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US American Culture - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Announce and explain the seperation from britain
    - - had to pay taxes to britain, but didn't even have a seat in parlament
    - - Preamble
        
        indictment against GB
        
        Conclusion
    - - All are created equal
        
        no god given hierarchy
      - people have power over government and the right to abolish it
  - - - Bill of rights
        
        first ten amendments
        
        1st: Freedom of speech and press
        
        2nd: right to keep and bear arms
        
        3rd: Anything that is not specified lies in power of the states
        
        civil rights
      - Challenges
        
        Checks and Balances
        
        Seperation of powers of federal state and government
        
        Had to keep a balance
        
        Regulation of taxes (slave states wwanted to count slaves in others didnt) -> 3/5th count
        
        Electoral college
        
        Federalists ->wanted overall government
        
        No identification with the country
  - - - Other examples
        
        "God's chosen people"
        
        Planting the nation
        
        Pastoralism
        
        Farming as the ultimate form of independence
        
        Need a farmers nation to gain this independence
        
        "self- catering"
        
        Connection between people and place -> cultivation of land, connection through farming
        
        Europeans poor people are "planted" by the Americans in the wilderness, which then transforms then to Americans
        
        "Those who labor the earth are chosen people of god"
  - - - Ritual creation
        
        Best done by embodiing rituals to create a connection in the community
        
        refunctionalizing things
        
        e.g. the singing of the hymn
    - - Need traditions to identify
      - Want to build an anchor in the past in order to seem older
      - Reinventing things
    - - You have to feel like one
      - Connecting of the nation
      - Print capitalism and imaginging community
        
        Everybody reads the same newspaper with the same content at the same TIME, through which the nation than is connected, a ritual is created
        
        Wants to build a common language and general literacy, which then creates nationwide myths and symbols
        
        Print capitalism
        
        Commercial print that circulates widely
        
        Many readers
        
        no copyright -> all the same
        
        reprinting and thus circulation of ideas
        
        Depends on cheap print
- - - - Programm for the process of turning immigrants to Americans, which involved things such as housekeeping and language
    - - Americanization of the world
      - culture with small c
      - Spreading American products around the world
      - Upcomming fear of American companies taking over the worlds's economy
  - - - Ideas, ideals and institutions
      - Structures that shape us such as school, family, religion, etc.
      - these are NOT determining everything else in materialist thinking
    - - Ecnonomy
      - Material relations, distribution of assets and power
      - This determines everything
    - - Implements dilectical relationship between top and bottom
      - A working proces
      - Ideas don't create/shape life, but the way life is lived shapes our thinking about it
    - - Should have an eye on power relations and interests rather than the ideas, which are not neutral and universal as these are historically specific and grounded in material resolutions
    - - Institutions have certain power over us, like school
      - relating to the circulation of ideas and our agreement to these ideas, which we don't question not that we are forced to agree rather that we agree with them an don't question them
      - Opposite of it would be an imperial relation in which you are held by force
      - The revelation of this term should open peoples eyes
  - - - Marxist background
    - - At the core all movies and entertainment products are identical at heart
        
        They want you to say that the worl is good as it is
        
        They are about to make us, the people IDENTICAL, STANDARDIZING us
      - The mass culture is meant to spread and reach everyone
      - Hollywood pretends to be culture, like a movie about history does, but it is just a business to make money
      - 2 ways in which we are deceived by Hollywood
        
        It pretends to be art
        
        It says that everyting is a business so there is nothing wrong with itself being one
    - - They dislike this media
        
        It is AUTHORITARIAN, they have the FULL FORCE over somebody, who is just receiving media
        
        CREATION OF STEREOTYPES
      - They like the telephone
        
        You can talk back
        
        You are not just receiving, you are participating
      - They want us to pay attention to Hedgemony and Ideology, do we want to live like this?
  - - - People of lower classes were able to get higher education
      - Stuart Hall
        
        Empowered by Marxist theories
      - Raymond Williams
    - - TV as the ultimate low brow authauritarian media
        
        Hall: It depends on HOW we watch it
        
        Introduced linguistic vocab
        
        De saussurean vocab (signs, denotation, connotation, decoding, encoding)
        
        Different types of decoding messages received by TV
        
        Hegemonic-Dominant code
        
        Viewer takes the connoted meaning full and straight
        
        Viewer fully agrees with the message
        
        Negotiated code
        
        Viewer recognizes the implications but doesn't agree completely, he would change something
        
        Oppositional code
        
        Viewer perfectly understands the denotative and connotative inflection
        
        The viewer decodes the message in a globally contrary way
        
        "Fake News!"
  - - - 1950
      - West of America thouht of virgin, without people, which is obviously wrong
      - You could just fill it up with people
      - Powerful idea
    - - John Gast, "American Progress"
        
        Visualization of A. E.
        
