Thursday, November 29, 2012
What a Fantasic Class!!
As class comes to a close I must end with saying a couple of things. First of all this has been one of the most enjoyable classes I have ever had. I think we were well warned, but I feel as if we live in this "We now know your secrets media, you can no longer trick us" bubble. And as I scroll through Facebook I notice the Ads on the side and think "What the hell, I WAS just looking at Rob Kardashian socks on Nieman Marcus's website, how creepy!" then I think "Kristen warned us about this!" For that I am very wary of Facebook and to be honest I have a they are out to get us conspiracy now. I really love how much this class really has to do with our every day lives and thinking. We were all able to truly voice our opinion whether that was in class, the blog or Twitter. Although at some points I think our topics of discussion were hard for some people to talk about I think, my eyes were really opened to new ideas. One of the most popular examples that we use in class and I think that most of us can really see in our society is the Princess culture.I have noticed lately when my friends post pictures of their babies with "Mommys little Princess" on the top of the babies shirt it makes me very irritated inside. I will no longer be able to sit down and watch TLC again with out thinking of this class. I have quickly realized that I am addicted to HORRIBLE television shows. From one about a hillbilly family who has too much time on their hands to one about women who dress up their children as adults throw them on a stage and force them to dance like a "good princess would". So although I might have become a little insane, that's okay because now I understand pop culture.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Kids + Branding
One of my favorite topics we covered this semester was
branding and how we teach children to recognize brands and how they create
their own style through their life from these brands. Corporate America are no
fools when they target virtually anything towards kids because most parents
will spend whatever amount of money to keep their children happy. So basically
the money is in the child’s hands and at their disposal. As a child, I can
remember dozens of times my mother would take me and my siblings or our friends
to McDonalds to eat a cheap meal and play in the big area. I also remember
McDonalds having the beanie baby toys in their happy meals and I would collect
them, so I was one of these corporate America children begging my parents to
take me to McDonalds so I could them all. To this day, as unhealthy and
disgusting McDonalds food is, I go there the most frequently probably because I
created a loyalty long ago with McDonalds therefore I choose their cheap, nasty
product above their competitors. I remember watching the video of kids and
brands in class and being shocked at how little they were yet they knew so many
of these brands. The more I thought about it the less shocked I felt because
these kids are active spenders in the market. From birth they are exposed to
these brands and their symbols so by the time they can start talking it is not
shocking that kids are able to figure out which symbol means what.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
The Catfish Epidemic
James Riley,
Matthew Perry,
Shane King,
Dawn Stump,
Kolleen Whitford,
Kourtney Cooper
Reality Television in Actuality
THESIS: Reality television is a solely profit-driven spectacle that exploits its subjects by promoting itself as "reality" when it is, in fact, fictional.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Friday, November 23, 2012
Thursday, November 22, 2012
More Media Minded
This course has introduced me to many cultural sinkholes
that I have been falling into. Escaping the fallacies that I have put myself into
isn’t easy. The media has a lot more input into cultural aspects than I even realized.
The media influences many things they should not such as free thought and they
can even convince someone to change their freedom of speech to fit into the
culture the media is forming around us. From putting politics into sports to strategically
placing advertisements around us to suck us into spending money on nonsense.
After
being in class and thinking for myself I have made a promise that I will try
harder to be more free thinking when it comes to buying into the media circus
that surrounds us. I will try not to buy into social media and define my own
version of what I think culture truly is instead of letting it be formed around
me through social media. This is going
to take more mental power than usual to recognize when something is wrong and
taking the time to think for my self and develop my own opinions and views on
the world around me. I can do it and I am glad I could take a class that opens
my eyes more and lets me think for myself.
Are we being trained for War?
After hearing Stahl’s Thesis on War themed video games, I
put the reading down rather scared of the future of the United States. I never
once stopped and thought that I might be being trained to fight in a virtual
war. I have played many war-based video
games in my time but I never thought that I am being trained to be a solider.
