FloRida, 11/14

Foucault’s reading definitely proves how although we are under surveillance at all times, we rarely recognize it. Dr. Rog proved, in class, that if we knew we were under surveillance at all times and saw someone physically watching us, then we would be greatly affected. I really loved learning about the idea of the words “look vs. watch.” Until that point I had never really thought about their use, meaning, and difference. We “watch” television but “look” at a computer screen. I think it seems as if we “watch” mainly moving objects and look at still ones. The word “watch” seems to have the connotation of stalking or intently gazing. The word “look” has the connotation that we are glancing at something or not directly paying close attention. Foucault states that, “Everyone locked up in his cage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when ask.” Our society has become one of spectacle. We both are involved in the spectacle and watch it happen. As Dr. Rog started class with the Foucault quote, “inspection functions ceaselessly,” we not only started to watch every move he was going to make but we began to watch the movements of all of our classmates. This proves that not only were we not sure what he was going to do or say, we were also not sure what moves or actions the students were going to make. We start to become the ones being watched and the ones doing the surveillance. “We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism.” We are doing this to ourselves and in order to stop this surveillance from occurring we are going to have to be the ones to take action.

Captain Outrageous, Post Class for the Casey Report make up

What is postmodernism? The answer is the objective of our semester. We are in it, we are out of it, we are making it, its already made? Looking through the powerpoint ROG put together, we are kind of all over the place when it comes to postmodernism. Its futuristic, its retro, its about speeding up or stopping completely. Its about radicalism, its about being silenced. And it is definitely out of our control if not out of control completely.

I most certainly like the idea that postmodernism started somewhere along the lines of the Columbia protests. People don't know enough about the student protests of the sixties, and I think that putting them in the postmodern category give them a bit more importance. Students, STUDENTS completely shut down the operations of Ivy League schools to make a statement. That's incredible! The Columbia protests shut down the school for a week. There was one at Harvard also where they shut down for 4 days and the accomplishments were incredible: they evicted 8 deans, created a black studies program, and instituted the right of students to vote to elect staff and faculty members. Maybe technology has gotten out of hand, but these student protests show that matters can be taken into our own.

I feel that technology is only overwhelming because we allow it to be. We have allowed technology and its' commodities to become normalized in our society, we rely on them. True we can't really protest computers and the internet, we do kind of need them now, but there are other things that can be taken by storm. What they are I don't know. But I have the feeling that, if enough people shut off their facebooks for a while we could figure it out.

The only thing I can really think to conclude with is a good contrast: we are a society that can create an atomic bomb to kill millions. But we are also a society that can shut down a University and change the lives of thousands. Perhaps this is the enigma of postmodernity: to destroy and to create are interchangeable, but not entirely inseparable. I think the idea of change has been tainted with the idea of something else being destroyed in the process.

Captain Outrageous, Post Class for DeSaussure/Barthes/Macherey make up

This weeks discussions and assignments regarding language, text and reading, were really interesting to me. Not only is it the meanings of the words, but it is the words themselves, their connections to one another, their structure etc. that all signify different things for us. And that literally means different things for all of us. No one interprets a certain text the same way as the next person. An author has no control over what we think we read or interpret. When you think about it, it makes the writing profession that much more challenging.

One thing that caught me in particular was the idea that from one reading to the next we never skip the same passage (barthes). This made me think of my favorite books and particularly movies which I have read or seen a hundred times. I'm always learning something new, noticing something else, ignoring something else. Its kind of a remarkable relationship. A text never changes physically or contextually, but its readers do. We develop over time, our minds develop and change, our ideals and judgments change...a text, a really good text in my opinion, never changes but continues to spark our interest. A text is ever adaptable as is our mind. I don't think I am explaining this in anywhere near a form of fascination as it sounds in my head. These texts are truly in its most definitive of ways masterpieces because they never have to change, they continue to transform within our own minds and changes. How brilliant is that?

Kiwi, Birkert

Svens style of writing and insight was very interesting… He discussed Birkert’s lecture was extremely interesting. He began the lecture by reading out loud an expert from his book about Kertesz on Reading. To Birkert, Kertesz captures people in the most private of freefall. He explains to us that the image is informative, however it allows for us a vast screen of interpretation. When Birkert went on talking about this the first theorists that came to mind right away was Macherey and how he talks about how we interpret a gap within the text and how the gap is the most important part of the text because it is where the meaning is created. Machereys ideas can connect to Birkerts photos and how explains the interpretations of them. Within Birkerts photos, we cannot see what the individuals are reading; this is a perfect example of how we are able to look at these images with an open-ended interpretation. Birkert went on talking about how a text is mute until the time we read it; and how we are the ones that give the meaning to the text once we have viewed it. Birkert then went on to discuss the childhood experience of reading; separate from the norm and the impact of technology on reading. He discussed how there id no longer a need to go to a library or a store to get a book. We now have access to the Internet which allows us to download books to our technological devices. He went on talking about how people are moving away from reading a printed page to looking at a digital screen. His example was reading a kindle vs reading a book. Birkert said that, “a printed book has a lasting impression, it is an entity dense with association”. He says that what we are reading might be the same but the interpretation and signification is no longer the same. I really liked how Birkert put it by saying, Kindles are not new, they are just a new way of looking at the old.” When he said this I thought of Lyotard and Bricolage and how he says that everything is just old things put together with new, how everything is the same. A kindle is just a machine that is producing the same information as a book. The digital book within this device is no different then the old which is the paperback itself. He said that in reality the books themselves are the ones that have more meaning within it.

At the end of his lecture an English teacher had brought up the idea of quaintness in sitting down and reading a book and the pleasures of what you get out of it. She went in depth on the interpersonal part of and said that, When you think of a book you think of the author and the mindset that he or she is in and that is why she thought having the book itself was more important because she thought that with a digital device you did not get the same feeling. Birkert agreed with her and again thought that she made a very good point.

I thought that Birkerts lecture was very interesting and I really enjoyed it. I really liked how I was able to follow him throughout his discussion and understand what he was talking about as well as connect different theorists to his ideas. I felt that it was much worth my time going to this lecture and I do not regret having to miss and hour and 15 min of basketball practice for this :0)

Captain Outrageous, Sven Bierkets

What a fascinating talk. I really enjoyed Sven's style of writing and insight. It was interesting to hear the way his brain was working and analyzing the processes of reading. I'd like to just list a couple of cool quotes before I get into what I want to discuss...

