In class on Tuesday we discussed Jameson and his ideas of images and meanings. Before class on Tuesday, if I had to explain the Jameson article I would not be able to. I found the reading to be extremely difficult to understand. After understanding the reading with images and examples it was a lot easier for me to understand the ideas and thoughts Jameson discusses. For example in class we talked about the impact of McDonalds throughout the world. McDonalds is seen everywhere in our world, when I was in China, there was Mcdonalds as well as in Spain, Italy & Greece.
We also discussed the idea of architecture & creating buildings that represent the meaning behind the building. One of the examples was the image of the doughnut shop which was shaped like two doughnuts. This object of the doughnuts gives meaning to our society providing us with the meaning that the object is indeed releated to doughnuts.
We are also living in a culture with no more advant gardism. We now live in a society where no one can come up with avant garde. We are unable to scandalize anyone anymore. Avant garde doesn’t exist anymore because it doesn’t affect us anymore and also avant garde does exist but it just isn’t a big impact on us and it is normal.
The example of Britney Spears also was beneficial because Britney Spears went from this innocent girl to this scandalous girl. When she was an innocent girl she had the #1 hit, and now that she is a scandalous girl she still has the #1 hit. This idea relates to Jameson quote, “frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods” (485). This quote by Jameson relates to Habermas and his idea of “the cult of the new”.
No matter what our style is and no matter what ideas we have in our society, we all try to be different. The issue with that is that no matter how different we are, we still meet in the middle somewhere. Everywhere we go, we encounter sameness in our society. This relates to the ideas of McDonalds and also the most well known word is “Ok”. I think this is interesting because no matter how different cultures are we still meet somewhere in the middle.
I know this post seems complicated and confusing but I am attempting to express the ideas of Jameson in relation to the examples that we have in class. The examples we have in class about the ideas of Jameson are beneficial to my understanding of Jameson & because of these examples I am not able to understand Jameson and his idea of, “…every position on postmodernism in culture…[is] an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today” (484).
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Jamerson is a very difficult guy to get your head around so considering this you so a good job analyzing his concepts and ideas. With each example you provide read back over it and think of previous theorists we have covered who relate to what you are talking about. For example take the first example about architecture, think back to Jencks and his different characteristics of architecture. :)
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