HW 38 - Art Project Cool

Due Sunday, February 7, at 9pm -

Please post on your blog a video/image/textual version of an art project that integrates insight into cool. I encourage you to consider uploading a video you've made about cool at school. See here for inspiration.

Together with the digital representation of the art project please address, in a few paragraphs, the following questions.

1. What insights about cool does the art integrate? What do you hope people will realize or question from their encounter with your art?

2. Describe the process of making the project - how'd you do each step? If it was a group project, what did you contribute?
3. Does making art seem cool to you? Why or why not?

Another Update

Ok - finished the grading for the semester. I have to drop the obligatory martyred teacher pose and confess that I deeply enjoyed reading most of the papers and also some of the triangle partner helps.

It probably helped that this marked my discovery of Pandora radio but the main factors were the quality of insight and writing and openness that many of you brought to your papers. I started planning our next book ...

Three quick spelling suggestions and a cursing reminder:
1. Definitely not defiantly (although makes interesting clinking noise in some sentences)
2. Rite (as in ritual) not right - when it relates to passage or initiation
3: Loose like jeans. Lose a game. Losing - what the Jets did Sunday.

Swear Words Reminder: Your blogs contribute to the insight of a worldwide audience. Please avoid unnecessary and unhelpful drama by finding socially accepted substitutes.

The list of kind souls who made my grading load lighter, who will be rewarded with a chance to shine on the exam on Wednesday at 9am - promptly. If you're pretty sure you failed but don't find yourself on this list, email me by 9pm Tuesday, in case I made a mistake.

Ultimate chance for semester credit:

1. Brendan B
   
2. Remy C
   
3. Paul P
   
4. Richard S
   
5. Paola Y
   
6. Andrew C
   
7. Lauren C
   
8. Chelsea G
   
9. Beatrice H
   
10. Sam K
    
11. Cindy L
    
12. Amanda M
    
13. Jace C
    
14. Ean M
    
15. Suoinnorra R
    
16. Russell R
    
17. Kareem T
    
18. Abe T
    
19. Katherine V
    
20. Kevin W
    
21. Juliette B
    
22. Jessica C
    
23. Yasmin J
    
24. Anias J
    
25. Granit
    
26. Elias N
    
27. Jin O
    
28. Victor S
    

To improve quarter 2 grade (currently below 65) and thereby semester grade by 5 points:

1. Aja H
   
2. Gavin M
   
3. Dinorah Y
   
4. Jenise L
   
5. Sam R
6. Ellen S
   
7. Stephanie A
   
8. Chris R
   

Tips for the exam - absorb the blogs of Yu-Xi, John L, and myself. Special attention to films & related essays, unit-ending essays (both units), art projects, stories, etc. And don't forget the orientation I offered earlier.

HW 37 - Cool Paper Done Draft

Please post your 1000+ word analysis of cool by Monday 8:30am.

Suggestions:

• Use sections, short paragraphs, bold, and italic to add readibility
• Use personal connections to make it more real and engaging
  
• Proofread repeatedly
• If you can't totally figure out a daring idea - name the idea and try to articulate what you can and also articulate what you think you're missing
• Include questions
• Benefit and quote from students - especially your triangle partners' blogs and suggestions
• Analyze a particular angle - make a focus - don't just give a couple random thoughts about each of the 15 aspects of cool we've discovered
• Address issues of authenticity and performance
  
• Puzzle through paradoxes
• Let yourself enjoy thinking and writing - even if its hard and frustrating and more work than texting "wat up" to your friends
• Make a little works cited at the end, even if it isn't perfectly MLA style
  

HW 36 - Triangle Partner Help

For this assignment, due by Friday 8:30am, please help your triangle partners make progress on their cool papers.

Let's try a different format.

1. Please re-write each person's main-idea/big-insight/thesis so that it is vivider, clearer, sharper. If you don't think your version is an improvement try again. If its still not, offer it anyway, with an apology.
2. Then write a paragraph for the person's main idea - some evidence, a story, a strong connection, some implications, etc. Write it really well, so that the triangle partner could just quote the whole thing, or a small part, in her paper.
3. Offer a short list - of 2-5 items that the triangle partner should consider for her next draft - specific spelling and grammar issues can be only one item. Other items could include particular questions to address, problems with the argument, evidence to include, etc.

