CAT 1: Media Seductions Overview

1. CAT 1: Media SeductionsOverview Elizabeth Losh http://losh.ucsd.edu

2. Who was Rasputin?Why is his name associated with seduction?

3. GrigoriYefimovich Rasputin1869-1916

4. Theories of Seduction • How does seduction replace or supplant other explanations of human behavior? • Who gets seduced? Women, children, the innocent, the morally weak, the seemingly righteous, the masterful yet compromised • How are they seduced? Powerful rhetoric, psychological warfare, emotional appeals, deceptive media experiences

5. Media Influence Research usually focuses on media influence as a contemporary problem best understood by psychologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, or educational specialists

6. Media Influence and Policy When is media influence a concern of the state?

7. Media Influence andCulture, Art, and Technology

8. Today’s Thesis The study of media influence is often assumed to be a subject only for empirical researchers in the social and behavioral sciences. However, I argue that ideologies about media influence have a long and complex history that goes back to the debate between Plato and Aristotle about culture, art, and technology. Often we’ll be talking about genres that actually impact us physically, such as melodrama, horror, and pornography, but we’ll also be talking about the cognitive effects of media and considering how media make us think as well as feel.

9. Concern about Deception, Delusion, Imitation : The Platonic Legacy

10. Consulting Primary Sources

11. Plato in the Gorgias: Rhetoric vs. Philosophy ‘ cosmetics vs. gymnastics

12. Plato in the Gorgias: Rhetoric vs. Philosophy ‘ pastries vs. medicine

13. Plato in the Republic: The Allegory of the Cave

14. Plato in the Republic: The Theory of Mimesis

15. Plato in the Republic: Theatre and Imitation The argument for banishing poets

16. Plato in the Phaedrus: Writing as an aid to forgetting ‘ Nicholas Carr similarly argues in The Shallows that the Internet is an aid to forgetting

17. Plato in the Phaedrus: How can authorship be verified? ‘

18. Boney M.

19. Boney M. Lip Synching

20. Frank Farian

21. Plato vs. Aristotleon Rhetoric and New Media

22. Aristotle in the Poetics: Theatre and Catharsis The argument for an education that includes being exposed to the arts and new media (He also thought a good education should include rhetorical training.) Negative emotions could be purgative as they inspire pity and fear

23. How Sontag Explores Pity and Fearthrough Photojournalism “Samar Hassan screamed after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2005”

24. Theories of Media Marshall McLuhan Hot media – film provide complete involvement without considerable stimulus (appealing to one sense); perception of sequential, linear, and logical arrangements. Cool media – comics provide little involvement with substantial stimulus; perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts.

25. Genre and MediaMelodrama Abolitionist melodrama Nazi melodrama

26. Genre and MediaHorror Gothic novels of the eighteenth century Horror comics of the 1950s

27. Body Genres Linda Williams, U.C. Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric Sweat, tears, and other bodily responses

28. Horror – too soon! Melodrama – too late! Pornography – perfect timing!

29. A Clockwork Orange

30. The Satanic Verses

31. Advice from Erasmus(1466-1536) Use “an appropriate little sign” to mark “occurrences of striking words, archaic or novel diction, brilliant flashes of style, adages, examples and pithy remarks worth memorizing.”

32. Fall Quarter: Critical Reading “What constitutes a ‘text’?” “How can an artifact or source be analyzed?” “Why is the same object of study approached differently in different fields?”

33. Synthetic Reading Applying critical lenses from one text to another Application not comparison and contrast often at work

34. The Reasonably Priced Books Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador, 2004. $10.40 Austen, Jane. 2004. Northanger Abbey: A Longman Cultural Edition. Pearson Education, Inc./Longman. $11.81 Richards, Jeffrey. 1997. Early American drama. New York: Penguin Books. $11.15 * McCloud, Scott. 1994. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Paperbacks. $13.54 Rushdie, Salman. 2008. The Satanic Verses: A Novel. Random House Trade Paperbacks. $9.09 Carr, Nicholas. 2010. The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton. $9.18 Plus: Access to a Netflix Account!

35. More about CAT http://cat.ucsd.edu Culture may mean learning about class, language, ability, gender, sexuality, race, nationality, and religious identity in many different contexts Art includes film, music, the performing arts, folk art, craft, and design Technology encompasses many kinds of technological innovations

37. Interdisciplinary Faculty in CAT Guillermo Algaze– MacArthur award winner from the department of Anthropology who teaches about history and culture from primate tool-use to Mesopotamian colonization Kelly Gates – Communication professor who studies new media technologies, science and technology studies, and cultural policies around surveillance Martha Lamplandhas a Ph.D. in Anthropology and an appointment in the Sociology department; she studies political economy, history, feminist theory, science studies, social theory, and the symbolic analysis of complex societies Elizabeth Losh– A rhetorician who directs CAT and teaches in three departments at UCSD: Communication, Literature, and Visual Arts. Her first book, Virtualpolitik, is classified under “New Media,” “Political Science,” and “Science, Technology, and Society” Emily Roxworthy– A professor in Theater and Dance who studies the history of Japanese internment camps and designed a video game with the help of the Supercomputing Center

38. Overlaps

39. Important Questions In the twenty-first century, how do we shape the world, and how does the world shape us? What ethical questions are raised by designed objects, environments, and interactions? How do cultures manage change? Why does the historical context of a given technology or commodity matter? How far back in time should we look? Which factors should we weigh most heavily? How do we understand media on a global scale? How is sensory experience mediated? What forms of production and consumption do we take for granted in contemporary life? How do new solutions sometimes create new problems?

40. The “Media Seductions” Course Website http://losh.ucsd.edu/courses/CAT1.html Writing as a mode of learning: three assignments aimed at critical reading on the Spanish Civil War Archive, 50s Horror Comics, and Rushdie’s Satanic Verses Assignments and Drafts Due in Lecture Not Section Information literacy beyond Google: databases like the Perseus Project, the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, Underground and Independent Comics from Alexander Street, ARTStor, JSTOR, or ProQuest and local digital collections like the Spanish Civil War Archive A final examination: work on your note-taking skills!

41. The Resources of a Research University Faculty Experts Archival Collections Research Institutes

42. Your Discussion Section Leaders Edward Sterrett Visual Arts Brian Lindseth Sociology Joe Bigham Music Chuk Moran Communication Tara Zepel Visual Arts

43. Ways to Participate • Talk in section! • Raise your hand in lecture! • Come to office hours! (Thursday 3:30-5:30 in Pepper Canyon Hall 249) • Come to the evening Q&As in the Residence Halls • Ask CAT faculty to coffee with a prof! • E-mail me your ideas and links! (lizlosh@ucsd.edu) • Suggest song titles!