Anthropology 295: Anthropology of Media

This is a test post by Mystery Man...

It's me again, mystery man...just testing...

It is clear that media has an enormous effect on our daily lives. The first day of class lecture addressed various topics relating to "media", including the fact that society is increasingly immersed in multimedia and that "it" shapes people and people shape it. The question of who owns and controls media is valid, also whose interests are being served? After reading "The Digital Dynamic: How Communications Media Shapes our World" it became clear that media influences us differently depending upon the medium. For example, reading a newspaper article about a rainforest in Borneo may not be as engaging as a show on the Travel Channel about the same place. Marshall McLuhan's quote, "the medium is the message" certainly holds true. With the continued decrease in printing and broadcasting, digital media has emerged, argues the author. I would have to agree wholeheartedly, whereas 10 years ago a young child most likely would be reading educational books, they are now using educational video games.
Coercion, by Douglas Rushkoff describes the coercive forces in media, which are always seeking be “less visible.” As I read the introduction, it became clear that coercive techniques are employed on me and everyone in society daily, despite these techniques many of us do not catch on. Chapter two, Atmospherics, talks about and explains “coercive environments” which have significantly risen in recent decades, providing the example of Niketown in NYC. What I found most interesting was the science of atmospherics, established in 1973, simply to increase revenue by increasing the customer’s tendency to purchase goods. A sub category of atmospherics, coercive atmospherics specifically looks at how colors, sounds, smells and floor arrangements “stimulate us to buy more stuff.” I can not count the times a color of an item or scent influenced me buying a product. My reaction to reading this chapter, scared. I knew to an extent that companies use color and such to sway our opinion and buying power, but that specific sciences have been established to study our buying patterns is news to me.
Lecture on Thursday addressed the “empowering” nature of media, providing examples of Youtube, Facebook, and Blogs. I never really understood how blogs functioned until my experience with this one. It amazes me that we can post a blog anywhere in the world, about anything, and someone across the map can read it.

Its seems strange to me that labor day, a day conceived by the labor movement to celebrate working people, isn't really about labor at all. Its usually about barbeques, vacations, and sucking in the last of summer. I understand that, for many working people, time spent with family is in fact an affirmation of life itself, but it seems that, in a country with a healthcare crisis, poverty wages, and huge wealth disparities that working families would be outraged and in the streets. I often wonder why, despite the fact that so many families struggle to make ends meet, that so few people are interested in the labor movement. With this problem/issue weighing on my mind, I went to find some answers this weekend.
Last night, I went to the Barre Labor Hall, an old historic meeting house in Barre, VT with a unique anarcho-socialist history, for a benefit/discussion about creating alternatives to a world dominated by imperialism and greed. One woman asked the young people in the room, "What gives you the spark? What makes you want to be politically active?" After a couple of people ranted, a teacher in the Burlington school district, said, "Its simple, when you are active and engaged, you feel empowered. Empowerment is key. People need to feel like they can do something." She was right. Youth and most adults for that matter are made to feel weak, inadequate, and powerless by hierarchical and bureaucratic businesses, governments, organizations, churches. Change is elusive. Its like Rushkoff says how "they" are in control of the changes. He, however, makes the counter-observation that we are "they" and that the "we" will always have more power that the "they." The key to this observation, however, is that people need to realize that they are powerful. And that's perhaps the hardest part. How does a largely disengaged and frustrated citizenry even begin to feel that they can make systemic social change?
I got some inspiration and food for thought at the Burlington Labor Day parade today. The parade itself consisted of about two hundred trade unionists, anti-war activists, SLAPatistas (members of the student labor action project), one crazy Nader supporter with huge neon colores signs, and some progressive politicians marching throughout the north end and downtown Burlington. The best part of the parade was when we moved onto a packed Church street screaming, "HEY, HEY... HO, HO POVERTY WAGES HAVE GOT TO GO!!" The shoppers and restaurant goers seemed shocked that , on labor day, workers and students would be exorting in a highly commercialized space. It was incredibly important, in my mind, because it seemingly challenged mall goer's assumptions about that public space and appropriate activities for that space. Reconceptualizing public spaces and providing alternatives to highly sanitized and systematized spaces is perhaps a crucial step to empowering people and tapping into individuals inherent ability to create, recreate, and imagine.

success!

I think I'm doing this right.

"The University functions within the rules governing a larger society. It was created for a special purpose: the facilitation of learning and teaching. It follows that the University's policies must conform to the law as well as take account of the particular role of educational institutions. Fundamental to our entire philosophy is our firm belief that rights guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, including rights to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, petition, and association must be protected on the campus as elsewhere, and that local, state, and federal laws must prevail on the campus."
Elucidated in UVM's Policy on Free Speech and Dissent, this statement conceptualizes the university as an open space in which challenges to the institution are not only respected but expected. At the same time, when the policy discusses the "rules governing a larger society" it suggests that despite its role of teaching and learning, it is still part of a highly coercive and hierarchical state apparatus. To me, this suggests the deep seeded irony that free speech is something that can be limited. In this regard, the UVM administration, namely the Board of trustees, have made a concerted effort over the past two years to curb free speech and dissent at UVM by limiting outdoor demonstrations, requiring organizations intending to protest university policy to apply for a permit to the Vice President of Student Life, and placing highly prohibitive limits on postering and other signage. When these limits on student free speech are contrasted against President Fogel's ability to send out campus wide emails, order police action, and utilize a professionally trained communications department, it is apparent that free speech is only free insofar as it promotes an official version of UVM. Of course, this version is revisionist, narrow, and incredibly sanitized.
One of the most important rituals in creating this version of UVM is the quarterly Board of Trustees meeting. Within these meetings, a group of wealthy business people (a majority of whom are old white men, though there is a black man and a number of women) and two students (one of the students is Sterling Winder, who's family donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to build Winder field, a state of the art field hockey field. Quite interesting that when she applies to be on the board of trustees she is selected. ) I digress. I mention this because it captures the wealth that holds the reigns of the institution. Anyways, back to the meeting. The sessions start with a public meeting in Maple Ballroom in the Davis Center during which Fogel delivers a statement on the state of the university. In last week's meeting, he highlighted the highly contrived and newly created convocation ritual as well as the new buildings at UVM. During his fifteen minute speech, he said nothing about actual educators or students and the work that they are doing. They usually continue on with financial matters. All Board members are welcome to comment at any time during this process.
At the same time, members of the audience are allowed two minutes per person during a public comment period. Those wishing to address the Board must be preapproved. This carries the dual function of limiting those that can speak and limiting the amount of dissent that can take place should a community member receive permission to speak. Finding this abhorrent, I along with some SLAPatistas usually start the meeting by reading our own critical statement, almost as if to preempt the bullshit that is to come. Carl Lisman, chairman of the Board, always stands up and screams at us, hammering his gavel. Last spring, when I read an unauthorized statement, Lisman screamed, "young man, you demand respect but you give none." I continued. He said if I did it again he'd have me arrested. I guess this is just one of the many joys of being in a pluralistic learning community. Clearly, certain well placed individual's words are more highly valued than those of the "rank and file."

1,2,3.

Does this thing work?

I've been reading Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye for an english class and came across something last night that harkened back to our group excercise on Tuesday. On page 169, discussing the history of one of her characters, Morrison writes, "Little Elihue learned everything he needed to know well, particularly the fine art of self-deception. He read greedily but understood selectively, choosing the bits and pieces of other men's ideas that supported whatever predilection he had at the moment...For all his exposure to the best minds of the Western world, he allowed only the narrowest interpretation to touch him."

This excerpt struck me because of how strongly it reinforces one of the points we made in our discussion; we tend to believe what we see, hear, read, or experience when it fits into our preconcieved perception of truth, our version of the world. Rarely do we choose to experience a form of media or are subjected to a form of media in a state free of a framework of judgement. While this personal frame is on one hand unavoidable and even reasonable, I think Morrison's excerpt reinforces the point that when our original frame is either self-serving and subsequently re-shaped and reinforced based on those singular motives, or is continuously reshaped and reinforced by the motives of companies who are trying to sell you something, such a basis of interpretation can be a misleading and dangerous thing.

In light of our conversations about Truth anti-tobacco ads and their relationship with Phillip Morris, etc. check out this interesting article:

http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/17/tobacco-anti-smoking.html

It points out that Truth (which is based in Florida) is state-sponsored. Where do these funds come from? The tobacco settlement (a bunch of states sued the tobacco companies in the past decade and brought in hundreds of millions of dollars, and most of these settlements have funded anti-smoking campaigns, such as in Vermont). The settlement prohibits anti-smoking ads from referring to any specific tobacco company or product.

Another interesting point it makes is that Phillip Morris spends more on advertising its charitable efforts (such as funding anti-smoking ads) than on its actual charitable efforts. Clearly, there's a pay-off there in terms of making an appearance of concern that teens don't smoke.

Truth ads have worked to reduce teen smoking somewhat, as the article says. But when they actually work to reduce smoking, politicians aligned with tobacco companies (such as Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida) pull funding for these ads.

So here's my first entry... I hope that it works. If it does, then I'll go to all the other entries and comment away...

I noticed that someone else had commented on this idea with an excerpt from an English class of theirs. I agree with those observations and in blog-spirit, am going to toss some ideas out into the world wide web.
I am perhaps ultra-cynical, but I find it very hard to believe anything at all. As humans, we have perfected the arts of deceiving ourselves and others around us. Even if it is something small, we have all lied and continue to all the time. Which is fine. White lies. Whatever. They happen and they ultimately pretty much do not make a difference. (Bigger lies - bigger problem). BUT GETTING BACK TO THE TOPIC - Belief is intensely personal and if I want to believe something is true, I will find all the evidence to suggest that it is and I will run with it. Self-deception, sure, but it keeps us all sane. I don't know... I find this topic really difficult to write about because it's a very in-my-head argument. But to boil it down, I think we will believe what we want to and when presented with something that doesn't fit our beliefs, we try to suppress it and eventually may even turn it around so that it becomes something that we can live with. I don't know. What do you think.

Whether media coerces or persuades “us” is a good subject to discuss. After lecture it became clear that media tends to persuade rather than coerce, mainly because the first can be good or bad. Media is also experienced individually, as a child some said that media played a large role in their childhood, while others never owned a television, Simply put, media is an important part of our socialization, shaping the way we think and the material we discuss.
The discussion surrounding how retail environments are arranged was quite insightful, especially that of the Farmers Market. Both location and comfort seem to be the most obvious techniques in my mind, using the example of Church St retail it becomes clear. Strategic positioning (“clustering”) is seen with the restaurants of Church St, where the majority are located on the South end of the street. “We” are unaware of the techniques, meaning that it works. To change the subject slightly, I’m doing research for a sociology professor and he had me watch An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore, followed by an article partly about Al Gore. After watching the film it seemed as if Gore was a very good advocate for the fight against global warming, and that he had been one as well during his vice presidency. My perception certainly changed when I read the article, which consisted of several interesting facts about Gore, one being that he has stocks in a petroleum company. I feel this raises an important point
Thursday’s lecture touched on the general principles and approaches to analyzing mass media. General principle three stated that “pacing” is a key component in production techniques. I learned that commercials run at 30 frames/second while movies at 24/second, thus overwhelming us. I’ve certainly felt this before, especially because of the amount of information packed into a thirty second advertisement. Examples of various pervasive techniques was really engaging. Viewing them one by one makes the techniques obvious, but if someone was flipping through a magazine and saw an advertisement they would most likely not realize it. Whether it was a technique employing symbols, flattery, humor, or bribery they all had one goal in mind, to keep you engaged. These techniques certainly work, mainly on the unconscious level.
The assigned reading, which addressed other cultures use of media, the Tongan tradition of going to the movies was a good read, where “intense audience participation” is a common practice, whereas in the US this it is shunned upon. In the 1940’s films were watched with a narrator who personalized the story, adding “flair to the film.” Changes have occurred, with the introduction of the VCR less people go to the movies. One constant has remained however, that the social event is more important than the actual content of the film. This is certainly different from the US tradition of going to the movies and watching a film without any interaction from the audience.

I had always considered myself to be more aware than most of the coercive techniques used by media and advertisers to influence us. I grew up on an island that did not allow chain stores or franchises and I was educated by my parents not to crave material things and to be wary of anybody trying to sell me something. However, without international retail stores or chain restaurants the only advertising that I was subjected to was broadcast on our local television channel and had a production value equivalent to the tapes my mom made of my school plays. I must admit that while I thought I was well trained to resist advertising I had never really been tested. When I did visit the mainland I had a free pass to buy whatever I wanted because the opportunity only arose a few times a year. I first realized that I was not well prepared against American consumerism during my freshman year in Burlington. The ease with which to buy almost anything I could think of completely overwhelmed me and I ended up with lots of useless crap. What I have realized after reading Coercion is that I had no idea of the amount of energy that goes into getting me to buy stuff and in my naivete, I grossly underestimated the amount of energy that I would have to exert to resist it.

test run...finally got it to work

I definitely feel that Douglas Rushkoff’s Coercion further expanded my media awareness. There is an awesome quote that I found on page 79 (the chapter: “Atmospherics”), “Window displays became as important to the department store as stained glass was to the church.” This metaphor illustrates that department stores are drawing you, the consumer, into their world by showing you what they have to offer in the most distracting way possible. The department store, like a church, is your temple. Spending tons of your hard-earned money inside is the way to achieve eternal greatness. You can spend your life savings on that hot new diamond necklace, or maybe it is a new pair of shoes that brings you one step closer to becoming as popular as the likes of Lindsay Lohan (minus the coke habit) or Paris Hilton (minus the jail time). What are you honestly trying to achieve when you allow yourself to be robbed blind by these department stores? Are you hoping that one day you might end up like Lindsay or Paris?
I always get a good laugh when department stores place pictures of such celebrities using and/or wearing the product. Someone who could buy whatever he/she wants chooses to use this product so it must be “top-shelf”. When a celebrity is seen using or displaying a product, the product gains instant credibility. If Paris says that something is “hot” then it must be. The point here is that product placement, whether it is a department store window or on the arm of a celebrity, has a very profound effect on the consumer. The goal of effective media is to suck every last line of credit out of you, in order to buy into a lifestyle. The product is secondary to this false sense of buying into the celebrity lifestyle. If you really stop and think, where would such a lifestyle land you? OH…..but wait….we’re just supposed to get suckered into buying the product….we’re not actually supposed to think this deeply into it, now are we?

so, i'm a bit behind the times, but i'm here now!

blog

I went to the mall for the first time today since I’ve started reading Coercion. I saw things differently. I started my visit by going to an eye exam and I thought that’s where my visit was going to end. After half an hour I was finished with the exam, and decided to get some film developed. Conveniently enough there happens to be a Ritz with one hour developing. I though I might just pop over and get my film developed. Easier said than done.

First of all , it appears that the mall only has two entrances/exits that do not go through “anchor stores”. Seeing how I had parked at the entrance closest to where I had to be, I ended up walking through the ENTIRE mall before getting from point A to point B.
All the while store fronts with flashy signs were pumping out the latest hits and calling to me to check out their latest products. The floor plan reminded me of a continuous hallway from a horror flick. It does not have any sharp turns or definitive markings, I just kept waiting for it to end. The repeating ceiling fixtures make it impossible to remember where you are or where you came from.

While my film was developing I decided to window shop. I was greeted with in 30 seconds of any store I walked into. I made a game of it. I’d walk into a store, mill about and count until some smiling associate walked up to me and asked what they could help with. In one store the associate yelled a “hello” from behind the counter (across the store), came out to greet me, and dutifully pointed out and described some new products.

She then escorted me over to an in-store sink, turned on the tap, dolloped a sample of the product into my hand, instructed me how to use it, told me all about it’s wonderful properties, turned the tap off for me, and handed me a paper towel.

For the first time I was consciously aware of the environment that has been set up for me. The construction of the building was disarming, the slightly too loud for comfort music made me all too happy to keep moving or to find solace next to a glittering storefront display. The special sales, pushy/hospitable associates, and eye-catching displays all lend themselves to take advantage of ,well, me.

Despite my superior knowledge I still left with less money in my wallet, but with much softer hands.

After reading Powdermaker's "Hollywood and the USA", I really began to think about the impact that movies and the movie culture have on our society, and in turn how our society impacts the movie making process. Although this study was conducted in the late 1940's, I believe that much of it still holds true. I think that it is widely believed that there is a typical "movie formula" (excluding Indie films, independent films, etc.) We expect that a character will act in a particular way and that things will end as they should. I think it is funny how movies pretend to be simulating real-life situations, when in the end they are just fantasies of we might like our world to be. It seems that producers and studios aim to tap into our deepest hopes and fears and leave us feeling vulnerable...thus becoming attached to the "emotion" we experience while watching these movies. In life we tend to question certain things like, "how was that sweet innocent girl capable of doing someone so horrible like that". I believe we tend to think this way because the movies have molded our view of what a "bad person" looks like, as Powdermaker suggests. These certain stereotypes are forever fixed in our culture, and movies and Hollywood just serve to perpetuate these stereotypes. Our society loves getting "lost" in movies and carried away with their fairytale stories. I believe this is the case because our real lives are so completely different from the lives protrayed in the movies, that it is a sense of hope for us. Like one day I really will meet that one special guy...Just because it happens in the movies all the time. I think that in our time where basically every news channel can't keep from gossiping about hollywood, we are just basing our happiness more and more on a reality that doesn't exist. Most people except that these movies are fantasy and are made for the sole purpose of money, but why do we still continue to be obsessed with them and the actors in them?

I was at the movies the other day (I saw the "Nanny Diaries", it sucked, don't see it, Scarlett Johansen tried to be an "anthropologist"...) and one of the previews was for a new film coming out called "The 11th Hour" featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as the narrator of the horrifying story about how our we're all going to die soon because we've used up all of the Earth's resources and have caused wacky new weather patterns that are going to destroy us (think "An Inconvenient Truth", on steroids). I am not arguing against the fact that global climate change is occuring or that nations are excessively using resources or that strong weather patterns are emerging. In fact, I believe strongly that all of these things are occuring and that public exposure about this is a good thing.

But, this preview/advertisement caused me to feel very strong emotions of fear and panic. The music, camera angles, images of people dying/struggling to live/drowning in a flood etc., all worked incredibly well on me to the point where I felt physical discomfort from watching this visual media. I then recognized that I was stimulated by multiple persuasive techniques all at once featured in Coersion and the other examples on "Develpoing a Media Education Language".

First of all, there were testimonials of acclaimed scientists vouching for the fact that the end is near. Also, there was strong repition of "now" and "the 11th hour" and other urgent wordings. Graphs, digital imaging and the testimonials of the scientists gave scientific evidence that all of these things are happening/will happen. Because of these techniques I felt a sense of panic and fell directly into what Rushkoff explains happens during a CIA interrogation: "They are all designed to disrupt a person's familiar emotional associations and lead him to a state of confusion... There is an interval... of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis... At this moment, the source is far more open to suggestion."

And this suggestion (in this case a not-so-bad idea) was to get involved with stopping climate change "before it's too late". Unprepared and there only to see a bad Scarlett Johansen movie, I was definitely persuaded.

