Jameson had some very interesting quotes that directly apply and relate to everday, real life. One quote that stuck out was "at one with the official culture." We discussed how that is not true in American culture, because what is American culture? There is no 'oneness' about it and there is nothing official. We are considered a great melting pot, or tossed salad, or curtain - each individual bringing their cultural/immigration roots with them and adapting to one another. So as an American, it is hard to describe an official culture because there is a blend of so many cultures, and there is constant adaptation, and many subcultures throughout.
If anything, our culture is a cult of the new, where there is always a new product being developed, always something being improved and 'solving our problems.' Advertisers will never tell you that you are perfect, because they need to sell a product to you.
And why is it that Americans obsess over blood, torture, death, and horror? There is always a tough exterior (the picture of the hip hop artists) to show that we are a dark culture and developed a tough skin, a hard attitude. All we see on the news nowadays are the bad things that happen to people - we obsess over Britney's attitude, if Tony Parker is cheating on Eva, if someone declares bankrupcy, or was shot, if someone is missing, etc. Why do we feed off of people's misfortunes? Does it make us feel better about ourselves as individuals? That the unfortunate event didn't happen to you, so it makes you feel better? It's very sad, and pathetic, that this is what it has come to in media. Not to mention that sex is everywhere as well - even in a 30 second commercial!
And how how depth is being replaced by surface - we have become such a shallow culture, and so superficial, that now it is better to look good on the outside than it is on the inside. Or how we prefer a superficial painting, like Andy Warhol's "Shoes" over Van Ghou's painting of his boots. It's pathetic. But can we say such things and generalize, and make this assumption about American culture? So that maybe we do have an official culture - a fake and shallow one.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Bella Post-Class 3/27
Jameson wrote, “Pastiche eclipses parody”. In class, Dr. Rog described pastiche as a “blanket” of sarcasm–similar to John Stewarts infamous eyebrow raise. Stewart uses just enough skepticism to make the audience laugh, without making an outright joke about the issue. Parody, however is different. Saturday Night Live is parody. The actors on the show imitate events, re-creating situations the audience knows about while making the events seem outlandish and ridiculous. I feel that Jameson’s ideas about pastiche and parody directly connect with Chomsky’s ideas about propaganda. Comedians, though they are considered by many to be the ‘court jesters’ of the media, play a huge role in government propaganda. They may poke fun, but by presenting an issue like the War in Iraq, they are merely reinforcing the significance of the event, and are giving it more publicity, therefore establishing a cultural obsession. Chomsky wrote that the role of propaganda is important to “inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the largest society” (Chomsky 257). In class, we talked about school being one of the biggest institutional structures that assimilates individuals into the functions of society, but I wonder if media itself could be considered one of these institutional structures. We talked about the idea of “cultural schizophrenia” affecting the public–they begin interacting with ‘psychotic experiences’ and can’t distinguish what’s real or not. I think one of the biggest examples of this is reality TV. Reality TV is almost a parody on life¬–the producers are probably sitting on the sets laughing at how ridiculously stupid their audience is for believing that the shows are unscripted, unrehearsed, and unplanned. I would have really liked to have gotten into this discussion a little deeper, and related the two topics we discussed in class (Pastiche/parody, and propaganda) and how they work together.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
bumble: post class 3/27
Today’s discussion of propaganda and how it pervades our lives, made me think about how much of what we think and what we know is actually propaganda. We would not necessarily know! Reality and fiction is a strange concept with this, if we were to take the conspiracy theory approach we would realize that when we talk about someone like Anna Nicole Smith how do we know she is actually dead!? What if she were never actually in existence. All we know is what is on the media, and we are “certain” she is dead, but who has had a personal encounter with Anna Nicole Smith? If you were to be a skeptic to the level of conspiracy, then you would be able to doubt every little thing put on the air or in the media.
There is a fine line between real and fiction. The greatest examples of this, of how believable the media can be, is Orson Wells, War of the Worlds radio broadcast. This radio show was so believable that people thought that the world was under attack by extraterrestrials. People could not differentiate between reality and fiction and it caused wide spread panic. This is because it was broadcast in a news style, which implies that people automatically believe what the news says, because it is the news. Oh the power of media!
In regards to propaganda and how it might not be possible to know what we know and believe because of propaganda, I always think about the holocaust. When looking back at history we realize that there were children’s books and games which constructed the image of a Jew in a certain way. The propaganda of reaching to children, shows that they might not have a choice of how or why they believe certain things. Lego sets created a concentration camp game set. The pieces were of the Jews as skeletons, they had the ovens and nazi gaurds. Children see this as a toy and of course they are going to play with it. Images of the lego sets...
Also, there were fairy tale books made very much like Little Red Riding Hood, but the wolf or bad guy was the Jew. So, if that is the only exposure you have to this, through these media forms then you will be persuaded. How many things do we do now, are controlled in those same ways? Noam believes that everything is, and perhaps we won’t realize it until years and years from now, when we look back at history.
Elizabeth Byrne - Herman and Chomsky
The first paragraph of the reading immediately caught my attention which is - "the mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. in a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulful this role requires systematic propaganda."
