This short video, made during the Educator’s Workshop at the Center for Digital Storytelling (Berkeley, CA), is a teaser/trailer for a paper on which I’m currently working. The paper is on Barack Obama’s rhetoric of “unity” as relying on an ironic sense of community and conflict in contemporary politics; it is also about the potential pitfalls and failures of such rhetoric, which we have seen strongly in the past couple of months in the most recent “debate” over health care reform.

Panel Abstract: In the famous 1964 Jacobelis v. Ohio case, Justice Potter Stewart famously claimed to know obscenity “when I see it.” Like obscenity and pornography, transgression is often taken for granted as a cultural “given.” As we become increasingly surrounded by cultural productions that blur any sense of coherent mainstream, alternative, corporate, state, or independent images, videos, music, and writing, it seems harder and harder to understand what transgression really means. In an age of online communities based on a free exchange of personally videotaped, exhibitionist pornography, websites that post embarrassing or illegal acts by powerful corporate interests, networks of political blogs that rival even the best print journalism, and the circulation of incredibly popular short films that range from the horrific to the banal, by what means do we measure how and when something transgresses what used to be known as the “dominant” culture? Breaking away from discussions of the internet, digital culture, and networks as either positive or negative characteristics of the contemporary public sphere, Transgression 2.0 brings together a variety of perspectives and case studies to find contemporary locations of cultural opposition, both on and offline. It suggests that the “prurient interest” of a culture, to borrow Justice Brennan’s terminology from another obscenity trial, is in fact to seek out those places in which it is forced to evolve. Far from an easy process, in the digital age transgression becomes increasingly essential even as it becomes harder to define, discover, and protect.Panel Rationale:Despite the constant attention paid to defining and redefining the field of Communications, and in particular the “keywords” that form the focus of this process, the concept of “transgression” has been largely avoided.  There are many reasons for this; the term is often associated with particular movements (e.g. battles for recognition in gay rights movements), specific theories (e.g. Bakhtin), and an ambivalent politics centered more on opposition than on what is commonly considered to be a progressive agenda.  This panel will attempt to bypass these issues, as they ultimately limit the usefulness of the concept of transgression.  More importantly, it will question whether or not transgression can exist in the contemporary moment, defined by increased information flow, increasingly shifting terms of personal and social identification, and political and economic systems that seem to co-opt and reappropriate areas of what would formerly be considered to be transgressive even before they are fully formed.  Focusing on transgression not as a personal act, therefore, but as a social act mediated in large part by technology, the panelists will discuss the (im)possibilities of transgression and its place in communication theory.David Gunkel, Northern Illinois University (Chair and Respondent)Ted Gournelos, Maryville University of St Louis”Hacking the News: Transgressing Performative Control Systems”Rather than presuppose the desirability of sincere, cohesive, or “positive” communication, this paper will examine how ironic and dissonant cultural productions can redefine the limits of the public sphere.  In a conflict-based view of what Henry Jenkins has called “convergence culture,” I argue that, in the search for new areas of exploitation, systems of control within late capitalism often internalize transgressive culture.  Informed by new media scholarship, the paper analyzes three primary case studies, each a performance within U.S. news productions.  In The Yes Men’s “pranks,” news organizations are forced to operate outside of existing control parameters; in faux articles and internet broadcasts by The Onion, the process of news appropriation (and thus consolidating journalism in massive conglomerates) becomes an absurd spiral of self-referentiality; finally, the judicial furor over the wikileaks project exposes the difficulty in controlling iterative discourse, particularly when it has “real world” implications and consequences.  I contrast Couldry’s “media rituals” and McNair’s “cultural chaos” to demonstrate the need for alternative methods through which we might understand transgression, departing from Habermasian fantasies of an open, power-free public sphere in favor of multiple, conflicting, and nomadic communities.  The paper argues that a model in which community and social change are embodied in a series of ontological “hacks” allows a space for a new, productive ethos of change even while operating within oppressive or stagnant system.  It culminates by trying to answer whether or not performance disrupts the everyday conceptual stasis of the news, or whether it simply acts to spice up an otherwise incestuous regime.Peter Krapp, University of California Irvine”Attention will be paid. Social media and economy of distraction”"Social media,” heralded as web 2.0, pivot on rampant monetization of attention and distraction. It depends on persuading a mass audience that participation in that dual market is not merely serving them up to advertisers, but empowers them individually to become content generators. This paper will argue that this is the most serious transgression in new media culture; it has become “the only division possible in a world now emptied of objects, beings, and spaces to desecrate.” From the vantage point of a dialectic of attention and distraction, the bundling of otherwise splintered audiences into advertising categories is an ill-concealed attempt to divert your attention from something and onto something else - or inversely, to distract you into thinking what I want you to think about. If we live in an attention economy, it is paramount to protect our freedom of decision on how attention is “paid”, and to observe closely how manipulations of the parameters of memory aid a “culture” industry.Grant Kien, California State University East Bay”Global Capitalism as Art: The case of Brendan Lott’s non-memory”This chapter explores several case studies in which conventional transgressions serve as the starting point for an entirely new common-sense understanding of agency and self-identification. Recent online phenomena such as Wretch.com and Stickcam.com circulate self-exploitative images and videos that reestablish traditional notions of transgression in a consumer base, evacuating them of any self-conscious opposition. How then to identify transgression in a world rooted in the self-management of one’s own exploitation? The work of Brendan Lott’s installation  Memories I’ll Never Have born out of online images reveals the transgressive juncture, the point at which unequal relations of global capitalism are revealed for what they are. This critical analysis of online/offline behavior is rooted in ethnography informed by Actor-Network Theory, taking web sites and Lott’s installation as sources of found data treated as narrative texts.Richard L. Edwards”Breaking Conventions: Political Video Mashups as Transgressive Texts”Political video mashups are an increasingly important part of transgressive political discourse in a digital age. Video mashups combine pop cultural knowledge, avant-garde techniques, the latest digital DIY tools and remix aesthetics into a media practice that is also increasingly driven by Web 2.0 logics and user-generated content. Using key examples of popular video mashups, this paper will examine how political video mashups are being used to affect contemporary politics and how they can play a subversive role in political discourse.As opposed to earlier modes of video activism that sought to signal their difference from mainstream, dominant media forms, a political video mashup embraces popular culture as its starting point. The formal properties of a political video mashup—frequently in line with larger trends in remix culture—are inherently transgressive. Mashups take existing media texts (many of them copyrighted and used without permission) and re-edit them and recombine them into new texts. A political video mashup can subvert official campaign media, attack mainstream news reports, reconfigure or decode the meaning of a candidate’s speech, or extend unofficial meanings latent in a video clip.But key questions remain about their transgressive potential. Can any practice that firmly embraces popular culture, even if it is subverting it on some level, operate as an oppositional practice for real-world political change? Do mashups use of certain cultural texts undercut claims of alterity or political resistance? In this paper, several case studies—including examples from mainstream shows and user-generated content—will be explored in an attempt to answer those questions.presented at the annual Popular Culture Association conference, New Orleans, April 2009

