midterm study guide

TVF 2500:  STUDY GUIDE FOR MIDTERM
The midterm will consist of multiple choice, true/false and possibly short essay questions on the main points, concepts, and analyses presented in course readings and screenings. Bring a standard scantron. You should know the main/major points (not just topics, but points) of all the assigned readings, and the screenings we have watched in the class thus far.  

Cultural Studies/Media Studies

-From Lecture: know the definitions of
Culture: the dominant patterns and systems of meaning that make up a way of life in a particular society

Ideology: A system of meaning that provides an interpretive framework for understanding some central aspect of life in a particular social formation.

Discourse: The actual use of signs, symbols, imagery, etc., to create meaning and communicate those meanings. Fairly coherent sets of meaning that circulate around a particular topic, and construct varying realities of that topic.

Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others.

identity/subjectivity

Basic Semiotic: Things have to be made to mean

Ideological Principles/Premises: The dominant cultural rules and conventions that govern meaning tend to reflect the interests, perceptions and experiences of the dominant group or groups. However, the dominant cultural rules, conventions and concepts are always up against the forces of resistance from those whose interests they do not serve, and whose perceptions and experiences they do not reflect.

Know the definition of gender: the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).

of patriarchal/misogynist vs feminist ideology/discourse

Queer theory: interdisciplinary and politically radical approach in Cultural Studies that emphasizes the instability and fluidity of gender and sexual categories, in contrast to the view that sex and gender identities are  fixed, binary, and essential categories.

Postcolonialism: the academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands.

Orientalism: style, artefacts, or traits considered characteristic of the peoples and cultures of Asia.

"race" is a social and political construction

Racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.
Cultural Studies: A multi-disciplinary approach to the study of cultural (i.e. structures and patterns of meaning in a society) and the ways in which those patterns are related to power/politics, economics, and social relations and struggles in a society.

Multiculturalism: the presence of, or support for the presence of, several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society.

Media Culture (Kellner, pp. 7-18 & Lecture): All media “texts” (i.e. media content/products) are subject to multiple readings depending on the perspectives and “subject positions” of the “reader”/audience member/user, and the ideologies and discourses they bring to bear when interpreting or “decoding” the “text”/media content (images, words, sounds, stories, etc).
Political economy: Economics as a branch of knowledge or academic discipline.
****know how Kellner defines “critical media literacy”;

critical media literacy aims to expand the notion of literacy to include different forms of media culture, information and communication technologies and new media, as well as deepen the potential of literacy education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information and power.
****know the 3 main components or forms of analysis in cultural studies.

SCREENING:The Merchants of Cool: Know Main points

-creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America

Go cool hunting- find individuals who are on the next trend and commercialize it

-The Economics of the Media Industry (23-33): Know trends in, and critique of, media ownership, conglomeration and integration, and how this relates to political power.

- One of the clearest trends in media ownership is its increasing concentration in fewer hands. Ownership of Media has become so concentrated that by the mid 2000s, only 5 global firmed dominated the media industry in the USA, operating like a cartel by taking over smaller media firms to make less competition.
- Media companies have become part of much larger corporations, which owns a collection of other companies that may operate in highly diverse business areas. The process of conglomeration in the media industry is continuous.

- Most people recognize the importance in examining the government’s control of media in totalitarian nations. It is clear in such situations that state ownership and exclusive access are likely to affect media products.

-Hegemony (Lull, pp. 33-36 & Lecture): know the author’s main points about the role of the mass media in perpetuating hegemony

- Hegemony does not mature strictly from ideological articulation. Dominant ideology streams must be subsequently reproduced in the activities of our most basic social units. Because information and entertainment technology is so thoroughly integrated into the everyday realities of modern societies, mass medias social influences is not always recognized, discussed, or criticized, particularly in societies where the overall standard of living is relatively high. Hegemony, therefore, can easily go undetected.

Why and how hegemony is never complete

- Hegemony in any political context is indeed fragile. It requires renewal and modification through the assertion and reassertion of power. “It is crucial that hegemony is not a given and permanent state of affairs, but it has to be actively won and secured; it can also be lost.

What it means to say something is “counter-hegemonic”

- Counter-Hegemonic tendencies do not inhere solely in texts. They are formulated in processes of communication.

-The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism (37-43): know author's’ main points about social, political and economic context in which the internet has developed

and why the democratic potential of the digital technology/revolution in general has not lived up to its promise.

Argues that the internet should be treated as a public utility but is instead becoming the territory of capitalist robber barons, while the U.S. government is failing its citizens by standing aside.
The internet has failed to deliver on much of the promise once seen as implicit in its technology.

