It is important to remember when doing the rest of the readings for this semester that we are focusing on concepts which we refer to as Ideotexts and Politexts. So what's the greater narrative that Chomsky and Herman argue?
Well, I'm unsure if I even know what is going on. I mean, WOW! this is one of those readings that burst your "I think I'm ready to face the evils of the world" bubble because you aren't. I honestly thought I already understand what is happening to our world, modern or post-modern. I mean, after all, the media merely sends “messages and symbols to the general populace…to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society” (257) right?
Apparently not so... My awareness regarding (post)modern society revolves around money, and when I mean revolve it is more like orbiting. I try to grasp the concept of real and virtual - yes, I understand the notion of video games but what about the stock market? All these huge figures of numbers are discussed and civilians who invest fret over this, however, what is supposed to be backed up by a stable currency (gold) is not even with us in reality. So, does this boil down to how the stock market, as in our economy, is an illusion because it is a mere concept???
So, everyday, we live our lives worrying about bills - or uh, the thing we use to exchange for more things...they're just mere ideas for more ideas? I mean, if you think about it, what is money but a face and some numbers printed on paper? Why do we toy with this notion of the real and the unreal or surreal?
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Billboard Music
In class on Tuesday DC asked how billboard top 100 music is post modern. My explanation for this phenomena is how we need approval for things(trends) which fit into ideology. By having a rating and top 100 songs we are defining ideology and remaining in it. I asked myself then who rates the songs and how is it decided what songs are popular. I found this statement in tiny print on the Billboard Top 100 Hits website:
"This weeks most popular songs across all genres, ranked by radio airplay audience Impressions as measured by Neilsen BDS, sales data as compiled by Neilsen SoundScan and streaming activity data provided by online music sources"
So this basically is decided by the radio. As we had discussed earlier the radio is a tool for ideology. The people can not choose what is on the radio and therefore we are subject to ideology no matter what. This list is only popular because of the radio and some online websites.
Pre-Class Herman and Chomsky
Herman and Chomsky’s article on America’s own model of propaganda is perhaps one of the most intelligent, well-put together and well-support essays on this topic I have ever read. As an educated American citizen, I think this piece should be read by anyone and everyone that has ever tuned into an American source for the news, whether it be the local newspaper or the national nightly broadcasts, these authors’ articulation of this cyclical business between the media, its ownership, and their bounded relationship to the government is nothing short of scary. It is absolutely unbelievable to grasp the highly politicized and profit-minded system that structures these relationships, and how their interests are overriding and are the ultimate decider of what is “important”, what is “worthy”, and what is “fact”. The amount of examples that are provided throughout this article are truly eye-opening in that they reveal exactly how these government and corporate relationships are able to manipulate media outlets into only broadcasting what lies in their interest, and consequently, only releases to the American public a very one-dimensional, one-sided view to a much large and complex interest: and this view is mostly, if not always, conservative, “Anti-Communist,” big-business, “mainstream”-minded.
Their explanation of the five filters that go into manipulating what we see on television and read in the newspaper was particular insightful for me as well, because although I had always recognized these “filters” as being in existence and of powerful constraint, I never realized to what extent they all functioned together in harmonious concert. The most interesting “filter” for me was that of the “flak machine” in which “centers” and “institutions” have been created for the sheer purpose of monitoring anti-business and thus supposedly “anti-American” propensities of the mass media. The media is than harassed by these groups until they decide to either abolish or provide counter-opinions to their “unconventional” arguments, which almost always end up with the media again giving more than adequate weight to the big business and government-sided point of view. Likewise, “although the flak machines steadily attack the mass media, the media treat them well. They receive respectful attention, and their propagandistic role and links to a large corporate program are rarely mentioned or analyzed” (277). I think the most alarming part is that it is our own government, a government that prides itself on a democratic society with freedom for every citizen, that is the major producer of this filth they call flak…
Their explanation of the five filters that go into manipulating what we see on television and read in the newspaper was particular insightful for me as well, because although I had always recognized these “filters” as being in existence and of powerful constraint, I never realized to what extent they all functioned together in harmonious concert. The most interesting “filter” for me was that of the “flak machine” in which “centers” and “institutions” have been created for the sheer purpose of monitoring anti-business and thus supposedly “anti-American” propensities of the mass media. The media is than harassed by these groups until they decide to either abolish or provide counter-opinions to their “unconventional” arguments, which almost always end up with the media again giving more than adequate weight to the big business and government-sided point of view. Likewise, “although the flak machines steadily attack the mass media, the media treat them well. They receive respectful attention, and their propagandistic role and links to a large corporate program are rarely mentioned or analyzed” (277). I think the most alarming part is that it is our own government, a government that prides itself on a democratic society with freedom for every citizen, that is the major producer of this filth they call flak…
Post Class, Andrew Wells
In class on Monday we were ask the question on why music top 100 is so popular. My only guess would be that people are inclined to enjoy a certain style to a song. Once enough people enjoy that style, others will mostly tend to enjoy the song just because they want to be apart of the style liking. I think that even at times people force themselves to like a song because others are listening to it. If you're the one that doesn't like the song, you're considered to be an outsider and a "different" person. Just imagine yourself at a club with everyone dancing to a top 100 song that you don't like. You would either not dance and stand by on the side by yourself and wait to the next song or you would force your self to like the song and dance with everyone else.
For thursday assignment we were instructed to read Pierre Bourdiu on page 328. The essay "On Television" was a analysis of the tv and its effects it has on culture. It criticizes the networks for their failure of presenting the public with "stimulating, broad based programming." Better yet he says that the tv is " a threat to political life and to democracy itself". According to Bourdiu the media attention is towards spectacle, disasters, and human interest stories. The expression of "invisible censorship" is exercised on the news both directly and indirectly by the market. All the ways that the journalists impose limits on the publics vision on what is considered real life and what is not. Furthermore he argues that the television provides nothing more than the illusion of freedom. The desire to strike a larger audience has not turned into a method of attracting the short attention minded. This would include segments with shorter information and intense camera use and audio. Todays news media has turned in to a virtual Peoples magazine, filled with scandalous pop-star images and pictures of world devastation.
Pre Class 4/1 Bourdieu
On page 330 Bourdieu states, “with [journalists] permanent access to public visibility, broad circulation, and mass diffusion – an access that was completely unthinkable for any culture producer until television came into picture – these journalists can impose on the whole of society their vision of the world, their conception of problems, and their point of view.” Before reading Bourdieu I never realized what a large effect television had and its overwhelming popularity over print. It is well know that the invention of the printing press was one of the most revolutionary inventions for the media but I do not think it is as well known that television has had such a huge impact. I guess it makes sense that people in such a fast moving society would not spend the time to read the newspaper or news magazines anymore and would rather just turn on the television and watch the news while eating dinner, folding laundry, etc.. In both CMC 100 and 200 we have discussed the problems with people viewing just one form of media. The news has a bias and by just viewing one news source, such as television, people are only getting one point of view and cannot formulate their own opinions. A major problem with television news is that news programs are not interested in getting people the right information but want to get the best ratings. Unfortunately there seems to be a discrepancy between what people need to hear and what people want to hear. Bourdieu talks about how news stations that air the least offensive news stories and spend time talking about unimportant topics, such as sports and the weather, are the stations that get the best ratings. News sources such as NPR and PBS that are known to deliver the most real news and the least bias are the ones with the lowest ratings while stations such as CNN and Fox News that are known for having a strong bias have much higher ratings. Bourdieu argues that if people need to start looking at this situation more critically and not supporting the more entertaining news programs and realizing the affect television news is having on our society.
3/30 Post Class
In class on 3/30 we contemplated the question what is postmodern about the billboard charts? This goes back to our Lyotard discussion on how our culture loves to rate everything from itunes ratings to yelp and other review sites. We are always looking for the best and newest releases of pop culture. I agree with scott's post when he says that train is at a postmodern point in their career because they made their big hit with "Drops of Juptiter" and "When I look to the Sky" and now their new song gives references to many songs that we as a culture have connected to in the previous decades. Going off of this it reminds me of how after John Mayer made it big and then came back later with his song "Waiting for the World to Change" where he gave a really strong statement about the media when he says, "and when you trust your television what you get is what you got cause when they own the information, oh they can bend it all they want " which is a critical media statement but in a pop hit song from John Mayer. Since our culture has such a fascination with ratings, he used this to his advantage and he brought what was going on in the world into a song that he knew was going to be on the billboard charts and give out a message. This relates to the quote we talked about, "The defrauded masses today cling to the myth of success still more ardently than the successful." I also enjoyed in this class the connection to my History of Radio and Television class, which is very interesting and important to know how media has evolved over the years. "The radio - democratically makes everyone equally into listeners." This medium created unity and the sameness that we were talking about and how it brought everyone together into the same routine and rhythm.