Rather than presuppose the desirability of sincere, cohesive, or “positive” communication, this paper will examine how ironic and dissonant cultural productions can redefine the limits of the public sphere.  In a conflict-based view of what Henry Jenkins has called “convergence culture,” I argue that, in the search for new areas of exploitation, systems of control within late capitalism often internalize transgressive culture.  Informed by new media scholarship, the paper analyzes three primary case studies, each a performance within U.S. news productions.  In The Yes Men’s “pranks,” news organizations are forced to operate outside of existing control parameters; in faux articles and internet broadcasts by The Onion, the process of news appropriation (and thus consolidating journalism in massive conglomerates) becomes an absurd spiral of self-referentiality; finally, the judicial furor over the wikileaks project exposes the difficulty in controlling iterative discourse, particularly when it has “real world” implications and consequences.  I contrast Couldry’s “media rituals” and McNair’s “cultural chaos” to demonstrate the need for alternative methods through which we might understand transgression, departing from Habermasian fantasies of an open, power-free public sphere in favor of multiple, conflicting, and nomadic communities.  The paper argues that a model in which community and social change are embodied in a series of ontological “hacks” allows a space for a new, productive ethos of change even while operating within oppressive or stagnant system.  It culminates by trying to answer whether or not performance disrupts the everyday conceptual stasis of the news, or whether it simply acts to spice up an otherwise incestuous regime.presented at the annual Popular Culture Association conference, New Orleans, April 2009