Foster and McChesney say if we assume that a genuinely free market is the best option, we should proceed to analyse the internet in that light. They find it lacking in three key respects which are ISP, Market Concentration, and Information as a public good. “The system’s overriding logic must be as an institution operated on public interest values, at bare minimum as a public utility.”

- Supersexualize Me (Gill, pp. 255-260): Know Gil’s point about the difference between sexual objectification vs. sexual subjectification;

3 challenges advertisers faced in early 1990’s; commodity feminism; characteristics of the “midriff” & themes of midriff advertising; critique of sexual subjectification/midriff & its “post-feminist” discourse.

Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person as a mere object of sexual desire whilst is treating a person as if they are below you.

Advertising has been shown to have a comparable influence to education and religion, and that graphic violence and hyper sexualized imagery are two prominent methods for advertisers.
The advertising of the 1960-1980s showed predominantly subservient images of women – housewives, dumb blondes, and passive sex objects – who relied on knowledgeable men.  This reinforced Gill’s statement that advertisers rely on “crude, easily-recognizable stereotypes”

Advertising modified its portrayal of women.  The sexually empowered female replaced the earlier portrayal of women as passive sex objects.

-La Princesa Plastica: Hegemonic & Oppositional Representations of Latinidad in Hispanic Barbie (380-385)

Know main points of author’s critique of the “Barbie narrative” and “Hispanic Barbie.”

The article basically explains that Diversity is beautiful and toys as a form of material culture are regarded as one source of cultural data. They are said to encode the cultural values of their creators. In the case of Barbie, there is the reproach that ethnicity is defined by other than white, that blonde Barbie sets the standard from which "the other" comes. While "ethnic Barbies" are qualified by their language, foods, native clothes etc.,"Standard Barbie" can do without these ethnic symbols

-Transgender & Transitions: Sex & Gender Binaries in Digital Age (126-134): know main points of author’s critiques about how and why the internet and other popular/commercial media tend to define and shape perceptions of trans bodies and trans identities.

Contemporary representations of transgender people often reinforce rigid gender binaries of masculinity and femininity, leading transgendered individuals to feel they must seek out hormones or surgery to “correctly align” their bodies with their gender. Cultural texts (e.g., films, television, Internet, digital texts) reinforce this “pre-op or post-op” ideology for trans identity. The pre-op or post-op MTF or FTM binary mandates an alignment with the heterosexual gender system (feminine female or masculine male). In this article, the author focuses on trans identities and how representations codify the need or desire for surgery and hormones and examines the paradoxical reification of gender and sexual stereotypes (particularly dichotomization) by electronic media for transgender consumers of these media at the same time that these same sources provide an abundance of information for those who would otherwise not be made aware of the resources available to them. The competition between marketing of products and services for transgender individuals and provision of otherwise non profitable information for the same individuals ranging from normalizing, informing of sources of help and health information is examined as well as the use of the Internet as a medium for transitioning individuals to share their experiences. This article argues that instead of a culture of hormones and surgery, teachers, medical professionals, and counselors should embrace and educate towards acceptance of trans identities and bodies that does not rely on the mandate of hormones or surgeries. Finally, the impact of the dissemination of information in the uncontrolled environment of the Internet illustrates the impact of culture on media and vice versa.

SCREENING: Clips from Hip Hop Beyond Beats & Rhymes (sections we watched were the opening, “shut up and give your bone marrow,” and “manhood in a bottle,” plus Self Destruction (See lecture notes for link)

-Explores the issues of masculinity, violence, homophobia and sexism in hip hop music and culture, through interviews with artists, academics and fans. Hurt's activism in gender issues and his love of hip-hop caused him to feel what he described as a sense of hypocrisy, and began working on the film.

SCREENING: Tough Guise : Know main points.

• The epidemic of male violence that plagues American society needs to be understood and addressed as part of a much larger cultural crisis in masculinity. Whether he's looking at bullying and school shootings or gay bashing, sexual assault, and violence against women, Katz makes a powerful case that male violence, misogyny, and homophobia are inextricably linked to how we define manhood as a culture. The film gives special attention to how American media have glamorized increasingly regressive and violence masculine ideals in the face of mounting social and economic threats to traditional white male heterosexual authority. Katz's innovative cultural approach to gender violence prevention has been adopted by the NFL, the NCAA, and the U.S. Marine Corps.

-Video Games & Machine Dreams of Domination: Know Sonbonmatsu’s critique of video games, particularly in relation to sexism, racism, instrumentalism, and militarization of everyday life; know main point about simulated vs real life.

• Video Game culture conditions us to instrumentalize human thought facilitating an ever more fateful intrusion of capitalism, technological fetishism, and masculine fantasies of domination are into the fabric of our daily life
• Video games create an escapism that restore in virtual form the power and control we have lost in a complex world
• Causing us to become less active in the real world forsaking those forms of speech and action that could matter

-The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies & the Media (90-92). Know main points about ideologies and how they function, racist ideology, and overt vs inferential racism.