"a description is really a prompt to get to the thought"
"to talk about reading is to talk about everything under the sun"
"the camera's eye proposes a whole field of suggestion"
"communication is always provisional"
"absolute imaginative transport"
"existential agitation"
"[library is a] exteriorized manifestation of content"
"readers are the sole recreators of what is coded in the text"

The lecture and discussions in their entirety were inspiring and thought provoking. What I found myself reacting most to was the contrast between technological reading and book reading: reading a Kindle vs. reading a book. Someone had posed the idea of quaintness in sitting down to read a book and this got my mind going (and to brag, I wrote down almost immediately what everyone got around to discussing).

Sven discussed the childhood experience of reading, of being completely submersed and displaced to another world, another realm, separate from the surrounding one. To me this signified a great slowing down of things. When we are on the computer or internet, things move fast- technology moves fast. It was Baudrillard was it not who discussed hyperstimulation? Information comes at us, pictures are a click away as are full explanations. This made me think of Adorno- this technology isn't chosen by us, it was forced upon us. This made me realize the significant contrast between sitting down to read a book and reading something online or on a Kindle: we have a choice in reading a book. We have made the choice to be submersed into someone else's world, to be molded and transformed by the work of an invisible person. Reading is interpersonal. When you think of a book, you think of an author. Reading a book connotates a person to page to person relationship. In my opinion, technology connotates machinery, computers, systems etc. Perhaps a programmer but not one with whom you could relate. Therefore reading a book is a slow reconnection with humanity and its original art forms, its a spiritual grounding process beyond comprehension. Any technological interference is a machine induced hyperstimulation of things. You have no relationship with an e-book, you have a relationship with your laptop based on commodity fetishism. But you do create relationships with your books, equally a commodity I understand, but I am trying to take this to a more intellectual level. There is indeed a nostalgia when you talk about how much you loved that book. There is indeed a lack of nostalgia when you remember reading something online.

Furthermore and conclusively I suppose I had a thought on my walk back to my dorm. I thought of my Junior year English Class in high school, how no one ever did the reading, no one ever cared, and the class would be silent (unless I was answering questions) and ignorant to the blessings of literature. And why shouldn't they have been? Cell phones in their laps and a computer at home where they could access the Sparknotes and Cliffnotes online to understand the book. We've come to an age where one doesn't even have to go to the bookstore to obtain the physical book of Sparknotes and Cliffnotes....Literature is available for download in a few easy clicks.

But who does the fault belong to I wonder. I blame the education system. Sven talked about the disappearance of his love for reading through the teenage years. In classes we are forced to read so much that the personal choice and personal enjoyment is stripped from us for years on end. Its really just one machine to the next that is slowly killing the mockingbird.

BiegieGo, Birkerts/Foucault

Last night I went to a lecture giving by a man known by the name of Sven Birkerts. He talked about the exhibit “On reading” and shared with us what he felt about the collection of pictures taken that were displayed in the museum that our class had seen earlier on in the year. Although he did not pull me into all of what he said one thing that made me listen more than the others is thought about watching people while their reading and their demeanors. I thought it was interesting because he talked about the way they held their self depending on where they were and how they looking in that setting of at the time. I was interested because we had just talked about the theorist Foucault in class yesterday and the stuff Birkerts was talking about went with Foucault ideas and how we are always being watched and this made perfect sense when looking at the photos earlier in the semester. It was almost scary how much we don’t realize people watching us.
Foucault says three simple words that we would never think about in a day to day setting that are “inspection functions ceaselessly.” But when we step back and look at what Foucault says, it all makes perfect sense. We are being watched ALL day long! We are being watched when we think don’t want to be seen by anyone and our contemporary society feels that we must look and act a certain way when we are being seen. In class someone said she must put on makeup before going out because she would never want to be seen without it. Why do we care so much about what others think of us? I think that the “On reading” was a perfect example of looking at people being put in this situation of being watched. I can remember seeing a photo of a woman on the top of a building and she was sun bathing but she probably had no idea that there was someone watching her and her actions and it resulted in a photo ending up in a college museum. Who knows where else the photo is now?

Daisy, 11/13 Birkert

Attending Sven Birkert’s lecture was extremely interesting. He began the lecture by reading out loud an expert from his book about Kertesz on Reading. To Birkert, Kertesz captures people in the most private of freefall. The image is informative, but it also allows for a vast screen of interpretation. Macherey talked about this opportunity to interpret a gap within the text. The gap is the most important part of a text because it is where the most meaning is created. During the lecture, Birkert talked about the different interpretations we can make from the photos. Within Birkert’s photos, we are unaware of what the individuals are reading, this allows for open-ended interpretation. Birkert said “is there anything more open ended then an opened book?” He talked about how a text is momentarily mute until we read it; we are the ones that give meaning to the text. To Macherey, the most important part of text is what is not said and I think that Birkert would agree.
Birkert went on to talk about the impact of technology on reading. The invention of the Kindle has allowed readers to digitally read books. There is no longer a need to visit a bookstore or library because you can wirelessly download books to your technological device. People are moving from reading a printed page to looking at a lit screen. Birkert discussed that for text to arrive on the Kindle, the text has to be detached. Benjamin would say that the detachment of the text causes a loss of authenticity. To me, holding a book in your hands and turning the pages is a much different experience. When a book is turned digital it loses a part of itself. Birkert said that a printed book has a lasting impression; it is an entity dense with association. What we are reading might be the same, but the signification is much different. I like what Sven Birkert said about a book turned digital, he said it has been vaporized, made ghostly. Kindles are not new; they are just a new way of looking at the old. This made me think of Lyotard’s idea of bricolage. We think that the Kindle is something new, but really it is just made up of the old, old books that is. A Kindle is like a generic machine that produces the same thing over and over. The digital books read within the kindle seem no different than the next. However, the books on their own, separate from the digital device, have much more meaning and difference. It seems as if the Kindle is a way to equate all books and their meanings, ignoring their differences.

