Generation of children could lose vital cultural skills, says Nicholas Serota

An entire generation of children could lose the cultural skills both they and the UK need if the government goes ahead with its English Baccalaureate plans without the arts as a core subject, the Tate director,Nicholas Serota, said on Thursday.

Serota used the launch of his organisation's annual report to urge ministers to rethink their plans for the EBacc certificates, which will replace GCSEs.

He said the arts should be a fourth "R" alongside reading, writing and arithmetic. "The proposals do not provide for the arts as being one of the core subjects and the way in which the proposals have been formulated makes it very clear that art, design, music, drama and dance will be pushed to the margin with very little time in the curriculum for those subjects.

"We regard cultural learning as being more important than ever and we think that the arts have a primary role to play in a world that is dependent on literacy of all kinds, including visual."

Serota said it was a more important matter than even the debate about public cuts to arts spending because it affected every child in the country and "it is about the kind of society that we want to have in 20 years' time".

He added: "There is a real risk that fewer and fewer schools will provide learning opportunities in the arts. The UK's leading edge in creativity may be lost. We cannot deprive an entire generation of children of the cultural skills that they will need."

Serota is the latest of many to express concern at the proposals as they stand. Among the many voices Deborah Annetts, the chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, said: "It is as if the Olympics never happened. Design – gone, technology – gone, music – gone. This shortsighted, wholesale attack on secondary music education will emasculate not only our world class music education system but also our entire creative economy."

Earlier this year Darren Henley published a well received report into cultural learning after which the government said it would publish a national plan by early autumn.

That plan is still awaited. Serota said: "Everyone recognises there have been many things on the plate of the DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport] over the summer of the Olympics, but we earnestly hope that the national plan will be published before Christmas."

Tate's annual report highlighted some of its 516 acquisitions to the collection over the past year. They include works gifted by artists, such as Martin Creed giving a neon work with the words "DON'T WORRY", and works purchased, such as nearly 10 cubic metres of Ai Weiwei's sunflower seeds and 58 photographs by Lewis Baltz, which make up a series called San Quentin Point 1982.

The chairman of trustees, Lord Browne, said Tate now got the majority of its funding, 61%, from private and not public sources. "Over the past five years Tate has increased its self-generated income by 15%, compared to the 5% increase in grant-in-aid."

It was also announced that it has raised three-quarters of the capital costs for its ongoing £215m extension while all the money was raised for the £45m Tate Britain redevelopment that will, among other things, allow the first floor to be opened to the public for the first time since 1928.

Guardian.co.uk

Britain in a Day

On Saturday 12 November 2011, all across Britain, people filmed the everyday events of their lives. The resulting 750 hours of footage have been edited into a 90 minute film by director Morgan Matthews. It will be shown on BBC2 at 9.00pm on Monday 11th June. For more information go to the BBC website, where you can see clips of the film.

An 18th Century Transvestite

The National Portrait Gallery has bought, what is believed to be, it's first portrait of a man in woman's clothing; an 18th century transvestite called Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont. He was well known across all sections of society as a diplomat, soldier and spy. Read more about the portrait and it's subject on The Guardian website.

In the Best Possible Taste

Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry hosts a new series on Channel 4 called 'In the Best Possible Taste' which starts on June 5th at 10pm. He looks at how our family background and class shape the way we define ourselves through what we wear and buy and how we live. Each episode sees Grayson create a piece of artwork inspired by his experience. See more about the series here.

To read an interview with Grayson about his views on taste and class go to the Guardian website.

Plan B's iLL Manors: 'This is the true, dark reality'

The song inspired by last year's riots has now become a film. Plan B, aka Ben Drew, explains why he was driven to make it.

"A lot of people outside this environment don't believe it exists," he continues. "So in the film, rather than glamorise it, I'm trying to say to people this is the true, dark reality. This is what happens. It's not cool. No drug dealer really has the last laugh."

Dark reality is, if anything, an understatement. The film is an unapologetic and at times unnerving and uncomfortable drama, a depiction of life in the most unloved and unforgiving streets of east London, seen through the interwoven lives of its dysfunctional characters, linked and part-narrated by six new Plan B tracks. Starring established British actors such as Riz Ahmed (aka rapper Riz MC) and Natalie Press alongside unknowns such as Keith Coggins (Drew's godfather in real life) and Ryan De La Cruz, it shows the spirals of hopelessness and violence that vulnerable individuals can easily be sucked in to.

