"Labor Day" as it stand in the US, is now a federal holiday that takes place on the first monday of September. The holiday was established as a federal holiday in June of 1984, though the holiday was first created by the Central Labor Union, a trade organization in the New York and New Jersey area. The Central Labor Union declared that there should be a day in which "the common working man" was "celebrated for his efforts." Since the federalization of the holiday, Americans all over the country take september 1st off not so much to celebrate the working man as the Central Labor Union may have depicted it, instead celebrating themselves as workers and spending time relaxing for the long weekend. Corporate advertisements that lead up to the Labor Day weekend are targeted at consumers' home lives, emphasizing the family and the "special times" spent wth one another. It also stresses sales on people at the same time. seizing the opportunity to make larger profits. For a more generic message, not so family-oriented, they still have the huge saving weekend extravaganza, because god forbid that there would exist a holiday where corporate culture doesn't ENTIRELY guide it. So ultimately what labor day boils down to is a breif break from working where you are told, (by commercial media) that it is supposed to be about families gathering and enjoying time with each, something which is precious and cherished. But, wait, your store is still open on labor day? And the grills are on sale? Hot Damn! Forget my family - I need to take hold of these sales! Don't worry though, you can bring your family! We got sales on all childrens products 99$ and above! Why not buy a little something, a trinket of affection for the Mrs.? It's in the spirit of the holiday!
I think this paints the picture of a holiday that wasn't manufactured by corporation, that started out with good intentions. Once companies realized there would be three days where consumers would have time off to do as they pleased, it became a profit making period. This is a perfect representation of American culture, where people are intended to gather with friends and have barbeques on the beach and maybe build a bonfire, real happy and carefree.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Thoughts on Christmas and New Years
I remember a time when I would eagerly count down the days until Christmas came, waiting impatiently for the mystical Santa Claus to appear and deliver his various Christmas gifts to me on the 25th of December. It used to be a time of complete and unbridled happiness, and no, I'm not overstating that. However, as time progresses and one grows older, discovering certain truths about your childhood beleifs, Christmas becomes just another day in the year, except you are presented with gifts by people and are expected to give gifts to others. Things reverse polarities, where I would have found myself counting down days until Chrismas arrived, this year I found myself shocked to find that Christmas was three days away, and I had nothing done in the way of shopping for my girlfriend. Another slight example of how things switch around between childhood and adolescence is gifts. When I was a kid, and I'm positive that most of us think this way, I hated getting clothes as a gift from my relatives. Now I find myself asking for clothes as opposed to whatever else they might imagine I want.
Changing pace for a minute, I would like to point out how the Christmas Holidays change from beacons of happiness to ultimately depressing slumps. Consider it like this; you've lost faith in your shiny, polished idea of a benevolent gift-giver, your relatives don't know you well enough or don't see you often enough to know what gift to get you, and so they just give you money to make up for it. You find out that Christmas is a shallow holiday of give and receive, emphasizing on your own reception. Turning on the tv presents a barrage of holiday themed ads desperately trying to get you to buy their product. Christmas can bring me down like no other thing, making me just regret the fact that all the people around me feel the "Christmas Spirit" and i can't. Every year, my mother plays the same CD, a christmas collection Cd. John Lennon, Live Aid, thta kind of stuff. When I was younger I couldn't really understand the lyrics, but it certainly set the mood. That music meant it was christmas time. We played the same songs this year, but now I understand the lyrics and I can't identify how they set off those Christmas sparks inside me. I wasn't satisfied with just being devoid of Christmas spirit, so I asked my immediate family if they felt it. They all said yes. This meant to me that the spirit isn't determined by age. I still haven't found out what exactly causes it, or lack of it.
Connecting this to the material we have discussed in class, I can see clearly the corporate strings attached to the Santa puppet. The entire concept of Santa Claus is a machination of the Coca Cola company to sell more of heir own product. Our parents perpetaute the lie because it has become imbedded in our American folk culture, a magical being who rides around the world and delivers presents to "good" children and coal to "bad" children. Folk culture present in this ritual is the concept of good and evil, though perhaps a bit downplayed. Santa, the judgement figure, declares that good children recieve gifts as a reward of their goodness, and bad children should get coal to serve as a punishment that isn't too harsh, but a reminder for them to get back on track. Seeing as Santa does not actually exist, no parent gives their kid coal, so every Christmas-celebrating kid in the world is led to beleive they are good. It's like another one of those self esteem-boosting rituals, much like the gold star. It is a representation of people's constant need of affirmation that what they are doing is right and they should feel good about themselves.