Hey, Soul Sister...Post Class
The song “Hey Soul Sister” by Train seems to be somewhat of a postmodern song, due to the references it makes to other songs, as well as the fact that the band Train itself is in sort of a post-modern (revival) part of their career. The first reference to other billboard successes is in the first line of the song “Hey soul sister” may come from the song “Lady Marmalade” from the 2002 film soundtrack Moulin Rouge. Also the expression itself, referring to a woman as a soul sister is a bit of a throwback to the late 60’s and early 70’s when powerful African American singers like Aretha Franklin were popular amongst the billboard charts. Aretha Franklin was even known as “Soul Sister Number 1” after her 1967 release of “I never loved a man (The Way I Love You)”. Other references (without knowing if they are intentional or not) are the lyric “one track mind” could make reference to the Johnny Thunders song “One Track Mind”, as well as the Madonna citation when singer Patrick Monahan says “like a virgin (Madonna song) your Madonna”. Other references that can be made to popular songs in the past are made when Monahan says “I don’t want to miss a thing”, he could be making reference to the Aerosmith song from the Armageddon soundtrack. All of these connections that I have made may or not be intentional by Train, however it is interesting that this song (showing so many influences) has done so well on the billboard charts. Drawing from artists of the past may have made listeners feel more connected with the song, because of songs they have liked in the past. The reason I say that Train as a band is in a post-modern part of their career, is because they are in a personal revival. Since the song “Drops of Jupiter” we haven’t herd much from Train, but now at what should be the latter part of their career they have made a revival, and there is something postmodern about that, and the music that people are listening to.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Herman and Chomsky, meg143, pre class 3/30
I found the reading on “A Propaganda Model” very interesting and a deeper look into why and how the media is filtered and controlled by such a small group of people before it is presented to the public as “freedom of speech.” It begins by explaining how many countries with extreme censorship in their government and media is obviously propaganda used to serve the dominant elite class. But also that media outlets in countries such as the US that are privately owned and claim to have the people’s best interest at heart are doing exactly the same thing it is just harder to pick up on. “A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multi-level effects on mass-media interests and choices” (257). This model has 5 main points of how the media in our country is still owned and produced by a dominant elite class. The points consist of the size of the size and concentrated owner wealth in mass-media firms, the fact that advertising is the main source of income, the reliance that media has on the government, businesses, and “experts” who fund and approve these media sources, “flak” a way to discipline the media, and “anticommunism” as a control mechanism. After all of these elements have effected and altered the news the public only sees the final product which in most cases is extremely different from the original raw news that was found. Unfortunately, the networks that have the most power are always the ones with the most money and the ability to broadcast their ideas the most and the loudest to the general public. Without funding from advertisers, the government, and other businesses a media network has almost new income and no way of broadcasting their news and ideas. “The trend toward greater integration of the media into the market system has been accelerated by the loosening of rules limiting media concentration, cross ownership, and control by non-media companies” (262). While, the media companies have been able to expand, broadcast more, and reach a wider and more diverse population the quality of news seems to be going down. When there are so many different people involved in the funding of these media outlets the filters create news that is produced for the investors benefit not for the greater good of the general public.
Jean, Herman & Chomsky
“ It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public” (257).
This quote makes me think of the differences between US media and Europe media. The US media especially the news is extremely censored. We only see one view of what is going on in the world. The government only presents an event in a way they feel is just enough information for us to know what is going on but not give the whole story. We are very censored in what we see when it comes to images of wars and what is happening in Iraq. The government “powerful” officials decided what we can handle and what we cannot. In Europe the media is not nearly as censored as the US. They see much more graphic and heartbreaking images that show citizens more of the truth that is occurring in these hard times. The BBC is not nearly as censored because it was originally a non-profit free news station that took off to be the number one especially in London. When living in London last semester it was much more interesting to watch the BBC news and see the true pictures of what was going on in the world today. The less censored news though may be more disturbing shows the truth rather then the extremely censored US news. In all categories not just news powerful people are the ones that decide what is right for people to see. They make decisions and are ultimately controlling the rest of the world with there power. This causes propaganda to become way to popular in society especially today.
Post-class on Adorno & Horkheimer
This is the first thing that came to my mind at the mention of psuedoindividuality. I shake my head every time I see this ad.
Pre-class Jameson
I thought Jameson's piece was somewhat confusing. I have yet to figure out parts of it, but what I did understand from it is that it reminded me of Jenks term of "tradition reinterpreted" and our discussion from Jenkins about parody. Jameson talks about the terms "coupure" or a radical break and "pastiche." The term pastiche is defined as "a work of art that imitates the style of a previous work." The term pastiche reminds me of Jenks term "tradition reinterpreted" because they both involve taking ideas from the past to create new ideas today. Today, everything is created with ideas from the past due to intertextuality. We shape everything we learn or invent today from previous experiences or ideas. From my understanding, the coupure is a break in time between a piece of work and the previous piece of work. For example, architecture. Years ago someone may have designed a building, then there was the coupure or the break in time, and now someone may use ideas from that previous building to create a similar style. One of Jameson's sections is titled "Pastiche eclipses Parody" (492.) The term parody means to make fun of or to make light of. Jameson says, "Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar mask, speech in a dead language"(493.) Pastiche and Parody relate because they are both imitating something that has already happened. I saw that one of the previous posts mentioned how 80's fashion is coming back. I thought this was a great example of how Pastiche and Parody relate. I feel as though people started wearing bright clothes and wild fabrics as a joke and because they thought it was funny to bring back the 80's days. Now, the fashion has caught on and it is becoming back in style. Today's 80's fashion is a pastiche because it is imitating a previous fashion era, but it is also a parody because it is making fun of how ridiculous it used to look.
Monday, March 29, 2010
A Propaganda model, Andrew Wells
Both Herman and Chomsky argue that all mainstream media outlets are in large corporations, which in return are mostly likely apart of a larger conglomerate. The conglomerates, because of their size, have powerful interests that may be endangered when certain information is "publicized."As a result a bias and censorship against the news is more than likely to occur.
This essay talks abotu the 5 filters that help filter out news that get published. The one just talked about was the filter of Ownership. The following filters include: Ownership, funding ,sourcing, flak, and Anticommunism as a control.
Its obvious that the mainstream media depends on heavily advertising revenues to survive. An example can be found in sports. The way a sport makes money is by the various amount of adverting during and in the middle of game play. Advertising is shown so frequently that the viewer is sometimes never aware that the ad is in front of them. Herman and Chomsky claim through the example of adertising in a newspaper, that the owners objective is to produce mass amounts of advertising with out affecting the reader to be uninterested. The idea behind the newspaper is supposedly to inform but what the owner is doing is puting the advertising as the product not the actual information printed.
The third filer is known as the sourcing filter. This is where the medias concern is the continuous flow of information to fill the demand for daily news. Herman and Chomsky argue that this task can only be filled by major business or even the government. To make it easier for the news promoters to get a hold of information from the government there are places in which they can discuss business, scheduling press conferences at hours well geared to news deadlines, and organization of press releases or photo opportunities.
The fourth filter is known as the Flak filter. Herman and Chomsky both refer this filter as a "negative response to a media statement or program" (Hc, 275). Flak from the powerful can be either direct of indirect. Direct(ex. Phone call or message). Indirect (ex. Funding a campaign with knowledge of later down the road asistance)
The fifth and and final filter is the Anticommunism as a control. This is the idea of exploiting public fear through potential threatening situations. The situation can either be real or fake. Both Herman and Chomsky say that this was often used to silence the public. An example of this could be the Iraq invasion and the Gulf war. With todays use of the internet many "indie" sites are able to publish independent articles to produce a certain idea of what the situation actually is.
This essay talks abotu the 5 filters that help filter out news that get published. The one just talked about was the filter of Ownership. The following filters include: Ownership, funding ,sourcing, flak, and Anticommunism as a control.
Its obvious that the mainstream media depends on heavily advertising revenues to survive. An example can be found in sports. The way a sport makes money is by the various amount of adverting during and in the middle of game play. Advertising is shown so frequently that the viewer is sometimes never aware that the ad is in front of them. Herman and Chomsky claim through the example of adertising in a newspaper, that the owners objective is to produce mass amounts of advertising with out affecting the reader to be uninterested. The idea behind the newspaper is supposedly to inform but what the owner is doing is puting the advertising as the product not the actual information printed.
The third filer is known as the sourcing filter. This is where the medias concern is the continuous flow of information to fill the demand for daily news. Herman and Chomsky argue that this task can only be filled by major business or even the government. To make it easier for the news promoters to get a hold of information from the government there are places in which they can discuss business, scheduling press conferences at hours well geared to news deadlines, and organization of press releases or photo opportunities.
The fourth filter is known as the Flak filter. Herman and Chomsky both refer this filter as a "negative response to a media statement or program" (Hc, 275). Flak from the powerful can be either direct of indirect. Direct(ex. Phone call or message). Indirect (ex. Funding a campaign with knowledge of later down the road asistance)
The fifth and and final filter is the Anticommunism as a control. This is the idea of exploiting public fear through potential threatening situations. The situation can either be real or fake. Both Herman and Chomsky say that this was often used to silence the public. An example of this could be the Iraq invasion and the Gulf war. With todays use of the internet many "indie" sites are able to publish independent articles to produce a certain idea of what the situation actually is.
Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Andrew Wells
After reading this article I understand that Fredric Jameson is critiquing postmodernism form a Marxist perspective. He lays out the differences in culture between the modern and the postmodern times. Hes worried with the cultural expression and aesthetics linked with the differnt systems of production. He draw on the area of architecture, and art to show his arguments.
Postmodernism is presented in this article as a means of making a radical break from high modernism.
"The case for its existence depends on the hypothesis of some radical break or coupure, generaly traced back to the end of the 1950's or the early 1960's" (F, 482)
It's considered a culture dominant, but not a style.
James also adds on the breaking of the bounderies between high art and popular culture in a critical way; aesthetic populism (F, 483)
Jameson does a comparison of Van Gogh and Andy Warhol to explain one of the keys in distinguishing features of postmodernism, the fetish. In Van Goh's painting, being represented as high modernist, is put next with Any Warhol's "Diamond Dust Shoes," representing postmodern art. Jameson argues that Ein Paar Barnshuhe contains the whole object world of agriculture a misery and the fore is not considered a fetish since it does not hide the poor conditions it represents.
The best example found in the article was when Jameson refers to an architectural example of a postmodern building symbolic of the multinational world space in which we function in daily. We as the people who occupy this new space do not posses the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace.
"... the Bonaventura aspires to bring a total space, a complete world, a kind of miniature city..."(F, 509)
The point that Jameson is trying to make is that with this latest mutation in space, Postmodern Hyperspace, has succeeded in lowering the capacities of the person to locate itself to organize its current position from an external world.
Postmodernism is presented in this article as a means of making a radical break from high modernism.
"The case for its existence depends on the hypothesis of some radical break or coupure, generaly traced back to the end of the 1950's or the early 1960's" (F, 482)
It's considered a culture dominant, but not a style.
