Alive and Lifelike: Theatricality and Animation (through Duck Amuck)

This article analyses the digital literary criticism, which got rid of the obsession of academic Babylon in the field of literary criticism in the 1980s and revealed a more diverse field of voice, inspiring endless possibilities of variation in the transformative stage of criticism. The advent of the Internet has created a participatory field for literary criticism and a platform to weaken the distinction between identity and power. Equality disrupts the validity of authority and the structure of the knowledge circle, which is also the reason why digital literary criticism has a certain degree of carnivalesque traits. The authors believe that literary criticism in a digital context is no longer obsessed with the confusion of history and the uncertainty of time. While capturing the pulse of globalisation, it at the same time ardently embraces the value of desire endowed by consumer culture. The article points out that Chinese literary criticism in the new era is a product of the construction of multidimensional relations in a digital context, which sheds the shackles of historical context and rushes into the age of digitalisation. With the rapid flow of consumption, a very open, inclusive, and complex space of media discourse has emerged. The results of the study show that a group of numerous critics belonging to the postmodernist perspective is forming in the digital world. The authors conclude that in the confrontation between tradition and modernity, in the complex interweaving of elitist consciousness and mass consumption, in the struggle for discursive position between media and literature, digital literary criticism differs from traditional in terms of aesthetic standards, criticism style, criticism language and media platform, creating the macro future development of Chinese literary criticism with its independent attitude, revolutionary impulse and irresistible courage.

Angela McRobbie (b. 1951) is a cultural critic and theorist, influential in both feminist and cultural studies scholarship. She is best known for her prolific work concerning young women, gender, sexuality, class, race, subcultures, postmodernism, and various popular and consumer cultures. Originally from Glasgow, Scotland, McRob‐bie now resides in England, where she has been a Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London since 1998.

<p><em>The world of media today is undergoing substantial transformation and advancement with various media forms making the most of it to attract the audience. Digital cinematography since 2010 has been enhancing not only the visual impact of the movies but also redefining the way they are produced and created. Silver screen, the most popular form of media too keeps resorting to new innovations to increase the marketing value of its productions by exploiting the technological advancements be it in the form of graphic effects or animations to appeal the watchers. Moreover, the digital world has revolutionalized the way movies are captured thus rendering refinement to its projection on the screen. Even the distribution of the movies, these days, is done via Internet or hard drive.</em><em> </em></p><p><em>In the genre of cinema, Hollywood animated movies amply exemplify the improvement that has resulted because of the contribution of the digitized world. The animated movies have now come a long way from being mere caricatures to real life characters, from being conception to concrete and surreal to real, so much so that these graphic projections are admired as well as emulated as the real life actors.</em><em> </em></p><p><em>One of the masterpieces of digitised visual effects that left the world awestruck was Ang Lee's Life of Pi, a 2012 American Adventure. It was soon perceived as a visual wonder by audiences all over the world for the use of animated technology and the realistic scenes created in 3D. The paper would be an attempt to examine the way visual effects have been exploited by the makers of this movie to create a successful story and a realistic depiction of imaginary on the screen. <br /></em></p>

The interacting components of everyday life - the weekly supermarket shopping trip, fast food, children's toys - are still largely unremarked by cultural theorists. Grounded in Marxist theory, and guided by feminism, Susan Willis' study of the consumer culture broadens the scope of cultural studies to introduce the notion of daily life, with the commodity at its centre. Willis pays particular attention to the influence of commodity fetishism on social relations. Her investigation includes the taken for granted phenomena of modern culture - Barbie dolls, plastic packaging, banana sticker logos and the aerobic workout. A Primer For Daily Life demonstrates that the trivial is crucial for our understanding of capitalist culture, and argues for the necessary development of a critical perspective on daily life. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of cultural studies and women's studies.

In this essay, I explore the possibility of a refashioning of the broader category of “the popular,” and further, of “popular music,” which, because of its obvious link to mass consumer culture, presents a challenge for any claims as to its transformative potential and capacity for resistance. This effort must follow the lead of various cultural theorists, who espouse something of an aesthetics of the popular, beyond, above, but also what we witness in contemporary pop and commercial artifacts, not only in terms of what's “hot” and what's not, but also in terms of the genres and artists themselves. This inevitably involves a peculiar paradox whereby we valorize, but also undermine, the popular. We embrace it, but also push its limits. To this end, I draw upon both Chris Cutler's taxonomy and criticism of the more traditional approaches to assessing the popular with respect to music and Jacques Attali's notion of “composition” to show how a reconstituted “popular” music is not only applicable to a broad understanding of music's situatedness, but can also have a significantly transformative social and political impact as well.