Changing pace for a minute, I would like to point out how the Christmas Holidays change from beacons of happiness to ultimately depressing slumps. Consider it like this; you've lost faith in your shiny, polished idea of a benevolent gift-giver, your relatives don't know you well enough or don't see you often enough to know what gift to get you, and so they just give you money to make up for it. You find out that Christmas is a shallow holiday of give and receive, emphasizing on your own reception. Turning on the tv presents a barrage of holiday themed ads desperately trying to get you to buy their product. Christmas can bring me down like no other thing, making me just regret the fact that all the people around me feel the "Christmas Spirit" and i can't. Every year, my mother plays the same CD, a christmas collection Cd. John Lennon, Live Aid, thta kind of stuff. When I was younger I couldn't really understand the lyrics, but it certainly set the mood. That music meant it was christmas time. We played the same songs this year, but now I understand the lyrics and I can't identify how they set off those Christmas sparks inside me. I wasn't satisfied with just being devoid of Christmas spirit, so I asked my immediate family if they felt it. They all said yes. This meant to me that the spirit isn't determined by age. I still haven't found out what exactly causes it, or lack of it.
Connecting this to the material we have discussed in class, I can see clearly the corporate strings attached to the Santa puppet. The entire concept of Santa Claus is a machination of the Coca Cola company to sell more of heir own product. Our parents perpetaute the lie because it has become imbedded in our American folk culture, a magical being who rides around the world and delivers presents to "good" children and coal to "bad" children. Folk culture present in this ritual is the concept of good and evil, though perhaps a bit downplayed. Santa, the judgement figure, declares that good children recieve gifts as a reward of their goodness, and bad children should get coal to serve as a punishment that isn't too harsh, but a reminder for them to get back on track. Seeing as Santa does not actually exist, no parent gives their kid coal, so every Christmas-celebrating kid in the world is led to beleive they are good. It's like another one of those self esteem-boosting rituals, much like the gold star. It is a representation of people's constant need of affirmation that what they are doing is right and they should feel good about themselves.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
What makes a good and meaningful life, drafted again
Welcome to the good life. We have pie and punch.
Intrigued? Well the good life, or rather, the concept of the good life is essentially that simple. As Americans, we are bombarded from all sides by images of what the good life entails, and thus everyone has built a perspective of "the good life". I propose that the good life is a life of awareness - most people are not aware that they are being controlled and impacted by pop culture and living what they think is their idea of a good life, an idea supplanted into each of their minds. Many people have their own take on the good life, some people I interviewed, some people who broadcast their ideas through music and others who sell it to us by other means. Perhaps the good life doesn't exist, and it is only a concept created by corporations to help sell their products. Perhaps it does exist and it is easier to attain than one would think. Based on many perspectives, we can work towards debunking the concept of a "good life".
Perhaps the best way to start unraveling the theory of a good and meaningful life is to start with my own belief system. I hold it true that a good life is something people must strive for, not something that you can be born into, such as may be the case with material wealth. No, I find that a truly good life is a life where you operate in full awareness of the factors guiding your life, factors trying to mold you into their image. Becoming aware in the sense that you can see the puppet strings that try to attach themselves o you is not an easy task, one that I am not versed in too deeply. It is the case for many people to subconsciously adopt the motto "ignorance is bliss" wherein what you don't know cannot hurt you. In this case it can be inferred that if you are ignorant of an assailant creeping up behind you, you will be perfectly fine, but if you are aware of his presence, then you are in some serious danger. What good can it do you to be unaware of the puppeteer that is controlling your every action and controlling every thought you think is your own? The way I see it (or perhaps I have been conditioned to see it this way, it is certainly a possibility) someone should try to be as aware of both themselves and everything impacting them as they can.
I am well aware that my ideas are not my own. I doubt that any of my ideas concerning my life and attitude have anything to do with me. I am a product of my environment. I can tell you, it’s a very uncomfortable position to be in; you don't know exactly what your beliefs are, you second-guess everything because you know that it came from one source or another. That's why I believe I find the most meaning in writing. True, most plot devices and in general, plots, have been created before. But the truth remains that when you put pen to paper or words to a screen, it is an original burst of thought from yourself. Even for those not gifted in writing can create something original and meaningful. The quality of the work doesn't have to be good, but it is meaningful in that it was created from the author's originality. Creating a fictional story, a poem, really any form of creative writing has meaning because it defies corporate media. If it's original, it's unaffected by anything but imagination. Perhaps it is cliché to say this, but imagination ultimately boils down to the best tool to defy social norms.