In the first sentence it declares that the mass media serves to send a message out to the public and in this I went back to “pleasure derives from pain”. Why does out media chose to put other people down to get amusement from the public. It is the medias “function to amuse, entertain, and inform—however it seems as though the amusement comes from making fun of something or someone else (South Park on Brittany Spears) and what really is our entertainment? Action movies that blow up buildings and people die- and then how does that affect how and what we feel about 9/11 or natural disasters when we have already seen produced by a director?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Sgt. Pepper, Herman and Chomsky
I was the editor of my high school newspaper for two years, and as a staff we were always taught to pride ourselves in our integrity and our objectiveness. Other high schools didn't have as much freedom, our teacher told us, so we made sure to stretch our limits as far as we could and to cover everything newsworthy we could get our hands on. As time went on, and as we consistently covered the controversy in my high school's administration, our staff continued to lose freedoms. The patrons were local businesses, so technically the school didn't own our paper, but since it was printed and delivered to the people in a building they own, they had control over it. I didn't realize until now that what was going on, the schools controlling what is printed, was just a smaller scale of national newspapers and the controlling forces of advertisers and the government. Advertisers, mega-mergers, and other wealthy corporations are the only means for funding, thus they can pretty much decide exactly what gets printed every day. As Herman and Chomsky explain, the birth of the free press was such an exciting time. Newspapers were printed with objective news to anyone willing to read it. There were no external forces controlling what was said, and the many different newspapers for many types of people truly defined and embraced the idea of freedom of press. The working man read his news. And the old-money business man read his. As a journalist in high school, being able to speak for the many troubled voices of my high school was a liberating experience. I was given the opportunity to write completely uncensored for (what seemed like) the whole world to see. To know that true journalists with an actual career don't do this is really heartbreaking to me.
What Herman and Chomsky (and I) are getting at is that we should take action toward how controlled our mass media is. We should wage a war on totality (Lyotard) and take hold of our individualities. And like Marx and Althusser suggest, let's start thinking for ourselves. We can't let the formed ideologies of these advertisers and big business executives decide who we are.
What Herman and Chomsky (and I) are getting at is that we should take action toward how controlled our mass media is. We should wage a war on totality (Lyotard) and take hold of our individualities. And like Marx and Althusser suggest, let's start thinking for ourselves. We can't let the formed ideologies of these advertisers and big business executives decide who we are.
sawsaw Herman & Chomsky
The quote I found most intriguing in Herman & Chomsky's essay was, "Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the "buying mood." They seek programs that will lightly entertain and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases- the dissemination of a selling message" (pg. 269). This quote is more prevalent today than it ever was. It is very easy to see that people want media to cater to their entertainment needs. They want shows that are light spirited. The most watched shows are melodrama's that deal with love triangles and heroic actions. People view television as an escape. When I sit down to watch a show on TV I want to watch something funny and romantic. Our lives are so filled with heartache and pain that we want to sink into this "fake" world were everything turns out good in the end.
The second part of this quote is very interesting to me. The fact that advertisers pick shows that will work into their "buying mood" is seen in all of the top programs. I just recently started watching LOST. I am amazed how much that show is selling a message. The interactive website, magazine and clothing are just a few of the ways this show is culturally connecting people. A couple of my friends are big LOST fans as well and whenever we get together we start talking about LOST. This example can be connected to Jenkin's ideas of media convergence and participatory culture. The advertisers of LOST definitely had this idea of dissemination of a selling message. LOST is so successful because it has a distinct “buying mood”. Most of the viewers are probably unaware that they are buying into the advertisers selling message or they probably enjoy the entertainment so much they ignore the underlying message of the advertisers.
The second part of this quote is very interesting to me. The fact that advertisers pick shows that will work into their "buying mood" is seen in all of the top programs. I just recently started watching LOST. I am amazed how much that show is selling a message. The interactive website, magazine and clothing are just a few of the ways this show is culturally connecting people. A couple of my friends are big LOST fans as well and whenever we get together we start talking about LOST. This example can be connected to Jenkin's ideas of media convergence and participatory culture. The advertisers of LOST definitely had this idea of dissemination of a selling message. LOST is so successful because it has a distinct “buying mood”. Most of the viewers are probably unaware that they are buying into the advertisers selling message or they probably enjoy the entertainment so much they ignore the underlying message of the advertisers.
July-->Herman & Chomsky
This reading correlates with my State of Black America class because it talks about the inequality of wealth and power between the dominant group and marginalized groups. The quote “It [propaganda model] traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalized dissent, and allow government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public,” broadly explains how our media is unequally controlled by one huge force. For example, when it comes to black Americans being displayed in the media market they are often associated with being violent, financially disadvantaged, unintelligent, or worthless people. The only reason why these perceptions are cast about this marginalized group is because its oppressor is in control over media, which allows their messages to be heard to general public. But, when comparing the percentages of black Americans in the United States (12.4%) to white Americans in the United States (73.9%) you notice a substantial difference in the United States population. If the population of both of these two cultural groups were equal, then there wouldn’t be a huge percentage gap between them, especially when talking about violence, poverty, high-educational levels, and role significance.
The main reason why white Americans have so much power over marginalized groups, besides dominance, is because of the financial wealth gap between them and minorities. Money or wealth in the United States establishes your role in society by providing individuals with reliable social networks, higher-education, financial stability, and a head-start on life, which are all major resources that produce upward mobility. Since minorities tend to lack wealth, when compared to white Americans it puts them further down the success ladder. Like Horkheimer & Adorno said “Only those who can keep paying the exorbitant fees charged by the advertising agencies… That is, those who are already part of the system…,” which infers, money is needed for the initial start in life but will always have a cycling affect for one culture (white Americans).
The main reason why white Americans have so much power over marginalized groups, besides dominance, is because of the financial wealth gap between them and minorities. Money or wealth in the United States establishes your role in society by providing individuals with reliable social networks, higher-education, financial stability, and a head-start on life, which are all major resources that produce upward mobility. Since minorities tend to lack wealth, when compared to white Americans it puts them further down the success ladder. Like Horkheimer & Adorno said “Only those who can keep paying the exorbitant fees charged by the advertising agencies… That is, those who are already part of the system…,” which infers, money is needed for the initial start in life but will always have a cycling affect for one culture (white Americans).