• Inferential racism - those apparently naturalized representations of events and situations relating to race, whether ‘factual’ or ‘fictional’, which have racist premises and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions
• Example - the sort of television programme which deals with some ‘problem’ in race relations
• Overt Racism - those many occasions when open and favourable coverage is given to arguments, positions and spokespersons who are in the business of elaborating an openly racist argument or advancing a racist policy or view
• Racist ideology - the belief in the superiority of one race over another, which often results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity
• Ideologies are of course, worked on in places in society, and not only in the head. The fact of unemployment is, among other things, an extremely effective ideological instrument for converting or contrasting workers to moderate their wage claims. But institutions like the media are peculiarly central to the matter  since they are, by definition part of the dominant theme of ideological production

-[2015] The Year We Obsessed Over Identity (85-89),

Main Idea: During 2015 everything had to do with race. Whether it be from the president and how he was a mix of black and white and how the show Key and Peele would show how racism was in America in a comedic way.

-Big Talkers: Rush Limbaugh, Conservative Talk Radio, and the Defiant Reassertion of White Male Authority (157-162): Know main points.

• A key part of the appeal of conservative talk radio to its predominantly older white male audience resides in it reinforcement of traditional masculinity in the face of a culture where economic transformations and progressive social movements have shaken old certainties about what constitutes a “real man”
• Speak with an old school masculine authority that recalls an idealized past, when (white)  men were in control in the public and private spheres, and no one was in position to actively challenge their power
• Conservative talk radio and Rush Limbaugh in particular, functions as a mass media vehicle for the defiant reassertion of a kind of traditional White male authority

-Dissolving the Other: Orientalism, Consumption & Katy Perry’s Dark Horse (108-117): Know main points of critique.

• The east is soft, feminine, and irrational in need of the saving grace of rational Western masculinity
• The video echos the ways in which Egypt was produced as a consumable product during the colonial era.
• This commodity feminism helps shape an understanding of the modern woman that does more to reinforce patriarchy and hegemonic understandings of gender roles than it does to challenge them focused on making women prettier and more attractive

-Resistant Masculinities in Alternative R&B?: Understanding Frank Ocean and The Weekend’s Representations of Gender (329-339)

Starting from the argument that hegemonic masculinity in contemporary R&B and hip hop culture can be and has been challenged, we conducted a textual analysis of the gender representations of two artists within the genre of alternative R&B. As implied in public debate (cf. supra), male alternative R&B artists are embodying and expressing alternative masculinities. This research wants to, first, investigate how the masculinities performed within the genre are alternatives to the hegemonic norm within R&B and hip

hop culture and, second, whether the alternatives qualify as cultural resistances to the norms and values linked to the hegemonic masculine man. We chose to work with two young Black artists, namely Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, who are considered popular within alternative R&B and representative for the genre. Frank Ocean, the artist persona of Christopher Breaux, is a Black American artist who wrote songs for, among others, Justin Bieber and Beyoncé and who sung as a member of the hip hop collective Odd Future (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA)). Under the name of Frank Ocean, he released his mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra (2011) for free, which gathered the attention and praise from the music press. In 2012, he released his first official commercial album Channel Orange (Def Jam Recordings, 2012). Since the release of the album coincided with his public disclosure of same-sex feelings (cf. supra), both the critically acclaimed album and the artist became the focal point of Western media attention (Jonze, 2012). Next to Frank Ocean, this article considers the work of The Weeknd, the artist persona of Black Canadian artist Abel Tesfaye. In contrast to Frank Ocean, The Weeknd/Abel Tesfaye remains a mystery. He debuted the work of The Weeknd with the free mixtape House of Balloons in 2011, whose work was lauded for its musical and thematic risks. That same year, he released two other mixtapes, namely Thursday and Echoes of Silence. Again, the music had to speak for itself as The Weeknd was not giving any interviews. Taking into account the debauchery, hedonism and sexual and drug excesses, the music press is conflicted whether the absence of author interpretation is a good thing or not for the music culture he created (Lawrence, 2012; Soderberg, 2012). Specifically, we put the music released as album of both artists at the center. For Frank Ocean, this concerns Nostalgia, Ultra and Channel Orange. For The Weeknd, we chose to analyze Trilogy (republic records, 2012), the commercial re-release of his three free mixtapes compiled in one digipak. From the albums, all songs are selected for an analysis of the gender themes that are being represented. Even though the focus will be on lyrical aspects, formal aspects will be taken into account.

