Academia – Page 3 – My Life, or Something Like It

Gendering History

If you’ve even dabbled into the discussion of gender and history, you’ve more than likely stumbled by a mention of a lack of female representation in the documented past. It’s something that’s come up in pretty much every course that deals with the past throughout university. Documentaion of women’s affect and even their presence in history is lacking because they just weren’t the ones who were writing it down.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Women were writing, and they were participating in documentation, but not quite as much as their male colleagues. Additionally, it was only usually women of power or money who had any time or ability to write anything at all. We see this even as early as with Sappho, the ancient Greek poet. She was a wealthy citizen, and as a result, had the privilege to leisure time and thus was able to write. While there are very few documented female voices in history, there are even fewer of the average women who would have lived alongside their much more represented male counterparts. Even when women may have written their perspective, carved their story, or have been celebrated in their time, historians have traditionally washed away female participation from the record. Anything which presents women as vocal individuals in their own right, in their own lens, detracts from the male domination narrative you see.

It’s not all that cut and dry, however, as there are plenty of women’s studies and history classes to teach the messiness of such a subject. Where we can tackle however, is something that we discussed in class this week, namely the male-washing of the Western genre. While industrialization allowed for more and more women to gain access to reading and writing, the legacy of their participation in the literary market would go overlooked.

As we discussed in class, the Western genre in its earliest days, when looking at the pulp magazines themselves, had high female engagement. Not just in reading either. Women were writing stories too. While scholarship on Westerns focused on literary sources, skewed towards male authors, the truth remained that the Western genre developed through simultaneous and mutual involvement in the genre. It’s no surprise that in the 1950s and 60s, eras desperately trying to embolden gender roles against an influx of new thinking, that scholarship would erase the presence of female participation. Naturally, it would seem to them, women would have come to the genre only for the romance. Women didn’t want to see the guns or action stories, nay (or perhaps neigh), they only wanted to read about stories where subservient (or perhaps wild-then-tamed) women fall in love with dominent men and start a new life in the West. They couldn’t possibly be interested in the same “men” stuff *insert chest bump here*.

Does my sarcasm read strong enough? It’s so incredibly infurating as an academic to look back and be faced with misled and unfounded historical scholarship. We are now taught to look at the entire picture. To preserve all that we can about a text or an artifact, in hopes that even if we can’t analyze the whole picture, someone, someday, might. When faced with situations like this, one cannot help but be infurated by the scholarship of dominant male authorities, which changed official analysis of history to fit their own goals. Nevermind that the female-driven/written pulps lasted longer than their guns-blazing counterparts. Nevermind that the blended magazines came first. Nevermind that women had any active role whatsoever.

I regret that I’m getting fired up about this more than I intended to, but it strike a chord with me. I have, thanks to my training through a very forward-thinking parent, I’ve always grated against imposed gender roles. Why should boys get all the fun stuff? Women have always been interested in things beyond romance and beautification, but because gender roles (albiet ever shifting) shame them for it, they either train themselves not to be interested, or find an excuse for something societally acceptable within them to like. It makes me hurt, not only for contemporary audiences and issues, but also for the women in history who have had their voices silenced or ignored–or worse yet, attributed to a male counterpart. There is a place for everyone in this analysis, in this field, and it’s up to us to go back and return life to those who we can find within these pages. To give back credit where it is due, and to change scholarship on history to better represent the truth of gender (and race) participation.

I’ve visually referenced Westworld twice in this post–a brilliant TV show (which if you haven’t watched it, stop, drop, and binge it all right now), created by the joint efforts of a male and a female, produced by a female, and containing an amazing cast of strong-willed, well rounded, and well-written female characters. In the sci-fi/western/drama category, it’s everything an inclusive audience should want, and it’s no wonder it was critically recieved accordingly. It deals with complex issues of romance, action, drama, abuse, artificial intelligence, ethics, free will, and consumerism (alongside so much else), against a backdrop of stunning visuals, breathtaking sets, and a moving score. It’s a show, for me, which proves that Westerns can be for everyone (well, except maybe not kids in this case). I can only imagine, that in the age of pulp magazines, a well written Western would have the same effect on its audience as Westworld has today. A good story need a blend of a variety of elements, and the best way to accomplish that would have been to incorporate blended perspectives and angles into a magazine.