Over the past two decades in the West, practices of ethical consumption have become increasingly visible within mainstream consumer culture (Lewis and Potter). While they manifest in a variety of forms, such practices are frequently articulated to politics of anti-consumerism, environmentalism, and sustainable consumption through which lifestyle choices are conceived as methods for investing in—and articulating—ethical and social concerns. Such practices are typically understood as both a reflection of the increasing global influence of neoliberal, consumer-oriented modes of citizenship and a response to the destabilisation of capitalism’s certainties in the wake of ongoing climate change and the global financial crisis (Castells et al.; Miller).

Journal Article American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century. By Michael Kammen. (New York: Knopf, 1999. xxviii, 320 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-679-42740-6.) Get access Casey N. Blake Casey N. Blake Columbia University, New York, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 4, March 2001, Pages 1449–1451, https://doi.org/10.2307/2674740 Published: 01 March 2001

The marketing literature is rich in gender and feminist conceptualizations useful to unpack the understandings of market phenomena that involve social justice, power relations, and equality issues. In our field, these phenomena have been mainly investigated from a Western feminist theoretical perspective building on Western consumer cultures. Most research tackling women and gender issues in the “Global South” is located within the social marketing paradigm. This prism often overlooks the wealth of local feminist scholarship and lacks a socio-historic and cultural perspective or a deep grasp of the ‘context of context’. Gender and feminist research anchored in the sociocultural marketing paradigm also tends to overlook social realities outside the Western world and/or superposes Western theories over social facts that require more depth through building on local knowledge. Consumer culture theorists and gender scholars appeal for a better grasp of this ‘invisible half’ and for more intersectional perspectives.

A Cornerstone for Rethinking Community Theatre Sonja Kuftinec (bio) Theatre scholars and professional practitioners tend to refer to “community theatre” in pejorative terms, conjuring images of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland rummaging through Granny’s trunk in the barn, puttin’ on a show. This idea of community theatre may now be as clichéd as the genre itself is perceived to be. Recent collaborations between experienced theatre artists and a wide variety of communities have generated renewed appreciation for the social and aesthetic possibilities of community theatre. This field of performance, termed “community-based theatre,” or “grassroots theatre,” has begun to enter our consciousness in descriptive, practical terms but has yet to be clearly situated in a theoretical context. Some practitioners may fear that, perhaps, critique amounts to criticism, endangering the fragile foundations of nascent projects. In order to legitimize the field and investigate its potential for making meaning, however, it is essential to scrutinize community-based theatre and the ways in which the collaborative process helps to build, perform, and destabilize community. Analysis of Cornerstone Theatre’s production process is an appropriate site for this critical exploration of community-based work. Founded in 1986, Cornerstone has worked in collaboration with rural and urban communities across the country. In the fall of 1994, I served as dramaturg for two productions with Cornerstone, as part of the company’s yearlong residency in Watts, Los Angeles. This experience complemented dissertation research conducted through newsletters, a company oral history, formal and informal interviews, and observations on process. My research and production experience have led me to propose that Cornerstone’s community-based work generates complex, aesthetically intriguing and engaging productions and contributes to a growing discourse on the nature of community and identity. “Community” has been a problematic term for sociologists since at least the 1950s when, to the consternation of the field, George A. Hillery, Jr. described ninety-four use-definitions of community with very little in common among them (qtd. in Bell and Newby 27). The term serves as a convenient symbol encapsulating a number of contradictory ideas. As Raymond Williams notes in Keywords, references to “community” suggest positive connotations without clear meaning (66). This ambivalence of meaning is, in fact, an important element [End Page 91] of how “community” functions. In The Symbolic Constructions of Community, sociologist Anthony Cohen suggests that “community” operates as a “God word,” used symbolically to avoid the confrontation of its connotative differences (Introduction). “Community,” like “God,” symbolically unites those who believe in and employ the concept, even though these individuals may have vastly varying ideas as to its connotations. We generally understand community as a function of commonality, whether that commonality is one of location, class, interest, age, or ethnic background. This idea of commonality lends community the positive connotation that Williams cites. However, as sociologists and cultural theorists such as Cohen, Paul Gilroy, and Iris Marion Young point out, commonality also implies boundaries, difference, and exclusion. 1 In order for a community to distinguish itself, its members must differentiate themselves in some way from other communities through boundaries of land, behavior, or background. These are fluid rather than stable boundaries, dependent on individual perceptions and definitions. Cornerstone’s local collaborations ground this discourse of “community,” defined by both commonality and exclusion, in concrete examples. Original company members founded Cornerstone as a way to expand and diversify one particular community: the theatregoing audience. Co-founders Alison Carey and Bill Rauch were frustrated by what they felt to be a limited idea of national identity as defined by the audience of the American Repertory Theatre. Carey and Rauch felt that, despite its titular claims, this theatre’s mainly white, upper-middle-class audience did not represent the full diversity of America. Rauch, Carey, and other founding Cornerstone members decided that if they wanted to engage a truly diverse American theatre audience they needed to travel beyond the geographical and economic confines of East Coast regional theatres. Further discussion led to the insight that engaging an audience required working with them rather than merely performing for them. Carey comments, “if we were sincere in our desire to learn from people what makes good theatre, and whether theatre...

