Research Question

Deciding which route to take

one of the CoP themes (Politics, Society, Culture, History, Technology or Aesthetics) either broadly or focussing on a specific aspect (e.g. "gender" being a specific aspect of Society); and one specific graphic discipline (Typography / type design, Advertising / public awareness, Branding / logo design, Editorial, Design for screen or Print making).

From the options shown above, I decided that the theme I want to take further is Culture within Graphic Design. I then gave some thought as to what specific area of Design I would want to explore within my practical response. At the moment, I have been enjoying the editorial brief and so I will try to combine this with the cultural theme.


Notes from Brainstorm:

- Cultural awareness among the the advertising and publishing industry

- the need for cultural specific or culture neutral imagery is not just desirable, but imperative for real success
- Ronnie Lipton - Designing across cultures 
> "chasing away potential readers and customers just by the colours, images and layouts"

- Practical Investigation - culturally neutral publication design ?

- Growth of culture neutral design ? 
> Globalisation

- is there a specific editorial that benefits more/less from cultural sensitivity ?

- "Everyone everywhere is seeing print & broadcasting content that spans across borders - and cultures"

- "Designing across cultures takes you through the major cultural barriers"

- Growing global village, it becomes evermore important for graphic designers to successfully cross cultural borders

------------------------------------

- I now need to focus my aims on something more specific
> A specific editorial ? specific cultures ?

- Decide whether to talk more about culture specific design or whether I base my design on the ever growing need for cultural neutral 

Parody & Pastiche

Parody:

work that mimics in an absurd or ridiculous way the conventions and style of another work

Pastiche : 

Unlike Parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates. Pastiche is an example of eclecticism in art.


Pastiche - Jameson

> "the imitation of dead styles" p.17-18
> "increasing unavailability of the personal style" p.16
> "Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs"
>"Something which lends the text an extraordinary sense of deja vu and a peculiar familiarity"

Pastiche, according to Jameson, is the regurgitation of old styles combined to make a new one

Parody - 'Ulterior motives" - challenging the establishment through humour

Pastiche - "Speech is a dead language"

extracting signs from their original place in time.. and ultimately their meaning.

According to Jameson, parody has now been replaced in the modern world by pastiche, but pastiche lacks the political and or satirical viewpoint that parody has...

"Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique - But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives"

Parody - Hutcheon

> "Postmodernism is a fundamentally contradictory enterprise, its art forms use & abuse, install and then subvert convention in parodic ways" p.180
> "Postmodernism art offers a new model for mapping the borderline between art & the world" p.180
> "A dialog with the past" p.180
> Paraody - an imitation of a style or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect" 
> Modernist aestheticism p.181
> Foregrounds historical, social, ideological contexts p.183

Hutcheon talks about parody as if it is postmodernism, that postmodernist artists are creating a parody of modernism.

Hutcheon criticises Jameson's work because she believe's you need to have both parody and pastiche in order to create new ideas and move forward.



Task

Parody and pastiche are two different attitudes in the most basic sense. Parody is the art of taking something that has already been, been used, designed or even a particular style and then applying this in an ironic or even satirical fashion. Pastiche is more of a celebration, it is the art of recreating, mimicking or reproducing a past style from a previous era or stylistic period.

According to Jameson, the postmodern parody is a "blank parody" without any political bite. He goes on to say that parody has been replaced in the by pastiche, but pastiche lacks this political and or satirical viewpoint that parody has, "Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique - But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives". 

Hutcheon, on the other hand, talks about parody in a sense that it is postmodern, that postmodernist artists are creating a parody of modernism. It is an ironic re-reading or re-writing of previous art styles, and that post modern art relies on the idea of there being a modernist collective style before it for it to exist as a movement in the first place. The general idea of the extract being read here is that postmodernism is the parody in its own right as it is produced with a sense of mimicry and mocking of past styles with the intent of provoking a reaction and encouraging discourse. It exists with a "parodic relation to the art of the past" (L. Hutcheon 1989).

A prime example of parody in graphic design is this comical remake of a well known image during the war. "We can do it" is an American wartime propaganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost worker morale. This redesign is mimicking the original by changing the quote from something inspirational to something lazy and borderline sexist. The redesign also takes influence from artistic styles such as pop art and cartoons through the use of colour and shape. The redesign is aimed at the fast food industry and general negative impacts of it in modern society.