ILL Manors is not a manifesto or a direct polemic, but, like many of the best protest artforms, concentrates on capturing a mood – of desolation and anxiety. Rather than judging or preaching, it's more concerned with encouraging debate about the root of the problems it presents and demonstrating how they can have a domino effect on people's lives. It's also a surprisingly accomplished piece of work for a directorial debut and Drew, you could argue, is becoming a much-needed spokesman for an alienated sector of our society that feels it doesn't have a voice.

"I just wanted to say, 'They're not all scum,'" says Drew of his characters. "They act the way they do because of the shit that happened to them that wasn't their fault. It's not your fault if your parents abandon you and put you in a home. It's not your fault, but there comes a time when you have to take responsibility for your actions. But for a lot of them, there's no one there saying, 'All that shit that happened to you in the past is fucked up, man, and I feel really sorry for you, but you're just repeating that bad and negative energy through what you're doing and you can't keep blaming the past for the way you're acting now.'"

Read the full interview/article: The Guardian

Audio Visual Presentation: Sample Coursework

Here is a sample Audio Visual Presentation for AS Coursework that gained an A grade. Use it as a a guide for what is expected of in terms of language, content and theory for your 'Audio Visual Presentation'. 

The Sociology of Culture: Everyday Life and the Construction of Meaning

Here are 2 chapters from 'The Sociology of Culture' which you will find useful for applying theory to your coursework and exam assignments. They are concerned with 'Everyday Life and the Construction of Meaning': specifically 'Music and Social Experience' and 'Consumer Culture'. Taking and using a few selective quotes from these sections will add a theoretical perspective to your individual studies and strengthen your critical analysis of cultural practices and products.

What role did brands play in last summer's riots?

'After the Riots' is the name of a report produced by the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel which was set up after last summer's riots. This is a very interesting article featured on the Guardian website that discusses the report's findings, the way big brands market themselves and the effects they have on young people.

The Codes of Gender

Written and directed by MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally, The Codes of Gender applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman's groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape, showing how one of American popular culture's most influential forms communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity.

Facebook's 'dark side': study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism

Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a "socially disruptive" narcissist, confirming the conclusions of many social media sceptics.

People who score highly on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory questionnaire had more friends on Facebook, tagged themselves more often and updated their newsfeeds more regularly.

The research comes amid increasing evidence that young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships.

The latest study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, also found that narcissists responded more aggressively to derogatory comments made about them on the social networking site's public walls and changed their profile pictures more often.

A number of previous studies have linked narcissism with Facebook use, but this is some of the first evidence of a direct relationship between Facebook friends and the most "toxic" elements of narcissistic personality disorder.

Full article: guardian.co.uk, 17 March 2012 

Off Book: Book Art

Books are in a conflicted state. Should they still exist in a digital era? Will they all be replaced by Kindles and Nooks? These questions dominate the discussion of books in our time. A select group of artists, who use books as their medium, engage this discussion from another angle. From pop culture pop-ups, to surreal sculptural stories, to reformations of antique sacred texts, these creators re-envision what the experience of a book can be. At times playful, and other times profound, this episode explores the boundaries of one of the most important human creations.

The Pink and Blue Project

Children of all ages are hooked on pink and blue, a trend ensured by parents who begin collecting for sons and daughters when they are infants. JeongMee Yoon's playful photographic project "The Pink and Blue Project" highlights both gender and culture by having infants pose with their favorite belongings, including JeongMee's own daughter Seowoo, pictured above.

Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing is a Birmingham born artist whose films and photographs explore people's public faces and private lives. She draws on fly-on-the-wall documentaries, reality TV and the techniques of theatre, to explore how we present ourselves to the world. Her photographic portraits and mini-dramas show that, given the chance to dress up, put on a mask or act out a role, can allow us to be more truly ourselves. She has a retrospective show at The Whitechapel Gallery which starts on March 28th.

Here is a short slide presentation made about her work.

Wonder Women! Searches for Pop Culture’s Heroines

Katie Pineda, a young girl who appears in Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, will teach viewers a lesson about comics that few others could.

An avid fan of comic books, Katie can talk about her favorites at length. Despite the occasional stammer, she is incredibly well-spoken for a fourth grader. But speaking isn’t how she teaches. What we learn from Katie is through her favorite character: Wonder Woman. And what we learn is that she probably idolizes the DC Comics character because, frankly, there aren’t nearly enough superheroines worth emulating.

“I just thought, ‘[Wonder Woman is] important in all these different moments historically, and wouldn’t it be interesting to hang up a larger dialog about women as heroes and women represented in popular culture and use her as a vehicle to guide that?’” Wonder Women! director Kristy Guevara-Flanigan said in an interview with Wired.

