Violence In Video Games

Re-posted from: screenagers.me

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

RETROMANIA: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past By Simon Reynolds

Dummy magazine's "The 10 Best Modern Music Books": #1. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction To Its Own Past "There’s no doubting technology’s ability to reproduce and discover art and artists of the past has had an impact on the retrogressive eye of contemporary culture and music. Whether you agree with his polemical tract, Simon Reynolds’s era-defining book is as essential as it gets."

"The best book I read recently is Retromania by Simon Reynolds. It's fantastic. Reading Simon Reynolds is like getting in a warm bath"--Jason Schwartzman, GQ Style

Visit Simon Reynolds Blog

http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk/

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'. 

Guardian Readers recommend: songs about teenagers – results

Youth is wasted on the young, as jealous old George Bernard Shaw once said. But that didn't seem true of the subjects of many songs you suggested last week. Anyway, with grownups hurling so many brickbats at them, who can blame teenagers for throwing the odd strop?

"It's only teenage wasteland." So sang the Who on Baba O'Riley. Though as RR commenter treefrogdemon says, "Why is it a teenage wasteland? Dunno." But incoherence is part of the teenager's lot, and anyone who's been 15 will feel the uncontained rage in the song, happily rescued from Pete Townshend's abandoned concept album Lifehouse (abandoned because only Townshend understood the concept).

Rock'n'roll began life as music for teenagers, and progenitor Eddie Cochran knew his audience. Teenage Heaven consists of a list of demands that will strike a chord with all disaffected teens: "I want to stay up all night … Just give me some time on my hands/ I want to make my own private plans."

Punk, like rock'n'roll, was to a large extent teenagers making music for teenagers. Hence Teenage Treats by the Wasps, east London youths whose musical career was on the skids before they were old enough to vote.

You've got to hand it to Atari Teenage Riot, whose eponymous debut single gleefully imbued the thrills of rave with the snottiest punk attitude. Rave plays a role too in the Killers' When You Were Young: it's half stadium rock anthem, with a Bruce Springsteen-esque nostalgia for mythical youth, and half house euphoria. And Dire Straits' Romeo and Juliet may be self-consciously "classic", but recasts the age-old tale of star-crossed teen lovers to the rock era in a way even Springsteen must have envied.

The Beach Boys' hymn to teenage solitude, In My Room, was an early attempt by Brian Wilson to create music he described as "teenage symphonies to God". The Beach Boys also recorded So Young, a cover of a 1958 hit by doowoppers the Students. The Ronettes' version is right up there, Ronnie Spector's voice full of not-quite-innocent heartbreak, Phil Spector's production all heavenly strings and choirs of angels.

The Teenagers' F*ck Nicole ("so teenage, so French" as RR regular Japanther says) is full of surprises: backwards verses, superfluous swearing and a Gallic Lou Reed detailing an adolescent career off the rails. But hang on. Japanese popstrels Scandal were nominated by Hoshino Sakura, who says Beauteen's about "being a teenager, pretty and love … the perfect antidote to all the teenage angst from the Smiths!"

No Smiths in this week's playist, but the Flamin' Groovies are in garage rock mode on Teenage Head, focusing on sexual frustration and aggression. First line: "I'm a monster!" And there's more cartoon parent-worrying from the Ramones in Teenage Lobotomy: "Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em/ that I got no cerebellum." A contender, surely, for the best lyric ever. And I loved RR commenter llamalpaca's description of adolescence as portrayed in the Regents' skinny-tie classic 7-Teen: "Knocking on the door of adulthood but not getting in."

Here's the playlist:

Baba O'Riley – The Who

Teenage Heaven – Eddie Cochran

Teenage Treats – The Wasps

ATR – Atari Teenage Riot

When You Were Young (Lindbergh Palace remix) – The Killers

Romeo and Juliet – Dire Straits

In My Room – The Beach Boys

So Young – The Ronettes

F*ck Nicole – The Teenagers

Beauteen – Scandal

Teenage Head – Flamin' Groovies

Teenage Lobotomy – Ramones

7-Teen – The Regents

* Listen to these songs on a YouTube playlist

* Read all the readers' recommendations on last week's blog, from which the songs above are selected

* Here's a Spotify playlist containing readers' recommendations on this theme

• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012

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.