James also adds on the breaking of the bounderies between high art and popular culture in a critical way; aesthetic populism (F, 483)
Jameson does a comparison of Van Gogh and Andy Warhol to explain one of the keys in distinguishing features of postmodernism, the fetish. In Van Goh's painting, being represented as high modernist, is put next with Any Warhol's "Diamond Dust Shoes," representing postmodern art. Jameson argues that Ein Paar Barnshuhe contains the whole object world of agriculture a misery and the fore is not considered a fetish since it does not hide the poor conditions it represents.
The best example found in the article was when Jameson refers to an architectural example of a postmodern building symbolic of the multinational world space in which we function in daily. We as the people who occupy this new space do not posses the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace.
"... the Bonaventura aspires to bring a total space, a complete world, a kind of miniature city..."(F, 509)
The point that Jameson is trying to make is that with this latest mutation in space, Postmodern Hyperspace, has succeeded in lowering the capacities of the person to locate itself to organize its current position from an external world.
VAGABOND, Jamesson
In the very beginning of this semester, Dr. Cummings already talked about how we understand the world by framing certain events with corresponding periods. In this Jameson reading, the presence of distinct “periods” in our culture which marks the ending of one and beginning of another is once again mentioned.
For example, from vinyl records to cassette tapes, CD's to iPods...Succeeding periods that deal with the notion of legacy (think Volkswagen's punch buggy commercial) is a naturally operating ideological system.
Generations serve the interest of companies because it helps the consumers figure out the trends through different eras. In fact, the clothing brand, GAP, prides itself the ability to mend the (generation) gap. Our pursuit for "faster, stronger, better" conflicts us because we do not understand what's the "better" one - AT&T or Verizon, PC or Mac. When we were given too many choices and too many media messages are involves in persuading us, we would recognize nothing in the end. While some may simply say there is no need to change or "if it ain't broken don't fix it," we may feel like we have done evolving the revolution and nothing original is left to create and there is no longer room for change.
For example, from vinyl records to cassette tapes, CD's to iPods...Succeeding periods that deal with the notion of legacy (think Volkswagen's punch buggy commercial) is a naturally operating ideological system.
Generations serve the interest of companies because it helps the consumers figure out the trends through different eras. In fact, the clothing brand, GAP, prides itself the ability to mend the (generation) gap. Our pursuit for "faster, stronger, better" conflicts us because we do not understand what's the "better" one - AT&T or Verizon, PC or Mac. When we were given too many choices and too many media messages are involves in persuading us, we would recognize nothing in the end. While some may simply say there is no need to change or "if it ain't broken don't fix it," we may feel like we have done evolving the revolution and nothing original is left to create and there is no longer room for change.
Pre-Class/ Response to Clem (3-29-2010)
Clem, excellent topic and one which I can agree with. This idea that we do not understand our own postmodern culture presents two outcomes: (1) a revert to nostalgic and comfortable styles of the past and (2) a contradicting identity crisis in understanding "postmodern." Clem, what i believe you were getting at when you say, "we pastiche the past," you mean we have an undying nostalgia for the past. It seems strange. I own a few NBA jerseys of players I loved watching when I was a child growing up in the 90s, but have no NBA apparel to represent any current players in the league. Over winter break, my mom actually asked me why I liked my John Stockton (NBA point guard during the 1980s and 90s) jersey so much; my response: "I don't know, I liked him when I was a kid."
To stay on the topic of fashion, I (and I'm sure most students on campus have) noticed a growing trend in bright clothing, reminiscent of the tacky 80s fashion. Why? We have this strange fetish with nostalgia in our postmodern era. Do we not know what to make of our time?
To explain what I mean by the latter point, I will refer you to a video I posted months ago on the blog:
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkCR-w3AYOE&feature=PlayList&p=599060200DB9C100&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=32 )
In this video, George Carlin (circa 2006) explains what it means to be a modern man, by which he means "postmodern man." Through the length of this bit, Carlin points out subtle contradicting ideologies and thoughts that compile the "modern man." It's an impressive piece of stand-up from Carlin and I implore that you watch it, let your mind soak it up, and analyze it as you please.
To stay on the topic of fashion, I (and I'm sure most students on campus have) noticed a growing trend in bright clothing, reminiscent of the tacky 80s fashion. Why? We have this strange fetish with nostalgia in our postmodern era. Do we not know what to make of our time?
To explain what I mean by the latter point, I will refer you to a video I posted months ago on the blog:
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkCR-w3AYOE&feature=PlayList&p=599060200DB9C100&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=32 )
In this video, George Carlin (circa 2006) explains what it means to be a modern man, by which he means "postmodern man." Through the length of this bit, Carlin points out subtle contradicting ideologies and thoughts that compile the "modern man." It's an impressive piece of stand-up from Carlin and I implore that you watch it, let your mind soak it up, and analyze it as you please.
Pre class Jameson
Jordan, I must agree with you, after reading this I was almost in physical pain. This text is honestly excruciating. He uses so many examples and refers to so many authors, theorists and artists that everything he was saying became very confusing. But anyway, what I understood from this and was still very interesting is that postmodernism is believed to be a coupure from the past and from modernism could in fact just be a change, an innovation, a stage in capitalism. Jameson relates postmodernism with capitalism and claims that aesthetic productions today have become integrated into commodity production. He gives us Andy Warhol work as an example of this. Postmodernism he says is not a style but a cultural dominance. But he also says we have trouble representing are own time and culture therefore we pastiche the past. This blank irony, the neutral representation or imitation of dead styles is now becoming our global culture creating intertextuality. So everything is becoming pop culture as we adapt it to our era. Even history. This was to my mind one of the most interesting part of this essay. When authors, filmmakers, artist attempt to recreate the past, they do so with ideas and stereotypes of the past. These representations therefore become simulacra of history, as Baudrillard would put it. It cannot be truthful because we were not there or if so time distorts memory and becomes more subjective, twisting reality. What we have at work is therefore not historical literature or films but pop history. With this comes one of postmodernisms symptoms: the difficulty to represent our own time.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Andrew Wells, 3.29.10
Over the weekend while I was watching TV, a certain commercial caught my attention. I'm sure most of you have already seen it but I couldn't help but think of Barthes idea of filling in the gap.
Here is the link to the Commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqqqaUwgbGo
The commercial is about the product gum called Dentyne Ice. It does a great job in reenacting a condom commercial. In one scene a couple is seen in the back of a car during the night with the windows fogged up. The girl asks if he has protection and he responds by pulling out a pack of gum.
The reason why I thought immediately to Barthes was because by viewing this commercial the audience is filling in the gap of the situation. When the girl asks for protection the viewer immediately thinks of a condom. Barthes says we constantly rewrite texts and give them new meanings based on our own emotions because of this we like to have something that is not fully revealed so we can fill it in with our imagination.
Here is the link to the Commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqqqaUwgbGo
The commercial is about the product gum called Dentyne Ice. It does a great job in reenacting a condom commercial. In one scene a couple is seen in the back of a car during the night with the windows fogged up. The girl asks if he has protection and he responds by pulling out a pack of gum.
The reason why I thought immediately to Barthes was because by viewing this commercial the audience is filling in the gap of the situation. When the girl asks for protection the viewer immediately thinks of a condom. Barthes says we constantly rewrite texts and give them new meanings based on our own emotions because of this we like to have something that is not fully revealed so we can fill it in with our imagination.
ANiCO – Individualism vs Ideology
Replying to McGowan’s questions and some of his comments in this post.
I think we kind of delved into this with Benjamin’s idea of the original, but I’ll take it a step further by referring to Henry Jenkins and his talking about subculture and how fans will take the canon and create something new with it.
Yes, we all live in ideology and can never escape it. Yes, the elite and general society create it and naturalize it for us to accept it. I can be bitter and say “well, we’re just going to have to wait for the elites to think it’s time to be forward thinking, lol!”
But I can be positive, and think we’re on some sort of cusp in technological and communicative advancement. When the industrial media creates something, we have the legitimate power to question, break, expand, or demean whatever media or ideology that’s thrown at us, with just a post on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and pretty much the rest of the internet. Yes, we can and will get muddled up in ideology, because it’ll even extend into the internet, but you can’t really let that stop you. It’s hit or miss. People will fuse ideas and ideology all on their own and progress on their own, even if it seems like it won’t in the present.
For example, what we’re learning right now—the acknowledgment of ideology, what it is, how it works—is probably an ideology itself. But we’re going to try and use this knowledge to apply in a progressive way to the world today, even if these were words made up by mostly white dudes that are either old or dead now. Their ideas were once individual ideas (and maybe even then, not really, if they constantly shared with other theorists,) but have since expanded into something incredible after being released into the world. I hope this made sense, because I’m posting this at midnight. Basically, what I’m saying, I know there’s a lot of scary and bad things that ideology can do. But sometimes you can make it do good things, like people becoming just a little bit self-aware. We just have to make more good than bad. (and hope our perspective of what is good becomes hegemonic, HA!)
“…are we capable of making any degree of progress or even forward-thinking change? Or are we just a band of robots who are unable to be individuals? And with this type of discourse in mind, how do we even define “the individual”?”
I think we kind of delved into this with Benjamin’s idea of the original, but I’ll take it a step further by referring to Henry Jenkins and his talking about subculture and how fans will take the canon and create something new with it.
Yes, we all live in ideology and can never escape it. Yes, the elite and general society create it and naturalize it for us to accept it. I can be bitter and say “well, we’re just going to have to wait for the elites to think it’s time to be forward thinking, lol!”
But I can be positive, and think we’re on some sort of cusp in technological and communicative advancement. When the industrial media creates something, we have the legitimate power to question, break, expand, or demean whatever media or ideology that’s thrown at us, with just a post on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and pretty much the rest of the internet. Yes, we can and will get muddled up in ideology, because it’ll even extend into the internet, but you can’t really let that stop you. It’s hit or miss. People will fuse ideas and ideology all on their own and progress on their own, even if it seems like it won’t in the present.
