When Whitman Sells Denim

Sorry for the recent scarcity of posts — the semester is winding down, and spare writing time will be pretty slim until mid-December. But in the meantime, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity…

In the 1930s, German cultural critic Walter Benjamin wrote an essay called “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”  In it, he talks about the loss of “aura” (authenticity, uniqueness) when art is reproduced and distributed en masse, appropriated by what fellow critic Theodore Adorno would call “the culture industry” for political or economic purposes, rather than aesthetic ones.

When that happens, has it ceased to be art (or literature)?

Bringing this debate up to the present, I recently came across an interesting discussion posted by Alexander Russo at This Week in Education: Poetry in Ads: Can We Live With It? and the related Levi’s Uses Rare Walt Whitman Recording To Sell Jeans. See video.

So does poetry lose its aura once it has been inculcated with a message for consumers?  I think there are several possible answers. On one hand, the advertisers are attempting to raise their product to the level of something artistic, powerfully American, and poetic. On the other hand, they are forging another link in the minds of consumers between art and consumption.

On one hand, they are acknowledging the power of the spoken word; on the other, they are, one could argue, debasing that power by employing a great poet to sell a pair of jeans. But then again, is this any different than hiring talented writers to inscribe Hallmark cards and magazine ads?

It’s worth considering. And to re-quote Seth Stevenson of Slate Magazine: “At least it’s not all about sex.”

Catching Shakespeare

Technology fascinates me, in part because I know relatively little about how it works, and I want to know more. The potential for responsible use of technology as a supplement to literary study is particularly interesting. The challenge, as I see it, is to keep technology in its proper place as a supplement, not a replacement for genuine thought.

That’s one reason I’ve chosen Plagiarism Software Finds a New Shakespeare Play by Gaelle Fauer in Time Magazine for the next ProfoundNet. Here’s a snippet:

Plagiarism-detection software was created with lazy, sneaky college students in mind — not the likes of William Shakespeare. Yet the software may have settled a centuries-old mystery over the authorship of an unattributed play from the late 1500s called The Reign of Edward III…. With a program called Pl@giarism, [Sir Brian Vickers, a literature professor at the University of London] detected 200 strings of three or more words in Edward III that matched phrases in Shakespeare’s other works.

As Vickers reminds readers, computers can’t do the work alone – human knowledge, skill, and judgment are still an integral part of the process. He says what he is hoping to do is “bring about a marriage between human reading and machine reading. If you distrust computers, you won’t advance at all; if you have just computers and know nothing about literature, you’re likely to go wrong as well.”

To me, this is a great example of using technology to advance the work of humans, rather than allowing technology to assume the role of primary agent and in the process rendering humans the subject of a passive sentence.

Thanks, Gaelle , for a thought-provoking article.

Videogames: Lit Undercover

Who wants to study mythology anymore?

Ancient literature? Who cares?

Well, as it turns out, videogame developers, and whether they know it or not, the masses who buy their games, care deeply. That’s one reason I’ve chosen “The Influence of Literature and Myth in Videogames” by Douglass Perry for the next ProfoundNet. Here’s a snippet:

But how exactly have myth and literature shaped the videogames we play today? Why do they matter? For developers, to improve the games of the future, they must understand the right and wrong of the present, and seek lessons from the past. The videogame medium isn’t an island unto itself. In fact, in a way, it’s a symbiotic creature that thrives on other entertainment successes; it’s also a shiny junkyard of rehashed, reshaped, and re-invented ideas re-forged for a powerful new medium still going through growing pains.

Perry points to the influence of Greek and Norse mythology on both literature and gaming. He mentions Tolkien, Lovecraft, Heinlein, and other writers of science fiction and fantasy, who were in turn influenced by mythology and the stories of the ancients.

“I would go as far to say that all literature and all entertainment are influenced by myth,” said Denis Dyack, head of Silicon Knights, the development team behind the original Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Eternal Darkness, and the upcoming Xbox 360 game, Too Human. “Whether people think so or not, basically, we are immersed in the mythologies in our culture. In some sense, mythology defines culture. It’s unavoidable. Any typical storyline almost always falls back to some mythology.”

Perry concludes that the eye-catching graphics and special effects are not enough anymore. Instead, he says games with the most “story and content” will go the farthest.