Herman and Chomsky, DetectiveDanny
The other night, I was watching Glenn Beck yelling about something on CNN. Occasionally I will read Beck’s commentary on his website as his style is a bit more appealing to me than other talking heads. A few weeks ago he published an article about the influence of conservative talk radio and he claims “No matter the reason, the point is that our listeners have their own brains. They make up their own minds. Talk radio may be one source of information, but it's certainly not their only one”, and he goes on to tout his listeners as much smarter than listeners of other radio shows or non listeners. Chomsky and Herman might get a little laugh out of Glenn Beck as they have a grasp on his position, saying that “media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news objectively and on the basis of professional news values”. To me, professional news values do not exist, they are just a veil behind which these corporations operate. Just like in Citizen Kane when the title character publishes his declaration of journalistic ethics, these promises of subjectivity and morality cannot be taken seriously. The motivations of these corporations can easily affect what news we see and don’t, but also, the writers and reporters have become incapable of these things. When someone goes into the news business, a prime motivation is their belief that they are fit to feed people information because they feel like their philosophy needs distributing. The infinite choices of words eliminate the possibility of standing in a middle ground without a bias as does the willingness of the audience to receive all information as fact.
kMO Herman and Chomsky
Herman and Chomsky state the essential ingredients in a propaganda model right away in their analysis. The “news filters” include (1) the size; concentration of ownership; owner wealth and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms. (2) Advertising as the primary income source of the mass media (3) The reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and experts funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power. (4) Flak and (5) anticommunism.
Sourcing mass media news (the third filter), in my opinion is the most detrimental to society. The symbiotic relationship formed between these major sources and mass media creates a non-objective view in a world where honesty and accuracy are most needed. Since the media needs resources that they can claim are accurate, the easiest (CHEAPEST) way for them to do so is to go through government agencies. To claim that this way of obtaining information provides the public with unbiased news is an absolute lie. For example, Herman and Chomsky state, “The pentagon has a public-information service that involves many thousands of employees, sending hundreds of millions of dollars every year and dwarfing not only the public information resources of dissenting individual or group but the aggregate of such groups.”
The next interesting statement I found was, “Only the corporate sector has the resources to produce public information and propaganda on the scale of the Pentagon and other government bodies." This is basically saying that smaller companies do not have the means to purchase newspaper, television, radio space. Meaning that the major companies will continue to rule the media and hold the main influence over public opinion...
Sourcing mass media news (the third filter), in my opinion is the most detrimental to society. The symbiotic relationship formed between these major sources and mass media creates a non-objective view in a world where honesty and accuracy are most needed. Since the media needs resources that they can claim are accurate, the easiest (CHEAPEST) way for them to do so is to go through government agencies. To claim that this way of obtaining information provides the public with unbiased news is an absolute lie. For example, Herman and Chomsky state, “The pentagon has a public-information service that involves many thousands of employees, sending hundreds of millions of dollars every year and dwarfing not only the public information resources of dissenting individual or group but the aggregate of such groups.”
The next interesting statement I found was, “Only the corporate sector has the resources to produce public information and propaganda on the scale of the Pentagon and other government bodies." This is basically saying that smaller companies do not have the means to purchase newspaper, television, radio space. Meaning that the major companies will continue to rule the media and hold the main influence over public opinion...
romulus Herman & Chomsky
"In addition to discrimination against unfriendly media institutions, advertisers also choose selectively among programs on the basis of their own principles."
The truth in this statement comes from its obviousness. Advertising and sponsoring are proven methods of accumulating wealth. In a recent New York Times article, there is a new trend in how advertisements and sponsorships are placed. The internet has allowed people to scan through an infinite amount of headlines via countless news sources and search engines. What makes money are the articles and essays that draw people in. The packaged newspaper is has evolved into a system that rewards the more popular ones. Which has its share of negatives and positives. I'm an optimist and I think its great that this is the state of media. This brings out better writing, a broader selection to chose from, and it is hacking away at the corporate stronghold of on news.
Advertisers have the right to chose its own target audiences. As a huge fan of the capabilities a democratic capitalist nation offers to its citizens, in particular gays. There is much discourse on the buying power of the gay community, however no one can ignore its magnitude.
"Eugene Schoeman, the new MD of Pink Advertising, says as a currency the pink rand is growing in strength and cannot be ignored – in 2006, the pink dollar was valued at over US$650 billion in the US alone and, with the American buying power of the gay market projected to exceed US$835 billion by 2011, locals advertisers need to sit up and take heed."(http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/12/23106.html)
Money equals power and influence. This wealth within the community, is lucrative for any company that wants a share. Honestly, being gay is definitely one of the coolest things that I could ask for, and its all thanks to my DNA. At this point in history, I have no complains about marketing towards gays. I like what Genre stands for, and the numerous other outlets that cater to the community. However its imbalanced, lesbians do not have the same resources as gay men. Overall there are inequalities between men and women, which favor men more.
The truth in this statement comes from its obviousness. Advertising and sponsoring are proven methods of accumulating wealth. In a recent New York Times article, there is a new trend in how advertisements and sponsorships are placed. The internet has allowed people to scan through an infinite amount of headlines via countless news sources and search engines. What makes money are the articles and essays that draw people in. The packaged newspaper is has evolved into a system that rewards the more popular ones. Which has its share of negatives and positives. I'm an optimist and I think its great that this is the state of media. This brings out better writing, a broader selection to chose from, and it is hacking away at the corporate stronghold of on news.
Advertisers have the right to chose its own target audiences. As a huge fan of the capabilities a democratic capitalist nation offers to its citizens, in particular gays. There is much discourse on the buying power of the gay community, however no one can ignore its magnitude.
"Eugene Schoeman, the new MD of Pink Advertising, says as a currency the pink rand is growing in strength and cannot be ignored – in 2006, the pink dollar was valued at over US$650 billion in the US alone and, with the American buying power of the gay market projected to exceed US$835 billion by 2011, locals advertisers need to sit up and take heed."(http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/12/23106.html)
Money equals power and influence. This wealth within the community, is lucrative for any company that wants a share. Honestly, being gay is definitely one of the coolest things that I could ask for, and its all thanks to my DNA. At this point in history, I have no complains about marketing towards gays. I like what Genre stands for, and the numerous other outlets that cater to the community. However its imbalanced, lesbians do not have the same resources as gay men. Overall there are inequalities between men and women, which favor men more.