I talked to several people to determine what they felt made a good and meaningful life. Talking to these people made it evident that some people have not given a whole lot of thought to their life’s meaning, and much less to the concept of meaning in general. Person A said "Meaning, well that's the stuff that has importance to you, like, the stuff you like." similar to this was Person B who said that meaning "isn't something that can be easily tossed away, more like the stuff that's precious to you." From these two, we're left to wonder exactly what importance is - what makes something a necessity to someone? I think people have been greatly encouraged to not think critically about "abstract" things like the meaning of life and what makes a good life. Instead, people focus on the more concrete concepts of "things". People put significance into objects, like their new phone, their clothes, and their cars. It seems that people hold things important, and the better the thing makes you look in person, the better and more important it becomes to you. Things in themselves hold little actual value, however. Sometimes people use these things to stimulate other ideas. A person may find a photo album important, as it documents what they see as important events in their lives or the lives of loved ones.
In America we are greatly exposed and more or less run our lives by Popular culture. Within Pop culture lay three different but not necessarily separate categories: Corporate, Folk Culture, and Big Subcultures. For this unit we have delved deeply into personifying Corporate Culture. Within this subcategory of Pop culture lie more subcategories that classify the messages broadcasted by corporate culture. These categories are Dominant, Marginal/Fringe, and Prohibited/Unacceptable. Dominant messages are those that are the basis of the music videos, movies, and books that we all consume. They typically involve "good" values of misogyny, heroism, and going with the flow. Marginal or fringe messages are those like "You can smoke pot and be a drug addict while you're young and single, as long as you clean yourself up and get settled with a nice wife and 2.5 kids.” They start off "bad" and end up "good". In prohibited messages, however, you will only see the direct opposition to the Dominant culture, and this is why you hardly ever see these kinds of messages being tossed around casually. The instances where these are shown are often found alongside the marginal messages, as the two are related. A prohibited message might encourage you to take to the streets and start the revolution, destroying every piece of corporate anything you find.
One medium that essentially serves up corporate messages to teens on a silver platter is the ever-expanding world of video gaming. With 3 current-gen gaming consoles, the attraction to video gaming ranges between age groups of 8 to 20s and
30s. Most every video game has a plot in which you must defeat a foe of some kind. In most of these you play the story's hero. You are the cream of your village's crop, there's something special about you, and you have a predetermined destiny for greatness. This serves as a drag for many teens, albeit subconsciously. They need the affirmation that they can be better than what they are now, that they can do more. Other than that, gaming is like a new sport between teens, a new form of competition where you can truly outshine your peers and earn your bragging rights without ever actually accomplishing much. It is a form of grandstanding, with every game becoming worse and worse, making you capable of doing more and more to humiliate your friends. Not to mention that the games' level of violence is another huge draw; it gives teens the ability to commit deviant crimes without suffering punishment. It allows teens to battle against armies of "evil" creatures, without doing much to reflect on the evil of killing said creature. For social devolution we can all count video games as a major player, no pun intended.
Another method of providing corporate messages is through literary media. Institutions like publishers and bookstores have a huge say in what we the people read. The process of putting a book through publishing from first draft to final, printed copy is a long and hard ordeal involving many rewrites and drafts. Typically we end up with the watered down and editor approved version of the author’s ideas. When the writer first sets his pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) he or she puts out an unpolished brick of a story, one that needs refining in order to pass through to publishing. The first brick of text contains all the author’s ideas for the work and everything he sees going into it. Some of those ideas get lost in the editing process and thus the author is limiting the ideas and the opinions in the text. Clever authors are the ones who lose very little to the crippling gaze of the publishing fiend. Take for example that most Fantasy stories follow the same string of plot as every other one. However, we do have those that pop up to take a different tact. Every story has a hero. Every story has a villain. Every story with a hero has a conclusion where typically the hero is victorious over the villain. He may even fall in love throughout the course of the story.
Intrigued? Well the good life, or rather, the concept of the good life is essentially that simple. As Americans, we are bombarded from all sides by images of what the good life entails, and thus everyone has built a perspective of "the good life". I propose that the good life is a life of awareness - most people are not aware that they are being controlled and impacted by pop culture and living what they think is their idea of a good life, an idea supplanted into each of their minds. Many people have their own take on the good life, some people I interviewed, some people who broadcast their ideas through music and others who sell it to us by other means. Perhaps the good life doesn't exist, and it is only a concept created by corporations to help sell their products. Perhaps it does exist and it is easier to attain than one would think. Based on many perspectives, we can work towards debunking the concept of a "good life".
Perhaps the best way to start unraveling the theory of a good and meaningful life is to start with my own belief system. I hold it true that a good life is something people must strive for, not something that you can be born into, such as may be the case with material wealth. No, I find that a truly good life is a life where you operate in full awareness of the factors guiding your life, factors trying to mold you into their image. Becoming aware in the sense that you can see the puppet strings that try to attach themselves o you is not an easy task, one that I am not versed in too deeply. It is the case for many people to subconsciously adopt the motto "ignorance is bliss" wherein what you don't know cannot hurt you. In this case it can be inferred that if you are ignorant of an assailant creeping up behind you, you will be perfectly fine, but if you are aware of his presence, then you are in some serious danger. What good can it do you to be unaware of the puppeteer that is controlling your every action and controlling every thought you think is your own? The way I see it (or perhaps I have been conditioned to see it this way, it is certainly a possibility) someone should try to be as aware of both themselves and everything impacting them as they can.