Graham, Birkerts

I attended the Sven Birkerts lecture and I have to admit that I was a little bit confused. At first, I was really bored, because he was just reading to the audience. This was not very engaging, and I found it hard to keep track of what he was saying. However, once people began asking questions and he was answering them, I think that I started to understand the message that he was attempting to portray. The main point of his lecture was that reading is being taken over by technology, and it almost seems as if books are becoming a thing of the past. He emphasized the point that he did not think that electronic books can have the same effect on an individual as actually reading the book, because while reading a book, you allow yourself to go into a different place mentally.
He also discussed the photos around the room, which consisted of various individuals reading, and he explained that it is interesting to watch people read because you have no idea where they are in the book. Are they imagining that they are in space, or in the country…etc. You can never tell by looking at a person, and how deep you get into the book can be effected by the place where you are reading. He mentioned that in a crowded place you are not able to get absorbed in the book as easily, because you are constantly pausing and checking out the surroundings and what the people around you are doing (much like Foucault discusses about how we can not help but watch people, and we are always being watched). I also could not help but relate the photos that were taken to the Foucault reading, because those people had no idea that they were being watched. They were sitting and reading, and they were clueless to the fact that they were being photographed. In a way, the pictures were kind of creepy.
Anyways, he believes that soon college libraries will be deprived of books, because everything will be online (although he hopes that this does not happen). Unfortunately, the internet is a lot faster and the information is a lot more accessible online, so coming from a generation that is dependent on technology for everyday life, I do not think that this is something that can be avoided. He continually discusses the importance of reading books, because it is so much more beneficial than having something read to you. This confused me, because based on his stance on the subject, I was surprised that his lecture consisted of reading to the audience.
The audience had mixed views on the topic, and a lady in the back of the room seemed to really disagree with what he was saying, which actually got a little bit awkward. However, I think that the end of the lecture was very interesting and I was glad that I attended.

Nate Dogg, Foucault

Foucault's article was disturbing to say the least. Let's begin with the Panopticon. I felt that the most obvious parallel to this panoptic "jail" was our very own Homeland Security and the USA PATRIOT act. Having people feel as though they are constantly being watched and monitored is a method of control. Fear of being seen doing something designated inappropriate or against the law will keep people from doing said transgressions, or so the Watchman hopes. The laws that our government set into place have certainly helped keep our country safe from attacks, but it's also given the USA a neurotic complex. Keeping people afraid is the best way to keep them busy, keep them in line, and keep the current rulers in power. I think that the Europeans might not have realized these steps for power at first, but it's exactly what they did when the enacted the great Confinement.

If we're going to compare theorists, the first thought is that of Althusser and the RSA's/ISA's. The Plague Society reminds me of the Repressive State Apparatuses (Apparatusi?), with all of the detail surrounding the intendents and the syndics and so forth. The fact that everything was done publicly, in front of one another, and no one did anything about it is beyond me. The same goes for Nazi Germany. Hitler and his cohorts used a very similar plan in order to rise to power. Come up with a bad guy, make that bad guy scary, pretend to be on the side that fights the bad guy and you've got control. The "disease" was Judaism, and the Nazi's did everything they could to individualize the Jew.

The Panopticon is much more like an Ideological State Apparatus, in that in functions only because of voyeurism and the fear of being constantly watched. Keeping people separated from one another and under constant supervision equals control. But I think there is an exception to the Panopticon. The rule is that the people that have been put in the panoptic jail are blind to the outside, that they cannot see who is supposedly looking at them. What if the person inside the panopticon WAS blind? If they can never see their captor nor their surroundings, what good is it that they're always being watched? If one never had the possibility of seeing the supervisor, what difference does it make that he cannot see him now? The idea that the prisoner can see but can't see everything is what scares him into submitting to the Watchman. What huge strength does the panoptic jail have over a regular jail if the prisoner is blind? The panoptic situation loses its power when the people being watched give up care that they are being watched.

I enjoyed this reading, despite its morbid subject matter. I think that deep down, most of these articles are about people gaining power over another people in some way, shape or form. The fact that there are so many ways to dupe us into acting like robots or sheep is pretty wild.

Captain Planet, Foucault

Foucault’s article Discipline and Punish was confusing at first. He uses the plague to illustrate his theory on power and discipline. The plague claimed the lives of many of its victims. In the wake of this deadly illness, the hierarchy of the town claimed power. The plague continued to strike the people of the town, and likewise, the power and discipline of the dominant class continued to rule over the lower class. Consequently, the state became a disciplined society. Foucault states that “against an extraordinary evil, power is mobilized; it makes itself everywhere present and visible” (99). Due to the fatality of the plague, the hierarchy used discipline as a tactic to control both those who had the disease, and the disease itself. Furthermore, Foucalt says that there are “two ways of exercising power over men, of controlling their relations, or separating out their dangerous mixtures” (96). The town exercised their power over the people of the town by control. Those with the plague were forced into confinement, separating out the ‘dangerous mixtures’ of the society. The power and control set into place by the dominant class relate to Althusser’s notion of the ISA’s (Ideological State Apparatus). Foucault makes a specific statement, saying that discipline is not an institution or an apparatus. Discipline can be taken over “by apparatuses that have made discipline their principle of internal functioning… or finally by state apparatuses whose major, if not exclusive function is to assure that discipline reigns over society as a whole” (100). Foucault is illustrating that discipline is “an ‘anatomy’ of power” (100) and that it works on us because of its quality of control. ISA’s work on the level of ideology, meaning they affect individuals subconsciously. The frightening part of ISA’s are that they controls us just as much as RSA’s (Repressive State Apparatus). Foucault is saying that discipline and ISA’s are not one in the same, and he states that side with conviction.

HOLLA! Foucault

The disciplinary modality of power, Foucault’s main theory, is based on a similar mechanism of power, that of Althusser’s ideological state apparatus. Instead of using ideology as the enforcer of power, Foucault believes discipline to be this unnoticed force of power. I like how Foucault used the “pantonic principle” as the reasoning behind his theory. It is more that discipline is a type of surveillance. This idea is the same as the purpose behind the Panopticon, built by Bentham, a perfectly structured observation building. A building in which its inhabitants are observed twenty-four seven without the knowledge of knowing so. “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (99). Foucault’s quotation shows why it is important that individuals not know they are being observed or watched over. In other words, this comparison between discipline and surveillance as power was made to show readers that the “disciplinary modality of power” is just that. We are being observed all the time without knowing it and this surveillance is what keeps us in order and the disciplinarians in power. So how ideology is a superstructure of power in which we act on unconsciously, the disciplinary modality of power is also working on us unconsciously as we follow it and allow it to rule our lives. I think what sums up Foucault’s theory of power in a nutshell is that, “We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism” (101).

