Subtitle: Adventures in Technology pt. 2
So, after filming the mockery that is my video at Nikki's house last night, I came home and attempted to edit the various "clips" we had collected. After three hours of making a bigger mess than I had to begin with, something occurred to me: Some of my favorite film makers make some of the shittiest films--Jon Waters...Ed Wood...
So, rather than polish a turd...I think it fits what I want to do with this project to keep these videos choppy, disjointed, and jumpy. The other week in class, Jon and I had a very brief side conversation about one of the problems with new media forms of textual distribution revolving around market distribution, etc. Leading out of this, my very next concern is exactly what gets distributed over technologies such as the internet. For example: reallllllly bad home movies. Poorly conceived notions of social-construction. Unarticulated political rants...just for some examples. As a motif, I began to like this more and more for this mini-project.
The heart of my seminar paper is going to revolve around how the internet (and perhaps other technologies...digital cameras and camcorders...) have in some ways kicked open the doors and broken down some of the gates that keep fringe/outlaw/"subversive" ideas at bay. However, if I don't take a closer look at the concerns/dangers of these new technologies...I am only doing half of my job as a researcher.
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Works Cited/Secondary Texts
1990-1992: books banned in schools and libraries in the US:
1. Impressions Edited by Jack Booth et al.
2. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
5. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
6. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
7. Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
8. More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
9. The Witches by Roald Dahl
10. Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
11. Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
12. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
13. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
14. Blubber by Judy Blume
15. Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
16. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
18. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
19. Christine by Stephen King
20. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
21. Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
22. The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
23. Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
24. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
25. Night Chills by Dean Koontz
26. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
27. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
28. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
30. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
31. The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
32. The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
33. My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
34. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
35. Cujo by Stephen King
36. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
37. The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
38. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
39. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
40. Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
41. I Have to Go by Robert Munsch
42. Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
43. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. My House by Nikki Giovanni
46. Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
47. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
48. Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth
49. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
50. Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/most-banned.html
http://classiclit.about.com/od/bannedliteratur1/Banned_Books_Censorship.htm
(reference site asking for commentary on banned books)
http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2008/09/23/list-of-25-banned-books
http://degreedirectory.org/articles/25_Banned_Books_That_You_Should_Read_Today.html
(top 25 banned books you should read)
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“Howl”
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19132
Books seized, Ferlinghetti and Gisberg tried for obscenity
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6393328
(NPR looks back)
http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100083370
(Book review of Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression: CityLight’s involvement and what was gained from the obscenity trial)
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Dubliners introduction by Brenda Maddox: the curious publication history of the novel
Images:
Bookburning: taken from http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://isurvived.org/Pictures_Isurvived/Book-burning.gif
on 10/25/2008
Galileo on Trail: taken from http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://faithjustice.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/galileo_facing_the_roman_inquisition.jpg
on 10/25/08
Traffic Anarchy: taken from http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.graphicreflections.org/wp-content/uploads/traffic_anarchy.jpg
on 10/25/08
Lorem Ipsum: taken from http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.fontstock.net:83/images/Anarchy-Mono_big.jpg
on 10/25/08
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Song
"Room Without a Window" by Operation Ivy. From the cd _Energy_. 1989 Lookout! Records.
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Antagonizing Nikki and Courtney aside (I can do that whenever I want!)...this was a lot more fun than I expected, and I might add...I walked away with an extra piece of technology...woot!
Elliot
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1 comment:
I like your idea, and was sort of thinking about it from my own perspective. The kind of writing I do doesn't necessarily have a home in the traditional world of print, but that's not because its been banned by libraries. Instead, the audience my stuff addresses isn't typically going to go out and purchase the same material at the bookstore. I know this because I read the same kind of things I like to write, and I rarely go out and buy (or even find) it myself. Fans of non-televised comedy writing get their fix from the Internet, which is why people like John Hodgman--who do subversive, absurdist textual comedy in books--are so rare. And his success was aided by appearances on The Daily Show and his role as The PC in those Mac v. PC commercials.
So I like to see the Internet as a place where small audiences of niche subjects can read about the things the middle-man of the printing industry would make unprofitable. And "niche" in this case could even mean 100-200k people. One of the sites I write for has a daily audience of 600-700k, but we only put out one book (by a single author) a few years ago, and I'm not sure if we'll do any more. But I sure hope we do--I need to fake my way into non-magazine print one of these days.
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