Allison Davis, Garret Hoover, Erika Mabee
Showing posts with label Garret Hoover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Garret Hoover. Show all posts
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Don Draper the Real-Anti-Hero
For those who watch the show Mad Men or know much about it, this will make sense - for those who don't, get on it because you're missing it.
Don Draper is tragic man. But he is certainly not the most tragic in the entire series thus far. Don transforms dramatically throughout the series. Good writing offers him a strike of reality and humanity. He is something is rare in media and even more so in television, a human being. Needless to say, all the characters on the show are well crafted and very vivd. But as Don is the center of the show, he receives a lot of flack. For a number of popular qualms - he is sexist (sorta), he promotes promiscuity, he is a liar, and he promotes the hyper-masculine male.
For the most part I entirely agree with all of those statements. Absolutely, he is a terrible husband and is overall a very bad person. He lies - constantly. He is certainly sexist in the way he treats women and is a handsome devil. Don Draper fits the era he lives in. He is real and develops as a real person. Don, the anti-hero, you accept. You accept these problems and faults of his. The show does nothing to hide or disguise it. The idea that the show promotes Don as the ideal male is skewed and not looking through the right lens.
The correct lens is that it, the entire series, is a story. A story has characters, good and bad - villains and heros. And because the show is well crafted, well written, these characters Don - are very real. No one person is all hero. No one person is all villainous (well for the most part). These stereotypical troupes are not real and do not carry the same weight as the anti-hero and a deeply layered persona. Man, in the universal sense, is a paradox and to ignore this in art and storytelling is cheap and easy.
Don Draper is formed out of real people. He is the character written out of real lives and thus is very complex. Full of problems and faults - it is poor judgment to criticize a show or character because of what they do is bad or 'wrong' to one's accepted morals.
Don Draper is tragic man. But he is certainly not the most tragic in the entire series thus far. Don transforms dramatically throughout the series. Good writing offers him a strike of reality and humanity. He is something is rare in media and even more so in television, a human being. Needless to say, all the characters on the show are well crafted and very vivd. But as Don is the center of the show, he receives a lot of flack. For a number of popular qualms - he is sexist (sorta), he promotes promiscuity, he is a liar, and he promotes the hyper-masculine male.
For the most part I entirely agree with all of those statements. Absolutely, he is a terrible husband and is overall a very bad person. He lies - constantly. He is certainly sexist in the way he treats women and is a handsome devil. Don Draper fits the era he lives in. He is real and develops as a real person. Don, the anti-hero, you accept. You accept these problems and faults of his. The show does nothing to hide or disguise it. The idea that the show promotes Don as the ideal male is skewed and not looking through the right lens.
The correct lens is that it, the entire series, is a story. A story has characters, good and bad - villains and heros. And because the show is well crafted, well written, these characters Don - are very real. No one person is all hero. No one person is all villainous (well for the most part). These stereotypical troupes are not real and do not carry the same weight as the anti-hero and a deeply layered persona. Man, in the universal sense, is a paradox and to ignore this in art and storytelling is cheap and easy.
Don Draper is formed out of real people. He is the character written out of real lives and thus is very complex. Full of problems and faults - it is poor judgment to criticize a show or character because of what they do is bad or 'wrong' to one's accepted morals.
Video Games
No not this one:
I respect a radical idea. Really, I do - I love thought provoking and crazy ideas. These are usually what end up being the greatest leaps in industry and art and essentially any field. Excluding accounting, taking risks and being bold is generally good. However, I find that Jane McGonigal's idea is, what's the best way to say it, incredibly ideal and rooted out of a fantasy world.
That might be harsh and I must admit all grand ideas throughout history had their critics - perhaps I will be one of them people will be talking about a hundred years from now. "Oh what a fool those people who didn't think that video games and sitting on the couch doing nothing physical would be productive!" - I earnestly pray people of the future will say this. But I doubt it.
I love a good gaming session. I'm not inherently against video games and against wasting time. Because I find some real truth in the saying of "time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted." But I also agree with the idea of wasting time by doing something physical. Can we start a National Save the World League? It's kind of like basketball but instead of a ball and hoop we use phones and chairs to argue and discuss how to create peace and solve world hunger.
I understand and appreciate the amount of time the world spends on video games. And even more so I love the effect that game play has on the mind. However, I find this growth and these new found "abilities" are of little use when there is no connecting tissue from actual game play of pointless results to real, hard, physical production.
