Did the torture ban pass the Senate?

The U.S. Senate voted 78-21 to pass an amendment prohibiting the use of torture across federal agencies, including the military. Several Republicans, including Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (KY) and Lindsey Graham (SC), opposed the amendment for national security reasons.

California Spends Six Times More On Prison Inmates Than On College Students

According to Scott Graves of the California Budget Project, California is expected to spend more than $62,000 on each prison inmate in 2014-15--almost 7 times the $9,200 it will spend for each K-12 student. Over the past two decades, California spending per prisoner has increased nearly three times faster than spending per K-12 student.

War on Drugs Hasn’t taken back a single corner Community folks (who vote) complain about drugs Local government reacts Fed and State government can’t be honest about how

ineffectual the war on drugs is Arrests and convictions for violent crimes, rapes,

burglaries, and armed robbery goes down So many resources go to generating stats about drug

crime Leads to police brutality

Bad morale: hate between police and corner kids Leads to meaningless arrests for things like loitering

Prop 47 CA public safety measure to reclassify low-

level crimes including drug possession.

Epistemology the study of the nature, origin, and

limits of human knowledge. How do we know things? How do we understand something to be

the truth?

Media as Epistemology Epistemology is concerned with the

origins and nature of knowledge Definitions of truth and the sources

where such definitions come Resonance: metaphor is a generative

force—that is, the power of a phrase, a book, a character

There is no universal way to know truth, but rather that a civilization will identify truth largely based on its forms of communication.

primitive oral culture great stock in a man who

remembers proverbs, since truth is passed on through such stories

What is your experience of hearing a story told through spoken word?

Proverb A proverb (from Latin: proverbium) is a

simple and concrete saying, popularly known and repeated, that expresses a truth based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim.

culture of the written word The rationality of written arguments

would be considered superior to a proverb in a culture that values written word

Perhaps, rationality and reasoning can override “common sense”

Congrats Reg Cathey!

Television limited our discourse to where all of our

serious forms of discussion have turned into entertainment. Television has influenced the way we live off the screen.

How has TV and other forms of entertainment influenced the way you live off the screen?

Metaphors that Resonate Athens=intellectual excellence Hamlet=brooding indecisiveness

Media as Metaphor A medium has the power to fly beyond its

material context into new and unexpected ones, because of the way it directs us to organize our minds and integrate our experience of the world

Different media resonate in different ways

Resonance is metaphor writ large

Medium of TV Creates new forms of truth-telling According to Postman, the epistemology

of TV is inferior to a print based one Amusement (and pleasure) is how TV

communicates Ironically, in the late 90’s David Simon

turned away from print journalism and to TV, because the former had gone the way of entertainment (as Postman predicted)

Emotional Power of TV Postman does not deny the emotional

power of TV, because it could arouse sentiment against the Vietnam War or against racism.

“We must be careful in praising or condemning a medium because the future may hold surprises for us”

(enter The Wire) Superior Serial Melodrama and multi-sited ethnography

Simon Uses emotional resonance to inform

people of the negative systemic issues of the American inner-cities

Melodrama as a means to communicate and possibly persuade

Multi-Sited ethnography (EX: “I don’t care where money comes from if they are giving it away”) Namond and Senator Clay Davis

Literate Culture Common Sense by Thomas Paine

published 1776 The popularity of that book at the time

is close to an event like the Superbowl Different classes were all interested in

reading about a variety of subjects Printed matter was all that was available America was founded by intellectuals

Literate Culture Approaches the world from a rational

perspective based around a series of rational

propositions that challenge a reader or audience to judge them as true or false, the entire society was founded around the idea of rational discourse.

(Going back to the telegraph) “Peek a Boo world”

“The Age of Exposition" defined Typographic America Exposition: a comprehensive description and

explanation of an idea or theory. replaced by a spectacle that prizes flash and

entertainment over substance. The message itself is less important than the

entertainment value of its delivery. The Wire is all about exposition The Wire addresses its subject matter in a

complex multi-sited way

TV demands rapid-fire editing, non-stop stimulation,

and quick decisions rather than rational deliberation Also, the pleasure of an ending that ties everything

up into a bow No spoilers either! The pleasure of a surprise

ending. The Wire has shorter beats, but its editing is quiet—

allowing the viewer to experience the naturalism of each location

The Wire, uses no flashy effects or even a musical score

Serial: The Alibi (Exposition) Jay recounts the entire day of the

murder the entire case hinges on just 21

minutes the window of time in which Hae is killed About those 21 minutes, precious little

is known.  "The Alibi," lays out the day of the

murder and Adnan's alibi that would clear him of killing Hae.

