Commonplace Book

Curated by Raquel. In an unanticipated return to Tumblr, this digital archive contains bits and pieces related to ENGL708. Click on the images and GIFs for more information about them.

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Living and breathing while Black: Racial profiling and other acts of violence

Last week a young Black scholar at a Canadian conference was detained. Defending oneself against racial profiling has a detrimental impact on the health of racialized people.

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Memes in the Midst of Political Upheaval

Two years ago, my friend, Vicki Lee wrote an article about how memes are created and circulated to elucidate the current social and political climate.

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To consider the selfie as a singular image removed from the larger practice of sharing selfies is like approaching a magazine through one word in one issue. A selfie is a photo of the selfie form, the repetition of a repeated practice.

Jodi Dean, Images Without Viewers: Selfie Communism

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The term is blurring together and so are our outfit choices. Ella and Kylie are joining in on mine and @pinkcoatselfies’s pink aesthetic.

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The NBA, Toronto, and the Utopian Imaginary

“The Raptors’ Jurassic Park is a Racial Utopia” is a material example of the utopian that Web 2.0 espoused, but like the Internet, the culture of sports continues to be in negotiation and contention in discussions on race, masculinity, and sports.

[awesomenbamoments]

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In a historic win against the Milwaukee Bucks, the Toronto Raptors will be advancing to the NBA finals for the first time in franchise history. The team’s triumphant has been considered a win for the entire city, especially for those who have been following years of rebuilding, playoff losses, and a lot of almost. 

This GIF encompasses the parasocial bond between Raptors fans and its celebrity players, with Kyle Lowry being a prime example, as his expression not only signifies his own redemption but fans watching his 7 year journey leading to the NBA finals.

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Cancel Culture

“Everyone Is Canceled” looks at the implications of cancel culture and how it is linked to the ways that the attention economy is mobilized.

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Sad Girls, Sadness, and dodie’s Online Persona

Inspired by Theresa and I’s discussion on embodiment and its relationship to the online persona of YouTubers, Lauren Fournier’s discussion of how sad girls “use their body and privilege to speak about larger issues” (654) hearkens back to the identity that dodie has established on the platform as a sad, white female musician on YouTube.

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Ultimately, photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

[art--woonz]

[cynthiatingo]

If it’s true that we photograph the things that we are afraid to lose, then it’s saddening to think that maybe this generation, the so-called selfie generation, aren’t really just a bunch of narcissitic fools and attention seeking people, but rather a bunch of individuals afraid to lose themselves. Isn’t it disheartening? That in this age of technology and fast communication gateways, there are more and more individuals that capture their own photos to preserve and have memories of who they are.

cynthia go // The things We Are Afraid to Lose

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Interrogating Aesthetics on Instagram

Returning to the idea that selfies are gestural acts, as Jerry Saltz and Paul Frosh posit, I contend that this notion is tied to the ephemerality and aesthetic value that platforms such as Instagram provides its users. In a Visual Culture course, my friend, Justine Fajardo aimed to subvert the affordances of constructing an identity on Instagram; particularly, a well-ordered and beautified version of one’s self and interests.

Works Cited

Fajardo, Justine. “Bad Photos of Insta: Questioning Reality Through Photographic Binaries on Instagram.” WordPress, Ryerson University, 7 April 2018, http://visualculture.blog.ryerson.ca/bad-photos-of-insta-questioning-reality-through-photographic-binaries-on-instagram/.

Frosh, Paul. “The Gestural Image: The Selfie, Photography Theory, and Kinesthetic Sociability.” International Journal of Communication, vol. 9, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1607-1628. doi: 1932–8036/2015FEA0002.

Saltz, Jerry. “At Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie.” Vulture, New York Media, 26 January 2014, https://www.vulture.com/2014/01/history-of-the-selfie.html.

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Queer Visibility

Do representations of the self on Vine and Instagram reinforce dominant discourses or present counter discourses? 

Stefanie Duguay’s initial contention of Ruby Rose opening up numerous possibilities for queer visibility online is not fully unpacked as the analysis concludes that “Rose’s Instagram selfies tend to be highly self-presentational, aligning with dominant discourses glorifying beauty, youthfulness, and affluence” [which] “mute discourses of alternative gender identity and sexuality through desexualized, proper, and aesthetically appealing self-presentations” (10). In doing so, Duguay erases attempts of making queer subjectivities visible and reinforces dominant discourses of representations of the self.

[getyourcrystalmethod]

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Alice Marwick’s “Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy” examines the ways that ordinary, everyday people become microcelebrities. She focuses on how Instafamous personalities attain their status by flaunting luxurious products and presenting a manicured version of themselves.

I, on the other hand, look at how YouTube as a platform becomes an avenue in which users have the potential to become a microcelebrity. Weylie Hoang also known as ilikeweylie is an example of what Graeme Turner calls the accidental microcelebrity. Hoang’s “How to Put on a Tampon” is the video in which she gained attention from viewers on YouTube.

[nbagifstory]

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Considering the attention that Kawhi Leonard’s buzzer beater shot received—which allowed the Raptors to advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the second time in franchise history—people remixed the clip to heighten the suspense and the reactions of players from both teams.

Initial Thoughts: How can we think about the intersections of race, masculinity, and sports in its representation and dissemination in meme culture?

(via Tumblr)

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How to Look at a Polariod Camera

James Elkins’s How to Use Your Eyes follows John Berger’s Ways of Seeing by challenging readers to see more deeply and clearly. In each chapter, he writes a short rumination on how to see something that would generally go unobserved.

For an undergraduate Visual Culture course, we had been tasked to take up Elkins’s challenge—a fitting discussion in visuality, visual arts, and Barthes’s reflection on photography as a genre—which we have considered in the course.

(via HerCampus)

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Studies in Visual Cultures

John Berger’s Ways of Seeing attends to the treatment of visual culture and visual images as go-betweens in social transactions, as a repertoire of screen images or templates that structure our encounters with other human beings.