DoubleBubble, Foucault

Foucault's reading, I thought was one of the easiest and most understandable readings we have had this semester. With our test this week I was able to make comparisons instantly within the ideas that Foucault was saying. When I first grasped this idea I instantly thought of our last test and the whole idea of how the ruling class has the power because of ideologies, but now power is within our eyes.

“neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism” I thought this quote was interesting. Before doing this reading I was watching the news and thought about the idea of how some news shows are just debates whereas other ones are simply just a way to broadcast information. Foucault was influential after watching the news because it talks about how we are the issue, we are the enemy and yet we blame others. On the news you see issues that are debated out but what are we really accomplishing? If you watch the news and see a debate occurring, most likely, it is going to give off the impression that one side is blaming someone else but we, the United States. We develop this idea about how we are in charge and superior to everyone else. What we aren't realizing is that, the United States is the issue. Our news programs are bias and incorrect and that affects our societies because we trust the news.

After our test this week, I thought it was interesting to connect Foucault to the ideas of Disney. Foucault introduces the idea of the gaze alert being all over. We are always being watched and always need to be alert of our actions and what we can and cannot do. We are always watching and looking around, it is just our nature to do so but we are gazing and watching everything without intentions. It seems as though we are constantly being watched and especially at Disney it seems like a fake movie set. After making that comparison I then thought of the movie, The Truman Show. He was constantly being watched and filmed, although he didn't know, but all of the United States would tune in to watch Truman. I think it is really interesting to think of this idea that we are constantly being watched through the idea of simply looking around. Anyone and everyone, not just the members of the ruling class, are watching us.

According to Foucault power should be easy to see but at the same time it should not be understandable. We should be able to see the power, but it is not important for us to completely understand what is occurring. This idea of power can interlock into Althusser and his ideas of ISA's and RSA's. ISA's are unverifiable and therefore. Power has to be visible and unverifiable and this concept as Foucault explained is the concept of Panoption. Whoever is watching you is the person that is in power.

I think this entire piece by Foucault compares to the idea of social authority and ideologies. With ideologies and social authority there was never someone constantly watching you, but I grasped the idea that with Panoption you are constantly being watched and under surveillance and you must be on your best behavior. Could you imagine someone at Disney trying to do something dangerous? It is a norm that we have developed to know that doing so would be wrong in numerous ways. Foucault introduces the idea of power and lifestyle with the simple concept of watching.

Mongoose, Foucault

Michel Foucault gives us a completely different take on society than what we have seen from our past theorists; we have spent the past few readings focusing on some different forms of oppression we face through media as well as other forms. Ideology may be repressive to society but only in a mental sense, we see very few instances where ideological forces have led to physical force or constraints; same thing to be said about propaganda – while it may influence and change our lives there is a very low possibility of it physically affecting our lives. Foucault presents us with a completely new concept of restraint – surveillance. The part of his idea of surveillance that I chose to focus on is his description of the ‘panopticon’; this was a building that was intricately designed to keep prisoners, the diseased, or whoever they chose, away from society. The purpose of this building according to him was to: “induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” (98). Basically it induced a state of fear that there was always the possibility of them being watched, judged or surveilled by others and themselves. Foucault described their situation as being “caught up in a power situation of which they themselves are the bearers (98).” The inmate was so afraid of being watched, they did not know if they were or not because they could not see the guards, that they policed themselves in order to stay out of trouble. This reminds me of a very resent day situation in which we do not know if we are being watched so we police ourselves: traffic lights. Because of the new implementation of cameras at street lights we never know if we are going to be caught running a red light, because of this we police ourselves better and tend to stop sooner than we normally would. This creates a more self-policed society much as the panopticon did back in the day of Foucault.

BiegieGo, Foucault

“The relation of each individual to his disease and to his death passes through the representatives of power, the registration they make of it, the decisions they make on it.”
We can relate this to Karl Marx and Althusser and there notion of ideology and different classes in our society. As Marx says “he who has the gold rules.” The dominating class is the one who sets these so called rules that our society follows know as ideologies. This quote is telling us that we as individuals are diseased and we follow our death to following these representations of power. The more we follow the power and the one that is in power the more that this notion will carry on into our future generations. The decisions that we make will dictate what happens to our future generations. For example if we see a movie and we are becoming so into the fact that nothing surprises us anymore then we will come out of the movie not being shocked when something shocking really does happen to us. We can also relate this notion to Jameson simulacra and how nothing affects us anymore. It also connects to the waning of affect. We see things so much on TV and are the community that they don’t even faze us anymore.
“This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links and centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead—all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism.

Ron Burgundy, Foucault

In preparation for Thursday’s class we read an excerpt from Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”. This article discussed two different sets of authoritarian mechanisms that demonstrated power over a society. The first one came from an order published in the 1600’s when the plague came to a town. It involved the disciplinary programme where “power is mobilized, it makes itself everywhere present and visible, it invents new mechanisms, it separates, it immobilizes, it partitions” (99). In essence, the people in the quarantined town where the plague was found would be confined to their houses, closely monitored, counted and reduced to conditions of existence daily, as completed by the syndics of the areas. In this disciplinary program, people were watched and people also watched what was going on around them from the confinements of their home. The second disciplinary programme explained in the article was based upon the building structure known as the Panopticon, or the “house of certainty” (99). This building could serve to house any sort of individual be it inmate, patient, madman, student, etc. and functioned upon the model that the individuals were separated into individual rooms, unable to communicate with others or see anything besides one window to the outside and one window to the central tower. In the central tower was the observer who could not by seen by the confined individuals because of blinds and other means, but who could see al the confined individuals. In this way, his power lied in the fact that those confined had no inclination of when or who was watching but a notion that someone always was. The function of the Panopticon therefore was "to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power". In discussing these two types of "disciplinary programmes" I could not help but connect these two forms of authority to Althusser's RSA's and ISA's. In my opinion, it seemed that Foucault's first system of authority, that of the town suffering from the plague, functioned as Althusser's RSA's; with public authority, and aggression (violence). The Panopticon on the other hand functioned as an ISA, using the ideology that someone was always watching to discipline those confined, it was most successful when no authority figure could be seen. Although both were effective in producing the desired results, they were two extremely different methods for the disciplinary structures.