Abstract: Drawing from his 2023 book The Authenticity Industries: Keeping It "Real" in Media, Culture, and Politics (Stanford University Press), Michael Serazio meets with fellow scholars Jefferson Pooley and Edward Timke to dissect and historicize the concept of authenticity across American culture. They explore three key dimensions of authenticity: personal genuineness, the impact of capitalism, and the quest for uniqueness. The dialogue further ventures into authenticity's role in media, branding, and the evolving discourse on "selling out," suggesting a gradual shift towards acceptance of commercial motives among younger people. They propose critiquing authenticity's potential in consumer culture and political branding and call for reflections on what constitutes authentic connections in an increasingly digital world. The conversation sheds light on the complexities and significance of authenticity in contemporary society, especially as various industries use it to sell and persuade.

Industrially produced mass culture has the reputation of being uniform and monotonous, leaving hardly any room for originality and creativity. In stark contrast to this concept, other theorists of popular culture emphasise the increasing individuality of mass culture made possible by the increasing opulence and leisure time of the working masses followed by the marketing of consumer goods and services. Using the American automotive markets and the Soviet fashion industry as examples, the article addresses the role of fashion in promoting individuality in modern consumer culture questioning both Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s analysis of culture industry and Bourdieu’s analysis of the ‘down-to-earth’ taste of the working class. Critical Theory was right in referring to the culture industry, fashion included, as promoting pseudo-individuation, but not right in downplaying the role of the individual judgement of taste. Bourdieu was right in arguing that the social groups with little cultural and economic capital have hardly any role in challenging the legitimate taste, but not right in arguing that their taste is not an aesthetic taste at all. In analysing the relation between the individual and the social, or the particular and the general, in modern culture, one should pay more attention to the social formation of fashion, operative in consumer goods markets. The reconciliation between the individual and the social that fashion offers is real enough but takes place only provisionally and in a socially conforming manner challenging neither the social formation of fashion nor the general social order of the capitalist, commercial society.

The technological rebellion has made current generations to depend more on the digital world in their day to day life. The effectiveness of the digital world has changed the learner's perceptive towards the education system. The impulsivegrowth of technology has increased the popularity of Information and Communication Technology which has created a research scope in Computer network domain thus Computer network course in the curriculum of Computer Science and Engineering plays an important role. It is always a challenge to teach Computer Networks course to students as the course requires a practical exposure more than the chalk and talk. It is very hard for students to envision the concepts of computer networks, protocols formats and understanding packets flow during teaching in classroom. To overcome above said challenge, pedagogical practice such as active learning through simulation tool is identified in delivery of the course. This paper discusses the effective use of a Packet Tracer (PT) simulation tool in the teaching of computer network concepts. A structured learning approach is introduced by using packet tracer tool in teaching network concepts and series of exercises are designed and developed to give the visualization of each layer functionality. These practical exercises helped in active learning to use the packet tracer to simulate campus network. This pedagogy practice encouraged the students' to build the clarity on the physical devices like router, access points, switch and their configurations. The troubleshooting skills were practiced by introducing the errors deliberately and how to resolve is learnt through the tool. Computer network simulation activity include the concepts of NAT, Subnetting, V-LAN setting, services of TCP/UDP, packet format details, application layer protocol like DNS, DHCP, E-Mail, FTP and HTTP. Activity is evaluated through demos, presentation and quizzes. Rubrics based assessment is followed to ensure uniformity and transparencyin the evaluation. The average marks obtained in quiz by students before using PT tool is 65% and after using tool is 85%, it shows significant improvement of 20% in learning the fundamental concepts of computer network course.

Creative multimedia has become a key component of innovation in today's quickly changing digital world, blending technology and artistry to provide captivating, interactive, visual, and aural experiences. Universities worldwide are offering specialized courses in creative multimedia to equip students with skills for industries like entertainment, advertising, education, and digital communication. This course integrates graphic design, animation, video production, game development, and virtual reality, fostering a holistic knowledge atmosphere. The purpose of the research is to establish the application of data analysis in creative multimedia courses in universities to enhance student achievement evaluation and foster innovative and technical development in university-level graphic design courses focused on packaging design. The Efficient African Buffalo Tuned Adaptive Random Forest (EAB-ARF) is applied to assess student performance based on various criteria, including creativity, technical proficiency, and the effectiveness of packaging designs. Data collection includes student performance, design samples, teacher ratings, and packaging design. The data was preprocessed using data cleaning and normalization from the acquired data. EAB is used to select the features from data, and ARF is employed to assess student performance and enhance creativity. The recommended EAB-ARF outperforms all other models with the highest accuracy values of 95.8%, (95.6%) precision, (99.2%) recall, and (97.6%) F1-score. This illustrates how EAB-ARF performs well across all evaluation categories and has a superior ability to forecast student results.