If he is correct, it is encouraging to see this medium reaching back and recognizing the depth of story and content literature can offer. It’s equally encouraging to see this unexpected demonstration that the value of great stories never grows old.

Thanks, Douglass, for a thought-provoking article.

AcademicHonesty.com

If you’ve read my blog before, you know that academic honesty is very important to me, both for the sake of developing personal integrity, and for the sake of recognizing and valuing the work of others.

The fluid, fluctuating nature of online communication makes it hard to consistently define and uphold academic honesty. It’s hard to define what respect of intellectual property looks like on a blog, for example, or a website, or a MySpace page.

Should all bloggers be required to use MLA citations when they quote a fellow blogger? Do permalinks make it acceptable to reproduce an entire post or article on your own site? What about images?

These questions can be overwhelming. One of the dangers of online communication is that too much information–and too little–can lead to carelessness and apathy. “No one told me I had to cite that image from Google Images. There’s no guide for quoting a website on another website, so I didn’t bother.”

Personal responsibility is out of vogue in our era. We like step-by-step instructions, and if the warning label “hot” isn’t on the cup of coffee, we have every right to legal restitution.

I am as guilty as the next person. In writing this blog, I have attempted to develop my own system of ethical use guidelines for quoting and “borrowing” others’ content. When I quote a blog or online article, I use the “blockquote” feature, and I include a permalink to the source. When I use an image to supplement my text, I link the image back to its source rather than to my site.

Is that the best way to do it? Probably not. Could I do more? Yes. Should I? I’m not sure. But am I freed of responsibility because there is no one right way to do it? Absolutely not.

Cracking down on Internet piracy and protecting copyrights have cost the writing, publishing, film making, and music industries enormous effort, and have done little to stem the flood. Smart people circumvent the system every day. Smart people will continue to find new ways around the new protections designed by other smart people.

The only way that real change will occur is when smart people take responsibility and choose to be honest people.

Unfortunately, if that sounds over-simplified, it is. Our postmodern view that all ethical systems are equal has made it easy to justify downloading pirated music (“Hey, I wasn’t the one who posted it!”) or leaving out the quotations marks once in a while (“It’s only Wikipedia; I could have written the same thing.”).

It’s a slippery spiral, isn’t it?

Relativism is only attractive until someone else’s ethical system interferes with us; until we write something and see it spread over the Web without our permission; until we cry “not fair” and no one listens.

So where do we go from here?

In blogging, just as much as in college classrooms, I think it is worth considering what honesty means, on what it is based, and how we erode it, or build it up, in each choice we make and webpage we open.

Teachers / Tools

Bullets-Charts-Graphs – click
Bullets-Charts-Graphs – click

If you went to college, even for a semester, you know what I’m talking about. It’s used in presentations. Professors use it in lectures. It’s not a bird, a plane, or superman (though some treat it as though it were) — it’s PowerPoint!

If students too often take shortcuts in their work, the lessons they have learned about “productivity” and “time management’ are no less relevant or applicable for professors. The Freakonomics blog even calls PowerPoint Another Form of Teacher Cheating.

The key, as with all technology, is for the teacher to use the tool, not to become a tool of the technology. Jeffrey R. Young writes this for The Chronicle of Higher Education, in When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom:

José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to “teach naked”—by which he means, sans machines.

More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather using it as a creative tool.

At the small liberal arts college I attended, teachers discouraged the use of PowerPoint for student presentations for the same reason Mr. Bowen cites. He’s correct when he says, “When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors [instead of a moving PowerPoint].”

That’s not to say challenging debates and a moving PowerPoint can’t both be in the classroom, but if one must take priority, it should be the former. Like watching television, viewing a PowerPoint is an essentially passive activity. It lacks the engagement that assists with deep learning and memory.

No single group is to blame. Lest we place an unfair burden solely on the shoulders of teachers, it is necessary to remember that there is student complicity in techno-rich, interaction-poor education. Young points out,

The biggest resistance to Mr. Bowen’s ideas has come from students, some of whom have groused about taking a more active role during those 50-minute class periods. The lecture model is pretty comfortable for both students and professors, after all, and so fundamental change may be even harder than it initially seems…

The roots are there: we watch the movie instead of reading the book (or the Cliff’s Notes). We Tweet instead of writing letters; we text instead of making phone calls.