Captain Outrageous, Focault

Discipline and Power. Much harsher than anything else we've read. Quite morbid actually. Focault has done an outstanding job of turning the pretty green numbers of the matrix that have been created for me by every other theorist we have read thus far in the semester and turned them into dark, intimidating and horribly depressing grey brick walls of the "Panoptic Machine". Mr. Focault I'm well aware of the symbolic imprisonment I suffer in being part of the social order, but you didn't have to be quite so kind in manifesting that image so literally in your comparative analysis. Let me comparatively analyze you.

In the final paragraph of the Discipline and Power excerpt we had to read Focault greatly elaborates on a plentitude of binary oppositions that define society, power and the individual. In doing so he nearly ticks off theorists we've read:

-society is not spectacle it is surveillance (buh bye Zizek)
-under the surface of images one invests in depth (adios Jameson)
-under exchange lies useful forces (sounds like some Jenkins to me)
-communication is the accumulation of knowledge (Macherey perhaps? DeSaussure?)
- play of signs define power (Very DeSaussure)
-individual is fabricated in social order not repressed (Althusser and so many more)
-(not from this section but let me add) lepers being victimized and excluded (Hebdige)

We live not in simulacra, not in the desert of the real, not in the matrix, not in anything but the Great Machine- the automatization and disindividualization of power. He talks about the architectual structure of the Panoptic (much like someone talked about the architectual structure of education) as the tower of power being visible to all, all being on roll call at any time, being plagued, victimized, excluded, controlled.

Mr. Focault I was quite content with my invisible ISA and RSA, my marxist structures of control. Big Brother is watching, I'm aware, but for those of us carrying the leper-some disease of the plague, "all along the watch tower" remains outside barbed wire. I'd very much like Focault to watch an episode of "Superjail".

There's nothing left to discuss regarding Discipline and Power (which i am so thrown by I don't feel like discussing the next Focault piece). He touches on everything we have learned just in an absolutely horrible way. If no one has gotten the concept we are "imprisoned" by the social order yet, then welcome to the slammer kids, courtesy of Focault.

Gwatter06, Focault

Our reading assignment on Focault is quite different from anything that we have read so far. He implements his concepts and ideas through the narrative and understanding of the situations created by the epidemic of the Plague of the mid-fourteenth century Focault mainly focuses on the ideas and concepts of discipline, surveillance and power within society and the community. Firstly, he incorporates his understanding of discipline and expresses it’s relation to power. Focault explains that “the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects” (96) and in doing so “it called for multiple separations, individualizing distributions, an organization in depth of surveillance and control, an intensification and ramification of power” (96). Focault does an impressive job of interlacing his concepts and linking one to the other. Here I believe Focault is explaining that our submission to ideological constructions and surveillance represents our passiveness and discipline in which ultimately relinquishes control to those implementing this concepts. I think that this closely relates to both Marx and Althusser and their concepts of class structure and ideology. Marx explains that those with the ruling ideas are those who make up the ruling class. In Focault’s explanation of the Plague situation and quarantine, the administration running the quarantine and creating the separation in the community through the fear of the Plague, plays the role of the ruling class because they obtain the conforming and ruling ideologies that the community follows. We also covered a secondary piece on Focault that covered the emergence of discourse of sex. This piece was a bit more difficult to comprehend but there were come interesting concepts that I was able to pick up on. One of the main concepts that I was able to grasp from Focault’s piece was his notion of sexuality and its relation to “scientia sexualis.” Focault states, “Sexuality: the correlative of that slowly developed discursive practice which constitutes the scientia sexualis. The essential features of this sexuality are not the expression of a representation that is more or less distorted by ideology, or of a misunderstanding caused by taboos; they correspond to the functional requirements of a discourse that must produce the truth” (104). Focault originally explained that sex has become an entity of confession through the necessity of discourse, and in this concept above he explains that sex functions on the discourse the provide the truth, that confession now plays hand in hand with sex a notion introduced early on by Christianity.

Teets, Foucault

Foucault talks about surveillance in his piece. I have a feeling that in the years to come surveillance is going to become even stricter and people will be reluctant to act even moreso. Foucault says that “our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance”(101). Phones are tapped, security cameras film people doing any number of things, etc. Once Americans became aware of surveillance they had to either develop stealthier methods to get away with misconduct or they had to restrain altogether. This works a lot like the Repressive state apparatuses Althusser discusses in such depth. People begin to fear for the worst, that their cell phone calls to their drug dealer are being tapped by police officers or the government. The internet has become a huge concern when it comes to surveillance. Internet hackers can literally hack into somebody’s IP address and see exactly what they are viewing on their computer screen at all times. Surveillance is only going to get worse as the government cracks down and law enforcement starts utilizing it more.

Surveillance is one way to discipline people, however. When people are repressed from acting out they will not do devious things. This can be seen as a good thing or a bad thing. People will always find ways to work around surveillance, so is it really necessary to use it as a means of discipline? I think not.

*I need more time to finish this later, I will come back and add the rest in a comment.

Daisy, Foucault

Michel Foucult’s article, “Discipline and Punish,” primarily stated that our society is of surveillance. He said, “the individual is carefully fabricated in it,” (this society of surveillance)(101). We do not realize it is because we have normalized it. It has been a part of society since the beginning of time. This reminded me of Althusser’s idea that both the author and the reader function naturally in ideology. Discipline and punishment have always been driving forces within our society, yet we fail to think of them as anything but normal.
I found Foucult’s article to be extremely interesting by the way he used history to show the presence of discipline within our society. He began the article by talking about the precautionary measures that were put in place when the plague came to America. The way the people in power dealt with the plague was by isolation of society. There was hierarchy put into place among individuals to monitor the isolated individuals, having a person of lesser power answer to a person of higher power, and so on. Throughout the entire isolation the individuals within their homes where monitored and no one could leave their houses except for the supervisors. The individuals were powerless, yet this method worked as a way to control society. The fear that was instilled within the individuals was a way to keep them insides their home. Baurdrillard would say that this fear is still a way to control our society, and the media is the one responsible.
Foucult builds on the idea of surveillance by talking about the panopticon, which was Bentham’s architectural design for a prison. The idea of the prison is that the prisoners are “totally seen, without seeing,” and the inspector “sees everything without every being seen” (98). The idea behind this is that the prisoners will never try to escape because they think they are always being watched. Here again, fear of punishment was instilled within the prisoners. This reminded me of the theory behind ideology. Although we never see the ones in power, we are always functioning within ideology. Power is visible throughout all aspects of society and most of the time we do not realize it because we have become so used to it. The powerful thing about ideology is that we cannot see it, but we see its effects and know it is real.

