DOCSLIB.ORG

An Analysis of Vernacular Agency Through Images of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
An Analysis of Vernacular Agency Through Images of Ruth Bader Ginsburg The Multitude Speaks in Style: An Analysis of Vernacular Agency Through Images of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Haley Swartz A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL December 2017 Copyright 2017 by Haley Swartz ii Acknowledgements When I began the process of conceptualizing this project, I talked about it. A lot. I knew there was something unique about how a Supreme Court Justice could be known as “Notorious,” but I was unsure about what the bigger question would be. Several people helped me to find that question and have thus influenced the trajectory of this thesis. Thank you to Dr. Jeffrey Galin for inspiring me to pursue visual rhetoric and providing me the opportunity to practice with it. Thank you to Dr. Becky Mulvaney and Dr. Christine Scodari for listening to and commenting on the early stages of this project and for serving on the supervisory committee for this thesis. Thank you to Dr. Noemi Marin for unwavering support and sincere guidance that catapulted me into action, and special thanks to my advisor, Dr. William Trapani, for many, many conversations that went many, many different directions, helping me to find my voice and giving me the confidence to complete this manuscript. I am grateful to the faculty, students, and staff of the School of Communication and Media Studies for the opportunity to learn, teach, and be a part of a community at Florida Atlantic, and I am especially grateful for the friendships I have made along the way. Finally, thank you to my family; you have made sacrifices to accommodate class schedules and research time, you have listened to me celebrate and complain, and you have supported me through this graduate school experience. iv Abstract Author: Haley Swartz Title: The Multitude Speaks in Style: An Analysis of Vernacular Agency Through Images of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. William Trapani Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2017 The unexpected comparison of a Supreme Court Justice with a popular culture icon demonstrates how politics and popular culture become entwined in the contemporary context; moreover, network culture provides a conduit for vernacular discourse about politics, which circulates in the style of popular culture. Through analysis of images of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as created, shared, and circulated in network culture, this project explores the alternative levels of discourse generated in network culture, examines the ways the public represents politics, and explains the ability of political subjects to affect meaning. The aim of this project is to document a conjunctural moment; as such, analysis of the images in aggregate provides a foundation to raise questions about how American political culture is manifested, attended to, and maintained through network culture and the parlance of popular culture. v The Multitude Speaks in Style: An Analysis of Vernacular Agency Through Images of Ruth Bader Ginsburg List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1: Ginsburg in the Vernacular ............................................................................... 1 Project Overview ............................................................................................................ 4 Literature Review ............................................................................................................ 9 Network Culture: To what extent is the medium the message? .............................. 9 The Shortcomings of Meme Theory ..................................................................... 14 Multitude Revised ................................................................................................. 17 Mediated Representation of Political Figures ....................................................... 19 Style: Speculative Instrument for Politics and Popular Culture ........................... 24 Chapter 2: Critical Approach ............................................................................................ 35 Methodological Approach ............................................................................................ 36 Objects of Study ............................................................................................................ 37 A Note on the Status of the Image in Politics ....................................................... 41 Style as Agency and Control in Network Culture ................................................ 44 Defining Terms ..................................................................................................... 47 Combining Perspectives for Analysis ........................................................................... 47 Chapter 3: Analysis ........................................................................................................... 54 A Brief History of RBG ................................................................................................ 54 vi A Justice dissenting. .............................................................................................. 55 Shelby County v. Holder. ...................................................................................... 56 An Image Created ................................................................................................. 57 Visibility of a Justice ............................................................................................ 59 An Analysis of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the Notorious RBG ....................................... 60 RBG Substance and Style ..................................................................................... 63 A Champion for the Disenfranchised ................................................................... 68 Etsy: An Imaginary Community in the Market Context ....................................... 71 The Reality of RBG .............................................................................................. 74 Chapter 4: Conditions of Vernacular Style ....................................................................... 78 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 78 Logics of Circulation ............................................................................................ 