Starfish Herman & Chomsky
Propaganda has always been something that has fascinated me. We have discussed in CMC 200 the influence and power media has over our culture. “The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace” (257). The media sends out messages, and sometimes subconsciously these messages change the way we think or feel about certain things. That is why the media is used for propaganda.
We talked about the connection media and government sometimes has in CMC 200 as well, it reminded me of this article. “Another structural relationship of importance is the media companies’ dependence on and ties with government. The radio-TV companies, and networks all require government licenses and franchise and are thus potentially subject to government control or harassment” 265. This quote reminded me of the whole “weapons of mass destruction” period on the news. Everywhere we looked on television we were being told about these weapons of mass destruction that were hidden in Iraq. The more we saw this, the more people understood why we needed to go to war and more people supported the governmental decision to do so. How is it that this story was all over the news, when it wasn’t even true? This story was given to the media for propaganda for the war so more people would support the cause. Propaganda is not a new concept to the government. Governments and authorities around the globe use and have used the media to help their own cause. Just look back at Nazi Germany. Hitler used the media as propaganda so that more people supported his cause and more people were against the Jewish people. I remember when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Boston, I saw a children’s book on display. The children in the book all were German, but the evil character was Jewish. Things such as this are happening today as well. In the Middle East, there was a children’s program aired with a big rabbit character that hated Jews and told children that Jews were evil and must be destroyed. Propaganda is a very powerful thing and can be used for good and evil. It is important that we are aware of the power media has over us, and make sure to shape our own opinions and thoughts rather then listen to what the media tells us.
We talked about the connection media and government sometimes has in CMC 200 as well, it reminded me of this article. “Another structural relationship of importance is the media companies’ dependence on and ties with government. The radio-TV companies, and networks all require government licenses and franchise and are thus potentially subject to government control or harassment” 265. This quote reminded me of the whole “weapons of mass destruction” period on the news. Everywhere we looked on television we were being told about these weapons of mass destruction that were hidden in Iraq. The more we saw this, the more people understood why we needed to go to war and more people supported the governmental decision to do so. How is it that this story was all over the news, when it wasn’t even true? This story was given to the media for propaganda for the war so more people would support the cause. Propaganda is not a new concept to the government. Governments and authorities around the globe use and have used the media to help their own cause. Just look back at Nazi Germany. Hitler used the media as propaganda so that more people supported his cause and more people were against the Jewish people. I remember when I visited the Holocaust Museum in Boston, I saw a children’s book on display. The children in the book all were German, but the evil character was Jewish. Things such as this are happening today as well. In the Middle East, there was a children’s program aired with a big rabbit character that hated Jews and told children that Jews were evil and must be destroyed. Propaganda is a very powerful thing and can be used for good and evil. It is important that we are aware of the power media has over us, and make sure to shape our own opinions and thoughts rather then listen to what the media tells us.
NewYorker - Herman and Chomsky
Some of what these authors had to say in this article I already knew. In a class I took last semester, we learned a lot about the power of the "superclass" which is the smallest percentage of the population with the most amount of money. They basically buy anything that serves their best interest. Whether that be paying a newspaper to print cerain things and omit certain things, or telling a reporter how to present a story. What the public then sees in the media has been carefully screened and selected. Even reality TV is not reality - it gets edited down a lot, and the producers sometimes make the characters reenact a scene so they can get it on film.
But the public thinks this what we want to see. We as a nation thrive on other people's misery and suffering. That is why there's always a terrible story on the news either about murder or bankruptcy, and why we want to know so much about Britney Spears and her downward spiral. Something needs to be done about this. We need to start having more positive stories get told so we can then thrive off of other people's success and happiness. It would be such a better world to live in if that were the case. But change is slow, and it has to begin somewhere. Maybe it can begin by not having the superclass rule over everything, and let another voice be heard.
The article also spoke about propoganda. Everything in the media is some form of propoganda one way or another. Even a speech made by the President is propoganda - propogand to make him and America look good, and to have the nation support him. But the clever thing that the media is doing is having multiple TV channels available with different kinds of news, and multiple newspapers and magazines for people to read. This way, it may seem to the common person that they are getting what they want, and have a plethora of different sides/views on issues, but every medium is still being censored and controlled.
But the public thinks this what we want to see. We as a nation thrive on other people's misery and suffering. That is why there's always a terrible story on the news either about murder or bankruptcy, and why we want to know so much about Britney Spears and her downward spiral. Something needs to be done about this. We need to start having more positive stories get told so we can then thrive off of other people's success and happiness. It would be such a better world to live in if that were the case. But change is slow, and it has to begin somewhere. Maybe it can begin by not having the superclass rule over everything, and let another voice be heard.
The article also spoke about propoganda. Everything in the media is some form of propoganda one way or another. Even a speech made by the President is propoganda - propogand to make him and America look good, and to have the nation support him. But the clever thing that the media is doing is having multiple TV channels available with different kinds of news, and multiple newspapers and magazines for people to read. This way, it may seem to the common person that they are getting what they want, and have a plethora of different sides/views on issues, but every medium is still being censored and controlled.
BubbaNub: Herman & Chomsky
At this point, the topics covered by Herman and Chomsky should be apparent to us all. It is no secret to the educated that the mass media merely reflects our governments sentiments. As you turn to FOX, CNN, or CBS you begin to notice that all of the news lacks substance. Devoid of journalistic integrity, the news has become a give and take form of distribution. The government gives them a message and the news takes it without question. So then we take another step back and look at the framework. Who funds these TV stations? What public and private policies benefit them? What president will let them keep most of their money? Why do they donate large sums of money towards presidential campaigns? Isn't news supposed to be unbiased?