I am well aware that my ideas are not my own. I doubt that any of my ideas concerning my life and attitude have anything to do with me. I am a product of my environment. I can tell you, it’s a very uncomfortable position to be in; you don't know exactly what your beliefs are, you second-guess everything because you know that it came from one source or another. That's why I believe I find the most meaning in writing. True, most plot devices and in general, plots, have been created before. But the truth remains that when you put pen to paper or words to a screen, it is an original burst of thought from yourself. Even for those not gifted in writing can create something original and meaningful. The quality of the work doesn't have to be good, but it is meaningful in that it was created from the author's originality. Creating a fictional story, a poem, really any form of creative writing has meaning because it defies corporate media. If it's original, it's unaffected by anything but imagination. Perhaps it is cliché to say this, but imagination ultimately boils down to the best tool to defy social norms.
I talked to several people to determine what they felt made a good and meaningful life. Talking to these people made it evident that some people have not given a whole lot of thought to their life’s meaning, and much less to the concept of meaning in general. Person A said "Meaning, well that's the stuff that has importance to you, like, the stuff you like." similar to this was Person B who said that meaning "isn't something that can be easily tossed away, more like the stuff that's precious to you." From these two, we're left to wonder exactly what importance is - what makes something a necessity to someone? I think people have been greatly encouraged to not think critically about "abstract" things like the meaning of life and what makes a good life. Instead, people focus on the more concrete concepts of "things". People put significance into objects, like their new phone, their clothes, and their cars. It seems that people hold things important, and the better the thing makes you look in person, the better and more important it becomes to you. Things in themselves hold little actual value, however. Sometimes people use these things to stimulate other ideas. A person may find a photo album important, as it documents what they see as important events in their lives or the lives of loved ones.
In America we are greatly exposed and more or less run our lives by Popular culture. Within Pop culture lay three different but not necessarily separate categories: Corporate, Folk Culture, and Big Subcultures. For this unit we have delved deeply into personifying Corporate Culture. Within this subcategory of Pop culture lie more subcategories that classify the messages broadcasted by corporate culture. These categories are Dominant, Marginal/Fringe, and Prohibited/Unacceptable. Dominant messages are those that are the basis of the music videos, movies, and books that we all consume. They typically involve "good" values of misogyny, heroism, and going with the flow. Marginal or fringe messages are those like "You can smoke pot and be a drug addict while you're young and single, as long as you clean yourself up and get settled with a nice wife and 2.5 kids.” They start off "bad" and end up "good". In prohibited messages, however, you will only see the direct opposition to the Dominant culture, and this is why you hardly ever see these kinds of messages being tossed around casually. The instances where these are shown are often found alongside the marginal messages, as the two are related. A prohibited message might encourage you to take to the streets and start the revolution, destroying every piece of corporate anything you find.
One medium that essentially serves up corporate messages to teens on a silver platter is the ever-expanding world of video gaming. With 3 current-gen gaming consoles, the attraction to video gaming ranges between age groups of 8 to 20s and
30s. Most every video game has a plot in which you must defeat a foe of some kind. In most of these you play the story's hero. You are the cream of your village's crop, there's something special about you, and you have a predetermined destiny for greatness. This serves as a drag for many teens, albeit subconsciously. They need the affirmation that they can be better than what they are now, that they can do more. Other than that, gaming is like a new sport between teens, a new form of competition where you can truly outshine your peers and earn your bragging rights without ever actually accomplishing much. It is a form of grandstanding, with every game becoming worse and worse, making you capable of doing more and more to humiliate your friends. Not to mention that the games' level of violence is another huge draw; it gives teens the ability to commit deviant crimes without suffering punishment. It allows teens to battle against armies of "evil" creatures, without doing much to reflect on the evil of killing said creature. For social devolution we can all count video games as a major player, no pun intended.
