Author Archives: jmcraighead

Labor Fantasies in Recessionary Japan (Lukacs) class discussion

Posted on by
1

Show clips from Shomuni and Sarariman Kintaro. 

1. What differences do you notice in the portrayal of the workplace and the worker in these two clips? 
 
2. Japanese television producers injected a social responsibility discourse into popular media by way of social-realist dramas. Do we see the same in North American television programming? Why or why not? Can you think of any notable examples of shows that reflect our own economic situation, currently or in the past?
 
3. In North America, do you think devices like mockery and parody are used as stand-ins for social responsibility discourse? What might this say about our culture?
 
(And…. if we have time:
 
4. The social responsibility discourse in media is not new, but it emerges in new ways context-dependently. Do you think Japanese workplace dramas reflect changing attitudes towards the “freeter” lifestyle, or is the other way around – lifestyles changing in response to what is on television?

5. Lukacs talks about the feminization of men as a reason why Shomuni is popular in the young male demographic. What do you think these shows are portraying about gender?)

The Noncontroversial as Graffiti

Posted on by
Reply

Graffiti has historically been looked on as the pursuit of lower-class marginalized communities, a social ill (Dickinson 2008:34). It is often seen as ugly, unclean, or just not aesthetically pleasing (Dickinson 2008:40). The work I have chosen to share here speaks as a rebuttal to those presumptions. In this piece, a part of a larger effort entitled The New York Beautification Project, Ellen Harvey has brought elements of higher art forms to graffiti by recreating 18th-19th century oval landscapes in oil paints (Honigman & Harvey 2005:105). Harvey chose this style of graffiti because it is a noncontroversial signifier of art, a form understood by the majority as the quintessential artwork. While they were still illegally painted, these ovals were executed in a style that attempted to transcend the urge or need for public outcry that graffiti usually elicits. Harvey is playing with the idea of the idealized landscape brought to the wrong side of town, and found that the aesthetic characteristics of these pieces trumped their illegality, with most passersby legitimizing it by calling it art (Honigman & Harvey 2005:105-106).

Contrary to the lower-class, youth-perpetrated, masculinized picture of graffiti artists noted in Dickinson (2008), Ellen Harvey is a 30-something white female artist with a law degree (Honigman & Harvey 2005:103). This is relevant to her medium of choice – public spaces in New York City. Having studied law gives Harvey a unique appreciation (among artists) of property ownership, who is allowed to do what and where, and how society is structured. These issues consciously shape her work.

– Jessica Craighead

Honigman, Ana Finel, and Ellen Harvey                                                                         2005  Good Artist/Bad Artist: An Interview with Ellen Harvey. Art Journal 64(3):102-118.

Dickinson, Maggie                                                                                                      2008   The Making of Space, Race and Place:New York City’s War on Graffiti, 1970—the Present. Critique of Anthropology 28(1):27-45.

www.ellenharvey.info