CAT 1: Media Seductions Overview Elizabeth Losh

CAT 1: Media SeductionsOverview

Elizabeth Loshhttp://losh.ucsd.edu

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

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin1869-1916

Theories of Seduction

• How does seduction replace or supplant other explanations of human behavior?

• Who gets seduced? Women, children, the innocent, the morally weak, the seemingly righteous, the masterful yet compromised

• How are they seduced? Powerful rhetoric, psychological warfare, emotional appeals, deceptive media experiences

Media Influence

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

Media Influence and Policy

When is media influence a concern of the state?

Media Influence andCulture, Art, and Technology

Today’s Thesis

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

Concern about Deception, Delusion, Imitation : The Platonic Legacy

Consulting Primary Sources

Plato in the Gorgias: Rhetoric vs. Philosophy

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cosmetics vs. gymnastics

Plato in the Gorgias: Rhetoric vs. Philosophy

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pastries vs. medicine

Plato in the Republic: The Allegory of the Cave

Plato in the Republic: The Theory of Mimesis

The argument for banishing poets

Plato in the Republic: Theatre and Imitation

Plato in the Phaedrus: Writing as an aid to forgetting

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Nicholas Carr similarly argues in The Shallows that the Internet is an aid to forgetting

Plato in the Phaedrus: How can authorship be verified?

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Boney M.

Boney M. Lip Synching

Frank Farian

Plato vs. Aristotleon Rhetoric and New Media

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

Aristotle in the Poetics: Theatre and Catharsis

How Sontag Explores Pity and Fearthrough Photojournalism

“Samar Hassan screamed after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2005”

Theories of Media

Marshall McLuhan

Hot media – film provide complete involvement without considerable stimulus (appealing to one sense); perception of sequential, linear, and logical arrangements.

Cool media – comicsprovide little involvement with substantial stimulus; perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts.

Genre and MediaMelodrama

Abolitionist melodrama

Nazi melodrama

Genre and MediaHorror

Gothic novels of the eighteenth century

Horror comics of the 1950s

Body Genres

Linda Williams, U.C. Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric

Sweat, tears, and other bodilyresponses

Horror – too soon!

Melodrama – too late!

Pornography – perfect timing!

A Clockwork Orange

The Satanic Verses

Advice from Erasmus(1466-1536)

Use “an appropriate little sign” to mark “occurrences of striking words, archaic or novel diction, brilliant flashes of style, adages, examples and pithy remarks worth memorizing.”

Fall Quarter: Critical Reading

“What constitutes a ‘text’?” “How can an artifact or source be analyzed?”“Why is the same object of study approached

differently in different fields?”

Synthetic Reading

Applying critical lenses from one text to anotherApplication not comparison and contrast often

at work

The Reasonably Priced Books

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador, 2004. $10.40Austen, 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. $9.09Carr, Nicholas. 2010. The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our

brains. New York: W.W. Norton. $9.18

Plus: Access to a Netflix Account!

More about CAT

http://cat.ucsd.edu

Culture may mean learning about class, language, ability, gender, sexuality, race, nationality, and religious identity in many different contexts

Art includes film, music, the performing arts, folk art, craft, and design

Technology encompasses many kinds of technological innovations

Interdisciplinary Faculty in CATGuillermo Algaze – MacArthur award winner from the department of

Anthropology who teaches about history and culture from primate tool-use to Mesopotamian colonization

Kelly Gates – Communication professor who studies new media technologies, science and technology studies, and cultural policies around surveillance

Martha Lampland has a Ph.D. in Anthropology and an appointment in the Sociology department; she studies political economy, history, feminist theory, science studies, social theory, and the symbolic analysis of complex societies

Elizabeth Losh – A rhetorician who directs CAT and teaches in three departments at UCSD: Communication, Literature, and Visual Arts. Her first book, Virtualpolitik, is classified under “New Media,” “Political Science,” and “Science, Technology, and Society”

Emily Roxworthy – A professor in Theater and Dance who studies the history of Japanese internment camps and designed a video game with the help of the Supercomputing Center

Overlaps

Important Questions

In the twenty-first century, how do we shape the world, and how does the world shape us?

What ethical questions are raised by designed objects, environments, and interactions?

How do cultures manage change?Why does the historical context of a given technology or

commodity matter? How far back in time should we look? Which factors should we weigh most heavily?

How do we understand media on a global scale? How is sensory experience mediated?What forms of production and consumption do we take for

granted in contemporary life?How do new solutions sometimes create new problems?

The “Media Seductions” Course Website

http://losh.ucsd.edu/courses/CAT1.html

Writing as a mode of learning: three assignments aimed at critical reading on the Spanish Civil War Archive, 50s Horror Comics, and Rushdie’s Satanic Verses

Assignments and Drafts Due in Lecture Not Section

Information literacy beyond Google: databases like the Perseus Project, the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, Underground and Independent Comics from Alexander Street, ARTStor, JSTOR, or ProQuest and local digital collections like the Spanish Civil War Archive

A final examination: work on your note-taking skills!

The Resources of a Research University

Faculty Experts

Archival Collections

Research Institutes

Your Discussion Section Leaders

Edward SterrettVisual Arts Brian Lindseth

SociologyJoe BighamMusic

Chuk MoranCommunication

Tara ZepelVisual Arts

Ways to Participate

• Talk in section!• Raise your hand in lecture!• Come to office hours! (Thursday 3:30-5:30 in

Pepper Canyon Hall 249)• Come to the evening Q&As in the Residence Halls• Ask CAT faculty to coffee with a prof!• E-mail me your ideas and links! (lizlosh@ucsd.edu)• Suggest song titles!