After reading “The Tongan Tradition of Going to The Movies,” and “Rambo’s Wife Saves the Day,” about Papua New Guinean audiences, I began wondering what these people learn about American society from our movies. I assume that Papua New Guineans have other sources of education about America but if we look just at movies, especially blockbusters that would be internationally distributed, a very inaccurate picture of our society emerges. However, many things can be learned by watching the movies of another society as long as you understand the context. For example you can learn what entertains people if you view a movie as entertainment and not a reflection of society. Even documentaries, which are often advertised as being a reflection of a society (or part of society), have to be taken in context. If someone’s only knowledge of America came from Hollywood movies they’d probably think that we are a super-violent, funny and quick-witted people, which is not very accurate. What the above-mentioned articles show is that there is also a lot to be learned by how societies put foreign movies into their own context. I love the description in “The Tongan Tradition of Going To the Movies,” of the interpreter getting booed for directly translating a movie without adding any of his own flair. Tongans put movies into their own context by comparing characters to people they know and elaborating to the plot in order to add relevance to Tongans. As I thought about this I began to realize that my own knowledge of places that I haven’t experienced directly comes, mostly, from movies. While I’d like to say that my knowledge of someplace like Africa comes from some kind of respectable sources, in reality my understanding comes from “Blood Diamond”, “The Last King of Scotland” and “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. None of which were made by Africans and all of which have their own biases.

We've been doing this course blog for a few weeks now, and thus far I've been unable to think of anything to write in it. It wasn't that I couldn't think of something to write about, so much as I wanted to be sure that whatever I wrote was actually worthwhile, and not just me fulfilling my participation grade by repeating ideas I heard in class. But this dilemma is pretty interesting in itself - I feel as though I'm more worried about how my online persona (which maybe 50% or more of the class wouldn't be able to match to my real face) appears to the rest of my classmates than I am about whether my teacher sees that I've written anything, and that is a dilemma unique to the modern age.

While in the past there were similar examples of this in authors or journalists putting themselves and their ideas forward through their writings, it hasn't been until the digital age that this feeling was so readily available to everyone. Today children are growing up as "published" writers and artists who, as they are able to operate a computer, are documenting their lives on Livejournal or Myspace or sharing music they've recorded on Garageband or posting photos they take on deviantart, etc. And these online personas don't have to reflect the actual identity of someone at all. It's really difficult to just be yourself in these online worlds when you could really just be whatever you'd like.

This can have its benefits and drawbacks. In one of the sequels to Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game", an extremely intelligent child creates online personas, named after historical philosophers, and manages to affect world wide politics with his writings. This is an extreme example of course, but it really shows how someone can reach a potential they never could in real life through the internet. But on the other hand, that little boy took over the world using the internet... Uh oh!

So yeah, I'm sorry for not writing anything for a long time, Luis. But I just really want to look good on the Internet!

I was driving down the road yesterday and saw an ad for Vitamin Water on the back of a truck that read: "It works for 'Big Papi' (David Ortiz)". "Big Papi" was swinging a baseball bat, and there was a larger than life Vitamin Water bottle sailing towards the bat (as if it was a baseball that "Big Papi" was preparing to send sailing out of the ballpark). With some newfound media awareness, I started analyzing the ad. I used the 29 criteria created by the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME) and determined that this ad used the following persuasive techniques: Simple Solutions, Testimonial, Strength, Card Stacking, and Timing. The Simple Solution is that drinking Vitamin Water will make you into a great baseball player, like "Big Papi". There is a disregard for the fact that a great deal of training goes into becoming a professional baseball player. The Testimonial is that "Big Papi" uses the product, therefore it must work. People respect this athlete’s career; therefore they might be persuaded to buy the product after seeing his endorsement. Card Stacking is evident through the “it” in: “It works for ‘Big Papi’ (David Ortiz)”. The real “it” is that the Vitamin Water beverage is hydrating and providing vitamin intake to David Ortiz. However, looking at this ad, the viewer immediately links his success as a professional baseball player with drinking the Vitamin Water beverages. The viewer is further persuaded to buy the product because of the timing. Sitting in traffic, or flying by the ad on the road, the viewer will not have the time or inclination to analyze what he/she is looking at. There is a quick flash of Vitamin Water with a picture of “Big Papi” with the words “It works…” in big bold print all thrown in your line of site for a brief moment. Are you affected by ads like this? I know they sure make spending the primo price for Vitamin Water seem more worth it to me.

P.S. I did some additional research and found this humorous "Big Papi" Vitamin Water ad on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRYOU4VKVcU

After watching “Oh What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me”, I was particularly struck by the quote, “electricity makes angels out of us all”. I think that in the broad sense this implies that media is empowering. For me, I believe that empowerment is one of the most crucial feelings a person should experience. To understand your worth, what you are capable of, and knowing that you can do anything…these are all feelings of empowerment. Media allow us to feel this way through many mediums: art, technology, writing, broadcasting, and even tattooing as we discussed in class. When I think about the fact that media is empowering it worries me a little. I think that any form of empowerment is positive, if used in a good way, but is this the only way that our society tends to feel empowered…by use of the media? It seems that by putting so much emphasis on the “empowerment of the media”, we tend to think that we cannot achieve success in other terms.
Fame and power are two things that certain people strive for. And how could these be achieved without some form of media? We are so embedded within the culture of media, that it almost seems impossible to do anything without it. For example, if I wanted to start a campaign that promotes HIV/AIDS education, how would I ever do this without resorting to flyers, letters, advertisements, etc.? In this way media is definitely empowering, it can help us do good when we need outside help. But this is just it…can we actually do anything by ourselves anymore?
I realize the advantages of being able to spread your words and ideas across the community, but for me there is something un-empowering about having to rely on outside sources for your voice to be heard. Nowadays we can do so much in terms of personal technology…podcasts, youtube, facebook, etc. It makes me wonder what won’t we be able to do in the future? The impossible always seems to become the possible…and doesn’t that scare anyone a little?

I have more questions than answers for this entry, but some interdisciplinary action is going on in my head that I need to purge. I recently read a chapter for an economics class by Peter Singer (controversial, I realize) in which it states that those of us who are absolutely affluent all have a moral obligation to help those in poverty and distress because of our shared humanity. It goes on to say that although people abroad have a more extreme poverty level than the "relative poverty" found here in the U.S., it is human nature to want to "take care of your own", meaning our own citizens or race or neighbors or family members rather than invisible strangers around the globe.

This is when I thought of that Christian Save the Children infomercial thing that is a total buzzkill. It shows images and audio of starving children around the world who are in need of our help, which usually comes on right as I'm about to chow down on stupid food like wings and beer. I feel like a terrible person until the next commercial comes on but it never amounts to much more than that.

The use of media in this way is used as a mechanism to try and create empathy for people and places we don't typically see or come into contact with. It is trying to form empathy for those strangers around the world who experience a greater degree of poverty than we typically see in the U.S. With the collapse of time and space in this manner, is it possible that these images actually work to make the affluent feel as though these starving children are closer than they actually are (right in your living room) and to make their obligation to aid them a more urgent and real one?

Is this an effective, useful or moral way for media to work? Is there a way (since I'm not quite sure how profitable the Christian infomercial actually is) to actually create a sense of empathy and obligation through media that would provide incentive for the absolute affluent to be o.k. with giving to foreign aid?

It is more likely, I think, that our perceptions of what media is/does to us is already too jaded to work for a worthy cause. As we can tell by our "mind dump", whether there is truth in this or not, the media seems to be an untrustworthy way to try and do good. The quest to save the world from poverty and inequality could just backfire.

It is clear that media shapes culture, playing a role in the way we think, what we converse about, and in many other aspects. Our conversations and discussions with others for the most part surround media of some kind, whether discussing the news or watching a movie. Class discussion about “our” cultural norm of being quiet at a movie theater was quite interesting. Why do “we” expect that everyone should be quiet, while in the case of the Tongans, participation is to be expected. In the article about Tongan’s and their movie experiences I found it very interesting that audience participation was a component of movie watching, while in the United States and many other areas it seems to be shunned upon. I thought about the reasons behind the quiet nature of watching movies quietly in our society and could not come up with a good answer, other than the fact that we are an individualistic society, and increasingly so. With the introduction of VHS to the Tongan people, movie watching has become increasingly westernized, a perfect example that technology helps shape and affect the nature of our social interactions and relationships. This is especially true with the introduction of Netflix and other media outlets.
When trying to establish a definition of media as a class the list included many different items. It seems as though the definition has many components and will be hard to define into a clear, simple explanation. Before taking this course I never thought of technologies as media, for example cameras and the internet. Also, media can be social practices, with the example of Church St being constructed to mediate our interaction a certain way. I am certainly more aware of my surroundings and have been more critical when watching television since the start of lecture.
On a different note, going back to the persuasive techniques in media, I saw a commercial for the “We are Ellis Island” campaign. Like the advertisement in the magazine presented in class, with huge amounts of product placement. The ad also gave a website to find out more information, so I thought why not. I went to the website and found it was even more rampant with clothing by Arrow, also riddled with actors. Quite amusing if you ask me, check it out.

One of the things that I found particularly interesting about last class’s discussion was that it raised points that seemed to directly contradict points raised during Tuesday’s class. On Tuesday we discussed the ways in which culture shapes the media. In our discussion of “The Tongan Tradition of Going to the Movies” and “Rambo’s Wife Saves the Day” we all seemed to agree that media is interpreted differently by different groups of people. While the same movies shown in the West were shown in Tongan movie houses, the Tongan experience of going to the movies was completely different from ours. The Tongan screenings were raucous events and involved intense audience participation. Tongan viewers seemed to be far more interested in the overall experience of seeing a movie (including audience participation and the input of interpreters) than in the meaning of the movie itself. This is obviously completely different from the Western tradition of going to the movies, where we sit quietly and pay attention to every detail of the movie. In this sense we see that the media is interpreted differently by different groups and has completely different roles and meanings within different cultures. Similarly, in the case of “Rambo’s Wife”, we see that the medium itself, in this case film, can take on completely different meanings within different groups of people. The article notes that in Gapun society meaning emerges as events are contextualized and embedded in the on-going flow of social life. Truth, or the idea of “truth”, has less to do with what might have actually happened, and has far more to do with the story that the village agrees upon. Events are essentially meaningless until the contextualizing voice of the village narrative negotiates their structure and meaning. For instance, villagers were shown the film Turkana in which there is a 63 second segment involving sorcery. When asked to describe the film, all of the villagers focused solely on the sorcery scene, and went on to describe events that hadn’t actually been part of the film. Thus, the film took on a completely different meaning for the Gapun villagers than it did for Western viewers.
In our discussion of these two articles we seemed to agree that in the act of consumption, people produce new meanings. They are not simply sucked in to a vacuum of pre-established meaning. On the contrary, the film Oh What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me presented a different view. The film suggested that the media essentially destroys culture and can be equated with an environment that constantly shapes us. Unlike the two articles, the film suggested that the world is becoming homogenized as the media swallows it. In essence, it is the media that has come to control culture rather than the other way around. I am more inclined to agree with view presented by the two articles and our subsequent class discussion. While I feel that the media has served to homogenize the world to a degree, I feel that we are missing something major and ignoring a number of important factors if we assume that the media is interpreted and used in the same way by different cultures. If anything, I would argue that the relationship between media and culture is reciprocal.

So this is the second post that I'm making about UVM and some of the unfortunate goings down. I don't hate UVM. In fact, I really just don't like the true festival of bullshit and spectacle that is the Fogel administration. The focus of my ire this week has been the consistent "Green washing" that is occuring at UVM. The term green washing refers to media based campaigns usually, thought not exclusively, carried out by corporations that make token environmental considerations in order to bolster their public image. While I feel that the President's Climate Commitment (A document signed by Fogel promise a move toward Carbon Neutrality and LEED certification of all buildings) is a positive step towards minimizing UVM's ecological footprint, I feel that the campaign fails to critically examine the capitalist ethos of constant growth and happiness achieved through materialism.
In this way, the Davis Center, a LEED Certified (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design) building, has been lauded for its low level of resource consumption in comparison to other buildings of comparable size. In fact, within the building itself, building managers and museum style displays create a narrative that highlights the conservative features of the structure. This narrative creates an outward appearance of conservation and environmental consciousness. However, I believe that this outward appearance belies a much more complicated and truthful reality. For example, while features like waterless urinals and self dimming lights are highlighted, it obscures the fact that UVM is kowtowing to market pressures to alter its built landscape in order to attract new students. This pathway to growth and improvement is problematic in that it emphasizes material development over human development. To clarify, the continuous monetary investment in "green" building seemingly takes precedence over paying workers and teachers better wages, while also linking educational quality to the quality of the built environment.
Within this growth framework, the Campus Master Plan, a document detailing all physical development at UVM, states that the University should, "be an exemplar of environmental ethics and a truly sustainable environment." What the plan doesn't include is a detailed assesment of the human impacts of this development. For instance, the Plan sets no standards for what types of firms will be constructing these buildings. In the past, the lack of responsible contractor policies has led to large construction projects, like the Davis Center, to be given to out of state construction companies, namely W Berry, that employ union busting tactics. I find these practices completely unsustainable in that they fail to support local firms that pay family supporting wages. Damian Hall from the Ironworkers local has told me that because UVM, among others, has used out of state contractors, it has eroded the in state construction business so much that he has to travel to Massachusetts every week in order to find work. Making workers drive hundreds of miles every week while sacrificing time with their families hardly seems sustainable or ethical to me.
Finally, altering UVM's physical landscape has also altered popular conceptions of necessity as well as institutional memory. By this I mean that buildings like the Davis Center and the activites that take place in them currently obscures the fact that those activities took place without the buildings in the past. In this sense, I've heard President Fogel make it seem like before the Davis Center was on campus, student groups didn't meet for lack of a location. Also, in last week's Vermont Cynic, SGA president Kesha Ram, in an attempt to justify a multimillion dollar renovation of the Athletic facilities on campus, stated, "When you talk about a sustainable school, it's not just about eco-design, it means having healthy students who take care of themselves and have the resources and opportunities to recreate." Ram's quote makes it seem like students do not currently have opportunities to recreate and that students aren't able to take care of themselves as a result of inadequate facilities. This notion is largely untrue given the fact that UVM was identified by Men's Health Magazine as the fifth fittest school in the nation. What's more, her statement fails to address the University community as a whole. What about the worker's health and well being? Can they even afford food on what they make? Are faculty members able to deal with consistently larger class sizes? Are students able to afford the six percent tuition increases per year that are being used to fund this construction? Perhaps a more pluralistic and critical development plan is necessary.

After watching the video on Edmund Carpenter and his book, “Oh What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me”, I began thinking about his idea that “electricity has made angels of us all”. In 1973, when Carpenter wrote this many forms of media that are common today did not exist. I would like to hear what he has to say about the internet. Today e-mail, AIM and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are quickly replacing face-to-face, real world social interaction. Human consciousness when channeled through a computer can take on a ghost in the machine kind of feel where the 16 year old girl you are chatting with could very well be a 50 year old man or a well written computer program. Games like Second Life bring this to a whole new level where a person’s representation in cyberspace is entirely self-designed and where their real world desires can come to fruition in a simulated reality. To some people their existence in these worlds feels more real than what is popularly considered the real world. I read an article recently about a man in China who played Second Life for seventy-two hours straight, neglecting his real world needs like food and sleep until he died. In most cases, however, I disagree that electricity removes us from our bodies so much as it extends certain aspects of it. The internet can bring your voice to millions of people, many more than you could reach by yelling really loud. The internet allows you to see places on the other side of the world without leaving your home. Of course that brings us back to the problem. There’s a lot to be missed by looking up a picture of New Zealand instead of going there, as well as chatting with a friend rather than visiting them. Win/lose I guess.

We spoke very early on in the semester about media accessibility, and the way in which it has been drastically increased in recent years by the development of certain forms of mass media. Specifically, the internet has placed the means of production in the hands of the people. Blogs have increased dramatically in popularity in recent years, and YouTube has become this generation’s soapbox to shout from.

And yet, there has always been a disconnect between this blatantly popularized form of media and the more “legitimate” commercial media. Despite the cynicism many people have towards many corporate news sources, most people would probably be more likely to trust a story from their local 11:00 news team than somebody’s most recent ranting YouTube post. They seemed to be two separate worlds of media, distanced by accountability.

Recently, however, this line was blurred. As I channel surfed one night last week, I noticed that the same story seemed to be playing on every single popular/entertainment/gossip news show. A YouTube user had recorded his very emotional opinions regarding the latest gossip and media frenzy surrounding Britney Spears. (Many of you may have seen the video, as it was the highest rated video on YouTube, and as I say, was broadcast repeatedly on television.) These television shows were playing this video, usually in its entirety, and discussing it. Some hosts used the occasion to mock and ridicule the man posting the video, while some discussed his opinions as a legitimate point in what we were meant to believe was an international debate that had developed on this slow news day.

It just seemed so very odd to see this YouTube video on the news. It seemed analogous to printing something from someone’s MySpace page in the newspaper—simply out of place. On a separate level, however, it seemed to be subverting the initial appeal of such people-friendly means of media production. People are attracted to blogs and YouTube because it allows them to broadcast on their own terms whatever they like. By rebroadcasting that material through a third party, it takes away from the initial ownership of the piece. It seems to beg the questions, do people have any ownership for items posted online, and is it the role of corporate media to rebroadcast independently published works?

I watched Factory Girl last night and the DVD opened with a truth ad. It was a man at a popsicle factory. He was trying to sell these popsicles that had shards of glass sticking out of them. At the end of the ad it said, "What if every company sold you products the way cigarettes are sold." Or something along those lines. Well, I though, most companies ARE, in fact, selling products that lead to ill-health, and we simply don't know it. Like this commercial I saw for Oust. Oust is a spray deoderizer. This ad showed a hearty-looking dinner being made and the woman was going on about how unpleasant it was when her house actually smelled like garlic or something that she would make, eat and feed to her family. She was detailing how the garlicy deliciousness would waft up the stairs and be so audacious as to hang around in her childrens' bedrooms! Lord save us! God forbid the smell of dinner should linger, and upstairs of all places! So she had to buy a spray (see ya ozone) and douse her house in chemical spray (peace out brain cells) so that her house would no longer smell of dinner.
So we should spray our house and family with toxic, odor-eliminating chemicals so that we can no longer smell dinner, but we should definitely not smoke a nerve-calming herb that is considered sacred in certain places? See how I turned that around?

Expanding on the concept of silence and sound…Yesterday as we were walking around campus, it was very interesting to actually pay attention to the background ambience of the school. Sitting outside Williams, everyone was actually silent, paying attention to the noises and writing down the sounds they heard. However, after heading to the library and then to the Davis Center, much of the focus seemed to be lost. Many of us started talking without bothering to write anything down. I thought about this and I think this might be contributed to the fact that we are just simply bored with simple sounds. Many forms of media are so saturated, so in your face, with frames flashing before you can even figure out what something is. I feel we are so used to television, where every sound is meant to capture your attention. So, when we just sit and listen, there is not much that is captivating our attention. I believe that it is a characteristic of our society that we are so “plugged-in”, everything is always being sold or marketed to us. We tend to forget what’s actually happening around us. Maybe more people would actually just sit around and meditate, listening to the natural sounds of our campus if there wasn’t so much construction and “obnoxious” noise.

If I were to hear a recording of our campus without knowing where it came from, I might think that it is a recording from a war zone. But I feel we seldom think about this or even notice it, because we are just so used to it. In fact, I think we would only notice the sound if it wasn’t there. When I think about silence I can’t help but think about a horror movie, where there is scary, foreshadowing music followed by unnatural silence, and then someone dies. Why is silence so scary? I think the answer to this might be the fact that in our society silence is just so unnatural and simply does not exist. Our media-saturated world functions on noise…so much that we forget the noise is even there.

There's an article in today's Burlington Free Press about a change in VPR's format. As you read through the article, it's striking how much individual's responses to the change touch on issues of personal comfort, the place of radio in the fabric of their everyday lives, etc.--the same issues we've been discussing in class.

