viz.

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

H/T: Emily Friedman

The audience hears violins sawing tensely as they watch a man scream on screen; only, he is mute.  He moves his mouth, but we only learn his words through intertitles:  “I won’t talk!  I won’t say a word!!!”  So opens the 2011 Academy Award-winning film The Artist.

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.

Let's get this semester started with some happy, shall we?  This is a 2009 video of a flash mob in Antwerp performing a choreographed dance to "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music.  This stunt was apparently orchestrated to promote a Belgian television show.  Though common sense tells you that this performance was meticulously organized and rehearsed, it's hard to deny the arrestingly joyous quality of the video.  As with most well-done flash mob videos, both the filming techniques and the performance itself promote the illusion that this was a spontaneous event.  The camera pans to individuals who appear to be regular by-standers, individuals who later join in the performance just for the sheer fun of it.  It's initially unclear whether the crowd of dancers rushing down the stairs is part of the performance or simply spectators trying to get a look at what's going on. 

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.)

In the spring of 2010 viz. contributor Rachel Schneider interviewed Drs.

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.

Screenshot Credit: YouTube

Zounds!  After Noel’s heartwarming welcome-back posting, I feel reinvigorated and ready to begin posting again here at viz.  I did rest my blogging muscles over the break, but managed to take a few notes for what will hopefully be more piquant posts on pop culture.

Recently, my friends have helpfully provided me with such a deluge of musical material that I don’t know what to do with it all.  My friend Cate Blouke forwarded me the NPR story about HOPE: The Obama Musical, which delights me to no end—but I was a little more intrigued by a video my friend Meghan Andrews brought to my attention—a short-form musical YouTube video that doubles as a Yale advertisement called “That’s Why I Chose Yale.”

Image Credit:  Spring Awakening

This weekend I happened to attend a performance from the Broadway Across America’s tour of Spring Awakening, which was incredibly enjoyable.  The show, based on Wedekind’s 1890s play, deals with issues of teenage sexuality, rebellion, depression, and even abortion.  Spring Awakening does a very good job in its staging and design of making the connection between teens of the 1890s with teens of the 2000s.  

Right now in my class we’re preparing to turn in the first draft of the second paper assignment, which is a comparative rhetorical analysis between two productions of the same musical where I’d like my students to talk about the different rhetorical arguments made by each production using sets, costumes, and performance, as well as changed scripts.  In order to alleviate student concerns, I’ve set myself the task to write a sample paper for them.  It’s been an interesting experience for me, and a somewhat difficult one.  For my texts, I’ve chose to compare the original 1949 Broadway production of South Pacific with the 2008 revival.

Image Credit:  CastRecordings.com 

Andi, I enjoyed reading your post from Saturday, as I'm struggling myself to think about how to teach visual rhetoric in my classroom-although, the concerns I'm undergoing are much different from yours.  There may be ethical concerns about using podcasts to teach a variety of songs united around a different theme, but most of what I do will involve looking at pretty pictures.