        Columbia and settlers moving from right to left in the picture scaring away native Americans
        
        Lighting on the right clearly bright while on the left, the unsettled side it is dark
        
        Progress comming from the right, the eastern country to the west
      - US superior to other nations
      - More liberty and freedom of opportunity
      - Worlds oldest constitutional republic
      - Saved the world from WW
      - errand in the wilderness
        
        Difference between New England and England the wilderness, the frontier
        
        Errand of the Puritans
      - City on a hill
        
        We shall be as a city upon a hill
        
        Everybody has their eyes on us
        
        Cant be reached
        
        puritan thinking
    - - Construction 1910-1940s
      - Construction and Critique WWII to 1960s
      - Critique and Re-construction - Cultural work from 1960s on -> deconstruct to reconstruct
      - Nowadays Analysis, critique
- - - - Creation of race chattel system (property)
        
        1662: Slave satus not by trade but INHERITED by mother
        
        not bad luck anymore
        
        Slavery not smth that CAN happen to you but smth that IS you
        
        1704: Organization of society based slavery
        
        1619: African slaves traded in Jamestown
      - Managing contradiction, containment, compromise
        
        1787
        
        US Northwest ordinance
        
        prohibits slavery in Northwest
        
        Gradual elimination of slavery in North
        
        1789
        
        3/5th compromise
        
        also balance
        
        1820
        
        Missouri compromise
        
        fugitive slave laws 1793 and 1850
        
        All slaves, who flew could be brought back to their holders by right -> also bounty hunters
        
        1857
        
        Dred Scott decision
        
        musn't file at court becuase slaves are property not people
        
        Also rebellions agains slavery
      - Civil war(1661-1665)
        
        Southern states set themselves up as own nation
        
        1863
        
        Emancipation proclamation
        
        no more slavery in southern states that still belong to US
        
        1856-1877
        
        Control of defeated southern states
        
        Organization to reconstruct them
        
        Constructions of democratic institutions
        
        Second national founding
        
        In the center of the state at the heart of he national project, almost 1mio deaths
      - Discrepance between American Ideals and reality
    - - Intensified immigration
      - Civil rights activism 1950s-1960s
      - "Jim Crow Laws" 1880s-1960s
      - Progressivism
        
        (social justice has to be brought equal to technological progress)
        
        social gospel
        
        what would Christ think if he came to chicago?
        
        practice chrisitian values
        
        Social activism
        
        anti-lynching
        
        against alcohol
        
        womens rights movements (voting)
        
        protest writing
        
        "how the other half lives"
        
        living conditions exposed
      - Expansion but also contraction of US due to close of frontier
      - From rural to urban 1900-2010
        
        "Gilded Age" -> concentration of economic power in cities
        
        Prosperity Gospel -> Religious
        
        Social Darwinism
        
        "survival of the fittest in society" -> "pruning weaker parts"
        
        Floorplan
        
        countryside
        
        much space
        
        many rooms
        
        cities
        
        factory workers
        
        one room for everything
        
        few windows
        
        "Blütezeit der Wirtschaft"
    - - Photography technology
        
        Heliograph
        
        Chemicals on paper didnt work -> used metal
        
        Mirrored images
        
        unique images
        
        Multi day exposure
        
        "sup painting"
        
        Daguerrotype
        
        1839
        
        Chemical coated metal surface
        
        Tried to get exposure reduced, 30 then 1minute
        
        Unique
        
        Successful
        
        Calotype/Talbotype
        
        1841
        
        15min Exposure
        
        Reproductions possible
        
        On paper -> usable as negative
        
        Patented
        
        Didnt succeed as much as it could have
        
        -> inventor not as happy as daguerre
        
        Ambrotype / albumen print
        
        On glass
        
        coat it
        
        scenitize it
        
        develop it
        
        Sunlight, long exposure
        
        Dominant photographic form in 19th century
        
        reproduceable
      - Phototheories
        
        Walter Benjamin
        
        Aura
        
        Lost by mass reproduction
        
        Not made by hand anymore
        
        Mass existence is substitute for a unque existence, which makes the one thing worth less
        
        We do things with things, a ritual, but with reproduction, circulating an image, this is lost
        
        Ritual and cult value
        
        Lost by reproduction, thus gettign an Exhibition value
        
        kind of voyeurism
        
        The more you see you shouldnt see, the higher the value
        
        Unique
        
        Imbedded in fabric of tradition
        
        Present in time and space
        
        Rosalind Krauss
        
        Index
        
        relation between object photographed and photograph
        
        physical relationship
        
        can be compared to a trace or footprints, that lead to somebody, something
        
        Photographs not destroying but connecting things together
      - Uses
        
        Art
        
        "AttractioN"
        
