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Hodgesb58069.Pdf (1.976Mb) Copyright by Benjamin Kidder Hodges 2006 The Dissertation Committee for Benjamin Kidder Hodges Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Special Affect: Special Effects, Sensation, and Pop in Post-Socialist Bulgaria Committee: Kathleen Stewart, Supervisor John Hartigan Elizabeth Keating Kamran Ali Yacov Sharir Special Affect: Special Effects, Sensation, and Pop in Post-Socialist Bulgaria by Benjamin Kidder Hodges, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2006 Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the support of the Center for Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin for their support of my Bulgarian language studies. Likewise, I would like to acknowledge the Institute of International Education whose Fulbright fellowship supported much of the research on which this dissertation is based. iv Special Affect: Special Effects, Sensation, and Pop in Post-Socialist Bulgaria Publication No._____________ Benjamin Kidder Hodges, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2006 Supervisor: Kathleen Stewart This dissertation is a study of a virtual Bulgaria, a Bulgaria built of ephemeral media images, desires, and structures of feeling. This virtual Bulgaria interacts with the Bulgaria of everyday existence, of everyday struggles and joys in complex ways. Employing the tradition of ethnographic research, I have approached the material of Bulgarian Popular media, its Pop music videos, talk shows, and reality television, as lived spaces, places where personal desires and emotions meet up with larger cultural affects and aspirations. In particular, I am interested in how Bulgarians are choosing to make not only sense, but also sensation out of the dissonances and resonances of their everyday lives via the virtual images of popular media. The vibrant Pop culture of music videos and commercials are certainly more than simple mimicry of Western media. As Bulgaria struggles with its Post-Socialist realities and its hopes for inclusion in the European Union, its producers and audiences approach the fantastic spaces of Bulgarian Popular media as the literal terrain of Post-Socialist reconstruction. v In approaching this terrain of media, I employ a non-meaning based model of culture, one where affects, sensations, and feelings are treated as the very material of culture. Theoretically speaking, I look to bridge the reception theories of Media Studies and current ideas of affect and virtual publics in Cultural Studies literature. Through stories of shooting music videos, beer commercials in the resort corridor of the Black Sea, and a reality dating show amidst the urban decay of Sofia, Bulgaria, I have sought to show how producers work to create an affective terrain of hope and success. Similarly, I focus on the local use of digital compositing, 3d modeling, and other specials effects as techniques for generating a new Bulgarian public. These technological aesthetics are used to generate a feeling of global connectedness and virtual potential. Ultimately this peculiar topography of Post-Socialist culture, with its interplay of virtual spaces, images, and feelings, is a unique opportunity to better understand the potential of television and other such mass media to create new virtual publics. vi Table of Contents List of Figures ....................................................................................................... ix Introduction: Depth of Field 1 Chapter 1 Virtual Publics......................................................................................20 Affects ..........................................................................................................23 Multiple Publics ...........................................................................................26 Distracted Visions ........................................................................................31 Conjuring the Public ....................................................................................34 I Love Craziness ..........................................................................................39 Disappearing Act .........................................................................................44 Chapter 2 Pop Folk(lore) ......................................................................................48 Chalgagia .....................................................................................................54 A Star is Born ...............................................................................................57 Putting the Pop in Pop Folk………………………………………………...60 Digital Utopias……………………………………………………………...63 Becoming Public…………………………………………………………....66 Chapter 3 The Living Room……………………………………………………...71 Real Space in Real Time ..............................................................................74 Behind-The-Scenes ......................................................................................79 Socialist Interiors .........................................................................................82 Post-Socialist Game Shows "Who wants to be a…"……………………….85 Love Roommates…………………………………………………………...87 Chapter 4 Vice City………………………………………………………………96 (Un)Just Gaming Heading 3,h3 style: TOC 3...............................................99 Running Around with a Gun in Your Hand……………………………….103 Balkanizing………………………………………………………………..106 "Grows but does not age"………………………………………………….111 vii Anxious Space…………………………………………………………….114 Chapter 5 Impossible Reflections……………………………………………….121 Invisible Labor ......................................................................................….125 Greyspace: The Space of Design………………………………………….130 A Brief History of Light…………………………………………………..134 Virtual Reconstructions…………………………………………………...138 Conclusion: Bright Culture……………………………………………………...141 Appendix..............................................................................................................145 Bibliography ........................................................................................................155 Vita ......................................................................................................................168 viii List of Figures Figure 1: “I Love Craziness”(Obicham Ludosta) Malina, Planta Records 2003……..40 Figure 2: “Love Fire” Vesela Planta Records 2003 and “Mystery” Desi Slava….…..41 Figure 3: Planeta Television 2003 annual awards show………………….…………..46 Figure 4: National Palace of Culture Sofia, Bulgaria …………………..…………….46 Figure 5 Sashka Vasela “Make Love not War” album cover…………………………49 Figure 6: Raihan and the Cristal Orchestra Painer Music 2001……..……..…………58 Figure 7: Reihan Painer Music 2003…………………………………………….……59 Figure 8: Absurd “Three in One”(Trima v Edno) Free Agents 2005…………………69 Figure 9: Nash Dom (Our House) magazine interior (1984)………………………….84 Figure 10: Stani Bogat Bulgarian Version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire……..…85 Figure 11: Love Roommates Reality Dating Show……………………………………88 Figure 12: Love Roommates Studio Set (copyright SIA advertising 2002)…………..94 Figure 13: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Screen Shots Rock Star Games……………103 Figure 14: Chinimport Chemical Company Advertisement in Sofia 2003…………..111 ix Figure 15: Half-Life Screen Shots Valve Software copyright 2004…………………..114 Figure 16: screen grab 3d studio max animation software interface…………………..131 Figure 17: Cornell Box, Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics…………135 Figure 18: Norelco Electric Shaver texture map and mapped 3d image…………….....137 Figure 19: Soft Scrub Bubbles commercial employing texture mapping………….…...137 Figure 20: Dessi Tenekedzhieva "Dark" music video stills courtesy 5 th Degree……....140 x Introduction: Depth of Field Since the dissolution of the Soviet influence in the early nineteen nineties, much debate has been expended both internally and internationally as to the future of the Balkans. The Post-Socialist agendas of Neo-nationalists, Socialists, and Royalists have all played a part in defining the local political atmosphere. Amidst these local debates, the prospect of inclusion in the European Union has become a defining goal. Excluding Greece, Bulgaria, together with Romania are the first Balkan countries poised to enter the European Union on January 1, 2007. The recent international attention hoisted on Bulgaria as a result of this integration is in contrast to the peripheral position it occupied during the Balkan wars of the nineteen nineties and its earlier absence from Western media due to its tight alliance with the Soviet Union. While over shadowed by these conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria struggled with its own difficult transition to a market economy, suffering along the way hyper inflation, illicit privatization deals, and massive emigration of its professionals and students. This same period also saw the development of private media conglomerates which expanded the media of Bulgaria beyond its prior State run industries. The success of cable television, radio, and locally produced recording artists has greater significance than as merely an economic indicator of the growth of local business. The new terrain of privately produced media is the very site in which Bulgarians’ aspirations and desires are articulated. Amidst the burgeoning development
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