For example, what we’re learning right now—the acknowledgment of ideology, what it is, how it works—is probably an ideology itself. But we’re going to try and use this knowledge to apply in a progressive way to the world today, even if these were words made up by mostly white dudes that are either old or dead now. Their ideas were once individual ideas (and maybe even then, not really, if they constantly shared with other theorists,) but have since expanded into something incredible after being released into the world. I hope this made sense, because I’m posting this at midnight. Basically, what I’m saying, I know there’s a lot of scary and bad things that ideology can do. But sometimes you can make it do good things, like people becoming just a little bit self-aware. We just have to make more good than bad. (and hope our perspective of what is good becomes hegemonic, HA!)
ANiCO – Post Horkheimer/Adorno
ANiCO – Post Horkheimer/Adorno
Replying to McGowan’s questions and some of his comments in this post.
I had a hard time swallowing this brain vs being part just for the word choice. First, the use of the specific word “being”. I thought of the word as a state of existence. My being, your being—‘to be’ something as opposed to nonexistence. If I’m understanding his question right, ‘brain’ is suppose to represent the individual, and ‘being’ the social person falling in line with ideology, does he mean that we validate our existence based on society or ideology acknowledging it? It irks me, but somehow it makes sense. I wanted to say that we all have different states of being (or realities!)—I am a being in my own head, I am a being within Rollins College, within America, within my Hispanic heritage—but then realized all of these have their ideologies.
And then ‘brain’. I HAVE to get into the mind vs brain argument. Was it just failure to be specific or did he genuinely want to use the physicality of ‘brain’ to represent the individual? I guess if the mind can be affected by ideology, something as reliable as predetermined chemicals and electrical signals have to substitute for absolute individualism (then again, damage to the brain, learning, and memory can change synapses, so WHO knows…)
Replying to McGowan’s questions and some of his comments in this post.
“…Marx’s idea of systemic ideology and the notion of collective consciousness: does our brain determine our being?, or does our being determine our brain?”
I had a hard time swallowing this brain vs being part just for the word choice. First, the use of the specific word “being”. I thought of the word as a state of existence. My being, your being—‘to be’ something as opposed to nonexistence. If I’m understanding his question right, ‘brain’ is suppose to represent the individual, and ‘being’ the social person falling in line with ideology, does he mean that we validate our existence based on society or ideology acknowledging it? It irks me, but somehow it makes sense. I wanted to say that we all have different states of being (or realities!)—I am a being in my own head, I am a being within Rollins College, within America, within my Hispanic heritage—but then realized all of these have their ideologies.
And then ‘brain’. I HAVE to get into the mind vs brain argument. Was it just failure to be specific or did he genuinely want to use the physicality of ‘brain’ to represent the individual? I guess if the mind can be affected by ideology, something as reliable as predetermined chemicals and electrical signals have to substitute for absolute individualism (then again, damage to the brain, learning, and memory can change synapses, so WHO knows…)
ANiCO - A Late Review for King Kriggle, AKA Jordan
ANiCO - A Late Review for King Kriggle, AKA Jordan
I could have sworn I posted this last week, found that I didn’t, and realized I accidentally deleted the document where I originally wrote it up. Fantastic.
Well there isn’t much to criticize about Jordon’s posts. They are exactly what Dr. Cummings has asked for: A frequently-updated, timely-posted glimpse into the mind of one of her students. His posts are reflective, always presenting a new idea or example to relate and expand upon what we read and/or spoke about in-class, but never a tedious, word-for-word summary of what was discussed. Also, emotional: he genuinely speaks about how he reacted to the readings, never afraid to admit his confusions about the readings or just downright rejecting what a theorist says. I think a lot of students are afraid to do that because of the social stigma of “well I’m a student, I don’t know any better” and tend to invalidate themselves. In reality confusion and questions are best for propelling us forward towards our goals in understanding these crazy, crazy theorists.
If I had to have one nit-picky gripe about his posts, it would be he writes like he talks. It’s a nice identifier when he’s using an alias, but generally informal and kind of confusing if I’m trying to get a sense for what he’s trying to convey and there’s ideas scattered about and no thesis sentence to refer to. But this is probably a difference in how we view this blog: I look at it like a place to post up formal mini-arguments on what a theorists is saying or what forms of media could be applied to their theories. I look at Jordan’s posts and see something like a scholarly diary.
I could have sworn I posted this last week, found that I didn’t, and realized I accidentally deleted the document where I originally wrote it up. Fantastic.
Well there isn’t much to criticize about Jordon’s posts. They are exactly what Dr. Cummings has asked for: A frequently-updated, timely-posted glimpse into the mind of one of her students. His posts are reflective, always presenting a new idea or example to relate and expand upon what we read and/or spoke about in-class, but never a tedious, word-for-word summary of what was discussed. Also, emotional: he genuinely speaks about how he reacted to the readings, never afraid to admit his confusions about the readings or just downright rejecting what a theorist says. I think a lot of students are afraid to do that because of the social stigma of “well I’m a student, I don’t know any better” and tend to invalidate themselves. In reality confusion and questions are best for propelling us forward towards our goals in understanding these crazy, crazy theorists.
If I had to have one nit-picky gripe about his posts, it would be he writes like he talks. It’s a nice identifier when he’s using an alias, but generally informal and kind of confusing if I’m trying to get a sense for what he’s trying to convey and there’s ideas scattered about and no thesis sentence to refer to. But this is probably a difference in how we view this blog: I look at it like a place to post up formal mini-arguments on what a theorists is saying or what forms of media could be applied to their theories. I look at Jordan’s posts and see something like a scholarly diary.
Post Class Marx/Althussar
One point that really stood out to me and led me on a little bit of a whirl was a proposition made in Tuesday’s classing concerning Marx’s idea of systemic ideology and the notion of collective consciousness: does our brain determine our being?, or does our being determine our brain?. I think, as explored by a number of our theorists, that the human being, at least where we experience the world, is so very much and above all a “social” being that his status as a “societal member” as part of this larger ideological-based situation rules just exactly how he will think and consequently how he will act. It is impossible to separate one’s position in the hierarchy of class and status from the thoughts he will possess, for these “thoughts” are part of a manipulated belief system that are so ingrained and enforced time and time again generationally, that it seems to simply appear “natural” or just “the way things are”. It is not realized that this consciousness is artfully created to support the ruling power and their ideology, and it is just this massive “acceptance” by society that allows for such ideology to function. What the leaders in power think , is that which is assumed “true,” and thus, never questioned: through this process of blind individual acceptance, “their” thought manifests itself among our own thought. To think of it in this respect, frightfully poses the human “social” being almost as a robot in which he can successfully complete tasks and follow orders yet is incapable of generating his own thought based on his own opinion. If we are all ignorant conformists reliant on a hegemonic-based, one-dimensional ideology that’s sole purpose is to keep the authorities in authoritative positions, are we capable of making any degree of progress or even forward-thinking change? Or are we just a band of robots who are unable to be individuals? And with this type of discourse in mind, how do we even define “the individual”?
Post class
I thought the discussion we had in class about subcultures was very interesting. We pointed out certain terms that make up sub cultures. For example at Rollins we use Rcards and have Fox day. Anyone who is not a student at Rollins would not understand what these terms are. I had noticed this when my friends from home came to visit and I would ask "Have you seen my rcard?" and they would look at me like I had 3 heads. The term Rcard must sound strange to anyone else that is not a student here. I like the fact that we have terms that form subcultures because it brings all the students together at Rollins. Everyone here at Rollins has something in common. The Greek Life at Rollins also forms a subculture because it is a huge part of our school. Subcultures are formed without an effort. No matter where you live or where you work there is some sort of subculture formed between what you and the people around you experience and have in common.
post class Horkheimer-Adorno
Like Jean, I was stuck by the quote “ The radio democratically makes everyone equally into listeners.” The choice of the word democratically is very interesting because it would mean that as listeners, we are all free to choose what we would like to hear and that all equally. Every spectator having the same right of choosing and the same voice. I can agree that we have the choice of turning of the radio or not, to change the channel or not but are we really choosing what is being aired? Not at all right? I find this quote very ironic and grate because it is what we are told to believe to be kept happy in our society. We think that we have all these choices and are free to decide what it is we want. But the truth is, we are in a consumer society where everything we think we choose is in fact set in front of us by the media, by society, by the way we have been raised, for us to “choose”. The reason we pick a brand at the store is because our mom use to choose that brand. The reason we watch a certain TV show, or listen to a certain type of music is because it has been advertised, our friends listen to it, watch it or for the sake of being “different” because no one knows about it, we feel like we move out of ideology by showing interest in them but they are all the same part of an other ideology. The most popular choices are the ones set by the hegemonic ideology because it is what we know best, have been expose to more. This just sends us back to what Althusser said, “ There is no practice except by and in an ideology”
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Post Class 3-27-2010
After reading Jean's description of class on Thursday, I'm a little disappointed I could not be in attendance. Hebdige had a few concepts I had not covered in my previous post that I would have loved to discuss in length in class. But, duty called on the lacrosse field, and thus is life. Instead, I will do my best to provide some insight on our Tuesday class, during which we discussed Althusser and Karl Marx. Let's focus on Marx. Someone we have been well adjusted to since CMC 100. We love him at this point. I'd like to combine Hebdige's article on hegemony and Marx's article on ideology so we can think about a theorist we read earlier in the semester: Jurgen Habermas. To directly borrow a quote from our original powerpoint on Habermas, "Hegemony never sees itself as 'political' or 'ideological.' " Hegemony is dictated by those who have power in our society. Let's not forget Marx's golden rule: those who have the gold rule. We live in a capitalist country and those who have the gold dictate hegemonic ideologies. In a capitalist society, the rulers (money holders) never need to stop and question their politics or ideologies if they are the ones dictating, manipulating, and enforcing those ideologies. I feel like we would be living in a utopia if hegemony did see itself as political and ideological - then, perhaps hegemony would care about the current sociological barriers that divide our country.
My ideas may be quite generalized and unspecific right now, but I'm failing to think of detailed examples or analogies at this point. If anyone can build on this thought, I would greatly appreciate it.
Friday, March 26, 2010
pre class for Jameson...King Kriggle!!!!