See the article here:

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070930/NEWS02/709300326/1007

Friday’s adventure around campus listening to sounds and assumptions we make was a fun activity. Starting with listening to sounds outside of Williams hall, I began to realize that many different things were going on. While if I was walking to class for example rather than sitting and listening to the environment I wouldn’t have noticed nearly as much of the sounds around me. Our next stop, the first floor of the library was even noisier than outside of Williams. The noise level was quite the contrary to what I would expect, since it is a library. The level of sound may have been more noticeable since it was the first floor rather than the third, where people tend to bunker down and study all day. Lastly, the Davis Center had many different sounds and noises, something that is to be expected since we were located in the atrium portion of the building, where people tend to meet up and talk with friends between classes. Doing recordings for the podcast has also opened up my eyes, or ears, to sounds that I normally wouldn’t recognize or think twice about.
I found Tuesday’s discussion about sound, more specifically about the idea of soundscapes as very fascinating. We discussed how sound is everywhere, where in one second, it’s “there” and in another instance, it is gone. The idea of sound varies culturally, where in ours we think of it as “background”, an example, turning on the television to help you go to bed. Whereas the Kaluli people have a theory of “lift-up-over-sounding”, which is composed of many different interlocking sounds. One interesting fact of the Kaluli is that they can identify some hundred birds by their sound, but not by sight. This fact demonstrates that sound is relied upon much more than in some cultures. They also use song for expression, rather than spoken language, which is relied upon the most in the United States

The idea that "the image is central to contemporary society" (p.4 "Reading National Geographic") stood out for me in light of Thursday's class activity. When we first began to focus on the sounds around campus, all of us were relatively alert. Sitting outside of Williams, everyone looked focused and deep in thought. When we arrived at the library more of us became distracted. People began talking to one another and seemed to be looking around more than actually listening. And by the time we got to the Davis center most of us seemed to have forgotten about the listening assignment altogether. While I think that in part this happened because we moved from a relatively quiet and distraction free area of campus (the steps and grass in front of Williams) to busier and perhaps more social areas, it also seems that most of us were unable to remain focused on sound.
I have tried similar activities in the past. For instance, I have tried to remain "present" in yoga classes, listening to my breath and to the sounds around me, and in general I simply find myself getting antsy and bored. I think that because we are constantly bombarded with images, we find it difficult to focus on, and be satisfied with sound. I would argue that a majority of people in my generation would rather watch the news on television then listen to it on the radio. In part, because the combination of sound and picture keeps us focused by forcing us to use more than one sense, and in part because images tend to bring things to life, or make them seem more real. The phrase "I'd have to see it to believe it" sums this idea up pretty well. Sound, with the exception of music, just doesn’t seem to cut it. We can listen to it for a while and then simply become distracted by images.

I've been reading bits and pieces of Naomi Klien's book NO LOGO recently. The book, an anti-corporate manifesto that critically examines Western consumer culture and media, provides some incredibly interesting insights into mainstream media as well as alternative media. One such form of alternative media is culture jamming, "the practice of parodying advertisements and hijacking billboards in order to drastically alter their messages." In this way, culture jammers reappropriate public spaces overrun with advertisements through highly contextualized critiques. Reappropriation, then, is seen as a means to rearm consumer's consciousness by forcing passersby to more critically examine the advertising messages that populate their daily realities. Additionally, by slightly changing advertisers messaging (i.e.-changing cigarette ads for Virginia Slims to Virginia Slimes) jammers cost advertisers millions of dollars while casually deconstructing advertisements in such a way that, "the superior strength of the Haves become thier own undoing." In other words, corporate power and influence symbolized by advertisements is subtly subverted in a few minutes by making seemingly simple alterations to advertisements.
Culture jamming, then, is a means by which individuals can reassert their agency over public spaces that have been commodified by corporations. In my mind, this power to create new cultural meanings out of ingrained corporate messaging is incredibly important as it allows for more pluralistic dialogue in which messages and their associated meanings are negotiated and altered by the viewer. In turn, this suggests that even in the midst of highly coercive media environments created by corporations and maintained by anti-vandalism laws created by the government, resistance is not only possible, but necessary.

In class on Thursday before our "sound tour" of campus, we discussed the uses or feelings associated with silence versus sound within our own lives. Whereas the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea use certain sounds as metaphor to express feelings and emphasis during speech, visual images and sights are more frequently used in our everyday lives rather than the symbol of sound. However, we all agreed that we are "consciously manipulating ourselves through sound" everyday. This, I believe, is most prominent through the use of iPods at every free moment on the way to class, in the library or on the bus. As we saw sitting outside of Williams Hall, many people put on their iPods as soon as they step outside and this is where that conscious manipulation occurs. Depending on what someone is doing, where they are going or how they are feeling, their iPod choices reflect a certain mindset that they want to achieve. Upbeat songs may be purposefully used to motivate someone to walk to class or be in a better mood. Other sounds are played to cause relaxation or to signify a time to party. These types of sounds/songs found on the iPod are designated for certain moods, time of day and activites. This is certainly a mechanism to control and manipulate one's mood through sound, which becomes an important and integral part of our sound culture, just as birds and voices of the rainforest are for the Kaluli.

Since we were looking at the human element ad in class, I thought this would be an interesting addition too. I TA for Introduction to Globalization and this was one of the first ads Jonah made the class look at.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BH_Kzicf84c

Also... check out the rest of their ads at yourpointofview.com

Once you're done watching the ad....

According to HSBC's website:
We at HSBC, the world's local bank, strongly believe in the potential of difference.
In a world of increasing sameness, we believe it's important to value different points of view and there should be somewhere everyone can air these views and see the views of others

I'd love to start a discussion on what persuasive techniques are used in this ad, and what do people truly think of it? I believe their ad campaigns are incredibly amusing and clever, but in terms of media use, do you all feel that they are success in achieving HSBC's goals?

I first saw Dow’s “human element” commercial while watching the Planet Earth series on the Discovery Channel. It played at just about every commercial break along with a few other ads that raised my suspicion. These ads were stylistically similar: landscape shots of mountains and lakes, very naturalistic and very few images of man made things. Another similarity was observed by my girlfriend, an environmental studies major, that the companies behind these commercials were all heavy polluters. Aside from Dow they included General Electric and Exxon. The absolute disconnect between these companies and respect for nature is incredibly transparent and I felt almost insulted that this connection was trying to be made. I later saw a similarly styled ad, however this one was for the Audubon Society, which made a lot more sense. After my anger of these ads subsided I began to respect the thought that went into them. First of all they are beautifully made commercials. Secondly they were first aired, at least I saw them first, during Planet Earth, a very popular series that the ads attempted to stylistically duplicate. Lastly I realized that falsely connecting Dow, Exxon and GE to environmental health is not at all a bad technique. These companies have obvious image issues when it comes to polluting and many of the products they make are themselves pollutants. The only option they have is to lie big and hope that someone believes them. This technique immediately brings to mind Fox News who, while being extremely slanted, use the slogan “Fair and Balanced”. As transparent as this technique is, it does work if not solely on the subconscious level. It might have angered me but I’m sure that it had an positive effect on people who may not be aware of Agent Orange or the Exxon-Valdez.

I got a call from my dad this weekend telling me there was an article about anthropology and the war on the front page of The New York Times. I love how my parents will always tell me when they read something about anthropology…wow it really is useful for something! I’m sure other anthropology majors can relate. When someone asks you what your major is, “anthropology” usually gets the same questions. Once a woman asked me if I have ever been on any digs…and another time at the laundromat I was asked if it was the study of bugs….oh yes. But anyways…this article really was interesting. It is from Friday, October 5th if anyone is interested, and it is called “Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones”. We have talked about how the military and CIA have misused anthropology in counterinsurgency and certain wars, such as Vietnam. So they are trying it again in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought it was interesting that many anthropologists are starting an online petition to boycott these teams of anthropologists in Army units. Many of them are scared that anthropology is being militarized and these anthropologists might be collecting intelligence for the military. But if these tactics are used in a positive way I believe it could be very beneficial. These anthropologists can offer fresh insight and help the soldiers to see the situations from the local perspectives. Although there is much controversy surrounding this issue, and it has been termed by some “armed social work”, I believe if used right, this could possibly decrease military conflict. It is hard to see an end to these wars when there is a continuous battle to establish a functioning government. I believe that other alternatives, such as this must be explored. Anything can always be exploited, but it seems positive to try something that steers away from armed conflict and allows the soldiers to spend more time focusing on other more important issues at hand, such as protecting the local populations.

I started to prepare a blog entry about Rob Gordon’s lecture, but apparently I never actually posted it…..so here it is…I really enjoyed Rob Gordon’s lecture about dogs. His theories about the use of dogs in Colonial photography were very intriguing. The use of visual metaphors implicated that there was a conscious desire to utilize dogs to represent various traits about human nature. There was the “top dog”, where the dog was above all of the humans in the picture. This “top dog” reflected that colonialism was powerful and was taking control of the savagery pervading the given territory, namely Africa in this case. I must say that I was most disturbed by the image of the dog suckling the Black African woman’s breast alongside her baby. Rob Gordon explained that the caption originally accompanying the picture read something like, “The woman’s milk was the only source of protein for the dog.” Even so, I am still disturbed by that visual image. Which brings up the interesting point that visual imagery has a stronger affect than the supporting “facts” that document what is occurring in the image. Another powerful use of visual metaphor was to photograph the white colonizers sitting at tables or standing upright, while the black Africans were on ground level alongside the dogs. The black Africans were on the same sub-human, animalistic level as the dogs. Living in liberal Burlington, VT, this way of thinking is both shocking and makes me sick to my stomach. I greatly appreciate Rob Gordon’s efforts to bring light to a majorly glossed over and ignored part of Colonial history. I would greatly appreciate any other reactions or thoughts on the matter.I started to prepare a blog entry about Rob Gordon’s lecture, but apparently I never actually posted it…..so here it is…I really enjoyed Rob Gordon’s lecture about dogs. His theories about the use of dogs in Colonial photography were very intriguing. The use of visual metaphors implicated that there was a conscious desire to utilize dogs to represent various traits about human nature. There was the “top dog”, where the dog was above all of the humans in the picture. This “top dog” reflected that colonialism was powerful and was taking control of the savagery pervading the given territory, namely Africa in this case. I must say that I was most disturbed by the image of the dog suckling the Black African woman’s breast alongside her baby. Rob Gordon explained that the caption originally accompanying the picture read something like, “The woman’s milk was the only source of protein for the dog.” Even so, I am still disturbed by that visual image. Which brings up the interesting point that visual imagery has a stronger affect than the supporting “facts” that document what is occurring in the image. Another powerful use of visual metaphor was to photograph the white colonizers sitting at tables or standing upright, while the black Africans were on ground level alongside the dogs. The black Africans were on the same sub-human, animalistic level as the dogs. Living in liberal Burlington, VT, this way of thinking is both shocking and makes me sick to my stomach. I greatly appreciate Rob Gordon’s efforts to bring light to a majorly glossed over and ignored part of Colonial history. I would greatly appreciate any other reactions or thoughts on the matter.

I would have to agree with the last blog in that the book, “Reading National Geographic” has made me look at the magazine more critically. I would also agree with the fact that little alternatives or changes that would make things “better” have not been provided, in representation and so on. However, growing up in a home that constantly had an issue of the magazine on the coffee table I had never really thought of the way people and cultures are represented. The National Geographic Society is a “powerful institution” the author states, one that has full reign in determining what and how people, places, and so on are represented in the magazine. The combination of both scholarship and entertainment makes the magazine somewhat unique in that it offers “new” information to the public, at the same time capturing our eyes with beautiful pictures of far away lands and people. Chapter two addresses the representation of third world countries in the magazine, both as “simple, childlike, and friendly.” Before reading the book I hadn’t really thought of this perspective, but looking back I can think of some instances. It was also interesting to learn that no coverage of the Soviet Union occurred for approximately 15 years, offering an obvious example that the magazine avoids conflict. On the other hand, conflict has been presently more recently, for example wars within developing nations.
The book’s detail of how pictures are produced, edited, and chosen was quite enlightening. I had no idea that so much went into this process, from initiating a story, to actually taking a photo, to selecting the picture(s), to “the art of juxtaposition”, and lastly printing and marketing. It’s a complicated and well thought out process that can take lots of time. As so far this book has made me a more critical reader and observer of the magazine’s structure, decisions making and so on.

To talk more about the National Geographic book, I think it is very admirable of the magazine to allow these writers to really “dig in” to their business. In times where many corporations and institutions seem to be hiding things, it is a nice relief to see some open doors. Clearly the members of N.G. realized that not everything would be seen in a positive light. But as the authors suggested, this power could be called “the confidence of class”, the magazine knowing that it already has a secured place in our culture. I think this is interesting seeing as National Geographic has become one of the most powerful shapers of how we see other cultures. It secures its respect from everything, including the type of paper used in the magazine. I think it is true that because of the glossy paper and official looking binding, it really signifies itself more than just a magazine.

When I think about it, it’s amazing how much the magazine surrounded me. We never had a subscription, but in most of my classrooms in elementary school, there was always a huge stack of National Geographic somewhere on the bookshelf. And even today, going to any doctor’s office, there is bound to be old and new ones lying around on the tables. This could be silly, but maybe because people are just so comfortable with the magazine, for its familiarity that it calms them down when entering the stressful doctor environment. In this sense, magazines serve as a distraction and to ease impatience. And in the case of National Geographic, one can thumb through and not have to read all of the stories to enjoy it; just looking at the beautiful pictures is fine enough. I had never thought about it before, but the magazine really does revolve around its pictures. So many times when asked about a profession, people will say, “I want to be a photographer for National Geographic”. Is the magazine some kind of mecca for photographers? Or is it something much deeper than that? I have always loved and respected National Geographic, but I think it is beneficial to dissect it. When one thing has so profoundly shaped our views of other cultures, I think it is important to question the source.

After completing the audio and video portions of our creating media project, I must say I have a new respect for film, television and music producers. I knew that there was a lot of time and effort involved in producing media; however, I was unaware of how tedious the work actually is. It took well over three hours for my group to produce our two minute podcast, and while I thought it turned out amazingly well, I highly doubt anyone would line up to purchase a copy of it. Similarly, it took us about five hours to complete the video editing process, and we simply worked with the footage we had (rather than re-shooting until we had perfect footage). The project not only revealed how difficult it can be to produce media, but also how easy it is to manipulate it. While we were working on editing our video there was a person editing interviews for UVM tv sitting next to us. The initial interview footage he imported was certainly different from the end product. Simply cutting out the "uhs", "ums" and awkward silences created the illusion of a smooth and flowing interview ( I always wondered how Britney Spears was able to answer questions so quickly and fluidly during interviews). Now I know that it's all at the touch of a button. Overall, I felt that the two parts of our project presented two very different versions of the "drunk bus". On the one hand, our podcast made the bus sound fun and exciting- like something you'd want to be on, and on the other hand, our video footage revealed that this was far from true. In reality the bus is not what it used to be, or at least what I think it used to be. It is empty, awkward and boring.

Vanessa’s post on the Discovery Channel’s show "Last One Standing" mentioned that a disclaimer before the show warns of 'indigenous nudity.' I am a fan of the Discovery Channel and usually find it to be (mostly) culturally sensitive and accurate. Of course when the goals includes entertainment and information the former often has a way of taking precedence over the latter. This show, however, has caused me to lose a lot of the respect that I once had for the old DC. Anyway, this reminded me of a section in “Reading National Geographic” concerning “indigenous nudity” in their photographs. “Reading National Geographic” explains that until the mass circulation of pornography in the 1960s, National Geographic was the only mass culture venue where Americans could see a woman’s breasts. It was also probably the only venue for the largely white male audience to see the nude bodies of non-white women. Richard Pryor, in his stand up act, call National Geographic “the black man’s Playboy”. The book goes on to note the difference between the coverage of nude women and of nude men. Obviously the mostly male audience and male photographers helped to ensure that while breasts were splashed about liberally a penis would not be found, often at the expense of careful posing or even air-brushing. This also reflected historically the sexualization of African and African American women and the fear of black male sexuality. What’s interesting to me is the distinction that’s made between acceptable “indigenous nudity” and all other kinds of nudity. If the deciding factor determining what kind of nudity is allowed is if it is viewed as sexual then I think these photographs bring up an interesting point. In the places where women are always topless I can imagine that bare breasts may not have the same sexual appeal as they do in American society. The nature of the photos, including the fact that there is no male nudity or even older nude women, suggests that those at National Geographic did not see “indigenous nudity” through a strictly scientific lense.

Discussion of the Discovery Channel's sexist tendencies could never be truer, epsecially since I saw the development of these perspectives from behind the scenes this summer first handedly as they filmed an archaeology special in South America. The crew, consisting of all males, filmed and directed the project of archaeologists (all females expect 3). Their reason for not having any women on their crew mainly relied upon "how hard it is to bring women down to South America". Ironically, our project only had 3 men on it and the rest of the women survived South America with much more success and dignity than the Discovery boys could ever do, as they stayed in the most expensive hotel in the country and pampered themselves, adorned with heated marble floors, champagne and chocolates on their pillows.
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Like Vanessa mentioned in her post about the "Last Man Standing", the sexism is definitely visible to the viewers, but what's not evident to us is what actually goes on behind the scenes of these "reality shows" which continually legitimize gender stereotypes and roles. When the users and producers of the media come from the perspective, it perpetuates the representation and reinforces these views whether it is consciously or not just as we see certain unintented visual metaphors in National Geographic magazine. It is interesting and scary that these sources like the Discovery Channel and National Geographic are where we all get most of our outside information about the world and yet it is rarely questioned or rejected. The sources of these media outlets come from a certain perspective and Discovery just so happens to be a sexist one.

Expanding on the ideas of the movie we watched about advertisements…Clearly we realize now that advertisements are everywhere, and even if we don’t think so, they influence us. I have a hard time with this. I would like to think that I’m not easily influenced. But isn’t that what our society is all about: influencing others? Whether it be to buy something, or adopt a similar view, there is simply always something to gain when you have people on your side. How would cigarettes have become so popular if they weren’t made to look “cool” by mainstream media (movies, ads, etc.).
Although advertisements have permeated our lives for some time now, nowadays, they really are EVERYWHERE. When I watch a 2 minute video clip on cnn.com, I must first watch a 1 minute advertisement. This drives me crazy! Obviously, there is so much research conducted about the impact of media advertisements, that companies would only spend millions of dollars if they knew it would work. I think the point is…the reason that companies spend so much is that they know we cannot escape from their grasp. We can choose to “ignore” the annoying commercials and looming billboards…but we often still see the name of the company or product. And I believe that this is really all they want. The more they instill their name, even if there is no real connection, you will recognize the name in a store and hopefully buy the product. So I thought that I was safe from advertisements, but when I think about it…I don’t think anyone can completely ignore the messages. When I’m in the drug store, am I going to buy a brand of lotion that I have never heard of? Probably not… I’ll most likely buy dove, because wait…don’t they have some like cool ad campaign about real beauty?

I thought Tuesday’s lecture by Brian Miles about wind power and image was great because it tied into what we’ve been discussing for the past several weeks. It’s clear that images are ambiguous, where anti and pro wind power organization utilized the same photograph, but in different contexts. It’s become even more evident that the way an image is view can convey different meaning.
The film we watched in class on Friday, “The Ad and the Ego” highlighted what we all know. That advertising is a powerful and ever increasingly employed tool. Teaching us how to consume in the commodity-centered world in which we live. The part about how advertising has developed since the 1920’s was quite interesting, where in the early stages ads were more social in nature, whereas by the 1950’s the material world was developing a shift of ad production occurred; focusing attention on the discontent in consumers. Another point the film made was that ads focus on what is wrong with you and how you can fix it by buying this or that. It is important to note that advertisements never say, "You are okay." In today’s world, it is impossible to escape advertising, on a conscious or unconscious level. We are constantly bombarded with commodity based images in movies, walking down the street, attending a baseball game, or shopping. Jhally’s article in the Anthropology Reader makes the point that we define others through the institution of advertising, we compare and contrast what “we” look like compared to those in the images we see.
Over the course of the semester, I have begun to question media and the ways in which “things” are represented. I look forward to the section on advertising because I have noticed over the last few years that the power of advertising has increased. When I use the internet or even when checking my email, you will no doubt encounter numerous advertisements and “spam” mail.

