boo boo bear 1-17

In our last class we discussed the beginning of post modernism. Dr. Rog gave us a couple of dates that could be considered the beginning of post modernism. Dr. Rog mentioned that September 11th is considered by many to be the end of post modernism. We went on to discuss how different life is after September 11th and how life will never be the same again.

Honestly, I don’t get it. I come from what you would consider a middle class, suburban family (about as close to the average American as you can get). My life hasn’t changed one bit since September 11th. Sure, I may have to take my shoes off at the airport, big woop. That takes up about 30 seconds of my life. George Bush may be on TV claiming that today is a Red day or a orange day or a blue day or whatever other color. But lets be honest, does the color of the day truly affect your normal life. It’s not like on Red days they have metal detectors and cops with sniffing dogs outside malls, restaurants, or schools. I couldn’t tell you one noticeable difference between a red day and a yellow day. Unless your parents work in the government or the military, September 11th hasn’t changed the life of the average American at all.

I don’t want to be contradicting the class subject but as a CRITICAL media and cultural studies major I have to look at things critically. I don’t think you can put a title on a time period, such as post-modernism or generation X. Time flows together. Who is to say that just because someone is born in 1983 they are part of generation X but if they were born in 1984 they are not. Those two people will be living in the same period, going through the same fads and trends.

People say that the internet and computers are the start of another time period. But how can people say that? It’s not like everyone had a computer overnight. It took years and years for the internet and computers in our society to get to where we are today. Life didn’t change overnight. This was just one part of human’s technological advancement, no more signigicant than the creation of the wheel, discovery of electricity, or the creation of the printing press.

With all that being said, I think that for the first time in history we have the technology and ability to start a new time period. Nuclear war is the only way we could change life across the globe instantly. There is no other time in history could we change the world we live in instantly.

sawsaw 1/17

The thing that struck me in class today was the statement that "Fear is the aesthetic du jour." This made me realize just how paranoid our society has become. We think that we are in constant danger and if we don't take action to protect ourselves we could die. When the reality is that we all are going to die at some point so why worry so much about trying to escape death.

Over the break I attended a field study to New York City with the Rollins Theatre Department. Since it was my first time in New York by myself my mom was worried about my safety in the city. The fear my mom had, made me believe that New York was a horribly dangerous city and something bad was going to happen to me while I was there. After being told to watch out for muggers, gangs, drug addicts and be mindful to wash my hands and sanitize often I was on my way. After being in New York I realized that there was nothing different about my safety in New York than there is about my safety in Orlando.

The fact is that our society is so full of fear people are too scared to live their lives normally. The media is partially to blame for this embedded fear. People are constantly being bombarded by horror stories on the news about murder, rape and theft. Advertisements tell people to buy antibacterial soap and hand sanitizers to help us stay "well" and "healthy." People are being told to upgrade their houses security with alarm systems and bolted locks.

If people continue to live their lives in fear they may miss out on so many great opportunities. If I was too worried about something bad happen to me while I was in New York City I would have missed out on a great trip. The only way we are going to change our societies fear problem is by letting people know that the more they fear about circumstances the more they will loose their sense of security and normalcy in their lives.

Bumble 1/17/08

Reality or Fiction, that is the question…

It is always scary when coming into a class that begins asking the question, what is reality? Or is there in fact reality? Is there actually a way to define what is real or not real? When pondering the concepts of a film like, The Matrix, it blurs the boundaries the world as we know it, and makes one think, are we really here or are we created through our minds or in someone else’s mind.

It is clear that “Reality ain’t what it used to be.”

I took particular interest in the quest for defining reality because of my backwards and twisted trip to visit my family over winter break. My family just moved to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, a place that undoubtedly can only be defined by absurdity!!

Did I really just step off of a 14 and a half hour direct flight into Disney land? I had to make sure that I had in fact landed in the Dubai International Airport. From the second you land into this desert, you realize that this could in fact be a journey into the Disney production of Aladdin or even better Las Vegas. The only thing is you are right along the Arabian gulf and surrounded by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Oman. Everything is fake. Buildings are made to look like Aladdin, but they are made for tourists so you are not sure if you are actually in Disney world or the middle-east.