My question is this, why aren't more people questioning what they are watching? Maybe, like religion, people need an answer to everything and the overwhelming quantity of questions would deter most people from asking. Perhaps that is the most powerful tool of the media, the fact that they no longer have to operate in secret but that they can continue to operate this way and make money. So what do we do? As I mentioned earlier the educated notice the structure, but what about the uneducated? Has it become our duty as the privileged to educate the rest of society? Is it our job to change policies that may raise our taxes, in order to help the lower class? Or, will we do what most do, and take the education and tools of the media to further exploit the poor as history has done time and time again before us?
Jiggy Herman/Chomski
The news media in our digital age has become more of an impact than any other time in human history. In no other era has news traveled to all corners of the globe faster than it does today with the domination of internet and television. With the worldwide media spreading faster and to more people than ever the oppurtunity araises with companies to advertise their products through these news mediums. The propaganda liked with the messages taken from our global media comes from the notion that major corporations want to show advertisments that progress the image and survival of themselves. This can be seen with the filtering of ads on major television networks and large internet news sites. These media sources are out to make lifetime viewers of the public, at a cost of our full rounded perspectives. We as the public are in a position, more than ever, to question the news that is filtered into our homes. The competition of news causes a swelling of propaganda to push and pursade veiwers into watching selected programming. Goods and services are so emersed in our culture that not even politics can escape their grasp. Politians are many times enfused with the concepts dirieved from the major corportions that they say they are against. The simple fact of it is, we believe what we see, hear and read in the main stream media. We have a notion that if its suitable to air that it must be true, leaving a vastly misinformed and manipulated western culture. The key is to question why? Why is this ad being aired? Who is its purpose and who is benefitting? This can be reached out to programming and the constructions of our "on air" media personalities. The stretches of the propaganda can reach across our media and its no question that its harmful to the well being of the culture in its entirity.
BOO BOO BEAR Herman & Chomsky
The power behind advertising
“Before advertising became prominent, the price of a newspaper had to cover the costs of doing business. With the grown of advertising, papers that attracted ads could afford copy price well below production costs.”
I never really thought about the whole process behind ads in newspapers and on televisions that much before I read this article. In CMC 100 we learned that we are exposed to thousands of ads a day. I felt like the majority of the class looked at this as an awful thing. The reality is that is postmodernism at its best. Isn’t this media and advertising saturation a great thing for everybody? I don’t really understand the full scale economics of this thing but to me this seems great. Companies can reveal themselves to the world in magazines and tv commercials. Newspapers can sell more copies for the same amount of work because they are lower and price but they are making significantly more money. And I can buy a newspaper for fifty cents. This advertising saturation makes my life easier with the lower prices and it also allows everybody else to make more money. This article goes on to discuss how the papers lacking advertisements sell less copies because they have to charge more but that is survival of the fittest. There is a certain bank slogan (I don’t remember which bank) out right now that says, “when banks compete, you win!” I look at this at the same thing. When newspapers are fighting to have the lowest prices, I benefit from it.
I have always wondered how TV game shows can just hand out thousands, even millions of dollars everyday but still make millions of dollars. This finally makes sense to me. If a TV station is making thousands of dollars every second a commercial is on their station, then they can get away with handing out thousands of dollars every show. This is also how shows like Seinfeld and Friends, at the end of their production, could pay their actors up to 1 million dollars an episode.
Nichole Herman & Chmosky
This article, more that anything, re-affirms my belief that the mass media are run by the wealthy and directed toward "the wealthy". I put that in quotations because mass media may be directed toward the wealthy but the proletariat submit to the "way of the borgeoise".
The introduction to the reading talked about an English Broadcasting system that once directed itself toward the lower/ middle class and union workers. It had programs and advertising that showed that if they work hard together, they can achieve something HUGE. So, naturally, the upper class didn't like that because it took power and control away from their television programing. They went to court over it and eventually the lower income broadcasting system was pushed out.
The reading also indirectly mentioned that hardly any alternative mass media have been introduced and they blamed the outrageous costs for starting a new paper. In 1920 America the cost was 20 million dollars for equipment and to start a new mass media newspaper. Now, what independent company, just starting out, is going to have to proper funding for a paper that expensive? Hardly anyone is the correct answer. A RICH person might, but thats my point exactly, even if new/alternative magazines come out, they are still run by the rich and to make the most capital are going to be distributed to the rich and if the proletariat happen to be interested in wasting the few dollars they earn on materialistic goods that are "new' then the new mass media was a success.
To me, this all sounds like a monopoly. The whole idea that it takes money to make money is at play here. In order to spread independent ideas (say ideas that the poor have had for a while) it takes an astronomical amount of cash to start. And for that reason, the rich remain richer and the poor are getting poorer once this mass media vicious circle began, its never going to end.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
ChittyChittyBangBang 3/25
I liked the quote Dr. Rog ended class with, "Jameson would agree that in a postmodern culture everyone wants to be different in the same way."
It is sad how superficial our society has become. We are much more concerned with aesthetics rather than meaning. "Depth is replaced by surface" (490). The ad from the Delia*s magazine was an example of different styles although they looked the same. This "Goth" look is supposed to be original and different although it looses its shock value and uniqueness when so many people try to be different in the same way. "The end...of style, in the sense of the unique and the personal..." (492). This example reminds me of my high school experience. There was a large population at my school that conformed to this "rebel, Goth" look that others were practically the minority. There were so many dressed like this, trying to be different and stand out, although they ALL looked the SAME.
The avant garde has lost its affect; so many boundaries have been pushed in television shows such as South Park, or ads sexualizing women such as Brittany Spears, that they are no longer a scandal. We as a culture are no longer shocked. "The underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and horror" (485). Our society is so desensitized to violence and sexuality that it has become part of our culture. I don't watch a lot of television but I noticed that when I turned on the TV today I was exposed to all of those things within the first 5 minutes.