As usual leave the comments on the triangle partners' blogs, and copy and paste to your own (HW 36). As usual if your partner lets you down, encourage them to step up. If you're still left in the lurch, abandon him/her and find new temporary partners.

I think this will be more fun, and more blue-skinned, than our usual way.

Cool Example Paper - Rough Draft - 1070+ words

What Cool Is & Isn't

Cool - a red-lined velvet boxy prison that we gladly sentence ourselves to - and flamboyantly throw out the key. Cool is not the ineffable mystery - the je ne sais quoi - that people claim. Its not just our consumer choices. Cool is a synthesis of an interior heroic narrative and exterior social approval. Our worldview - our received cultural maps contain sections - the "hero's journey" and "how should we live" and "getting along well with others"- that dictate our approach to cool. These cultural maps are usually provided to us based on our position in society - gender, race, class, nationality, etc - through core cultural institutions - family, school, media.

Thus - our aspirations, preferences, and self-understanding are very often the product of a crude enactment of a particular demographic. The white young man growing up in the farmer family in western Kansas will (simplified and generalized) watch Fox with his parents and wear a baseball cap and vote Republican and admire George Bush and listen to country music and collect rifles. Obama will not be cool to him. A particular 'cool' sensibility is not primarily the unique gift of a self-expressing creative spirit - it is a consequence of demographics and associated life experiences, values, and marketing.

Goffman (1959) phrased the unfreedom of cool in another way. He theorized that the 'scenes' we participate gloop together into one or more 'characters' which form the core of our 'self'. We aspire to successful and 'natural' performance of these roles - and collect props and bits of costumes and preferences to sustain the character. Falling down jeans were valued by urban youth 2002-2010 not because of creative desires to share boxer designs - but because the falling down jeans served as an effective costume bit for the cartoony character that the urban youth had learned to enact and thus to see himself as - oppositional, preening, conformist, and crude. We're all close captioned (Fugazi).

Why Cool?

Why do we lock ourselves in these well-decorated prisons? I believe we can identify two primary reasons (an 'inner' and 'outer') - the inner compulsion to imprison ourselves is an attempt to escape a sense of meaningless floundering confusion. The outer compulsion is the need to present an attractive consistent 'face' to the demanding performances of the world.

We all know (to some extent) that we're going to die (though we deploy various shields against this knowledge). What are we going to do until then? What can offer our life a narrative thread - a sense of literary cohesion?

And we're surrounded by others in complex social arrangements that demand from us that who we were yesterday should be strongly related to who we will be tomorrow. After all, for everyone else, we're bit players in THEIR drama - and imagine how Rihanna would react if a back-up dancer seized the mic? People like us to play a predictable person - a character - a dependable role player. In fact - they require it - there's lots of penalties for people who can't or won't do that.

So Now What?

The percentage of gringo lefty public school teachers who have been vegetarian and listen to Radiohead and believe that the meaning of life has something to do with deeper understanding and voted for Obama is probably pretty high. Thrift store clothing and uncombed hair typify my subculture as well (and some role distance). Though tattoos have become common among my subculture my family brought me up fundamentally Apollonian and the lack of tattoos goes along with the lack of drug use and having already been done with college by the time body alteration started getting common. I've been shaped into a cartoony character in many ways - by my social position and consequent roles and the scenes I play in.

(An important point to consider - as Foucault pointed out later in his career - is that these social pressures don't just limit us, they also construct us - they produce us - if it weren't for family/school/media I wouldn't be a free and natural organic soul able to dance as I want to - I'd be dead or non-human. Cut the strings and the puppet doesn't dance free!)

So how should I integrate the understanding of myself as performer - as character? Should I experiment with other characters - start wearing falling down jeans and collect some rifles and buy a TV to watch Fox? Maybe that wouldn't be too bad an idea - why do people go overseas to be exchange students when they could experience different positionality and associated cultural cues around the block?

Of course the truth is that I don't want to watch Fox, I can't stand the idea of having to hold my pants up with my hand, it'd be illegal (and I'm glad about that) to start a rifle collection in NYC.

