9. The two articles I chose were similar in that they both deal with President Obama. The article from CNN.com discusses how President Obama is made a trip to recently devastated Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The article from the Onion discusses how the President’s plan to cut the deficit is to cut spending, make tax reforms, and of course, rob Fort Knox. The article from CNN.com is an example of gatekeeping as well as agenda setting because after President Bush’s poor response to the devastation in New Orleans after Katrina, the media site that is more in favor of Obama is likely to run a story that shows a quick response time, as well as the situation irking the president. The Onion article functions as a breakdown and reevaluation of discourse by pointing out the difficulty in finding a solution for our current debt. Many people in society are critical of Obama because he has increased the deficit by simply trying, yet none of the critics have offered valuable solutions. This satirical articles employs the concept of detournement, which as Jamie Warner says is, “a perspective jarring turnabout in your everyday life.” (Warner 147) These satirical articles confuse people from the everyday perspective by presenting comical relief that is still prevalent in society, as well as applicable for social debate and discussion.
10. My video is a clip of the most recent South Park, in which Kyle and two other individuals volunteer to become apart of the newest Apple product, which is a spoof on the movie The Human Centipede. I related this to Roland Barthes’ article Myth Today, in which Barthes discusses the concept of a signifier and the signified. The South Park episode revolves around Apple placing a clause in their terms and conditions for the newest update of iTunes that states they willingly subject themselves to whatever experiment Apple pleases. I believe that Barthes would argue that, in this scenario, Kyle and the other two people who didn’t read the terms and conditions are considered the signifier because they represent a group that willingly accepts whatever Apple puts in front of them without question. Apple is the signified in the sense that the people trust Apple so much, and partly because no one reads the terms and conditions, that no one would question whether or not Apple would place a clause such as the one in the video. In Nicholas Garnham’s readings he discusses the undermining of cultural studies’ role within education, citing, “the refusal to recognize the possibility of false consciousness, the associated guilt about the status of intellectuals, and the fear of elitism…” (Garnham 625) This can be related to the video in the sense that people are afraid of cultural studies in education because people become aware of certain aspects that allow them to advance. This is not to say that people don’t learn cultural studies, it is simply an inquisition about whether or not it is in our society’s best interest to have people with such power, such as Steve Jobs, running things that we depend so heavily on. Finally, Warner discusses culture jamming, which South Park is a prime example of. This episode points out the flaws in our society’s dependence on not only Apple, but technology, as well as our desire for a continuous flow of improved products.
11. My project over the semester focused on wealthy individuals, often times celebrities, depicted as the ideal construction of an American. Yet, with this subject, I also studied poverty and the efforts, as well as images, that wealthy people are putting forth in order to end poverty. One of the more interesting things that I noticed about the ads I found was that more often than not, women were sexualized in some form or another, or the male appeared clearly dominant over her. There is an advertisement in which Usher is shown driving a car in a high speed chase, yet he has a beautiful white woman in the car with him to whom he is showing no interest. Then from all of the action and sexualized images in the advertisement, it turns out to simply be a cologne commercial. This would be what Butler considered gender insubordination, not quite in the homosexual sense she concentrated on, but certainly in a sense of males being constantly portrayed as dominant over the female. This ties into my first paper’s inquisition, which was to see if most ads featuring celebrities portrayed them as superior to their female counterparts. Oddly enough, when women celebrities are portrayed in advertisements, they are often pictured with a large group of men, or with their husband. More times than not, the female is being pursued or gawked at by the males, which ties into Ouellette’s article about inventing the Cosmo girl. She desired to make women feel powerful, and she accomplished that by giving them a voice in the publication world, as well as a forum for women to communicate and learn new things about how to help them thrive and be happy. Like the Cosmo girl of Ouellette, the male celebrity’s pictured in ads today are meant to feel more powerful than sexy, most of the time, or more inspirational than popular.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Final Exam 5-8
5. Ideology is the study of ideas, or in other words, common sense. It is the idea that if you do certain things in certain places you are conditioned to react or expect certain things. Hegemony is the construction and sustaining of ideologies. The urinal game represents ideology through representation of an understanding of social norms. We are socially conditioned to choose the urinal furthest from people, as well as closest to the door, for no reason other than it is what is expected. Hegemony is represented through the goal of winning the game by understanding, as well as adhering to the social norms represented in the game.
6. Conan O’brien ventures through India in the American Express advertisement, yet even in a foreign country, which I highly doubt is exposed to TBS in order to watch Conan’s show, he is treated as a celebrity. He is distinctly taller than every individual in the city, as well as dressed in a much more modern style, as opposed to the Indians who are dressed in stereotypical turbans and gowns. The Indians are portrayed as exotic in the ad because they are foreign, and in some regards, are what people depict Indians to look like. He also rides an elephant through town, which furthers the exotic look of the Indian setting. However, globalization is represented through Conan’s popularity in a foreign country, as well as the allusion to the fine silk production that is needed for Conan’s curtains.