        Memorialization
        
        "Collecting the world
        
        Business
        
        "the eye of history"
        
        "harvest of death"
        
        composition
        
        no snapshot
        
        active composition
        
        foreground vs background, center of attraction
        
        photographers wagons
        
        took photos of civil war
        
        Gardeners photographic sketchbook of the war
        
        moving closer and closer to the battlefield
      - potentials
        
        Attention and valuation
        
        loss and retention
        
        connection
  - - - shows us whats right and connects us with others
      - "This is why we dont eat our family but love them"
  - - - 1st abolish slave trade
      - 2nd abolish slavery
    - - use of the power of print
        
        tried to create sympathy to justify violence
        
        Slave narrative
        
        Testemonys of slaves
        
        Mobilitation of power of sympathy
        
        Douglas Testimony
        
        Turning point battle with overseer
        
        "Acquiring manhood"
        
        Glorious ressurection of tomb of slavery to heaven of freedom
        
        Composition -> life narrative
        
        Christian framework
        
        "I was born...."
        
        Turning point
        
        Title page
        
        Title with name(Self chosen)
        
        "Written by him/herself"
        
        Portrait
        
        Third person authentification, "edited by"
        
        Uncle Tom's Cabin
        
        Seriality
        
        Serial publicaiton
        
        Transmedial ADAPTION
        
        PARTICIPATORY CULTURE
        
        Not one story ut new part every week
        
        Readers can decide what happens through a FEEDBACK LOOP
        
        Ideal dynamic for cultural work
        
        network of creation -> expansion in all directions
        
        Strongly connected to fan cultruy
        
        People are MAKING culture -> Agains Adorno and Horkheimer
        
        Extremely popular
        
        Adapts slave narrative and plantation literature
        
        The example of cultural work
        
        Story
        
        Uncle Tom sacrifices himself to save plantation family -> gets sold
        
        How?
        
        Power of sympathy
        
        Adaption of familiar stories
  - - - Blackface Minstrelsy
        
        Mostly white actors with black painted faces
        
        Singing, dancing, performing sketches
        
        embodiing black stereotypes
        
        Jim Crow is a character from this, who is later used as an emmbodyment for "anti-nonwhiteism"
- - - - Pulrality
      - Cultural comparison/diversity
    - - "Volk"
      - Can be moved into hierarchy
    - - against creation and authority from above
  - - - Didn't mean to create a hierarchy of quality, it was made out of his model
      - Higher society
    - - Culture not as something that is pressed in your mind, but rather something that is pleasant and delighting
      - Culture should please you
    - - Plurality
      - Education through the "new"
    - - Hierarchy
        
        If there is a best of any kind a hierarchy is easily created with the most valuable things in every category decreading the value of other thoughts or creations
        
        American Culture percieved as LOW-brow while European was percied as HIGH-brow
  - - - Working class
    - - Everything is culture, not just a piece of art in the museum
      - Culture is in everybody and comes together again in even the easiest things we do in life like cleaning and cooking
      - It should not be a privilege to any society
    - - Dehierarchization
      - Expansion
    - - Dehierarchization
      - Expansion
        
        If everything is culture, how can I study it?
- - - - 1776-1804
      - America
        
        1776-1783
      - France
      - Haitian
    - - Impressment
        
        French stelaing sailors, seizing, etc.
      - Piracy
    - - American: GB tried to take US territory back
      - Canada: Invasion of Canada by the US
      - America gave up 1814
  - - - Slavery vs non-slavery
      - Always had to balance which form new states follow
  - - - President: we should stay out of conflicts
      - Doesn't work
        
        Quasi-wars
        
        US keen on expansion
    - - Jefferson purchased territory from France
        
        Expansion and Isolationism
        
        Louisiana purchase 1803
        
        Wanted to push out European powers
    - - Americnas should only intervene in European economy if American interests are present -> Isolation
      - American CONTINENTS are not to be colonized in future
        
        Regarded as "unfriendly act"
    - - Expansion of territory
      - Continued conflicts
        
        Republix of Texas -> Annexation of Texas
        
        "Indian wars"
        
        1836: Indian Removal Act (Deportation of Indians eastern of the Missisippi river)
        
        Trail of tears
        
        1838
        
        Deportation out of fertile southern land
  - - - Frontier/Turner Thesis
    - - Here it is god's mission for America
      - More emotionalized and passionate -> differently packaged
      - Same idea
- - - - "time-photographs"
      - zoopraxisscope
      - Edward Muybridge
    - - Brought together businesses
      - capitalized on Muybridges inventions
      - Kinetoscope
        
        had to look into it, didnt beam
        
        capture and play moton movies
      - Phonograph
      - Edison studios
      - Vitascope
        
        projected on screen
  - - - Films of 1min max
      - Parlor = upper class sitting room
      - could watch movies but only individually in every single Kinetoscope
      - High brow
    - - Filsm up to 15min
      - 5 cents, could stay as long as you wanted
      - come and go
      - Low brow
      - High brow vs low brow
        