Another method of providing corporate messages is through literary media. Institutions like publishers and bookstores have a huge say in what we the people read. The process of putting a book through publishing from first draft to final, printed copy is a long and hard ordeal involving many rewrites and drafts. Typically we end up with the watered down and editor approved version of the author’s ideas. When the writer first sets his pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) he or she puts out an unpolished brick of a story, one that needs refining in order to pass through to publishing. The first brick of text contains all the author’s ideas for the work and everything he sees going into it. Some of those ideas get lost in the editing process and thus the author is limiting the ideas and the opinions in the text. Clever authors are the ones who lose very little to the crippling gaze of the publishing fiend. Take for example that most Fantasy stories follow the same string of plot as every other one. However, we do have those that pop up to take a different tact. Every story has a hero. Every story has a villain. Every story with a hero has a conclusion where typically the hero is victorious over the villain. He may even fall in love throughout the course of the story.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Thanksgiving/BlackFriday Thoughts
November 27 was the typical American holiday of over-indulgence and "good feelings" for loved ones. Thanksgiving is known to everyone as the day that Americans gather around to eat together and to give thanks for whatever they are thankful for. Initial thoughts going into this holiday were to clear room for the food I planned to eat. Just because it is an ultimately empty holiday doesn't mean that I don't have to refuse copious amounts of free food. In class the week leading up to the holiday break, Andy made it very clear that the holiday was based around early American genocide, where the white European settlers came in and essentially destroyed the indigenous Native American population. Since those early years, America has emulated the holiday in joyous celebration, gradually forgetting the circumstances surrounding the origins of the holiday.
The day before thanksgiving I spent time with my girlfriend Desiree and I first told her Happy Genocide day as we sat down to make our gingerbread house for the big meal. She responded with literally "Chyeeahh," acknowledging the thought as a joke in initially, but then expanding by saying how sad it was that people chose not to remember the killing of Native Americans. "there really isn't any point to this holiday. People take it more as a way to eat a lot and not care, and then to shop a lot the day after. Consumerism rocks!"(This was fairly clearly sarcastic, and it is hard to represent sarcasm in typeface)On Thanksgiving, I wished my parents a happy Genocide day as well, to which my father, looking up from his book, responded "Yep" and my mother gave me a silencing look. It would seem that the atmosphere didn't allow for questioning of the holiday's motives.
On Black Friday I stayed home. This was not, however, out of some anti-corporate and anti-consumerist motive. It was because there is actually nothing out there on the market that I really want right now. Thus, no driving force directing me to whatever bargains may have plagued the minds of the other reckless consumers. I stayed home and sat on y couch and read a book. Though I am aware that had there been something I wanted, I would've likely gone to go and get it. Saturday I went shopping to grab some necessities (admittedly along with some not-so-necessary items) such as new pants and sweater. The crowds had thinned greatly, and I realized that these sales, whatever they had been, would almost certainly drop to lower on January 2nd, after Christmas and new years, where whatever is left over needs to be gotten rid of. People had flocked to sales simply because the TV told them to.
Additionally worth mentioning was the Monday we returned to school and reunited after the small break and I asked people what they had given thanks for. Not surprisingly, I found that everyone I asked said they hadn't actually given thanks and had just begun to tuck into their meal. Perhaps (and this is most certainly an optomistic view) this indicates a decline in the Holiday's importance, and ultimately thanksgiving as we know it will cease to exist in anything more than name.
The day before thanksgiving I spent time with my girlfriend Desiree and I first told her Happy Genocide day as we sat down to make our gingerbread house for the big meal. She responded with literally "Chyeeahh," acknowledging the thought as a joke in initially, but then expanding by saying how sad it was that people chose not to remember the killing of Native Americans. "there really isn't any point to this holiday. People take it more as a way to eat a lot and not care, and then to shop a lot the day after. Consumerism rocks!"(This was fairly clearly sarcastic, and it is hard to represent sarcasm in typeface)On Thanksgiving, I wished my parents a happy Genocide day as well, to which my father, looking up from his book, responded "Yep" and my mother gave me a silencing look. It would seem that the atmosphere didn't allow for questioning of the holiday's motives.
On Black Friday I stayed home. This was not, however, out of some anti-corporate and anti-consumerist motive. It was because there is actually nothing out there on the market that I really want right now. Thus, no driving force directing me to whatever bargains may have plagued the minds of the other reckless consumers. I stayed home and sat on y couch and read a book. Though I am aware that had there been something I wanted, I would've likely gone to go and get it. Saturday I went shopping to grab some necessities (admittedly along with some not-so-necessary items) such as new pants and sweater. The crowds had thinned greatly, and I realized that these sales, whatever they had been, would almost certainly drop to lower on January 2nd, after Christmas and new years, where whatever is left over needs to be gotten rid of. People had flocked to sales simply because the TV told them to.
Additionally worth mentioning was the Monday we returned to school and reunited after the small break and I asked people what they had given thanks for. Not surprisingly, I found that everyone I asked said they hadn't actually given thanks and had just begun to tuck into their meal. Perhaps (and this is most certainly an optomistic view) this indicates a decline in the Holiday's importance, and ultimately thanksgiving as we know it will cease to exist in anything more than name.
Friday, November 28, 2008
What makes a Meaningful and Good life? (Exhibition style paper)
Welcome to the good life. We have pie and punch.