In contrast, an example of pastiche design would be something like the example on the left. This pop art-styled image tackles the problems of Male suicide and depression in the modern era. Instead of mocking previous styles and artists, the use of pop art is to be recognisable and to get the attention of people who may have not considered the growing issue previously.

Critical Analysis and triangulation of a given text

Method of Contextualising and Analysing...


- Look up context about author(s), time it was written, reasons for, explanations, background work, qualifications etc

- then analyse text... find key points and pair with quotes

- then find other relevant texts about same topic, by same author, about same author etc

^ thats the method to academic writing 


Visual and Other Pleasures

Mulvey. L (2009 [1975]) Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke

About Laura Mulvey

Mulvey is a British feminist theorist that has published essays on topics including feminism and the objectification of women in cinema. One of her most well known essays titled Visual and Other Pleasures helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytical framework.

Key Points 

- Scopophilia
- this essay looks at scopophilia in film and its audience
- how culture reflects society and its equalities
- women as object, almost incidental to the film
> "in herself the woman has not the slightest importance"
- active/male and passive/female - sexual imbalance
> pleasure on looking has been split between...."
- to-be-looked-at-ness


Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

Storey J (2006) Cultural theory and popular culture. Prentice hall, USA

Key Points

• Laura Mulvey
• view on popular films from feminist psychoanalysis 
• the ‘male gaze’
• image of women (i) object of male desire
• scopophilia - pleasure of looking, using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through site
• cinema produces two contradictory forms of visual pleasure
• first invites scopophilia
• second promotes narcissism
• Freudian terms, the separation is between pleasure of looking at another person as an erotic object and forming identification processes
• sexual imbalance - men look and women exhibit - both playing to and signifying male desire
• women crucial to pleasure of male gaze
• concludes that the pleasure of popular cinema must be destroyed on order to liberate women 

Stars and Audiences 

Storey J (1986[2006]) Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. 

Key Points 

• Spectatorship theory sees the moviegoer as an identity produced exclusively in how the organisation of looks construct a position which addresses members of the audience ??
• difficulty with theory - ‘spectator’ suggests cinema is only visual pleasure, ignoring the aural effects of film
• another difficulty - way on which spectatorship theory would cast the moviegoer as the passive product of meanings which are already determined onscreen ??
• moviegoers do respond actively as individuals producing a diversity of responses
• research into TV audiences has provided different ways of understanding viewers
• context of social relationships - e.g. those at work or in the family, are influential in how people view television
• In a family watching Rocky III, father identifies himself with Stallone with his role as a union representative at work and sees himself fighting for his family.
• identification is therefore seen to be the result of multiple social positions
• Spectatorship theory dominates readings of relationship between audiences to film stars.
• Laura Mulvey’s theory ^
• Classic narrative cinema continually organises looks which centre on a woman as spectacle
• spectators or moviegoers are positioned according to the pleasures of male desire
• although narrative films continually include looks directed at the male body and also looks between male characters
• Steve Cohan considers how the film constructs a look that eroticises William Holden’s body which is is contradicted by elements of the star’s image.Holdne’s character continually removes his shirt, whilst female cast each look at him erotically, objectifying male body
• Studlar’s account of masochism suggests how the image of the female star can represent a power found in performance which transforms the pleasure and control of the male gaze
• severe limitation of all spectatorship theory is that it hypothesises the positioning of moviegoers without researching if moviegoers occupy those positions

Triangulation and critical analysis 


In an extract I looked at of an essay first published in 1975, Laura Mulvey explains her theory behind scopophilia. This is a term to describe the act of looking at something in an erotic manor, in particular, evidence of this in film and its audience. One of the first points made demonstrates the difference between male and female roles in film, "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female" (Mulvey 2009 [1975]: 19). Mulvey's theory attacks the film industry by saying that the women's role in film is to be an object for which the audience and male actors to look at where as the male role is to look at the females in an erotic way, thus creating an imbalance in gender roles. This point is also made in another academic essay written by Mulvey and featured in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. In this essay, Mulvey argues that "men look and women exhibit 'to-be-looked-at-ness' - both playing to and signifying male desire" (Mulvey in Storey J (2006). This further proving Mulvey's point about gender inequality within the roles of actors/actresses in cinema. In her essay, Mulvey then goes on to explain how the objectification of women in films is almost incidental to the film plot itself, Budd Boetticher puts it as "in herself, the woman has not the slightest importance" (Boetticher in Mulvey 2009 [1975] : 20). Mulvey then goes on to talk about the source of the problem being that "women displayed as sexual objects is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to strip tease" (Mulvey 2009 [1975]: 19).