Well after reading what could very easily be considered one of the hardest readings of my life, you seriously were not kidding doc, there is only one or two things from this that I feel I can speak about in an educated way. When he speaks about the rise of aesthetic populism and postmodernism one of the first things he mentions is the architecture, it is really interesting because he mentioned how it came under criticism and analysis and was constantly compared to modernism. Then i thought back to the other posts and thought to myself why can’t we seriously compare something postmodern without having to look back at modernity? I mean now it is interesting because all of those architecture lectures are finally starting to make some sense, but it is interesting to me that it would be used as a forefront for a new movement like that. I thought it was interesting how he said how the break “should not be thought of particularly as a cultural affair” this was definitely going into depth about the topic whch he does in the next 10 pages following that quote, but at the same time I really felt as though it was a bit long winded. I frankly got more and more confused when the “Euphoria and Self-annihilation” section came about because as usually it was being compared to art as he had done in a previous section, but I just think a good deal of these theories don’t seem to have any empirical background, and yes I understand as soon as I wrote that that a good deal of these things and ideas cant be proven empirically, but it certainly would help him because the ideas are really out there. I don’t see why people couldn’t be more like Said and just say something in so many less words that it makes sense. The only part of this entire thing that I really understood pretty well was the subsection on China and the one on Historicism destroying the past. I mean what he is saying in this section is not only sad but true, in looking back at the past and working toward the future we are in essence getting rid of the past in a cultural sense and leaving only books. Without the flavor of the times we will have no idea what was really going on. Well it certainly was an interesting read, but to say the least I would love to see what others are saying about it and the in class discussion. The only outside thing I can think of that would encompass this would be the movie Pi (3.14) and how we are all interconnected and our actions affect everything in some way or another, well anyway I know it is a stretch but that is my reccomendation this week folks.
VAGABOND, Hebdige [preclass make up / post class]
Hebdige is one of the most recent theorists we have studied in CMC and it's interesting to see how his ideas regarding subculture corresponds to other theories/theorists we have studied. For example, Jenck's postmdoernism architecture ideas ultimately relates to ideas that focus on de Saussure's semiotics and structuralism as certain concepts regarding language are said. Hebdige's discussion regarding subculture focuses mainly on the notion of punk and hippie subcultures - think Hot Topic and ripped jeans.
The subculture mentioned in class shapes us as individuals. For example, if I were to interact with someone from UCF, instead of saying campus center, I would say student union. If I were to hang out with someone from Berkeley, I would use a very different lingo.
The subculture mentioned in class shapes us as individuals. For example, if I were to interact with someone from UCF, instead of saying campus center, I would say student union. If I were to hang out with someone from Berkeley, I would use a very different lingo.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
post class Hebdige
I liked in class how we talked about subcultures and related it to schools and colleges. I never really thought how every school has its own language such as r-card, country club, fox day and many more. Its true that every school creates its own culture and ideologies within themselves that we subconsciously conform to. Without thinking these new ways and words become part of our everyday life when we become a Rollins students without ever thinking twice. How many times have you wrote foxday to a friend at another school and they have no idea what you are talking about and you just don’t understand why. We use these words in everyday life and expect everyone to understand. After reading Hebdige it made me think about how many things really are subcultures such as sports, clubs, communities, schools that I never would of thought in that way. Everything we do and take part of has its own ideas and words used everyday and we never think twice about it, just assume everyone understands. It made me realize how so many acts of everyday life take part subconsciously and how many different subcultures people truly are apart of.
Jean, Adorno
“The radio democratically makes everyone equally into listeners” (42)
I liked this quote by adorno because we can relate it not only to radio but to all types of media. When we listen the radio we have no say in what is being played. Someone in charge chooses what he or she plays on the station and everyone listening to the station no matter where they are hearing the same thing without any choice. Everyone is listening equally. This is the same with television as well. When we choose to turn on a certain television channel at a certain time whatever is playing is on. We cannot choose what is being played on that channel at that time and everyone tuned into the channel is watching the same thing being equal watchers. This makes you think about how everyone has something in common. How even within many subcultures and ideologies we all come together at some time as equal listener and watchers. We are all forced to the hegemony of our culture at certain times through this idea of watching the same television shows and listening to the same music. It also makes us think of how our culture is shaped and formed through radio and television. Since we all listen and watch the similar things it makes it become part of our culture and is accepted as the norm because everyone is seeing or hearing it. This idea makes us think how our culture and subcultures are shaped by control of different types of media.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
VAGABOND, Horkheimer and Adorno
Adorno and Horkheimer's ideology revolves around the notion of driving our culture towards sameness. This kind of homogenous attitude results in conforming those who are different into a hegemony. Furthermore, this can lead to certain ethnic groups being intolerant of other distinct groups. Aside from the obvious intercultural conflict, this also shapes the way one culture tries to embody. Let's use the United States of America for example.
American television show usually revolves around a typical theme: flaunt money & the riches such as Teen Cribz, they target specific audiences in order to assure favorable ratings. Disregarding reality TV, fictional characters represent typical people, television networks secure audiences that are seeking to identify with a specific group. As these characters demonstrate idealized standards of attractiveness, the bar is set for viewers as to how they should look. The popular media also sets a basic norm for how one should act, talk, and dress. Furthermore, the escalated drama presents problems that are plausible but the heightened intensity causes viewers to apply poor communication skills to their lives.
For one of the CMC 100 projects, my group and I examined The O.C and Dawson's Creek - two popular teenage sitcoms one taken place in the 90's and the other in the millenia. We looked at how the social scene portrayed as been changed over the course of time. Not only are the clothing and lifestyle way more "glamorous," a lot of the scenes are more vulgar and is borderline PG13 because it challenges a certain ideal which most people are not able to reach.
In other words, these shows are your life, only better (this reminded me of how te virtual is better than the real and the real is jealous of the virtual.) I say this because teenagers gravitate towards shows with such outrageous themes because it gives us a "myth" to live up to.
American television show usually revolves around a typical theme: flaunt money & the riches such as Teen Cribz, they target specific audiences in order to assure favorable ratings. Disregarding reality TV, fictional characters represent typical people, television networks secure audiences that are seeking to identify with a specific group. As these characters demonstrate idealized standards of attractiveness, the bar is set for viewers as to how they should look. The popular media also sets a basic norm for how one should act, talk, and dress. Furthermore, the escalated drama presents problems that are plausible but the heightened intensity causes viewers to apply poor communication skills to their lives.
For one of the CMC 100 projects, my group and I examined The O.C and Dawson's Creek - two popular teenage sitcoms one taken place in the 90's and the other in the millenia. We looked at how the social scene portrayed as been changed over the course of time. Not only are the clothing and lifestyle way more "glamorous," a lot of the scenes are more vulgar and is borderline PG13 because it challenges a certain ideal which most people are not able to reach.
In other words, these shows are your life, only better (this reminded me of how te virtual is better than the real and the real is jealous of the virtual.) I say this because teenagers gravitate towards shows with such outrageous themes because it gives us a "myth" to live up to.
Pre Class, Horkheimer & Adorno, Ann
One of the opening lines of Horkheimer and Adorno’s essay “The Culture Industry” is, “Culture today is infecting everything with sameness.” They talk about how everything in culture is becoming more and more the same as well as connected. This is a lot of what we are talking about in my Social Media class. These days television shows, movies and radio stations all have websites. Websites these days also usually connect to Twitter, MySpace and Facebook making everything flow together. Another example of this maybe would be Disney. They have theme parks, movies, websites as well as there own television and radio station. The company spans upon vast forms of media. The essay argues that the same points are incorporated into all media forms so that something will appeal to all audiences. I can see how there are certain genres that appeal to certain people and these genres are usually repeated throw all types of media. Not many original pieces far away from these genres. People seem to think that there needs to be a category for everything. The media tends to be criticized for being very liberal and this can have huge effects on society. People tend to not view the media with a critical approach and although they do not do it intentionally end up mimicking the views of what they view in the various forms of media that they see everyday. This essay seems to dramatically put into theory what I have learned in CMC classes as well as heard from other sources about the dangers of the media. It took a lot of points for the authors to come to these conclusions so at times I did get a little lost reading this article but I think I was able to draw the main points.
Pre-Class "The Culture Industry"
I think Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s argument throughout “The Culture Industry” is one that I have also often find myself too proposing and is surely something that should be seen as worrisome for the future of mankind: the fact that modern capitalism has ultimately resulted in the dumbing down of our society. Much of their argument reminded me of Marx’s idea of a “false consciousness” in which people are ignorantly, not only participating in, but perpetuating an ideology that they have no idea is in existence and they have no idea they are playing a role which is aligned within a certain ideological framework. In order to conceptualize this idea, I often think of the individual constantly having to put on a sort of “performance” for both himself as well as others, a performance that is strategically planned out and executed flawlessly as promoted by the rest of society’s ideals. The consumer culture that has in recent times taken over, endlessly serves to position the individual as consumer, employing such tools as the media and advertising to manipulate this consumer into buying an endless array of things that are by no means necessary. It is this ultimate cycle of propaganda that occurs so inconspicuously that we do not even realize how we have been, for the most part, brainwashed. The notion of consumerism has become so engrained in the subject’s mind that it is now difficult for this individual, or subject, to distinguish between “reality” and an “illusory reality” created by this market-based ideology. It is stated that, “but freedom to choose an ideology – since ideology always reflects economic coercion – everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same. The way in which a girl accepts and keeps the obligatory date, the inflection on the telephone or in the most intimate situation, the choice of words in conversation, and the whole inner life as classified by the now somewhat devalued depth psychology, bear witness to man’s attempt to make himself a proficient apparatus, similar (even in emotions) to the model served up by the culture industry” (71). And in the end, we are just that, all the same. We follow the same rules, align ourselves with the same expectations, perform in the same ways in order to “fit in” as “accepted societal members”. There is no longer a freedom of choice because all choices are the same. And there’s no escaping it. So, now the question is, how are we to make intellectual progress with these standing conditions?
