Border Patrolling and “Passing” in Eminem's 8 Mile

This essay argues that the semi-biographical film 8 Mile represents Eminem as being both racially distinctive and as possessing universal commercial appeal. 8 Mile accomplishes this paradoxical construction by portraying “Rabbit” as “white trash,” a discursively “dark” (white) object, and as an American mythological white subject. The film makes whiteness hyper-visible by subjecting it to raced and gendered struggles. Through real and symbolic violence, Rabbit battles “dark” villains and grapples with “dark” women, initiating a rite of passage. The film grounds Eminem's hip hop authenticity in Rabbit's discursive darkness, but attaches to this image the marketable allure of mythic whiteness. I conclude by contemplating how the film's conservatism reifies “blackness.”     

The SK-II #changedestiny campaign and the limits of commodity activism for women’s equality in neo/non-liberal China

This article examines one market-based intervention to combat gender discrimination in China, beauty brand SK-II’s #changedestiny campaign, and in particular an accompanying video, Marriage Market Takeover, which attempts to challenge the cultural stigma of “leftover women” (single women over 25). By mobilizing affect and highlighting the self-optimizing subject, SK-II, through the #changedestiny campaign, positions itself as a key instigator of women’s empowerment, and ultimately of not only familial, but also societal, change. In this regard, it follows the logic of what Banet-Weiser and Mukherjee (in Commodity activism: Cultural resistance in neoliberal times [NYU Press, 2012]) call commodity activism, or the merging of consumer behavior with efforts at social change within neoliberal brand culture. However, in a context we call “neo/non-liberal China,” modes of authoritarian and therapeutic governance intersect, and consumer subjects, not consumer citizens, are encouraged. We argue that through offering resistance to, and a resolution situated within familial relationships, the #changedestiny campaign does little to challenge the patriarchal “leftover women” discourse. We further argue that gender discrimination is raised in the #changedestiny campaign as a way to rationalize a neoliberal emphasis on consumption, self-care, and personal fulfillment, and that ultimately gender—as well as class—norms are reaffirmed despite the campaign’s efforts to promote meaningful social change.     

Aesthetic ruptures: viewing graffiti as the emplaced vernacular

This essay theorizes the notion of the emplaced vernacular, a type of vernacular expression that is mobilized by the production of aesthetics in particular places. I argue that 1970s graffiti in New York City emerged as an aesthetic rupture in response to the spatial exigencies of postwar urban renewal projects. Analysis of The New York Times coverage of graffiti writers “Kilroy was Here” from WWII and “Taki 183” from the 1970s demonstrates how the force of this emplaced vernacular was disciplined within dominant spatial ideologies, producing an aesthetic that continues to enable and constrain contemporary efforts of vernacular subjectification.     

Documentary Film as Policy Analysis: The Impact of Yes,In My Backyard on Activists,Agendas, and Policy

The production and distribution of social-issue documentaries can have a wide range of significant impact on community organizations, educational institutions, citizens, and policy makers. What this article seeks to demonstrate, using the example of Tracy Huling's Yes, In My Backyard, is the utility of an “issue-centered model” that allows a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the full range of political impact, including impact on producers, activists, and policymakers. Much of the way Yes, In My Backyard “worked” within the rural prison issue network parallels the way that policy analysis can affect public agendas and public policy. Although many documentaries can be regarded as “implicit” pieces of policy analysis, Huling's is the most explicit, and her measure of success is how well her work can alter the agenda of activists and policy makers, stimulate research to support policy change, and then help implement that change.     

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: A Cautionary Tale Starring White Working-Class People

Depictions of white working-class people are steadily on the rise in reality television. To understand this phenomenon, and the ways in which it articulates white working-class people in the United States today, I analyze Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a popular reality series on TLC featuring a self-described “redneck” family. I argue that this series highlights the family's inability—because of their working-class status—to conform to “ideal whiteness,” a whiteness that displays dominant cultural standards bolstered by neoliberalism, such as wealth, rationality, personal responsibility, and self-control. The family members consequently become exemplars of “inappropriate whiteness,” a marginal identity presented as humorous and, through the use of surveillance and spectacle, authentic.     