Kiwi, Foucault

Foucault discusses ideas such as discipline, surveillance, and power relations. The panoptic mechanism is the ultimate invasion of privacy. Foucault explains to us that we are constantly being watched which causes us to be afraid to do something different then the ideologies our society follows. “ The gaze is alert everywhere”( 94). This takes place on an everyday basis weather it be from the GPS systems, cell phones, internet. Taking a deeper look into these different technologies we come to realize that they are all panoptic mechanisms. “our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance”(101). We are the one that are scaring ourselves, yet we are also at fault by providing our personal lives out to the public. For instance Facebook, twitter, giving out our cell phone numbers etc… This has all become part of our culture and we are the ones who are at fault for this. Like eco says, “its visitors must agree to act like robots” we believe that to be accepted into society and to enjoy it we have to simply act like robots and imitate what everyone else is doing. This also goes back to Althusser and how he says that we live by ISA and RSA and how they are created by the people and we stand by them. We don’t know any better and this has all become a natural thing to us. “They tell us that if we want to be successful in life and get a good job, then we have to go to college.” These “rules”, have become so normal to us now that we do what we are told. As Foucault would say, “if we do not listen to authority, we will be punished.” Therefore we continue to follow everyone else.
Lyotard would say that this is exactly what he is talking about how we are living in a world of metanarratives and we live our day to day lives how everyone else tells us to and have the same beliefs and values like everyone else.
Although this reading was somewhat difficult for me I think I have a clear understanding of what Foucault is trying to argue. And I also think that Foucault is someone who can connect to a lot of previous theorists we have learned and I look forward to talking about him in class:0)

Elmo, Foucault

The reading by Michel Foucault was a little bit tricky; it seems to be pretty different from what we have been recently learning about. However, there was one specific quote that I found to be interesting; Foucault says that, “everything that may be observed during the course of the visits— deaths, illness, complaints, irregularities— is noted down and transmitted to the intendants and magistrates. The magistrates have complete control over medical treatment; they have appointed a physician in charge; no other practitioner may treat, mp apothecary prepare medicines, no confessor visit a sick person without having received from him written not ‘to prevent anyone from concealing and dealing with those sick of the contagion, unknown to the magistrates’” (95). While this quotes seems rather dated, it does have relations to out lives today (clearly that’s why we’re reading it). Today the government seems to have complete control over us and can access any information they want pertaining to our lives. They make up rules and laws for us to follow and if we break any of them there are percussions. They dictate to us what we can and cannot do; yet no one seems to question it, we just do what they say. This reminds me of Benjamin’s theory about how we are such absent-minded examiners. We don’t think about this power that the government holds over us, we just play into what they want us to do. I personally can go days without thinking about how the government is controlling my life but when you actually stop and think about it, it’s pretty crazy. I guess that we have been so exposed to it and got so used to it, that we barely even think about it anymore. This could also relate to what we have learned about ideology. The government having control over the general public is an ideology that we have just all learned to play into and not question.

Serendipity, Foucault

The one idea that really appealed to me in the Foucault reading was the notion of constant surveillance. Celebrities, Gossip Magazines, and Reality Shows are everywhere. The reason for this is because our society is literally obsessed with finding out about and watching other people from behind the camera lens, the tv screen, or the glossy pages of a magazine. When these "celebrities" are seen in real life it is a shock because part of our pleasure is seeing them in our private spheres and almost spying on them. Many people get "starstruck" and literally cant physically move because of this shock. Like Benjamin said "the camera lies". We are often disappointed seeing our favorite stars, saying things such as "shes so short!" or "she was prettier in the movies". DUH!We are tricking ourselves by watching these shows and reading these magazines, making a perfect alternate reality, and when we see them in real life, it all comes crashing down. Going further into the notion of surveillance, what we dont realize is that much of our communication devices can work against us. For example, we make ourselves "celebrities" on the internet using Facebook,and now the term "Facebook Stalker" seems like it has been around forever, it is part of our vocabulary. Everyone can see into our lives. Delving even further, we are digging our own grave. If we make the slightest mistake, the government can pull up our phone records, our internet history records, and even tap into our phones and hear what we are saying at that exact moment. They have all the power, and even though it seems like we can do "whatever we want" in cyberspace, there is authority always invisibly looming.

Graham, Foucault

Society as a whole has normalized the idea of constant interaction and surveillance that now exists. Because we are so used to being watched and controlled, it almost seems as if we do not even realize that it is going on anymore. There are so many reality shows that intrigue individuals, and people try for years to get on these types of shows, ultimately being deemed as “reality stars” which we seem to think is similar to celebrities. Why though? Because we are so interested in watching people’s lives and having people watch our lives, that it has gotten way out of control. There are no longer secrets, people tell the world everything, and act as if the camera is not even there. We have become so comfortable with the cameras that we do not even realize that they are there anymore. It is a part of our culture. We are not only able to be tracked by government, along with many other individuals on the internet for a small fee, but we are also controlled in the ways that we all conform to what the law tells us to do. If act in a way that is considered “moral” by the government, we face the chances of going to jail, or being reprimanded. There are rules EVERYWHERE, that are not only set in place by our government, so we live our lives by these rules. This relates to how Ecco said that we all do as we believe that we are supposed to do, and act as robots, for the fear of being punished. This goes along with the reading by Althusser, speaking about ideologies. They are created for the people, by the people, and we choose to abide by them. “They” tell us we have to go to college, and now it has become the norm. It is basically necessary in order to be successful. If we do not go to school, we will not get a good job, which is similar to Faucault saying that if we do not listen to authority, we will be punished.