However, after thinking about it I can see how it can be true. As soon as the
war began, more war based video games started hitting the shelves.
The Call of Duty series as well as the
Battlefield series have both been very popular and have been complimented on
their realism. I have thought to myself how cool I thought the games were just
on the basis of realism during gameplay and it really did make me feel like a
solider in the war and made me feel like I was somehow doing something. The
games do give you a sense of patriotism and a sense of belonging to the cause
of fighting in the war or against terrorists. In turn I never really thought
bad about the war, I thought we were doing what needed to be done to protect
the United States and the citizens that reside in it. In many aspects I was a
“virtual citizen solider” in the war and I was buying into it hook, line and
sinker. I have since come to my senses and formed my own opinions but sadly I
know this will not stop me from buying these games just be cause I enjoy them
so much. I am still a virtual citizen
solider.
Thanksgiving Day
All year I wait for this day. Stuffing my face, watching football, and being with family that I havent seen in months is what I look forward to the most. And just recently, I now have two Thanksgivings because my parents are divorced. One may think that two of these holidays in one day would be the greatest, but to be honest, its just a headache. This holiday is just another day to be together and have a good time, but once the day is actually here, I just want it to be over. The commercialization of this holiday has made Thanksgiving less special. You look on television and see every other commercial is about either Black Friday shopping or a bunch of people going to someones house for a giant extravagant dinner. Every now and then, you get a Christmas commercial in there, what is that about? Its not even December yet! But anyway, over the years, Thanksgiving is losing its real meaning, just like every other holiday. Commercialization can be a good thing, but when a true holiday loses its original meaning because of companies wanting to get more money, that is just flat out sad. I feel sorry for generations to come because who the heck knows what meaning Thanksgiving will have in years to come. I know this rant seems a little silly but this is what national holidays are coming to. And all I have left to say is, good luck to those who are going shopping on Black Friday, hopefully you will leave wherever you are with a good deal and your life.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
The Lady-Child
We read several articles on the
state of gender roles on television, analyzing shows from Clarissa Explains It All to How
to be a Gentleman. This article reminded me of another article from Entertainment Weekly, which noticed a
new trend regarding women on television: the “lady-child,” or the female
counterpart of the man-child. Melissa Maerz wrote that the lady-child is “the
savvier counterpart to the man-boy, the overgrown teenager so often played by
Adam Sandler or found in the movies of Judd Apatow… Because life’s a little
unfair, the lady-child is usually much hotter than the man-boy, and much less
likely to wear sweatpants.” The lady-child is also in a state of arrested
development, often living with or financially dependent on her parents, witty or
sarcastic to the point of alienation, and still looking for a ‘worthy’ career. The
article name checks new series such as New
Girl, Girls, and 2 Broke Girls—all
of which were created by women. I am obsessed with the idea of the lady-child
and what this new trope says about mediated representations of gender. I also
think it is interesting that women have stolen this trope from male-centric
movies. While I hope to do more research on this for my thesis, I love how much
backlash these shows have received for their portrayals of lady-children. New Girl is regularly attacked because
Zooey Deschanel is considered too infantile. Girls is particularly battered in the media—even James Franco wrote
an article for the Huffington Post
criticizing the series for its whiny, over-privileged, unrelatable characters.