The idea of millenarianism that Jameson discusses is also a dark subject that our culture is desensitized too. We are obsessed with "the end". We think everything is going to wipe us out such as the Avian Flu. We seem to always need something to be afraid of. This is reinforced in our media, in movies about the end of the world and other narratives. We are scared of everything and not really shocked anymore about the idea of "the end"; people are constantly trying to unlock these mysteries. It's like we enjoy the horror of it all...
I think the class discussion today definitely made a lot of Jameson's points even clearer when associated with all of these examples!
It is sad how superficial our society has become. We are much more concerned with aesthetics rather than meaning. "Depth is replaced by surface" (490). The ad from the Delia*s magazine was an example of different styles although they looked the same. This "Goth" look is supposed to be original and different although it looses its shock value and uniqueness when so many people try to be different in the same way. "The end...of style, in the sense of the unique and the personal..." (492). This example reminds me of my high school experience. There was a large population at my school that conformed to this "rebel, Goth" look that others were practically the minority. There were so many dressed like this, trying to be different and stand out, although they ALL looked the SAME.
The avant garde has lost its affect; so many boundaries have been pushed in television shows such as South Park, or ads sexualizing women such as Brittany Spears, that they are no longer a scandal. We as a culture are no longer shocked. "The underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and horror" (485). Our society is so desensitized to violence and sexuality that it has become part of our culture. I don't watch a lot of television but I noticed that when I turned on the TV today I was exposed to all of those things within the first 5 minutes.
The idea of millenarianism that Jameson discusses is also a dark subject that our culture is desensitized too. We are obsessed with "the end". We think everything is going to wipe us out such as the Avian Flu. We seem to always need something to be afraid of. This is reinforced in our media, in movies about the end of the world and other narratives. We are scared of everything and not really shocked anymore about the idea of "the end"; people are constantly trying to unlock these mysteries. It's like we enjoy the horror of it all...
I think the class discussion today definitely made a lot of Jameson's points even clearer when associated with all of these examples!
WouldntULike2Know 3/25
Is it sad that scandal doesn’t shock us anymore? Or is it liberating? Do those who speak or act out against hegemonic definitions of society rejoice in the fact that the ramifications of such actions are not as harsh? Or are they frustrated that their acts do not receive as much attention as perhaps they wish they would because of the institutionalization of and widespread acceptance of their lifestyles, which are then promoted through differing, albeit less mainstream, mediums? Are we content with being merely entertained and pacified at a most basic and bland level?
I find it odd that we enjoy the “blood, torture, death, and horror” (485) to the extent that we do all the while feeling no emotion. We are numbly fearing millenarianism, are aware of the fact that our line segment of life must end at some point, and are content with temporarily putting our minds at ease with “this great new product that will protect you from (insert deadly disease here).” We are at peace with this process and try to avoid at all costs thinking hermeneuticaly about what is actually happening.
These avant-garde images and/or notions have so infiltrated society that they have lost their shock value. Where this one group once stood for social change and enlightenment, now, perhaps due largely to technological advances, has become nothing more than a topic for SNL or Southpark to create some ridiculous skit or parody out of; a process that, as Jenkins described, lends itself to the analysis of the participatory culture. Once that has occurred, it is only a matter of time before the ideals of these subcultures become so mainstream that they no longer shock us.
On a side note, while writing this post I had the news on. I thought I was going to conclude with the third paragraph until I viewed a teaser on Fox News that introduced a new website entitled missbimbo.com which is a site where you create a virtual bimbo. The point of this website is “to become the most famous, beautiful, sought after bimbo across the globe. You can customize your female character and give her plastic surgery, and feed her diet pills to keep her thin. The users of this site are said to be grade school girls, some as young as age nine.” (Fox News)
Shocked? Not really.
Bumble: propoganda reading
Propaganda…
Class division and money are CLEARLY the source of power and influence over a mass of people.
Before the massive boom in the technology age for media, single power figures could control the ideologies of the masses just as the media corporations can infuse their beliefs and ideals on the population. Hitler is the perfect example of how a person who is perceived as having power can dictate to everyone else what they should believe, and just how powerful an ideology can be once it is solidified into our culture.
Imagine Hitler magnified by billions of dollars and mass media mediums, and then multiply his power by 20 other people who all work together to lay the rules out for society.
This article reminded me a lot of Adorno and how the media advertising is a cycle of those who are able to spend a lot of money, are the ones who end up on top and with the most success. This works in all arenas. Politicians NEED money for propaganda. The higher the class and the more money, then the more persuasive they can be over the lower class. In terms of the entertainemtn industry, the biggest budget films are the ones that can pervade our lives and really GET US!
This article also reminds me of a piece we read for the CMC200 class about the brokering between all different arenas. Particularly with the news stations that are dependent on the good graces of the politicians so will dish out millions of dollars to stay in their favor in order to receive information first. The news stations who do not give the money are already at the disadvantage over those who do. It is remarkable that those who say the news also are dictating what the masses (or lower class) thinks.
Propaganda also serves as a function in our perception of history. Those in power are the stories we hear. For example our great manifest destiny ignores the struggles of the Native Americans. Or, currently the Turkish government is still denying the Armenian genocide. They took control over the Armenians and they remain dominant.
All of the levels of what happens behind the media all leads to the same conclusion that those with money are controlling THE WORLD!
Scary…
bumble: post class 3/25
It is the end…
All good things come to an end, the fun has to end sometime. Why do we all find ourselves obsessed with the E.N.D??
Not only do we have this macro version of ending of the universe which is symbolized in practically every movie! Like even this new release “I am legend” which is about the last man on earth. Even on the discovery channel there is a “historical” search for the ending of the world. According to the ancient calendars of the Mayans and the Aztecs there is the ending date that we are trying to interpret. Sitcoms, and cartoons like the Simpsons also talk about the end.