Since we've been discussing cross-platform media (such as the increasing interpellation of advertising and television content), this struck me: CSI: NY has an episode involving the virtual world of Second Life. Check out this bit in the NY Times, as well as a trailer for the episode, at:

http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/second-life-on-a-tv-screen/index.html?hp

"Cannibal Tours" was an interesting perspective on tourism ad the use of media. It was pretty embarressing to watch how tourists use cameras and such things as a way to capture and own this new place in which they had no real humanly interactions. Instead of uniting people with a common tool, it became the barrier in which the tourists viewed the people. The interactions stopped at the camera and did not permit communication to occur between both parties whereas we have talked about the use of photos and other media to encourage or become the connection between very different people. The most illustrating part of the film was when they were interviewing one of the native men about how tourists take pictures of them and then that old lady appeared leering around trying to take a picture of him from the back. They wanted to take pictures without the people knowing, in a candid, "natural" way. I think that tourism like this, and having evidence that you have been on tours like this, has become a prestigous status symbol, even without the aspect of cost to get there. It is like personally being a part of the National Geographic life even though as we saw, these people had no legitimate or positive contact with those who they were there to see. No understanding, just proof of exoticism, was achieved.

There is so much to say about the movie “Cannibal Tours”. I definitely think there was a sad undertone to the movie. There was such a large gap between the natives and the tourists. When the natives were interviewed, some of them were angry, knowing that the tourists had so much money, but did not contribute much to their economy. At the same time, the tourists were happily unaware that their presence was not so welcome. To them, it is simply an “exotic” vacation. Seeing the women sunning themselves on the boats in their bikinis…it just seemed so ridiculous. As was pointed out by one of the natives…if they had money they would be able to get on boats and travel. It is only the people with money that are capable of experiencing other cultures. The term “backward” has often been used to describe these indigenous populations. I think this stems from the fact that there is simply no trace of the modern world in their societies. But why is this looked at as a bad thing? It is sad that money is the determining factor when it comes to “experiencing” the world. For as long as there has been the means for traveling, it is only the privileged that are able to take part.

There is something very negative associated with the word “tourist”. No one ever wants to look or seem like a tourist. I think that if the people on the tour really wanted to get a sense of the culture, they should have cared less about taking pictures. It seemed as if they were all hiding behind their cameras because they were too uncomfortable to really engage with the locals. Seeing them constantly snap pictures of them…creating the ideal picture by telling them to move, or turn around…it just seemed like they were treating them like objects, ordering them around to get the perfect picture. There just seemed to be no connection between the two cultures.

While reading Watching Wildlife, I thought it was really interesting to run into the same concept of what pictures really tell us that was in Reading National Geographic. I remember when I first picked up Reading National Geographic I thought it was going to be about the magazine and the cultures and places it covered. Yet I find it more interesting that the pictures and movies taken are a better reflection of the photographer/ filmmaker and their society than of what they are “capturing.” I think this idea is simple, yet fascinating. I had never really consciously examined pictures or movies to try and establish what really was going on. I loved the quote in Watching Wildlife by Julian Huxley when he says:

Man is a vain organism, and likes to stand surrounded by mirrors- magnifying mirrors if it be possible, but at any rate mirrors. And so we read the ideas of our own mind into the animals…as if birds or even spiders or newts were miniature human beings, in fancy dress no doubt, but with the thoughts of a twentieth-century inhabitant of London or New York. (25)

When I read this I laughed. I laughed because of how ridiculous it is to think that newts or spiders would think like us. Yet I also laughed because I know that I have done this and I know I am not the only one. I immediate thought of every kids’ movie and TV show I watched growing up and blamed them. In those shows animals are just like “us”; they talked, they walked, and could burst into song at any moment. Yet I then moved the blame I had was towards my parents. They had to have known what I was watching and did not stop me or my “misbeliefs.” I can remember distinctly as a kid being in the woods trying to talk to animals, and when they did not respond to me thinking how I must have run into the dumb one and needed to find a smarter animal that would understand me.
I also remember jumping off of fences thinking that if I really believed I would fly, and thought that I didn’t get anywhere because I didn’t have any pixie dust. I guess you could say that I was not the brightest crayon as a child. Yet seriously, it is dangerous how impressionable people can be. Before reading Reading National Geographic I had always considered National Geographic to be a “reputable” magazine. And to an extent it is. I had never really thought in depth about all the different ways of telling the truth. And in using those different ways or methods, it tells us more about the photographer than of the subject being captured. I think it’s intriguing to go back and have a second look at photographs and movies and try and establish what truly was going on, in the sense of what the photographs was doing. It is cool to examine the examiner, or critiquing the critiquer, by flipping the mirror and seeing what it shows us. It’s somewhat of a complete reversal from what was intended originally. Yet in all of these staged photos and movies, what the photographer was not able to control was our view of them. They had control of everything but themselves.

While watching Cannibal Tours I found myself feeling an unanticipated solidarity with the Papua New Guineans. I admit that just about everything in their daily life is very different from mine, but one aspect of the film was very familiar. That is having to deal with ignorant tourists. I grew up on a resort island that sees its population swell from 15 thousand people to over 100,000 people in the summer. Not only is there suddenly six times more people on the Island, but the vast majority of them seem to be completely lost. It seems as though they believe that being on vacation gives free pass to ignore even the most basic rules of civil society. These violations of common courtesy range from the annoying (like driving 15mph to take pictures out the window or stopping all together to in the middle of the road to look at a map), to the dangerous (like driving a moped in the middle of the road or walking into the street without so much as glancing up). I’m sure that the much greater degree of cultural difference between tourists to my island and myself, and tourists to Papua New Guinea and native Papua New Guineans gives them a much longer list of complaints. The film shows some examples, such as tourists treating the Papua New Guineans like dolls to position as they like for photographs, that I found absolutely shocking. At least back home I know that there are positive outcomes to tourism that allow me to tolerate the summer visitors. Unlike the tourists in the film, tourists to my Island contribute a lot to the local economy. The amount of taxes paid to my small island by summer residents for their multimillion-dollar vacation homes insures that we never have to worry about our town budgets. Many year-round residents also rely on tourism for their own income. One of the more disturbing scenes in Cannibal Tours was one in which an American woman is being instructed by another tourist about how to haggle with a Papua New Guinean artisan. She is told to ask for a “second price” even though she comments on how cheap it already is. I don’t mean to put myself on the same level as the Papua New Guineans in the film, but I know that ignorant tourists can be extremely frustrating and can only begin to imagine how the Papua New Guineans feel.

I had seen the film “Cannibal Tours” previously in a class and found the interaction between the tourists and the “natives” almost amusing to an extent. Repeatedly we see foreigners interpreting the native’s actions, such as their diet and their way of life. The tourists seem completely oblivious to the fact that they are intrusive and the natives despise them. I like how the director decided to do the filming, where there was little to no narration, rather the camera followed tourists around the native lands, filming them buying goods and talking about their ways of life. On another note we do not hear/see the person filming asking the questions. One quote that struck me came from one of the European tourists who said they (natives) needed all the help they could get, to get away from their primitive way of life, and that it will take years to happen but it “needs” to be done. This film does succeed in its goal, to show the “vast cultural divide between the tourist and the Other” as stated in Performative Pilgrims and the Shifting Grounds of Anthropological Documentary.
The film “Incidents of Travel in Chichen Itza” was quite different from “Cannibal Tours.” Rather than the etic nature of the latter, “Incidents” strives for an emic point of view. The goal and intentions of the filmmakers can be debated, whether they wanted to make people look stupid or to convey some knowledge about the area. The interaction between the person filming and those being filmed was quite different as well. In Cannibal Tours the questions are not spoken, whereas in “Incidents”, they are audible and the observer can see the ethnographer/film producer. I look forward to discussing how and with what intentions ethnographic movies are produced. On another note, as discussed in class the assumption and goal of showing ethnographic films to undergraduates is that they will become less ethnocentric and more open to different cultures, this actually reinforces ones ethnocentrism. I can distinctly remember students sneering during introduction to anthropology when watching films about the “Other.”

I thought the chapter about the giant panda in Watching Wildlife was very interesting. Although I have always been aware of the immense media coverage surrounding the importance of the giant panda, I have never really thought about it to the extent to which Chris explains the phenomenon. Clearly, sex is one of the most natural, basic instincts of the animal and human species. Sex, as a topic, is often uncomfortable in some situations, unless it has to do with nature or some sort of animal documentary. From an early age we have become used to seeing images of mating animals, and are basically forced to come to terms with its naturalness. But as Chris talks about in this chapter, what is so natural about forcing reproduction between giant pandas? For some reason it seems that as long as an animal is in nature it is allowed to reproduce as it pleases. But when an animal is confined to a zoo, there is some sort of power held over it, as the “naturalness” of its wild life is virtually taken away in every shape and form.
I’m not trying to go on a rant about animal rights or anything, but not only does the giant panda have its freedom taken away (as it is forced to live in some reproduced habitat), it is not even allowed to practice its natural mating habits. Why do humans always try to interfere with nature?
I know there is much worry about their endangerment, but as they seem to be striving for making reproduction more “natural” for the giant pandas, it just seems to be getting more and more unnatural. They have used artificial insemination, in vitro and even Viagra. Chris also talks about how they showed the males videos of panda mating to try and get them into the mood. As Chris says, all of these techniques “have all been utilized to improve on nature when it does not meet human goals for the species”. It seems obvious that humans do have specific goals for other species and for some reason we feel entitled to change their natural ways. I have always been enthralled by the giant panda, but I really had no idea about their role in terms of cultural assumptions about sex and even political issues.

One of the big things that I've noticed with my experiences with the food network (and there are many, it's pretty much the number one channel in my apartment of six twenty-something year old dudes) is that while it goes out of its way to avoid promoting specific products, it definitely functions as a sort of advertisement. Like Mr. Mexico said below, it definitely pushes people to get into their kitchens and cook. However, like advertising for any product, it only really affects those who are already in the market for that product. For example I, someone who can barely boil water and has little to no interest in spending more than ten minutes preparing food that I want to eat immediately, and my roommate, who cooks for fun and comes from a long line of gastrofetishists, will sit and watch the food network, and afterwards he will have a strong desire to go in the kitchen and cook or go online and find the recipes he just saw, while I simply feel hungry, and will get my food in whichever manner I typically would have (usually for free from the grocery store I work at). So in this way, the food network is definitely just a big advertisement for cooking and chefs themselves, and if you aren't interested, it's just an entertaining commercial.

Hi Everyone --

Sorry to interrupt the obsession with gastroporn, but I just published a whole ton of comments folks had made on previous submissions that never got posted -- so check back through previous entries to see what people think of your hair-brained-- I mean deeply thoughtful--submissions.

I know this blog is a tad bit late but I forgot to post it, so here it goes. I found class on Tuesday, which focused on what we learn from watching television, specifically the food network to be entertaining and eye opening in a way. I have watched countless shows on the food network, my favorites being Iron Chef and Good Eats. Each show is quite different, whereas Iron Chef is high in intensity; Good Eats shows basic cooking recipes in a scientific/simple manner. The guest presenter touched on gastro porn, a termed I had never heard. After going through the examples of word, they are "dirty" in a sense, but I ask myself, does it really matter? It is one of the persuasive techniques utilized to draw us in and hold our attention, remember the Food Network's goal is to make profit. I feel that most of the food prepared on television is for the most part realistic. While in magazine's, photos can be doctored to make it look better, with food shows the hosts and chefs know how to cook. On the other hand, some of the shows display much harder cooking recipes, but those are for entertainment. I tend to have some sort of background noise when doing work and it is usually the Food Network, its entertainment and something to look at. Maybe the Food Network has me in its grip, but for some reason I do not think so. What matters in the end is that it functions as entertainment and provides ideas about food, both essential in one's life.

I guess I’ll keep the convo going about food…its really fun to talk about. It seems that when cooking shows first started to come out, their purpose actually was to help people learn how to cook and give them ideas for recipes. What started as an informative kind of show has launched into a huge industry of food entertainment. Nothing will survive on television without some form of entertainment and drama. Soon enough, people just begin to get bored with mere informative shows. I realized that the food network shows don’t have to be informative. For the producers it is more important to highlight the alluring hosts/chefs than to actually try and help people at home learn how to cook. Because of the numerous forms of media we can access today, it is much easier to simply log onto the food network website to look up recipes than actually sitting in front of the TV copying down everything that is said. Because of this, the cooking shows really are about entertainment, and for the few that actually do want the recipes, the internet is the place for that.
As we talked about in class on Thursday, there is always a desired outcome when it comes to television production. Obviously one purpose of television is pure entertainment…but do the production companies really care that we are happily entertained? Well of course they do…but only because by entertaining us they are able to sell us things. I believe one of the fundamental desired outcomes of television in our country is to boost the economy. What is the point of entertainment unless there is something to be sold? It is amazing to think that one form of technology has been so fundamental in shifting the nature of our family relationships. From our discussion in class, it just seems that with the introduction of new media, family relationships will continue to be undermined. With the option of occupying oneself with a million different types of technologies, there is often little need for personal engagement with family members.

So when my favorite website and source of much of the joy in my life (oink.cd, a massive and all-knowing torrent based file sharing community) was shut down recently, its main page was replaced with a link to this blog: http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html

If you don't want to read it, it's basically about how the music industry messed up big time by not capitalizing on the internet's music distribution capabilities when it had the chance, and now it's lost the support of everyone. It's an interesting read - the guy is right about a lot of things.

It made me think about how interesting and complicated the issues of media control are. For a while people were alright with allowing large corporations to control the distribution of their music - their art. But with the coming of internet technology, there's been a really interesting resurgence of the idea that music is art and should be both free and available to anyone who wants it, if only because the internet provided a way for this to be true in the much-larger-than-in-the-past modern world. So strangely enough, with technological advancement has come a hybrid of the new combined with old ways of musical distribution, namely by the artist and those who appreciate the art.

So while oink may be gone, there's still google, and livejournal and yousendit and this and that and those, and tons of other ways to get what you need because, well, the digital world has revolted, O Industry!

I’ve been thinking about our conversations on what we learn from TV. I think the answer is simple. We learn what we want to. TV is simply the medium, a tool. We as people decide how to use it. By watching TV we learn what we value most as a nation. By watching TV we learn how to become consumers, believers, haters, lovers.
Through this tool that is TV we can see the world. Today we are able to travel more places in 60 minutes of primetime television than our great-grandparents could have dreamed of in a lifetime.
When I have access to TV the History channel and the Discovery Channel are my favorites. It amazes me to learn about places that exist in history, in myth, in world so removed from my own. In that way TV also becomes an escape.
TV is just a tool. IT does not manipulate, convince, coerce. It is the people’s interpretation of the data they are providing, the social understandings that are worked into what is being displayed and the same of the people ingesting it on the other end.
I’m finally digesting the meaning of “we” are “they”. It’s just us. We make the media, we take the media, we spew the media. The cycle just keeps going.

Today’s article got me thinking. What is indigenous? The people who have been there the longest? The ones that can prove that they have been there the longest? What is proof? What about the people who existed there before there could ever be records of their existence?
In 100,000 years time will the Euro-Americans and the African-Americans and the Chinese-Americans all be seen as natives of North America? What does it take?
I feel that war, and migration, and evolution are a part of humanities existence. I do not believe that there could be one place in this world that has been inhabited purely by one and only one group of people in it’s entire history.
So I wonder why the people that we see as “natives” and those that claim that identity feel so strongly about that identity. What happened to the voice of the people that came before these “native”, what will come from the voices of the people that come after.
In a few millennia will my decedents hold claim to any nativism? And will those still fighting to be recognized be forgotten, or remembered, or indifferent. I wonder if nativism is something that could only exist in a more “pure” world. Something that we associated with romanticized savage world. Can a new native ever be created?
I know I pose many questions in this entry. I would like to see if any of you have an answer.

After reading the blog “TV and EDU”, I would agree with the writer in that TV is a medium, a tool, and that we ultimately learn what we want to by it. However, I disagree with the comment that TV “does not manipulate, convince, coerce.” Although it is up to the individual to decide how they interpret messages via television, their are certainly coercive tactics at work which influence our opinion and reality from what we gather from the news and/ or television shows. So yes, television is a technology in which we learn and are entertained from, however not for one second do I believe “we” aren’t manipulated and coerced into believing what we see.
Discussion of indigenous forms of media on Tuesday was quite interesting. Previously, before watching “Te Rua” I had never really encountered an indigenous feature film. I was quite confused about the plot and what was going on in the first portion of the movie, probably due to the frequent scene cuts. Learning that the film was directed with the function of a mask carver helped me appreciate this though. I wonder if indigenous forms of media can become its own genre, as Barclay proposes. I look forward to watching the rest of the film on Thursday, maybe it will all come together in the end.

does anyone else find it difficult to take this blog seriously when it's mostly filled with superficial entries on the topics we just talked about in class, which usually just restate points that were already made, and most of the comments are simple pats on the back? On top of that, our Professor actually said that when it comes to the blog it's "quantity, not quality" that counts? I think a much better way to do this would have been to have specific discussion points which may or may not be relevant to the recent class discussions posted by the Professor, and then have the comment space open for discussion. New topics posted by students would be worth some extra amount of participation points. We could also follow up on what is discussed in the blog more often in class, to at least make the need to read other posts more legitimate. That way, we could at least be guided towards discussing something fresh, and I know I would at least feel better about being graded on my quantity if I was having fun taking part in an active and unique discussion, rather than "post it and leave it" entries and unrequited comments. I apologize if this sounds harsh, I really do love this class but it's hard to know that while I enjoy taking part in our great real-world discussions, so much of my participation grade will be based on an incomplete digital replication.

I have some trouble with Barry Barclay’s description of fourth cinema. When I look over the films that he suggests would belong to this category, I find that all the ones that I have seen fit relatively neatly into a preexisting category. I must admit that I am still a little unsure of what differentiates fourth cinema from the rest but I believe I understand enough to make a few points. The philosophical distinction that Barclay suggests makes some sense, however I believe that it is superficial. The first film that Barclay suggests belongs to fourth cinema (that I have seen) is “Smoke Signals”. It’s been a few years since I watched this film but as far as I remember there were very few things that separated this film from any other Hollywood movie. I suppose it could be considered an indigenous film because it was written and directed by a Native American, but stylistically, visually and narratively (if that’s a word) it followed the same formula used developed by Hollywood. The difference between Hollywood films and art house films is infinitely more substantial then any difference between a Hollywood film and “Smoke Signals”. Because of this I would argue that it belongs to first cinema many along with an asterisks explaining that it was made by an indigenous filmmaker. The same argument can be applied to “Once Were Warriors” and what I have seen so far of “Te Rua.” I do not see enough of a difference between these films and the films that Ang Lee makes about his native China or that Coppola makes about Italian Americans to give them their own category in the way that Barclay suggests. Films that may qualify for their own category might be something like the Australian Aborigine films that Professor Vivanco mentioned in class, where there are profound differences in film style.

