america adrift

Next week will be a busy academic whirlwind tour of two Nordic capitals for me: Helsinki and Oslo. The two main American Studies events of the year are crammed together as Consecutive conferences: The Renvall Institute’s Helsinki do, The Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference, has reached instalment no. 12 in its fine run (it will be my third time around as a participant). The theme is always broad and this year is no exception: “North America - Relations and relationships”. My contribution is about the cultural importance of one specific, iconic brand of car: The Cadillac…

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…and so must we all. Shameless indeed. There has been a disturbing resurgence of Jim Crow legislation around the country but Florida’s overt intimidation of civic volunteers is the most troubling. With gutted federal enforcement agencies and a conservative Supreme Court, it will take some serious grassroots momentum to turn the trend around. I won’t hold my breath on either McCain or the elite media.

After last week’s ABC Democratic primary debate, the Bag posted a great series of TV frames as a visual recap to the debate. In my earlier post I wrote;

This is by far the most succinct summary of last night’s debacle of a debate TV show hosted produced by ABC News Disney Entertainment. This captures the essence of what is, “the postmodern condition” of US politics.

I selected this image as the most telling frame of the set.

Tuesday was Earth Day btw, but most wouldn’t have known if not for Google’s always clever way of “holiday theming” their logo. Al Gore has recently launched a $300 Continue Reading »

For the last couple of weeks or perhaps a month, I’ve been rediscovering The White Stripes, a Detroit City garage rock band. I knew and liked them before my visit to Detroit two and a half years ago, and I can’t say that my visit to Detroit really had anything to do The White Stripes - but I did discover another garage band The Detroit Cobras while there. Not sure why I’m re-tuning myself to Stripes, probably because their sound is quite close to The Detroit Cobras - unpolished, raw, energetic and not filled with a pitch-perfect ProTools sound.

The song that really stays with me is “The Big Three Killed My Baby”, a song that is both typical and atypical for the Stripes. It was their third single ever, also the third track on their debut album. The sound is typical of their early years, which is more unpolished than the later, and Jack White’s vocal is more scratched and raw and pulled a bit back in the production. The result is pretty close to MC5, who of course also hailed from Detroit. Lyrically, the song is atypical for the Stripes, as it is quite political, while most of their songs are relationship songs (for lack of a better word). Continue Reading »

I’m just going to link (without comment) to Historiann’s wonderfully compelling post, Feminist Art, Feminist History, and Public History: Friction in the Archives?

Plus I got to play with the words of her post title which should win this year’s “top 10 best blog post titles award.” I could wordplay all night with this but I sense a future thesis title like, “Friction in the Archives: A History of Public Feminist Art.”

ok, one comment. Art critic or not, did she have to take the “Big Eye” down?

Seriously. Great post. And I wasn’t kidding about Big Eye or the title.

As of 24. April 2008, the first issue of the new graduate journal aspeers is available online and in print. aspeers is Europe’s first and currently only peer-reviewed graduate journal in American Studies. The founding issue delivers a snapshot of American Studies work in European graduate programs. Its six academic papers are complemented by five creative contributions from around the world.

For more information on aspeers, please visit: www.aspeers.com
To access (and respond to) the inaugural issue, visit: www.aspeers.com/2008

In the summer of 2008, aspeers will issue a new, topical call for papers for the 2 (2009) issue. Register online at www.aspeers.com today, to make sure you receive the call for papers by email. Continue Reading »

As often happens here on this blog, because we don’t have a formal editorial process, different writers post articles related to the same or similar material, albeit from often different perspectives. See Bent’s article bellow, Barack Mean to Bubba, which also deals with the topic of this blogpost. Although we have approached the subject from different perspectives these two articles should be seen as complimentary.

One of the many interesting aspects of American politics are the ways popular cultural narratives are manifested, especially as deliberate campaign constructions. Continue Reading »

Barack Obama may have committed a major political faux pas last week when he spoke out on the attitudes of some prospective working class voters: “It’s not surprising then,” he said, “that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Hillary Clinton quickly saw an opening and worked the spin to the max: “It’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter; well, that’s not my experience,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience at Drexel University. “Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them; they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.” Certainly Obama committed a bad move in terms of navigating discourse spheres: by raising the otherwise silent class issue, he opened himself up to all kinds of metaphorical abuse. Continue Reading »

So, Bob Dylan won an honorary Pulitzer, for his contribution to American culture. It seems that people are surprised by this, as it is the first time that rock’n'roll has been awarded. It doesn’t really seem surprising to me. Awarding Bob Dylan the Pulitzer now seems more like getting it done before closing time, possibly even spurred on by I’m Not There. Also, all it really shows, is that Bob Dylan is an icon of the Sixties and that the Sixties counterculture is slowly being completely incorporated into American cultural life.

Whatever the musical merits of Dylan’s post-1980s output, it seems a safe bet that Dylan won for his work in the 1960s. He certainly didn’t win for his album Modern Times (2006), so his recent work is less significant than his collected output. Dylan has been awared quite a bit in recent years, but the Pulitzer is probably the highest honor so far.

But in fact, what is interesting about the Dylan Pulitzer, really isn’t Dylan; it’s about how these awards work. It was inevitable that Dylan ended up getting a Pultzer Prize, and not surprising as commentators say. It was clearly necessary for the Pulitzer committee to reinvigorate the Pulitzers by making them more relevant to the times, otherwise they were in danger of never being able to award other musicians than jazz musicians and classic composers. Dylan’s honorary award is the first step in this direction, and in that sense, the Pultizers need Dylan more than he needs a Pulitzer.

Times are a-changing, then, as the awards need the celebrities and the celebrities in fact award the prizes with their glamor, rather than the prizes awarding anything to the celebrities. Perhaps this was always the case, and with the ubiquity of award shows all over the world, it definitely seems that the awards needs the celebrities.

This article is partially a response to Bent’s last post, Beauty and the Beast? I had originally intended on posting the Lebron Vouge Magazine photo which Bent analyzes below. I then thought I would post a reply in his thread but upon further reflection, I think an independent post is in order. I typically wouldn’t do that but I wanted to display a fair amount of images and just couldn’t do that in the comments. Continue Reading »