78 The Multitude Speaks ........................................................................................... 80 Political Agency of the Common .......................................................................... 82 Limitations and Directions for Future Research ........................................................... 87 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 90 References ......................................................................................................................... 92 vii List of Figures Figure 1. Dissent Poster (Burruano, 2017). ........................................................................ 3 Figure 2. Dissent pin attributed to Notorious RBG (Handpecked Designs, 2017). ............ 3 Figure 3. Can't Spell Truth Without Ruth (Sow & Chi, 2013). ........................................ 58 Figure 4. RBG T-Shirt (Knizhnik, 2013). ......................................................................... 58 Figure 5. The Notorious R.B.G (Teespring.com) ............................................................. 58 Figure 6. RBG as depicted in Notorious RBG (Johnson, 2015). ...................................... 58 Figure 7. Queen Ruth (Jaramillo, 2015). .......................................................................... 61 Figure 8. Dissenting Ruth (Pell, 2016). ............................................................................ 61 Figure 9. Official Portrait (Petteway, 2010). .................................................................... 63 Figure 10. Picture of Ginsburg as a superhero from The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Coloring Book (SheKnows, 2015). .......................................................................................... 69 Figure 11. A sampling of pictures shared on Instagram following Ginsburg’s comments about Donald Trump (Instagram, 2016). .................................................................. 70 Figure 12. Sketch of Ginsburg wearing her dissent collar the day following the 2016 presidential election (Lien, 2016) ............................................................................. 70 Figure 13. Dissent Club Pin (Vickery, 2017b). ................................................................ 72 Figure 14. Dissent Collar Necklace (Jehlen, 2017b). ....................................................... 72 viii Chapter 1: Ginsburg in the Vernacular During the 2017 Rathbun Lecture on a Meaningful Life at Stanford University, Provost Persis Drell introduced Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the guest lecturer, admitting, “Many of you know her by another moniker, as the Notorious RBG” (Rathbun lecture on a meaningful life, 2017). At the mention of this sobriquet, the audience erupted in a cacophony of cheers, exclamations, and applause. Later the same year, Ginsburg received a rock star welcome to a sold-out crowd in Roosevelt University’s Auditorium Theater during The
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Lessons Learned from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
    LESSONS LEARNED FROM JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG Amanda L. Tyler* INTRODUCTION Serving as a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Supreme Court’s October Term 1999 was one of the single greatest privileges and honors of my life. As a trailblazer who opened up opportunities for women, she was a personal hero. How many people get to say that they worked for their hero? Justice Ginsburg was defined by her brilliance, her dedication to public service, her resilience, and her unwavering devotion to taking up the Founders’ calling, set out in the Preamble to our Constitution, to make ours a “more perfect Union.”1 She was a profoundly dedicated public servant in no small measure because she appreciated just how important her role was in ensuring that our Constitution belongs to everyone. Whether as an advocate or a Justice, she tirelessly fought to dismantle discrimination and more generally to open opportunities for every person to live up to their full human potential. Without question, she left this world a better place than she found it, and we are all the beneficiaries. As an advocate, Ruth Bader Ginsburg challenged our society to liber- ate all persons from the gender-based stereotypes that held them back. As a federal judge for forty years—twenty-seven of them on the Supreme Court—she continued and expanded upon that work, even when it meant in dissent calling out her colleagues for improperly walking back earlier gains or halting future progress.2 In total, she wrote over 700 opinions on the D.C.
    [Show full text]
  • Educator's Guide | Ages: 6 & Up
    LIT TLE, BROWN AND COMPANY BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS Educator’s Guide | Ages: 6 & Up Martin’s Big Words The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. LittleBrownLibrary.com LBSchool LittleBrownSchool Martin’s Big Words Pre-Reading With a small group, discuss questions about leaders. What is a leader? What does a person do to become a leader? What makes a good leader? Genre We study biographies to learn from the lives of others. Why is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an important person to read about? What can we learn from the way he lived his life? The author inserted many of Dr. King’s own words throughout the text. Why do you think this was an important thing to do? Pick one quote and explain the significance. Theme: Equality The civil rights movement worked to create equal opportunities for African American people. What are some specific examples in education, employment, and public settings that needed to change for equality? Use the book to provide specific examples that support001-040_MBW_C75362.indd your 11 JOB NO:06-97121 TITLE:MARTIN’S BIG WORDS 1/5/16 10:50 AM 12-AC75362 #150 (JBRD) DTP:44 PAGE:11 answer. Are there still things that need to be changed? Setting What are the major settings in the biography of Dr. King? Which illustrations give you a clue that it is in a time different from today? What part of the country did most of Dr. King’s work focus on? Why? Show where you found your answer in the text. Across the Curriculum Language Arts Use technology to research another hero or major figure of the civil rights movement and write a biography.