Abbreviation may be simpler, but that simplicity comes at the risk of divorcing communication from thought, discussion, and contemplation; and with them, wisdom.

Isn’t that the goal of higher education in the first place?

Easy Button for the Bard

Bt w8, wuz dat lyt n d wndw ovr der?
Itz d east, n Juliet S d sun.

Shakespeare in Text-Speak.

That day has come.

Shakespeare in text-speak may be funny. It may be a clever nod to pop culture. It may be a reminder that 16th century language is no stranger than 21st century language. But it is not Shakespeare.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all in favor of new ways to get students interested in great literature.  And as I’ve written before, I thoroughly enjoy a good parody or clever application of new technology to literature.

I do…as long as the point is still to draw students in to the original literature, to spark interest and encourage them to delve deeper. You might start a prospective chef-in-training with a boxed cake mix, but you certainly don’t stop there.

The subtitle of the original article is, “Bard’s language poses challenge for teachers.” Though I agree with some of the article’s points, I have to ask, when did “challenge” become a dirty word?

Yes, the language is unfamiliar and can be difficult. Yes, Shakespeare wrote for performance, not reading (another false step in the way the Bard is often taught). But is it impossible for a ninth or tenth grader to understand Romeo and Juliet as written? No. Is it hard work? Yes.

The easy button has become a familiar icon since its appearance in commercials for Staples. Perhaps too familiar. Though we laugh at the ad, we also act as though its logic is true. In doing so, we forget that there is no easy button for learning.

In the midst of widespread emphasis on self-esteem and self-help, we treat students as if they are helpless and incapable of meeting high expectations.

The same problem holds true in other subjects, not just literature, but when Shakespeare is reduced to “bt w8, wuz dat lyt n d wndw ovr der,” the effects of reductionism in education become a little clearer.

Must be all the light coming in d wndw.

Academic Journals in Old Age

Literary scholarship has come a long way in the past 200 years. In preparation for the masters program I’m starting this fall, I am currently reading Eagleton’s Literary Theory, which traces the movements of literary criticism and theory since the early 1900s.

Consistently, academic journals have fostered (and fomented) those developments.

That’s one reason I’ve chosen “Academic Journals in the ‘Network’ Economy” by Jordan Ballor for the next ProfoundNet. Here’s a snippet:

John Hartley, the founder and editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies [...] takes his experience as an editor to reflect on the current state of the scholarly journal amid the challenges and opportunities in the digital age.

Hartley opens his study, “Lament for a Lost Running Order? Obsolescence and Academic Journals,” by concluding that “the academic journal is obsolete,” at least as regards to its “form– especially the print journal.”

One could say the same about any timely, community-based writing. However, one feature of the “ivory tower syndrome” that afflicts literary scholarship is a dependence on academic journals for self-propagation. Like it or not, the future of print will have a profound impact on the way we read and teach literature and scholarship.

Hartley’s article comments further on this idea:

For now that it is available online, ‘users’ (no longer ‘readers’!) can search for what they want and ignore the journal as such altogether. This is presumably how most active researchers experience any journal – they are looking for articles (or less: quotations; data; references) relevant to a given topic, literature review, thesis etc. They encounter a journal online through its ‘content’ rather than its ‘form.’ The latter is irrelevant to them, and may as well not exist.

What is lost when form is shattered?

• Order. The editorial process of organizing articles in a logical pattern is ignored.
• Unity. The impact of cover, design, and image is separated from text.
• Context. Individual articles are skewered from the associated–either complementary or contrary–viewpoints in the field.
• Contemplation. The act of reading is no longer set apart from checking email, reading the news, or watching a video clip. Room for critical thought becomes scant.

Ballor concludes that “the complete digitization of journals and casting off the printed form ‘may reduce collegiate trust and fellow-feeling, increase individualist competitiveness, and inhibit innovation.’”

He doubts that journals will become entirely obsolete, and I tend to agree, but I do think we will see the gulf widen between academia and well-read, educated members of the non-academic community. That, in my mind, is one of the biggest losses of all.

Thanks, Jordan, for a thought-provoking post.

Twitter, Wit, and Elizabeth

To many, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Sidney seem as far removed from modern society as crème brûlée is from peanut butter and jelly.

