Tabes Readings
CULTURAL CRITICISM
Editorials
For comparing argument styles
The Onion: Congress Threatens to Leave D.C.
Unless New Capitol Is Built
Parody newspaper
published this article claiming Congress threatened to move to
Charlotte or Memphis; The Beijing Evening News did not realize this was
satire, and ran it as a top story
Articles on the Onion story about Congress
moving to Charlottes or Memphis
Alexander Abramov: Nevermind
How political rock became a pose
Steve Albini: The Problem with Music
Albini
is a near-legendary rock producer and musician from Chicago, who's
produced bands like The Pixies, Nirvana, The Breeders, The Blues
Explosion, more
Chris Barsanti: Bohemia Revisited
Jean Baudrillard: The Precession of
Simulacra
David Beers: Irony is Dead! Long Live Irony!
A response to the calls for the end
of irony after 9/11
Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction
John Berger: The Ambiguity of the Photograph
Nell Bernstein: Goin' Gangsta, Choosin'
Cholita
Todd Boyd: So You Wann Be a Gangsta
John E. Calfee: How Advertising Informs to
Our Benefit
William Jelani Cobb: White Negro, Please
On white society's misaligned embrace of hip hop through Eminem
Mark Cooper: Reclaiming the First Amendment
Gary Engle: What Makes Superman So Darned
American?
Thomas Frank: Alternative to What?
Thomas Frank: Twenty-Nothing
John Taylor Gatto: Against School
Can be read with Postman's article
against Sesame Street
Richard
Goldstein: War Horny
On military chic as a style
Lynn Harris: Living Large -Clothes for Obese
Kids
How image becomes everything
Frederic Jameson: Postmodernism and Consumer
Society
Sut Jhally: Image-Based Culture
Douglas Kellner: Network Television and
American Society
Naomi Klein: Culture Jamming
Robert McChesney: The Emerging Struggle for
a Free Press
Robert McChesney: Public Broadcasting Past
and Present
Marshall McLuhan: Media Hot and Cold
Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Message
Stephen Metcalf: Debunking Punk
National Geographic-Roper Geographic
Literacy Survey, 2002
Survey shows that only 13% of American students could find Iraq or Iran
on a map, only 17% could find Afghanistan, and over 30% believed the
U.S. had over a billion people.
George Orwell: Politics and the English
Language
Plato: The Allegory of the Cave
Plato:
The Phaedrus
Neil Postman:
Teaching as an Amusing Activity
Claims Sesame Street teaches children to watch TV, not their ABC's
Roger Rosenblatt:
The Age of Irony Comes to an End
An argument on how after 9/11 we can no longer have irony in our
society (is this dialogic or combative?)
Annette Rottenberg: Understanding Argument |
Mark Leyner: Life, Liberty, Whatever
Rep. Bernie Sanders, VT: Why Americans
Should Take Back the Media
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Also see Harvard Gazette story Which Comes First, Language or Thought?
Madan Sarap: Baudrillard and Some Cultural
Practices
Help with Baudrillard
Jack Shafer: Why I Don't Trust Readers
Jack Solomon: Masters of Desire
Gloria Steinem: Sex, Lies and Advertising
Tom Vanderbilt: The Advertised Life
David Foster Wallace: A Supposedly Fun Thing
I'll Never Do Again
Examining the dynamics of advertising and the
micromanagement of enjoyment
David Foster Wallace: Tense Present
On the limits of langauge and debates over usage
David Foster Wallace: The View from Mrs.
Thompson's House
On watching 9/11 coverage at the neighbor's, and watching them watch
the coverage
Curtis White: The New Censorship
On self-censorship through staid comfort in post-9/11
world
Curtis White: Whatever, Dude
On reading a cowboy movie critically
Colson
Whitehead: Swept Away
On television
Colson Whitehead: The Way We Live Now
On television and politics
Patricia Williams: Fiction and Truth in
Advertising
Raymond Williams: Technology and Society
Thomas de Zengotita: The Numbing of the
American Mind
Thomas de Zengotita: The Romance of Empire
On how we valorize war through media
Slavoj Zizek: Will You Laugh For Me Please?
On the inventor of the laugh track
Creative Commons License
creative commons license