ARCHIVE - julia zay's blog

ARCHIVE - White House Mug Shots

julia zay — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:17:04 -0800

Funny series of mug shot photo-collages by artist duo Ligorano/Reese::::: "LINEUP: THE UNOFFICAL PORTRAITS"

Ashcroft

HERE 's a link to a blog post about this series and the media to-do surrounding it from one of my favorite celebrity-culture intervention blogs: "Gallery of the Absurd." [Christine, Celia, and Spencer showed a painting by the artist who runs this site in their wk 9 BP presentation on BRITNEY.]

and, via YouTube, HERE are the images in video form (with audio clips of the subjects themselves), as they were projected on the wall at The Kitchen, a NYC gallery/performance space.

ARCHIVE - phantom program topic

julia zay — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:26:19 -0800

Reading Emily H.'s post on the 50 Cent/JT song "Aayo" and Spencer's comment reminded me that if we were teaching this program over a semester, instead of a measly old quarter, we'd have to move to pornography next. How could one teach a program with this title and not cover that material, once we all got comfortable enough with each other? It's amazingly hard to figure out how to teach porn studies well or without shocking or enraging various people on campus, but that's all the more reason it would need to be done. I've taught gay porn in the past, briefly, in a class on Queer Film/Video. The crossing over of the classroom space into porn viewing space is impossibly complicated but fruitful.

If you are interested in further reading, start with the brilliant Linda Williams' book, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible , the Porn Studies Reader, edited by Williams, and Laura Kipnis' Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America

-julia

ARCHIVE - Doll Parts

julia zay — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:16:32 -0700

In "Doll Parts" Courtney Love sings I fake it so real I am beyond fake. And someday you will ache like I ache. Some day you will ache like I ache.

What else to say. I was struck by these. Here's the link.

ARCHIVE - The Wig

julia zay — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:34:58 -0700

This is, more than anything else, a placeholder for a longer post on the wig.

Perhaps contemporary and emerging wig technology and styles.

I am watching a little Home Shopping Network (HSN) right now. A lady named Toni Brattin is selling "Toni's Un-Wig Fancy Flip Midlength Wig." She's addressing the viewers as "Girls." I'd say something here about interpellation, but I'm in a rush.

This one is $89.95 and comes in 13 colors. My favorite color is the Light Gray (one might also describe it as "silver fox") but my favorite color name is "salt and pepper."

The revolutionary design these wigs seem to be known for is the ventilated and adjustable strappy cap to which the hair is attached. It allows you to pull your own hair through, too.

Wigs are masks for the hair/top of head (as opposed to the face).

But before I close I must tell you about the models, attired in identical thin cotton cable knit fuchsia sweaters and trim back pants and skirts. The pink's signaling an affiliation with breast cancer causes. We can have another conversation about pink as the designated color of the breast cancer awareness cause(?) movement(?). And yet another about what gets called a "cause" and what a "movement." But, as I mentioned, I'm in a rush.

Catch a Glimpse. [no pink sweaters here, unfortunately]

ARCHIVE - Functional Fashion?

julia zay — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:09:29 -0700

These are incredible designs, and even more so, in some sense, because they've been designed to meet a perceived urban threat. Interesting to think about the city, The Roaring Girl (itself a city comedy), navigating densely populated steel canyons, people shape-shifting into street furniture at the mere unfolding of a skirt... Metropolis is a city film. Interested to see what connections we will make between 1602 and 1927, London and German techno-dystopia. --jz

Fearing Crime, Japanese Wear the Hiding Place

Slide Show

TOKYO, Oct. 19 — On a narrow Tokyo street, near a beef bowl restaurant and a pachinko parlor, Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hopes will ease Japan’s growing fears of crime.

Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine...

CLICK to read the full New York Times article