Frank Ocean: men searching for a real love Over the course of two albums, Frank Ocean has engaged in portraying a musical universe that is both aesthetically and thematically diverse. Pinpointing him to solely alternative R&B is already something that can be considered restrictive, as his music blends genre conventions that characterize EDM, alternative rock, (neo-)soul, funk, hip hop and contemporary R&B. He further varies in choice of instrumentations, sound and ways of vocalizing. Similarly, the choice of artists he samples and/or invites to sing or play along reveals Frank Ocean as an artist who refuses to remain in the confines of Black popular music culture. Thematically, Frank Ocean does not take the safe road that is paved with picture-perfect, heteronormative and neoliberal fantasies. Rather than reiterating these commercial tropes, he explores socio-cultural and political issues that typify contemporary Western society. As tackled in early hip hop and soul music (Maultsby, 1983; Stewart, 2005; Watkins, 2006), racial segregation, class distinctions, and community building return as themes in his music. For some music journalists (e.g. Soderberg,  2012), this is what makes alternative R&B alternative. It defies classical, marketable and

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racialized categorizations, which are traditional marketing strategies regarding Black popular music. By offering his first mixtape for free online, he further undermined the music industry’s neoliberal model of making profit. Even though these strategies can be interpreted as niche marketing, they have nonetheless unsettled the aesthetic, thematic and commercial conventions of the genre. Of interest to this article, however, is the way he represents masculinity. Demonstrated in the literature review, hip hop and contemporary R&B are ambiguous toward gender equality. Even though some male artists advocated gender equality (see Iwamoto, 2003), hypermasculinity remains the dominant trope, while the genres’ progressive political potential remains tied to class and race issues. Frank Ocean, however, does not follow suit. The ‘authentic’ male identity often promoted in many hip hop songs is challenged by Frank Ocean’s portrayal of diverse male characters. His songs consist of men that vary from traditional, patriarchal figures over men who reevaluate their (masculine) identities to men who are comfortable with engaging in nonnormative gender behavior. By giving these diverse masculinities a stage, Frank Ocean explores the performativity of gender and questions what it means to be a real man. On the first record Nostalgia, Ultra, for instance, the male characters include, among others, a workaholic estranged from his female partner in ‘Songs 4 Women’, a heartbroken and suicidal man in ‘Swim Good’, and a man dealing with the death of his grandfather and the absence of a father in ‘There Will Be Tears’. What is interesting about all characters is that, despite their differences, they struggle with how to deal with their emotions. ‘There Will Be Tears’ is exemplary. Even though he sings about having to hide his tears for his friends, the song itself operates as a public expression of a man crying. This is further emphasized by sampling verses of the eponymous song ‘There Will Be Tears’ by Mr Hudson. What is being challenged is the idea of having to live up to an ideal of masculinity that, besides being a patriarchal socioconstruction, conflicts with the everyday-life emotions of men. Yet, due to societal pressure, they often put on a hypermasculine performance to hide their vulnerability, love or jealousy. For instance, on Channel Orange’s ‘Thinking Bout You’, he portrays a male character who is in love for the first time. However, afraid of assuming the vulnerable position in the relation, he conceals his emotions by singing to the other character:

No, I don’t like you, I just thought you were cool enough to kick it

Got a beach house I could sell you in Idaho, since you think

I don’t love you I just thought you were cute, that’s why I kissed you.

He masks his desires and instead articulates traditional masculine behavior. Taking into account that the other character is presumably male,2 the verses are remarkable in terms of de-feminization: he addresses the other man in a hypermasculine lingo, he broaches about property and wealth and he emphasizes that the kiss has nothing to do with love. Yet, at the same time, he uses the hook – sung in a higher and more vulnerable manner – that he is actually thinking about being together forever. In the end, ‘Thinking Bout You’ portrays a hypermasculine man whose performed masculinity keeps him from happiness. In other songs as well, hypermasculine men are featured and represented in a similar way. Take the two main male characters Frank Ocean portrays on Channel Orange’s diptych

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‘Pyramids’. In the song, he portrays two stereotypical men who, each in their own way, abuse their women and consider their acts justified. Yet, the patriarch (in the first part of the song) and the pimp (in the second part of the song) are portrayed as despicable, estranged and ultimately disconnected from the women who were once their partners. By representing masculinities and critiquing the masculine identity considered hegemonic in R&B and hip hop culture, he is deconstructing the idea of an unchangeable masculinity that is generally taken for granted. A few songs highlight this by undermining fixed ideas regarding men and women. For instance, the insertion of a monologue spoken by Nicole Kidman’s character in the film Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999) in ‘LoveCrimes’ (Nostalgia, Ultra) is significant. As such, he metaphorically gives women agency in his music and allows them to counter ingrained stereotypes regarding women. The character is making a stand for the sexuality of women. She reproaches the evolutionary psychological perspective that justifies men’s sexual behavior to ‘stick it in every place they can’, while ridiculing men for thinking that women are only interested in security and commitment. By making only these phrases audible, Frank Ocean inserts a plea for female sexual agency while questioning hypersexual and hypermasculine behavior. At other times, he makes explicit his views on gender equality. In ‘We All Try’ on Nostalgia, Ultra, he expresses the following statements:

I believe a woman’s temple

Gives her the right to choose […]

I believe that marriage isn’t

Between a man and woman but between love and love.

