Blog — Jenn Dumoulin

2020... Year in Review

Ah, 2020… it’s certainly been a year like no other. The pandemic has impacted many of us to an unprecedented and unexpected degree - personally, professionally, financially, psychologically - and I know that many people reading this are keen to see 2020 head out the door, but I think if we each took some time to reflect, we’d see that 2020 hasn’t been all bad news.

So, in the spirit of the New Year, I thought I’d take a moment and reflect on some of the big things that I’ve accomplished this year (and I hope that, if you haven’t done so already, this will inspire you to do the same).

Who Am I? Adventures in Popular Culture (Fall 2020)

As you might remember from my post in April about A Virtual Pop Culture Art Exhibit, one of the assignments in my Popular Culture and Communication class asks students to think about how popular culture - broadly or narrowly defined - has shaped their identity, perceptions and behaviour. This is something that we consider over the course of the semester through readings about the CSI Effect (which influence can behaviour) , counter- and sub-cultures (which can influence identity) , and monsters (which can influence perceptions) - among other topics.

In addition to the above, during the semester I also share how popular culture has influenced my life by wearing popular culture inspired clothing, including photos of myself participating in subcultures like punk culture, travelling and engaging in tourism, and posing with life-sized cardboard cut-outs of the Rock in my slides, and talking about how my doctoral research was inspired by my favourite book series.

One of the assignments in the course asks students to do the same…

TeachingJennifer DumoulinDecember 12, 2020Teaching, Online Teaching, Popular Culture, Identity

Propaganda and the American Military Establishment: How Television Influences Attitudes, Behaviours and Perceptions

I’ve been digging through my own archives to find papers that I wrote during law school, my master’s degree and my undergraduate studies. It’s been a useful exercise that has allowed me to get back in touch with some of my earlier research interests - yes, there is a trend - as well as to reflect on the evolution of my writing.

It is therefore with great pleasure that I finally publish this paper from my master’s degree, submitted in January 2010, entitled Propaganda and the American Military Establishment: How Television Influences Attitudes, Behaviours and Perceptions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine propaganda, in particular wartime propaganda, in a post-9/11 context in order to understand the complex role that television plays as a tool of social control and mass persuasion. In doing so, this paper begins with an in-depth study of propaganda which explores the target audience and scope of propagandistic campaigns, the functions and objectives of propaganda, and, finally, the techniques and features employed in such campaigns. In order to distinguish between propaganda and other forms of promotional discourse, a discussion on the ethics of propaganda is conducted.

Finally, a case study focusing on the television series 24 is conducted to illustrate how patriotic and idealistic images can be used to mobilize support for the American military establishment and its strategic operations, including the acceptance of morally questionable conduct. This case study demonstrates the influential role that television can play in the context of wartime operations by encouraging support for the military and law enforcement agencies.

Lessons in Popular Culture: Racialization and Disney's Zootopia - Part II

Picking up where we previously left off… using the concepts of racialization, dehumanization and affect, Sandlin and Snaza (2018) argue that Disney’s Zootopia shapes the identities, desire and subjectivities of its viewers “by policing ‘negative’ emotions such as anger, which (re)produces social forms by perpetuating white heteropatriarchal privilege” (p.1197).

Let’s take a look at how the authors argue Zootopia does this.

TeachingJennifer DumoulinNovember 6, 2020Popular Culture, Teaching, Metaphor

Lessons in Popular Culture: Racialization and Disney's Zootopia

During the final weeks of the Popular Culture and Communication course that I teach, we focus our attention on (1) different topics or areas of research that are undertaken in the field of popular culture studies and (2) the effects of popular culture. In particular, we examine how popular culture - and the repeated exposure to certain messages or themes in the media - influences our perceptions of ourselves and of others, and therefore our identities and behaviour.

When building the syllabus for this course, I try to take into account emerging research and trends in the field of popular culture, what’s happening in the world, and what students are interested in learning about. One of the topics that we look at is race, racialization and the representation of the police (the police state and police violence). This is explored through a reading called “It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart”: Black Lives Matter, the Police State, and the Politics of Colonizing Anger in Zootopia” written by Jennifer Sandlin and Nathan Snaza and published in 2018 in the Journal of Popular Culture.

TeachingJennifer DumoulinNovember 5, 2020Popular Culture, Teaching, Race

The Individual, the Office, and a Bible: A Critical Examination of the President’s and the Presidential “Body”

During the spring semester, I took a graduate seminar in the School of Nursing called “Histoire socioculturelle du corps” (or the Sociocultural History of the Body). As the final assignment for this course, I wrote a paper on “the presidential body” following President Trump’s Bible Photo-op in early June. The paper sits at the intersection of public relations and political communication. Public relations is a little outside of my wheelhouse, but I enjoyed reading for and writing the paper.

This critical essay (which you can read on my blog) examines how the president's body (as an individual) and the presidential body (as an institution) have been constructed through the use of photography, publicity, and force. To do this, this paper first examines how the physical body of the president has been positioned and represented in photo opportunities (hereinafter referred to as photo-ops) and public relations events to emphasize or minimize certain characteristics. Then, the presidential body (as an institution) is examined to shed light into how it participates in the positioning of the president’s body and how it has been perceived as a result of specific photo-ops and publicity moments.