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

Click to download

Click to download

Culture & Identity: Section A Exploration

Cultural icon Morrissey discusses how the media is obsessed with insignificant issues and fails to make valid critical comments on the state of nation, the august riots, contemporary culture and the current music scene in an interview with clashmusic.com. Read it here.

Watch the video below and consider the cultural implications that the song implies and apply similar principles to your individual tastes:

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

Your Teen’s Search for Identity

They try to strengthen their own identities by excluding those who are not like themselves. Their bodies kick into overdrive. They find themselves disoriented, scared and alone. They become moody, secretive and sarcastic. You don’t recognize your own child. What happened to the child you used to know? The answer: adolescence.

In the teenage years, young people begin their quests for identity. To help you understand your child’s adolescence, Les Parrott, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, offers the five most common ways in which teens demonstrate their struggles with identity:

Through status symbols. Adolescents try to establish themselves through prestige — wearing the right clothes, having the right possessions, from stereos to sunglasses. These symbols help form teen identities by expressing affiliation with specific groups.

Through forbidden behaviors. Teens often feel that appearing mature will bring recognition and acceptance. They begin engaging in practices they associate with adulthood — tabooed pleasures — such as smoking, drinking, drugs and sexual activity.

Through rebellion. Rebellion demonstrates separation. Teens can show that they differentiate themselves from parents and authority figures, while maintaining the acceptance of their peers.

Through idols. Celebrities may become “models” for teens who are looking for a way of experimenting with different roles. They may identify with a known figure, trying to become like that person, and in effect, losing hold of their own identities. This identification with a well known personality gives teens a sense of belonging.

Through cliquish exclusion. Teens often can be intolerant in their exclusion of their peers. Since they are constantly trying to define and redefine themselves in relation to others, they do not want to be associated with anyone having unacceptable or unattractive characteristics.

By AMY BELLOWS, PH.D.

Groups: Goths

The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify. Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from the 19th century Gothic literature along with horror films and to a lesser extent the BDSMculture.

The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion. The music of the Goth subculture encompasses a number of different styles including Gothic rock, Deathrock, Ethereal, and Neoclassical. Styles of dress within the subculture range from deathrock, punkand Victorian style attire, or combinations of the above, most often with dark attire, makeup and hair.

Source: Wikipedia

High Culture and Popular Culture

There are lots of different ideas and definitions of these two terms - you will be expected to explore them and provide examples of them in your work and examination answers.

Popular culture would include most forms of mass communication or commercial forms of art such as pop and rock music, TV soap operas, romance stories, blockbuster films, tabloid newspapers etc.

High culture would include classical music, documentary, serious novels, avant-garde or experimental films, broadsheet newspapers, great art such as Van Gogh, Rembrandt etc

We should be interested in this distinction because certain theoretical groups such as Marxists and Feminists see popular culture as either big business (or the ruling classes) making money out of us and keeping us happy or in the case of feminists, exploiting us for money.

High culture, on the other hand, is seen as pure art, an expression of individual but universal ideas being communicated to other individuals who appreciate and interpret these pieces of art - stories, paintings, films - in their own, unique way. High culture can also be a force for oppression because it is held up as the model all cultural artefacts and art should aspire to.

Re-posted from: communicationandculture.co.uk

Definitions of Culture

What is culture? Try writing a definition for yourself.
 Now read the definitions below. Which ones do you agree with? Which ones do you disagree with and why?

"Culture used to be so simple. Culture use to mean art, literature, and ideas. And not just any old art, literature, and ideas. Culture was High Art, Great Literature, and Big Ideas. And more particularly, our High Art, Great Literature, and Big Ideas."

"Culture is a collection of beliefs, values and ways of doing things which are typical of a particular community and which are expressed and perpetuated through various codes"

"Culture - a particular way of life which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and literature, but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour"

"Culture. the best that has been thought and said in the world"

"Culture is the constant process of producing meanings for and from our social experience"

"It's alleged by the media - and our culture - are "dumbing down", abandoning brain for sentiment, rigour for raucousness, standards for commercial success."

"Mass culture is very, very democratic: it absolutely refuses to discriminate against, or between, anything or anybody."

"The cultural order of our day still tells us that Schoenberg is superior to Presley; many people go along with that."

Re-posted from: communicationandculture.co.uk

Mod: Cultural History

The Mods, dressed in dapper attire and riding Vespas, believed they were truly modern—that they alone personified “the future” and “change.” Originally they were mostly working-class youths who wanted out of their social “caste.” They also thought the Rockers—dressed in leather and riding motorcycles—symbolized the past. Rockers embodied the uncouth ignorance and urban grit of working-class life that Mods wanted to escape. However, this story of identity moves well beyond southern British beaches and the stereotypical Mods depicted in Quadrophenia.