Pre Class Hebdige
I thought Dick Hebdige's readings were very interesting and fairly easy to relate to. I have found many of the readings difficult to understand, but this one seemed to make the most sense. I thought one of the most interesting sections was the Ideology: A Lived Relation. Within this section he discussed "false consciousness" He states that Althusser says, "Ideology has very little to do with 'consciousness'... It is profoundly unconsciousness. " I though that was interesting because I never thought of it that way, but it is completely true. People have a sense of false consciousness when they listen to others or to the media. If people thought on their own and did not give into what the media or higher class was saying then they would not have that sense of false consciousness. Althusser says it is profoundly unconsciousness because people are not taking action. By listening to what the media and higher class says people are "unconscious " because they are not believing in what they want to believe in themselves. The section following the Ideology section is Hegemony: The Moving Equilibrium. In this section he discusses how the higher class creates hegemony. Beliefs should not be based on what type of class you are in, but because people are "unconscious" it turns out this way.
Post Class 3/23 Jenkins, meg143
I found our class discussion on Tuesday very interesting and I have enjoyed the readings by Jenkins, Marx and Althusser as well. The discussion about twitter was the first topic that I have a slightly different opinion on. I currently use twitter and have found it both entertaining and fascinating and I’ve also watched it work wonders in the marketing world. While I do understand there are a lot of skeptics against twitter, I have to say that I think it is a useful media tool that brings about an ambient awareness of your friends, celebrities, as well as companies/ designers that you like. I understand it may not be a necessary tool but I don’t believe it has created any negative implications either. “People who may not ever meet face to face and thus have real world connections with each other can tap into shared framework of popular culture to facilitate communication” (556). Jenkins explains in this quote how tools like twitter and facebook have created real connections with strangers who may not ever meet each other but it does not take away from the fact that they are communicating and making connections. We live in a very participatory culture that is now surrounded by the web and I think that instead of rejecting these tools we should embrace them and look for the positives in connecting with others around you. I am planning to go into marketing or public relations and I have already become very familiar with certain media tools from past internships and I know that I will continue using them and have to stay up to date with the newest technologies and ways to reach the general public. “We are witnessing the emergence of an elaborate feedback loop between the emerging DIY aesthetics of participatory culture and the mainstream industry.” (571). Different websites and technologies are taking off and becoming extremely popular and I am very interested to see what will be the next media tools that change our day to day lives as well as the marketing and public relations industry.
Pre Class response to Dick Hebdige
The part of the reading that I enjoyed the most was the section about the ideological form. It is explained that certain sub-cultures seem dangerous, but at the same time have been co-opted into our culture to be accepted. A good example of this is the punk culture. Punk culture originates arguably in New York City, in a pre 1977 scene in Andy Warhol’s doll factory (practice space for The New York Dolls). It is often perceived that punk culture started in England, because the punk culture in England caught on a lot faster there. The fact that it is understood by most that this music scene started in England is a great example of how the counter-culture has been co-opted into a society that needed it. In the mid 1970’s kids in England were fed up with police brutality, and the treatment of the lower middle class, which is why angry punk music caught on so well for them. Today, we see that punk music has been co-opted into our mainstream society, with the induction of The Sex Pistols into the rock and roll hall of fame, and The Who having a huge contract with CBS’s nighttime dramas (as well as their multi-million dollar deal with the super bowl in 2010). Stuart Hall has a few pieces about the co-optation of counter-culture. Because counter culture will always be co-opted into our mainstream society (due to big business seeing it as a commodity i.e. $$$), counter culture will always change. Take the music scene in Seattle Washington in the early 90’s. No one could have ever guessed that a band like Nirvana (so rebellious) would ever appeal to 15-year-old kids living in the suburbs across the world. The fact that it did made grunge music (and culture) commodified. The counter-culture will always change, but will always end up being bought out by big business, and eventually lose its cultural aspects.
Andrew Wells, Post-class 3/24/10 THE CULTURE INDUSTRY
When reading this chapter I made sure I had my highlighter and notebook at hand to try to understand all that I was reading. What I ran into was a cluster of ideas that overwhelmed me.
"Culture today is infecting everything with sameness. Film, radio, and magazines from a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together. (M. 41)"
- What I understand from this is that we are all connected through one simple idea. Media has us all connected to the point where we can receive information no matter what system we use. (I don't think I understand correctly)
"The conspicuous unity of macrocosm and microcosm confronts human beings" (M,41)
- Macrocosm: The great word or universe
-Microcosm: a little world
This quote is a double negative to me and yet I cant help but feel there's a bigger meaning that i missing.
"all mass culture under monopoly is identical and the contours of its skeleton , the conceptual armature fabricated by monopoly are beginning to stand out."
-???
Culture lag: the backwardness of American consciousness in relation to the state of technology
"Those who deplore it as a betrayal of the ideal of pure expression harbor illusions about society" (M, 51)
- Media harbors illusions about society
"the culture industry is pornographic and prudish. It reduces love to romance."
- I love this quote for the soul fact that it uses a term that is sometimes harsh to the ear in to meaning something positive and deep.
Going through the rest of the chapter I believe that I have a somewhat grasp of the material. The main idea that was the theory that though western culture used to be divided into middlebrow and lobrow, the modern view of mass culture is that there is a single marketplace in which the best succeed. The media companies are the centralized power that is in control of production and distribution to the few remaining corporations.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Post Class for 3/23/10 King Kriggle
Well after an interesting discussion today in class we once again came upon my favorite topics in CMC and those would be the ISA,RSA, and the good ol concept of ideology. For this blog i just wanted to focus on a few things, first of all the quote doc gave “you can never escape ideology”. This is very interesting to me because of how true it really is. I think back to the Punk movement and how i had mentioned in class that originally it was a subculture with its own ideology and then became a counter culture that was merely doing the mirror opposite of the hegemonic ideology of the time. These glory years of 75-78 were short lived. Yet I was very into this entire movement for a good deal of my adolescence and finally into college until one day i sat down and thought about the entire thing. It was while watching a very good movie called SLC PUNK, at the end of the movie the main character (who had blue hair, bad attitude, and was completely punk to the core) realized that in being a punk and trying so hard not to conform he had actually conformed to another set of rules. His outfit was not expression, it was a uniform. The counter culture dictates that you curse, have crazy hair, wear ripped up clothes, and generally dont act educated. He realized that in doing all of these things he had become a poser and had conformed to that set of ideology, which was the exact opposite of what he was trying to do. this shows that no matter what you do you are trapped in some ideology. I assume that would mean the only way to truly escape ideology would be to move out to the middle of nowhere and live as a hermit, but then again you would probably be following the ideology of the Yeti or something of the mix haha. Seriously can anyone think of a way that you could completely escape ideology, maybe Captain Nemo did or something, who knows but it definitely brings up an interesting debate and should make you look at yourself in the mirror a little differently now.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Response to Althusser
So apparently I am a little behind here, I guess I missed something last week, because I am posting on the Marx and Althusser readings. I haven’t seen any responses besides Jordan’s in the blog and now I am seeing Hebdige all over the place. I’ll get to him in my next post. If you haven’t read Jordan’s post you can read it here: http://s2010cmc300.blogspot.com/2010/03/pre-class-for-althusser-marx-for-31810.html. He gave a very good example of how an ISA uses both ideology and violence. The main reason I brought it up was to agree with him that this topic is one the most interesting that we have come across. I thoroughly enjoyed discussing it in 100 as well. I was following Althusser’s piece easily until he proposed his two theses, which apparently were apart of some grand central thesis. This is where I started to lose him. He first states that Ideology is an illusion; it does not represent one’s ‘real conditions’ but their relationship to those conditions? I took this to mean that because Ideology is something created in the minds of men to explain the way their world works or should work; it is not reality or actuality, but someone’s interpretation of it. If that’s what he was getting at it seems like there were much simpler ways to put it. If anyone has a clearer idea of this please comment. As far as Ideology having material existence, I believe he was alluding to the fact that Ideology trickles down to its subjects by material means (i.e. propaganda). ISA’s use written text, film, and the like to transmit their ideology. Again, I am a little weary, because he could have just come right out and say that, but it seemed like he was beating around the bush a lot. So perhaps I am not getting it. Again, please comment.
Pre class for Hebdige 2/23/10..KING KRIGGLE
after reading yet another awesome reading there are a few things that stood out to ol king kriggle. One of the most influential quotes of the entire work was “Since ideology saturates everyday discourse in the form of common sense, it cannot be bracketed off from everyday life as a self-contained set of “political opinions” or “biased views”. neither can it be reduced to the abstract dimensions of a “world view” or used in the crude Marxist sense to designate “false consciousness”(Hebdige 148). I found this quote to really sum up a good deal of the points that the man was making in a nice nutshell. It is interesting that a good deal of people seem to believe that “heremonic ideology” is almost always political, but after you read Althusser it completely changes, well at least it did for me. Yet think of marketing and market research as we have discussed before the other Hegemonic ideology that does not exist in the public realm, Coca cola for example is one. I dont know about y’all but I havent seen a pepsi commercial in the longest time, or any other that wasnt a coke product. I don’t believe there is any false consciousness involved in a product such as coke, there might be one in McDonalds for some kind of atmosphere they are trying to display or the fact that they are connected with the world and the youth, it never really makes sense to me why they do their commercials that way anyway. Looking at Disney there definitely might be a little of the false consciousness in that realm because they are masquerading around as a legit world view as we saw in the videos, when in reality they are as fake and processed as American Cheese. I mean it certainly is a lot easier to look only at the political realm when thinking of hegemonic ideology or any ideology for that matter since it has been around since the feudal ages. Yet as we look at the marketing arena it is not hard to imagine that very soon, at least in our lifetimes it will become a lot more apparent how hegemonic and cutthroat the entire thing really is. and lets give a shout out to Mr. Joe K for boxing without gloves haha
Pre- class Hebdige
For this reading of Hebdige, I would like to focus more on the first part of the reading: (i) From Culture to Hegemony. First of all I enjoyed seeing how Hebdige took us through the understanding and changes in meaning of the word “culture”, from a feudal ideal of hierarchically ordered community to a future of socialist utopia to the understanding of a particular way of life. Nowadays, as he puts it, we comprehend this word as the study of a society and its total way of life. This term, culture, which we are all part of and study other ones too is engulfed in ideology. I like how he refers to other theorist like Barthes and Althusser, particularly when the later mentions in his description of ideology that it is perceived-accepted-suffered cultural objects but which act beneath consciousness. And again relating to previous reading we have done such as Marx and Althusser on ideology we have come to the understanding that those who have more say, more power, the ruling class impose their dominant ideology. Those who have less power to produce or impose their definition of the world on the world are nonetheless still in ideology but that of their own group on top of the one of the oppressor.
