John Updike 1932-2009

An appreciation by CMCI lecturer Dr. Harvey G. Cohen

Just thought I would mention the passing of one of my favorite authors this week, John Updike, a prodigious writer of novels, short stories, non-fiction, poetry, and criticism, producing about a book a year for the last 55+ years. In my courses taught here at King’s College, I often focus on how culture reflects history, and vice versa. Perhaps no American writer is better suited to illustrate this concept in the last half-century.

For my money, his best books are the “Rabbit quartet,” 4 books published between 1960-1990 about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, one of the most indelible characters in American literature, right up there with Huckleberry Finn, Scarlet O’Hara, and Jay Gatsby. The best 2 books in the series are the last two (“Rabbit is Rich” and “Rabbit at Rest”), which both won the Pulitzer prize, but their richness can’t be fully appreciated without reading the first two. Another favorite of mine is “Couples,” from 1968, which portrayed how the sexual revolution really gained currency in America not when the 1960s hippies embraced it, but when it was picked up (so to speak!) by suburban middle-class married couples with children. I’ve always felt that Ang Lee’s excellent film “The Ice Storm” (1997) would not have been possible if not for the groundbreaking provided by Updike’s “Couples.” One last shout-out: Updike’s historical novel “In The Beauty of the Lilies” (1996).

It’s also interesting that Updike remained with the same publisher in America, Knopf, for over half a century, a rarity in today’s market-obsessed publishing industry. During the week of March 9th, in the Cultural Organisations and Creative Industries course that Dr. Hye-Kyung Lee and I teach here at MA CCI, I’ll be focusing on the publishing industry, and we will be discussing the history of the Knopf publishing company, and how they were able to sign so many of the most important and profitable American writers of the 20th-century.

I’ve only read about a dozen of more than 60 Updike books, so I have some catching up to do in the decades to come. Think I’ll start with his newest book, which I picked up last month here in London, the sequel to his famous “Witches of Eastwick” book, which was made into a film starring Jack Nicholson in 1987.

For more info, an appraisal of Updike by the NY Times’ chief book critic, Michiko Kakutani:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28appr.html?hp

In the Guardian today, authors such as Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, and Zadie Smith write about how Updike inspired them and brought them literary pleasure through the decades:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/28/johnupdike-usa
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/28/johnupdike-fiction

Managing Nicely

CMCI’s cultural management specialist Dr Lynne Nikolychuk has been more than a little busy lately…

She was the lead researcher for a report just published on “UK Independent Television & Film Sectors: Exploring New Collaborative (Business) Models”. The project was funded by the London Development Agency and supported by King’s Business Ltd. It’s been published by the School of Humanities at King’s (ISBN 978-1-897747-22-5). Her co-authors were Finola Kerrigan of the King’s College management department and Pamela Abbott of Brunel University. You can also see the report at:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/29/17/UKIndependentTelevisionFilmProductionSectors.pdf

Meanwhile, Lynne was co-author of a scholarly article on “technological objects and the adoption of technical product innovations” in the January 2009 edition of the Cambridge Journal of Economics. The article focused on transitions from analogue photography to digital imaging, and was a collaboration between authors from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, and King’s College, London.

Last month, Lynne and Pamela Abbott presented a paper on ICT-enabled organisational change at the OASIS conference in Paris, while they are planning to present another research a paper together on social network analysis in UK television broadcasting at the 3rd annual conference on Cultural Production in a Global Context: The Worldwide Film Industries in June 2009.

Closer to home, Lynne is also currently teaching two modules on cultural and creative management as part of our MA in Cultural and Creative Industries.

Must be funny

Our friend Ricarda Ross at the School of Advanced Study is running a series of seminars in visual culture with the topical theme of Money Money Money.

The seminars take place in the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Room ST 275, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, WC1B 5DN London. Two papers will be presented at the first seminar, on Thursday 29 Jan, 6.30 – 8.00pm:

Dr. Yair Wallach, “Money becomes Text: Gold and Paper in Palestine”

In what ways is money written or read? Does the shape of money matters to its use? I will address these questions looking at money in everyday life and high politics in late Ottoman and British ruled Palestine (1858-1948). The dramatic shift from gold coins to paper banknotes in Palestine provides an intriguing example of the abstraction of money and its de-materialisation, its becoming a text of sort. The paper will discuss these developments against Palestine’s textual and political economies, as well as the monetary theories of Marx, Keynes and Simmel.