The Trouble with Aileen Wuornos,Feminism's “First Serial Killer”

Lesbian prostitute Aileen Wuornos was popularly termed “America's first female serial killer.” Between 1989 and 1990, she killed six men, later testifying they had raped or attempted to rape her. By analyzing media coverage of Wuornos’ story, I argue that Wuornos’ incommensurability with available stories of women who kill illustrates the need to expand the rhetorical resources that make female violence and victimage intelligible. After demonstrating that Wuornos’ gender transgressions were disciplined into intelligible terms by understandings of criminality as an already spatial and gendered category, I conclude by discussing the “trouble” Wuornos poses to feminist and queer cultural politics.     

煮"夹生饭":解放战争时期黑龙江地区土地改革运动的曲折、对策及影响

黑龙江地区早在1946年初就以分配"敌伪"土地为契机开始了土地改革。"夹生饭"问题发生于土改运动初期的1946—1947年,是当时基层干部对清算分地不彻底现象的一种形象概括,其产生说明中共与农村基层社会互动的最初尝试遭到挫折。为扭转这一局面,各省适时调整政策"放手发动群众",通过"砍挖"运动、"小诉苦会"、"诉苦大会"、"东村斗西村"等方式最终煮熟了"夹生饭",并为土改运动全面胜利奠定基础。     

“Open-Mouth Awe”: ESPN's Streetball and the “Transcendent Simultaneity” of the Media Sublime

An impressive body of research on the subject suggests that the seeds of the sublime experience are rooted either in the aesthetic qualities of the viewed object or in the cultural and contextual characteristics of the viewing subject. In this article, I contend that sublimity is, rather, the product of the relationship between subject and object, a relationship that defies representation and therefore provides the “excess of experience” that is the hallmark of the sublime encounter. Turning to ESPN's Streetball: The AND 1 Mix Tape Tour as evidence, I conclude that mediation as a process invites sublimity in audiences by immersing the viewer in the “transcendent simultaneity” of subjectivity and objectivity.     

It's HBO: Passionate engagement,TV branding,and tourism in the postbroadcast Era

This paper contends with how postbroadcast television branding subsumes viewers’ affective interactivities with place to produce brand value. Focusing on the HBO series Treme, I argue that Treme engendered HBO's postbroadcast brand mutation by producing “passionate engagement,” where viewers were invited to interact with the show by touring New Orleans, thus adding place to online interactivity and multiscreen engagement as a means of constructing an “authentic” brand identity. The desire for viewers to connect to New Orleans’ culture is thus transformed into a vehicle for profit making for HBO and an assurance to shareholders that the brand still holds value.     

乡村文化再生产的秩序重构

乡村文化的传承与变迁,本质上是一种具有鲜明“自组织”特性的乡村文化“再生产”过程。然而在社会大变革、文化大变迁以及城市化、现代化的多重“挤压”下,乡村文化“再生产”秩序受到不同程度的破坏,文化“自组织”能力也日渐式微。“安康新民风建设引领乡村公共文化服务创新发展”制度设计与实践探索,就是要通过主动干预,建构起乡村文化“再生产”的新秩序,推动乡村文化繁荣与发展。现代公共文化服务体系建设与优秀传统文化传承发展两大国家战略,无疑是介入乡村文化“再生产”秩序的重要“他组织”力量,为乡村特别是集中连片贫困地区重构乡村文化“再生产”秩序提供了路径探索和经验借鉴。     

Occupational branding for diversity: managing discursive contradictions

In line with recent efforts to increase the representation of women in the field of computing and information technology (I.T.), the National Center for Women and Information Technology has spearheaded an occupational branding campaign that seeks to encourage more women to enter this field. We use this campaign as a case study to investigate how representations of work in an occupational branding campaign (“official branding discourse”) compare with the ways in which practitioners represent this work (“unofficial branding discourse”). Through our analysis, we show that whereas the official branding discourse represents computing and I.T. as a field where women are valued, unofficial branding discourse represents this field as hostile to women. We then propose three avenues through which these contradictions can be managed: (1) acknowledging the challenges expressed by practitioners, while simultaneously discussing how to foster a more inclusive occupational culture, (2) changing the primary goal of the campaign from increasing the number of women in computing and I.T. to making the culture of computing and I.T. less hostile, and (3) committing fewer resources into organized branding campaigns and more resources into direct organizational interventions that seek to make work environments inclusive.     