If for nothing else, the lesson of male-washed Western genre scholarship calls for us to use a critical eye when looking at other pulp magazine genres, as well as literature more broadly. Just because it’s not obvious, or its been overwritten, doesn’t mean female voices aren’t there–that female participation isn’t there. Sometimes you just need to dig a little deeper, find meaning in the blank spaces, and help to try and uncover what history has tried to erase. We cannot hope to move foward in our own scholarship, if we continue to accept ingrained and perpetuated biases about the people we study.

The cycle has to end somewhere, why not with us?

The Good of the Many

After class this week, I was elated to receive our pulp magazine in the mail, timely and well-packaged. I slipped it carefully out of its protective sleeve of cardboard and plastic, before gently flipping through its pages. Hints of stories to read flashed before my eyes as I gingerly touched its fragile pages. Then it struck me, I needed to document this magazine–to scan its pages, and upload them to the PMP. While I had known this all along, I was suddenly disheartened. The well-preserved mag possessed a very deliberate spine that didn’t seem to want to give way, even to read it wide open. Conservation would be troublesome at best, and I feared that I would have to break the spine in order to scan it properly. What is lost in breaking the original so that a digital copy may live?

A very à propos question to be sure, following our discussions from this week. What is lost in the digital preservation of pulp magazines? What is gained? We spent a great deal of time analyzing the ways in which scholarship and individuals could benefit from a database like the PMP. For my MA thesis I spent a great deal of time looking at archaeological artifacts and 3D replicas. In order to do this, I analyzed the semantics and meaning-networks of ‘originals’ vs. their digital replicas. While my thesis was focused on actual material replicas, I briefly touched upon purely digital replicas as well. Mass-access, availability, and production were all benefits to such a phenomenon. While not going into the ethics of digital replication (mainly of cultural objects you may have no authority to duplicate), I came to the conclusion that the benefits of digital reproduction and preservation outweighed the costs, at least for educational purposes. Most relevant to our topic this week however, I found that meanings and that something extra held within an original artifact only has meaning because we give it meaning. While something can be argued for seeing ‘the real thing,’ many people would not know any different if presented a reliably produced replica. While the old must of a vintage pulp magazine may be hard to duplicate, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were propmasters who could come up a solid approximation for the layperson, which would be indistinguishable, save for perhaps having them side by side.

Suffice to say, there are dangers to certain kinds of object-replication. In the case of the PMP, and something that never occured to me before I held one in my hand, is the potential need to break the spine in order to accurately scan the magazine. In this way, the original is broken, is altered due to digitization. My research explored non-invasive digitization of artifacts, and as a result, this adds an entirely new element to such a study. Do the scales shift when the act of digitization destroys, or at least alters, the thing we’re trying to save? Does the good of the many [scholars] outweigh the needs of the few [magazines]?

FLASHFORGE_Flyer_FRONT — 3D Replica of the Winged Victory of Samothrace

I have to say I’m philosophically at a loss as to the most correct answer in this regard. My inner archaeologist wants me to preserve the original at all costs. That being said, my inner scholar would rather see it digitized before the original crumbles to dust. That’s the thing about paper objects versus stone tools or clay pots–they deteriorate so much faster, and are in so much more need of early digitization to preserve their integrity. It would seem to me that in this case, that Spock was more correct than Kirk at the end of The Wrath of Khan. Sacrificing the physical integrity of the original object for a prolonged digital life, feels as though it’s the right thing to do. The paper copy will ultimately fade and fall apart, even with perfect preservation. It will deteriorate. Pulps were not made to last after all–it’s a miracle we have as many as we do. A digital replica, at least we hope, will never fade beyond the moment the original is scanned. It can be transmitted, duplicated, and shared without fear of lost pages or damages. In an ideal world, one can save both the magazine and create a perfect replica, but I have yet to see if we can pull off a proper Kobayashi Maru. Or are we, like Starfleet officers in training, meant to accept defeat for the greater good?