I want to navigate my life by my cultural map - including my sense of cool - my hero's journey, my sense of what is worth appreciation and admiration. The new segments of my map that I gain will come as a result of me using my existing map to find them. I think learning German is cool - and so is philosophy - so now I'm reading Schopenhauer and he might alter my map - but it will be an organic/evolutionary development (a stream of consciousness rather than the interruption of a seizure, an epiphany, a cult).

Does it devalue my life to realize that I'm also one of the ones that Shakespeare was describing? "But a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

But isn't this realization - that we're performing according to particular cultural scripts - the only chance we have to choose another performance, to be aware of the meaning of our actions, to see our own contradictions, to glimpse our own absurdity? Isn't self-awareness the goal of philosophy (from the ancient Greeks' to the Matrix - "know thyself")? Doesn't this insight help us live a little lighter - a little humorously, taking ourselves a little less desperately seriously?

Despite the benefits the realization of our performedness - our shapedness - our absurdity can make it hard (or rather reveal that it's hard) to figure out what matters, what we should do, who we should become.

HW 35 - Cool Paper Rough Draft

By Tuesday 9am please post a rough draft of a 2-4 page (1000+ words) analysis of cool. I strongly encourage you to pick a sharp and interesting angle/thesis/primary-target and also to cannibalize your own and others' best thoughts to build the paper.

Please see the outline assignment for more suggestions and information.

Punctuality is important, if you finish this draft by the due date it will enable your triangle partners to provide suggestions and feedback well before the final draft due date.

Semester Exam Information

The semester final exam provides an opportunity to earn a 65, and avoid credit recovery, to folks who can demonstrate mastery of course material despite failure to produce adequate work. It will be offered Wednesday the 27th at 9am in room 605.  

On Tuesday night, at the latest, a list of people who've earned the chance to take the exam will be posted on this blog.

To earn the 65 you need to achieve a 65% or higher on the multiple choice exam.

It will include material from the whole semester - drawn largely from the following three blogs:

Andy

John

YuXi

My theory is that we've learned a lot, and that much of our learning has been shared online and with each other. I don't think my thoughts are the only ones that matter. So to demonstrate mastery of the content, you need to be able to show that you understand and can apply the concepts and information from the course from my blog and two outstanding student blogs.

Sample questions:

Which of the following can be considered a prehistoric representation of reality?

a. photographs

b. block printed novel

c. language

d. telescope

Ryan, the protagonist of John's cool story, successfully inspires the physics class to;

a. learn

b. do their own experiments

c. dance

d. defy the teacher

The take home relevance of Merchants of Cool, according to YuXi, is that;

a. kids are stupid

b. kids aren't stupid

c. corporations are evil

d. corporations aren't evil

I invite you to submit questions (must include the multiple choice options) for possible inclusion in the exam.  So far, no one has done this, which strikes me as particularly strange since it would significantly improve your chances of passing.

Hair Resources

Hair and tattoos provide examples of the physical embodiment of positional images of cool. In other words they physically signify the specific "who" of the heroic personal narrative and also claim a certain audience for attention, approval, and connection (and another audience for defiance, controversy, etc.).

Hair chapter from the Body Social. Password protected with the four letter name of the unit.

NYT article about 4 year old suspended for long hair

HW 34 - The Cool Pose and Various Approaches to Life Rooted in Class, Race, Gender, Age, etc.

What's cool, as has been (too) often pointed out, varies from person to person and from culture to culture (the kind of first thought as last thought that thuds like a frog dropped from a tall building or a first thought that sparks other thoughts like a bushfire in Australia).

For instance the Central American kid who lives in East LA and joins a gang rather than the few afterschool opportunities - or a Black kid who lives in a housing project and buys Prada shoes rather than saving for college - or the Asian girl who spends hours reading manga and tattoo magazines instead of feminist books - or a white rich kid who decides to join a fraternity rather than a social justice club at college - or the immigrant boy who gets crossed up between wanting to make his parents proud and wanting to be cool at school and finally decides to become a doctor after all.

Are there patterns to our understanding of what's cool? Do some of us get cooler cools than others? Could coolness be a contributor of racial or class or gender marginalization? Does coolness compensate in some cases for worse job opportunities, earlier death, and higher suffering? Is coolness a consolation prize that marginalized peoples pilfer from the Cultural Carnival after they lose the ring toss for the better prizes?