As a crime reporter or a lawyer Question the truth of Jay’s statement Find out reasons why Jay would lie Point to moments in his testimony when he has

implicated himself in a large crime Have the detectives been involved in other

cases where false testimonies have been made?

Interview many people about the timeline Jay gives

Point to the many times Jay changes his story

To write a crime story You introduce intriguing characters You delay the listeners access to

information You introduce information that makes a

central character look either guilty or innocent (in Serial—week to week wavering from one to the other) forcing the audience to make hypotheses

What is the exposition setting the listener up for? The groundwork for finding the truth? The groundwork for a good story?

The groundwork for a good story Did Serial start the story by investigating

Jay and why he would give that testimony? Past trouble with the law? Reward money? How the investigators get him to cop to

accessory (punishable by the death penalty)

Did Serial look at how the investigators focused primarily on Adnan?

They were not building the foundation for finding the truth

Serial sets up an amazing structure where each week we have certain aspects of the case revealed that lead us to question either Adnan or Jay

The story she is following, is the story of the investigators and the prosecution

That story is slanted and flawed It is incomplete

Arousing Suspicion Sarah gives the listener her story of

being conflicted between the state’s (incomplete and flawed) investigation and her perception of Adnan

Humanization of the Invisible In traditional crime stories characters

like Adnan are not so richly humanized This is the most truthful aspect to the

Serial Podcast

Conventions Conventions are the generally accepted

ways of doing something. There are general conventions in any medium, such as the use of interviewee quotes in a print article, but conventions are also genre specific.

Story Conventions

Closure, Safety, DiscourseStructure of CSIStructure of Law and Order What do those shows mean?What are they saying?

Causal Connections People are less likely to keep events

straight if a story is not causal and merely sequential

Many times when causality is not part of a sequence of events—it will be supplied by the viewer/reader

Canonical Story Format Introduction or Exposition: Explanation

of setting, basic character attributes, equilibrium

Complication Action: Introduction of conflict, obstacles,

Ensuing Events dealing with conflict Conclusion, outcome, ending.

Primacy Effect Initial information establishes a frame of

reference to which subsequent information is subordinated as far as possible

Ex: When a character is presented as virtuous they will tend to be considered so even in the face of some contrary evidence

Ex: When we are hearing the state/prosecution’s story as the truth—we are led to believe that’s how things really happened

Delayed Gratification (Retardation) Essential to narrative structure Expository interruptions Blocked expectations balanced with immediate

ones Delay in satisfying hypothesis can be exploited

to trigger new expectations A viewer’s hypothesis can be clearly validated,

invalidated, or left dangling Perceptual hypotheses tend to be vague and

open ended and they are seldom disconfirmed

SIN MURDER AND NARRATION

Transtextual motivation is a strong factor in determining a story’s narrational options.

The Detective film (Serial) The Melodrama (The Wire) Detective Film: Serial

Crime

Cause of Crime Commission of Crime Concealment of Crime Discovery of Crime

Investigation

Beginning of investigation Phases of investigation Elucidation of crime Identification of criminal Consequences of identification

The detective film justifies its gaps and retardations (delayed story development)

Controls knowledge The genre aims to create curiosity about

past story events Suspense about upcoming story events Surprise with respect to unexpected

disclosures about the story We learn what the detective learns

when he or she learns it

We are not allowed access to the detective’s inferences until he or she voices them

The activity of piecing together cause and effect in the crime plot constitutes the central formal convention of the detective tale

Privileged access to his character and motives

Romance becomes another factor. The detective is attracted to the Femme Fatale even if he suspects them of deception, betrayal or even worse (Could be why listeners interpret Sarah as “in love” with Adnan.)