Along with this macro analysis of the ending of the world in a dramatic way, we have the micro sense of the end. The greatest example of this is the idea that we all think that good things come to an end. My friends and I look back at the young kids today and say, gosh what happened to the childhood that we used to live. There is an end to running around outside, it is now a new generation of video games. This is a reoccurring notion, our grandparents look at the music of our parents and say, gosh what happened to the good old days and the innocent music. The era ended and then our parents look nostalgically into our music culture and shake their heads the same way. Boy, it’s a shame that everything ends… Ultimately though, isn’t it all the same? We are all analyzing the same thing, and humans are humans and we are simply re-living the same youth. The surface of it looks different but maybe they aren’t as different as we were.
Why do we emphasize this so much in the media? Perhaps it is because we are trying to deal with the human’s greatest fear of death. We are creatures of habit and when something ends it throws us all into SHOCK! So, we are trying to deal with our fear by making it a form of entertainment. By keeping it as a form of entertainment we have an easier time saying, “oh well its just in a movie… we have nothing to worry about.” We are all trying to convince ourselves that we are in the clear from the inevitable END.
Another scapegoat or denial of culture could be the idea that on the underside of culture is blood, death, and horror. No one wants to think about the horrors or struggles, just as no one wants to think about the end. So, we create forms of entertainment and a life full of distractions (like Adorno said) to cover up what is truly happening underneath.
Monday, March 24, 2008
sawsaw 3/20
I found the activity we did in class to be very helpful. I really benefited from having to interpret the quotes and explain them to the class in my own words. I got a new understanding of what Hebdige was trying to say. A quote I found to be very interesting was, "Culture today is infecting everything with sameness." (63) This quote is saying that the culture we live in is trying to make everything the same. Take for example Spiderman. There are Spiderman movies, books, clothing, sheets and comic books. Everything is the same. This shows that the society we live in is trying to make everyone comform to a certain concept or hegemonic idea.
Another interesting quote is, "The concept of genuine style becomes transparent in the culture industry as the aestetic equivalent of power." (47) This is so appaent in our culture's fashion. People who don't conform to the typical everyday style are seen as "original" and "inovative." Yet, if they take their individual style to far or extreme they are judged and seen as being weird. Society accepts difference as long as it fits into the boundaries they have set. They are only allowed to be different or original as long as they follow the guidelines culture has established.
Another interesting quote is, "The concept of genuine style becomes transparent in the culture industry as the aestetic equivalent of power." (47) This is so appaent in our culture's fashion. People who don't conform to the typical everyday style are seen as "original" and "inovative." Yet, if they take their individual style to far or extreme they are judged and seen as being weird. Society accepts difference as long as it fits into the boundaries they have set. They are only allowed to be different or original as long as they follow the guidelines culture has established.
ChittyChittyBangBang Jameson
In "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism", Jameson comments on the importance of aesthetic production. "It is in the realm of architecture, however, that modifications in aesthetic production are most dramatically visible, and that their theoretical problems have been most centrally raised and articulated..." (483). In the postmodern age Jameson talks about progressing into a "high modernism" style.
"High modernism is thus credited with the destruction of the fabric of the traditional city and its older neighbourhood culture (by the way of radical disjunction of the new Utopian high-modernist building from its surrounding context)..." (483). The way I translated this was enforcing a radical change to Jencks’s Urbane Urbanism which is new but appears old and has urban context but acknowledges new technologies as well. Jameson talks about disconnecting this old, "traditional" style city and moving it into "high culture". Aesthetics are extremely important in commercial culture and updating architecture is a dramatic route. The newer architecture according to Jameson, "...stands as something like an imperative to grow new organs, to expand our sensorium and our body to some new, as yet unimaginable, perhaps ultimately impossible, dimensions" (508).
This could also be connected to Eco's article, "The City of Robots". Jameson mentions Venturi's influential manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas. Eco talks about cities such as Vegas and Disney which imitate others and also concentrate on aesthetics. Is Jameson saying we could learn from Las Vegas and its modern architecture and lifestyle? Would this improve our consumer, media, information, and electronic society?
"High modernism is thus credited with the destruction of the fabric of the traditional city and its older neighbourhood culture (by the way of radical disjunction of the new Utopian high-modernist building from its surrounding context)..." (483). The way I translated this was enforcing a radical change to Jencks’s Urbane Urbanism which is new but appears old and has urban context but acknowledges new technologies as well. Jameson talks about disconnecting this old, "traditional" style city and moving it into "high culture". Aesthetics are extremely important in commercial culture and updating architecture is a dramatic route. The newer architecture according to Jameson, "...stands as something like an imperative to grow new organs, to expand our sensorium and our body to some new, as yet unimaginable, perhaps ultimately impossible, dimensions" (508).
This could also be connected to Eco's article, "The City of Robots". Jameson mentions Venturi's influential manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas. Eco talks about cities such as Vegas and Disney which imitate others and also concentrate on aesthetics. Is Jameson saying we could learn from Las Vegas and its modern architecture and lifestyle? Would this improve our consumer, media, information, and electronic society?
Sunday, March 23, 2008
July: 3-20-08
When applying hegemony to discourse it relates to whom and why individuals determine what is distributed in the mainstream. The term hegemony has been used throughout all of my classes at Rollins, but at some points it has a universal meaning. When dealing with hegemony in Dr. Rog’s class it basically deals with ones culture’s belief or belonging in society. For example, American is the dominant group in America, leaving minority groups behind, which causes a separation in ideologies and mythologies. “The American Dream” was created and enforced by Americans, but it isn’t structured to fit everyone’s life, minorities are always judged according to this ideology because they are constantly left out. The “American Dream” is mainly for the Americans that are already established in society because they haven’t experienced the depression of downward mobility. The head-start will give them motivation to seek higher levels of employment, but it isn’t likely for all Americans, especially minorities. Many minorities are already in a hard spot financial and academically because they have other obstacles that hold them from an equal chance at higher employment levels. Equal chances aren’t given to every born citizen in the United Sates so applying ideologies like the “American Dream” as the structured way to success isn’t fair for the underprivileged marginalized groups.
kMO 3/18
The study of sub-cultures is an exceedingly important topic. In fact, the ideologies that are formed by the language of culture affect our every day life. For instance most people do not even realize the normalization of performing certain actions that are limited to our own sub-culture. This is because we perform these actions on a unconscious level. The example of "sub-consciously believing" an r-card can buy you food 1/2 way across the country falls under this theory.