The fact that there aren’t many female heroes in comic books isn’t that shocking — comics have always been something of a sausagefest — but what seems to be overlooked is girls like Katie, one of many young women who would love a few more heroines to look up to. And, as this documentary shows, Wonder Woman has had such an impact since her creation in the early 1940s — from inspiring Rosie the Riveters to Riot Grrrls — that she herself deserves more credit than she gets.

Wonder Women!, which premieres Saturday at the South by Southwest Film festival, was originally conceived after Guevara-Flanigan — whose day job is teaching film at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area — saw an article about Gail Simone, the first female ongoing writer for the comic from 2007 to 2010.

What the director found as she started digging was that Wonder Woman’s original incarnation, as created by William Moulton Marston in 1941, was a very feminist character that became fairly milquetoast during the more conservative post-World War II era, only to be revived and embraced during the Second Wave Feminist movement (the first cover of Ms. magazine featured an image of the heroine with the line “Wonder Woman for President”).

Guevara-Flanigan’s documentary traces how Wonder Woman’s presence influenced the Riot Grrrl political punk movement of the 1990s — Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna trashing of the Spice Girls’ embrace of “Girl Power” is particularly phenomenal — and also puts in stark contrast the fact that so many women in the 20th century looked up to Wonder Woman because there really weren’t many other characters on which they could train their admiration.

“I think when you’re little, and looking at people’s knees, you’re so powerless and so unequal that it’s really helpful to be able to think yourself into someone who is powerful,” Ms. magazine co-founder Gloria Steinem says in the film. “Even more powerful than grown-ups.”

Drawing on input from other feminist thinkers, comic book scholars and fans at New York Comic Con (as well as Katie Pineda), Wonder Women! turns what could’ve just been a flat history of a comic book character into a brief study of female empowerment in the last century. This is especially clear in a vignette with a young single mother, who serves as the narrative’s real-world superhero (complete with Wonder Woman tattoo).

In 2010, social sciences scholar Kathryn Gilpatric — a subject of the film — did a study or 157 female action characters and found that half were evil characters, doomed to death. Another 30 percent that weren’t villains were killed off, dying in self-sacrifice (think Trinity in The Matrix trilogy, Phoenix in X-Men: The Last Stand).

The documentary doesn’t end on a downer. In a brief montage, we are reminded that in recent years new heroines have risen out of Phoenix’s ashes, so to speak. Lisbeth Salander has proven hacking (among other tools of vengeance) can enable a whole new kind of justice in the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo book and films. Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games will soon show theater audiences just how revolutionary female self-preservation can be.

“Not all superheroes have powers, like, most of them are just regular people, but they became something more, and that’s how they inspire me,” she says in the film. “Sometimes I get picked on at school but I just tell myself, ‘Keep going, keep going, you’re going to be more.’ Because some day they’re going to be wishing that they treated me better.”

Edited from: Wired.com

Taste: Cultural Products

Useful Notes: Role Models/Identity

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Celebrity: facing your fifteen minutes of fame

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Ideal Bookshelf

American artist Jane Mount runs a website called Ideal Bookshelf. She creates these personalised illustrations of people's favourite sets of books. How many people are completely honest in their choices? Do they choose the books they really read or those they want other people to believe they read?

Exploration Chosen Topic: Site B

“Every time you move through a built human environment, a trans-formed physical landscape, you are moving through something like a book or text, a collection of signs whose meaning derives from the intentions of those who made the environment what it is and the cultural ideals and ideas that lie behind those intentions. Simply by living in that environment, one learns and absorbs those meanings. One shapes ones life in accordance with the imperatives the landscapes contain.”

Cultural Studies:

A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION

MICHAEL RYAN

Consider this quote in relation to your 1,000 word Exploration and it may help you in analysing your personal cultural experiences.

If discussing Blur's Glastonbury 2009 performance you must consider: the place (environment), the historical implications of the performance (why they did it?) as well as the actual musical performance on the night. Only then can a TRUE interpretation of the cultural significance of the event be fully understood. 

Gender & Culture

A few interesting gender items popped up on the Film Studies For Free Twitter feed:

• Louise Wilks ‘”Boys don’t like girls for funniness”: Raunch Culture and the British Tween Film’ – Download
• Francis Smith on ‘Gender and Class Performativity at the Prom: An Analysis of PRETTY IN PINK’ – Download
• Networking Knowledge journal online (2011 conference, papers + “Girlhood in Popular Culture” theme) 

Re-posted from: Screenagers.me