There are no immediate and critically daunting repercussions to failing at a video game. There are in the real world. And the combination of "gaming" and the real world mixes to become something similar to Hunger Games (most recent example I could conjure up) and a factual example the Roman gladiators. All very unproductive for the greater good. Isn't that kind of the point of games? As soon as you create a video game that has real world repercussions it really seizes to be a "game". It is now a job, a responsibility and if something good or bad happens, someone will take the blame.
It's a fantastic idea and should really be written up into a book or screenplay - perhaps all the glitches and strange mutations this idea must take can be worked out.
Stereotypes + Homosexuality = Comedy?
I personally don't watch much TV, especially considering that I don't actually own a TV. So this is all from a slightly off focus point of view. Which in my opinion, might be most fair. This is because I don't have a particular bias for one show or the other. I'm not as susceptible to the continuous trending of TV sitcom stereotypes but very well know that it's there. And I'm certainly not immune to accepting what the networks provide. So every time I do see a new TV sitcom is always a little interesting.
I find that homosexuality has a strange place in TV sitcoms right now. With shows like Modern Family, Glee, The New Normal and others, homosexuality is placed in the forefront - at the very tip of the shows to create comedy. The comedy genre is an interesting place to discuss a cultural and socially unstable topic.
It offers what you may call a "padding" that allows difficult or hot-button-topics to be more approachable. And specifically with homosexuality, aside from what the shows are themselves promoting or suggesting through their written characters etc, the topic may benefit from this approach. In class we covered Ellen Degeneres and her change in TV and her strengths for being public and funny. Writers and stories can develop a short hand with the audience that is difficult to communicate in a straight forward argument. This is the essential power of story. However because it's comedy, it has the potential to become cheap. The writing and jokes are within reach to become shallow and easy. A complexity and well developed structure must insist on helping and promoting such topics as homosexuality. Instead, if they lean to the easy route of cheap and gaf jokes, it will essentially derail the point of featuring such characters.
Creating characters as a comedic spring board is one thing - creating a character as a clown with intentions to be laughed at is entirely different. Though some shows may originally use characters to focus on social topics, and respectfully write for homosexual characters to be complex and well crafted, it's inevitable for this character to become a stereotype. This now flat, unsurprising character is easy to use and fits into the role that has been establish in the same vain as others stereotypes - the husband, the mother of three, the arrogant boss, etc.
Comedy is best when it tiptoes the dramatic realities of life and the ironies of the very world it lives in. But this mentality rarely sells and excels in popular television. Homosexuality then finds equality on the keyboards of writers working for TV sitcoms. It seems to me to have just become another pawn such as the stereotypes mentioned before - the bafoon husband, the stressed out mother, struggling immigrant, etc. And at this point the argument transitions past homosexuality in comedy and a much more broad problem of media and stereotypes.
I find that homosexuality has a strange place in TV sitcoms right now. With shows like Modern Family, Glee, The New Normal and others, homosexuality is placed in the forefront - at the very tip of the shows to create comedy. The comedy genre is an interesting place to discuss a cultural and socially unstable topic.
It offers what you may call a "padding" that allows difficult or hot-button-topics to be more approachable. And specifically with homosexuality, aside from what the shows are themselves promoting or suggesting through their written characters etc, the topic may benefit from this approach. In class we covered Ellen Degeneres and her change in TV and her strengths for being public and funny. Writers and stories can develop a short hand with the audience that is difficult to communicate in a straight forward argument. This is the essential power of story. However because it's comedy, it has the potential to become cheap. The writing and jokes are within reach to become shallow and easy. A complexity and well developed structure must insist on helping and promoting such topics as homosexuality. Instead, if they lean to the easy route of cheap and gaf jokes, it will essentially derail the point of featuring such characters.
Creating characters as a comedic spring board is one thing - creating a character as a clown with intentions to be laughed at is entirely different. Though some shows may originally use characters to focus on social topics, and respectfully write for homosexual characters to be complex and well crafted, it's inevitable for this character to become a stereotype. This now flat, unsurprising character is easy to use and fits into the role that has been establish in the same vain as others stereotypes - the husband, the mother of three, the arrogant boss, etc.
