Performing Rites

Download or read book Performing Rites written by Simon Frith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-02-06 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who's better? Billie Holiday or P. J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan or Keats? And how many friendships have ridden on the answer? Such questions aren't merely the stuff of fanzines and idle talk; they inform our most passionate arguments, distill our most deeply held values, make meaning of our ever-changing culture. In Performing Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. What's good, what's bad? What's high, what's low? Why do such distinctions matter? Instead of dismissing emotional response and personal taste as inaccessible to the academic critic, Simon Frith takes these forms of engagement as his subject--and discloses their place at the very center of the aesthetics that structure our culture and color our lives. Taking up hundreds of songs and writers, Frith insists on acts of evaluation of popular music as music. Ranging through and beyond the twentieth century, Performing Rites puts the Pet Shop Boys and Puccini, rhythm and lyric, voice and technology, into a dialogue about the undeniable impact of popular aesthetics on our lives. How we nod our heads or tap our feet, grin or grimace or flip the dial; how we determine what's sublime and what's "for real"--these are part of the way we construct our social identities, and an essential response to the performance of all music. Frith argues that listening itself is a performance, both social gesture and bodily response. From how they are made to how they are received, popular songs appear here as not only meriting aesthetic judgments but also demanding them, and shaping our understanding of what all music means.

Download or read book Neopagan Rites written by Isaac Bonewits and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2007 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guidebook for creating and conducting public rituals that that unify, inspire and fulfil their intended purposes.

Download or read book Performing Death written by Nicola Laneri and published by Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. This book was released on 2007 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume represents a collection of contributions presented by the authors during the Second Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar "Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean," held at the Oriental Institute, February 17-18, 2006. The principal aim of the two-day seminar was to interpret the social relevance resulting from the enactment of funerary rituals within the broad-reaching Mediterranean basin from prehistoric periods to the Roman Age. Efforts were concentrated on creating a panel composed of scholars with diverse backgrounds - anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, art historians, and philologists - and the knowledge and expertise to enrich the discussion through the presentation of case-studies linked to both textual and archaeological evidence from the Mediterranean region. Fundamental to the successful realisation of this research process was the active dialogue between scholars of different backgrounds. These communicative exchanges provided the opportunity to integrate different approaches and interpretations concerning the role played by the performance of ancient funerary rituals within a given society and, as a result, helped in defining a coherent outcome towards the interpretation of ancient communities' behaviours.

Download or read book Deeply Into the Bone written by Ronald L. Grimes and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-12 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a personal, informed and cultural perspective on rites of passage for general readers, this text illustrates the power of rites to help us navigate life's troublesome transitions.

Download or read book Rites of Realism written by Ivone Margulies and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-27 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rites of Realism shifts the discussion of cinematic realism away from the usual focus on verisimilitude and faithfulness of record toward a notion of "performative realism," a realism that does not simply represent a given reality but enacts actual social tensions. These essays by a range of film scholars propose stimulating new approaches to the critical evaluation of modern realist films and such referential genres as reenactment, historical film, adaptation, portrait film, and documentary. By providing close readings of classic and contemporary works, Rites of Realism signals the need to return to a focus on films as the main innovators of realist representation. The collection is inspired by André Bazin's theories on film's inherent heterogeneity and unique ability to register contingency (the singular, one-time event). This volume features two new translations: of Bazin's seminal essay "Death Every Afternoon" and Serge Daney's essay reinterpreting Bazin's defense of the long shot as a way to set the stage for a clash or risky confrontation between man and animal. These pieces evince key concerns—particularly the link between cinematic realism and contingency—that the other essays explore further. Among the topics addressed are the provocative mimesis of Luis Buñuel's Land Without Bread; the adaptation of trial documents in Carl Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc; the use of the tableaux vivant by Wim Wenders and Peter Greenaway; and Pier Paolo Pasolini's strategies of analogy in his transposition of The Gospel According to St. Matthew from Palestine to southern Italy. Essays consider the work of filmmakers including Michelangelo Antonioni, Maya Deren, Mike Leigh, Cesare Zavattini, Zhang Yuan, and Abbas Kiarostami. Contributors: Paul Arthur, André Bazin, Mark A. Cohen, Serge Daney, Mary Ann Doane, James F. Lastra, Ivone Margulies, Abé Mark Normes, Brigitte Peucker, Richard Porton, Philip Rosen, Catherine Russell, James Schamus, Noa Steimatsky, Xiaobing Tang

Download or read book Rites of the God-King written by Marko Geslani and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rites of the God-King offers a critical revision of mainstream Hinduism from the perspective of the life of a single ritual from medieval India. Drawing theoretical connections to modern ethnographies, it raises questions about the nature of kingship and priesthood, image-worship, and ritual change.

Download or read book Being Chinese written by Wei Djao and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2003-09 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese have traveled the globe for centuries, and today people of Chinese ancestry live all over the world. They are the Huayi or "Chinese overseas" and can be found not only in the thriving Chinese communities of the United States, Canada, and Southeast, but also in enclaves as far-reaching as Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Peru. In this book, twenty-two Chinese living and working outside of ChinaÑordinary people from all walks of lifeÑtell us something about their lives and about what it means to be Chinese in non-Chinese societies. In these pages we meet a surgeon raised in Singapore but westernized in London who still believes in the value of Chinese medicine, which "revitalizes you in ways that Western medicine cannot understand." A member of the Chinese Canadian community who bridles at the insistence that you can't be Chinese unless you speak a Chinese dialect, because "Even though I do not have the Chinese language, I think my ability to manifest many things in Chinese culture to others in English is still very important." Individuals all loyal to their countries of citizenship who continue to observe the customs of their ancestral home to varying degrees, whether performing rites in memory of ancestors, practicing fengshui, wearing jade for good luck, or giving out red packets of lucky money for New Year. What emerges from many of these accounts is a selective adherence to Chinese values. One person cites a high regard for elders, for high achievement, and for the sense of togetherness fostered by his culture. Another, the bride in an arranged marriage to a transplanted Chinese man, speaks highly of her relationship: "It's the Chinese way to put in the effort and persevere." Several of the stories consider the difference between how Chinese women overseas actually live and the stereotypes of how they ought to live. One writes: "Coming from a traditional Chinese family, which placed value on sons and not on daughters, it was necessary for me to assert my own direction in life rather than to follow in the traditional paths of obedience." Bracketing the testimonies are an overview of the history of emigration from China and an assessment of the extent to which the Chinese overseas retain elements of Chinese culture in their lives. In compiling these personal accounts, Wei Djao, who was born in China and now lives near Seattle, undertook a quest that took her not only to many countries but also to the inner landscapes of the heart. Being Chinese is a highly personal book that bares the aspirations, despairs, and triumphs of real people as it makes an insightful and lasting contribution to Chinese diasporic studies.