Two noteworthy blog contributions from our Anthropology of Media class are Jeff H.’s “Constructing Identities with Graffiti,” which examines the repeated defacement of the UBC engineers’ cairn, and Katrina S.’s “The Insurrection of Signs? Graffiti, Marc Emery and The Culture of the (Non-) Deviant,” which questions the subversive nature of a “Free Marc Emery” graffiti […]

The protagonist of the French film Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (“The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain”), is a shy, quirky Parisian with a fantastical imagination. She is depicted as content with her interior life and self-reliance, but a series of events lead her to seek out greater human connection and eventually pursue a male […]

With the advent of MP3 players, podcasts, subscription satellite radio, and customizable Internet radio stations, options abound for individuals to craft a highly personalized, solitary listening experience. But two recent case studies—the CBQM documentary and Danny Kaplan’s exploration of Israeli radio—illustrate that traditional radio performs important cultural work for their respective communities: more than simply […]

“How much time, and how much space, is required to separate an object from its reiteration; an echo from the source of the sound?”–David Novak, “Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood” (2010) In a fascinating sequence in the 2008 documentary RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, director Brett Gaylor traces the evolution of a work […]

David Novak argues that “appropriation is a creative act” (2010:42) and suggests that remediation, the “repurposing [of] media for new contexts of use” (2010:41), resonates with the cosmopolitan subject’s capitalism-fuelled sense of alienation. While he notes that the Heavenly Ten Stems’ live performance of the Indian song “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” triggered accusations of cultural imperialism, […]