Cultrface – a blog dedicated to culture and how it enriches our lives.

Jonpaul Douglass - Pizza In The Wild

Los Angeles photographer Jonpaul Douglass has worked with the likes of Google, Facebook, and Apple but for this project, entitled Pizza In The Wild, he used the popular dish as the focal point.

As the title suggests, Douglass photographed pepperoni pizzas in different places involving road signs, shire ponies, tanks and his pug. There’s certainly something enchanting about them, especially the pug shots.

Pizza in the Wild is a personal project I started when I first moved to Los Angeles in 2013. It was essentially a product of having the free time to create something purely for fun. I had about 15-20 pizza images up on my Instagram account when it started to get featured all over.. thus kickstarting my creative life in LA. Thank you pizza. 

Jonpaul Douglass’

The idea of uneaten pizza is usually a bad sign in my book but I don’t mind it in this case (and sometimes it’s comical, like in that episode of Breaking Bad.) The inclusion of Jonpaul’s pug is also a cute touch and I’m a sucker for a pug. But who isn’t?

Head over to Jonpaul Douglass’ Pizza In The Wild series on his website.

Superheroes In Native American Culture Explored By Exhibit At Arizona Museum

Superheroes In Native American Culture Explored By Exhibit At Arizona Museum

“Super Heroes: Art! Action! Adventure!” gave children the opportunity to become superheroes of their very own, choosing their special powers and their costume. From there, they embarked on “exciting adventures, including an animal companion interactive experience, a Native video game and other adventures along their ‘super’ journey”.

There are many similarities between the Westernised stories of superheroes – from Batman to Wonder Woman – and tales of Native American legends such as Crazy Horse and Sacajawea, but in many cases, the multi-cultural origins are lost amongst the rhetoric of fighting for American justice. Exhibits like these open up new worlds of Native American culture. Heroes and heroines aplenty.

The exhibit is now closed but you can find out more about it on The Heard Museum website.

Madison Moore Gives Lectures on "How to be Beyoncé"

It’s not going to happen but her influence in pop culture is strong enough to warrant emulation. This admiration hasn’t gone unnoticed, however, as Madison Moore, a postdoctoral research associate from King’s College London, has started a public seminar entitled “How to be Beyoncé”. Moore gives tips on how to replicate Beyoncé’s success and delves into her stance within pop culture alongside Moore’s own research.

“I’m all about taking popular culture seriously,” he said. “I believe you can take any pop cultural text and open it up and see what’s happening on the inside.”

Beyoncé related: An essay on why Jaap Kooijman writes about Beyoncé

(via The Telegraph)

A Cheatsheet of Typographic Characters and How To Use Them

Do you know the difference between a hyphen, an en dash, and an em dash? Or when to use single or double quotation marks? If the answer is no, then you’re not alone. Fortunately, Jeremiah Shoaf of Typewolf is at hand to help with this brilliant “cheatsheet” dedicated to those little known typographic characters. The guide features a variety of characters and their respective keyboard shortcuts for Mac and Windows as well as a mini-FAQ for each category.

You can read the full typographic list on the Typewolf website or download the condensed 1-page printable PDF.

(Fact: Did you know the @ symbol is known as an arroba in Spanish and an arobase in French?)

Typography related: Women in Type showcasing the influential women of typography and typography with Pizza Typefaces

A Thesis Discussing Hip Hop, Skate Culture & Web Culture In Tyler The Creator's Music

This one piqued my interest. It relates to the multicultural facets of controversial rapper Tyler, The Creator. The thesis, written by Brazilian producer and musicologist Gustavo Souza Marques, discusses the ways Tyler “shifts, but also maintains, some frames of gangsta rap discourse in his use of ‘hip hop mentality, skate culture, nihilism and Web 2.0 platforms to promote his art has made him one of the most prominent hip-hop artists from 21st century'”. That’s a lot. But also very insightful.