Intrigued? Well the good life, or rather, the concept of the good life is essentially that simple. As Americans, we are bombarded from all sides by images of what the good life entails, and thus everyone has built a perspective of "the good life". I propose that the good life is a life of awareness - most people are not aware that they are being controlled and impacted by pop culture and living what they think is their idea of a good life, an idea supplanted into each of their minds. Many people have their own take on the good life, some people I interviewed, some people who broadcast their ideas through music and others who sell it to us by other means. Perhaps the good life doesn't exist, and it is only a concept created by corporations to help sell their products. Perhaps it does exist and it is easier to attain than one would think. Based on many perspectives, we can work towards debunking the concept of a "good life".
Perhaps the best way to start unraveling the theory of a good and meaningful life is to start with my own belief system. I hold it true that a good life is something people must strive for, not something that you can be born into, such as may be the case with material wealth. No, I find that a truly good life is a life where you operate in full awareness of the factors guiding your life, factors trying to mold you into their image. Becoming aware in the sense that you can see the puppet strings that try to attach themselves o you is not an easy task, one that I am not versed in too deeply. It is the case for many people to subconsciously adopt the motto "ignorance is bliss" wherein what you don't know cannot hurt you. In this case it can be inferred that if you are ignorant of an assailant creeping up behind you, you will be perfectly fine, but if you are aware of his presence, then you are in some serious danger. What good can it do you to be unaware of the puppeteer that is controlling your every action and controlling every thought you think is your own? The way I see it (or perhaps I have been conditioned to see it this way, it is certainly a possibility) someone should try to be as aware of both themselves and everything impacting them as they can.
I am well aware that my ideas are not my own. I doubt that any of my ideas concerning my life and attitude have anything to do with me. I am a product of my environment. I can tell you, its a very uncomfortable position to be in; you don't know exactly what your beliefs are, you second-guess everything because you know that it came from one source or another. That's why I beleive I find the most meaning in writing. True, most plot devices and in general, plots, have been created before. but the truth remains that when you put pen to paper or words to a screen, it is an original burst of thought from yourself. even for those not gifted in writing can create something original and meaningful. The quality of the work doesn't have to be good, but it is meaningful in that it was created from the author's originality. Creating a fictional story, a poem, really any form of creative writing has meaning because it defies corporate media. If it's original, it's unaffected by anything but imagination. perhaps it is cliché to say this, but imagination ultimately boils down to the best tool to defy social norms.
I talked to several people to determine what they felt made a good and meaningful life. Talking to these people made it evident that some people have not given a whole lot of thought to their live's meaning, and much less to the concept of meaning in general. Person A said "Meaning, well that's the stuff that has importance to you, like, the stuff you like." similar to this was Person B who said that meaning "isn't something that can be easily tossed away, more like the stuff that's precious to you." From these two, we're left to wonder exactly what importance is - what makes something a necessity to someone? I think people have been greatly encouraged to not think critically about "abstract" things like the meaning of life and what makes a good life. Instead, people focus on the more concrete concepts of "things". People put significance into objects, like their new phone, their clothes, their cars. it seems that people hoid things important, and the better the thing makes you look in person, the better and more important it becomes to you. Things in themselves hold little actual value, however. Sometimes people use these things to stimulate other ideas. A person may find a photo album important, as it documents what they see as important events in their lives or the lives of loved ones.
In America we are greatly exposed and more or less run our lives by Popular culture. Within Pop culture lie three different but not necessarily separate categories; Corporate, Folk Culture, and Big Subcultures. For this unit we have delved deeply into personifying Corporate Culture. Within this subcategory of Pop culture lie more subcategories that classify the messages broadcasted by corporate culture. These categories are Dominant, Marginal/Fringe, and Prohibited/Unacceptable. Dominant messages are those that are the basis of the music videos, movies, and books that we all consume. They typically involve "good" values of misogyny, heroism, and going with the flow. Marginal or fringe messages are those like "You can smoke pot and be a drug addict while you're young and single, as long as you clean yourself up and get settled with a nice wife and 2.5 kids.". They start off "bad" and end up "good". In prohibited messages, however, you will only see the direct opposition to the Dominant culture, and this is why you hardly ever see these kinds of messages being tossed around casually. The instances where these are shown are often found alongside the marginal messages, as the two are related. A prohibited message might encourage you to take to the streets and start the revolution, destroying every piece of corporate anything you find.
