“The first issue of Oh Comely was published in 2010 and co-edited by Des Tan and Liz Bennett, with Rosanna Durham and Dani Lurie as art and music editors. Collectively the four worked as Adeline Media. Oh Comely publishes craft, DIY, creative non-fiction, photography and illustration, as well as reader submissions. In 2014, The Independent identified Oh Comely, alongside Delayed Gratification and Apartamento, as part of a change in magazine publishing led by younger editors launching print titles for a generation of readers raised on digital media. Iceberg Press announced their purchase of Oh Comely from Adeline Media in 2016.”

– https://en.everybodywiki.com/Oh_Comely_(magazine)

Oh is about new ways of looking inside ourselves and out at the world – http://ohcomely.co.uk/magazine

• bi monthly publishing
• Made in London
• Set up by 3 people who previously worked in big media industries

Iceberg press

• Iceberg press produces oh comely and the simple things magazines

“It’s all about the audience.

Chase the work, not the money.

Compromise isn’t our friend.

We will always make time for ideas.

We are stronger when we work with others.

We want good people to work in a good place.

Every year we will help a cause that matters.

We believe in a thing called Print.“

-http://www.icebergpress.co.uk/about-us

Lisa Sykes:

-Editorial

-Used to edit national news stand magazines

-Moved on to work at the Sunday times before working for country living magazine

-Lisa then spent further stints at Hearst Magazines UK, working as Deputy Editor of Coast Magazine, as a senior editor on Good Housekeeping, and as Editor of Prima, one of the largest circulating women’s titles in the UK. 

-She joined The Simple Things as Editor in November 2013

David Parker:

-David Parker is a highly successful publisher with a track record of growing brands and working every avenue and margin in the business. He published three of the largest magazine brands in the UK: Country Living, Prima and House Beautiful, alongside AllAboutYou.com, a website with over one million unique users every month.

Narrative

Theme space and time

Story-

Themes- Death (the murder of john G), forgetfulness (short term memory condition), confusion, Betrayal (murder and rape of the main characters wife), truth(facts)

Meaning-

Todorov- Tri part narrative

Story begins with a climax acting as a hook to interest the audience then reverts back to an equilibrium

Structure is not linear which disagrees with Freytag’s analysis of structure (5 part structure) as well as todorov’s (3 part structure)

The present is shown in black and white and the past is in colour

the unconventional oder of the scenes mirrors the confusion within the main character

Radical

Propp’s character theory

1. Hero- Leonard
2. Helper- Natalie
3. Princess- Leonards wife
4. Villain- John/ Teddy
5. Victim- Leonards wife, Leonard (victim of his condition)
6. Dispatcher
7. Father
8. False Hero

Stock characters, operate in ‘spheres of action’

Levi-Strausse binary oppositions

Oppositions in momento- Leonard vs everyone without his condition, Past vs present, good (leonard) vs bad (teddy)

Seymour Chatman- satellites (embellishments) and kernels (key moments)

kernels- Teddy’s murder, Leonard’s wife’s murder, jimmy’s murder,

Satellites- Burning his wife’s things, drinking spit beer,

Ronald Barthes- proairetic and hermeneutic codes

Moral code of the film:

Flashback

parallel narratives

light and shade

Ellipsis

Elision

Post modernism

‘The pleasure is finding out what is going to happen next’- self referenial film

‘can’t remember to forget you’

complicated, fragmentary but connected

Pastiche- detective story

Fragmented identity construction- These days we have more than one identity based on which homogeneous groups we are with at the time

This is seen in Momento as Leonard give people the chance to be someone completely different as he doesn’t remember who they were before. So, throughout the movie as we see more and more sequences and learn who each character really is. All characters in Momento are alienated individuals as they’re ever settled in one place with the same people.

Post modern culture- consumerism

We see consumerism in Momento with Sammy Jenkins as he doesn’t receive human connection or the benefit with the doubt. The insurance company ‘win’ and refuse to give him money

-A way of understanding the world/ a philosophy

– an approach towards understanding, knowledge, life, being, art, technology, culture, sociology, philosophy, politics and history in that it often refers to and often copies other things in order to understand itself.