FloRida, Foucault

“The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions- to enclose, to deprive light and to hide- it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap” (97). Foucault’s reading seemed to be rather difficult. The article discusses ideas such as discipline, surveillance, and power relations. The panoptic mechanism is the ultimate invasion of privacy. In today’s world, we have the use of the internet, cell phones, and GPS systems. The ones, who contain all the power, keep watch over the public. All of these technologies are extremely helpful and useful; however, they allow us to put everything about us for the entire world to see…or at least our Facebook Friends. People know where we are and what we are doing at all times of the day. If we actually took a look at these technologies and their purpose we would realize they are a panoptic mechanism. We are cornering ourselves and making our personal lives completely public. Our privacy is significantly decreasing. Foucault tries to explain how constantly being watched causes us to be afraid to do something different than what the ideologies tell us to do. Our society has become so used to being watched, moderated, monitored and controlled. This is occurring on a daily basis. There are legal guidelines that define what is legal and what is illegal. We usually follow these guidelines. This directly relates to Althusser’s ideas about ideology and how we following not only out of habit but out of fear. Our fear is of punishment. Almost every aspect of culture that we are involved in contains a set of laws or guidelines. This includes schools rules, religious regulations, home rules, and rules set by the government. We choose to follow these rules even though in reality, we are not forced to follow some of them.

serendipity, 5/11

I found the Chomsky and Jameson readings pretty difficult, but class definitely helped to clear it up for me. I especially liked how we were split up into groups and had to think of examples for each of Chomskys propaganda model steps. It really helped me to understand how propaganda, and therefore media, could be such a huge part in convincing the population to think a certain way. For example, during world war two when propaganda was used, it was shown as the norm, so people didnt think of it as an atrocity. Also, now during the Iraq war, the word terrorism is used so often. Nobody is going to be "for" terrorism, it just makes sense in anyones framework in the mind that they should be against terrorism, and more patriotic. Therefore we "should" be for whatever the government believes, with no questions. The way the war is portrayed is also propaganda because it is showing it to us from one point of view, and isnt giving anyone a chance to make their own decision by showing the truth, and both sides of the story. However, this goes both ways, I am fairly sure in Iraq they are making America look bad and the popuation probably has negative feelings towards us as a consquence. This is related to Benjamins notion of "the camera lies" because everything is framed in a way that makes the audience think a certain way. We seem to forget this, and just take everything that is on TV and especially on the news as real when in reality there is a reason for everything that is being shown, and that is for us to think in a certain point of view.

Gwatter06, 11/8

• This week in class we covered two very different theorists who approach very different topics but all, of course, pertain to entities of the media. Firstly we covered multiple concepts and topics from Jameson. One of the more compelling topics that we covered from Jameson was the concept of millenarianism, which is a concept of an end of time, a belief that there is an end of things and we are progressing to that end. For the first time we came across a concept that relates other theorists, not for similarities however, but for its oppositional text. This concept oppositely relates to Habermas and Lyotards belief that we are constantly moving on to better things, stuck with the belief that we constantly strive to improve. I think that our society includes both of these regions of belief. For example, we have recently experienced the concept of millenarianism with the scare of Y2K back in 1999. It was a worldwide fear phenomenon that we would meet an apocalyptic fate to our end merely because our programs weren’t set right for the millennium switch over. This directly relates to ideology, as Althusser would critique, we have been caught in a trap of ideologies conforming our society through mass fear tactics. It was unbelievable how many people actually believed that there would be major destruction on the turn of the millennium. I for one, being young and naïve and not the critical thinker that CMC has helped me to be, found myself waiting for the end in fear. This ideological concept was fueled and broadened by the media. It was only able to become as massive of an ideological conformity as it was because the general populous had so many avenues and sources to be dragged into the fear of the end. This then leads me into the other theorists that we covered in class. Chomsky wrote his piece mainly on mass media and propaganda. One of his main concepts that I found most compelling was his notion on mass media in stating, “[mass media] inculcates individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.” (257) This exemplifies the affect that millenarianism is capable of having, solely through the power of mass media and its ability to draw the populous together. All in all I found both theorists quite compelling and I enjoyed that we were able to take in so many new concepts that we haven’t covered already in class.

DoubleBubble, 11/8

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).

Teets, 11/8

In class on Thursday we went over the 5 essential ingredients of the propaganda model, outlined by Noam Chomsky. The propaganda model essentially demonstrates that the media, which is controlled by the select few, impacts our entire nation in five different ways. The dangerous thing about propaganda through the media is that people choose to accept the world views broadcasted and society becomes numb to the obscene amount of advertising. Americans specifically have this sort of “opine and recline” attitude towards media, where people elect to sit back and just accept what life throws at them. People tend to consume “simplistic” forms of media, which advertisers are fully aware of. “Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the buying mood” (Chomsky 269). For example, advertisers would not want to spend money to have their commercial air during a documentary about the Holocaust or something with equal negative emotions. Advertisers and consumers alike do things the easy way, and it pays off for both fronts.

This whole notion of media propaganda ties in with Althusser and his discussion about ideology. The upper class/media can persuade the masses to believe certain ideologies, while at the same time adhering to media propaganda. Society has a laid back attitude towards these facts, accepting their fate as subjects within a rigged system. Aside from celebrities, arguably, there are no individuals within our society in America. Each individual is interpellated as a subject within the realm of the media conglomerates that dominate our cultural beliefs. Americans also choose to democratically accept the idea of “experts” reporting news, rating movies, etc. The idea of an expert opinion is so exciting people blindly believe what in reality are the words of a complete stranger. These days anybody can call themselves an expert if they work decently hard for a little while at something. Blind consumption is the name of the game, whether it be expert opinions, ideologies, or the propaganda model in general.