It seems to me that it’s good our group chose sci-fi after all. It has so much to teach us.

That feel when…

You receive your 1936 Sci-Fi pulp fiction magazine in the mail at last.

With only minor (and careful) flipping through of the issue, I’m very excited to get engaged with it. I think we made a good choice.

Also, there’s a literal story about “gaslighting.” However, it’s quite literally about the history of Gas Lighters (by the looks of things). And let’s not forget the existence of a circa 1930’s science questionnaire. I’m hyped.

Ready to Party

Things got a little more lively this week as we started to really get into thinking about how to analyze pulp magazines. Class discussion was fruitful and I was very engaged with how much people pulled from the day’s readings. While we covered both Christine Bold’s introduction to The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture Vol. 6: U.S. Popular Print Culture 1860-1920 and the introduction to Mussell’s Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age, we spent the majority of our discussion working through an anatomical study of Popular Magazine, where people got really into things.

Something that came out of our discussions, which I really carries forward from my initial topic area last week, is the problematic history of pulp magazines. In class last week we discussed the origins of pulp magazines in Dime and Nickel magazines, which were predominantly of a “dangerous” and “sensational” variety, governed by a white and male master narrative.

bioshock_history_2 — One of the many areas where racial tensions are highlighted in an alternative history setting in *BioShock Infinite.*

Pulp magazines, coming out of this tradition, had to struggle to establish themselves as a quality source of reading material, away from the juvenility of the Dime mags. As we see in pulp magazines however, this was not entirely possible to get away from, as a lot of the master narrative elements continued. This is something that is picked up in BioShock Infinite, a game that explores issues of race and class extensively, mirroring issues of the pulp magazine era, while forcing us to analyze our own cultural perspectives (e.g. as explored more fully by Waypoint or HowManyPrincesses).

For now I’d like to hold off on the contemporary comparisons to pulps, and instead focus on the analysis of pulps themselves. As demonstrated by Bold, pulps historically fell into a low culture motif, despite their attempt to remove themselves from the Dime and Nickel days.

While this worked, somewhat, to elevate their cultural status, the dichotomous approach to culture remained a dominant force in their ‘place’ in the world — including in academic study. While ‘high’ culture is as much culture as ‘low’ culture, the social elites have continued to try to defame ‘low’ culture in order to keep social groups separate. This has been a problem for academic study in particular, as often ‘low’ cultural elements have trouble being studied in any depth–believed to be lacking any cultural relevance. Naturally, this is far from the truth.

With a large surge of literate Americans and ease of access to printing via the industrial revolution, pulp magazines became a tool of expression for the public at large. This was not without some sort of control however, that as much as pulps were avenues of expression for the non-elites (especially as more sub-genres developed), so too did they serve to normalize and establish a desirable master narrative of Americana. We saw this clearly when we performed an “anatomical study” on The Popular Magazine from December of 1908.

In this early pulp magazine we found a steady theme of adventure…but only so far. Quite frequently the stories in the magazine conveyed a sense that adventure can be found anywhere for the everyman–even just outside of the city. It is oriented towards this everyman, who is capable of reaching his own potential, if only he tries hard enough (read like traditional Americana or what). The advertisements (at this time) reinforce this theme, with promotions of becoming a better business man, family values, as well as patriotism and nationalism, naturally. This is quite literally laid out at the end of the magazine, where “A Chat With You” leads potential writers into how they should tailor their stories for the magazine. Underpinning these normative performances, we also see simplified and stereotypical representations of People of Colour and immigrants–quite often negative ones at that.

Finally, we took to buying our very own pulp magazines. Searching the e-racks of Ebay, we tried to find an authentic, interesting, and affordable magazine to call our own, and to document for the rest of the term. As a group, we readily decided on a sci-fi theme, as the stories they promised were sure to be entertaining, if only just to see how people saw the future. Luckily, we had a lot of potential options, and settled on a copy of “Amazing Stories” from the mid-1930’s. Sadly we weren’t able to get a synopsis of any of its contents but its cover alone was enough to draw us in. Some sort of squid people rolling people in a Christmas-ornament style orb–what isn’t to love? Here’s hoping its as interesting as its cover suggests–but wasn’t that the hope of all pulp cover art? To draw you in? Well, this one surely has us hooked, and luckily, it follows a nautical theme with “The Maelstrom of Atlantis.”