Intertextuality

-When one text references another

– ‘preoccupation with visual style’ – Shuker

-We find it hard to distinguish fiction from reality

Intertextuality=  signs only have meaning in reference to other signs and that meaning is therefore a complex process of decoding/encoding with individuals both taking and creating meaning in the process of reading texts

Bricolage = the rearrangment and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning

Surface and style over substance

‘In a postmodern world, surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture‘ (Strinati: 234)

-If post modern culture is focused more on the style and surface over substance there is a problem with culture

Postmodernism context

Richard Hoggart noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘neighborhood lives’ (everything and everything are extremely near)

• We don’t make anything anymore we just consume (characterized by consumption more than production)

Fragmentary consumption

– separating, splitting up and dividing previously homogeneous groups such as, friends, the family, the neighborhood, the local community, the town, the county, the country

–Fragmentary identities= work identity, social identity, family identity 

1. Pastiche = a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist
2. Parody = a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony
3. Bricolage = the rearrangment and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning
4. Intertextuality=  signs only have meaning in reference to other signs and that meaning is therefore a complex process of decoding/encoding with individuals both taking and creating meaning in the process of reading texts
5. Metanarrative=  a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience, or knowledge
6. Hyperreality= an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality
7. Simulacrum= an image or representation of someone or something
8. Conumerist Society= one in which people devote a great deal of time, energy, resources and thought to “consuming”
9. Fragmentary Identities = the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.
10. Implosion= a sudden failure or collapse of an organization or system
11. cultural appropriation=  the adoption of an element or elements of one culture by members of another culture
12. Reflexivity= the examination of one’s own beliefs, judgments and practices…reflexivity is about what we do with this knowledge.

Letter to the free

Q1:How can you apply the concept of Orientalism to Common’s Letter to the Free?

Orientalism is a theory which suggests how people from the west view those from the east which involves stereotyping, prejudges and racism.

This has many similarities to the relationship between black and white which Common emphasises through both video and lyrics. The video and lyrics both show a pejorative view on stereotyping

Q2: Can you apply Fanon’s 3 phase plan of action to this music video?

The setting of a prison is showing Common’s recognition of where black people originated. His lyrics show his idea of being ‘the other’ ‘of having black and brown bodies fill them’ working round the idea of the pronoun ‘them’

Q3: How is the audience called / addressed / hailed (interpellated)? Use examples from both the lyrics and the visual grammar (shot, edit, mise-en-scene) to show how audiences are drawn into a specific subject position / ideological framework?

Ghost town

• Q1: Where can you identify ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’ in this music video?

-Hybridity= A cross between two races and cultures

-Ambiguity= Open to more than one interpretation

-Cultural poly valency= Being part of more than one culture

Hybridity and cultural polyvalency are shown in the genre of the music. The specials was a two tone band who produced two tone music (a mix between ska and punk music). They are also shown through the different ethnicities of the band themselves.

• Q2: How does this text apply to Fanon’s 3 phase plan of action?

• Q3: How is the audience called / addressed / hailed (interpellation)? Use examples from both the lyrics and the visual grammar (shot, edit, mise-en-scene) to show how audiences are drawn into a specific subject position / ideological framework?

In ghost town the lyrics, genre of the piece and the mise en scene all mirror each other and create a sense of boredom

Orientalism – Edward Said

” the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism “

‘an economic system like a nation or a religion, lives not by bread alone, but by beliefs, visions, daydreams as well, and these may be no less vital to it for being erroneous’

‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘

we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves.’– Jacques Lacan

ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpellation’ -Louis Althusser

‘Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way to ‘recruit’ subjects among individuals . . . through the very precise operation that we call interpellation or hailing. ‘

Ideological state apparatus (ISA), is a theoretical concept developed by French philosopher which is used to describe the way in which structures of civic society . (society is structured to keep you in your place)

interpellation is the way in which your subject identity is formed and which, more often than not, corresponds to the dominant ideology.

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

• power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture
• Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others

Syncretism, double consciousness & hybridisation- Paul Gilroy

Paul Gilroy is insistent that ‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’

-Happens at a structural and textual level

Toril Moi’s set of definitions:

Feminist- a political position

Feminine- culturally defined characteristics

Female- a matter of biology

Laura Mulvey

She wrote an essay called ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’

She talks about the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media.

‘pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female‘

Female representations are constructed around male ideology

Scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ )- Natural pleasure in looking

fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘)

Jacques Lacan

This mirror moment- highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen (the first time you see yourself in a mirror and recognise the reflection as yourself)

Laura Mulvey uses this theory to suggest that when we watch other people in the media and recognise them as something like our self ‘a complex process of likeness and difference

Raunch culture

Raunch culture is ‘a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars – the conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘

exploitation vs empowerment 

Intersectionality: Queer theory

Butler suggests that gender is fluid, changeable, plural a set of categories to be played out and performed by individual subjects in individual moments in time and space

Van Zoonen and Hook

Lisbet Van Zoonen highlights the idea that the concept of ‘woman’ is not a homogenous, collective noun. That students need to be aware of the differences between women, that ‘gender is not the defining quality alone for women, and intersects with race, sexuality and class.’ 

Bell hook advocates media literacy, the need to engage with popular culture to understand class struggle, domination, renegotiation and revolution