The verse explicates his support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage, expressed in a song that predates his public coming out. Notwithstanding his sexual identity, the song is significant as it acknowledges the role of politics to bring about emancipation of women and sexual minorities. Yet, advocating same-sex marriage does not imply he is not critical of the institution of marriage. ‘American Wedding’ (Nostalgia, Ultra) – a song that uses the master track of The Eagles ‘Hotel California’ – tells the story of a young man and woman who decided to get married, a marriage that did not last long. He refers to the marriage as an American wedding, an institution he describes as having little meaning, unable to last long and due to result in an ‘American divorce’. Even though the song can be interpreted as making a case for taking the institution of marriage more seriously, it also allows to be read as critical of the institution itself. In particular, the song consists of a verse that describes the married woman turning in her term papers:

M-R-S dot Kennedy, she signed her name in pen

In a fancy fancy cursive, then turned her term papers in

A thesis on Islamic virgin brides and arranged marriage

Hijabs and polygamist husbands, those poor un-American girls.

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At first sight, the verse reports the woman’s socio-cultural critique of Islamic  marriage. Yet, the verse implies that the aspects she deplores (e.g. virginity, arranged marriage, polygyny and hijabs) are taken out of its historical and spatial context and are only used to reinforce her American-centric perspective on marriage. Yet, at the same time, the verse evokes the notion that her marriage is not that different from the ‘unAmerican girls’. Emphasizing the practice of taking the husband’s last name, she partakes in yet another patriarchally constructed marriage. If anything, Frank Ocean uses his work to stress the value of an emotional commitment rather than to have it institutionalized and rendered empty, hollow or disposable. It is not surprising that many of his songs deal with heartbreak, estranged lovers and unstable relationships. Yet, this does not imply that he promotes heteronormative bliss. As songs such as ‘Nature Feels’ (Nostalgia, Ultra), ‘Pink Matter’ and ‘Monks’ (Channel Orange) illustrate, sex can be perfectly experienced in a pleasurable way outside of wedlock and without the necessity of love. What he does criticize are the discourses – whether materialized in political institutions or in socio-cultural norms and values – that hamper intimate commitments. We already referred to his plea for same-sex marriage rights. In addition, his critique is equally implied in the representation of the hegemonic male who conceals his emotions (cf. supra) or the man who becomes a victim to a woman’s sexuality. This is illustrated in ‘Pilot Jones’ (Channel Orange), a song about a man who has seen his female partner becoming a drug addict and dealer. He wants to quit the relationship, but she uses sex to seduce him. Even though the story, in a way, reads as a gender reversal of the story of a male drug addict convincing his girl to remain loyal to him, it, nonetheless, expresses the inability of a heterosexual hegemonic male to distance himself from his sexual desires. Last, the burden of being governed by hegemonic discourses and hegemonic masculinity also affects Frank Ocean as a man with same-sex desires – a theme that became more readable in his music after publicly disclosing that his first love was a man. Take for instance ‘Bad Religion’ (Channel Orange). The song features Frank Ocean confessing his unrequited love for a man to a cab driver. He tells the driver that he has ‘three lives balanced on his head like steak knives’, which might be interpreted in terms of feeling forced to embody a fixed sexual identity category even though the identity might not correspond to his desires. Challenging the notion that sexual orientation is a fixed construction, his songs (and his tumblr note) avoid the labels ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’. Even though he might experience his sexual desires as confusing, he refuses to be confined to a rigid sexual identity category. He challenges the rational categorization in ‘Pink Matter’. The song is not only intended as a deconstruction of masculine behavior, it also explores the relation between sexual pleasure and gender identities. Whereas the first verse of the song explores the relation of the male character with women –  metaphorically referenced as pink matter – the second verse questions whether ‘matter’ is so important when it comes to sexual pleasure, as the verse ends with Frank Ocean making a stand for ‘pleasure over matter’. Nonetheless, the song also brings to mind the power of hegemonic discourses such as heteronormativity – metaphorically represented as the purple matter – which is able to enforce the idea that sexual identity is fixed, natural and stable. Consequently, when Frank Ocean sings near the end of the song that he has no choice but to stick to blue matter since blue is his favorite color, he adopts a homosexual identity.