I’m ready to dive in.

Breaking into Pulp Reading

I have always been a fan of detective fiction, mystery, and sci-fi novels. This has extended to movies and video games that delve into these topics from a variety of levels. For me, pulp fiction magazines highlight some ways in which these genres came to be developed in a different, more easily digestible, way.

BioShock Infinite Ad — Advertisement from *BioShock* Infinite

In particular, some of my favourite games feature art, themes, and graphical styles based on the same styles seen in pulp magazines (BioShock series, Fallout, etc.), and there’s a

real movement towards narration or satire based on the themes originated in pulp. I would love to trace how some of these things are enacted and developed in pulp magazines, versus how they are manifest in video game contexts. I am curious to see if the tropes and imagery are blatantly pulled from these precursors, or if they are used and adapted to fit the motivations of the game. I know in many cases the themes are adapted, but I am sure there are places that are near recreations of pulp-styles. It’s also interesting to consider how pulp motifs play out in a video game setting, that is often the opposite of quick and digestible.

In considering this possibility, I spent a great deal of time pouring over various magazine covers from the Pulp Magazine Project (PMP), and doing a visual overview of various art and media messages found in the BioShock and Fallout series. It was of no surprise that there were a lot of similarities in advertising and message. There are a ton of background advertising stills, videos, and audio clips played throughout both the BioShock and Fallout universes–aimed at creating a very specific type of atmosphere. It is at once ‘nostalgic’ but also a little surreal as they both take what’s familiar (Art Deco, 1950’s suburbia, etc.) and twist them to fit the worlds they want to represent. We buy in because we recognize these cultural markers, but we are carried along by how those markers are shifted and inverted to show us entirely new and often self-reflexive perspectives.

One of the things that I enjoy so much about these worlds, and why I find them so important for informing my study of pulp magazines, is that the visual motifs used from these video games are derived quite deliberately from the eras that pulps come from. Not only do they play on nostalgia, but they outright present alternative history representations of the same visual style.

“[Developers] also [make] use of a game’s atmosphere to support narrative–the architecture of the cities, the ambient conversations of the citizens, the advertising of the time period” (Fast Company).

In developing BioShock Infinite, the third BioShock in the series, creator Ken Levine “…was drawn to the time between the Civil War and World War I, a time of scientific progress that saw the development of electricity and the telephone but also religious belief and nationalism. Specifically, he cited, ‘Devil in the White City, which is a great book about the 1893 World’s Fair, and then certain movies give you a feel–There Will Be Blood gave me the weird vibe of revivalism and frontierism'” (Fast Company). As Levine highlights, movies like There Will Be Blood or tv shows like Downton Abbey sensationalize and stylize the eras these pulp magazines represent. They create a feeling–a feeling that I experience simply by looking at the real covers in the PMP. I’m curious if that feeling is because of the pre-conceived cultural understandings I have of those eras, or if any impression is at all factual.

From a more technical angle, I’ve always been interested in typography and layout in magazines, print media, and advertising of all kinds. I would also be interested in exploring how pulp developed their genre visually and typographically. What threads exist between sub-genres, and how do those tie into larger visual symbols.

While we ultimately discussed in class that advertising could not necessarily be tied to a sub-genre of pulp magazine due to mass-sales of advertising space across a publishing company, it remains interesting to see what kinds of advertising entered into pulps at all. What did companies think the readers of pulp wanted to buy? What did they want them to buy? What can we learn from their sales attempts (including how advertisements are placed throughout a magazine, etc.).

I’m excited to find out.

Object Meaning: What your Stuff is Saying About You, and Why it Matters.

I challenge you to think critically the next time you look at your stuff. Things are not as simple as they seem. Everything is connected in a wide array of networks that code and translate the world around us. So when you set down your venti peppermint mocha from Starbucks next to your MacBook Air and adjust your wide-rimmed black glasses, be aware that you are sending out a number of signals to people around you about who you are, what you like, and your socio-economic status—or at least an impression of those things, whether or not any of them are actually true.