Graham, 11/8

When I originally did the Jameson reading, I was not able to do a post on it, because I found it extremely difficult to understand. I understood that it had something to do what the media, but Tuesday’s class definitely cleared up any questions that I previously had. Jameson discusses the way that there is no longer a “shock” factor in our society, because as time passes, and we see thing over and over, we become used to them. There was a slide in the PowerPoint that really helped me in understanding this, and it was the one about rap stars that we all know in society. We saw that it is now normal for them to look tough, have tattoos, piercings, and talk about provocative issues in their albums. This did not used to be accepted by society, but the more that we see and hear them doing these things over and over, we no longer think of them as being a big deal. I related this to society in thinking that it did not used to be okay for women to be outspoken in society. Women used to have to stand behind their men, and keep quiet while doing so. My grandma has discussed with me that she believes it is crazy the way that women are so loud and overbearing, because this is not something that she is used to. I think that this relates a lot to the way that society changes the way that they feel about certain issues. It really makes me wonder what the world will be like in 30 or 30 years, because from what I hear, and by what Jameson says, ideologies, social norms, and even everyday interactions are changing daily. How far are we going to let this go? I believe that it has already gone too far, but this downward spiral of “provocative” actions is going to continue until society stops accepting them. The “shock factor” has been eliminated, but it needs to come back before our society turns into a huge disaster!

Mongoose, 11/8

In a week filled with ideology, propaganda and conspiracy theories, the topic which stood out to me the most was Jameson’s concept of millenarianism. Millenarianism is the idea of an end of time and our progression to this end. To me this ties right in with these other topics discussed this week: ideology, propaganda and conspiracy; depending on one’s own personal beliefs, many of the things which have been tied to the possible end of time could very well be conspiracies or such. Some of the ideas which we connected to the end of time were: the Christian belief of the rapture, the millennial change of Y2K, the idea of a ground zero and various health scares which have lead to world wide panic. Now depending on what you believe, these different ideas and events have been connected to ideological scares around the world and conspiracies stirred up by others in order to achieve an agenda. This got me to thinking about the recent infestation of the swine flu and the world wide scare which has taken place regarding this illness. The reason that this caught my attention on this topic was because of a conspiracy theory that I heard: someone wrote about the possibility of the Obama administration making more of this infection than there really was to it in order to promote their agenda of a new healthcare plan. While I believe that this is pretty far fetched, it has to at least be given some thought based on what we have studied this week and last. We have seen many instances of ISAs and RSAs with this case the RSA being the gov’t and making a big deal out of the flu while the media is the ISA by repeatedly covering both the flu and the promotion of a new health care plan. Now again, I am not sayin that I believe such a far fetched conspiracy, but you can see the frame works of the conspiracy based on our study of these theorists.

Ace Ventura, 11/5

In class on Thursday, we reviewed Chomsky and his major ideas regarding propaganda. I find the idea of propaganda to be very similar to the concept of ideologies that are being impressed upon society through a "ruling class". In the case of propaganda, there is still a "ruling class" that is choosing which ideas and opinions are conveyed to the public whether it is through news, movies, print publications, etc. As a public, we "opine and recline" which means that we have all of these different forms of information which includes propaganda being given to us and we choose to absorb it. Just as Adorno and Horkheimer say that the radio democratically makes everyone equally into listeners, the same happens with propaganda as we recline and absorb it. We could choose to not listen to it or we could be aware of it and critique it so that we have a more valuable outlook on it, but most of us choose to accept it. I think magazines like People or Us are good examples of this because they are often telling conflicting stories like "Angelina and Brad are broken up!" while another magazine is saying "Angelina and Brad in love and having another child!". Instead of seeing these conflicting messages and realizing that both could not possibly be true so this must be propaganda that is strategically used to sell magazines, we buy into both stories, discuss it with our friends to see what they think about it. I think this is partially because of the idea of hyperstimulated sensitivity that has fallen upon our society. We have become so accustomed to receiving news from so many different sources that we hardly notice it anymore and it all becomes mashed up into one source that we take in and almost immediately believe.

Daisy, 11/8

In class on Tuesday, we discussed the theorist Jameson and his ideas of our postmodern culture. Like Lyotard, Jameson believes that it is impossible to be avant-garde in our society. We are living in a world where almost anything is acceptable to be seen in the media, images that would have seemed extreme years ago, no longer do. The media has made it possible and acceptable to watch violence from your home. Just the other day, when there was the shooting in Downtown Orlando, the news was showing the injured people being taken out of the building on gurneys and put into the ambulance. I couldn’t believe it, I felt terrible for the poor woman being plastered all over television, but yet I’ve seen it before. This reminded me of Jameson’s quote, “The underside of our culture is blood, torture, death, and horror” (485). We are used to seeing the violence on television. Baudrillard said that media is part of the terror, and it is not hard to believe when you turn on the news and see these types of images. We no longer need to leave our homes to experience the world; the media does that for us. Unfortunately, when we trust the media, we begin to develop a tainted picture. The media is producing what they want us to see, never giving us the full story. Chomsky’s fifth essential ingredient of the propaganda model, anti-communism, goes along with this. Now instead of anti-communism, it seems that our society is anti-terrorism. The media is giving us something to agree to be scared of. The media starts fear campaigns, using the word terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. Zizek would agree with Chomsky and say that the media is responsible for creating this fiction by spinning stories certain ways. As the media does this, we never question is, we accept it.

FloRida, 11/8

Chomsky’s ideas of propaganda are what really stuck with me this week. Propaganda’s purpose serves to influence the public through different mass media outlets. We think we have a choice in expressing our opinions but it is merely an illusion because propaganda controls us. This goes along with Chomsky’s idea of “opine and recline.” We, as a society, are just spectators with news and media being thrown at us while we just sit there and take. The Ruling Class (Marx Theory’s) is the one who controls what propaganda, media, and news is being displayed. Business corporations are often the ones who decide what is news worthy, therefore business is inputting ideas into the news. I always sit in front of the television and wonder if there is a systematic way for why certain ads are paired up with certain television shows, which is obviously extremely clear. Chomsky states that, “advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the ‘buying mood.’” This corresponds to Marx because he believes that social being determines conciseness. In my visual rhetoric class, we learned that advertisers create ads for people to look at and NOT question. Looking deeper into an ad can cause conflict, which is the exact opposite of what the advertisers want us to do. This is what propaganda is used for, to get rid of the conflict without people really realizing it. According to Chomsky, “In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.”Just like Baudrillard, the media are part of the event; they are part of the problem. Mass media uses flak in order to get people’s attention no matter how it is done. Putting a spin on things always gets the ball rolling. (No pun intended)