Chasing Dragons

Newcastle University Launches World Politics and Popular Culture MA Degree

I am pleased to announce that Politics at Newcastle University will be launching a new MA degree in World Politics and Popular Culture for the 2010-11 academic year. Here is the course description:

• World Politics and Popular Culture is a distinctive interdisciplinary degree programme that examines the changing dynamics of contemporary international relations in the context of the politics of the various forces shaping and shaped by popular culture. The programme focuses on key theories, policies, and events in world politics in relation to both traditional and new media. You will learn not only how to think critically about how world politics is reflected or reproduced in popular culture, but also how the politics of popular culture shape the dynamics of world politics...

The programme entails three core modules in Politics (World Politics and Popular Culture, Theories and Approaches to the Study of Politics, and a Dissertation in World Politics and Popular Culture) with 4 optional modules that can be taken from politics, cultural studies, media studies, and film.

Admission requirements are an undergraduate degree from an accredited university with at least a 2.i result--the rough equivalent in North American systems would be a B average.

Please note that 'other qualifications or relevant professional experience may also satisfy the entrance requirements. Applicants whose first language is not English require IELTS 6.5, TOEFL 575 (paper-based) or 233 (computer-based), or equivalent.'

Information on how to apply can be found here. There is no formal deadline--apart from the start of classes at the end of September--but if you are applying from overseas, securing a student visa can take several weeks depending on your circumstances.

If you'd like to talk to someone to find out more about the World Politics and Popular Culture MA, you can contact  Matt Davies, whose tremendous efforts and vision saw this through from design to implementation.

I'm also happy to field any inquiries that you may have about the programme or pursuing a MA in politics in the UK.

Disclaimer: If there are any differences between information provided here and that contained on official Newcastle University web-pages, the latter should be viewed as the authoritative source.

Collage and photo credit: DerrickT (work displayed under a Creative Commons attribution license)

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 37

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Dudeism, the faith that abides in the Big Lebowski' by Ben Walters via guardian.co.uk

• 'Taki183 Interview' by Roger Gastman at ilovegraffiti.de (Taki183 was one of the progenitors of the emerging graffiti scene in New York during the early 1970s).

• Excellent discussions of media representations of the Haitian disaster, the role of photojournalism, and the political implications of both from bagnewsnotes, (notes on) politics, theory & photography, and duckrabbit.info

• 'Cricket Team Snub Reeks of Politics to Pakistanis' by Lydia Polgreen and Hari Kumar via nytimes.com

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: Adam_Baker

Bristol Residents to Vote on Street Art

Bristol City Council wants residents to vote on whether public murals painted on buildings and walls should be considered 'art' or graffiti. Those images voted to the status of art will be left while those deemed by public opinion to be graffiti will be removed by the council's clean street team. You can find out more about the policy, its potential upsides, its potential downsides, and the whole Bristol scene at bristolgraffiti.

If 'artistic merit', popularity, and decency are the pillars for decision-making and Bristol City Council's decision represents the leading edge in local governance, why is it only street art that is open for discussion?  Why not hold a vote to keep public spaces clear of advertising? For example, Sao Paulo turned into an advert free zone couple of year's back in order to cut back on 'visual pollution'. 

Many might welcome that kind of serenity, particularly those of us who now mark the decline of civilization with the appearance of Iggy Pop--the very epitome of recklessness--on billboards for car insurance that have popped up across the UK.

Funny how what counts as art is always up for discussion but the intrusion of capitalism into every aspect of our daily existence is not.

Photo credits: AussieDingo, tirafotos, and jcrakow

Obama + Joker + Socialism = FAIL

The internets are buzzing with opinions, laments, and general bru-hah-hah over the infamous 'Obama as the Joker' posters. Here are a few scattered thoughts on the phenomenon.

• Obama is cool.
• The Joker--as a fictional villain--is cool in a crazed psychopathic kind of way.
• Socialism, as form of social organization where social needs are prioritized over the desires of market forces, can be pretty cool too.

Yet, when they're all put together you get big time FAIL. Why?

First off, the poster makes no sense. Anyone who thinks Obama is a socialist is sadly mistaken; just look at who his economic advisers are--neoliberals the lot of them--and the advice he is taking on board! And, the Joker was not a socialist either. His persona in economic terms could be better described as 'predatory disaster capitalism'. What's the connection then? The answer is that there isn't one!

Second, the poster is a blatant rip-off of an image that appeared in Vanity Fair which depicted former President Bush as the Joker. Now to be fair, remixing and remashing is an accepted--and exciting--feature of contemporary art. But nicking satirical content is kind of lame. So it fails on the originality front too.

Third, the image is offensive. Beyond harking back to the white-face/black-face dynamics of American minstrelism, the image itself also draws upon historical fears rooted in ludicrous claims about the latent savagery within African American males. The drivers of this savagery were linked to biological traits as well as what were presented as stereotypical cultural practices like drug taking or voodoo. Thus, when I first saw this poster, I thought it may have been trying to channel the image of  Baron Samedi --as depicted above in the James Bond film Live and Let Die--before I thought of the Joker.

Finally, despite the way in which this is being presented in the media, I suspect that this is not some kind of grassroots street art happening being forwarded a bunch of hipsters who hate socialism and/or Obama. Rather, the slickness of the whole thing opens up the possibility that the 'Obama as the Joker' poster may be the result of an organized guerrilla marketing campaign by groups on the right who are trying to make conservatism 'cool'. If so, that would increase the 'epic-ness' of the failure astronomically because everyone knows that the first rule of being cool is not to appear to be trying to be cool.

So in the end, what are we left with? A cultural artifact that is racist, derivative, non-sensical, and insincere. Any similarity with the Republican policy platform for the past three decades then would be purely coincidental?

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 11

For your reading pleasure this weekend:

• a little bit of forgotten history from the Working Class Movement Library on Socialist Sunday Schools

• Time Magazine's  Top 10 Guerrilla Artists

• California's 'Green Rush'--at least someone other than baliffs are thriving in the current economy

• 'Energy Drinks and Violent Masculinity' from Sociological Images

Wherever you are, hope you have a great weekend!

Photo credit for 'path to relaxation...': muha...

Islamic Street Art?

Motivated from discovering that Taki 183--considered by some to be godfather of 'tagging'--has just launched his own website, I started searching around the web and stumbled upon aerosolarabic which showcases the street art of UK's Mohammed Ali.

Regardless of whether you agree with the politics conveyed in full, in part, or not at all, Mohammed Ali's work is really fresh and extremely powerful. As reported by the BBC, it's so powerful in fact that the Birmingham police felt the need to order one of his pieces to be painted over amid 'security' concerns. But what most interested me was his blog.

One of the questions driving the world politics-popular culture continuum research project that I am currently engaged in with two of my colleagues (Matt Davies and Simon Philpott) at Newcastle University  is 'how do cultural producers negotiate amongst desires to affect, entertain, and uphold ethical and political principles?'

The blog gives a rare glimpse into the considerations of an artist who must navigate through a series of difficult issues that arise from his own contested identity at the local level in Birmingham, at the national level within the UK, and globally. At a time when our affiliations are taken as a given in political discourses based on who we supposedly 'are', he does not fit neatly within the orthodox bandwidth of any community. Thus, I was struck that beyond his work, it may just be that Mohammed Ali is himself both the medium and the message regarding the challenges and complexities of contemporary politics and a reminder that our understandings of them should not be left to simple reductionisms.