How does our position in our culture determine what will look achievable and cool (heroic and attention-worthy) on our given cultural maps? How does our sense of cool further mineralize our current position in society?

To get at these questions please read the following pieces -
A poem by Gwendolyn Brooks (be sure to listen to the audio), an African-American poet

An op-ed piece by Orlando Patterson, a Harvard sociologist of African heritage
A brief summary of "Learning To Labor" by Paul Willis (also of African origin, according to contemporary scientific theories, but not in the way people usually mean, English white guy)

How does our enactment of cool for the audience of our immediate social circles (ala Goffman) lead us to our major life choices, limit our options, and imprison our bodies (ala Foucault's gaze)? Is coolness an important factor of the sometimes startling choices made by people in disadvantaged situations? Should we blame the people who make the choices or should we change the choices offered to them (or both or neither)? What paths is coolness leading us down, and should we get our maps out again, and maybe even try to make new maps?

Please write a 3-6 pararaph analysis of this phenomenon drawing on the texts above and your own observations and experience. Due Wednesday January 13 8:30am.

HW 33 - Cool Paper Outline

We've got 3 more days of Phase 3 of the Cool Unit - where you're being taught new information, concepts, and skills. After that we'll move to Phase 4 - where you attempt to integrate what you've learned into powerful and relevant insights and understanding. To help you prepare for the transition, please make up an outline of a cool paper. The most important parts:
a. a thesis or central idea
b. a collection of sharp insights and major points
c. a collection of evidence from previous assignments, class notes, and other research

The outline should be posted by 8:30am Monday, January 11. The rough draft of the paper should be posted by 8:30am Monday, January 18.

Your goal eventually will be to write a paper that explores one or more angles of coolness - it doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be, comprehensive. It should be colorful, lively, include your own insights and observations, as well as the most powerful insights you've collected from your brainstorming, interviews, stories, research, class sessions, readings, film clips, and guest speakers (Matt Fried and John Fanning).The paper willl end up ~2-4 pages in length.

For the outline you need to choose a thesis/central-idea to start with. You can change it later. I encourage you to identify your own angle/thesis. The following suggestions could be used, or could serve as orientation and inspiration.

1. If we realized X we would play the cool game a lot differently. We'd do more of Y and less of Z.

2. Coolness - as a heroic internal narrative and the successful command of attention and social significance - is a basic human need. We need to be cool - what are the best ways for us to do that, individually and collectively?

3. As Goffman (and maybe Shakespeare) argued, our sense of self is but a shadow of our character. And that character is merely an attempt to meaningful integrate our performances in the scenes we've been cast in. So, really to be cool, in the best sense, would be to become a director (or scriptwriter) rather than just an actor in the drama of our lives - as shown in the short stories we wrote. Otherwise we'd have to remember that a black sheep is still a sheep! Unfortunately, most characters' experience in institutions, families, and peer groups disables this power of transformation.

4. Coolness is a social disease whose etiology consists of consumerist attempt to adorn a basically meaningless/unfulfilling life. The cool epidemic can be ameliorated with proper public health measures such as banning advertising to children and schools systematically helping students form positive and powerful identities as distinct and admirable 'heros' rather than allowing them to remain as interchangeable seat-warmers who need to pierce themselves to seem interesting, as in the present situation. That requirement that schools help students become heroic would also mean greater interaction with the community, a focus on helping students develop unique areas of study, and support for experimentation and discovery.

5. Coolness is a tragic trap that appears to solve problems of meaning and significance but only worsens them, as demonstrated by Tolstoy and my own experience.

6. If we could become more aware of death and aging - by systematic visits to senior centers, hospitals, hospices, and funerals - by discussion and philosophy and theology - we could free ourselves from the triviality of the cool pose.

7. We're stuck in a culture of celebrity worship, status obsession, and pervasive mediocrity and meaninglessness. Frankly, a truly heroic life and abundant attention from others won't be available to 98% of people - since almost all of us are trapped in meaningless jobs in a meaningless rat race watching meaningless TV shows. Facebook friends, unique tattoos, new apps on your iPhone, clothes from a hip store with semi-nude workers, vacations to exotic places, and a big screen TV provide some relief from what would otherwise be a grey hopeless misery.

