Illinois Press Book Blog

Makes perfect business sense.

Rather than demand that the video featuring his song “Forever” be removed from YouTube owing to infringement, Chris Brown’s label recognized the viral potential by adding click-to-buy links to the wildly popular dance-down-the-aisle featuring that groovy St. Paul wedding party. According to the YouTube Biz Blog (thanks, John):

Despite compelling data and studies around consumer purchasing habits, many still question the promotional and bottom-line business value sites like YouTube provide artists. But in the last week, over a year after its release, Chris Brown’s “Forever” has again rocketed up the charts, reaching as high as #4 on the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 list. We’ve seen similar successes in the past with partners like Monty Python.

The New York Times covers the brouhaha over a new history of Jones County, Mississippi, during the Civil War. Where? you may ask. Not to worry: there are at least two books (one from a respected university press), one unproduced screenplay, one blog war, and one classic movie for background.

Linda Royster Beito, co-author of the new book Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power, was interviewed on Chicago Public Radio’s Eight Forty-Eight program by Richard Steele.

The School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois will host a memorial honoring University of Illinois Press author Archie Green on September 14, 2009, in the Wagner Education Center, 504 East Armory Street, Champaign. Presenters will include:

-Stephen Wade, performer, writer, and folk music scholar, “How Archie Taught Us to Learn from Music”
-Mike Munoz, Bay Area pile driver and union historian, “Archie as Trade Unionist”
-David Taylor, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, “Archie Green and the Founding of the American Folklife Center”
-David Roediger, Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Labor Music as History Lesson”

The L.A. Times book editor David Ulin examines Amazon’s power and influence.

Nathaniel Norment, Jr., author of the new book The Addison Gayle Jr. Reader, is quoted by Temple University’s Newswise.

If this is the first time Professor Gates has been arrested, after having lived in America for roughly 60 years, he is quite unique. What Gates experienced has been experienced by most black men and is happening somewhere right now.

Bookslut points to an author who is not pleased with the cover for a U.S. edition of her latest book.

After the past year especially, scholarly publishers are looking for new models that work in an age of digital downloadable segmentable content and declining sales and institutional support. Over ten years ago I heard someone say at a conference that “the page is no longer primary.” That’s never been truer. (Some would say that the publisher is no longer primary in the age of Web 2.0; I’ll let someone else tackle that one.)

David Wiley at the CHE’S Wired Campus reminds us once again that free content can lead to print sales. Free content can probably also lead to digital sales. So many questions, and so little time as our industry shifts and quakes daily. Where is the collaborative effort involving tenure decisionmakers, scholarly societies, academic publishers, libraries, and other stakeholders taking up this question and many more? Per the King, it’s now or never.

My research and the writing of my new book, Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom, was such a lengthy process, during which the U.S. witnessed the blossoming of several Latino actors and actresses and TV series such as The George Lopez Show and Ugly Betty, that I had come to think that it as more a historical than a contemporary project.  Even not-so-long-ago days when Jennifer Lopez was promoted as unique and newsworthy because of the shape of her derriere rather than her talent as an actor and when Latina and Latino performers, even those born in the U.S., might be described by entertainment journalists as “crossover” stars were behind us, I wanted to think. 

Then I witnessed the confirmation hearings last week for Judge Sonia Sotomayor after she was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court.  As Republican senators grilled the Puerto Rican, New York-born judge in particular on her comment during a speech that she had particular insight as a “wise Latina” judge, I became convinced that a study of the treatment of Latinos in the media has just as much relevance today as it did decades ago. 

Comments made by senators and pundits during the political circus of the hearings underscored the fact that Latinos still hold an uncertain status with respect to national racial politics, that they are still not viewed by everyone as central to such discussions, and that confusion abounds regarding the racial and citizenship status of Puerto Ricans and other Latino groups. Rita Moreno encountered many of the same misconceptions when she began her career as a film actress at MGM. That was 50 years ago, however.

While the career paths and promotion of actors wishing to be considered potential stars in the entertainment media are of course of a different ilk than the career and public image of a Supreme Court nominee, there are important parallels. The widely diverging careers of Dolores Del Rio, Desi Arnaz, Rita Moreno, Freddie Prinze, Edward James Olmos, Jennifer Lopez, and Jessica Alba— the actors who serve as case studies in my book—demonstrate how being viewed as white or non-white, as citizen or foreigner, as wealthy or as working class, and as politically radical or middle-of-the-road dramatically affected and still affects Latina/o performers’ opportunities and how they have been marketed to audiences, as well as how and whether publicists promote them through capitalizing on stereotypical tropes.   The intense scrutiny Judge Sotomayor has faced is not so different, it would seem.

*****

Mary Beltrán is an associate professor of communication arts and Latina/o studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.   She is the author of the new book Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom.

As I prepare to follow up on a couple of forthcoming titles, it’s interesting to see what the thrice-daily publicity e-mails I receive say newspapers and magazines are really looking for:

-Looking for hideous real estate agent Twitter backgrounds
-Female attorneys who collect things
-Baby rashes
-Buying habits for jeans in recession
-Looking for people who have had incredible psychic readings
-Men’s Mushiest Moments