        Edison wanted it to be upper class, first achieved it but with Nickelodeons it got low brow
    - - Ticket for 1 full-length film
      - term signals higher end entertaiment
        
        sight and sound
        
        seating and snacking
        
        elegance
      - From attraction to complexity
        
        Camera work, D.W. Griffith
        
        Extreme long shot
        
        birds eye view of scene
        
        narrative and attraction cinema mixed
        
        orientation and overview
        
        Medium long shot
        
        orientation and human creation in context
        
        Human figures and background
        
        Can identify the people
        
        Medium shot
        
        "Eye level" human figures from torso up
        
        that level draws you in
        
        increases sense of inclusion
        
        alignment and identification
        
        Medium close up
        
        Human body from chest up
        
        Emotionalization and empathy
        
        Close up
        
        Faces
        
        Extreme close up
        
        Editing, Sergei Eisenstein
        
        Discontinuity
        
        Editor wants you to see the cut
        
        enstrangement effect
        
        intellectual montage
        
        one thinks about it
        
        clear cuts
        
        Emotionalization
        
        you by yourself have to put it together
        
        Continuity
        
        draws you in
        
        you dont notice the cut, it flows
        
        connecting scenes -> causality
        
        parallel editing technique
        
        Shot - reverse shot
      - Definitions
        
        Frame = single image
        
        Shot = Filming from paricular camera position
        
        take = Time that camera is rolling without interruption
        
        scene = Action in one place, time
        
        sequence = multiple scenes
      - Narrative Cinema
  - - - Blackface
      - Stereotypes
      - Elements of history
        
        facts
        
        Blending in with stereotypes
        
        powerful as reality is connected with myths
      - Celebrates lynching as jusice
      - KKK
      - Unity of whites against blacks
    - - obvious coloring
        
        red= dead
        
        golden = southern states
        
        north = grey
      - Seen through eyes of KKK
      - Griffith wanted to access history
- - - - Mayflower
      - Why is this always taken?
        
        Cultural and social power
        
        "Better" than other beginnings because of religious destiny "god given mission"
        
        Slavery structure but is not built up on it, the inequality is present but not as striking as in the carribean for instance
        
        Most compelling story
      - Pilgrims
      - Mayflower compact
        
        New rules that were made up after Mayflower missed their destination
    - - Settled first
      - Colonization more of a business venture rather than arranged by government
      - Virginia company
    - - Most important in that time period
      - This is where the money was
      - Important ressources like sugar, etc.
      - Violent slavery structure
    - - Best from our perspective concerning structure and justice
      - You could buy an area and claim rights as an own colony
  - - - Total election of individuals, either you are or you are not
      - Limited atonement -> eternal life through christs sacrifice only to these predestined for heaven
      - Irresistible grace
      - Preperationism
        
        You cant influence if you are taken into gods like but you can prepare for it
      - Congregationalism
        
        Community and gathering of the saints
      - Total depravity because of the original sin of all humanity
      - How do they see the Bible
        
        Not like a guidebook to live but rather like a code book: old and new testament are mirrored -> they see the book as whole, mirrored in the real world
        
        Everything that happens, happened in the bible and has a special meaning, not the exact same things but similar things you can decode alike
        
        Puritans decode themselves as the jews, gods chosen people
    - - Plain style in language to engage mind senses -> everything should be visible, not a lot of metaphores, shouldnt compare
      - Not preaching to but with the congregation with main emphasis on reasoning
      - Puritan meeting house as place of all community activities -> government, church, everything
      - Structure
        
        Doctrine
        
        Text taken from bible
        
        Reading
        
        Explication
        
        Reasons
        
        Explanation
        
        Q and A
        
        Application
        
        Applicability, Use for Congregation
      - Jeremiad
        
        "The hellfire variation"
        
        Use
        
        to fright people
        
        To help people living better in community
        
        Against crime
        
        "We" vs. "them"
        
        Contrast of ideal past and degenerate present
        
        Emotionalizing thorugh extreme language
        
        Structure is the same, but different approach and sources
        
        Doctrine
        
        Always fired up text, apocalypse, etc.
        
        Isaiah or Jeremiah
        
        Consequences of sin
        
        Explication
        
        Terms, conditions, duty to god
        
        Application
        
        Provocations to vengeance
        
        Lay out consequences of what happens when everything continues like this
      - Cultural Work
    - - then led to American Exceptionalism