Ordinarily the quote, "Sub cultures represent "noise" (as opposed to sound) interference in the orderly sequence...." would leave me confused and disheartened. However, after last class period I felt that with our accumulation of information I could understand what this quote actually means. I believe that it is discussing the fact that people within a subculture do not identify with those of another subculture because their signification of that culture is different...
Now that leads me to wonder if that is a subconscious or conscious desire. While thinking of certain situations that could relate to this question I became aware of the fact that most people CHOOSE to distance themselves from a certain culture do to their own sub-culture beliefs. For instance Punk music and classical movement represent both high and low culture. People who categorize themselves to be within these subcultures blatently know that they are creating unbreakable barriers... which leads me to the conclusion that most subcultures CONSCIOUSLY distance themselves from one another...
ChittyChittyBangBang 3/18
"Ideology saturates everyday discourse in the form of common sense" (148)
Our class discussion of the unsaid or societies common set of assumptions was very interesting. We've talked a lot about linguistics so seeing ideology at work and our learned speech effect the way we communicate is intriguing.
Different cultures, people from different locations, or even just people who are interested in different types of subjects do not share the same speech and understanding. I thought it was funny when Dr. Rog used the NASCAR example and how someone who does not know anything about NASCAR would not have any idea what he was talking about if he was to use that type of lingo. I'm on the Crew team and sometimes when I use lingo such as; "You wouldn't believe it, someone caught an ejector crab today at practice!" People who do not have knowledge about rowing have no idea what I'm talking about, and when I talk about catching crabs: "I caught a crab today at practice", they assume I mean I LITERALLY caught a living crab. When really I just mean that my oar got stuck in the water and I was unable to remove it in a timely matter therefore slowing the boat down. (There are different levels of severity, ejector crab being about the worst where the rower actually gets ejected out of the shell/boat.)
I also enjoyed the examples such as: "Don't carry an umbrella, it's lightening outside" where society uses their common sense to finish the sentence. Most people know that most umbrellas will attract lightening. Although there is usually someone who does not have the same set of assumptions and does understand.
Our class discussion of the unsaid or societies common set of assumptions was very interesting. We've talked a lot about linguistics so seeing ideology at work and our learned speech effect the way we communicate is intriguing.
Different cultures, people from different locations, or even just people who are interested in different types of subjects do not share the same speech and understanding. I thought it was funny when Dr. Rog used the NASCAR example and how someone who does not know anything about NASCAR would not have any idea what he was talking about if he was to use that type of lingo. I'm on the Crew team and sometimes when I use lingo such as; "You wouldn't believe it, someone caught an ejector crab today at practice!" People who do not have knowledge about rowing have no idea what I'm talking about, and when I talk about catching crabs: "I caught a crab today at practice", they assume I mean I LITERALLY caught a living crab. When really I just mean that my oar got stuck in the water and I was unable to remove it in a timely matter therefore slowing the boat down. (There are different levels of severity, ejector crab being about the worst where the rower actually gets ejected out of the shell/boat.)
I also enjoyed the examples such as: "Don't carry an umbrella, it's lightening outside" where society uses their common sense to finish the sentence. Most people know that most umbrellas will attract lightening. Although there is usually someone who does not have the same set of assumptions and does understand.
Sgt. Pepper, 3/18
For some reason, the thing I'm most fascinated with in Hebdige's discussion of subculture and ideology are the subcultures that attempt to challenge hegemony. He talks about the dirty subculture of the Sex Pistols and mentions the mods, the punks, etc. These are examples of a current ideology in America of going against the grain and being different from everyone else. Unpopular is the new popular. It made me think of one of my friends from home, and his obsession with being the first one to find out about a certain band or movie. Because once it becomes mainstream, it's not as cool. I hate that, and it's especially prevalent with people my age. As high school and college students are constantly trying to "find themselves," we're definitely the most affected by the mass media's control over hegemony. I, too, want to break the ideologies hegemony is forcing and get back to a true system of democracy.
So, the soul-searching teenager might ask, "How can I completely avoid hegemony and the ideologies it's throwing at me?" And the answer is that you can't. Hegemony surrounds us so completely that it's near impossible to avoid. The idea of thoughts or actions being "innate" almost seems arbitrary after reading this article. With such strong hegemonic spells being cast, there are few decisions we make that are completely our own.
We can take small steps though. For instance, and someone else mentioned this in their post too, one of the most notable outcomes of hegemony in our culture are the distinct gender roles. One of my previous professors, though, told us about his 5-year-old son, and how he and his wife have decided to encourage any gender-specific actions or ideas. It will be interesting to see how it works out.
So, the soul-searching teenager might ask, "How can I completely avoid hegemony and the ideologies it's throwing at me?" And the answer is that you can't. Hegemony surrounds us so completely that it's near impossible to avoid. The idea of thoughts or actions being "innate" almost seems arbitrary after reading this article. With such strong hegemonic spells being cast, there are few decisions we make that are completely our own.
We can take small steps though. For instance, and someone else mentioned this in their post too, one of the most notable outcomes of hegemony in our culture are the distinct gender roles. One of my previous professors, though, told us about his 5-year-old son, and how he and his wife have decided to encourage any gender-specific actions or ideas. It will be interesting to see how it works out.
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