One medium that essentially serves up corporate messages to teens on a silver platter is the ever-expanding world of video gaming. With 3 current-gen gaming consoles, the attraction to video gaming ranges between age groups of 8 to 20s and
30s. Most every video game has a plot in which you must defeat a foe of some kind. In most of these you play the story's hero. You are the cream of your village's crop, there's something special about you, you have a predetermined destiny for greatness. This serves as a drag for many teens, albeit subconsciously. They need the affirmation that they can be better than what they are now, they can do more. Other than that, gaming is like a new sport between teens, a new form of competition where you can truly outshine your peers and earn your bragging rights without ever actually accomplishing much. It is a form of grandstanding, with every game becoming worse and worse, making you capable of doing more and more to humiliate your friends. not to mention that the games' level of violence is another huge draw; it gives teens the ability to commit deviant crimes without suffering punishment. It allows teens to battle against armies of "evil" creatures, without doing much to reflect on the eveil of killing said creature. For social deevoltuion we can all count video games as a mjor player, no pun intended.
Intrigued? Well the good life, or rather, the concept of the good life is essentially that simple. As Americans, we are bombarded from all sides by images of what the good life entails, and thus everyone has built a perspective of "the good life". I propose that the good life is a life of awareness - most people are not aware that they are being controlled and impacted by pop culture and living what they think is their idea of a good life, an idea supplanted into each of their minds. Many people have their own take on the good life, some people I interviewed, some people who broadcast their ideas through music and others who sell it to us by other means. Perhaps the good life doesn't exist, and it is only a concept created by corporations to help sell their products. Perhaps it does exist and it is easier to attain than one would think. Based on many perspectives, we can work towards debunking the concept of a "good life".
Perhaps the best way to start unraveling the theory of a good and meaningful life is to start with my own belief system. I hold it true that a good life is something people must strive for, not something that you can be born into, such as may be the case with material wealth. No, I find that a truly good life is a life where you operate in full awareness of the factors guiding your life, factors trying to mold you into their image. Becoming aware in the sense that you can see the puppet strings that try to attach themselves o you is not an easy task, one that I am not versed in too deeply. It is the case for many people to subconsciously adopt the motto "ignorance is bliss" wherein what you don't know cannot hurt you. In this case it can be inferred that if you are ignorant of an assailant creeping up behind you, you will be perfectly fine, but if you are aware of his presence, then you are in some serious danger. What good can it do you to be unaware of the puppeteer that is controlling your every action and controlling every thought you think is your own? The way I see it (or perhaps I have been conditioned to see it this way, it is certainly a possibility) someone should try to be as aware of both themselves and everything impacting them as they can.
I am well aware that my ideas are not my own. I doubt that any of my ideas concerning my life and attitude have anything to do with me. I am a product of my environment. I can tell you, its a very uncomfortable position to be in; you don't know exactly what your beliefs are, you second-guess everything because you know that it came from one source or another. That's why I beleive I find the most meaning in writing. True, most plot devices and in general, plots, have been created before. but the truth remains that when you put pen to paper or words to a screen, it is an original burst of thought from yourself. even for those not gifted in writing can create something original and meaningful. The quality of the work doesn't have to be good, but it is meaningful in that it was created from the author's originality. Creating a fictional story, a poem, really any form of creative writing has meaning because it defies corporate media. If it's original, it's unaffected by anything but imagination. perhaps it is cliché to say this, but imagination ultimately boils down to the best tool to defy social norms.
I talked to several people to determine what they felt made a good and meaningful life. Talking to these people made it evident that some people have not given a whole lot of thought to their live's meaning, and much less to the concept of meaning in general. Person A said "Meaning, well that's the stuff that has importance to you, like, the stuff you like." similar to this was Person B who said that meaning "isn't something that can be easily tossed away, more like the stuff that's precious to you." From these two, we're left to wonder exactly what importance is - what makes something a necessity to someone? I think people have been greatly encouraged to not think critically about "abstract" things like the meaning of life and what makes a good life. Instead, people focus on the more concrete concepts of "things". People put significance into objects, like their new phone, their clothes, their cars. it seems that people hoid things important, and the better the thing makes you look in person, the better and more important it becomes to you. Things in themselves hold little actual value, however. Sometimes people use these things to stimulate other ideas. A person may find a photo album important, as it documents what they see as important events in their lives or the lives of loved ones.
In America we are greatly exposed and more or less run our lives by Popular culture. Within Pop culture lie three different but not necessarily separate categories; Corporate, Folk Culture, and Big Subcultures. For this unit we have delved deeply into personifying Corporate Culture. Within this subcategory of Pop culture lie more subcategories that classify the messages broadcasted by corporate culture. These categories are Dominant, Marginal/Fringe, and Prohibited/Unacceptable. Dominant messages are those that are the basis of the music videos, movies, and books that we all consume. They typically involve "good" values of misogyny, heroism, and going with the flow. Marginal or fringe messages are those like "You can smoke pot and be a drug addict while you're young and single, as long as you clean yourself up and get settled with a nice wife and 2.5 kids.". They start off "bad" and end up "good". In prohibited messages, however, you will only see the direct opposition to the Dominant culture, and this is why you hardly ever see these kinds of messages being tossed around casually. The instances where these are shown are often found alongside the marginal messages, as the two are related. A prohibited message might encourage you to take to the streets and start the revolution, destroying every piece of corporate anything you find.
