viz.

Image Credit:  Theatre is Easy

Even though my Rhetoric of the Musical class has finished up, I can’t quit musicals.  When I heard that Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a musical I’d discovered when I was preparing my class, was moving to Broadway, I decided that it was the perfect karotic moment to tackle this rich topic.  The musical’s Gothic visuals, emo music, and satirical presentation of American politics combine to bring audiences to consider not only American populism but also the act of history making itself.

Image Credit: Small Screen Scoop

I know that this post is a bit belated, but my excitement in posting this fabulous interview makes me unable to resist the potentially corny title. (And no, while these actresses are not my actual interview subjects, both of them love musicals as much as I do, and one has even written about the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from which this pictures comes.)

Image Credit:  Screenshot from Towleroad

H/T:  Hampton Finger

It’s been hard to miss the recent media coverage of the new Arizona immigration law SB 1070, which allows police to stop individuals and require them to show legal papers proving their citizenship upon “reasonable suspicion.”  Many have interpreted this as legalizing racial profiling, which has caused protests to spring up against this, most recently the one pictured above where individuals smeared refried beans in the shape of a swastika to point out the potentially fascist implications of the bill.  What makes me curious is how racial tensions have been visually deployed during the theoretically post-racial Obama presidency.

Image Credit:  Screenshot from YouTube

When my friend Lauren pointed out to me the following TED video on “photos that changed the world,” I thought that it would be good material for viz.  What I hadn’t realized was where Jonathan Klein’s claims would take my thinking.

Image Credit:  Hulu

Glee’s return last night to television with their new episode “Hell-O” not only served to get my students excited this morning before class, but also demonstrated the utility of using rhetorical concepts to analyze the musical genre.  In this unit of my class my students are considering how kairos informs musical performances.

Image Credit:  Screenshot from YouTube

As everyone reading this blog knows, I love random bits and pieces of pop culture.  Jezebel is one of the websites I visit to indulge this love, and they did not let me down last week.  I’ve been saving this since then, and though I know it may be a bit late to write on this, I couldn’t resist bringing this to everyone’s attention as a kind of alternative archive in its own right.

Image Credit:  A Catalogue of 18th-Century British Mezzotint Satires in North American Collections

I thought I’d step back from the contemporary pop culture discussions today to look into two archives with a more historical emphasis:  the Lewis Walpole Library Digital Collection and A Catalogue of 18th-Century British Mezzotint Satires in North American Collections.  Both of these collections offer extensive resources for instructors in eighteenth-century literature, politics, art, and culture.

Image Credit:  Screenshot from Radical Software

H/T:  Chris Micklethwait

As Noel prepares to lead a Best Practices for Digital Images workshop here at UT, the rest of us in the Visual Rhetoric group hope to make some of this work public here on viz. for others to use.  One website that presents some interesting work done in the 1970s that theorizes the use and creation of digital/video media is Radical Software.

Image Credit:  Screenshot from YouTube

H/T:  Hampton Finger

Lucky for you and me that before I started working on my blog post today that my friend Hampton asked me if I’d seen the new OK Go video for “This Too Shall Pass,” and thus I stumbled onto a much more interesting debate than any engaged in by any Texas Republicans running for the governorship.

Image Credit:  Screenshot from The Atlantic

Every time I sit down to write a blog post for viz, I struggle not only to think up exciting titles but to find striking visuals to decorate my posts.  As we all know, the picture that illustrates the story plays a role in helping to draw meaning from the text.  The above picture from The Atlantic shows a good relationship between the two:  the sign in the foreground looms ominously over the house to stress the anxious idea implied by the headline “Foreclosure Sales Trap.”  However, there are times when the visuals work to imply something that the text doesn’t warrant.