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Yet, the reconciling, defeated attitude at the end of ‘Pink Matter’ is short-lived. The songs that succeed on the record consist of the cheerful, humorist love song ‘Forrest Gump’ – in which he confesses a romantic and sexual interest in the main male character of the eponymous movie Forrest Gump (Zemeckis, 1994) – and the bonus track ‘Golden Girl’ – a romantic song addressed to a girl living on an island remote from the United States. As he stresses on the last track, he refuses to be ‘going backwards’ because he found happiness. Concluding, Frank Ocean features many male characters who are craving for realness (e.g. ‘Super Rich Kids’), yet only those who transgress the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity seem to succeed in finding something real.

The Weeknd: hegemonic masculinity in crisis With The Weeknd, alternative R&B was given yet another face that unsettled the conventions of contemporary R&B music. Like Frank Ocean, he defied the music industry by releasing his three mixtapes for free on the Internet, all in the same year. The Weeknd’s music sounds less varied than Frank Ocean’s and remains more close to the contemporary R&B signature in aesthetics and vocalizing. Nonetheless, by sampling, among others, 1960s French pop artist France Gall and a diversity of contemporary alternative rock artists such as Beach House and Cults, he broadens the musical perspective in which he positions himself. Furthermore, he introduces new themes into contemporary R&B by exploring a hedonist life of sex and drugs. Yet, what distinguishes him from the other artists in alternative R&B is his choice to remain a mystery. He conceals his private persona – Abel Tesfaye – as much as possible and refrains from providing background and interpretations to the musical world he creates. Taking into account the subjects he broaches and the questionable roles he assumes, however, both audiences and the music press are left wondering what to make of the songs and of the norms and values the artist holds. Looking at the subjects in his work, it is remarkable that racial and class issues are largely ignored or left unspoken. Whereas Frank Ocean and other R&B and hip hop acts do engage in explicit and implicit social criticism of racial and class inequalities, The Weeknd portrays himself as a character whose main worries are related to women. Gender relations are at the heart of his music. Almost every song is built around the relation of The Weeknd with a girl/woman he is addressing in the lyrics. Throughout Trilogy, these relations are predominantly shaped as unequal. We are presented with a male character who is superior to almost all female characters in the songs, whereas the female characters are muted, objectified and, with the exception of a few songs, nameless and rid of any agency. On top of that, the female characters come across as passive and submissive, who are willingly subjected to his opinions, confessions and seductions. Whereas Frank Ocean represented diverse and contrasting masculinities, The Weeknd represents variations of the hegemonic masculine man. ‘High For This’ introduces audiences to this man and his attitudes toward women:

Close your eyes, lay yourself beside me

Hold tight for this ride

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We don’t need no protection

Come alone, we don’t need attention.

Sung in an authoritative and seductive voice, he tries to persuade a woman into doing drugs and having sex. As the latter two phrases reveal, The Weeknd knows best. Yet, reading between the lines, the fact that a man convinces a woman of engaging in unsafe sex and doing drugs without priers implies that there is something suspicious with what is going to happen if she follows him. Other songs further fortify this image of a patriarchal deceiver. In ‘Lonely Star’ and ‘Thursday’ – two songs that make up one story – he convinces a woman to give up her life and devote herself to him. In return, he promises her ‘the clothes, the jewels, the sex, the house’ (‘Lonely Star’). Yet, he then reveals the condition on which the relation will be based; he will only see her on Thursday. First, the songs reveal him as a patriarch who is not per se interested in loving a woman but rather owning a woman. He is prepared to provide her material wealth in return for sex. She, however, cannot expect an emotional commitment. Second, he is a hypersexual man who wants his (sexual) freedom – whether symbolically or literally – preserved. Even though he assumes often the role of patriarch, he does refer to other types of male characters in his songs. On the one hand, the songs feature men who are ridiculed, despised or threatened with violence if they are current or former boyfriends of the girls he is trying to seduce (e.g. ‘What You Need’, ‘House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls’). On the other, he references his gang, his ‘boys’, who have his back and who come first before the girls (e.g. ‘Loft Music’, ‘Life of the Party’). In sum, The Weeknd qualifies as a hypermasculine, hypersexual and misogynist R&B and hip hop man. However, that is just one way of looking at it. Reading The Weeknd’s music, three other aspects need to be taken more explicitly into account to fully understand the gender politics of his songs. First, and quite central in his work, is a question of sincerity. Lacking context, each song has the potential to provoke the thought whether the artist supports the hypermasculinity and misogyny expressed by the I-character in his songs. To understand his position, we point out the song ‘Valerie’ as key in unraveling his position toward the hegemonic male identity. The song discusses how ‘performance’ is a crucial strategy employed by men to ensure their superior position:

There comes a time in a man’s life

Where he must take responsibility

For the choices he has made

There are certain things that he must do

Things that he must say

Like I love you

And I need you

I only want you

And nobody’s going to know if it’s true.