    [Show full text]
  • (Candace Fleming) B EARHART O Tells the Story of Amelia Earhart's Life - As a Child, a Woman, and a Pilot - and Describes the Search for Her Missing Plane
    Real Life Rebels Amelia Lost: The life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart (Candace Fleming) B EARHART o Tells the story of Amelia Earhart's life - as a child, a woman, and a pilot - and describes the search for her missing plane. Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves & other Female Villains (Jane Yolen) 920.72 Y o Harlot or hero? Liar or lady? There are two sides to every story. Meet twenty-six of history's most notorious women, and debate alongside authors Yolen and Stemple--who appear in the book as themselves in a series of comic panels--as to each girl's guilt or innocence. Being Jazz: My Life as a Transgender Teen (Jazz Jennings) B JENNINGS o Teen activist and trailblazer Jazz Jennings--named one of "The 25 most influential teens" of the year by Time--shares her very public transgender journey, as she inspires people to accept the differences in others while they embrace their own truths. Brown Girl Dreaming (Jacqueline Woodson) B WOODSON o The author shares her childhood memories and reveals the first sparks that ignited her writing career in free-verse poems about growing up in the North and South Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Phillip Hoose) CD 323.092 H o On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Shouting 'It's my constitutional right!' as police dragged her off to jail, Claudette Colvin decided she'd had enough of the Jim Crow segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a young child.
    [Show full text]
  • Celebrating Women's History Month
    March 2021 - Celebrating Women’s History Month It all started with a single day in 1908 in New York City when thousands of women marched for better labor laws, conditions, and the right to vote. A year later on February 28, in a gathering organized by members of the Socialist Party, suffragists and socialists gathered again in Manhattan for what they called the first International Woman’s Day. The idea quickly spread worldwide from Germany to Russia. In 1911, 17 European countries formally honored the day as International Women’s day. By 1917 with strong influences and the beginnings of the Russian Revolution communist leader Vladimir Lenin made Women’s Day a soviet holiday. But due to its connections to socialism and the Soviet Union, the holiday wasn’t largely celebrated in the United States until 1975. That’s when the United Nations officially began sponsoring International Woman’s day. In 1978 Woman’s Day grew from a day to a week as the National Women’s History Alliance became frustrated with the lack of information about women’s history available to public school curriculums. Branching off of the initial celebration, they initiated the creation of Women’s History week. And by 1980 President Jimmy Carter declared in a presidential proclamation that March 8 was officially National Women’s History Week. As a result of its country wide recognition and continued growth in state schools, government, and organizations by 1986, 14 states had gone ahead and dubbed March Women’s History Month. A year later, this sparked congress to declare the holiday in perpetuity.
    [Show full text]
  • Justice Sandra Day O'connor: the World's Most Powerful Jurist?
    JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR: THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL JURIST? DIANE LOWENTHAL AND BARBARA PALMER* I. INTRODUCTION Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has been called a "major force on [the] Supreme Court,"' the "real" Chief Justice, 2 and "America's most powerful jurist."' 3 Others have referred to her as "the most 5 powerful woman in America" 4 and even of "the world.", Even compared to women like Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton, there is no one "who has had a more profound effect on society than any other American woman... If someone else had been appointed to her position on the court, our nation might now be living under different rules for abortion, affirmative action, race, religion in school and civil rights. We might well have a different president." 6 Former Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger noted, "What is most striking is the assurance with which this formerly obscure state court judge effectively decides many hugely important questions for a country of 275 million people.",7 As one journalist put it, "We are all living in * Diane Lowenthal, Ph.D. in Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University and Barbara Palmer, Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Minnesota, are assistant professors in American University's Washington Semester Program. The authors would like to thank their undergraduate research assistants, Amy Bauman, Nick Chapman-Hushek, and Amanda White. This paper was presented at October 28, 2004 Town Hall The Sway of the Swing Vote: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Her Influence on Issues of Race, Religion, Gender and Class sponsored by the University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class and the Women, Leadership and Equality Program.