乡村传统文化治理体系的现代性构建

以传统文化为核心、以“自然”“自治”“自适”为基本特征的乡村传统文化治理体系曾经在传承与发展乡村文化、维护乡村社会秩序方面发挥积极作用。在现代化进程中,乡村传统文化治理体系的社会基础、客观条件、价值取向发生了根本性改变,亟待完成现代性构建。文章结合“安康新民风建设引领乡村公共文化服务创新发展”制度设计,从现代乡村文化场域构建、乡村文化“内生性重构”和乡村文化价值体系重塑3个维度探讨乡村传统文化治理体系的现代性构建问题,认为要在充分尊重乡村文化底色和“自然”“自治”“自适”传统的基础上,融入面向未来、持续发展的时代意识,推动乡村文化治理体系和治理能力现代化。     

A Dialectic With the Everyday: Communication and Cultural Politics on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club

This essay explores the cultural politics of television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey's Book Club. Because women constitute both the primary Oprah television audience and the largest United States book buying public, it focuses specifically on women's involvement in the club and their modes of engagement with its selections. The Book Club's astonishing success was attributable in part to the carefully considered communication strategies through which participants, Winfrey, and Oprah producers collectively articulated the value of books and reading specifically for women. Their de-emphasizing of purely literary considerations, I contend, enabled women to strategize how to use Book Club selections simultaneously to distance themselves from and to engage more intensively with the demands of living in a patriarchal and otherwise socioeconomically stratified society – a relationship I call a “dialectic with the everyday.” This essay thus traces the communicative processes/practices through which those involved in Oprah's Book Club articulated a highly sophisticated economy of cultural value around books and reading and the implications of that economy to a possible feminist cultural politics.     

Queer Imag(in)ing: Liminality as Resistance in Lindqvist's Let the Right One In

This essay explores queer imag(in)ing by analyzing a contemporary vampire text, Let The Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist. As I argue, the rhetorical act of humanizing vampires is inherently limiting for (queer) audiences and indicative of processes that seek to clarify, assimilate, and tame—in short, normalize, which as Michel Foucault states “imposes homogeneity” by stamping out difference. Furthermore, I argue that a text can actively resist moments of normalization with the strategic use of what Victor Turner calls liminality—a (queer) rhetorical tactic that resists while seemingly/simultaneously buttressing a liberal humanist belief wherein difference is denied thus displacing and denying the significance of the Other.     

The forced choice as a measure of television station image

That intangible attribute of a broadcast station commonly called its “image” isn't quite as hard to measure as that other intangible asset, “good will.” Nevertheless, measurement isn't simple, and the standards for measurement are not yet agreed upon. In the following article, a new technique of indexing a station's image without special training and supervision of the respondents is illustrated. Malachi C. Topping, author of “The Cultural Orientation of Certain ‘Western’ Characters on Television” in the Fall, 1965 issue of the Journal, earned his Ph.D. at Ohio State University and is Assistant Professor of Radio and Television at Oklahoma State University.     

基于农村公共图书服务一体化的总分馆制度研究

论文以安徽省农村公共图书服务一体化建设为例,通过对农村公共图书服务一体化概念的介绍,分析了建立农村公共图书服务一体化的作用,重点指出在农村公共图书服务一体化总分馆的建设过程中,所要解决的“谁建设”“谁管理”“谁服务”的问题,为全面铺开农村公共图书服务一体化建设提供借鉴经验。     

Movement as memory: Significant form in eyes on the prize

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years ranks as one of the most successful public television documentaries ever produced. Although it originally aired in 1987, the series has since been shown widely in school and college classrooms, where it arguably has influenced many students’ understanding of the civil rights struggle and, more fundamentally, of the nature and form of “social movement” itself This essay draws upon Kenneth Burke's concept of “significant form” to examine how the documentary's design works to shape public memory of the civil rights struggle as a social movement. In addition to yielding insight into the rhetorical structure of a landmark television documentary, the analysis of form in Eyes on the Prize illumines how public consciousness of “social movement” can be created and perpetuated through narrative form.