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The cynical last phrase reveals how he and, according to him, men in general are able to fake a loving and dependable position in a relationship. A woman will never know whether her partner is merely putting on a show or not. Yet, more remarkable about this phrase is the exposure of that performance. Additionally, the last phrase also fortifies our argument that his music is not per se intended as true narratives and experiences. As audiences, we will never be able to know whether what he portrays is true. Yet, by provoking this thought, it does evoke a reading of his music as rather critical of the superiority of hegemonic masculinity. Furthermore, The Weeknd’s musical choices help to read his music culture as rather criticizing men’s behavior than supporting it. First, by sampling songs by female artists in which men are critiqued, he allows the samples to operate as challenges to the discourse he expresses in his songs. For example, in ‘House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls’, which samples the distinctive guitar riff and hook from Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Happy House’, the hook of ‘Happy House’ is used as an ironic and cynic commentary to The Weeknd’s attempt to convince his girl that their imbalanced and abusive relationship is perfectly normal:

This is a happy house

We’re happy here

In a happy house

Oh this is fun.

As in the original song, the hook mocks the patriarchal exploitation of the male character. Another way of using music to convey a critique of hegemonic masculinity is articulated in specific conjunctions of sound and text. ‘Life Of The Party’ and ‘Initiation’ are exemplary for this practice. In the former, the spectrum of sound consists of raging electric guitars, an acoustic guitar that is strummed in an ironic way, and threatening metallic percussion sounds. Meanwhile, The Weeknd moans, sighs and giggles in a lunatic manner while his voice sounds slightly distorted. As The Weeknd is trying to, once again, lure a girl into a room full of men and drugs, the connotation of abuse becomes enhanced in the oppressive and upsetting sound of the song. In ‘Initiation’, which features a similar narrative, the technique is pushed to an extreme. Drenched in a charged sound of brooding basses and sketchy break beats, The Weeknd tries to convince a girl into ‘meeting his boys’. In return, he promises her his heart. Whether his boys operate as a metaphor for actual boys or for drugs, the threat of falling victim to a gang bang or to a risky drug party is near. Not only the sound operates as a warning, also his manipulated voice – which is rid of any humanity by being electronically lowered and sharpened throughout the song – announces the girl may end up in peril. The hegemonic male has been unmasked as a ghastly debased character. Third, a few songs explicitly emasculate the hegemonic masculine man. To do so, The Weeknd connects the emasculation to a drug-infused lifestyle. In his music, drugs function as literal and metaphorical obstructions to having a healthy private and public life. Even though many of the male characters express a desire to be together with a woman, they are generally more interested in getting her as high as they are and, eventually, end

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up alone and/or emotionally detached from these women. In ‘Gone’, he boasts to a girl about his skills to satisfy her sexually but ends up apologizing to the girl as he sinks more into his drug trip and eventually fails to perform. ‘Gone’, like other songs on Trilogy, undermines the powerful and superior position of the hegemonic masculine man. In ‘Coming Down’, the main male character acknowledges this. The song is an apology of a guy to a girlfriend after coming down from his drug trip. He expresses remorse and guilt while admitting that he is addicted to his ‘friends’ – used as a metaphor to the drugs he is on. This song features a rare moment of a male character exposing himself as vulnerable. Yet, other songs, such as ‘Wicked Games’, ‘The Knowing’, ‘The Zone’ or ‘Rolling Stone’ all feature male characters who are confronted with their own emotions and forced to deal with unrequited love, insecurity and jealousy. Yet, rather than negotiating the fact that the hegemonic masculine ideal is unrealistic and accepting their own emotionality, vulnerability and humanity, they indulge in more debauchery, machismo behavior and self-loathing. In fact, if anything, The Weeknd presents a repertoire that explores a hegemonic masculinity in crisis. As Frank Ocean did in a few songs, The Weeknd holds out a mirror to men and shows them what is wrong with men in contemporary Western society. Even though he situates the characters of his songs in an underground community outside civil society, he populates the community with familiar men who consider their patriarchal rights natural and essential and who engage in verbal or physical abuses on their female partners.

