Parodying Mao’s Image: Caricaturing in Contemporary Chinese Art

Although Chinese contemporary artists are often criticized for creating superficial works that parody Chairman Mao without any deeper meaning, the employment of parody is a far more complex phenomenon. Instead of being representatives of Jamesonian pastiche, many artists employ varying methods of trans-contextual parody to express their mixed and even controversial intentions and notions. With a detailed structural analysis of the art works, and taking into account the socio-cultural context and the artists’ own intentions, I will show that the common assumptions—that parodying Mao is equivalent to political pop or that political pop represents pastiche—are oversimplifications of this complex phenomenon, especially when caricaturing is used as a method to violate the visual norms.Čeprav kitajske sodobne umetnike velikokrat kritizirajo, da ustvarjajo površinska dela parodij predsednika Maota brez kakršnegakoli globljega pomena, pa je uporaba parodijeveliko kompleksnejši fenomen. Namesto, da bi bili predstavniki Jamesonove pastile, številni umetniki uporabljajo različne metode transkontekstualne parodije, da bi izrazili mešane in kontroverzne namene in ideje. Z natančno strukturalno analizo umetniških del in z upoštevanjem družbeno-kulturnega konteksta in avtorjevih namenov, bom prikazala, da so splošne domneve—da je parodija Maota ekvivalenta političnemu popu ali da politični pop predstavlja pastile—preveč poenostavljene ideje tega kompleksnega fenomena, predvsem, če se karikature uporabljajo kot metoda kršenja vizualnih norm

Sonic intolerance : aural yellowface during the golden age of American radio.

The position of the Asian in the American popular imagination has a long history, stretching back to nineteenth century vaudeville theatrical performances and remaining largely unchanged throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Portrayed as simultaneously cunning and ignorant, spiritual and corrupt, or submissive and sexualized, Oriental stereotypes have remained firmly entrenched in popular culture. While perceptions of race exist largely in a visual sense, a closer look at how people heard racial differences opens up new avenues for scholarly interpretation of the social construction of race and the shifting notions of citizenship. This thesis will investigate how listeners during the Golden Age of American radio understood race and racial differences, as yellowface on the radio allowed performers to embody conceptions of Asian otherness, producing sonic caricatures that reinforced notions of inferiority while concurrently securing a white national identity. This thesis adds to the growing number of cultural histories of Asian Americans and offers readers a comprehensive look into the presence of yellowface on the radio during the first half of the twentieth century

A Proposed Schema for Analyzing the Other in Visual, Political Satire: The New Yorker Cartoon on Barack Obama

This thesis will provide an image schema for analyzing the Other in satirical imagery. It will also strengthen previous theories in visual communication that argue that imagery, specifically satirical imagery, may also function in the form of visual ideographs. The case study that will be conducted to illustrate this argument will be an analysis of the controversial July/2008 New Yorker cartoon entitled The Politics of Fear which satirized Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as fist-bumping terrorists in the White House. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework or analysis tool for deconstructing the Other in visual, political satire and is a response to the existing fragmented methods of analysis. In a broader sense, this thesis is meant to build on theories that contribute to the existing debate that argues for incorporating imagery into rhetorical studies

Diversifying Children’s Literature by the Retelling of Folk Tradition and Orality in Afro-Caribbean Stories

Examining the historical context of Children\u27s Literature in America and the Caribbean, there are common threads that occur. Linked by a complex history of racial tensions, the representation of Afro-Caribbean children are minimal compared to white children. Disconnected from the orality of previous generations, Afro-Caribbean writers utilizes folk tradition and dialect to retell those stories of their ancestors in an amalgamation of oral-literature text

Marietta Holley, Alice Duer Miller, the Rhetoric of Suffrage Humor, and the Changing Notions of Womanhood, 1848-1920