Ethnography A method of nuanced qualitative social

research “in which fine grained daily interactions constitute the life blood of the data being produced

Simon’s work from back to the Baltimore Sun could be described as ethnographic from the beginning

Methodology for The Corner Long-term, one year stay in the field

where a particular set of social relations can be observed

The observer learns the visuals and the habits of the culture by following selected individuals in their work and daily lives

Police culture and drug culture Stand-around-and-watch-journalism

George Marcus Inherent problem with the ethnographic method Concentrates on a specific location of study “single site” ethnographers have recourse to a larger

whole that has not been studied in so deep a systematic fashion

Researchers do not have data for the whole This amounts to an abstraction: “the state, capitalism

and so on. Enables some sort of closure He and others developed an ambition to undertake a

multi-sited ethnography One that can approach the system as a whole

The problem… No single ethnographer has enough

knowledge of enough worlds or enough time to map this constantly evolving world system

“ethnographic imaginary” World enough and time

Simon’s unique fabrication of ethnographically informed serial television melodrama speaks to this according to Williams

Makes arguments, sets up contexts that could not be managed in journalism alone

Serial television melodrama, according to Williams, makes possible the larger canvas of the ethnographic imaginary

Combined factual, ethnographically observed, and detailed worlds of cops and corners into one converged fictional world

With the exception of Spike Lee’s 1995 adaption of Richard Price’s novel Clockers there had never been a film that had given equal time to both sides of the law

Season 1 Breaks crime story conventions Introduces a crime A cop who pursues solving the crime Higher ups who have no interest in solving

the crime Doesn’t stay with the cop, but moves to the

complex world of the committer of the crime Humanizes that character as well Equally important procedures of cops and

dealers are introduced

Comparison between two microsites Cops who want to be good and cops

who just want to bust heads Competent drug dealers vs. ones who

lack the discipline to avoid capture

Complexity of the Series’ microsites (plotlines) Politics Different police details Education Co-ops War on drugs and “Hamsterdam” Etc.

The vivid and interlocking stories from so many concrete ethnographic sites is what fiction affords, what ethnography aspires to, and what newspaper journalism can rarely achieve

Multi-sited ethnographic imaginary that no longer needs to depend on allusions to abstract ideas of “the state,” “the economy”, or “capitalism” as its “fiction of the whole”

The many sites reveal a vivid picture of that “whole”

Simon had to quit the business he loved and turn to television

Hasn’t fully embraced the form Hence the comparison to Greek

Tragedy?

John Carroll and Bill Marimow From Baltimore Sun (criticized “The Metal

Men—1995” Said it was too much like “The Corner” and

that it wasn’t hard enough on the thieves Simon believed that newspapers should

adopt a wide sociological approach to the city’s problems

His editors thought he should be more clear and focused on right and wrong

Rifle-Shot Journalism One story is small and self-contained and

has good guys and bad guys The other is about why we are where we are About who is being left behind Harder to report Carroll and Marimow saw them as

performing a public service that can’t reach for the larger ethnographic complexities

Rifle-Shot vs. Multi-Site Rifle shot is like a half hour of episodic

television whose world is necessarily narrow and whose time is limited to a half hour or hour

In contrast, Simon’s reporting presented an expanded world view

Transforms a social “type” to a human being

White Middle Class Editorializing In The Corner, his editorializing has an

identity In The Wire he shows instead of telling (Which is more truthful?)

In place of the five-paragraph rifle-shot story he would eventually create a five- season cumulative serial whose primary outrage-a futile war on drugs-encompasses myriad others

Serial melodrama can show us, in a way sociologists and ethnographers cannot, how much as Detective Lester Freamon puts it, “all the pieces matter.”

Crime Story vs. Melodrama

Controls knowledge The genre aims to create curiosity about past

story events Suspense about upcoming story events Surprise with respect to unexpected disclosures

about either story or plot detail We learn what the detective learns when he or

she learns it Focus tends to be on finding out who

committed a crime Closure—leading towards full knowledge

Story can rely on broad emotional impact

Evokes pity, sometimes irony or distanciation. Sirk and Bertholdt Brecht

Maximizes the viewer’s urge to know what will happen next—and, especially, how any given character will react to what has happened

 The emotional expressiveness of the film issues partly from the narration’s tendency to be omni--communicative

 To wring every emotional drop out of the narration employs omniscience

 Various characters discover what viewers already know

 Unrestricted knowledge: of multiple storylines

 Crosscutting different plotlines

 Following several characters from one locale to another

Expanded range of knowledge

Plot will inform us of initiation of a chain of action and then skip over some time or move to another line of action