7. The video How To Make Your Breasts Look Bigger offers a dominant commentary through the objectification and sexualization of the female. She is constantly in need of attention from the Dominant figure, the white male handy man. The video seems to suggest that the woman is simply a sexual tool that craves attention, and that she should try every possible option in order to gain more sex appeal. The oppositional perspective relates to the male displaying no sense of attraction to the gorgeous woman, large breasts or not. It is only when she has highlighted her breasts that she becomes appealing, yet when she receives attention she shuns it off as a success, which signifies the absurdity of women’s obsession with their appearance, as well as the barbaric mindset of certain males that focus merely on a female’s appearance.
8. One of the approaches that the video Mouse Trapped 2010 displays is the idea that, “Cultural studies refuses to assume that people are cultural dupes, that they are entirely and passively manipulated, either by the media or by capitalism.” (Grossberg 634) My point being, that in the interviews with the agitated workers there was not a sense of disbelief that they were, in fact, being swindled out of money. They knew they were being underpaid and kept in a constant state of inescapable poverty. However, in Mickey Mouse Monopoly, the consumers of Disney World seem completely oblivious to the corruption and power hungry corporation they are funding. Grossberg goes on to argue, “But it does not deny that they are sometimes duped, that they are sometimes manipulated…” (Grossberg 634). The political economy ties into this idea of people being duped as well in the form of false consciousness. By contrasting a video of some people attending and supporting Disney World, and another of people who work for Disney and are exposing the unfair conditions, the idea of false consciousness is reaffirmed, in that, people know the facts and know the company is doing bad things, yet they still support it in hopes of the warnings being false.
6. Conan O’brien ventures through India in the American Express advertisement, yet even in a foreign country, which I highly doubt is exposed to TBS in order to watch Conan’s show, he is treated as a celebrity. He is distinctly taller than every individual in the city, as well as dressed in a much more modern style, as opposed to the Indians who are dressed in stereotypical turbans and gowns. The Indians are portrayed as exotic in the ad because they are foreign, and in some regards, are what people depict Indians to look like. He also rides an elephant through town, which furthers the exotic look of the Indian setting. However, globalization is represented through Conan’s popularity in a foreign country, as well as the allusion to the fine silk production that is needed for Conan’s curtains.
7. The video How To Make Your Breasts Look Bigger offers a dominant commentary through the objectification and sexualization of the female. She is constantly in need of attention from the Dominant figure, the white male handy man. The video seems to suggest that the woman is simply a sexual tool that craves attention, and that she should try every possible option in order to gain more sex appeal. The oppositional perspective relates to the male displaying no sense of attraction to the gorgeous woman, large breasts or not. It is only when she has highlighted her breasts that she becomes appealing, yet when she receives attention she shuns it off as a success, which signifies the absurdity of women’s obsession with their appearance, as well as the barbaric mindset of certain males that focus merely on a female’s appearance.
8. One of the approaches that the video Mouse Trapped 2010 displays is the idea that, “Cultural studies refuses to assume that people are cultural dupes, that they are entirely and passively manipulated, either by the media or by capitalism.” (Grossberg 634) My point being, that in the interviews with the agitated workers there was not a sense of disbelief that they were, in fact, being swindled out of money. They knew they were being underpaid and kept in a constant state of inescapable poverty. However, in Mickey Mouse Monopoly, the consumers of Disney World seem completely oblivious to the corruption and power hungry corporation they are funding. Grossberg goes on to argue, “But it does not deny that they are sometimes duped, that they are sometimes manipulated…” (Grossberg 634). The political economy ties into this idea of people being duped as well in the form of false consciousness. By contrasting a video of some people attending and supporting Disney World, and another of people who work for Disney and are exposing the unfair conditions, the idea of false consciousness is reaffirmed, in that, people know the facts and know the company is doing bad things, yet they still support it in hopes of the warnings being false.
Final Exam Evan Pantazis
1. When theorists capitalize Woman as compared to woman they are separating the social construct of a “woman”, as compared to the physical gender of a female. In essence, when theorists capitalize words, such as Woman, they are referring to society’s construction of a Woman, whereas when it is not capitalized it simply refers to the gender of the woman.
2. An audience fallacy is when we assume that we know the demographic and audience in a given situation. For example, if we assumed all people who attended a Bob Marley concert habitually smoked marijuana. An authorial fallacy is when we assume that someone did something intentionally. For example, if we assume that a magazine ad featuring more white people than black is racist.
3. Both videos depict a certain idea of “Blackness”, but they differ in the sense that the Ghetto Delta Airlines video is intentionally creating a satire on stereotypical “Blackness”. However, the Everest College video is trying to relate to a certain demographic; namely African-American, non-college educated, and low income people. It is possible to assume this because of the setting and the individual presented in the video, which can be seen as saying, “I did it, and so even if you are as degenerate as I look, you can too.”
4. The image of the pipe represents the concept of interpellation, which is when one recognizes something by shape because it is familiar to them, much like the common image of a house. The text reads, “This is not a pipe”, which is meant to draw attention to the fact our first inclination to call it a pipe is, in fact, wrong, and that instead this is simply a collection of items assembled in an order to form a symbol.
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