Greetings all, my name's David Hoffman, UVM '05 alum and former Williams 511 junkie, and I'm looking forward to having a conversation with you about the following week's section on 'lives in cyberia.' I've put together some thoughts to share about virtual networks from some of my experiences working with social movements that make use of new web technologies and online communities in their advocacy efforts and campaigns. I'm eager to engage your thoughts, stories and questions; I've kept a keen eye on this space over the last semester, so I know there are some great ideas out there!

The whole concept of Fourth Cinema is very interesting, considering that I usually only think of movies in terms of Hollywood or independent, more or less. Before we watched Te Rua, I had an image in my head of what “fourth cinema” would look like. I was pretty surprised by the inclusion of very “Hollywood-esque” characteristics. To me, it seemed as if the notion of fourth cinema would want to be drawing away from these elements as much as possible. Some of the subplots, like the love interest seemed to draw away from the main point of the movie. However, I thought it was very unique in the sense that it was completely from the view of the Maori. Because it was somewhat of a “heist” movie, I could totally see this movie being made in Hollywood, but from the other perspective. The museum curators would be fighting to keep their precious artifacts, while depicting the Maori as “savage” or “cruel” for wanting their lost possessions back. There are so many movies that have been made that only offer the view of those with power, while the indigenous groups are the ones that are depicted as an “obstacle” and you are left with little chance to understand or sympathize with their situation.
I commented about this on Zach’s blog…but I really think there was a problem with the fact that the songs weren’t translated. It was obvious that singing was a very important means of communication to the Maori people. Although a couple times they put subtitles up, most of the singing had no words to go along with it. It seems that it is often difficult to find a direct translation from one language to another, which can leave a big gap for understanding. I just thought that it would have been important to Barry Barclay for the audience to understand what was being sung, in order to better understand the feelings of the Maori.

So, halfway through the semester, I stopped posting on the blog. I was fairly up to date and on topic and time up until that point, but I then went on a very long stretch of forgetting to do this every week and comment every other week. I don't know exactly why I have so much trouble remembering to do this, but I do know that when I must leaf through a book or journal article, or type up, print out and staple together a paper, these things are always in the forefront of my mind, constantly reminding my procrastinating self to just get it done. No matter how many times I have written it down to participate in our virtual blog class discussion, the intangibility of it all allows me to give myself some kind of subconscious permission to forget about it. It is because of this that I am now sitting in Massachusetts, far away from the base of our UVM discussion (in the space and the, ahem, time that this should have been done in), yet finally posting. Please forgive me for regressing weeks back into the course and posting reactions to those long gone topics. But, after this, I'll be caught up and ready to discuss reactions to David Hoffman's essay in a more fluid route of discussion. Sorry for my next load of posts...

We watched parts of March of the Penguins in class on November 1st. It was really surprising to me how this nature film was appealing to so many audiences and that it also served as a way to reinforce our own cultural norms through the use of wildlife and nature. A big hit with Evangelical Christians, the film constructs feelings of normalcy around the formation of a nuclear family, sex and gender roles, and values. More specifically, these penguins demonstrated such human-like tendencies and actions, that the animals became personafied to embody a respectable human population or community. There is an intense dedication to the family through acts of self sacrifice, non-instant gratification and protection of the offspring. The film also produces a sense of community and a sense of naturalness about the existence of the nuclear family and monogamous, heterosexual love. It is this presence of naturalness, or maybe "God", and the human-ness of the penguins that creates these lessons and values to be acceptable to the viewing audiences. Ironically, penguins are not known in the animal kingdom as monogamous, nor heterosexual. However, I think that perhaps this type of media has even greater success at reproducing these ideals and expectations for the audience. People may be even more off guard for these messages to be present and prominent in a nature film, but more engaged to the themes and goals on the surface of the medium, therefore, allowing it to be very effective at subconsciously portraying these messages and pleasing Evangelicals and liberals alike.

The presentation on anti-wind power was an interesting perspective on the use of a media formula in order to achieve a certain reaction from the audience. This example was especially unique because of the counter-argument it makes to the typically positive reaction to clean energy sources. I thought the media presented held an important truth, but at the same time, angered me in the context of the globe, which changes the meaning of this outlet. The negative experiences held by people around the installation of wind mills and power are legitimate and of course important in considering planning for landscape changes and development. This is a different perspective than is typically never explored through mainstream media outlets until now, when the installation of wind mills has effected affluent white communities. Other situations, I believe, that are caused by forms of energy production (clean or not) are cause for more serious and urgent concern. It is in this context that this media takes on another meaning, not just one against wind energy, but it produces the existence of an individualized spotlight on one experience that lacks a more thorough examination of cause and effect. Because of the environmental racism that derives from the nuclear power industry (the mining, waste deposit and location of power plants on Native American lands and reservations) and the social, medial and economic repercussions of this are never protrayed in the media in the manner that this anti wind family was. While it may be judgemental to say, the effects of the nuclear power may be more deserving of attention like the type that was given to the anti wind campaign. The absence of this, in this case, speaks more that the presence of the anti wind media.

Great presentation on the food network's marketing of gastroporn. With the rising popularity of cooking shows, chef-personalities and pornographic images of unattainable food, and the decreasing levels of actual cooking, family dining, and non-microwavable or unpackaged food, the role of the media has helped transform our own perception and relationship with food in our lives. To me, it is intriguing that food has become manipulated in this way. The examples about using soap to give bacon the right off the griddle appearance, or the use of glue in cereal to appear more milk-like and milk even does, create images of the ideal food. Food also has undergone a makeover- from a necesity for survival and nutrition, to the status of art. With the illusion created by images and TV that it is possible to achieve this level of succulence, it truly isn't a possibility unless you want to eat soap or glue. This is part deception, part entertainment and it surprisingly doesn't bother me as do other forms of media that produce false hope. Perhaps it is because I know that I can't really achieve what Giada does, and nor do I try to, so I don't run the risk of disappointment and accept it simply for entertainment sake.

Te Rua as an indigenous media is very effective in portraying key values, ideas and goals that are present within the Maori Renaissance, such as the loss of tradition, struggles between Maoris and white people, and the role of family. But, the content, themes and perspectives of the "Hollywood style" indigenous film were engaging and satisfying to me as a western viewer. It is because of this, (and also the context of the film and connection to Germany) that makes me disagree with Edmund Carpenter's analysis of indigenous media as "media swallows culture. The old culture ways are there all right, but no more than a residue at the bottom of a barrel". Sure, Barry Barclay's production of Te Rua used Hollywood style techniques for appeal. But the central focus, his Maori-ness and his culture were not, in my opinion, overshadowed by the use and technique of this media. His experience and use of media as compared to the master Maori carvers creates a media that is unique and Maori by definition, not simply "western" because of perceptions on who owns Hollywood styles of production.

A recent article in the news reports a girl who, decieved by a bogus MySpace profile created by a family in her neighborhood of a new cute boy in town named "Josh", committed suicide. "Josh" had recently began an online relationship with the 13 year old girl, controlled by an old close family friend, and then began posting degrading rumors and insults to the psychologically unstable and medicated girl. So devastated that one of her positive friendships (albeit, virtual and web based) went sour and cruel, the girl went to the extreme. While this may be a sign of her medical state, it is possible that legal action could be taken against the family and their behavior on the online social network. Is it possible (or will it soon be common) to persecute someone for their online behavior, people other than the usual child predators seen on Dateline? Harassment is a plausible option, but does the family of the 13 year old girl have a case against the family for the death of their daughter due to web based relations? Things like this that occur on MySpace, I suppose, could be considered material for legal action if it were to take place with interpersonal relationships not in the virtual realm. In the future it may become possible (and probably common) that we'll see more and more legal actions specified particularly for online interactions.

David --

A few years ago I participated in an online initiative to bring together indigenous communities struggling with tourism development on their lands to share information on a new development taking hold in ecotourism policy circles: the rise of green tourism certifications. Very few indigenous communities knew anything about them, but their governments were beginning to promote them.

Over the course of a month, the organization I was participating in (Indigenous Tourism Rights International) sponsored a fascinating discussion and similar posting of information from all over the world on issues of certification. It had over 200 participants from 35 countries. We faced many obstacles to participation you mentioned in your paper (access to internet, even electricity, being a common one), and the North-South political divide was an ever-present tension. But when our organization which was hosting the online forum lost funding, we closed it down--just as the conversation was really getting going. Nobody has picked it up since.

But I think our initiative had some important impacts on the elite organizations pushing for certification schemes, especially seen in their increased wariness to reform their process to include indigenous perspectives. Certainly we strengthened the relationship between organizations participating (as long as there was funding).

In thinking about IFIwatchnet.org, I wonder what concrete political impacts it's had in bringing its participants together. One of its major objectives (I hope everybody in Anthro 295 has gone to the site and noodled around) is to "Improve participants' awareness of others' current and planned outputs and activities to allow better co-ordination of activities and identification of synergies". Can you give us an example of one concrete situation where coordination between groups has happened?

At home for break, I’ve once again discovered the beauty of television. I don’t have a T.V at school and have certainly been taking advantage of the opportunity to sit on the couch for hours and aimlessly flip through the channels. The fact that I have absolutely no idea what’s on T.V these days has not deterred me from getting excited by the hundreds of channels at my disposal. I flip from one crappy, mindless show to the next and can almost feel my brain shrinking. While I realize that I haven’t really been missing out (almost every network has been sucked in by the reality show craze), I have found many of the new commercials interesting. I don’t know whether this has always been the case or whether I have simply been paying more attention to commercials and advertising techniques, but I have been shocked by how hyper-sexualized most of the advertisements are. The idea that “sex sells” seems to have been taken into account by every advertising agency, and while it makes sense to use this idea to sell things like perfume, make-up and women’s clothing, it seems absurd, and almost sick to use it to sell things like Clearasil or other products intended for teenagers. In fact, almost everything on T.V (regardless of who it is aimed at) seems to be hyper sexualized. During the presentation on cooking shows and “gastroporn”, the presenter pointed out the ways in which the sounds and images of food on cooking shows are eroticized and intensified. I understand that this manipulation of sounds and images makes anything more attractive, which is essentially the aim of advertisers and T.V producers, but it seems wrong to use the idea that “sex sell” to sell products to teenagers.

One of the things that my group talked about in our discussion of what we learn from television was the fact that most people in our generation seem to use T.V to fill a void. During the presentation on cooking shows a number of people in our class noted that they didn’t necessarily watch the food network because of the cooking tips, but rather felt “at home” while watching cooking shows. The shows reminded them of dinnertime at home. I think that reality shows operate in the same way. Not only do they appeal to people in the sense that people feel like they are watching people like them, but they also seem to make people feel like they have friends, whether or not this is really the case. I have certainly heard people talk about conversations between people on reality shows as though they were a part of them. This phenomenon is certainly not limited to reality shows. Shows like “Sex and the City” and “Entourage” seem to evoke the same sense of nostalgia. Viewers seem to bond with the characters and often aim emulate them. These shows essentially aim to evoke a sense of nostalgia for things and experiences that we may not even have had.

I went onto IFIwatchnet after reading your report and was pretty impressed with the breadth and depth of information and resources on the site. But while I looked around, I couldn't help but feel like the whole site was only really appealing to those who have an extremely specialized interest in the issues surround NGO's and IFI's. While this may be, and probably is the purpose behind your site, I was just wondering if this network takes any steps toward giving people education or some kind of general awareness of these issues? I don't really know the first thing about any of this business, but after reading through several of the headline articles on the site and some of the blog sections, I definitely felt like this was another thing to put on my list of "important things I don't and probably can't know enough about." I think it would be a great place for people who don't know anything about these issues to get their first taste, as I did.

In your efforts to focus on development, personal rights and environmental policies, how does IFIwatchnet.org while addressing concerns of the “North vs. South” in global interests, also address issues of gender inequality with development? While the organization seems aware of certain technological concerns contributed to lack of access to internet through electricity and other such resources, what does IFIwatchnet take into consideration about, in particular, women’s access to education, technology and technological knowledge? Are cultural constructions and social norms that restrict women’s participation in this way powerful enough in suppressing special interests to gender equality?

I realized relatively recently how much we take the internet for granted. It seems odd that something which a relatively small number of people used 10 to 15 years ago has become such a vital part of our lives. As soon as I moved into my house this summer I was eager to call Comcast and get my wireless running, and for the few days that I was without internet I felt like I was completely disconnected from the outside world. The reality is that my need for internet access is centered around school; however, the idea of being without it for even a few days (without even really needing it) seemed oddly unbearable. I think our generation has become so used to being connected and being able to access information quickly and effortlessly that we are lost without this ability.

I found our discussion about Facebook really interesting, particularly in light of the fact so many people in our generation have Facebook profiles. I don't have a Facebook account; however, I am interested in the types of information which people display on and omit from their profiles. Sites like Facebook and Myspace essentially enable people to create their identities and shape the way that others will see and think of them. One of the things that I think is really worth discussing is the way that Facebook has altered social interaction, not simply by allowing people to keep in touch and commicate frequently and effortlessly, but by providing people will access to an insane amount of information about people who they may or may not even know. You can check someones Facebook profile without knowing them and get a clear sense of what they like to do, who they hang out with and how they spend their weekends. In this sense Facebook and similar sites seem to have destroyed the "getting to know someone" process (you can meet someone and already know a lot about them), and have therefore dramatically altered the ways in which we think about and interact with one another.

On the way back to Burlington from home after Thanksgiving break, I made a stop at my girlfriend’s parent’s house in New Hampshire. She had made a plan to meet up with a high school friend of hers to pickup some new software for her computer. This friend is an Apple representative for his college and, after my girlfriends hard drive crashed, he answered a Facebook plea to anyone who could help her restore some her old programs. I have found Facebook to be useful for things like this but I am still very critical of it. I have an account but I seldom use it. My girlfriend, Elena, on the other hand, seems to be on it every free minute she has looking at her “friend’s” posted pictures. I call her a stalker and she admits that she is but gets too much voyeuristic pleasure to stop. Anyway, her friend with the software came by her house and after he caught up with her family I introduced myself. The exchange of words that followed puzzled me. After the standard “I’m Dylan. Nice to meet you,” he said, “Yeah. I guess we have never met for real.” It took me a few minutes to realize what (I think) he meant. As a savvy computer user I can only imagine he spends too much time on Facebook. His quick response to Elena’s plea also testifies to this. If he spends half the time that Elena does on Facebook he no doubt has checked out her posted photos of which I am in many. If he were even the slightest bit more curious, a link underneath Elena’s name would bring him to my profile where he could learn very few but probably still too many things about me. He then could have checked out my pictures. The more I thought about it the more creeped out I got. Without ever meeting me “for real” he probably had a good idea of what I’ve been doing for the past few years and probably knew more than some of my good friends about what my favorite books are. He was a nice guy and I didn’t have any problem with him stalking me necessarily, but I don’t want everyone with an Internet connection able to access too much of my personal information. When I got home I promptly deleted everything except my birthday and my hometown.

One of my friends claims that Facebook and Myspace are CIA conspiracies used to keep surveillance on Americans. When pressed for more details, she asked you where facebook was created. And if you know where facebook was created, you say Harvard and she says that those are top recruiting grounds for the CIA and other such organizations. Though I disagree with her theory, she insightfully points out that sites like Facebook and Myspace, by their very nature, promote people to reveal ever more personal details about themselves, making it easy for any government agency or random person to find information about you. Americans are so funny when it come to privacy issues because if you violate there privacy without them knowing it ( like the Bush administration's wiretaps) people freak out and get pissed (rightfully so) but if there is a social incentive, as facebook provides, to give up privacy, people sacrifice privacy in all kinds of ways. This, then, is analagous to the larger media context in it creates the illusory notions of power and control amongst the general public. In other words, in the larger American media context, people are led to believe that they can form unique, informed opinions based upon the information that they receive from the five big media corporations that control an overwhelming amount of media outlets in this country. However, it is hard to form a unique opinion and or an incredibly informed opinion when you get your information from the same types of media sources with relatively similar economic interests. Thus, by making people believe that they have a choice in what media that do or do not watch/agree with individuals become more maleable because they feel that they are actually making the decisions. Similarly, when people feel as though they are willingly giving up their privacy it seems less harmful because they are the ones "making" the choice. I argue that choice is not equivalent to agency or the ability to have control/influence over someone or something because people are not engaging in negotiated relationships with the media as per their privacy they are more influenced by the media and the choices that its forms demand. While I'm sure that Facebook has responded to users desires to maintain privacy, the site's form or the social networking website medium, implores people to give up ever increasing amounts of personal details by offering ever increasing tools for "self-expression." In this sense, any privacy utilities provided by the site create a false sense of privacy in that they obscure the overall promotion of self-exposure as a means of attaining social status.

So tonight i am watching the republican debate on CNN. i pretty much watch it so i can laugh at all the crazy republicans...but anyways... i was fascinated to see that youtube was not only a sponsor for this program, but also an intricate component of the events during the program. a youtube video would pop up, and a random person or group of people would ask one of the candidates a question or propose an issue. i think this is definately some sort of revolution of media in terms of republican/democratic debates. in the past, we have merely watched these programs and listened to (and critiqued) what the candidates had to say. however, i think it is amazing that this year, we "common people" are able to participate...by broadcasting on youtube and proposing a relevant question...a question that the candidates are forced to respond to seriously. i think this is a perfect example of a substantial shift of the media possibilities. never before have we been able to personally interact with the debates, with youtube, it seems we are suddenly awarded more power and we are granted with a special kind of access to this political world. it seems that politicians are often obligated to confront the issues of the people that are in the spotlight. however, in this case, a random person from some unheard of county can personally demonstrate their concerns. is this a completely revolutionary shift in terms of personal connections with politics? i don't know about anyone else...but this process seems to be very beneficial...and also funny in the sense that the people in the youtube videos often make the republicans look pretty dumb.....

I really enjoyed our discussion about online schooling. One in five students take online courses as of 2007. This is an intermeshing of on and off-line worlds and experiences. Some of the benefits we discussed were increased class sizes, saving money and saving space. A virtual university does not require the upkeep of physical space and decreases the size of the infrastructure. We then argued the true value of the “college experience”. Many of us agreed that college taught us much more about how to live and exist with one another in society than we learned in the classroom. We generally felt that the higher cost was worth the life experiences that we gained by being away from home and living with other students in a community. Luis brought up an excellent point that we approach the use of our computers and the Internet as a form of entertainment. We don’t necessarily enjoy blogging because we would rather be entertaining ourselves with our computers and the Internet than doing class work. Although we are on our computers all the time, doing course work clashes with our desired use of the media. The computer is one of the most distracting places to do work. Furthermore, digital writing is modifiable, unlike verbal or hand-written communication. Therefore, written postings are more thought out because anything you publish online is permanent. What do you think about all of this?

After looking over the handout about anthro and the internet, what was the most surprising to me was the fact that only 12% of the world is wired. For some reason, this figure was really astonishing to me. But I’m also a little confused about it, does this mean that 12% of the world actually possesses access? (like they have a computer with internet in their home). Or does this mean that 12% can actually go out and find a computer with internet (like in a internet café or a public library). I realize that as a western society we are very privileged to have access to vast media technologies and basically anyone in this country can access the internet, even if they don’t have a computer. This makes me feel like we have taken for granted this digital power. As we have talked about in class, we cannot really separate our culture out of the media. However, this is obviously not true for much of the world. We often think that technology has the power to save us, but what about the people that cannot be reached?