Drawing on analyses of two South Park censorship controversies, one surrounding the “Trapped in the Closet” attack on Scientology and Tom Cruise and the other inspired by the “Cartoon Wars” engagement of the Prophet Muhammad cartoon scandal, this chapter discusses the connections between religion and liberal state identity in the contemporary United States. These two case studies imply not only a close juridical relationship between religion and the state, in which each institution works to mask the other’s limit event (the breakdown of religious rhetoric in blasphemy and the breakdown of liberalism in censorship), but also the importance of new media in making that relationship evident, in which the self consciously new media focus of the show’s creators allowed them to publicize and attack what would probably have been hidden in residual media forms. Rather than separate discussion of religion and secular liberal identity, South Park relies on its own cultural capital and a close connection to independent new media producers to expose their symbiotic relationship in U.S. politics. Underscoring fights for free speech by highlighting the hypocritical rhetoric of blasphemy claims, South Park accentuates both. However, the iterative quality of viral media that made the show famous is what allows such a discussion to push past either the editing room or the board room, and begins to suggest possibilities for an “open society” beyond satirical popular culture itself.presented at the annual National Communications Association conference, San Diego, November 2008presented at the annual American Studies Associaiton conference, Albuquerque, October 2008

Drawing on analyses of two South Park censorship controversies, onesurrounding the “Trapped in the Closet” attack on Scientology and Tom Cruise and the other inspired by the “Cartoon Wars” engagement of the Prophet Muhammad cartoon scandal, this paper discusses the connectionsbetween religion and liberal state identity in the contemporary United States.  These two case studies imply not only a close juridicalrelationship between religion and the state, in which each institutionworks to mask the other’s limit event (the breakdown of religious rhetoric in blasphemy and the breakdown of liberalism in censorship), but also the importance of new media in making that relationship evident.  Blogs and video sharing communities like YouTube were essential for the discussion of and protests against Comedy Central’s censorship of South Park, and the self consciously new media focus of the show’s creators allowed them to publicize and attack what would probably have been hidden in residual media forms.Rather than separate discussion of religion and secular liberal identity, this paper will demonstrate how South Park relies on its owncultural capital and a close connection to independent new mediaproducers to reconnect the issues and expose their symbiotic relationship.  Underscoring fights for free speech by attending to the hypocritical rhetoric of blasphemy claims, South Park accentuates both.  However, the iterative quality of viral media that made theshow famous is what allows such a discussion to push past either theediting room or the board room, and itself begins to suggestpossibilities for an “open society” beyond the satire and irony of apopular culture production.

 “Boobs, Barf and Bloody Asses” charts the  changes in gender construction and performance in the television show South Park.  Over ten seasons, the show has methodically confronted and violated preconceptions and taboos regarding sexuality and gender, and has mounted a series of harsh critiques of neoliberal and neoconservative conceptions of identity and tolerance.  Through an examination of developments in the show’s rhetoric and a deeper textual analysis of two episodes in particular, this paper will discuss the ramifications of anarchic and aggressive critiques of reified gender identity.  The analysis draws primarily on Haraway and Butler for a theoretical backdrop, but engages gender precisely through its performative or blasphemous potentials for political activism and oppositional culture.  It suggests that scholars consider mass media as locations for hyper-allusive discourse and as transgressively polysemic, even in productions some would consider to be juvenile or “masculine.”  More importantly, it suggests ways in which radically (and institutionally) transgressive cultural productions can force open previously closed topics or rhetorical binaries, making room both for alternative discourses and for future exploration (i.e. the rise of youtube or Sarah Silverman).  The episodes discussed, “Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society” and “Marjorine,” demonstrate the possibility for a fluid conception of gender and a highly intertextual approach to gender development.  Rather than asserting a coherent worldview or political position, South Park examines and disrupts gender norms precisely through its multiplicity and fragmentation, and demonstrates an emergent paradigm for social activism.

presented at the annual National Communications Association conference, Chicago, November 2007

With landscape as a visual and conceptual framework, this paper discusses the ideological implications of the film franchises The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, and Terminator.  Through a discussion of landscape theory and its implications within a larger postmodern paradigm, it will examine how imagery and narrative construct visions of politics in the United States that deviate from their (often ostensibly progressive) surface-level messages.  As each trilogy is a landmark in popular and film culture, and as they attained considerable symbolic capital in both subculture and dominant culture, they are ideal entry points for a discussion of negotiated popular ideology.  Moreover, as the Terminator trilogy spans twenty years from its first to its third film, and changes considerably in its politics, it provides a useful counterpoint to the massive The Matrix and The Lord of the Ringsproductions.  By discussing all three through their visual rhetoric, it is possible to navigate the often perplexing worlds of United States ideology, and the increasingly blurred lines between progressive and reactionary agendas.