    [Show full text]
  • Executive Order 13978 of January 18, 2021
    6809 Federal Register Presidential Documents Vol. 86, No. 13 Friday, January 22, 2021 Title 3— Executive Order 13978 of January 18, 2021 The President Building the National Garden of American Heroes By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Background. In Executive Order 13934 of July 3, 2020 (Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes), I made it the policy of the United States to establish a statuary park named the National Garden of American Heroes (National Garden). To begin the process of building this new monument to our country’s greatness, I established the Interagency Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes (Task Force) and directed its members to plan for construction of the National Garden. The Task Force has advised me it has completed the first phase of its work and is prepared to move forward. This order revises Executive Order 13934 and provides additional direction for the Task Force. Sec. 2. Purpose. The chronicles of our history show that America is a land of heroes. As I announced during my address at Mount Rushmore, the gates of a beautiful new garden will soon open to the public where the legends of America’s past will be remembered. The National Garden will be built to reflect the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism. It will be a place where citizens, young and old, can renew their vision of greatness and take up the challenge that I gave every American in my first address to Congress, to ‘‘[b]elieve in yourselves, believe in your future, and believe, once more, in America.’’ Across this Nation, belief in the greatness and goodness of America has come under attack in recent months and years by a dangerous anti-American extremism that seeks to dismantle our country’s history, institutions, and very identity.
    [Show full text]
  • The Death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Initial Considerations for Congress
    Legal Sidebari The Death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Initial Considerations for Congress September 21, 2020 On September 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, passed away at the age of eighty-seven, vacating a seat on the High Court that she had held for twenty-seven years. Nominated to replace Justice Byron White in 1993, Justice Ginsburg already had a trailblazing career as a law school professor; Supreme Court litigator; co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project; and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (D.C. Circuit) for thirteen years. Several of her opinions have been consequential, including her 1996 majority opinion in United States v. Virginia, holding that women could not be denied admission to the Virginia Military Institute on the basis of their sex. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in a recent statement that “no American has ever done more than Justice Ginsburg to ensure equal justice under law for women.” Justice Ginsburg was also noted for her pointed dissents, including in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), where the Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), where the Court rejected a Title VII employment discrimination claim. In more recent years, Justice Ginsburg gained recognition in popular culture, becoming known by the moniker “the notorious RBG.” She was the subject of books, movies, and an opera, and in 2015, was named one of Time magazine’s one hundred most influential people.
    [Show full text]
  • Get to Know Celebrated Supreme Court Jus- Tice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
    Author: Debbie Levy Curriculum Connections: Women’s History Month (March), Character Illustrator: Elizabeth Baddeley Education: Assertiveness, Government, Supreme Court Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers Unpaged Bends lends itself in the instruction of: Close reading in the grade 3-4 band, Character Education, Woman’s History AR 4.4 Lexile: 710L Common Core Get to know celebrated Supreme Court jus- Primary CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.1 tice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—in the first pic- Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate under- ture book about her life—as she proves that standing of key details in a text. disagreeing does not make you disagreea- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.4 ble! Determine the meaning of words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 2 topic or subject area. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.8 Describe how reasons support specific points the author makes in a text Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg CCSS ELA-Literacy RL 1.1 has spent a lifetime disagreeing: disagree- Ask and answer questions about key details in a text. ing with inequality, arguing against unfair CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.5 treatment, and standing up for what's right Explain major differences between books that tell stories and books that give information, drawing for people everywhere. on a wide reading of a range of text types Intermediate: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when draw- Text Features: ing inferences from the text.
    [Show full text]
  • Ruth Bader Ginsberg
    NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW – INSTITUTE OF JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATIO N (IJA) Oral History of Distinguished American Judges HON. RUTH BADER GINSBURG JUSTICE, U.S. SUPREME COURT An Interview with Trevor W. Morrison, Dean and Eric M. and Laurie B. Roth Professor of Law New York University School of Law July 5, 2016 All rights in this oral history interview belong to New York University. Quoting or excerpting of this oral history interview is permitted as long as the quot ation or excerpt is limited to fair use as defined by law. For quotations or excerpts that exceed fair use, permission must be obtained from the Institute of Judicial Administration (IJA) at Wilf Hall, 139 Macdougal Street, Room 420, New York 10012, or [email protected], and should identify the specific passages to be quoted, intended use, and identification of the user. Any permission granted will comply with agreements made with the interviewees and/or interviewers who participated in this oral history. All permitted uses must cite and give proper credit to: IJA Oral History of Distinguished American Judges, Institute of Judicial Administration, NYU School of Law, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: An Interview with Trevor W. Morrison, 2016. *The transcript shall control over the video for any permitted use in accordance with the above paragraph. Any differences in the transcript from the video reflect post-interview clarifications made by the participants and IJA. The footnotes were added by IJA solely for the reader’s information; no representation is made as to the accuracy or completeness of any of such footnotes.