Generally when people think of the suffrage movement, they conjure up serious images of impassioned speeches, violent protests, and intense congressional lobbying. However, there was another side to the movement and that was laughter. This dissertation investigates suffrage humor as a rhetorical act: the strategic use of laughter to restrain people from engaging in certain behaviors, to reinforce certain perceptions or beliefs, to undermine opposing views, and to unify like-minded individuals. Laughter was a rhetorical tool both for the movement and against it as both sides fought to gain the middle ground and claim common sense as their own. Guiding the debate about votes for women was the public struggle over the ideals of True Womanhood. The years of the fight over suffrage, 1848-1920, were years of great upheaval in United States, a time of questioning and re-evaluating long-held assumptions and cherished notions of what it meant to be a woman. Therefore, the evolution of the use of humor by pro-suffragists and the rhetorical strategies they employed reflects the progress of twentieth-century notions of womanhood. Suffrage humor, as it moved from ineffectual pleas for simple justice to popular domestic arguments to aggressive, mocking satire illustrates the much larger battle over woman's proper place in society. In the end, suffrage humorists were successful because their conception of what constitutes the best role for women was fluid enough to evolve alongside the audience's perceptions. Pro-suffrage humorists constantly reframed the suffrage argument to reflect the current boundaries of woman's proper place. The rhetoric of suffrage humor, therefore, evolved as conceptions of womanhood evolved, moving from appeals for parity to arguments of social and political expediency. The audience willingly accepted the notion of women as politically and socially active yet still feminine and domestic, able to clean up politics and their kitchen floors. Even further, suffrage humor, having built a foundation of consensus, moved from Marietta Holley's rhetoric of conciliation and moderation, stressing conformity to the values of True Womanhood, to Alice Duer Miller's rhetoric of aggression and punishment, rejecting gender distinctions and refusing to conform to any model of acceptable womanhood

The Comic Grotesque: Troubling the Body Politic in American Graphic Satire from World War I to the Great Depression

This dissertation examines the comic grotesque as a strategy of critical engagement within the thriving field of U.S. graphic satire from World War I through the Great Depression. During this period, artists across the political spectrum were using disruptive bodily forms, along with references to pain, vulgar associations and crude techniques, to challenge political authority, undermine attempts to smooth over political turbulence, and address communal anxieties about social tensions and the direction of the nation. Emerging in the context of record unemployment rates, the explosion of political radicalism, dramatic shifts of gender and class power dynamics, and emerging threats of fascism, these iconoclastic, rebellious, or evocative bodies gained popular attention within a thriving publishing industry that maintained much of its readership during the Depression through its graphic satire. I focus on works in the magazines The Masses, New Masses, Daily Worker, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. Through case studies examining such artists as John Sloan, Robert Minor, Henry Glintenkamp, Jacob Burck, Gardner Rea, James Thurber, and William Gropper, I argue that the comic grotesque served as a means of challenging the often totalizing construction of society embedded within many of the debates in the period around recovery and progress. This project draws from the field of disability studies, recent scholarship on eugenics culture, and studies on political citizenship in the U.S., as well as the theories of the grotesque by such early twentieth century figures as Mikhail Bakhtin and Kenneth Burke, to consider the various ways that the comic grotesque was used as a form of sociopolitical activation. The comic grotesque not only served as a metaphorical tool, I argue, but also as a means of challenging viewers\u27 ideological foundations through somatic forms of engagement. At the same time, artists also utilized grotesque racial and gender stereotypes, in the process justifying and reaffirming racial prejudices. This project also situates these works within broader traditions of the comic grotesque that may be traced back to the early modern period, particularly as a tool of critique employed by such artists as British eighteenth-century caricaturist James Gilray, French nineteenth- century artist Honoré Daumier, and U.S. nineteenth century graphic satirist Thomas Nast

SuperNova: Performing Race, Hybridity and Expanding the Geographical Imagination

This thesis attempts to explore the many socio-political, temporal and spatial factors that contribute to the formation of cultural identity. Through my video work, SuperNova, I examine how race is performed and the discursive structures that contribute to the process of racialization. The core question that is central to this thesis is how race is performed and the potential benefits and drawbacks of this performance. In chapter one, I explore how whiteness is performed and how racial hierarchies are maintained through performance. I critique the Aryan race discourse that is a part pf Iranian nationalist discourse of identity. In chapter two, I examine ethnic performances in the western art market and cultural institutions. I review several art stars and memoir writers from the near east that employ neo-orientalist aesthetics to appeal to the western voyeur. In chapter three, I introduce the possibility of new spatial dimensions and perspectives that become available to the hybrid subject. I introduce my concept my limbo logic and the emancipatory potential of this strategy. Additionally, I explore the possibilities of a futuristic narrative through alien subjectivity and I aim to contribute to ethno-futuristic discourses, scholarship and cultural production

Black and White and Read in Profile: The Silhouette as Race Manirhetoric in Flannery O\u27Connor and Kara Walker