Conclusion This article started from the assumption that alternative R&B brought about a new array of masculinities, alternatives to the traditional and dominant characters of masculinity in contemporary R&B and hip hop. Even though Frank Ocean and The Weeknd differ significantly in approach, they both are engaged in questioning what it means to be a man in R&B and hip hop culture. Their representations of masculinity both express a craving for something real – a realness that stretches back to what hooks (2004) described as real in blues music and what she finds lacking in men of contemporary hip hop culture. Looking back at the gender representations in the work of both artists, it seems that only the masculinities in Ocean’s world seem to qualify as ‘real’. The male characters represented by Ocean are at least attempting to challenge the hegemonic interpretation of masculinity offered by both contemporary R&B and hip hop culture and heteronormative society at large. In the case of The Weeknd, we are predominantly confronted with men having a crisis over what is real. Furthermore, the postmodern approach employed by The Weeknd remains debatable. If anything, the ambiguous approach of exaggerating the gender hierarchies and gender violence rather than ‘explicitly’ critiquing it, while avoiding to represent a strong nonnormative masculine character and independent, confident female characters, holds the risk of being misinterpreted. For some, the songs may be read by some as a justification of gender and sexual violence, and for others, the thematic connotations may evaporate while listening to the music rather than the lyrics. As such, one may enjoy his crooning and angelic vocalizing while ignoring the ambiguous and unsettling content. In a way, the duplicity that typifies The Weeknd’s approach is comparable

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to the work of other artists within R&B and hip hop culture, particularly White rapper Eminem. Rodman (2006) emphasizes that Eminem’s hegemonic masculinity has often been considered autobiographical. As a result, his private and public persona has been held responsible for the use of violent, misogynist and homophobic lyrics. Ironically, Eminem’s performance of multiple identities (e.g. Slim Shady and Marshall Matters) has seldom been taken into account when interpreting his music. Like The Weeknd, his work allows to be reinterpreted in terms of a hegemonic masculinity in crisis. To conclude, both Frank Ocean and The Weeknd can be understood as being part of a music culture that reflects the social complexities of masculinities in current Western public spheres. The liberal environments in which contemporary R&B and hip hop operate are less dominated by homophobia, sexism and misogyny and provide spaces for nonnormative gender representations and pro-gay attitudes. However, as the crisis within The Weeknd’s work illustrates, the changing of cultural understandings of masculinities is often accompanied by same-old hegemonic recuperations. Moreover, these continuous oscillations between representations of alternative masculinities and hegemonic reinforcements debouch in multiple everyday interpretations and appropriations at the individual, societal and cultural level.

-The Latino Cyber-Moral Panic Process in the United States (657-664),

know what moral panic is,

the impact of internet/cyber media on moral panic,

what this research concluded

about how this has been applied to Latino/Mexican immigration.

In the article, “The Latino Cyber-Moral Panic Process in the United States”, the authors talk about how moral panic occurs in the United States. From the definition, moral panic is the “reaction of a society against a specific social group based on beliefs that the subgroup represents a major threat to society”, and people who create such sense of fear are called “moral entrepreneurs”. Throughout the history, a certain group of people have been always victimized. Chinese people were prohibited from moving to USA by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, and it was European immigrants’ turn in early 20th century. In the recent days, Latinos are abandoned because of several facts, such that they fail to learn English, do not adopt the Protestant values, and above all, they are large in number.

Latinos should have come to America because of the same reasons. They still have “American dream”, and many of them are better off in America even if they work at fast food restaurants and receive just a little bit of money. It is understandable that the United States try to limit the number of immigrants, but it will not have much effect in the long run. There are already many unauthorized immigrants, and they actually help American economy in the sense that they work with low wage. In addition, they may become a real threat to America if they stay as being unauthorized. Since they cannot work legally, they may work in illegal industries and contribute to the negative aspects of the United States.

-Injustice Rolls Down Like Water…”:

Challenging White Supremacy in Media Constructions of Crime and Punishment” (217-224).

• Basic Idea: Media is used to frame people of color as a problem and the use new mobile technology to further their agenda but new independent media sources can of digital media and a new genre of citizen produced journalism
• Explores the intertwined nature of the culture and criminal justice industries
• Most obvious and significant change in media comes from the proliferation of digital technologies that have fragmented the means of content production and distribution once controlled by a handful of multinational corporations
• Guy Debord dubbed an entertainment and commodity-obsessed culture, has achieved seemingly unchallenged hegemony, and the most powerful players in the media industries now possess even more wealth and a longer global reach than ever before
• Despite technological and industrial changes, corporate media systems continue to frame people of color as a problem while transforming violence and suppression into the stuff of entertainment
• Orange is the new black shows how the culture of women's prisons and how queer a trans prisoners have problems in those prisons
• Orange is the new black uses narratives of contrast, identification, and disidentification  
• Criticizes fox for giving white supremacists a voice for the lethal and militarized and lethal policing of black people
• Orwell feared the truth would be hidden
• Huxley feared the truth would be drowned out
• Technology can also give people the power to become independent media outlets