    [Show full text]
  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court's Feminist Icon, Is Dead at 87
    Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court’s Feminist Icon, Is Dead at 87 By Linda Greenhouse The New York Times Sept. 18, 2020 Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court and a pioneering advocate ​ for women’s rights, who in her ninth decade became a much younger generation’s unlikely cultural icon, died on Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87. The cause was complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer, the Supreme Court said. By the time two small tumors were found in one of her lungs in December 2018, during a follow-up scan for broken ribs suffered in a recent fall, Justice Ginsburg had beaten colon cancer in 1999 and early-stage pancreatic cancer 10 years later. She received a coronary stent to clear a blocked artery in 2014. Barely five feet tall and weighing 100 pounds, Justice Ginsburg drew comments for years on her fragile appearance. But she was tough, working out regularly with a trainer, who published a book about his famous client’s challenging exercise regime. As Justice Ginsburg passed her 80th birthday and 20th anniversary on the Supreme Court bench during President Barack Obama’s second term, she shrugged off a chorus of calls for her to retire in order to give a Democratic president the chance to name her replacement. She planned to stay “as long as I can do the job full steam,” she would say, sometimes adding, “There will be a president after this one, and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president.” When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retired in January 2006, Justice Ginsburg was for a time the only woman on the Supreme Court — hardly a testament to the revolution in the legal status of women that she had helped bring about in her career as a litigator and strategist.
    [Show full text]
  • Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
    VOLUME 134 JANUARY 2021 NUMBER 3 © 2021 by The Harvard Law Review Association MEMORIAM: JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG The editors of the Harvard Law Review respectfully offer this collec- tion of tributes to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Brenda Feigen∗ Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed all our lives by profoundly influenc- ing the law that had encouraged sex discrimination in the United States for centuries. I am writing now in tribute to her. In the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court ruled that women had neither the right to practice law1 nor the right to vote.2 In the mid- twentieth century, the Court approved “beneficial” practices by states making women’s service on juries optional3 and approved Michigan’s law preventing women from working in bars unless a male relative was present when they were working.4 In 1970, while some of us were joining the call of the women’s liber- ation movement to march in protest of outrageous sex discrimination, Ruth and her husband Marty, a tax lawyer, decided to represent Charles Moritz, who lived alone with his elderly mother and had tried to obtain a tax deduction for wages paid to her caregiver.5 The Tax Court had said that type of deduction was available only “to a woman, a widower ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ∗ J.D. 1969, Harvard Law School. Ms. Feigen directed the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project with then-Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was National Vice President for Legislation of NOW and a cofounder of the National Women’s Political Caucus and of Ms. Magazine. She au- thored Not One of the Boys: Living Life as a Feminist (2000), republished in electronic format twenty years later with a new edition forthcoming.
    [Show full text]
  • The Days May Come, the Days May Go, but Still the Hands of Memory
    Best Chapter of Your Life Helping you create your next career or passionate retirement Inspirational Quotations Volume 2 Compiled and edited by Karl Hoppe, CPC, CHt, NLP, EFT BestChapterOfYourLife.Com Best Chapter of Your Life The man who has done his best has done everything. – Charles Schwab, 1862-1939, American Industrialist and Businessman It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them. – Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, American Scientist/Publisher/Diplomat It is our basic right to be a happy person. -- The Dalai Lama Each of us has the potential to contribute. You have a great opportunity to make a new shape of the world. -- The Dalai Lama "Hay is more acceptable to an a.s.s. than gold." -Latin Proverb 'The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.' ~ Anon 'The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.' ~ Abraham Lincoln 'In describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.' ~ Alvin Toffler 'Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time.
    [Show full text]