presented at the annual International Communications Association conference, San Francisco, May 2007

Panel Description

 Following the deeply divisive and traumatic aftermath of the September 11^th attacks and the subsequent Adorno-derived calls for the “end of irony,” it seems time to interrogate how rhetoric surrounding the attacks was destabilized rather than mobilized.  Humor, following Freud, is one of the most advanced and intricate rhetorical and aesthetic of social strategies, and as such is an ideal entrance into this discussion.  This panel will attempt to interrogate how humor has been used in various ways to engage the September 11^th attacks, focusing on the ways in which instability and disruption are productive socio-political interventions.  From alternative print (The Onion) to animation (South Park) to live-action television (The Colbert Report), humor has been one of the most powerful, and perhaps one of the only, strategies which has successfully challenged dominant media discourse on the topic.  Therefore the papers in this panel will demonstrate humor in cultural production not only as a source of entertainment or catharsis, but as an essential component in politics and cultural memory.

Panelist and Chair:  Ted Gournelos, PhD Candidate, Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“A Neo-Con Parade:  South Park and the Call to War”

This paper is intended as an aggressive critique of neoconservative ideology, specifically as it relates to the “war on terror” and its portrayal in the media.  Primarily an examination of the relationship South Park has with post 9/11 politics (i.e. “Ladder to Heaven,” “Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants”), the main focus of the paper will be to demonstrate how political discourse as constructed by the Bush administration, as well as its mobilization in the media, can be decentered and denormalized through a humorous, disruptive approach to narrative.  A partial rebuttal to Brian Anderson’s South Park Conservatives, it is also meant to demonstrate how dissonant popular culture can be aggressively conceived to operate in what are often considered to be conservative domains.  It will also briefly discuss the movie Team America: World Police, one of the examples of “conservative” ideology Anderson celebrates in Parker and Stone’s work as an example of how a disruptive strategy can result in a text that is at once reactionary and progressive.  Through a discussion of neoconservative and neoliberal rhetoric surrounding 9/11, drawing primarily on Judith Butler, Susan Willis, and Wendy Brown as well as Slajov Zizek and Stuart Hall, the paper concludes that dissonant visual culture assimilates both types of discourse in order to produce a critical, and perhaps anarchic, sensibility. 

Panelist:  Marina Levina, Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley

“In Truthiness We Trust: “The Colbert Report” as a Postmodern Response to the Post-9/11 World.”

In one short year “The Colbert Report,” which features Stephen Colbert as a pompous right-wing commentator, transcended its role as an O’Reilly Factor caricature to become a cultural phenomenon in its own right.  Beginning with his coining of the word “truthiness” and culminating in a blistering speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Stephen Colbert has not only proven that irony did not die in the ashes of the World Trade Center, but has, in fact, become an essential weapon through which to critique the politics and policies of the post 9/11 world.  This paper argues that “The Colbert Report” relies for its existence, humor, and political poignancy on the context of the post-9/11 political landscape.  It is ironic that the attacks that reintroduced the rhetoric of “good vs. evil” and a political response reminiscent of the crusades became both a Baudrillardian “absolute event” and an atmosphere capable of giving birth to Stephen Colbert’s unabashedly and unapologetically postmodern performance.  In order to fully understand the role of irony in the post 9/11 world, this paper argues, we need to examine how one of its most shining examples straddles the boundary between modern and postmodern narratives and social conditions, resulting in an anarchically playful sensibility with remarkable cultural capital.  