While this trope is more prevalent than ever, it’s clear that audiences are
still uncomfortable with it, perhaps because it defies many traditional gender
expectations. Women are supposed to be more refined and in control of their
lives. Many second-wave feminist television characters fought hard for careers
and equality, so to see women lying around while their parents support them
deeply upsets some audiences. Whatever you think of this new trend, it doesn’t appear
to be going anywhere.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20587537,00.html
Community and the Culture of Cool
As a TV addict, one of the most frustrating things for me to see is all of the uproar over the NBC series Community. There are several very vocal communities of other TV addicts, including a TV critic for the AV Club, who think Community is the greatest, funniest, most innovative series on television. While I enjoy the series, I don’t think it’s anything too special—it’s funny, but it’s not mind-blowing. In the comments section of the AV Club website, people regularly break into fights over the series, attacking anyone who is not totally enamored of it. However, the big problem with being a Community fan is that the show is incredibly low-rated. Its last three episodes in May only reached 2.6 million people, so the series is on hiatus until February. The show is constantly on the verge of cancellation, which I think is part of its appeal for its diehard fans. They love to brag about how enlightened they are and how refined their taste in television is, which is in line with Malcolm Gladwell’s article on the Coolhunt. The article argues that the only thing that’s real is the desire to be cool; however, part of what makes something cool is that it is not mainstream. Gladwell writes, “The act of discovering what’s cool is what causes cool to move on.” Community is certainly a unique show—it has had episodes dedicated to elaborate action movie parodies, a claymation Christmas special, and a “flashback” episode entirely consisting of clips the audience had never seen. The show is innovative because its low ratings allow the network to ignore it. The show can do whatever it wants because the network knows only 2.6 million people watch it. So while fans want the show to become more popular so that it can survive several more seasons, it would almost certainly lose its creative edge. As the Gladwell article argues, the show would lose its appeal if it ever became cool.
Have Things Changed Since Ellen?
In her article on Ellen and gay and lesbian visibility, Bonnie Dow argues that Ellen was “largely geared toward the comfort of heterosexuals,” and did not differ from other televised historical representations of gays and lesbians. She also elaborates on the four rules of portraying gay people: they were relegated to one-time appearances rather than recurring character status, they were never incidentally gay, their lifestyles are depicted in terms of how they affect heterosexual characters, and they ignored gay and lesbian sex and desire. While I argue that these rules still hold on contemporary television, there are exceptions. The ABC series Happy Endings is an ensemble comedy about six friends hanging out in Chicago and is often compared to the iconic sitcom Friends. Unlike Friends, however, one of the main characters is gay. In addition to being gay, Max is aggressively masculine. He is a slob, is a little overweight and unkempt, regularly wears flannel, and loves drinking beer and watching sports. He just happens to be gay. The series regularly shows Max pursuing and talking about sleeping with other men—and his conquests are always other traditionally masculine gay men. On Happy Endings, being gay is incidental. We often only discover characters are gay after Max says he is dating them or has slept with them, which also challenges Dow’s assertion that gay sex and desire are ignored. Finally, because Max is one of the six main characters, he is obviously recurring, and his character often headlines plotlines of his own rather than affecting or tagging along with the heterosexual main characters’ storylines. I can only hope that more characters like Max appear on television because I adore him.
Pranking Wikipedia
When I was teaching the research
and support lesson in my Comm 210 class, I was reminded of one of my favorite
instances of culture jamming of all time: Stephen Colbert’s Wikipedia prank. In
one of his shows, he logged into Wikipedia and changed the Wikipedia pages
about George Washington (to say that he never owned slaves) and elephants (to
say that Africa had more elephants today than it did 10 years ago). These “facts” were obviously false; however,
because Wikipedia allows users to vote on what information is true, Colbert was
able to rally enough of his viewers to approve the information that the pages
were temporarily changed. Eventually, the Wikipedia administrators changed the
pages back and revoked Colbert’s membership to the website. Generally, I agree
with Dr. McCauliff’s assertion that Colbert and Jon Stewart are not culture
jammers because they culture jam to make profits; however, in this case
Colbert’s actions perfectly fit the definition of culture jamming. Harold wrote
that culture jamming “usually implies an interruption, a sabotage, hoax, prank,
banditry, or blockage of what are seen as the monolithic power structures
governing cultural life… It is an amping up of contradictory rhetorical
messages in an effort to engender a qualitative change” (p. 192). Colbert used
Wikipedia’s reliance on user-generated knowledge against the site by
encouraging viewers to add their own ridiculous “facts.” Colbert exposed the
untrustworthy nature of the website and provided an excellent video clip for my
Comm 210 class on the dangers of using Wikipedia for scholarly research.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/72347/july-31-2006/the-word---wikiality
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