reflection questions
(You are required to complete six reflections over the course of the quarter. Slides posted will conclude with 2 questions about the provided material . Each question should be answered in at least 2 paragraphs. Reflections are designed to assess students’ familiarity with course readings and ability to apply theoretical concepts to course screenings and other contemporary media texts of interest. )
Final Project
New due date: March 18, 11:59PM CST
New week: final project tips and guidelines
Please email with questions, to set up meetings, or for help finding additional sources
Late Reflection Policy
Any reflection that is a week+ late can be submitted for half credit
Last day to submit reflections: March 18, 11:59PM CST
Please email me if you would like to check in regarding any uncompleted work
Week 8
MTV – Queer Vanguard?
Previously on MCS 274:
“the obsession with firsts reveals a key element in popular and professional understandings of the history of the sitcom: the idea that the genre is a barometer of social change.” (McCarthy, 595)
“T ular and professional understandings of the history of the sitcom: the idea that the genre is a barometer of social change.” (McCarthy, 595)
Pre
“Th professional understandings of the history of the sitcom: the idea that the genre is a barometer of social change.” (McCarthy, 595)
“Reality TV”
as we know it
Towards “Reality TV”
“The Real World” (MTV 1992-2017)
Focus on “ordinary” people
Contrived cast and premise
Confessional as mode of narration
Reflexive awareness of mediation
“The Real World” (MTV 1992-2017)
Focus on “ordinary” people
Contrived cast and premise
Confessional as mode of narration
Reflexive awareness of mediation
“This is the true story / of seven strangers /
picked to to live in a house / and have their
lives taped / to find out what happens /
when people stop being polite / and start
getting real”
“The Real World” (MTV 1992-2017)
The Real World: New York (1992)
Introduction to minority subjects made through the perspective of an ignorant —but ultimately open-minded—southern white woman.
“The Real World” (MTV 1992-2017)
The Real World: New York (1992)
Introduction to minority subjects made through the perspective of an ignorant —but ultimately open-minded—southern white woman.
The Real World: San Francisco (1994)
“On one of your episodes this season [season two] you had an HIV+ guy come in and talk about AIDS/HIV with the group. He was there for a few hours and he left. I wonder what kind of issues would have come up if that HIV+ guy would be living with the group, sharing the bathroom, the refrigerator, the bedroom, eating together? Everyday for six months. Things that make you go hmmm.” (Quoted in Muñoz 150)
“The Real World” (MTV 1992-2017)
The Real World: New York (1992)
Introduction to minority subjects made through the perspective of an ignorant —but ultimately open-minded—southern white woman.
The Real World: San Francisco (1994)
Zamora is often credited for offering “normal” (straight, white, healthy) people one of the first humane portraits of queerness and HIV/AIDS.
“The Real World” (MTV 1992-2017)
The Real World: New York (1992)
Introduction to minority subjects made through the perspective of an ignorant —but ultimately open-minded—southern white woman.
The Real World: San Francisco (1994)
Zamora is often credited for offering “normal” (straight, white, healthy) people one of the first humane portraits of queerness and HIV/AIDS.
BUT! Muñoz: “although these interventions into the majoritarian public sphere were important, one would fail to understand the efficacy of the activist’s tactics and the overall success of his life’s work if one only considered such [effects.]” (143)
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
“Pedro’s work enabled the possibility of queer and Latino counterpublics, spheres that stand in opposition to the racism and homophobia of the dominant public sphere.” (143)
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
José Muñoz was a performance theorist whose work explored queer theory, women of color feminism, Latina/o representation and media production, and cultural studies.
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
His work decenters majoritarian culture in contemporary media and academic scholarship; in Muñoz’s theory, minorities engage with popular media but are not dominated by it. Queer people of color and Latina women serve not simply as objects of analysis but as producers of counterpublic theory and political practice.
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
Majoritarian public sphere:
hegemony / dominant culture, especially as it manifests in popular media and political discourse and policy.
Dominant publicity: popular media and political narratives that rely on stereotypes; Muñoz is especially concerned with limited images of queer and Latina/o life.
Counterpublics:
Counterhegemonic communities, formed as a means of survival and resistance
Counterpublicity: counterhegemonic politics and representations. Counterpublicity can manifest through the strategic use of majoritarian/mainstream channels.
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
Ethics of the self / Care of the self for others:
Recognition of one’s political significance and potential—within this, further recognition that this potential can be realized through interpersonal and mass communication.
Through Pedro Zamora’s work, Muñoz champions the public performance of minority life experience (“minoritarian subjectivity”). Muñoz argues that Zamora knowingly gave up his own (supposed) privacy in order to foster community and change through the platform of The Real World.
Muñoz takes the concept “ethics of the self” from French theorist Michel Foucault; he acknowledges that Foucault’s theory is built via analysis of dominant groups. Muñoz asserts that he must rework the theory in order to address the specific experiences of minorities. AKA he must disidentify!