And that’s perhaps the most important part. As much as our stuff sends out a lot of signals about who we are and what we believe in, we need to be aware that those signals only tell us part of the story. These networks of understanding are imprinted on us from very early ages and are highly culturally specific. We spend our childhoods observing the world around us, learning how to speak the language(s) of our cultures in words, but also in the things we surround ourselves with.

So what if then, you find yourself sitting at Starbucks, surrounded with your paraphernalia and happen to read on the internet some blog post (much like this one) that details Starbucks stereotypical patrons. You skim the list and despite fitting the criteria of many of the people listed, you don’t fully click with any of the pictures they paint. Why is that you ask? Because you aren’t white and all these stereotypes are.

We often get so lost in the messages being transmitted around us via objects and words that we forget to read between the lines of our cultural products and see some of the messages that hide themselves in plain sight.

Take for example the phenomena we’ve seen the past few years take place on the internet about Halloween costumes. Started by a student group out of Ohio University, a campaign begun that attempted to bring down, or at least raise awareness about the insensitivity of, race or culture-based Halloween costumes.

Most of the comments and blogs posted about this campaign try to claim that people are just becoming too sensitive. That being PC has run away with itself, leaving nothing left for us to have fun with. This of course is far from the truth of what’s actually going on. These comments neglect these very same networks of understanding that permeate our cultural interactions and ignore the crossing of them that is taking place on the hem of these costumes.

In truth, the whole thing really isn’t about the costumes. When we take a deeper look at what’s happening behind this campaign and its responses, we find the interplay between social, cultural, political, racial, and historical contexts all thanks to different understandings of stuff and cultural identity.

During Halloween people generally believe that they should be able to dress up as whatever they want. In recent years these costumes have changed to incorporate more than your traditional ghouls and goblins from B reel horror movies—adding into the mix pop culture icons alongside these problematic racial guises. While inversions and dressing up as something else is nothing new—with ties dating back to Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages—the intersections of these disjunctive ideologies, contexts, and histories are bringing out latent race tensions within the population.

In all the posters promoted by the campaign, the offenders are always white and the wronged parties come from traditionally minority ethnic or cultural groups. The claims made against cultural adoption also follow this pattern. You’ll never find an official campaign poster showing a POC dressed up as another POC. All we find are pictures of white people metaphorically rubbing their superiority in the faces of subjugated populations, or so we’re made to believe.

In her blog post “That’s Racist,” Alex Felipe counters most of the problems raised by this debate quite succinctly:

“I don’t understand why the call is basically for White people NOT to do it Full stop. I mean why is it that we see costumes based on traditional dress racist? The usual refrain is: ‘we are a culture, not a costume.’ But if this is the case, would it not also be proper for Whites to decry costumes based on horned Vikings…or medieval knights? Now the answer to my question is obvious. It’s not the same because of the disparity in power relations.”

She continues, “When we people of colour see these costumes we are reminded of our subordinate place in society. We are reminded that our countries of origin were ravaged by colonialism, and are still exploited through modern imperialism…why do we stop at simply calling out the costume…If the costume is a symbol that offends…why do we stop at the symbol and not continue onto what it symbolizes?”

There’s no consensus on how we can deal with this situation but as an anthropologically inclined blog, my goal has been to try and draw your attention to our tricks of the trade—context. We need to be aware of how our stuff affects how we understand and live in the world not just for the good of ourselves, but also in how we can do better for others. We are limited in how we interpret the world by our own personal histories and cultures but in taking charge of that information we can start to have a dialogue with others in order to learn how to see each other’s side of the story.

Keep it all in mind, the next time you take a sip of your coffee or go to buy your next Halloween costume. It’s not all just black and white, right and wrong—the whole web is much more complicated and varied than we think. The phone or computer you’re reading this on, even now, probably says something about you just as pointedly as the status updates you post on Twitter or Facebook. And not all of it is necessarily good, so it’s probably best to keep it in check. Be aware, be conscious, and don’t let your things say more about you than your words or actions. No one wants to be reduced to what they can only see on the surface.