ABSTRACT My research project, in fulfillment of the requirements for the dissertation in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design, utilizes the schema or trope of the silhouette as a binding metaphor for black/white race relationships in America. Specifically, I argue that there is no better model for examining social interactions between the races than the back- and fore-grounding that is transacted through this primarily visual--but also verbal and oral--technique of profiling and outlining. This is particularly true given its origins in discriminatory practice, dating as far back as the literary iconismos and characterismos used to categorize Greek and Roman slaves, and the ethnic taxonomies perpetuated with Johann Kaspar Lavater\u27s Essays on Physiognomy. In locating the silhouette as a major trope in the discourses on race, I am adding to the rhetorical lexicon by coining the term manirhetorical, and applying it to illustrate the unique and adaptive features of the silhouette--its suitability to operate through various media and to accommodate multiple tasks. Thus, I examine the manirhetorical practices of two artists, one primarily literary--Flannery O\u27Connor--whose principled positioning in the Southern gothic tradition of grotesque literature comports accurately with the sense of privilege and entitlement that is examined in a focused way in the field of Whiteness Studies. The other artist considered in this study--Kara Walker--is primarily a visual rhetorical virtuoso, whose works with the silhouette are used to both develop and demonstrate her racial and feminist ethos. Both artists perform the recuperation and re/appropriation of the silhouette as manirhetorical trope of critique in the \u27signifyin\u27\u27 tradition described by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Both artists make multiple uses of the silhouette as verbal and visual representations for race relations, and for their accordant power dynamics--and in the process perform racial profiling. My study has application for writing and other across-the-curriculum programs, as well as for theme-based and engaged learning models. This work involves multimedia as well as inter- and transdisciplinary content and methodologies

Dating_MissRepresentation.Com: Black Women\u27s Lived Love-Hate Relationship With Online Dating

The increased use of online dating sites has further encouraged corporations’ attempts to capitalize on these mate-seeking trends. Match.com, eHarmony, and OkCupid are primary competitors in a growing market of individuals seeking out potential romantic partners. They offer several mainstream dating options as well as niche-dating sites. Similar to society at large where dating still occurs offline, scholars have revealed that racial hierarchies exist within various online platforms. As such, the roles of gender and ethnicity in online dating environments merit study. Specifically, the experiences of Black women who use Internet dating sites, a virtually unexplored demographic, form the basis of this dissertation. This study consisted of 16 interviews and a demographic survey, which were used to examine Black women’s online dating experiences from their perspectives to determine whether or not online dating sites are productive, love-seeking spaces. Data analysis was conducted utilizing a Google Form survey to collect demographic data and NVivo 11 qualitative software to help generate themes that guided analysis. Themes that emerged included: negative and positive perceptions from men; physical and non-physical attributes participants possessed that men found attractive; whether or not men’s perceptions impacted interview participants’ success or failure in online dating, and whether or not participants viewed their online dating experiences to be in line with those of other Black women. Participants discussed how perceptions from men online influenced their racially-gendered online dating experience

Hell on Earth: An exploration into what drives evil

Evil abounds. Even the most cursory glance at the news yields harsh headlines about bombings, school shootings, acid attacks, murder, rape, sex slavery, torture, and the occasional mass genocide. The 20th century alone featured roughly 135 million military and civilian deaths due to war and democide (White & Pinker, 2013). Recently, a cultural narrative has emerged proselytizing that evil is an aberrant, caustic mutation of the otherwise unsullied human soul. Philosophers and sociologists, among others, contend that “civilization needs to believe that it does not have an inhumane or barbaric side, leading members of the mainstream to constantly project unacceptable feelings onto those they deem ‘barbarian…’” (Chudzik, 2016, p. 586). Such explanations provide a veneer of logic inviting enough to keep people existentially comfortable by relying on an externalized notion that cruel, violent, and inhumane people are always “out there,” rather than coiled dormant inside each individual. The persistence of lying, neglect, psychological abuse, and physical violence across both time and culture suggests that increasingly sophisticated and empirical conceptualizations of the forces driving evil are of particular importance to the counseling profession given our occupational obligation to help foster personal growth and bolster well-being, abilities inexorably rooted in a thorough familiarity of the human organism. This paper will examine how ordinary people can behave with extraordinary malevolence due to their innate biology, threats to their ego, the gradual disengagement of their moral compass, ideological blindness, situational pressures, and more. The ensuing examination and synthesis of the prevailing literature on evil will ideally function to provide interested clinicians an introductory guide for understanding the etiology of human darkness