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
Disidentification:
Minoritarian survival strategy: “decoding mass, high, or any other cultural field from the perspective of a minority subject who is disempowered in such a representational hierarchy.” (Disidentifications, 25)
The reuse, redeployment, and/or rethinking of majority culture (or cultural theory) in the service of counterpublic formation and queer possibility.
“Zamora worked within The Real World, which one should never forget is a product of the corporate entity MTV, and yet still managed to find ways to do [his] work despite the corporate ethos that ordered the program.” (144)
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
Disidentification:
“The ‘realness’ of Pedro and the efficacy and power of his interventions have as much to do with the manner in which he insisted on a being complicated and intersectional subject: not only gay but a sexual person; a person of color actively living with another person of color in an interracial relationship; a person living with AIDS.” (153)
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
Disidentification:
“Here the public sphere is reimagined by bringing a subaltern counterpublic into representation. The real world is overrun by queers—queers who speak about those things that are terrifying and ennobling about a queer and racialized life-world […] The new form that Sean and Pedro’s performance of the self brings into view is one that suggests worlds of possibility for the minoritarian subject who experiences multiple forms of domination.” (159-160)
José Esteban Muñoz on Pedro Zamora
Disidentification:
“Here the public sphere is reimagined by bringing a subaltern counterpublic into representation. The real world is overrun by queers—queers who speak about those things that are terrifying and ennobling about a queer and racialized life-world […] The new form that Sean and Pedro’s performance of the self brings into view is one that suggests worlds of possibility for the minoritarian subject who experiences multiple forms of domination.” (159-160)
Written in the late-1990s, Muñoz’s analysis remains striking because it is so different from most contemporary work on reality tv (e.g. Laurie Ouellette’s neoliberal critique of America’s Next Top Model). Without knowledge of what the genre would become, he offers us tools for identifying and discussing the political potential of reality tv’s varied representational strategies.
Are You The One? (MTV 2014-)
Seasons 1-7: The “perfect match” premise is built upon a heteronormative imagining of romantic relationships.
While the premise is often undone by the messy actions of the cast, there remains little space for queer community.
Are You The One? (MTV 2014-)
Seasons 1-7: The “perfect match” premise is built upon a heteronormative imagining of romantic relationships.
While the premise is often undone by the messy actions of the cast, there remains little space for queer community.
In season 8, “Are You the One? is challenging the dating genre’s conventions, foregrounding experiences and conversations about love, desire, and relationships from a nonheteronormative perspective that, in today’s pop cultural landscape, are still rare.” (Dominguez)
Does season 8 disidentify with previous seasons (and reality tv dating shows more broadly)?
on the positive/negative binary:
reality television dramatizes the tension between “real” (underrepresented) people and types
on the positive/negative binary:
through “negative” or trashy formulas, underseen relationships, desires, and communities can emerge in complex, complicated ways
Reflection Questions
José Muñoz and Laurie Ouellette (“America’s Next Top Model: Neoliberal Labor”) analyze reality television in order to assess how “ordinary” people use and are used by popular media platforms. How does Muñoz’s work complicate Ouellette’s argument (refer to the Week 5 slides for a review of Ouellette’s position)? Is your understanding of the political potential of contemporary popular media more in line with Muñoz or Ouellette? If helpful, refer to an example.
Alessa Dominguez argues that season 8 of Are You The One? “[asks] us to think differently.” In your opinion, does the show disidentify with heteronormative reality television and/or dating conventions? Reference a scene or sequence form “We Come To Slay” and Dominguez’s article to complete your answer.
Questions
1.José Muñoz and Laurie Ouellette (“America’s Next Top Model: Neoliberal Labor”) analyze reality television in order to assess how “ordinary” people use and are used by popular media platforms. How does Muñoz’s work complicate Ouellette’s argument (refer to the Week 5 slides for a review of Ouellette’s position)? Is your understanding of the political potential of contemporary popular media more in line with Muñoz or Ouellette? If helpful, refer to an example.
2.Alessa Dominguez argues that season 8 of Are You The One? “[asks] us to think differently.” In your opinion, does the show disidentify with hetero normative reality television and/or dating conventions? Reference a scene or sequence form “We Come To Slay” and Dominguez’s article to complete your answer.
(You are required to complete six reflections over the course of the quarter. Slides posted will conclude with 2 questions about the provided material. Each question should be answered in at least 2 paragraphs. Reflections are designed to assess students’ familiarity with course readings and ability to apply theoretical concepts to course screenings and other contemporary media texts of interest. )
Provided material
Are You The One? We Come To Slay
https://depauledu-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/yzhou72_depaul_edu/ERz9Zl9dqrFAnpXWl4CK45ABBzbQ-_u95FeKtteLC2lQPg?e=pB3Fn5