As I was reading this I could not help but relate to this passage from a book I am currently reading Franny and Zooey by J.D Salinger:
“It isn’t just Wally. It could be a girl, for goodness’sake. I mean if he were a girl, he’d have been painting scenery in some stock company all summer. Or bicycled through Wales. It’s everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so- I don’t know- not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”
I really enjoyed reading this passage because it sent right back to CMC and to the idea that we are stuck in ideology and no matter how hard we try and leave it we just enter a new ideology. Like Franny’s character I think it is sad-making. The importance again is being aware of such things and that we do thing maybe because we enjoy them a little yes, but mostly because ideology has, with time made us enjoy them by being engulfed in it.
Blog Exercise- Feedback for Clem
First off let me begin by saying that all of your posts have been very beneficial for me. If ever I had a problem understand a reading or something that was brought up in class, I knew it was safe to read what you had to say. In and out of the class you are very knowledgeable with the material being taught. I especially enjoyed your post on VAGABOND post-class 2/25. In that post I was able to have a clear understanding with your relation of Disney and Vegas and how they pose as a threat to our culture because of how people fail to realize the way that they alter our way in understanding our world.
Though, after looking at all the posts I can see that you only have 8 posts up and some are below the class recommendation of 300+ words. Bouncing off someone else's critic idea, it's better to have a post that shows knowledge quality and than quantity. I'm sure with you're strong knowledge in all the areas in CMC it shouldn't be a problem doing any make up posts for the class.
Keep up the great work!
Review for Meg143
Meg –
Overall I enjoyed reading your blog.
- Posts seemed to demonstrate understanding of class material.
- You have been blogging twice a week.
- Almost all posts seem to meet length requirements.
- You may want to try to use less quotes and write more of your own ideas.
- You also may want to use less summarization.
- Annie
Overall I enjoyed reading your blog.
- Posts seemed to demonstrate understanding of class material.
- You have been blogging twice a week.
- Almost all posts seem to meet length requirements.
- You may want to try to use less quotes and write more of your own ideas.
- You also may want to use less summarization.
- Annie
Hebdige - Hegemony/ Pre-Class 3-22
After reading Dick Hebdige's piece, one quote stuck in mind and this quote is actually quoted from another author: " 'Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring classes' - Brecht, A Short Organum for the Theatre" (150). That's the result of hegemony: warring classes. Usually, classes are not tangibly at war with each other, but we have broad opinions and generalization when we mentally place people into classes. As we have studied in CMC 100 (and Hebdige reminds us, too), dominant and ruling classes in a society will impose their dominant ideologies on the rest of the population.
What happened just last night? Congress voted and passed a health care reform bill that has been two years in the making. I am not bringing this up to start blog-based political fisticuffs; the new health care bill represents a HUGE change in hegemonic power in our modern society. The bill will impact my generation, how we receive health care, and how we will pay our taxes for years to come. In the past, health care generally was made available for families and individuals who could afford it - in other words, the dominant power in the health care industry resided with the privatized health care agencies. With this new health care bill, virtually all Americans could receive health care; this is an incredibly interesting hegemonic power shift in our generation. However, to point back to my initial quote at the top of this post, I have heard of a greater split (or a greater war waging) between classes as a result.
The Washington Post published a long article this morning (source of article listed at bottom) which presented a synopsis of the event. I found it interesting how they quoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi toward the end of the first page, saying, "Today we have the opportunity to complete the great unfinished business of our society and pass health-insurance reform for all Americans as a right, not a privilege." Reading this quote, part of me wants to say, "F___ yeah! Citizens rights! We need more of those, cuz that's what America was founded on." The other, more rational part of me is reminded of the dense bureaucracy I grew up around in Washington DC and thinks, "Well, that sounds great, but I doubt we will have any more rights than we did yesterday." Call me a pessimist, but I firmly believe the ruling class has not given a shit about health care reform and rather cares about securing their personal endowments; hence, everything will stay the way it has always been.
DISCLAIMER: I tried to stay an unbiased as possible when discussing touchy political topics; I simply used the health care reform as a platform for discussion.
Link to Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/22/AR2010032201817.html
Feedback for Joe
Joe, you are doing a really good job of breaking down what is said in class or in the reading in your blog entries. Your blogs are conversational and get to the point of the article or what class has left you thinking about. You do a good job of drawing conclusions and asking questions that will hopefully be answered by other bloggers. This seems like exactly what DC is looking for, to keep the conversation going. I especially liked your response to "King Kriggle" about Jencks cannons and Dr. Casey's lecture. I would suggest that you make sure you are posting twice a week and commenting on others posts. Overall really good work though!!
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Post Class 3-21-2010
As a follow-up to our discussion of Jenkins on Tuesday, we brushed over the differences between satire and parody. A few simple examples that came to mind when I think of satire are Jonathon Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and (a more contemporary example) The Brady Bunch Movie, wherein the fictitious Brady Bunch family resided in the typical suberbs of 1995. The film was a satire because it critiqued family values preached on the original Brady Bunch Show from the 1970s, as these "family values" were tested in a new era - the 1990s environment. Sketch comedy shows like Saturday Night Live or Mad TV are also considered satires, because they tend to comment openly on current and topical social issues. When I think of parody, Scary Movie comes to mind, obviously because it is parodying other horror films. Two others would be "The Daily Show: with John Stewart" and "The Colbert Report;" these two shows are comedic parodies of actual nightly news reports and should be treated as mere entertainment.
However, I found myself watching "The Colbert Report" earlier this week and was pretty impressed with one of Colbert's "news" segments, in which he discusses Senator Patrick Kennedy yelling in front of Congress for the lack of press coverage on our war in Afghanistan. Kennedy complains that the media is clearly covering the Eric Massa scandal, and ignoring efforts to end the war in Afghanistan. Colbert sides with Kennedy in satirizing a media obsession with dodging "convoluted details." In this bit, Colbert presents the word "Afghanistan" next to his face while discussing some monotonous, yet pertinent information regarding our troops in Afghanistan. Then Colbert quickly looks into a different camera and excitedly tells some "juicy details" pertaining the Massa scandal, usually ending with a funny punchline. He then looks back and talks about Afghanistan for a few moments, and pulls away for tantilizing details of the Eric Massa scandal. Colbert continues this act until, hopefully, you get it.
I thought it was a good example of satire, especially when the critique is centered toward our media. So, I thought it was pretty funny. Here's a link to it, if you want to check it out:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267525/march-15-2010/the-word---afghanistan
Feedback: for Jean's eyes only
Hi Jean, Jackson here. I have reviewed most of your blogs and would like to commend you for your work, thus far. If not analyzing a quote from the text, you are providing us with personal experience from other classes you are or have taken, which pertain to your topic. You have quoted your CMC 350 and sociology classes a few times in recent posts, which is excellent - I am sure others in our class would appreciate hearing some of the material you discuss in other classes, to give us a better grip on our coursework. For example, in your most recent post, you commented on Poster's idea of web connectivity and tied it into internet privacy issues, which you learned in CMC 350. Rather than simply repeating something you had learned in class, you expanded my knowledge of internet privacy laws and restrictions - something I previously knew nothing about. Also, I like how you use very direct language, leaving no mystery to the point you want to emphasize and I have noticed that almost all your posts have exceeded the minimum 300 word requirement, going into fairly deep analysis and critique on the topic of discussion. However, reading some of your posts, I feel like you are trying to touch on too many topics at once and when you do so, you leave out punctuation, which makes it can make it difficult to read at times. My one suggestion is that you proofread your posts before submitting them. Personally, I will lose a few words in translation from my brain to paper: it's a common human error and unfortunately the only cure is proofreading and editing. It may only take a few extra minutes, but it's well worth it.
Otherwise, keep up the blog work. I counted that you have only missed 1 (perhaps 2) blog entrees so far, but keep dropping knowledge on us - it's much appreciated
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Comments for ANICO, and more on blogging in general
Skye’s style and content is very organized in her blog posts. It makes it very easy to follow and understand. She presents her topic clearly and then follows it up with in-depth analysis. With the exception of her first post, Skye has offered a response to other classmate’s posts in each of hers’. This makes for a very successful blog, as it is the purpose of the blog to get us interacting with each other about the course and relevant topics – as opposed to providing a summary of the reading and posting it for the sake of not failing this portion of the class. I wish more people would provide content like this. I know I do not, although I wish I would have read Skye’s posts earlier in the semester, as I have a lot I could say about them. She offers a lot of great points and poses very interesting questions. In fact, it took me forever-and-a-half to finish reading her posts, because my mind kept jumping off and making connections. Unfortunately when I have been in the mood to read through other posts I haven’t seen Skye’s. Which leads me to my one suggestion for her: catch up on your posts and make two per week. Of course, if you split up the posts you have made into 300 word sections, you would probably be close to catching up. I would like reiterate that I wish more people would use the blog for its true purpose. I am guilty of it too, so I don’t blame anyone for not posting, or for just providing their response and moving on. We already have to sit through class for over an hour trying to digest this stuff, and with all of our other responsibilities, reading through the blog just isn’t a priority when we can get by with the minimal requirement. I don’t know if anyone else has this problem or not, but when in class I find it hard to contribute because someone will bring up something, I will contemplate it and make connections, and by the time I formulate a response, two or three other people have chimed in and either completely changed the topic or just made a mess of the discussion. So I just sit back and kinda take it all in and then make my conclusions. This is why I think the blog is a very useful tool. We could all benefit by extending the class discussions into the blog. Now this isn’t always easy considering if you don’t make the post right after class you may forget everything you wanted to say, because not every day and every theory can be interesting. In fact, I haven’t found myself that interested in any of our recent theorists since the topic of semiotics. So I am offering to do my best to make solid posts and contribute to the content of the blog by interacting with other people’s posts. Chances are no one will read this, except maybe Skye, but if anyone does I encourage you to do the same. Skye, keep doing what your doing, just more often.