After spending a month there, living in this desert it was only natural to ask what exactly about Dubai is real, and what about it is artificial? How do we even know? I came to the conclusion that my entire experience was surreal, and quite post modern.

Placed in the middle of a desert, where water is scarce and people wander with camels, is a metropolis. Dubai is the cutting edge Mecca center of the Universe. With construction taking place around the clock, endless beach resorts, and the tallest building in the world, how can this city be squat in the middle of a desert? The Sheiks and other political power decided that there simply was not enough sand to develop into these corporate office buildings and race tracks. So, they decided to blast in sand to the bottom of the Arabian Gulf to create new land, new islands, only this time they chose to make the land in the shape of palm trees and of the globe. From the ground you can not even notice that Jumeirah Palm Islands looks like a palm tree. It is for the airplanes flying above, so what purpose do they actually serve being in this shape? It is absurd. Post modernism is about controlling our environment, or rather ruining it.

How can it be “real” to live on a golf course with actual grass in a land where there is no grass? It can’t be, in fact it only rains about twice a year. Who would have believed that my parent’s water bill could infinitely surpass the electric bill? A simple task of flushing a toilet is so taken for granted in Western societies, but when there is no water, it actually becomes a difficult task to make a toilet flush. Again I have to ask how do they irrigate their land, the golf course, every single day? Who decided that this would be the best way to spend the country’s money.

Even further into our artificially created world is Ski Dubai. My parents call me at 11 o’clock at night while I am at school and tell me, “It has finally cooled down to 110 degrees from 120 degrees with 100% humidity!” In a land where the temperature is so high that it is dangerous to be outside, they have generated enough power to create an indoor ski slope, oh and it is right in the mall. Right next to the movie theatre, the starbucks coffee in Arabic, and the mosque, there is a slope with a ski lift! On the inside it feels like you are a penguin on the inside of Sea World with thousands of people glaring at you inside this glass cage. How bizarre? It is surreal, because it is snow, but is it really since it was artificially constructed?

About 80% of this country is expatriates and the rest are natives. Running along the lines of the explosion of language in the post modern world, every person there speaks English as the common language. Arabic was only recently made the official language of Dubai; in fact 30 years ago it was Urdu because there were so many people from India who migrated there. Due to fear of losing the Muslim heritage, they created a Muslim heritage. Now, everywhere you go Islam is infused into everyday life. Mosques are EVERYWHERE, including the water parks.

Dubai. Is it real or not real? Hard to define what real actually is.

nichole 1-17

The idea came up in class today that everything is here to scare us (remember the class examples: hand sanitizer, bird flu epidemic and Doc Rog’s parentals watching the nightly news and being forever traumatized!). We learned in CMC 100 that we see 5000 advertisements daily; a fair amount of which scare consumers into thinking that if they do not buy a certain product then (you’ll contract this disease, you will be mugged and in all likelihood, you will DIE if you don’t get product X today). I suppose, then, that this doesn’t really surprise me that people are so scared all the time in our society.

Going back to one of the examples above regarding protection against getting mugged, another point came up in class about the current theory that newer always equates to better. Newer technologies allow us more protection from the things that the media has made us fear. If you buy this new BMW, higher security comes standard so you can reduce some of your fears, which the media has ingrained in our minds, WHILE at the same time get the fabulous new car (and we all know that newer is better).

It is kind of wild that the media has shaped us so drastically. We are on this never ending circle beginning with fear (a result of news stories regarding murders and new research that somehow seems to contradict what has previously been said (does splenda cause cancer or not??) ) . Since people fear so much, new (and therefore better) products are made to protect against disease or robbery etc. AND SO, we are now stuck on this never ending circle compliments of the media age. Naturally, because of the new way in which we live, we can see that the reality that we live in is so skewed from what it used to be (Doc. Rog)