Time Square Special  

Posted by bryce in , , , ,

As many of you know, I am very interested in acoustic ecologies and soundscapes and how these are used to construct places. 


I'm watching the history channel as we speak, specifically a special on times square during the 29-32 depression and beyond. I'm intrigued by the background music that they use to characterize the area. During the depression, they highlight the amount of burlesque houses that happened, and how these carried on into the war. Of course, what we see are pictures of white sailors in burlesque houses staring at white women. Then it moves on to talk about coming out of the depression- and this is where it gets interesting. Showing images of WWII NYC, the jazz that they played was "Little Brown Jug"- a classic of the Glen Miller Orchestra. The interesting thing, as many jazz scholars would point out, is that big band was dead for most jazz listeners, and it definitely was not what characterized 42nd street. Interesting though, GMO was the sound of rich white people, while they describe the area as "seedy" during that time. 

Why is the question that we must ask! I'm reminded of a conversation with Mark Auslander about a reserve in Africa where men were feeding or maintaining crocodiles, blasting some reggae. The reason white people would find this interrupting of nature is the same reason why the Glen Miller Orchestra is heard in the sonic-space characterized by the anti-big band musicians Charlie Parker, Chuck Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, etc. In this History Channel special, they have attempted to reclaim the soundscape, and Times Square at that time, as white space. The soundscape is important in how one perceives spaces, and this is no exception. One must wonder if noise-pollution would be more acceptable if the reggae of Mark Auslander's story was replaced by Bach, Beethoven, or another archaic white man. In that vein, Times Square's seedy-ness becomes more accessible and less threatening through the conversion into white space through acoustic ecology. 

Regardless, the whiteness of sonic space is a very interesting thing often ignored, and we (everyone) should be more aware of when we are changing the acoustic ecology in favor of colonial politics. 

With that, I bid you happy new year. 

Frost/Nixon & Me  

Posted by bryce

Just got back from seeing Frost/Nixon. Absolutely fantastic. I cannot tell you the many ways in which this movie is great. The acting is absolutely superb- and unless you were familiar with Nixon deeply, you'd almost mistake Frank Langella for the real deal. Truly superb...


But I have to ask myself, why now? Especially considering that I may have been bringing down the average age of attendees by 20 or so years. Could Frost/Nixon be symbolic for Obama/McCain; a way for republican devotees and liberal punks to come together for another battle of new v. old? In many of the mannerisms, it seems possible. As box office ratings come out, we'll see how intrigued audiences are by the drama of politics- or will it be different because we're not living them? Will this ritual of substitution work...

Some Updates  

Posted by bryce

Please bear with me while I try to update the blog with my home page. Some in & outs are to be expected.

Sa'more Cold War  

Posted by bryce in , , , , ,

Just a quick follow-up:

I saw the previews for Frost/Nixon. I'm going to see it tomorrow.

It appears we're also invested in re-creating the mythos of cold war politics. In a way, our own political and social ecology mimic that of the cold war era. Are we on the brink of a new era of hope, or is society stuck in a constantly reproducing holding pattern of hope/belief/disappointment/ and devastation?

Here's a new thought: maybe instead of re-live the cold war, we're trying to re-write its mythos for political reasons. Maybe as a way of justifying a new movement in American politics? I suppose that, from a Marxist lens, you could evaluate movies as cultural engineering and social maintenance...

now that is an interesting thought.

The first real post  

Posted by bryce in , , ,

So I've really been noticing as of late America's Coldwar Nostalgia. It's in movies, video games, books, commercials, TV shows, and the general imagination of most Americans. Thinking of specifically movies- we have an explosion in the rebirth of zombie cinema (a coldwar post-apocalyptic imagery), Spy/superhero movies (the power to do things unknown to the enemy), and infatuation with codes (the idea that math could figure out the very agency of men and militarization). Before this, I think we were marveling in postmodernism and Baudrillard (the matrix), so why the instant return?

On a more surface level, regarding our anxieties around constant militarization, atleast during the coldwar we knew who had a button to have their finger on- with terrorists the enemy is unknown. While we often paint the face of the enemy in darkness, terrorists come with their own premade, un-imagined shroud of darkness. One that may be "too real" for Americans.

In discussing this with Mark Auslander (http://culturalproductions.blogspot.com/), he offered another fantastic reading that I'm going to assimilate with some of my own ideas; and that is that things were much more cut and dry (or should I say wet and dry) in the Cold War era. Binaries were still ultimate- what was man was man and what was woman was woman, what was good was good and what was evil was evil, what was culture was culture and what was primitive was primitive. At least that's what the mythos of the time projected, how else would spies and monsters shape-shift? It was also a time where we thought we could outsmart the agency of others, using math and technology to predict their next shape shift...much like we find ourselves now. Ask any high school administrator what programs are the most essential: I'm sure you'll find mathematical oriented technology and science (i.e. physics & chemistry) has replaced biology and the softer sciences.

In our post-Baudrillardian/Matrix imagination the dichotomies have been "deconstructed" in both cinema and real life. We are left in a state of confusion. We feel further exposed because of our falling economy and our failing wars. If only things could be like what they were when we were afraid of the only other country that could be as powerful as us...now we fear the ones who should have no power at all. The ones who are winning the war are the ones who don't care what the three r's are (according to mythos once again).

Maybe, like those times of the cold war, we are trying to re-kill a manifestly conservative (closet liberal) Victorian age. We thought we shook it, but it may have still lingered in our subconscious.

The question becomes, as is suggested by the title of this blog, how much this is shared. Do African-Americans and other minorities have these same anxities- do they care about so many of the dichotomies that the hegemonicly caucasian society has created? Of course the answer is that some do and some don't. What is American is not unified, and does not mean the same thing; thus the imagination of the American cannot be the same for all of the people who utilize its discourse differently.

The new Blog-o-rama  

Posted by bryce in , ,

Hello-

congrats for finding this...it's brand new! I'm currently in the process of designing my home site on WIX with flash, and I want to keep a blog function open. So, I'm moving to blogger.

I'm a little disappointed though; my title was supposed to be "After Culture: Ramblings of a Confused Sociolinguistic Anthromusicologist" but it turns out that it's too long. I will probably call it that on my site, and let the rss feed do the dirty work of translating.

for those of you who find this and don't know me, I'm Bryce. I'm currently finishing an MA at Brandeis University in cultural production. My interests are in music, identity, imagination, and globalization, and I've been attempting to develop an approach that utilizes phenomenology, narratology, and (recently) psychoanalytics. Thinking of culture as text makes me feel as if the prominent literary theories should be applicable to the real world; but don't take me for an optimist, I utilize whatever theroetical tools are in my belt that come up. I may not like structuralism, but sometimes it has a good answer for the question.

I've been doing fieldwork in Gozo (a Mediterannean Island that is part of Malta), and Toronto. I plan to return to Gozo this summer before going to Tunis to participate in 1) an intensive arabic school, and 2) to do fieldwork on mental mapping. My focus for this summer is to find out how people conceptualize where Europe starts and where non-Europe ends. With Malta become part of the EU, I'm interested to see if ideology in Tunis is changing about how European they are (or could be). In Toronto, I've been doing fieldwork on zombie walks- specifically focusing on the phenomenological experience of collective imagination (which will be the topic for my thesis paper). In general, you could say that I'm interested in what it means to be _____.

Hopefully you'll come back and find some very interesting things in this blog- if not, don't sue me.

Welcome to...

A blog filled with anthro-inspired cultural criticism (with a strong continental philosophy bent), focusing on the digi-physical worlds we inhabit and the end of the world (complete with zombie apocalypse).

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