The Mod youth culture of the mid-1960s emerged from what British historian Arthur Marwick describes as a “unique era.” The decade’s significance is bound to distinct and rapid cultural transformations. Key changes included more ubiquitous use of technology such as color television and affordable jet travel, new concepts of identity formation via fashion, and, most importantly, the growing cultural influence of young people. More so than youth of previous decades, Mods consciously and deftly galvanized the quickly accelerating communication technologies to transmit their style around the world. Between 1964 and 1967 a transnational flow of youth- oriented television shows, films, print media, and commodities such as records and clothes globally united young people. Mod’s innovative and androgynous fashion sense raised questions about gender aesthetics and sexuality, while the style’s global reach expressed a desire for international openness among youths. Fueled by the marriage of expansive media technologies and utopian, generation-specific impulses, Mod’s international impact on youth during the mid-60s was unprecedented and foreshadowed the international sweep of the late 60s counterculture. While the original wave of Mod peaked for just a few years (early 1964 to mid-1967), its adoption by youth in succeeding generations suggests an enduring cultural journey.

Read more here.

Group Communication: Signifiers

Identifying Group Culture

Although group culture is complex, you can get a general idea of the culture that has developed in your group's interactions by examining some key cultural indicators.

• Vocabulary: words group members use that are unique to the group. By studying the vocabulary people use, it is sometimes possible to determine who is part of the group, who isn't, who is new to the group, and who the "old-timers" are.

• Practices: unique group processes. For example, the group may have written documents that detail meeting procedures, yet meetings may not follow those guidelines. Practices are how group members go about accomplishing their tasks.

• Stories: narratives group members tell about the group. Stories often convey the group's values, priorities, power distribution, and member relationships. Stories often have a moral, although the moral may not be explicitly stated. Stories told to newcomers often let the rookie know how group members are supposed to interact and accomplish their tasks.

• Metaphors: the way group members relate unfamiliar things to things they are all familiar with in order to describe an idea or experience. Metaphors are often implied rather than stated explicitly. For example, group members may say, "We smashed it!." This suggests that the group process is a journey. Some metaphors are more explicit, as when group members refer to the group as "home".

• Rituals: provide structure for group work. Rituals include group customs, daily activities that group members perform regularly, and ceremonies, infrequent activities that mark a particular occasion. For example, groups may have parties for members who leave the group.

• Objects: nonverbal symbols that represent key aspects of the group. Logos or emblems are good examples of objects that reflect the culture of a group.

These cultural indicators alone do not constitute group culture. However, by examining group communication in all these areas, you can get a sense of group values and beliefs.

Youth groups in the UK: 'We're about really doing it'

Where do artists first discover they're artists? In school, almost always – stumbling across the instrument they end up playing like a virtuoso, picking up the paintbrush that will eventually lead them to the Turner prize. But government cuts and curriculum changes have placed a question mark over arts in schools. Creative Partnerships, a scheme that saw musicians, actors and artists visit 2,500 schools every year, has been scrapped. And last December, the coalition announced that schools were to be assessed on subjects collectively known as "the English baccalaureate". This doesn't include music, art or drama.

So, if not in school, where will tomorrow's musicians, actors, dancers, directors and artists learn their craft? Step forward extracurricular arts groups. Three – the National Youth Choir, the National Youth Orchestra, and the National Youth Theatre – have been training young talent for decades. How do they do it? Who attends? And what do they get out of spending their holidays immersed in the arts? The Guardian's Laura Barnett spent a day with each to find out.

Read her observations here.

A worrying gulf

What struck me most about these youth groups? Two things: the enthusiasm of the teachers and the joy of the kids – joy in their subjects, joy in meeting others who feel the same way. It is especially stirring to see this at a time when so much is being said about the disaffection of the "lost generation". And these aren't stage-school brats. While private-school pupils still dominate, all three groups (especially NYT) are making a real effort to attract a wider range. What's also clear is that there is a gulf between arts opportunities at the average state school and those at an independent school like Shrewsbury, with its music wing stuffed with instruments. If that gulf continues to grow, we could see fewer state-school pupils even thinking of applying for groups like these. And that's a sad and worrying thought.