Shaun Cullen

Middle Tennessee State University, English, Faculty Member

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Susan Falls

Savannah College of Art and Design

Lucia Nagib

University of Reading

Roskilde University

University of Kent

University of Southern California

Rebecca Harkins-Cross

Monash University

Elizabeth Wijaya

University of Toronto

Bernardo Bortolin Kerr

University of Nottingham

Camilla Reestorff

Aarhus University

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Papers by Shaun Cullen

The Use and Abuse of Illusion: On "The Act of Killing"

A review-length piece analyzing orientalist tropes in Joshua Oppenheimer's 2013 film "The Act of ... more

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"The Innocent and the Runaway: Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Racial Melodrama, and the Epistemology of Ignorance"

During the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West famously interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance... more During the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West famously interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for "Best Female Video." A year later both performers returned to the VMAs with songs that responded directly to the original incident. In the meantime, the U.S. media and record-buying public had come to interpret the original incident using the stock scripts and characters of what Linda Williams has called “U.S. racial melodrama,” the fact of which both performers seemed aware. In this way, the Swift-West “incident” had come to reflect and mimic larger racial tensions, especially between black men and white women, as they had specifically come to be understood and portrayed during the Obama presidency, which many commentators have hastily and incorrectly identified as a symptom of “post-racialism.” This essay discusses how Kanye West and Taylor Swift reflect on and revise the tropes of racial melodrama, in the latter case to reinforce what Charles Mills calls "the epistemology of ignorance" when it comes to racism in America, and in the former case to challenge it.

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"White Skin, Black Flag: Hardcore Punk, Racialization, and the Politics of Sound in Southern California" (forthcoming)

In 1978, hardcore punk rock band Black Flag made their recorded debut with the EP Nervous Breakdo... more In 1978, hardcore punk rock band Black Flag made their recorded debut with the EP Nervous Breakdown. Over the next eight years, until their breakup in 1986, they recorded six full-length albums and multiple singles and EPs, founded the record label SST, and established a touring circuit for underground rock bands that is still being followed today. Since their debut, the music of Black Flag and many of their hardcore punk peers has been criticized for its racial politics. This essay argues that while Black Flag did parody the rhetoric of racism in at least one song, this provocation masked a deeper musical dialogue on the topic of race that was occurring between Black Flag’s members, who were of black, white, Latino, and Jewish descent. Following Stuart Hall’s injunction to listen for the “marks of difference” in popular music and popular cultural production more generally, I explore, in this essay, Black Flag’s musical dialogue within the context of the imperial and colonial legacies of the Southland that were being revived, during their career, by suburban revolutionaries such as Howard Jarvis and the national neo-conservative movement more generally. Ultimately, I suggest that Black Flag’s musical dialogue was a tactical engagement with this legacy that challenged the historical process of racialization upon which that legacy depended.

"Countering Glenn Beck"

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The Use and Abuse of Illusion: On "The Act of Killing"

A review-length piece analyzing orientalist tropes in Joshua Oppenheimer's 2013 film "The Act of ... more

Download

"The Innocent and the Runaway: Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Racial Melodrama, and the Epistemology of Ignorance"

Download

"White Skin, Black Flag: Hardcore Punk, Racialization, and the Politics of Sound in Southern California" (forthcoming)

"Countering Glenn Beck"

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Shaun Cullen

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