I think that David Hoffman’s work with IFIwatchnet.org is definitely a revolutionary concept in terms of using the internet for the benefit of certain communities. However, it seems that so many people probably don’t know this tool exists, and if they did they might not be able to access it. I guess this is the only issue I have with this website….access. How can access be guaranteed to everyone? Especially when the people who could benefit from it the most are the hardest to grant access to. With 12% of the world being wired, it seems that it is only this 12% that holds the power (if I’m understanding this notion of 12% in the right way). I think it is commendable that this project (IFIwatchnet) it really focusing on the concept of balance of power, as it is basing its project in Uruguay. I think this whole idea is great, and I would love to see if it all works out as planned. Although there is the issue of the dominance of the English language, I believe that it is possible to connect to everyone simply by having the option of accessing the site in multiple languages. It seems to me that one of the biggest obstacles is making sure that this is not a western-dominated project…it looks like it is on the right track in terms of this. But it is just so hard to maintain a balance of power when in reality this balance often seems to be somewhat unattainable. As we have talked about in class, the internet can have the power to “advance social justice and promote empowerment…” but only when a certain balance exists.

It’s hard for me to remember the time before google. When I’m doing work on my computer I always have one page opened to google. Anything I come across that I don’t know is automatically put into google, and when I think about it, so much of my random knowledge comes from google. But how valid is this knowledge?? It seems that we have learned to trust the internet in a very comfortable way. When I read wikipedia sites its very easy for me to take everything I read as the truth and forget that some random, non-credible source probably wrote it, and it is actually strewn with bias. But all of this is just so easy for us…never before have we been able to access such broad information and so quickly. The process of research has been revolutionized due to the expansion of the internet and sites like wikipedia. But with all of this, it seems that we become more comfortable with accepting information as fact, when in reality this information could just be cyberspace puke. So for me, although it seems that google is the epitomy of efficiency…it doesn’t seem quite so after learning about the “popularity contest” that it is based on. I’ve often wondered how certain sites end up at the top of the list, when they seem to actually have the least relevance. My fantasy is for google to be able to read my mind…when is this going to happen? And it is often frustrating when the most relevant match is actually located on page 19….am I really going to look through all of them just to get there? So I in a way I believe that google and sites like wikipedia have revolutionized the ability to access information on the internet…but just how credible and efficient are these tools? As we continue to rely on them, it seems that we lose our ability to really critique the source of the information that we readily accept as fact.

On a side note…I think that it is funny that Microsoft word has yet to recognize the names “google” and “wikipedia”…I’m getting kind of sick of looking at the wavy red lines under the words…someone should inform Microsoft word that they are a little behind…

Tuesday’s discussion of the Internet and particularly online courses brought up some interesting points. A couple of summers ago I took a course on terrorism in SE Asia. I found it very enlightening, and harder than courses I took on campus. Some points raised in class discussion included, do you get a richer or stripped down version of a schooling experience. I think the answer depends on how much effort you put into the course, on one hand it is easier to slack off, on the other you must be prepared to post comments and such. The professor/student relationship is quite different online, on the one hand, you will never see your professor, on the other the professor may even learn more about you from all of the comments you post. Ironically, the day before our discussion on the internet I read an article on online courses (e-learning). It discussed how professors must deal with students differently, and that more preparation time was necessary for both the professor and student.

NPR article on “e-learning”:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16638700&ft=1&f=1001

Everybody should check this out:

The NY Times has an interesting analysis of social networking sites and how they parallel (and potentially even displace) oral forms of communication, creating what some refer to as "secondary orality."

It asks a great question: are the forms of communication we see on facebook and myspace all that new? I am always cautious about any claims that what we see happening in contexts of new media technologies are radically new, so I like this question. But I also find the article's answer--that we can look to so-called "primitive societies" for possible clues to what we see on facebook and myspace--way too facile and simplistic (which even this article suspects). For one, it reinstates a digital divide in which the Other (Papua New Guinea tribespeople, for example) exist outside of the time and space of modernity, existing as "essential humanity" while we "moderns" are wrapped up in our technological modernity and somehow stumble "back" to patterns that are deeply set in our evolutionary history.

The article is here: Friending, Ancient or Otherwise.

I was reading Time Magazine the other day when I stumbled upon an interesting analysis of the current writers strike. I don’t know if the author had Marshall McLuhan in mind (probably not) but he couldn’t have written a more relevant analysis of McLuhan’s argument. The article began by outlining the conflict between writers and the networks. Basically, writers believe that they deserve a bigger cut of profits when material they have written appears on the Internet or when shows are released on DVD. It’s a pretty straightforward dispute over money, however, the changing landscape of media outlets (i.e. the Internet) makes this issue more important than it has been in the past. The rest of the article analyzes each party’s leverage and what it means for their struggle. The writers believe that their strike will bring the networks to their knees by making TV so boring that no one will want to watch it. One genre that survives because it doesn’t require much of a writing staff is reality shows. I watch TV every once and a while but if reality shows were the only thing on I would have no problem never watching it again. To sum up their argument, the striking writers believe that content is the most important issue and people will be quick to abandon TV in exchange for the internet and services like Netflix. The networks, on the other hand, claim that they can hold out indefinitely because the medium is more important than the content and viewers will be satisfied with reruns and reality TV. I am interested to see if loyal TV viewers will prove the networks (and McLuhan) right or if the idea of the medium as the message will be struck down as the writers hope. Either way get used to TV sucking for at least the next couple of weeks.

I find it interesting how quickly YouTube has gained legitimacy in society. I find evidence for it in the fact that the most popular debates this election season have been co-sponsored by CNN and YouTube. Questions are no longer written by faceless writers backstage and read by news anchors, but we submitted by American citizens. Most are filmed with a monitor-mounted webcam, and have a feel very similar to any other confessional YouTube video diary post.
What does it mean when media technology which was previously viewed as illegitimate due to the people’s control over it (YouTube, blogs, Wikipedia) suddenly gains legitimacy, and even gains a interactive role was mainstream corporate media? It seems to me that this represents a growing attractiveness of the people taking control over their media, or at least the appearance of this control. An added consequence of putting the control partially in the hands of the people is that the tone of the debate did indeed change from the serious tone of the past, most famously exemplified by a video narrated by a stop-action animation snowman asking about climate change. Some candidates did not approve of this change, however. Mitt Romney initially refused to participate in the debate, saying, “I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman.” Romney himself, however, is apparently not an opponent of YouTube in general, having posted 283 videos on his own YouTube site at the time, more than any other candidate. Romney ultimately decided to participate, and it could be argued that YouTube has now inherited some of the legitimacy held by CNN as the host of the presidential debates.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/08/12/the_gop_youtube_debate_is_back_1.html#more?hpid=topnews

I thought that the ad for the Peruvian cancer foundation was interesting in light of our discussions about the ways in which television has the power to evoke a sense of nostalgia or sentimentality in us. I always wonder whether ads like this one actually work, that is whether they actually urge people to donate to various causes. They are certainly effective in the sense that they grab our attention (either through visual or audio effects) and at least for a moment take us out of ourselves and force us to think about the causes which they aim to bring our attention to; however, these ads tend to lose their effect and meaning when they are followed by Neutrogena ads filled with bright faced smiling teens, or ads for reality shows. I noticed that I was very touched by the ad while actually watching, but was able to quickly shift my attention away from the ad and onto other things. In one sense I feel like these ads are good and necessary, as they force us to pay attention to things that we might not otherwise know or think about, but on the other hand I feel like, as with other forms of technology, they desensitize us. We are so used to seeing “moving” ads about the “plight” of those who are far removed from us that I feel like many people become used to simply brushing them off.

I thought that the presentation on second life was awesome. I always find people’s serious involvement in virtual realities interesting. One of the things that I find most fascinating about virtual reality is how much it tells us about actual reality. As Marshall McLuhan notes in “The Medium is the Message” whenever a new technology emerges, it fundamentality changes the ways in which individuals think about and relate to one another. It was clear from the presentation that most of the individuals who took second life seriously and who spent vast amounts of time in this virtual world were, in actuality, living in less than ideal situations. The single mom who could not afford to go out, the man who had been unhappily engaged for several years, and the “fury” all seemed to be in situations where they felt unable to relate to others in their actual society, and seemed to feel more comfortable in a virtual reality (or at least felt comfortable using second life as a social outlet). Virtual reality in a sense enables us to work out many of the imperfections in our real lives by creating other lives for ourselves. Technology has in many ways allowed us to exist in complete isolation from one another, which has inevitably effected, either positively or negatively, the ways in which we socialize with one another. The possibility of being able to be whoever we want to be, even if it isn’t real, enables many people who feel socially awkward in reality to relate to others. I personally find virtual realities bizarre, but I think it is difficult to say whether their effects have been wholly good or bad. I don’t know whether the existence of virtual realities has resulted in more isolation, as people no longer have to actually engage with others in order to have social lives, or whether virtual realties have enable many people who previously had no social outlets to relate to others. Regardless, I think that the popularity of virtual reality says a lot about how unfulfilled, or socially disengaged people feel in the actual world.

Last weekend I saw a bluegrass band called Hot Buttered Rum at Higher Ground. The band is an all string band that plays a mix of traditional and new bluegrass (newgrass). Touring the country tirelessly in their veggie oil bus, they have been part of a larger repopularization of bluegrass music among younger people (and older folks too for that matter). The long and short of it is that they have a really dedicated fan base that loves to see them live (their live performances are high energy musical mastery). However, most fans only were able to catch a live show once or twice a year given the spanning touring schedules that the band maintains. Basically, they couldn't be everywhere at once...until now.
At the show on Saturday, a view dedicated fans did a live simulcast of the show online, streaming high-quality content over the fansite morebutter.com. My friend Colin, who lives in Arizona, listened to the entire show from the comforts of his computer. He later asked me if I thought that the members of another band that sat in for one of the songs were off beat (which they were). While I was impressed by the quality of the broadcast, I really can't imagine listening to a live show on line. Don't get me wrong, I love live music recordings but there's just something that seems boring about listening to a simulcast live show, especially a bluegrass show where half the fun is dancing like a monkey. In this way, the digital radio medium cannot create the energy of being at a concert in a crowd with hundreds of other people dancing to mutually appreciated music. To take this a step further, I believe that the radio remove the ritual context of going to a concert in that you don't wait in line, buy the ticket, get searched by the bouncers, dance with friends, meet strangers, etc. As such, radio carries with it an overtly desocialized message, one that removes direct human interaction as well as ritual context. Jo Tacchi, in his article "Radio Texture: Between Self and Others," clarifies radio's message when he states, "radio sound creates a textured "soundscape"...within which people move around and live their daily lives...these sounds, on both a social and personal level, can be seen to connect with other places and other times. Linked with memories and feelings, either experienced or imagined, they can evoke different states of mind and moods." As Tacchi indicates radio fragments human experience by juxtaposing disparate social places and times while also serving as a component of other experiences within daily life, not the focal point of activity as in live performance. Furthermore, "radio can be used in this pseudo social way to create a self that could, or would like to be, social. This makes listening to the radio a social activity, in that it can act to reinforce sociality and a sense of social self, and at the same time has the potential to fill perceived gaps in one's social life" (Tacchi, 242). Thus, radio is paradoxically, social and unsocial. For instance, my friend Colin, a huge Hot Buttered Rum fan, used the radio to mimick the social experience that he would normally have at a live performance. Accordingly, he confirmed to himself his hardcore fan status (thus constructing the social self) while also filling his social desire for that particular live music experience. Regardless, I still feel that live music ought be lived in context it originates in order to have a truly social experience.

Here's a new one: coloring books and comics to teach kids about molestation and sexual abuse by priests. Check out this article that I first found on the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and then on Newsweek. It explains how certain Catholic schools in New York are distributing these fun cartoons for kids to color and read while instilling some fear about sexual predators and also, continuing to avoid talking to children about things that are unconfortable for adults. The example reprinted in Newsweek warns children against being alone in a closed room with an adult, accompanied by a picture of a waving priest. It advertises to children that people they know and trust, like priests and nuns and bishops, can be the ones who are unsafe to be alone with. But it's not just priests the children must worry about, it's also online predators. And in the comic, the kids can even color in the online predator with his exposed chest hair. If the medium is the message, then what exactly is being said here?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/73270

for another perspective, here's the El Mundo version:
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/12/05/internacional/1196873786.html

(it may be possible to translate the article into English, but I'm unsure how to do it).

The notion of the “indigenous aesthetic” is something that came up for me a few times in this class, most recently when watching Te Rua. When consuming indigenously-produced media as a westerner, particularly indigenously-produced art, we have certain expectations. Specifically, we expect the product to possess an aesthetic in some way distinct from what we are used to. I believe this came out in class discussion prior to watching Te Rua, in discussion of the Native American film Smoke Signals. Some people overlook the fact that this is an example of indigenous media because the aesthetic of the film is so familiar to us as distinctly Hollywood. The same statement could be made in regards to Te Rua. Despite the fact that this film is even more removed from Hollywood geographically, it still shares many of the same aesthetics that are so familiar to a western audience. In this way, these movies have the potential to lose something to some western viewers. However, despite the borrowed techniques, there is something distinctly Maori about Te Rua, in the way in which Barry Barclay incorporated some of the aesthetics of Maori weaving.
This also reminds me of the film that we saw regarding tourism and the purchase of indigenous art. When westerners consume indigenous art, they have some preconceived notion in their mind of what it should look like. We both other and homogenize indigenous cultures and their art when we make assumptions and expectations regarding their aesthetic qualities. On the other hand, it should not be disregarded that the influences of Western art and culture are permeating the art of other cultures, as evidenced by films such as Te Rua and Smoke Signals.

I stumbled upon an interesting and relevant article today concerning Second Life. With more Universities teaching classes in Second Life’s virtual world, Georgia State University has constructed a virtual island within Second Life to teach Professors how to teach courses in the game (many Second Lifers actually get offended when Second Life is referred to as a game). I initially did not believe that Second Life could be a very valuable teaching tool. This article, however, provides some interesting examples of how it can be used. “For example, architecture students can build a virtual house instead of simply designing one on paper. Clothing design students can hold a virtual fashion show. Business students can start a company and see how it does without risking startup capital. And other students can see the impact of a tsunami or hurricane coming ashore.” One professor praises Second Life for providing a place where students can experience things that might be too expensive or too dangerous in the real world. While I initially doubted that Second Life would be anything more than a game I have to admit that I may have been a little short sighted. The practical implications of Second Life, as well as other forms of virtual reality, could be huge. Someone on this blog likened Second Life to the Matrix and that comparison may not be to far off. I think the fact that Ailin Graef, a Second Life real estate baroness, has made over one million real dollars in Second Life is a testament to its power.

Here's a link to the article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22115492/

I really feel that the internet, because of the anonimity and/or social distance it provides, creates the opportunity and nexus for all kinds of nasty and passive agressive behavior. As such, some users avoid resolving conflicts through direct face to face communication, instead choosing to send emails, messages, and angry posts to vetn frustrations. For instance, I am living in a house next year with eight other people and right now we are trying to figure out who will have what room. We picked a date and a time to go and look at the house over email because it is just too hard for us all to get together and agree on a time. During this process, one of my housemates (#1) told us that she wouldn't be able to make a time that was good for everyone else because she had cook crew at Slade (our current house). Another housemate (#2) responded stating, " [name ommitted]! its at 7!! you can still cook dinner, save yourself a plate, and come back to clean.. i think its really important to do this now.. and it seems like this time works for everyone else not to mention the 8 people who live there..and we all know its impossible to find a good time.. so coooperate woman! :)" After speaking to housemate #2 about this later on, she told me that her email was meant to be a friendly reminder about a meeting based on rational arguments and what she felt was best for the groups. However, because housemate #2 could not convey her tone in the email, housemate #1 interpreted her email as being hostile and mean spirited. Accordingly, #1 responded, "Wow [name omitted] I can feel the hostility through your email. I'm not sure why you have to "yell" at me over an email about this. It makes me feel really shitty when you do this and you do it a lot, so please, especially since we're living together next semester watch your tone of voice and be mindful of how you are addressing an issue you have with someone, even if it is over an email." Even though they live less than twenty feet from one another in their current living situation, both parties used the internet to avoid direct communication while also using the social distance to express harsher emotions than normal. Also, using words like "yell" and "tone of voice," #1 perceived a tone that wasn't present because email as a medium limits users to textual expression. While exclamation points can indicate stronger emotion, they still do not convey the range of emotions expressed by vocal tone, as they are ambiguous. Obviously, ambiguity allows for misunderstanding. In this case, when the two housemates sat down and talked face to face, they realized that there wasn't an issue and they apologized to one another. This, in my opinion, confirms the necessesity, even in this digital age for face to face interaction, as it allows those involved to use non-verbal communication (facial expressions and tone) to deal with conflict. I just have to wonder what type of social impact indirect nasty commentary has on people that don't know each other and can't eventually have that face to face interaction. What happens if someone gets says something on second life that's misinterpreted and a huge argument erupts? Has the internet made people feel more entitled to be nasty? Were they always this way? I think its interesting when media types claim that they internet has made communication more convinient and more readily available because while those things are true, the web, if anything, has made communication that much more complicated and alienating.

the presentations that we had last class were really great. but what makes video or audio a media artifact? i find it hard to call something an artifact that is not tangible. what makes something an artifact? is it only something that remains from a previous life?

Merrium-Webster defines an artifact as:

1 a: something created by humans usually for a practical purpose; especially : an object remaining from a particular period
b: something characteristic of or resulting from a particular human institution, period, trend, or individual

so, it appears that audio and video does count. it just feels wrong. in a thousand years what is going to remain of our culture? i think that if we keep putting so much of ourselves and our culture into the virtual we will lose ourselves. if electricity can make angles of us all, i suspect that eventually it will make ghosts of us all as well.

During the presentation on the sale of outdoor gear items I was struck by how much companies use the ‘only available for a limited period of time’ tactic to sell items. I can recall numerous commercials in which the viewer is told that he or she will get a discount if they call within the next 5 or 10 minutes. The thing that always struck me as strange was that these ads seemed to be on for hours, proving that the items were not available for a limited period of time. They were always available and probably for the same price. The ads seem to have been created to hook people into to watching them while flipping through channels, to look at an item, which in reality they probably didn’t even really want or need, and to buy it impulsively. The time constraint essentially limits the amount of time you spend actually logically thinking about your purchase. You end up getting caught up in the thrill of the race to buy, and in many cases lose all sense of reality or real needs.

One thing that I wish we talked about more explicitly in this class is how activists affect and are affected by the media. While we examined alternative media spaces created by fourth cinema, the zapatistas, and others in addition to making our own media, I wish we would have engaged in more of a more direct discussion of ways that individuals and collectives are subverting corporate dominated media. I think that this would have provided a nice counterpoint to all the time we spent on how Americans are coerced and thereby marginalized by advertisers and corporate media sources. In this way, deconstructing examples of popular resistance to hierarchical domination is thoroughly empowering, as it shows that fighting back is not only possible, but a viable and necessary means for engendering social change.
For instance, it would have been sweet to examine the Yes Men, an activist collective in which members pose as high level corporate spokespeople that expose corporate human rights violations by providing false statements during press conferences. They establish legitimacy by creating fake websites through which they solicit and accept invitations to appear at business conferences and on television. In one case, one of the Yes Men, posing as a spokesperson for Dow Chemical, promised twelve billion dollars (money obtained by liquiding their subsidiary Union Carbide) to the victims of a massive chemical spill in Bhopal India on BBC News (to access the clip go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlUQ2sUti8o). A couple hours after the liquidation was reported, the real Dow Chemical denied the statement, thus creating even more coverage. As a result, the Yes Men put huge pressure on Dow to take action on continuing impacts of a chemical spill largely forgetten in the main stream media. On a broad level, the Yes Men show how vulnerable corporations are to media based subversion, as they take advantage of the fact that mainstream media sources place so much faith in authority figures, like spokespeople, to disseminate information. Additionally, they draw on most media consumer's willingness to believe what they are told to their advantage by playing off false claims as real in the public arena. Finally, they counter the fact that most mainstream media sources consult corporate leaders far more than activists for information by disseminating their own corporate messages. In essence, the Yes Men respond to corporate controlled media by becoming the media and subverting it from the inside.
Now I know that the semester is only so long and that we can only do so much, but, as an activist, I am floored by this kind of stuff and I absolutely love seeing people use media to serve socially just ends.