Blogger Review Molly Andrews
I enjoyed reading Molly Andrews blog. I liked how you brought in personal experience and compared it to the issues we have talked to in class especially in your Disney and Zizek blog posts relating it to a recent trip. It shows good understanding being able to apply the information to everyday life and makes it more interesting to read. I also like how your posts have a reoccurring theme of Disney. I like how this style shows connections of many different theorists all being able to relate it back in some way to looking at one particular place. It shows that you have a really good understanding of the theorists we are discussing
All your posts that you have done have great content and can relate to all readers. You just have to start posting more, very few posts and almost all of them are post class posts, not really any pre-class posts. Just catch up and continue your style!
Barthes' theory in Dentyne Ice commercial [rambles]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPZuBNH6d00
The gap. We fill in the blanks.
'Nuff said.
The gap. We fill in the blanks.
'Nuff said.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Blogger Review on Alison 3/18
I really like how Alison takes quotes and makes an in-depth analysis on them while making connections at the same time. For example, she took the quote "It was Disney's magic to be able to stress the happy side of life, and there are always, in human society, characters who resemble those of Disney comics"(123) and explained how people use disney to escape the "horrible tragedies and wars going on." I agree with her when she says that people do want to believe there is good and peace in the world and that is why Disney makes its millions. That quote was in response to Mickey being nominated for the nobel peace prize and it is kind of humorous to think about.
Alison's posts give engaging examples that help others examine the content further. I like when she says that parents take their kids to to Disney to, in a way, get them away from the horrors of real like distracting them with the imaginary world of Disney. Allison did a good job in taking what we learned in class and intertwining it with her own thoughts about our class topics. A suggestion I need to work on as well as her would be commenting more on other people blogs when they have a good point or something you want to add on to them, because other than that I really enjoyed her posts because it addresses what it should.
Review for Jackson Ryland by King Krig
After reviewing Jackson’s posts the man clearly needs a “Hell Yeah” from the audience. There are many positive things to say about his blogs but to begin lets start with style. The best thing about his posts is that they are to the point and are not convoluted or enigmatic in any way. This is very nice considering the fact that a good deal of what we are reading usually is. The depth is very good as Jackson has repeatedly replied to other blogs and welcomes feedback on his own. His one on Disney was very good but the analogy that was made between Lax and Baudrillard's essay was very good. He has the ability to go very in depth into a topic like that but be able to explain it to a layman on the street that has no previous knowledge of the topic. He offers opinions when necessary but usually sticks to the facts and will interject his own ideas in there where he feels they need to. As mentioned the depth is good, it is not too deep or not enough so the reader does learn something. One interesting thing previously mentioned about his content is that he always offers some kind of real world connection that works really well. His one about Logorama and then abour Marconi as well show that not only does he have a grasp on the topic as well, but more importantly he has a grasp on pop culture and history and is making good references to them. Truth be told this assignment kinda scared me at first, but I have had no problems reading Jackson’s posts and have enjoyed doing so. It is very interesting to hear a different voice on the entire thing. I had read his previously but never really gone in depth to analyze them or have all of them on one sheet to look over. The only 2 things of constructive criticism I would have for Jackson would be that he adhere to the minimum of 300 words and that he interject a little more of his own opinions, maybe a funny joke or something. I think we all want to hear a little more of what he has to say, and that would definitely fill the extra 40+ that a few of his posts were missing. Overall good job man and I look forward to hearing more from ya.
pre class for Althusser Marx for 3/18/10 KING KRIG
Althusser and Marx were 2 very interesting articles because not only were they very different in some aspects but they were also the same. I think Marx was coming from a much more centralized area whereas Althusser was making a bit more broad strokes attempting to lay down the actual frameworks. I was particularly interested in how Althusser was very thorough with the ISAs and IRAs. I have ALWAYS enjoyed learning about this, even in shamas’ class haha. It is just interesting to me how one controls the other. When thinking about the Religious ISA you could very easily point to the middle east and here in the Midwest, in both places (radical Islam and Radical Christianity) are functioning first with ideology (their interpretations of the scriptures) and although they are not doing violence themselves they often inspire it. A good movie if you have time to check it out is called Jesus Camp, it is a wonderful documentary on how basically the evangelical Christians are creating children soldiers for the republican party. There was a part in the movie where the children go to a camp, hence the name, and a cardboard cut out of former president bush is brought in and they bless him and touch him and almost seem to worship him. Based on their ideas and complete detest of abortion it is not out of line to think that the church itself would not carry out a bombing, but it definitely could persuade some of its followers to do so. The same thing is happening with radical Islam, so I guess you could very easily say the more powerful of the two is definitely the ISA because an IRA can be stopped, an army or police force can be stopped, ideas are a little harder to put down. They linger in the imagination for much longer than a scar ever can. Well it is interesting at the same time because I am sure that Marx would say (at least I think since the whole communism thing happened) that bullets change countries much quicker than votes, but who knows…
Response to Vagabond's Posts:
Vagabond’s posts have been very interesting and entertaining to read. You do a very good job of connecting the readings to other theorists or to other related ideas, giving the reader a deeper understanding of the material as well as showing you fully grasp the concepts. You’re posts on Disney were especially interesting and thought provoking about how the American culture has no real symbol, and that Disney may truly be the most prominent American icon whether we believe it or not. Your post on Marx and Althusser was also very interesting and when you bring in specific quotes it makes your post that much stronger. I also think its great that you often comment on other students blog to make it much more conversational. The “rambles” post of a quote by George Carlin also fit in perfectly with our blogging and was an interesting change of pace and idea from a different person. All in all your posts put the theorists in a new light by relating them to outside ideas, they were entertaining as well as informational. My only advice would be to make your posts a little more in depth, and bring in specific quotes from the readings more often. And you seem to have made up the blogs you missed which is great. Keep up the good work!
Feedback for Vagabond
It is quite clear that Vagabond has a strong, well-established understanding of the theorists, and I was quite impressed by their ability to demonstrate this comprehension. I think their writing is extremely insightful as exemplified by their ability to make connections between theorists (as demonstrated by the Marx and Althussar post) as well as their ability to pull in quotes not only by the theorist at hand but also by other theorists we have studied. Likewise, Vagabond’s content is solid for not only does it address one of the issues at hands but it also relates and makes connections to similar topics. I think my favorite part of their writing was the fact that he/she often pulls in real life applicable examples that anyone can connect with (the DisneyWorld/Victoria Secret references), and thus, puts the sometime vague, unclear discourse into human terms. Their style is quite conversational (not a bad thing!) and allows for easy understanding by the reader. I also enjoy how he/she often proposes their own personal questions in relation to the text because it proves their understanding of the material. If I was to make any sort of suggestion, I think it would simply have to be providing a bit more depth towards their arguments. Although the main point is there, I think the response would be even better if it was expanded upon for a bit more clarification. Also, just make sure the posts are in on time! All in all, great job and thanks for your ideas!
Feed back for Devon
First of all, you write very well. Your style is clear and sharp. I feel like you understand the theorists and theories well and your comments are always very developed. I like that you use examples from your personal experience or also take elements from class discussion or text and related to real life. It seemed to me like you were constant in you blogging and do not need to worry about delayed posts much.
You use quotes well and integrate them nicely in your analysis but you could do that even more. To be honest you are a good blogger and I it is hard to give you advice because I think you do a really good job. The only thing I could say is that maybe you could comment on peoples post sometimes too, to alternate and give your opinion on what other classmates have to say.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Post class Jenkins and Poster
Jenkins and Poster both put forward this idea of the web as being “ Rhizomic”, “Viral”, “Chiasmic”. And this is true to a certain extent. Yes we can be connected with people from the opposite end of the world, receive and give information we never would have had before. The idea that we can share our ideas, art creations, videos, essays and more, the idea that we participate we are active members of this wave. But as much as some aspects of this are great I think it also poses a problem because it makes all these art forms somewhat lose their essence, as Benjamin would say. We are able to show “the world” but it is not the real thing. It is just a copy of it on a screen. Also it blurs the lines of who are the artists, professionals and who are the amateurs. And as it was mentioned in class, what do we believe in all that is said in this abstract place of the web? What do we trust and what do we not trust? Think of Wikipedia, we all use it to look up basic info, but complete strangers wrote that, anyone can change it and what is the background of the person who posted the info. Are they qualified in that field? We know we should not rely in it yet we still do. To finish, I would like to talk about this idea of being connected to the world. This is false. We are connected to people who are just like us, who have the means to have Internet and be connected to us. We are not sharing anything with certain parts of the world that do not have the luxury of having our tools of communication and knowledge.
Pre class Marx and Althusser
When Marx says “ The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” or “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it”. To my mind this means that the loudest voice becomes the right one, the powerful one. We accept ideas put in front of us as a consensus. It becomes the status quo and because everyone else believes it, so do we, with out questioning where it came from or how reliable these ideas are. Those who have more time on their hands, as Marx would say, are able to think and produce ideas. They also have most of the time a strong power of speech and language in order to convince an audience but who says their ideas are the right ones? These ideas are concepts, which are not palpable. Althusser would call this “illusions”, “allusions to reality”. And this is what forms an ideology, which we cannot escape and are no matter what a part of. So I think this is what I understand when Althusser speaks of the differences between RSA an ISA. The Ideological state apparatus, functions by ideology primarily but also by repression secondarily. I think that not being able to get out ideology, having difficulties questioning because we are so ingrained into it is a form of repression. This is a vicious circle and I don’t think we could ever resolve this but the importance is to be aware of it and not be passive subjects.
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