Panelist:  David Monje, Visiting Assistant Professor, Northeastern University

“Hummer Rhymes with Dumber: The Political Cartoons of Jeff Danziger after 9/11”

Jeff Danziger’s political cartoons following September 11, 2001 are exemplary of the critical capacity of visual culture and irony. This paper argues that not only did 9/11 not signal “the end of the age of irony,” as predicted by Roger Rosenblatt in the New York Times, among others, but that the attacks in fact renewed the use of irony as a critical, rhetorical tool. Political cartoons, in addition to often being funny, are a longstanding, but often overlooked, means of identifying political rhetoric that dissimulates. They are, in this sense, a means of exposing lies and contradictions by juxtaposing, visually, metaphorically, and semantically, the inconsistencies in political discourse. Danziger’s cartoons following 9/11 have zeroed in on the Bush administration’s responses to the attacks by, literally, drawing connections between the Bush and Bin Laden families, between Enron, Halliburton, big oil, the rise in popularity of gas-guzzling Hummer SUVs, and finally the invasion of Iraq. As a Vietnam veteran, Danziger was one of the first pundits to articulate the worrisome, and indeed ironic, parallels between that war and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Using selections from his work over the last five years, this paper argues for the enduring—and exigent—criticality of irony and humor in visual culture, especially after 9/11.

Panelist:  Ryan Wepler, PhD Candidate, Brandeis University: Department of English and American Literature

“History Hits the Funnies Page: Memory, Rupture, and the Response to 9/11 in The Boondocks and Get Your War On”

 Within weeks of 9/11, comic strips The Boondocks and Get Your War On turned their attention to its cultural aftermath.  By focusing on such a traumatic and decidedly unfunny event, the authors of these series were able to transform the humor of the traditional 3-4 panel comic strip and transcend the apolitical tradition of “the funnies.”  In addition to breaking with the conventions observed by other comic strip authors, The Boondocks and Get Your War On counter the historical rupture created by the trauma of 9/11 by using humor to emphasize incongruity within their own forms.  Aaron McGruder’s fictionalized replacement of his dissenting comic strip The Boondocks with the patriotic “Adventures of Flagee and Ribbon” calls attention to political attempts to fill in the ruptured space created by the events of 9/11 with ideology and, in turn keeps this space open for individual memory.  In the less mainstream Get Your War On, David Rees further expands the space for individual memory by forging his humor almost solely from polyvalent and incongruous juxtapositions of language, idea, and image.  Despite Henri Bergson’s claim that “laughter has no greater foe than emotion,” Rees and McGruder rely on his idea that humor is created from the recognition of “something mechanical in something living.”  This paper explores the ways in which The Boondocks and Get Your War On create space for individual emotion by exposing the mechanicism of culture and ideology in the wake of the national trauma of 9/11. 

 presented at the annual American Studies Association conference, Boston, April 2007

 This paper is intended as an aggressive critique of neoconservative ideology, specifically as it relates to the “war on terror” and its portrayal in the media.  Primarily an examination of the relationship South Park has with post 9/11 politics (i.e. “Ladder to Heaven,” “Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants”), the main focus of the paper will be to demonstrate how political discourse as constructed by the Bush administration, as well as its mobilization in the media, can be decentered and denormalized through a humorous, disruptive approach to narrative.  A partial rebuttal to Brian Anderson’s South Park Conservatives, it is also meant to demonstrate how dissonant popular culture can be aggressively conceived to operate in what are often considered to be conservative domains.  It will also briefly discuss the movie Team America: World Police, one of the examples of “conservative” ideology Anderson celebrates in Parker and Stone’s work as an example of how a disruptive strategy can result in a text that is at once reactionary and progressive.  Through a discussion of neoconservative and neoliberal rhetoric surrounding 9/11, drawing primarily on Judith Butler, Susan Willis, and Wendy Brown as well as Slajov Zizek and Stuart Hall, the paper concludes that dissonant visual culture assimilates both types of discourse in order to produce a critical, and perhaps anarchic, sensibility. 

presented at the annual American Culture Association conference, Boston, April 2007

presented at the annual International Communications Association conference, San Francisco, May 2007

In the twenty-first century it is increasingly difficult to separate the fine arts from elitist and capitalist social systems, as festivals like the Venice Biennale make abundantly clear. However, recent examples in visual media point us to cultural activities that operate outside of the binary constructions of low/high, public/private, local/global, individual/community, and mass/popular. Using the 2005 Biennale as a metaphor and entry point, this paper examines Gregory Crewdson’s photographs of suburbia, Temporary Services’ “Prisoners’ Inventions” project, and viral internet phenomena in order to draw conclusions about where the arts lie in contemporary society and where they might be headed, both visually and politically.

Presented at the annual National Communications Association, San Antonio, November 2006