Comedy is best when it tiptoes the dramatic realities of life and the ironies of the very world it lives in. But this mentality rarely sells and excels in popular television. Homosexuality then finds equality on the keyboards of writers working for TV sitcoms. It seems to me to have just become another pawn such as the stereotypes mentioned before - the bafoon husband, the stressed out mother, struggling immigrant, etc. And at this point the argument transitions past homosexuality in comedy and a much more broad problem of media and stereotypes.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Local News Effect
I find it interesting the power the local news has - it's much more than what most would think. Local news inherently brings the idea of 'small time' news and not anything of great importance. The majority of a news hour consists of generally benign stories and are often creating and seek out stories out of thin air (depending on which city you may live in).
However, the approach and the context that local news is has is greatly contrasting to the murder stories or very serious incidents. When these awful and serious events take place the news must report them - these are what reporters live for. But all too often the delivery hardly changes. Starting a segment off with the breaking news of a murder on the east side might have a very serious and forward delivery (tone), but then because other 'new' took place, they easily with a smile move into the next news story of a much lighter tone. This stacking of serious and grave news stories along with light hearted "fluff" pieces, creates a strange and eerie world view. Enough of the negative and audiences get a very narrow and specifically reinforced point of view but combining the fluff with the serious doesn't provide justice to the tonality of proper news.
Such events such as the tragedy of Matthew Shepard only fuel this strange machine. The duality and inherent nature of local news creates a strange lens to create a worldview through.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Brands Living Out their Adverts
As of this afternoon, the Red Bull Stratos project was put on pause. The launch of the balloon that would eventually carry Felix Baumgartner was grounded due to high winds. The Stratos project is a daring and exciting science experiment reflecting the amazing high altitude jumps by Colonel Joe Kittinger of the U.S. Air Force in 1960. What's extremely interesting is what company is funding the project. Red Bull - an energy drink. This is one heck of an advertisement.
What I find striking is how in particular Red Bull carries out its brand. There's something honest about their interests and investments in alternative sports - and these adventures. Rather than sneaking up on you and trying to brainwash you into thinking you need or should be apart of their culture, it seems they are simply doing what they really care about.
An energy drink supporting and funding science? The Stratos project is not only science but extreme and "an attempt to transcend human limits..." This is really quite a serious statement. A little more investigation reveals Red Bull's magazine that highlights youth and adventure (Red Bulletin). One can assess that they indeed care about their culture. It's not only a marketing ploy or ad campaign. Similar to Levi's "Go Forth" ad campaign - they both use and exploit real emotions. They both draw from the young and energetic. Pulling from what many believe is in our culture: exploration and discovery. However; unlike Levi's campaign, I find Red Bull not to be tapping into the vain of a rising youthful vibration. I find Red Bull to be along with and side by side - genuinely invested, in the exploits of real adventures and alternative athletes. I find them to be much more honest. There is a hint or tinge of corporate anxiety and a little push in the Levi's ads - we are used to this it's hard to notice. But how many have even heard of the Stratos project?
So no, I absolutely do not mind admitting I like drinking Red Bull and it's remarkably influenced by their advertisements - their adventures.
What I find striking is how in particular Red Bull carries out its brand. There's something honest about their interests and investments in alternative sports - and these adventures. Rather than sneaking up on you and trying to brainwash you into thinking you need or should be apart of their culture, it seems they are simply doing what they really care about.
An energy drink supporting and funding science? The Stratos project is not only science but extreme and "an attempt to transcend human limits..." This is really quite a serious statement. A little more investigation reveals Red Bull's magazine that highlights youth and adventure (Red Bulletin). One can assess that they indeed care about their culture. It's not only a marketing ploy or ad campaign. Similar to Levi's "Go Forth" ad campaign - they both use and exploit real emotions. They both draw from the young and energetic. Pulling from what many believe is in our culture: exploration and discovery. However; unlike Levi's campaign, I find Red Bull not to be tapping into the vain of a rising youthful vibration. I find Red Bull to be along with and side by side - genuinely invested, in the exploits of real adventures and alternative athletes. I find them to be much more honest. There is a hint or tinge of corporate anxiety and a little push in the Levi's ads - we are used to this it's hard to notice. But how many have even heard of the Stratos project?
So no, I absolutely do not mind admitting I like drinking Red Bull and it's remarkably influenced by their advertisements - their adventures.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)