A few conventions of modern society convince me to argue otherwise.

Like Twitter. Bear with me.

England in the late sixteenth century enjoyed “an impressive, widespread growth in literacy; an educational system that trained its students to be highly sensitive to rhetorical effects; a social and political taste for elaborate display…and a vibrant, restless intellectual culture” (Will in the World, Greenblatt).

What are the characteristics of the United States in the twenty-first century? More and more young adults attend college, creating if not a vibrant, then certainly a restless intellectual culture, particularly as more and more college graduates find themselves without a job that uses ingenuity or creativity.

One side effect, I think, is a re-awakening taste for wit in the social realm. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the newest social networking phenomenon is called tWITter.

The exchange of brief, one-sided dialogues has progressed from instant messenger to Facebook to texting and Twitter. Humor and wit are the name of the game. And it is a game. These media are ideally suited for banter: light, quick-witted one-upmanship.

One difference is the skill for which Elizabethan courtiers were known. “Courtiers were highly gifted at crafting and deciphering graceful words with double or triple meanings” (Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol.1) Their wordplay was born of cultural necessity. The upper classes were classically trained in rhetorical devices, and court intrigue demanded careful speech.

Perhaps the United States lacks both of those spurs to rhetorical training. Perhaps social networking is becoming more attention-seeking and self-serving. Perhaps, though, we are also returning to a simple enjoyment of language’s subtleties and possibilities.

And lest we fall too deeply in love with the PB&J to the exclusion of fine cuisine, I think we have to ask the question, are these phenomena unique to our society?

My answer? Not a bit.

Or should I say, not a whit.

Or a twhit.

Poets Go Tweet Tweet Tweet

I got interested in Twitter poetry while writing my last post and decided to check it out. Here are some results in true Twitter style (almost).

(Twitter Poetry, from Tom Watson in 2007)

I went looking for words to stitch together.  [...] I saw [Twitter] as a way to plumb the common mindset, to see what communal wisdom and beauty and insight the group of geeks could register…

(Twitter Poetry from NowPublic Blog in 2007)

Today I came across the first example I’ve seen of Twitter poetry.  Could twitter be the re-birth of the art?

(Twitter Poetry, from Home is Where You Hang Your @ in 2008)

I like the creative limitation that 140 characters gives you. In exchange, twitter gives you a whole new medium for your poetry…

(Join Us in Twitter Poetry from Servant of Chaos in 2009)

(Baracku: The Twitter Poetry Experiment for the Inauguration from Whose shoes are these anyway in 2009)

Baracku [...] is a way for poets, writers, artists and others to read the positive expressions of people participating in this poetic twitter stream for this historic moment.

(Twitter Poetry from Make Literature in 2009)

is a free Twitter application that lets you share your thoughts, feelings, views or ideas about anything in a poetic manner.

Isn’t it interesting. What do you think? Keep your eyes out for more of my thoughts on this topic later.

…all the literati on Baker street
love to hear the poets go tweet, tweet, tweet…

Twitterpoeted From Iran

For those who fear that new media is the beginning of the end of traditional literature, let’s take a “half-full” perspective for a moment. Although the popularization of authorship may bury the next great American novel under a slough of blogs, the Internet and technology can also transmit literature that might otherwise be lost.

That’s one reason I’ve chosen Poetry From Iran, One Tweet at a Time, by NPR’s Davar Iran Ardalan, for the next ProfoundNet. Here’s a snippet:

Persians are known for their poetry. So it is not surprising that as recent dramatic events have unfolded in Iran, so many Iranians who have been alerting the world have written poetically — even in their tweets.

At twenty-six, Parham Baghestani is an engineering student and Web developer from Isfahan. He’s also a poet. Living through the last few weeks of sometimes violent dissent in Iran, Baghestani has used Twitter to share his verses with the rest of the world. (In translation, from NPR).

If the world sees all these pictures, what are they going to say about Iran? I’ll let you know tomorrow!

A new sorrow has been added to my sorrow. The thought of darkness and this destruction.

My love has gone underground. The taste of night is nothing but awareness.

I am curious if someday the 140-word “Tweet” will become an accepted form of poetry unique to our generation, alongside the haiku and sonnet. What other characteristics might define it?  I think this is the subject for another post…

Thanks, Davar, for a thought-provoking post.