Reviewed by: Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race ed. by Harriet Pollack Suzan Harrison Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race. Ed. by Harriet Pollack. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2013. 288 pp. 8 photos. $69.95/$24.95. Ever since Diana Trilling took Eudora Welty to task for what she considered a celebration of “the parochialism and snobbery” of white, southern privilege in a 1946 review of Delta Wedding, critics have debated the treatment of race and racism in Welty’s art and life. Welty’s own essay “Must the Novelist Crusade?,” which articulated the author’s rejection of fiction with an overtly political agenda, led others to read, or as this collection of essays argues, to misread Welty’s work as apolitical, as avoiding the racial and social injustices of the Mississippi in which she lived and wrote. The twelve essays Harriet Pollack has collected in Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race extend the examination of the political dimensions of Welty’s art that the essays in Pollack’s earlier collection, Did the Novelist Crusade? Eudora Welty and Politics, co-edited with Suzanne Marrs, advanced thirteen years ago. In this new collection, the issue of race takes center stage. Thanks to the critical discussion included in and spawned by the earlier collection, these essays do not merely address the question of whether Welty’s work confronted the complexities of racial identities and racial interactions in the twentieth-century South but, instead, explore the nuanced strategies Welty’s works use to make visible the color line, to racialize whiteness, and to reveal race as a social performance. The approaches taken by the essays differ widely, opening new avenues for critical exploration of Welty’s play with the intersections of race and identity, injustice and resistance. In the collection’s opening essay, “Welty, Race, and the Patterns of a Life,” Marrs writes from her position as Welty’s official biographer and close friend, puzzling her way toward a way of understanding four disturbing instances in which Welty used the term “nigger” as a descriptor in letters written between 1946 and 1948 to John Robinson, a dear friend and at one time romantic interest of Welty’s. Against these instances, Marrs sets the context of Welty’s large body of correspondence, essays, editorials, interviews, and activities that persuasively document her lifelong commitment to a liberal political agenda; her abhorrence of the racist politics of Theodore Bilbo, John Rankin, Ross Barnett, and their ilk; and [End Page 173] her insistence on integrated audiences for her lectures at Millsaps College. Marrs concludes that despite these four references and despite occasional reticence in speaking publically about the racial situation in Mississippi, Welty “did not feel ambivalent about racism” (44). Essays of similarly nuanced attention to Welty’s fiction and photography follow Marrs’s reading of the writer’s life. In “Parting the Veil: Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, and the Crying Wounds of Jim Crow,” Susan Donaldson reads Welty’s first collection of stories, A Curtain of Green, in conversation with Richard Wright’s first collection, Uncle Tom’s Children. Donaldson finds in these works by two writers born in the same time and place but separated by the racial politics of the Jim Crow South a shared critique of the dehumanizing, alienating power of W. E. B. Du Bois’s “sombre veil of color” and of the violence inherent in and necessary to the perpetuation of the racial divide (qtd. in Donaldson 49). Donaldson illustrates the similar strategies Welty and Wright employ to figure resistance to the white gaze and to part the veil. Welty’s photographs are central to two essays in the collection. In “Eudora Welty’s Making a Date, Grenada Mississippi: One Photograph, Five Performances,” Keri Watson offers a perceptive analysis of the presentation and reception of Welty’s photograph in five different settings. Watson reads these five “politicized performances” of Making a Date in ways that capture Welty’s ongoing and changing challenges to the cultural construction of race (89). Mae Miller Claxton also considers the cultural implications of Welty’s 1930s photographs as well as several of Welty’s stories in “‘The Little Store’ in the Segregated South: Race and Consumer Culture in...

Due to the demand for IoT technologies, the concept of CPS was explored in this paper. CPS refers to the coordination and communication of physical processes and computing elements connecting the physical and digital worlds. With the increasing number of smart buildings, the researchers considered the automation control of various facilities in a smart building which are air conditioning, lighting, and surveillance systems for sustainability. With this, the researchers acquired and analyzed the STEER Hub building’s layout diagram as the basis of a smart building design. It was verified and evaluated by an ocular visit, and the total number of existing system devices for air conditioning, lighting, and surveillance was 313. Wireless access points connect these devices to the internet. The network architecture was designed and simulated in Cisco Packet Tracer. Meanwhile, the aforementioned systems were modeled and simulated in MATLAB® and Simulink®. A digital signal, signifying the On/Off condition, serves as the output of the air conditioning and lighting systems. Meanwhile, the surveillance system’s output is a waveform that compares the motion intensity to a threshold value. The captured picture displaying the total number of source and captured frames were also presented.