Brad Will, and independent American journalist working for the alternative media site indymedia.org, was fatally shot by Mexican paramilitaries in October, 2006 while reporting on massive civilian protests. Will, unlike many reporters who send reports from their hotel rooms when reporting on violent issues, stood in solidarity on the front lines with the thousands of Oaxaqueños who were protesting the corrupt and brutally repressive state government under Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. In many cases, fierce street battles erupted between the protestors organized under the Asemblea Popular de Los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), an umbrella group that declared itself the de-facto rulers of the state, and paramilitaries in which protestors molotov cocktails were met by bullets. Will was filming one such exchange when he was shot. In fact, you can actually watch the video in which Will gets shot on youtube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=quq4zoeZaqU). I must warn you its quite chilling as you can hear him scream as he get shot and then you see the camera bobbing up and down as people rush him to safety. The reason I included this video was that I felt it was an incredible sacrifice made by a journalist to bring the APPO perspective to light. I found this video similar to Robert Cappa's famous image of a Spanish Partisan being shot (http://www.westga.edu/~preinhar/Robert%20Cappa.jpg) as well as the image of the South Vietnamese Police Chief shooting a supposed guerilla (http://www.abc.net.au/southwestwa/stories/Execution_m931614.jpg) as they show normal people at the moment of death. These are not drawn out scenes, rather they are fast paced snapshots of conflicts and the deaths that they provoke. In other words, the photographer or in this case, the videographer, uses technology to fragment and preserve time into single or multiple framed images, freezing that death in time. I find this video particularly interesting on multiple levels, as Will films his own death. First of all, death is almost never recorded by the dying. Also, I find it strange that death would ever be recorded as it is, in my opinion a very intimate, personal experience. I also find it strange that such a video would be available online given its gruesome content. At the same time, that might just be the point. I mean Will was reporting alongside the protestors in an attempt to get a news story that was more gritty and real than the sanitized perspectives of the conflict provided by mainstream media types. The fact that he was shot and that that event was preserved on film represents the gruesome, violent nature of the conflict as well as the government's brutal reaction to rock wielding protestors. Any way you slice it, Brad Will's death was a tragedy and huge loss to the independent media community.

From seeing some of the media artifact presentations, it is obvious that most people either focused on the components of the Internet, or used the Internet to demonstrate their artifact. I think this is a clue to just how widely we rely on the Internet. Because a media artifact can be just about anything: a newspaper, magazine, photograph, etc., it was interesting that most everyone chose to do something on the computer. It seems to me that maybe about 10 years ago, if a group of students were faced with this project, they would probably bring in an actual newspaper or magazine. However, with our technological savvy skills we cannot only focus on many different mediums, but we can use technology and the Internet to further explain our projects. I remember the first time trying to figure out PowerPoint, it was a little annoying, but once understood it is very simple. I would have say that after graduating from college, most students probably know how to use PowerPoint, and can use it to its full potential. For our generation, we did not have the Internet when we were little, but we have been forced to socialize into it as we have grown. Throughout the years we have continued to gain further technological knowledge, and we will still continue to learn. Its crazy for me to think that younger generations will just simply have all of this knowledge, prior to their college experience. I believe that because our lives have not been completely embedded in the technology of the Internet there is still much room for us to criticize it and analyze it. I think it’s very important to understand just how these mediums are used, and to realize how they are influencing us. It is dangerous to accept everything as the truth, and I believe that by doing a project such as this we are really dissecting the true nature of these media technologies.

"This week, I got my collection of National Geographic magazines up at school. You are all welcome to look at them. Please look at them, they are beautiful. Don't cut them up. They are very important to me because I grew up reading National Geographics and having my dad try to work for them..." announced my friend Eric at a recent Slade house meeting, referring to the large boxes of magazines that he so kindly placed in our living room. I haven't seen either Eric or anyone else in the house look at the magazines some or which are from the sixties and seventies. Why the hell does he lug all this crap around I thought to myself. Granted Eric is a pack rat and his room is full of all kinds of random and unnecessary trinkets and curiosities, I think he has a pretty significant cultural attachment to the magazines as well. As Lutz and Collins note, White, middle class Americans used these National Geographic volumes to establish status, while also developing perspectives on the outside world. I think that Eric, a person who hasn't really examined the culture concept, is merely using his massive magazine collection as a cultural signpost for his level of culture and sophistication while trying to subsitute National Geographic's perspective of the outside world for more in depth study. At the same time, I think that Eric also values the magazine's aesthetic appearance over its content. In this way, he didn't want us to cut up his magazines, for fear that we would damage their appearance. Additionally, he has made numerous references to looking at the photographs, indicating that he is not interested in written content as visual content. This perspective plays to the idea forwarded by Lutz and Collins that the aesthetic appearance (sleek and glossy) increased the magazines legitimacy and visual appeal to consumers. Additionally, the fact that Eric found the pictures interesting partially confirms the idea that the photographs produced for the magazine were selected and arranged not to best represent those being photographed, but to appeal to Western consumers visual and cultural paradigms. Regardless of his associations and attachments to National Geographic, I just want him to get his shit out of my living room.

Here's another function of the blog-

Are we still meeting on Tuesday to finish viewing the Media Artifact projects???

Our class discussion on what the Internet is and what we thought it originally would be, got me thinking. I remember when I first heard it as a concept I was somewhat overwhelmed and confused. This was at a time when I remember having to type in codes to access games to play in “Dos” on my home computer. What a pain in the ass that was. I just remember thinking of how it was this vast ocean or “net” to connect us all over the world, yet I was perplexed to know how this could be done.
Yet what struck me most was the realization of what the Internet is like now, and what we had originally “intended” it as. One of my first introductions to the Internet was actually in Disney world, in Epcott, on the ride in the ball (which is the symbol of Epcott) as known as Spaceship Earth. It is one of the more boring rides, in that it is “educational.” A slow-moving cart takes you through the advancement of technology of communication through out the years. When I was young, the part of the ride that impressed me the most was where a child at one sides of the world was talking to their dad on the other side. Disney did a great job showing the blinking lights, which symbolized the information being send across the world and then showing the image of the child talking to their father on the other side. I was floored. I was not able to fully fathom what was going on. Yet in looking at the Internet now, one truly has to question is it about connections and making connections people to people, or is it people to businesses? The fact that I am bombarded by pop-ups, that I am constantly sent e-mails by that company I bought a t-shirt from 3 years ago, or every page I go to has blinking lights and dancing targets making false promises of ipods and phones, makes me think.
Last spring I went back to Disney. I wanted to go back on the rides that I went on as a child to “re-live the magic.” When we went back to Epcott I convinced my friends and my family to go back on Spaceship Earth. During the course of the ride, I was wondering how they would have updated it or changed it. When we got there, there was no line. Just the ramp of carts moving on and on with no riders, a pretty “happenin” place to be. Once we got on the ride, it proceeded to break down three or four times. At times I was even concerned with the safety of the ride, but considering there were no drops and that it moved less than one mile an hour, I didn’t get up. I sat there re-living what in my childhood had me in awe but now had me nostalgic and almost sad for the days when I could believe such things. While these animated moving manikins moved around, I thought about how this ride probably wouldn’t last much longer. Did Disney leave it up because it was a classic? Watching the child talk to their father on a “cyber camera” miles and miles away left me thinking of how that could happen now, but most people I know do not use the internet for that. It was an idealistic look at what it could be used for, but isn’t always. Just as the ride was breaking down, so is this idea of the Internet bringing people together. In our discussion I came to realize that just as the ride at Epcott was outdated and almost dilapidated, so was this notion of what the internet could be. No one was in line for this ride or this notion.

I’d like to share a new development concerning one of my last entries about the writers strike. I read an article recently about how NBC, as well as a few other major networks, are reimbursing advertisers for not supplying the guaranteed ratings levels the advertisers were promised. The networks blame a new ratings system but anyone who has turned on the tube lately will notice that TV sucks significantly more than it did before the strike. The drop in ratings can be attributed to the lack of new material that has led many networks to endlessly rerun their most successful shows. This lack of written material has also led to an increase in reality programming which, despite the popularity of shows like American Idol, the average television consumer can only take so much of. These reimbursements average about $500,000 per advertiser, which multiplied by the number of advertisers, is a significant loss for the networks. Of course the networks problems are about to get worse as their small stockpiles of original scripted shows start running out. With the writers’ strike possibly lasting until, or even through, the spring, I have a feeling that the networks will feel enough pressure to give in to the requests of the writers. As I mentioned in my last entry, the networks are faced with a much different entertainment landscape than they were in the past. Television has lost some of its captivative power with the advent of Netflix and the popularity of television shows on DVD as well as on the Internet. Ironically, shows on the Internet and DVD are exactly what the writers are striking about.

With the media artifacts all wrapped up I have to say I am rather amazed at the different directions that everybody took this. From graffiti to Second Life, verbal presentations to Power Point, I think this project really highlighted the eclectic nature of media and how we can talk about them. I found it interesting that many of the presentations focused on some aspect of the Internet. While the Internet itself is a medium, it also provides almost endless opportunities for other media (Facebook, Youtube, etc.). It is interesting to note that the television ads that were presented were shown through Youtube or other Internet sites, rather from their original source, the television, which would be almost impossible. With all the potential of the Internet, it was also nice to see that some people stayed away from it and recognized the importance of other media. Just goes to show how diverse the media landscape really is.

For some reason i've always had some desire to build a time capsule....mainly for the reason that i believe that when we look back at how life was we usually are not that surprised at how things have changed unless we have tangible comparisons. If we were to put all of the media artifacts into a time capsule and open them in less than 50 years we would probably laugh at how cool we thought everything was. And for some reason this scares me a little, because it just seems there is endless possibilities for technology, and this is a little frightening. During our generation there have been some really awesome discoveries and trends. Its really interesting to have lived to see the move from tapes to cd's to stealing music online (like napster) and to ipods. In only a span of about 20 years an entire medium of music has continued to change multiple times. How will we be listening to music 50 years from now? Hmm maybe there will be some chip that we just place in our ear, that reads our mind and knows exactly what we want to listen to. maybe not? I don't know, i just think its crazy to think how things change, and at the rate they change we often do not sit back and really think about them. I think in a way this class has taught us do this, to really contemplate the way media affects our lives and the way it is presented to us and in turn how we can present it in multiple mediums. Like our parents and our grandparents generation it is often hard for them to pick up on these new technology trends. Although its probably worse off for grandparents, my grandfather is still transfixed with the idea of internet and has pretty much given up on it. I think that for us, because we grew up in such a media-saturated world we will continue to stay on top of all new technology that's out there, so hopefully when we are like 60 or 70 we don't feel lost or out of it. As Luis said at the end today, as much as this was an Anthropology class it was equally a class of introducing us to all of these mediums and even teaching us how to use them. I think now and especially in the future most classes will become structured in a more media-oriented way, using the media in other ways for education besides just powerpoints....

I'm really surprised that no one has commented about the latest Radiohead album, In Rainbows. While the album's content continues the innovative sound that fans have come to expect over the past two decades, the way in which it was released is markedly different than their previous releases or anyone's previous releases for that matter. Having fulfilled their contract with EMI with 2003's "Hail to the Thief," Radiohead became one of the biggest "free agents" in the music market with numerous labels offering the band massive contracts. Instead of signing, Radiohead decided to remain independent, so that they could write, record, and tour at their own pace. Although band members had been writing and recording solo material during this period as well as band material, there was little indication as to when the band was to release a new album. Then, after almost four years of anticipation, Radiohead announced that it would be coming out with a new album. Fan's excitement was generally tempered by the fact that most thought it would take a couple months to actually be released. Then, a couple weeks later, Radiohead did something that hasn't really been done before. They sent out a message on their website saying that In Rainbows was going to be online within a couple of days and that they fans could pay what they wanted for the album, including nothing. Fans and the media responded almost instantaneously, spreading the word virally around the internet through articles, blog posts, and other clips. While the articles emphasized content, they concentrated more on how the album was released, asking how music is valued in the digital age while questioning the relevance of corporate media in the 21st century.
Like most of the fans, I downloaded the album and payed nothing, which felt really good. I like knowing that the artists want me to have their music regardless of cost. In my opinion, corporatization and commodification detract from the actual artwork itself, as they play up marketing and image over quality. Radiohead, with the help of the internet, has subverted corporate domination of the music industry by proving that bands do not need record labels to create hype or to distribute their records, as the internet allowed them to use a direct distributive medium to create buzz. Also, because many people have chosen to act outside of their rational self interest and pay something for the record (some have payed over $200.00), it shows that decommercialized distribution can provide decent income. At the same time, we are talking about Radiohead, one of the largest rock bands of our era. They can get away with this kind of thing because they have such a large fan base and because they don't care about making millions of dollars. To even suggest that smaller, independent acts could make any money doing this now seems like a bit of a stretch, but I don't think its too far off. More and more bands are deciding to forgo large records deals, instead chosing to produce their own records. I think that some fans even prefer this type of production to corporate controlled media, as these bands are generally not as large and image based as corporate media and they tend to focus more on creating really good music than making millions. In so doing they, like Radiohead, have made decent amounts of money. In this way, independent record distribution seemingly provides an economically viable alternative to the doldrums of corporate record production. I really hope that more bands follow Radiohead, hastening the decline of the outdated and unnecessary corporate noisemakers.

Considering the Google is possibly the most commonly used search engine on the internet today, the idea of Google bombing is decidedly disturbing. This concept was brought the public eye a few years ago, when someone Google bombed George W. Bush. At the time, whenever a Google user typed in “total failure,” the first result that they received would by the official presidential website.

Google bombing has been used by many groups and organizations as a way of manipulating the search results that uses receive from a Google search. It is a simple matter of manipulating the information that is input into Google’s PageRank algorithm, which Google then uses to determine what pages to output, and in what order. The George W. Bush prank is an amusing stunt, but what larger implications could this technology hold of the dissemination of information?

Thanks to Google bombing, individual people, equipped with nothing more than an internet connection and a whole lot of free time, can effectively control the information that we, the people, receive. What does it mean for our freedom of speech if this speech can effectively be masked by Google bombing? For that matter, what is the effectiveness of a search engine that operates solely on the popularity of a given website? From this perspective, it seems that Google does not exhibit necessarily exhibit the necessary characteristics of net neutrality. While all sites are given even ground from which to distribute their information, this level ground has the ability to be strategically manipulated in ways that may seem equitable. True, this analysis does stretch the definition of net neutrality, and there are probably no legal qualms related to the practice of Google bombing, but it certainly does raise some interesting questions regarding the fairness of one of the most prominent methods of internet media dissemination.

I found our class discussion about Facebook very interesting especially in regards to what qualifies as a person as a “friend.” It seems somewhat ridiculous, yet there are varying degrees of friendship. For the most part I generally accept people I know as “Facebook friends.” And while we make joke about how now we are official friends because we are Facebook friends, there is a reality to it as well. It is as if Facebook “legitimizes” the relationship by making it official. It is also interesting in looking at how many friends people have. I know some people that have around over 500 friends, while others that simply have 50. What’s interesting is what the number of friends a person means. A person with a lot of friends could mean that they friend everyone they meet, in wanting to make many random friendship or to seem “cool” or maybe they just really have 500 friends. On the otherhand people with few friends could mean that they have a ‘higher standards” for what qualifies as a friend, that they do not use facebook really or that maybe they do not have a lot of friends.
I also thought it was interesting to think about how on facebook we can “create” an identity that we want. We can be who we want to be. We can put up the pictures that make us look best, due to cropping and such. We can say what we want about ourselves even if it’s not true.
All in all in looking at facebook and examining it even more it showed me how funny of a thing it truly is. I always find myself laughing at how ridiculous it is, but then two seconds later seeing what is new on there and what is happening with my friends.

David Hoffman’s write-up was interesting because I was not really acquainted this issue before reading it. To be honest I learned a lot. There is a lot going on and there is a lot to consider. The impact that IFIwatchnet.orgproject has is important. As Hoffman states, “The added-value of IFIwatchnet to our work then is the opportunities it provides to promote campaigns of grassroots groups to a broader international audience, and to consolidate the experiences of other movements within one comprehensive framework.” It seems to be all about opportunities. Yet this is not just about just getting the message out there. It is about having an equal playing field for these opportunities which means English is not the universal language and is also shown through being aware that other areas of the world may not have easy access to the internet and electricity as well. In looking over the information one major thing stuck out in my head which was a point mentioned midway through. I wondered about people may not have easy access to technology. What are the actual efforts being done for them? What does an open-source web content system do and how is it helpful, specifically in regards to people who do not have easily available access to technology?

So I decided to watch the movie Playing Unfair: The Media Image of the Female Athlete. Being a female athlete I found it interesting to see what would be said about the media and its portal of women athletes. One statistic that surprised me was in the movie they say that while 40% of athletes they only make up 3-5% of the media coverage. It does not surprise me that women get less coverage, I knew that but what surprised me was how low it actually was reported to then be.
Another major topic the movie touched upon was how female athletes are supposed to be sexy. A male athlete can be simply good at sports and be considered “sexy” for that, but for a woman it seems beauty is valued more than actual skill. A guy can be an athlete and be seen as an athlete while a woman has to be good looking to in order to attract “positive attention.” Anna Kournikova is a key example. She receives tons of endorsements, yet has not really won anything. The movie argues that a woman objectifies herself more by posing in comprising was for such magazines as Sport’s Illustrated.
Another interesting concept brought up was called the “glass closet.” The glass closet refers to how in women’s sports there is homophobia and people are aware of it, yet it is not addressed. A woman may be gay, and it is known, yet it kept within this glass closet. This is due to “society” but also because of how women’s sports are for young girls and having this out would not be fit for a “family atmosphere.” An example they bring up Billie Jean King and how she was “outed.” Once she was outed she lost most of her sponsors. The movie claims that as a woman athlete we need to portray a wholesome image. The most extreme example of wholesome and having it all image was Chris Evert, a professional tennis player. She was really good, and decided to retire early to get married. Yet when Sport’s Illustrated put her on the cover they did so with a picture of her holding a racquet with the title, “ I’m Going to be a Full Time Wife”. I literally had to pause when I saw that. Instead of respecting her athletic accomplishments, she was being labeled as a wife. I found it somewhat disheartening and upsetting. Granted this happened quite some time ago, I find it sad that it even occurred.
Yet in regards to homophobia in sports, I did not fully agree with the film. While it is not easy for a woman to be gay in sports, I think it is equally hard for a man, if not harder. The image that a male I feel makes it harder to be gay in men’s sports. I feel as though men and women have to deal with this “glass closet” in sports.

I was intrigued by the presentation today involving the “To Catch a Predator” television series. When examining this series from the perspective of the persuasive techniques what we discussed for media analysis, it seems that this strongly exhibited examples of both diversion and simple solutions. I did some reading into both the television program, and Perverted Justice, the private watchdog group that NBC hires to actually catch the predators. While it is true that Perverted Justice as a solid track record of catching online predators and taking them to trial, their record is not so impressive when it comes to actual convictions. Apparently, the techniques that they use to actually catch the predators are not entirely legal, and violate the rights of the predators, who are then able to get their case dropped in trial.

