Volume 5, Issue 3 — Behind the Scenes: Uncovering Violence, Gender, and Powerful Pedagogy
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Item Open Access THE MANY FACES OF FOLEY: A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY AND INFLUENCE ON PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2018) Nicks, Adam MichaelThough the academic community often looks down on professional wrestling, there are examples in which the medium allows for elaborate and complex storytelling rivaling other forms of literature. During the 1990s, due to the constant blurring of the lines between reality and fiction within the world of wrestling and the increasingly intelligent audience that consumed the product, performers were forced to adapt to a more realistic style integrating their actual life events and personality into their on-screen personas. One sports entertainer of note was Mick Foley, who crafted three splintered characters he portrayed amongst numerous promotions. Each had their own trajectory and were representative of separate aspects of his own psyche. Cactus Jack was a brutally violent version of Foley hungry to succeed by any means necessary, Mankind was a Gothic personification of Foley’s insecurities, and Dude Love was an out-of-date projection of an adolescent Foley’s ideal, confident hero. Throughout Foley’s career he pioneered a new style of sports entertainment, set a new precedent for character development, and redefined physical expectations for what a performer could be. Mick Foley has since gone on to become a New York Times bestselling author, an advocate for the charity RAINN, a spoken word performer, and a Santa Claus portrayer. Keywords: Mick Foley, Mankind, Cactus Jack, Dude Love, professional wrestling, World Wrestling Federation, World Wrestling Entertainment, Attitude Era, sports entertainment, personasItem Open Access GROUNDED AESTHETICS: PEDAGOGY FOR A POST-TRUTH ERA(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2018) Cragin, BeccaWith the rise of cultural studies, positivism and formalism fell out of favor. But in recent years, altered versions of these methodologies have been suggested as solutions to the deficiencies of the ideological approach dominating the field. Where the ideological approach looks at the content of texts to determine their meaning, the aesthetic approach adopted by media scholars in recent years returns to the close textual readings of formalism (while abandoning its assertion that meaning resides in the text alone). Similarly, where the ideological approach tends to use textual analysis devoid of sociological empiricism, the use of “big data” in the humanities enhances interpretation by using empirical data alongside it (while rejecting positivism’s assumption that measurable data alone is probative). This article draws both methodological strands together to propose an approach to media interpretation called “grounded aesthetics.” Grounded aesthetics involves correlating sociological data with close textual reading to argue for the likely social meaning of the text, given the techniques it uses and the social reality around it. Examples of classroom activities are used to show how the approach can address the “post-truth” perspective many students share: that analyses of representation are interchangeable opinions. Grounded aesthetics greatly improves students’ ability to create well-supported textual analyses and to evaluate the persuasiveness of others’ arguments. It also models critical thinking skills that are useful for dismantling attacks on reality in the “fake news” era, especially those that dismiss analyses of inequality as ideology. Keywords: aesthetics, big data, class, cultural studies, empiricism, formalism, gender, inequality, media studies, pedagogy, post-truth, raceItem Open Access WE ALL HAVE JOBS HERE: TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES IN THE WALKING DEAD(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2018) Gartley, ElizabethA model can be useful when engaging secondary students in team-building by appreciating differing skills and identifying their own strengths. In this example, a model was provided that students to indulge in the transgression of popular culture and zombie media. Middle and high school students participated in a critical thinking and team-building unit which capitalized on student interest in zombie popular culture, particularly the AMC series The Walking Dead. Students engaged in cooperative activities with a “zombie apocalypse” theme. Activities included identifying roles for team members based on individual skill sets in order to strengthen to group as a whole. This approach allowed students to approach this unit as assembling a “zombie apocalypse team,” an idea borrowed from popular culture. The popular culture “zombie apocalypse team” shows that survival depends on building a cooperative team of individuals with disparate but complementary skills and approaches to problem solving. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences can provide theoretical framework to examine how the group of survivors in The Walking Dead combine multiple intelligences, as represented by individual characters, to survive. This model can provide a more detailed context to allow students to their own strengths within a team. Keywords: educational psychology, Howard Gardner, intelligence, Multiple Intelligences, psychology, The Walking Dead, pedagogy, team building, secondary educationItem Open Access A GENDERED PERSPECTIVE ON POLICING VIOLENCE IN HAPPY VALLEY AND FARGO(Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 2018) Culpepper, T. AllenPortrayal of a police officer determined to fight crime and execute justice in a harsh, isolated environment has become a television and film subgenre, often featuring women facing gender-related challenges. The issues raised in Sally Wainwright’s British television series Happy Valley, can be made more accessible, particularly to American undergraduate students, via its commonalities with the Coen brothers film Fargo. In both, a tough but compassionate policewoman pursues the more sociopathic of a pair of criminals involved in a botched kidnapping attempt instigated by an inept businessman, taking on the case for personal and professional honor, and as a responsibility to family and community. Catherine in Happy Valley and Marge in Fargo juggle “masculine” and “feminine” roles as they care for family members while policing violence. The women generally succeed in balancing their gender roles, whereas the men around them do not. But they sometimes assume the aggression associated with the male criminals they pursue. Happy Valley takes these issues deeper by giving Catherine a more intimate connection with one of the perpetrators and presenting the story more directly through a woman’s extra-patriarchal perspective, thus revealing the performative nature of gender roles and the limits of a patriarchal binary view of them. Looking at these issues in relation to Fargo paves the way for examination of their more complex and extensive treatment in Happy Valley. Keywords: television, women, gender, police officers, crime, northern England, film, violence, Happy Valley, detective, Fargo