Check out the abstract below.

This article came from the homonymous PhD proposal submitted and accepted by Music School of University College Cork (UCC, Ireland) to be started in September 2015 under the guidance of Dr. J.Griffith Rollefson. It aims to point out and discuss the articulations made by rapper, producer, actor and video director Tyler Okonma, known by the stage name Tyler, the Creator, to shift, but also maintain, some frames of gangsta rap discourse. Noticed by his rape fantasies lyrics and ultraviolent shouts, most present in his two first albums, Tyler has been acclaimed for his notable musical talent but criticized for its misogynist themes. Despite this outrageous aspect of its music, his confessional and often self-deprecating lyrics have been a novelty for constant self-pride and powerful hip-hop lyrics. Moreover, it works as a compensation for his aggressiveness since it could be seen as a demonstration of fragility rather than sexual domination. The way he uses hip-hop mentality, skate culture nihilism and Web 2.0 platforms to promote his art has made him one of the most prominent hip-hop artists from the 21st century. Based on related authors on hip-hop topics like gangsta, misogyny, media and racial stereotypes this article discusses the ways in which Tyler, the creator reflects but also denies the most known and commented frames of rap music.

The abstract from Beyond Gangsta: Hip-Hop, Skate Culture and Web Culture in the Music of Tyler, The Creator

Academically related: The man who submitted a 52,438-word essay without punctuation and passed and Madison Moore’s lectures on “How to be Beyoncé”.

It's Not Hip To Be Square: What Is A Hipster Really?

But has it always been that way? Well, the truth is they aren’t the first hipsters to walk the earth.

A quick search of the term “hipster” on Wikipedia brings up two examples: one from “contemporary subculture” and one from “1940s subculture”. By definition, the former relates to the hipsters we know today, described as coming from a “mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior”. From this perspective, the term first came into prominence during the 90s before gaining a new life in the past five years but looking at the term’s previous history in the 1940s, everything changes.

In 1948, American literary critic Anatole Broyard wrote an article called A Portrait of the Hipster where he described the hipster as a “the illegitimate son of the Lost Generation” longing “to be somewhere”. Brossard’s article continued, describing terminology of the hipster such as “jive” – described as “a philosophy of somewhereness”, “solid”, “out of this world, and “drag” amongst others.

Norman Mailer in his essay “The White Negro” described hipsters as “philosophical psychopaths living on the fringe of society” but the crux of the essay depicted them as white people appropriating black culture through their adoption of black styles, vernacular and jazz music as their own as well as their choice of living in abject poverty. He also discussed the idea of hipsters living a life surrounded by death and choosing to disconnect from society with their own brand of existentialism.

Looking at the two produces stark contrasts in definition and subculture but in some cases, there are similarities. There’s a sense that the current hipster (or as I like to call them “fauxhemians”) chooses to look dishevelled and absent from the mainstream culture as do the hipsters of the 40s.

But getting into the nitty-gritty of their motives is where the likenesses branch off. Fauxhemians are more aligned with indie music while hipsters were lovers of cool jazz and the former’s association with organic produce is a unique development. The reason I call them fauxhemians is because their lifestyles seem to be closer to those of the bohos of pre-20th Europe (although they are said to be descendants of the 40s hipster) rather than their appropriating American counterparts.

Their disconnect from mainstream society isn’t related to a life centred around death; rather it seems to be a choice purely in the name of paradoxical individualism, as perfectly depicted on 2000s UK series, Nathan Barley. They even have their own brand of racism and sexism, involving “ironic” Kill Whitie Parties and appropriation of Native American headdresses supposedly to satirise political correctness and repeated uses of the terms “bitch” and “slut” amongst others.

Truth be told, it’s a complicated subject to form a complete picture of how the movements are all related and what they truly mean to those involved. But one thing’s for sure – the new hipster isn’t going away any time soon and they’re not quite as cool as their 1940s cousins.

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