Write a five-to six-page analysis of a cult movie zine or magazine, from your choice of the following: Asian Eye,Blood Video, I Love Bad
Movies,Kill Baby,Psychotronic Video, or Trash Compactor. Your goal is to identify and discuss the particular critical “sensibility” at
work in your selected publication(s), asking the following questions: •If, as David Sanjek notes, fanzines constitute an “alternative”
brand of criticism with their“own set of values and virtues” (“Fan’s Notes,” CFR 421), what are the “values and virtues” exemplified in
your chosen publication?•How does your publication exemplify or complicate some of the various “sensibilities” identified in class (e.g.,
camp, cultism, etc.)? •What do these journals suggest about the politics of cultural taste (Bourdieu)? To what extent can their
sensibility be understood as an “oppositional” gesture in relation to the conventions of mainstream/middlebrow taste?Do not feel that you
have to address all of these questions, which are intended simply as prompts. Also do not feel that you have to limit yourself to a single
publication: you can do so if you choose, but you can also write a comparative analysis of, say, two zines from the above list. Feel
freeto set your own parameters based on the goals of your argument. Once again, this assignment is designed in large part as reading
comprehension. It is essential that you read ahead and familiarize yourself with the Stephen Duncombe, Henry Jenkins, and David Sanjek
essays. Please be sure to incorporate ideas from at least three of the readings from weeks 7, 8, and 9 into your own essay.
reading sources
Week 8:
Chi-yun Shin, “The Art of Branding: Tartan ‘Asia Extreme’ Films,” in
Jinhee Choi and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Horror to the Extreme:
Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema (Hong Kong UP, 2009),
85-100 (CW)
Week 9:
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Routledge, 1979), 100-
112 (CW)
Stephen Duncombe, Notes from the Underground: Zines and the Politics
of Alternative Culture (Verso, 1997), 105-130 (CW)