my reviews is online right now, but I imagine they'll be updated more often. Here's the link.

Death and Rebirth: Captain America Takes Up Arms (video essay made Visual Research Methods)

The above is a video essay I've created about the significance of Captain America's assassination and rebirth with a gun on his belt (something the old Cap didn't have). Over the last three weeks plus, I've clocked anywhere from 2-6 hours a day on this puppy. I started by gathering video clips from YouTube and DVDs, along with soundbites from Podcasts, radio broadcasts, and special effects sound offline. I've got footage from all over the place in there: video blogs, fan news videos, Fox News, the Colbert Report, NPR, and film clips. Then there's the exorbitant amount of comic book stills and covers from DC and Marvel Comics.

After I gathered all the pieces, I spent a lot of time just playing around with how to organize it all. I decided to take a journalistic approach. I let the stills and video clips go first, telling a story of a character once revered to murdered. I originally planned on a voiceover but then I just kept creating it without one, everything seemed to just flow so well. Finally, I did run out of audio clips and decided that I wanted to insert my voice in it, vis-a-vi, voice of God style. I looked at the clips I'd created and wrapped my voice narration around the edited content already there. I recorded the audio with my iPod, using the voice memo application, and emailed myself the files when I was done. I did have to redo one clip because it peaked when recording (and you can probably tell which clip it is since I couldn't get it to sync). Before this project, I didn't know how to get images to move across screen, something I had to learn since I was dealing with vertical comic book covers over a horizontal visual space. Thankfully, somebody posted a YouTube tutorial to do just that. The second to last main piece was locating sound effects. The beeping sound at one part of the video in one beep copied and pasted many times over--and the military document that goes with it is several different frames, one for each new letter added to a sentence. Everything else was just learning how to structure it all. Thinking of essay form greatly helped with that process after several changes to the structure.

It was a conscious effort not to choose "Patriotic" songs because I wanted to show that what's been happening in the Captain America storyline is helping redefine how the character wears the American flag on his chest.

The last part of the puzzle was music. It was a conscious effort not to choose "Patriotic" songs because I wanted to show that what's been happening in the Captain America storyline is helping redefine how the character wears the American flag on his chest. Instead, I chose mood music from Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream), Cliff Martinez (Solaris), Nine Inch Nails, Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica), and The Appleseed Cast.

I used KeepVid to rip videos offline and Quicktime to convert them to use in Adobe Premiere. I also used Photoshop to prepare images for video, edit some images ("Dust and Speckle" helped me smooth out a few), and create some photo art as well. The biggest problem I encountered with this projects was Premiere's tendency just to shut off on occasion without warning...and more importantly a chance to save the work I'd done. This process alone added several hours of work. It was an exhausting process to create this film but I'm very broad of the final product. I've done other videos before but never without having to shoot anything. It was both a challenge to solely use other people's material and refreshing not to have to worry about importing.

We showed this videos in class today and I do agree with the criticism. The video moves very fast. This comes from both my frustration with online videos I'd seen that stay on any one image too long without moving and my love for fast-paced film (yes, I did like the new Star Trek, along with films like 300, but not Transformers 2, that's the line). There was just so much to say in 5 minutes. I realize that my familiarity with the material made it difficult for me to notice this but, at the same time, I created a video that would appeal to Captain America fans on the viral webscape. My intention was to create something that move quick for people that already have a working knowledge of Cap but also something short enough that it could be viewed multiple times and still have something new to offer the viewer. That said, I definitely should've spent more time showing the main image I address. If I were to do this video again, I'd redo the voiceover to it flows smoothly, spend more time on volume settings, and extend it to about 8-10 minutes. I have enough footage here with images alone to do that.

Boys Don't Cry and the Gaze

The head of the cultural studies department Dr. Eve Oishi (my Transnational Media Theory instructor for a class at Pitzer) guest spoke in my Visual Research Methods class last Wednesday. We discussed several readings from The Visual Culture Reader on sexuality. I fount our first class discussion on Judith Halberstam’s “The Transgender Gaze in Boys Don't Cry” to be the most intriguing. Halberstam’s essay discusses the transgender gaze of the film, as opposed to the male gaze, which dominates the majority of Hollywood films and reminds the viewers of the often-male point of view of most popular films. For an easy example of this, just check both Transformers films and try to tell me that the camera doesn’t exploit Megan Fox’s body much like an adolescent male would (targeted demographic for the film).

Halberstam discusses that the first part of Boys Don’t Cry but transforms into a lesbian gaze at the pivotal moment in the film. Dr. Oishi played for us the clip in question and we engaged it. The clip of interest occurs after Lana (Chloë Sevigny) learns that the man she had been dating, Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank), was not a biological man but a biological woman. Lana approaches Brandon in the secluded barn he lives in, not with anger but willing to accept him. However, the language used in this interaction changes the dynamic from a man and a woman to two women. With Brandon’s head in her lap, Lana says to him, “You’re very pretty,” something she wouldn’t have said prior to the reveal. The interaction here changes the way the two act and then turns the story from transgender to lesbian.

We also discussed the cinematic conventions used by the film that provide problems for interpretation. By earlier showing sex scenes and then, in this scene, fading to the aftermath, attempting to show the difference between showing sex on screen and implying making love, the film places itself within the tradition of other Hollywood films. In the end, Boys Don’t Cry sacrifices transgender politics for gay/lesbian ones. I must admit here, I have only viewed the scenes from class and haven’t scene the film, but I don’t imagine this is a far stretch. Gay and lesbian politics have won out in other cinematic examples as well, especially in the form of stories solely about white people, turning gay and lesbian issues into white issues of sexuality. Boys Don’t Cry then aligns with other Hollywood films because it simplifies something like sexuality, just as other films, like Crash or Pursuit of Happyness, simplify such things as race for the sake of a the story.

We ended this part of class talking about how most scholar, when analyzing films, tend to favor criticism based on how the film ends. I’ve noticed this feminist criticism of Thelma and Louise for ending with their deaths. The same criticism could be used here, as it ultimately ends with the death of Brandon Teena, leaving only assumedly heterosexual couples to find love without threat of death. Dr. Oishi discussed the Brandon’s home, an isolated little shack with nothing visible inside, just a bright view of the sky above when the door is open. The shack serves as a metaphor for Brandon; he won’t find hope in his life on earth, only in the sky. We discussed if just looking at the end should ignore the journey along the way of most films and I find myself torn.