8. Different perspectives on cool reveal the different life chances available to sectors of our society. People aren't dumb - generally we'll take the coolest option we're offered.

HW 32 - Tattoos & The Presentation of the Self

Almost all of us want to be liked, admired, influential, attractive (external cool) and to feel significant and even heroic (internal cool).

We have developed many methods, as explored in HW 31, to mask, manipulate, costume, adorn, and aggrandize the self. These methods allow us to influence how we view ourselves and how others view us, which Goffman observed as core to human interaction, and to deal with our hollowing sense of meaninglessness.

Tattoos were previously associated, in the U.S., only with often-violent subcultures (sailors, soldiers, and gang-members), but hoppped and skipped into many other subcultures before finally jumping into the mainstream in the last 5 years - as seen in blogs by Sarah, Matthew, Brandon and on Miley Cyrus' skin, and in the gossip press.

Tattooing seems to me a potentially revealing aspect of "cool" for the following reasons;
1. Its 'hot' now.
2. Good example of cool paradox #2 - stand out while fitting in - edgy but common (tattoos in general are trendy, but yours is unique and the story behind it is meaningful and dramatizes some aspect of WHO YOU ARE that you will share with anyone who stands still or, better yet, you could mysteriously refuse to share something that you make others look at!).
3. "Self-expression" as "self-presentation" (inner to outer).
4. A powerful instance of the mind/body dichotomy in our culture - on one level the tattoo represents the inscribing of the inner on top of the outer (outer skin as mere sign space for the inner personality/narrative-self). But from another perspective it indicates the primacy of the body - the physical becomes the site of the "real" and "permanent" self. Interestingly, the process is the piercing of the outside layer from the outside to engrave an image from the inner mind (usually received from the outer world) that will shine through the outer layer. The discord between these two levels - outer-inner - provides some of the power of the act.
5. Death and, more broadly, impermanence shadow our sense of self. The tattoo might be seen as an attempt to claim permanence - it might not be a coincidence that one of the archetypal tattoos has been an anchor! I associate this desire for bold acts with lasting consequences with the immortality projects of the hero's quest.
6. Tattoos have, in various cultures, been associated with rites of passage, with performing particular roles, with claiming certain ranks, proclaiming particular self-concepts. These seem to be human needs! Shakespeare's quotes (Macbeth, As You Like It) come to mind. And how do these archetypal images get translated into the modern hero's journey? Tramp stamp on the 18th birthday! Some Norteamericanos choose tattoos from one or more 'exotic' cultures - does this demonstrate a perception of a lack of magical meaning in our culture?

A tattoo can be seen as a fairly durable signifier - a decoration or artistic alteration of the body. Some traditions hold that tattoos separate us from G-d - who made our bodies holy and wouldn't want for us to make them wholly or partly inked-holey. I think of the decision to tattoo oneself as related to the tagger's decision to spray-paint a tree or a wall - which reminds me of dogs peeing on fire-hydrants. And as the dog's best efforts are diluted by rain, the tattoo fades and shifts and wrinkles and eventually decomposes with the rest of us, which seems sort of reassuring, ultimately, to me.

Should we resist this trend - this puncturing of the flesh for self-expression in others eyes? What does tattooing signify to you? Is it heroic/artistic/bold-self-expression? Does a tattoo signify to you a brave individual challenging vanilla conformity or a sheep pushing forward for branding to pledge permanent allegiance to her particular flock? Why do so many people make so many different stories to explain basically the same action? Does NOT getting a tattoo also now become an attempt to become special? What do you think of the gendering of tattoos - the male tricep tatto and the female ankle tattoo? What does this perforating trend reveal about larger stippled processes of "cool" - of our desire to seem heroically special - an important actor in a meaningful drama?

Please write 3-6 paragraphs exploring tattooing as an instance of cool. You can use the questions directly above for inspiration, or make your own. You should examine several of the hyperlinks above. For maximum credit, as usual, please edit for flavor and sharpness as well as spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Include your own experience, the insights and experience of others you know, images, and outside research!

If you absolutely have no interest in tattoos, pick another external bodily modification - plastic surgery, hair extensions, piercings, make-up, lifts, high heels, body-building, etc.

Due Thursday January 7 at 9am.