Rebecca Ross (Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design), “Doing Visual Culture: Currency and Graphic Design”

I will discuss work produced with second year BA Graphic Design students at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design for a recent studio project centred around the theme of currency. While the student work itself approaches money from multiple perspectives and with a variety of interests and concerns, the main objective of this talk will be to present this studio project as one model for integrating visual design practice with intellectual agency.

RSVP ricarda.vidal@sas.ac.uk so we know roughly how many people to expect.

Inauguration event

Our own Dr Harvey G. Cohen will be speaking at a special presidential inauguration event at King’s College this Tuesday, 20 January, to offer comments on the swearing in of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States of America.

The event runs from 4.30 to 6.30pm at the KCLSU Waterfront Bar, Macadam Building, Surrey Street.

Join Harvey to watch the President-elect sworn in to office and discuss the future of America and American Studies!

This event is sponsored by the King’s College London Annual Fund.

Opera on Screen

Former MA CCI student Allison Burr (2007-8), together with Claire Price of Arts Alliance Media, will return to give a talk at King’s on 20 January about the new phenomenon of opera and other arts being relayed into digital cinema.

The convergence between opera and cinema will be explored from historical, artistic and business perspectives, and the speakers will also analyse new business models and approaches being adopted by key opera houses, including pricing policies and marketing strategies. The Royal Opera House will be used as a case study.

Arts Alliance Media’s project on opera in cinema will be introduced, including an explanation of how technology developments have pioneered the possibilities of screening live and recorded alternative content in cinemas. The company’s partnerships with the Royal Opera House and other content owners will also be discussed. There will also be a Q&A and the opportunity to view trailers of Royal Opera House cinema events.

All are welcome.

Venue: Room S-2.23, Strand Building, King’s College London
Time: 4.00-5.30pm, Tuesday 20 January

Photo: danielabsilva (via www.flickr.com/creativecommons)

Is It Becoz I Went to Cambridge?

The character of Ali G may not be famed for his intellectual capacities, but he was nevertheless the subject of a research paper that centre director Dr Richard Howells gave at Cambridge University.

“It’s Semiotic, Innit?” explained the often contentious relationship between race, humour and television, and looked closely at how Sacha Baron Cohen, the actor behind the character, was able to get away with his frequently outrageous racial humour.

Interestingly, Baron Cohen himself was an undergraduate at Cambridge, where he studied history before finding fame as Ali G on television and then on film as Borat in the hugely successful (and controversial) Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006).

Richard’s paper was given to the Screen and Media Cultures Research Seminar, University of Cambridge and took place at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).

Booyakasha.

All In the Family

PhD student Joaquim Negreiros already has a busy spring 2009 lined up. First off, he’ll be speaking at the 1st Global Conference: Ethics in Everyday Life in Salzburg, Austria from 17-19 March. His topic will be: “The ‘super-ethical mum’: discursive instability in a mass mediated representation of the ethical dimension of motherhood”.

Then the following month he’ll be presenting another paper at The British Sociological Association 2009 Annual Conference, 17-18 April, to be held in Cardiff. This time his topic will be: “‘What I’ve learned from other people’s marriages’: ambiguity and complexity in mass mediated representations of family life”.

Both papers have been developped from Joaquim’s doctoral research on reperesentions of family life in British lifestyle magazines. Before starting his PhD, Joaquim was a journalist on a leading newspaper in his native Portugal. Here at the Centre for Cultural Media and Creative Industries Research he is supervised by Dr Richard Howells. There’s more about Joaquim and some of our other PhD students at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/cci/people/phdstudents.html

2009

We haven’t had time to check this out ourselves, but Lost in CCI readers might be interested to know that 2009 has been designated the European Year of Creativity and Innovation. You can read about it here.