Search Results (5)

Within evangelical communities, “worship” and “performance” are often diametrically opposed, with the latter instantly evoking damning connotations of pretense or artifice. This leads many artists to utilize a strategy of disavowal to legitimize their music-making as worship—erasing the “performance” category in order to highlight the ultimate worshipful aim of their actions. David Crowder, especially during his lengthy tenure with the David Crowder*Band (DC*B), places performative elements front and center through calculated uses of sound in live performances and on recordings. My analysis in this essay will focus on the ways that David Crowder legitimates “performance” as its own distinct musical space, using a dialectical move to navigate the performance/worship problem by emphasizing its divide rather than simply trying to erase it. Full article

The Benedictine Archives at Lazkao contain a multitude of propaganda stickers and related visual media that provide a snapshot of the Basque region’s artful political culture in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the most compelling examples include several items that remix Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, referencing the famous antiwar painting to become a form of mass-circulated pastiche. This move was somewhat unusual amid the strong nationalist bent of public discourse and art in the Basque Country during this period. Almost entirely unknown outside the region, these materials capture political performance during the decade-long period between the instauration of Spanish democracy (1978) and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), when separatist sentiment reached a peak in the Basque Country. This artful visual platform, rendered in the small, focused format of stickers, constitutes a useful index of rhetorical currents within the Basque Country and Spain, as well as an interesting analogue prototype of what we might call, in the twenty-first century, meme culture. Circulated in bars and other public places across the Basque region, and frequently worn upon clothing, the stickers demonstrate a propaganda principle described by Jonathan Auerbach and Russ Castronovo, whereby participants in movements of mass persuasion actively partake in the dissemination and consumption of propaganda. The stickers normally refer to very concrete events (for instance, a one-day celebration, a protest for a concrete situation, etc.). When organized on topics and themes, they create a nonlinear visual account of post-Franco Basque history, providing propaganda narratives that invite performative acts from the audience. This account documents the significance of the vast Benedictine collection for future scholars, analyzing, in detail, four stickers that employ Guernica in their design. It also considers several other representative items from the collections that play on other art forms, as well as pop culture, in their attempt to influence public opinion, politics, and media consumption. Full article

In publications of Russian folklore, along with authentic texts there are a number of literary stylizations based on folklore. The article traces the history of one such pseudo-folkloric text—a carol which was first published by Ivan Petrovich Sakharov (1807 to 1863) in 1837. It has been established that this carol is a montage of two texts: the first is a carol, printed in 1817 by I.E. Sreznevsky in the Ukrainian Bulletin, and the second is a song included in the Tale of Brother Ivanushka and his Sister Alyonushka (SUS 450). Such contamination is unique and is found only in this one text, which was later reprinted many times. Taking into account Sakharov’s reputation as a falsifier of folklore, there is no reason to doubt that it was he who composed this carol; such contamination of works belonging to different folkloric genres is also characteristic of other of Sakharov’s publications. The carol that Sakharov published attracted the particular interest of researchers of Slavic mythology due to the fact that it described how an old man was going to sacrifice a goat. Several generations of historians saw in this pseudo-folkloric text a description of a ritual that pagan Slavs performed in ancient times. Considering the carol as an historical document, researchers of mythology built their interpretations based on the supposed time of its appearance, the nature of its genre, plot, and individual details. Thus, Sakharov’s pseudo-folkloric creation found an eager audience among scholars, and it stimulated their imagination in picturing the life of pagan Rus’. Full article

Since the end of the 20th century, Korean churches have awakened to the fact that pop culture is enjoyed by a large segment of the population and thus provides a natural bridge between Christians and non-Christians. As a result, many Korean churches utilize popular cultural elements that Christians and non-Christians relish, such as movies, music videos, and images, as a way of demonstrating their evangelistic invitation to the world. They appropriate famous pop culture contents and present slightly modified materials through various channels, such as church websites, social media, and YouTube. This study focuses on the artistic technique of the evangelistic materials that Korean churches create. Based on the artistic understanding of appropriation, parody, and pastiche, this study examines whether the evangelistic imitations are “parodies” as they are introduced by their creators. I also look at ways another artistic style, “pastiches,” might be more suitable to those appropriations than “parodies.” Employing insights from the artistic analysis, this study explores which artistic style might be a better way of providing imitations of popular culture not so much as superficial entertainment but as a serious way to communicate the gospel. This will show how to appropriate popular culture as both faithful and efficient evangelistic methods. Full article

Bill Willingham’s Fables comic book series and its spin-offs have spanned fourteen years and reinforce that fairy-tale characters are culturally meaningful, adaptable, subversive, and pervasive. Willingham uses fairy-tale pastiche and syncreticism based on the ethos of comic book crossovers in his redeployment of previous approaches to fairy-tale characters. Fables characters are richer for every perspective that Willingham deploys, from the Brothers Grimm to Disneyesque aesthetics and more erotic, violent, and horrific incarnations. Willingham’s approach to these fairy-tale narratives is synthetic, idiosyncratic, and libertarian. This tension between Willingham’s subordination of fairy-tale characters to his overarching libertarian ideological narrative and the traditional folkloric identities drives the storytelling momentum of the Fables universe. Willingham’s portrayal of Bigby (the Big Bad Wolf turned private eye), Snow White (“Fairest of Them All”, Director of Operations of Fabletown, and avenger against pedophilic dwarves), Rose Red (Snow’s divergent, wild, and jealous sister), and Jack (narcissistic trickster) challenges contemporary assumptions about gender, heroism, narrative genres, and the very conception of a fairy tale. Emerging from negotiations with tradition and innovation are fairy-tale characters who defy constraints of folk and storybook narrative, mythology, and metafiction. Full article