If NBC was so inclined, I’m sure that they could consult with an attorney or two and get some advice on how to catch the predators in a way that would be more legally sound, and that might result in putting these alleged child molesters behind bars. However, if these changes were made to the show, it would undoubtedly lose much of the drama and sensationalism expected from primetime television. It is this drama that diverts the viewer’s attention, and prevents the audience from questioning what actually happens after the cameras are turned off. We assume that because we see the bad guy being led off in handcuffs, that justice is about to be served. This is the “simple solution.” In reality, criminal justice, and the larger issue of internet predation, is much more complex, and is not being effectively addressed by the tactics of the show.

NBC is willing to sacrifice the integrity of the show in exchange for a larger viewing audience. By using diversion, simple solution, and possibly even big lie tactics, viewers are fooled into thinking that the show is actually simply exploiting a serious problem for their own gain.

I wrote a little while ago about how individualized forms of internet media such as blogs and YouTube sites are rapidly gaining validity and legitimacy in the public eye. Well, I just found out, thanks to the New York Times (link below), that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been blogging for over a year. Given most American’s perceptions of Ahmadinejad, I think this probably comes as quite a surprise. Also, in a country where most things we hear from our own president must first come through an intermediary of a press secretary, it is shocking to me that Ahmadinejad is communicating so directly with the world.

The tone of the blog is often times much more personable than one might expect. Like any political blog, he writes small commentaries outlining his opinions on various issues. In a recent entry, Ahmadinejad wrote that “the purpose of running this blog is to have a direct and mutual ‎contact and communication with the viewers.” Readers are invited to comment, and he often responds directly to individual comments.

Personally, I think this sort of interaction is nice for a world leader to have. How often in the past has this sort of relationship been possible. True, it may be that his posts have been carefully crafted by staffers or PR people, but it does seem to be a legitimate outlet for the Iranian president. To me, this seems to be yet another recent example of blogs gaining more and more legitimacy in the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/world/asia/11blog.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/

There are countless organizations devoted to providing aid to underprivileged people all over the world. This aid can come in the form of food, clothes, money, or even livestock. However, one organization that has received a lot of press recently is devoted to putting a laptop computer into the hands of every child in the world. The organization is aptly named “One Laptop per Child” (OLPC), and has developed a laptop that can be produced for under $100. A few large scale plans have been introduced to distribute the laptops to children. Nigeria has ordered one million computers, and Mitt Romney attempted to pass a bill that would provide a computer to every child in Massachusetts. This holiday season, there is a “Give One, Get One” program, in which shoppers purchasing a computer to donate to a child will receive a free computer for themselves. Currently, approximately 190,000 computers have been purchased in this fashion.

It is interesting that, given the ways in which this money could potentially be spent providing food, clean water, or other necessities, so many people feel that the money would be better spent on computers. Have computers reached the point in society where they are on a par with food, water and shelter? I feel like the primary reason behind this shift is the rising importance to global connectivity of the internet. It is now considered imperative for people to have internet access in order to be involved global citizens. In addition, the internet is one of the most common forms of media consumption today. In this way, this organization could be said to be indicative of an ideology which states that consumption of media is sometimes considered to be of comparable importance with consumption of food.

In looking back at our soundscape experience, it was a truly informative experience. I really enjoyed going all over campus and listening to the different sounds that each environments and atmospheres had. At times I felt really odd and out of place just standing there and not doing anything. I remember being at the library and standing by the computers and having people star at me because they were wondering why I was standing there if I wasn’t using a computer. I found myself pretending to be texting, writing something down or looking in my backpack to try and not seem so weird.
It was a very interesting experience in listening to the actual sounds of what our campus are. Usually I walk around campus in a rush talking on my phone or ipod. It was cool to take the time and notice what the “ambient” noises around campus are.
But to be honest the most interesting part of this assignment was how much I learned about myself. The fact that in the library I need to pretend I was doing something because of how out of place or uncomfortable I felt showed me a lot about myself. I was not alone in that other people in the class were checking the e-mail and using their phones as well. Why is it that we cannot just simply sit there and do nothing? What is wrong with me that I cannot just listen to the sounds of my environment? Is it that I am so used to multi tasking that I am basically too restless to sit around? I think it is deeper. Personally I think it has to do with the silence and not being ok with it. It’s the silence that I think people find scary. I think it could be the silence of being alone or the silence of our own thoughts. But to be honest I’m really not sure.

In the past, celebrities were chosen by the public for a particular trait or ability – acting, musicianship, athletics, etc. However, today online communities have made it possible for people to develop their own celebrity through nothing but their own involvement in these communities. For example, Tila Tequila became a celebrity based solely on the number of friends she has on MySpace. After she gained notoriety in the MySpace community, she somehow managed a mediocre modeling/music career and became someone known outside of MySpace. Recently, she landed herself an MTV dating show to make all other dating shows look like Masterpiece Theater. By some unknown reason, the show became inexplicably popular, and viola, Tila Tequila is a real life celebrity for doing absolutely nothing. What?

This same sort of phenomenon is also evident on smaller-scale virtual communities, such as the UVM Facebook server. UVM has its own variation on Tila Tequila: Vanessa Burke. Vanessa Burke is one of those names that is familiar to most UVM students, though most of them have not actually met her. We know her simply because she added us on Facebook. Now there are even Facebook groups devoted to discussing Vanessa Burke.

What is the nature of this form of celebrity? The celebrity is based in a world which is entirely virtual, yet the fame leaks into the real world as well. What does this say about our celebrities, if they can simply create themselves by spending hours adding friends on the computer and then receive a reality show? It seems like we might soon need to reevaluate our concept of celebrity to incorporate these new flexible and individually-controlled notions of celebrity.

I really enjoyed the thoughtful analysis in class of John Cage’s famous piece, “Four Minutes, Thirty-three seconds.” The main point that I took away from the presentation was the way in which Cage ingeniously employed the use of silence, or nothing sounds, as a way of encouraging the listener to hear all of the sounds around them. This reminded me of the exercise we did in class in which we sat in silence in various places around campus in order to observe the soundscape around us.

One of the things that I noticed when we did this exercise was the way in which familiar individual sounds transformed to become a soundscape. For example, the sound of a car engine and a generator would blend together and fade back and forth to create one continuous sound. Also, familiar sounds, such as a truck backing up, would generally be easily identifiable to me. However, when forced to focus solely on the sound alone, the sound became much more difficult to identify, even though it was very familiar to me. This is also an important quality for 4’33”. In order for people to hear the soundscape around them, they must be able to take the individual sounds surrounding them and weave them into a continuous sound.

The other thing that I noticed while watching the video of 4’33” was that just as the reactions of the other audience members played a pivotal role in the experiences of each individual audience member, I found myself observing the reactions of everyone else in the class. These reactions, I incorporated into my own experience.

I thought I'd post a blog about the media artifact in which I presented yesterday, mainly because I felt as though I left out information I meant to discuss. Firstly, I forgot to say what www.avaaz.org is about, it consists of 1 million plus members from every recognized country in the world. This illustrates that the Internet is an extremely powerful medium, if it weren't for the platform, how else would the group organize? The message of the advertisement is clear, demand peace talks in the Middle East, the producers get their message across from various techniques we looked at as a class over the course of the semester. I felt as though the use of group dynamics was a key piece in building group solidarity to "help the cause". The advertisement has over 1.5 million views on Youtube, a statement that people are interested in both the cause and organization.

Link to organization, various ads can be found: www.avaaz.org
P.S--> one of the ads combines Paul Wolfowitz and the Office (Hilarious)

I was flipping through a magazine the other day and came across very interesting ad. I have to say that this class has made me more aware of ads and I find it to be a lot of fun to look at one and dissect it into it main themes and techniques.

The company- Thermador, " An American Icon", the product- a super efficient oven, its tag line " the beauty of POWER". It features a women in her late 20's with her hair up in a scarf, wearing blue, collar popped, cuffed at the sleeve, her arm raised gripping the the oven handle in a "we can do it" attitude. sound familiar? it should. ladies and gentleman, i introduce Rosie the Riveter of our era. except this one doesn't wear overalls, but a beautiful gown with pumps.

I recognized the iconic image right away, it jumped off the page at me. I am disturbed that this once powerful icon of WWII had been made into a kitchen maven. Her once inspirational call to the women of the United States, "We Can Do It" has been turned into a cry from the kitchen aid market saying " Come on ladies, we can bake that ham in half the time".
Talk about raising morale.

For those of you who are unsure of who Rosie the Riveter was ( if you haven't stopped reading this to google her by now) here is brief explanation. Rosie was an ad campaign during WWII to draw women into factories, plants, and shipyards across the country. She actually IS an American icon

So, is this really a call to women everywhere? Has the kitchen become our call of duty? To serve from it while our brave men and boys leave home to wage a new century's war? Or perhaps it is only the doings of a clever advertiser.

To see the Thermador ad go here
http://www.thermador.com

To see and read a little about Rosie go here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter

In thinking about virtual relationships versus real life ones I went back to our dear old friend Facebook. On Facebook there is this application where one can play the game of Scrabble. It is addictive. I was sitting around my house the other day with some friends and realized that I was currently engaged in scrabble games with them on Facebook. Yet what I found to be humorous was the fact that at that very moment in that very room was the actual board game of Scrabble and we were not playing it. I was in an actual room, with actual people that I was playing virtual Scrabble with, yet when the actual opportunity arose to play Scrabble in real life, we opted out. I found this to be interesting. We actually started joking around about it, but the question arose in my mind as to why? Why didn’t we just play? Was it because it is easier online because the dictionaries and word verifiers were there one hand? Yet I realized that while both online and real life Scrabble were the same game, they had there differences. In “real life” scrabble you are there in the moment. It is more intense in that you must make your decisions in a timely manner. Also when I play with my friends we don’t allow the use of dictionaries, unless you are looking up a word that you already have and want to double check on it. Virtual Scrabble is more leisurely in that one can play at when it is more convenient for one to do so. You can pick it up and stop whenever you want to. You are more apt to get “better” words because you have more time and more resources so you end up looking better or smarter in the end.
It might mean nothing the fact that currently my friends and I prefer online to real life. It might just be a fad. Or it might be a reflection of where things are going.

I enjoyed Barry Barclay’s film Te Rua. It was a very interesting movie. I loved the way it was told as well as the messages it conveyed. The views were also amazing. I was not really acquainted with Maori culture and the issues concerned with it until this film. The issue of having museums return artifact to the original owner is not a new topic, yet it was done with an interesting twist. I loved how the Maori demonstrators took hold of the Berlin statues and held them hostage. It was an interesting perspective to flip the situation on westerns who were not used to being taken advantage of or being “othered.”
One line that really stuck out to me in the movie was how the museum needed their artifacts, their “congos” their “africas”, otherwise they were nothing, they were left this emptiness. It’s as though museums/western civilization needed an other to use as a reference to define themselves even more. They are essentially nothing without other cultures and artifacts.
Also in class we talked about the part in the movie where the Maori girl yelled a the news reporter, and told him that they would let them know the news when it was “our news.” I thought it was interesting because it was a show of power. A similar part was when the older white woman was talking to the younger one. The younger woman was upset that she was not invited to be a part of demonstration. The older woman consoled her by telling her that it is not their fight to fight. In both these scenarios there is the split where the Maori want to define themselves and fight their own fights their way. It showed the Maori taking hold of their situation rather than use the “people” who put them in that situation for help. They are taking their situation and in making it their own and solving it on their terms taking back the power that they initially been stripped of. It’s a powerful and influential move.

Daniel Miller and Don Slater’s article “Relationships” was cool look into seeing what other cultures view and use the Internet for. Personally I use it for more entertainment purposes, as well at times communication. Yet Miller’s and Slater’s perspective on the use of it in Trinidadian culture was interesting to see. The fact that the Internet helped to patch up the void that distance created when people left home is important. While telephones were always an option, the expense made it more of a special occasion type deal rather than a day-to-day one. With the email and the Internet, Trinidadians were able to maintain strong ties by talking with one another whenever one wanted more casually. The use of email not only allowed maintaining of relationships that pre-existed, but also make friendship with people that had never met. The most interesting example I found was the one where someone looked up there father online, and now thanks to the Internet maintains a relationship with their father that they had not known growing up.
One of the lines that I found interesting was from on of the interviews that they conducted. The questioner asks, “So part of being in a real relationship is getting into real issues?” The interviewee agrees. Yet this notion of the qualifications of a real relationship is established through value of the content versus proximity or distance is valid. What ones talks about is a vital part of the degree of intimacy and friendship a person has with someone. It all depends on how ones utilize it. Before reading this article I would have most likely argued that online relationships were secondary to “real” life ones. Yet after reading this, I realize that that is not necessarily so. Online line relationships can help solidify pre-existing ones, if not create new ones on their own. While in person may seem the better means of communication, the Internet is not as trivial as I had once viewed it to be in forming quality connections.

So I decided to write a blog about my media artifact. I’m not doing this is simply write a blog, but more so because in being sick I did not really have much of a voice and may not have hit upon my topic they way I had wanted to.
My artifact was the picture of two men in a field taking pictures. I found it to be an extremely interesting picture because to me it hit upon so many of the topics that we have been discussing in class. The first and somewhat more obvious one is the issue of subject. We have seen this theme touched upon in books and movies on how subjects are used to create an “other” or an exotic. To emphasize this point I decided to put a piece of white cardboard to in the picture to represent the emptiness or “hollowness” of simply being European/western has. Yet the white was also supposed to represent how pictures are just random and it is the photographer that decides what is important. What I love about the picture is while these men are looking into the field, right behind them is just as beautiful as in front of them. It shows that not only beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that pictures themselves are simply the perspective of the photographer. The picture may seem “honest” yet it is not in that no matter what the photographer has an influence as impartial as they may try to be.
With the tinfoil I wanted to represent the point of how pictures themselves show us more about the photographer and society that the picture is being taken for more than the actual subject itself. By taking pictures of certain things in certain ways it shows the ideals, values in that society it is being taken for. The picture is almost more honest about its audience than it is about the subject it is in fact of.
With the recording I found it to be fun and fitting and in the end decided to add it to emphasize the point of how we take from media not only what we want to, but also what w put in. I thought the songs match up with the whole picture explorer theme but also in that with a re-recordable button people can leave any mark as they so wish to leave.

In doing our reading I found it interesting when it referred to Jacque Cousteau and his many adventures. The way that these were staged got me thinking about the movie Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou by Wes Anderson. I love Wes Anderson and thought it was interesting to look back at the movie in thinking about it as a spoof of old time explorers. I found the movie to be really funny, but I realized that part of it had to do with the ridiculousness had to do with what these staged explorations were about. When Zissou is question as to what the scientific purpose of killing the endangered species Jaguar shark that killed his best friend was, he simply replied “revenge.” I may have laughed because this answer is absurd; it brings to light the issue of authenticity or scientific-ness of media. The fact that events had to be staged reflects that media producers felt the need to reflect something that may not be totally honest. And while some events may not have been the full truth, others were blatantly lies. The fact that movies made in the US in movie studios about an exploration did better than the movie filmed at the actual exploration says a lot about the value of authenticity. Yet it also says a lot about the purpose of media in the role it has in our everyday life. It seems sometimes people would rather be lied to and entertained, rather than bored with brutally honest truth. Is media supposed to tell the truth? It all depends on why one uses the media. It can do both. Media can do anything we want it too because we are what control it. We can make it what we wish. And while Steve Zissou makes claims such as, “It’s a documentary! It’s all really happening!” it causes one to question if a true documentary is even possible?

One of the main characteristics of the virtual worlds of the internet that we discussed is the ability for users to create their own identities. But what I think is just as interesting is the fact that within the anonymity of the internet, users can choose to have no defined identity at all. Perhaps no identity is not the right way to describe this. What I’m referring to are the horrible things that people will say online that they would never actually say in real life. Go read through any discussion board on a popular Facebook group or YouTube video to read some of the most disgusting and hateful thoughts you will ever see. If you really want to ruin your day, try a race-themed discussion.

I suppose my question is this: with one person expressing two distinctly different personalities (one online and one offline), which is their true self? Are they truly as angry and hateful as they seem in their online posts, and this side is just repressed by the conventions of society? Or rather, are they in reality kind and accepting, and something about the internet brings out these hateful tendencies? That said, is there actually a difference between these two possibilities?

This is something that has been bothering me for a while, because it is frankly disturbing to think that the authors of these comments living among us. Another possibility: could it be that people with these socially unacceptable beliefs seek out these online communities to express themselves, and it is for this reason that they are seemingly overrepresented? I don’t know. It scares me.

One of the common techniques of advertising that we discussed was the ability of an ad to be disguised so that the viewer would not know that they were watching an ad. Well, this just happened to me. Ages ago, I saw this video on YouTube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XH7p3xWyv7g&feature=user
It shows a girl being given a car for her birthday, then proceeding to throw a tantrum because it wasn’t the right color. The video is hilarious (and tragic), and I was just watching it again when my friend looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered that the entire thing was staged by actors as an ad campaign for Dominos pizza. Apparently, there were sequels to the video made, in which the girl finally gets the right car, then sells the old one on eBay for $9.99. In the last video, she announces that she used the money to buy a Dominos pizza. I’d totally been had.

But seriously, what an interesting idea for an ad campaign. And how appropriate, given today’s media climate. It’s typical of advertisers to use particular cultural trends as a canvas for advertising: graffiti ads, the Nike swoosh shaved into the back of heads, etc. In the age of YouTube, why not disguise an ad as a YouTube video? It’s really brilliant, I have to admit.

While I’m on the topic, I have to give a nod of the head to probably one of the greatest efforts in subliminal advertising ever carried out: the Boston Mooninite Scare. If you forgot, this was when this past January, people placed little LED displays around Boston of that character from Aqua Teen Hunger Force around Boston. People saw them, thought they were bombs in a terrorist attack, and freaked out. The whole city was on full alert for a while until they figured out that they were just harmless toys.

You have to admit, this is brilliant. Stupid, yes. Careless, yes. Selfish, definitely. But really, it’s genius. Aqua Teen Hunger Force was this little cult TV show on cartoon network that no one had heard of. They could have shelled out the money for advertising if they had wanted to. Or they could have just staged a fake terrorist attack and get the series discussed on every news program on every channel for the next two weeks.

As much as I hate watching ads on TV, I really do have to respect these new and creative techniques. I’m very curious to see what comes next.

I found the presentation on cooking shows to be fascinating. I personally am a huge fan of Top Chef. I am kind of addicted to it. But I have never really sat down and tried to analyze why this is so. I just figured it was because I was a fan of food and cooking and wanted to try to learn some tricks on how to become a better cook. Yet in thinking about it more critically I came to the realization that was more than just that. In thinking about it deeper, I realized that the comfort I feel in watching cooking shows may also to be to fill a void. Not simply the void of how I myself do not cook and rely on frozen and easy to prepare meals. I also am filling the void of distance from my family. At home there are always meals being made. I have a large family so preparing meals in my house takes help from everyone. It takes the whole family helping to make the meal all come together. It usually is my mother, sister and myself, but sometimes by my complaining about how it should not be a woman’s job to be in the kitchen draws in my dad and brothers. When I am at school I miss it. I miss the Sunday night meals my family does especially. I miss the aroma of foods being prepared. It gives a comforting sense of being “home.” In watching these cooking shows I find that I am partially doing it for the entertainment aspect, but also for the fact that I miss home and my family.
Another major interesting part of the presentation was the concept of “gastro porn.” I had never heard of that terminology and was really interested to learn about it. I had never really thought of food in that sense. All in all I learned a lot from the presentation and would love to learn more because of how fascinating it is as a current topic. Nice job!