One medium that essentially serves up corporate messages to teens on a silver platter is the ever-expanding world of video gaming. With 3 current-gen gaming consoles, the attraction to video gaming ranges between age groups of 8 to 20s and
30s. Most every video game has a plot in which you must defeat a foe of some kind. In most of these you play the story's hero. You are the cream of your village's crop, there's something special about you, you have a predetermined destiny for greatness. This serves as a drag for many teens, albeit subconsciously. They need the affirmation that they can be better than what they are now, they can do more. Other than that, gaming is like a new sport between teens, a new form of competition where you can truly outshine your peers and earn your bragging rights without ever actually accomplishing much. It is a form of grandstanding, with every game becoming worse and worse, making you capable of doing more and more to humiliate your friends. not to mention that the games' level of violence is another huge draw; it gives teens the ability to commit deviant crimes without suffering punishment. It allows teens to battle against armies of "evil" creatures, without doing much to reflect on the eveil of killing said creature. For social deevoltuion we can all count video games as a mjor player, no pun intended.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Looking at corporate messages
The first corporate message I looked at for this assignment was the music video for the song Pork & Beans by Weezer. The video is essentially a compilation of internet trends that have recieved huge appraisal by viewers around the world. The lyrics of the song are about how the singer, as a representaion of normal people, is defiant of the typical messages broadcasted to us by society. "Imma do the things that I want to do, I aint got a thing to prove to you" is a clip of lyrics from the song, clearly stating how this person is independent and doesn't need to live life based on how the owrld says he/she should. To emphasize the concept, the video shows clips of people like Chris Crocker, famous for his internet rant "Leave Britney alone", the afro ninja, and the bassist imitating a video of a man who sets out to conquer the world record for most shirts worn at a single time. These images coincide with the mesage of doing what you want to do regardless of other people's opinions on things. Also, the song reflects on the sheep mentality of people today, saying "everyone likes to dance to a happy song, with a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along". The message in those words being fairly clear, the video uses a clip of people performing the Soulja Boy, a trendy dance from 2006-2007. I would say that this is a marginal to mainstream message of doing whatever you feel, marginal because it ridicules people for being sheep but mainstream because every musician says to be different.
The second corporate message I looked at for this assignment was the movie Jackass 2.5. In it, a group of young white men perform "stunts" that involve publicly humiliating themselves, hurting themselves in some way, or stirring up disturbances in public areas. The people involved are personified as stupid and reckless, and for the most part they try to fufill that personification. This movie is a compilation of unused clips from the 2006 film "Jackass number 2" and the ones excluded. An example of some of the stunts in the movie are painting and dressing up one of the actors as king kong and standing him up on top of a port-a-potty to "defend" the damsel in distress, who was another actor, a dwarf dressed as a woman. The other actors were made to fly hand-controlled RC planes into the two standing atop the port-a-potty so as to reenact the final scene in King Kong. This kind of stunt serves the purpose of dissuading people to do something like this, and serves the purpose of being a mainstream message; don't be a fool. Don't try this stuff in front of your friends or anybody. At the same time it also says that it is reallt cool to hang around with your friends and do whatever you find to be really fun. by not saying that explicitly, they get the message across indirectly, making this a spokesperson for the mainstream message of don't be stupid on the outside, and the marginal message of do it because it's fun and you'll make people laugh.
The last bit of corporate culture I examined was an Ad for the Wii game "Wii Music". The ad features many different kinds of people using the Wii controller to make various notes using various instuments to contribute to the general Super Mario theme. The ad featured people like an elderly couple, many teens, and several young adults, aged 20-26 or so. There seemed to be a lack of emphasis on the child audience for once, showing that Nintendo is trying to make its product more relatable to more people of different age groups. It had many teenagers performing music with "cool" instruments like drums and electric guitars, and it had the nice-looking sensibly dressed people playing instruments like the fulte or the piano. It profiled all these age groups into musical preference, and had everyone beaming ecstatically, as though they were enraptured by the game, as though it were something never witnessed before, when in actuality it is just Nintendo trying to tap into an already successful francise of musical video gaming. The message was wordless, and was very mainstream- buy this product so you can be happy and have fun! You want to be like all these smiling people because they are all just like you!
The second corporate message I looked at for this assignment was the movie Jackass 2.5. In it, a group of young white men perform "stunts" that involve publicly humiliating themselves, hurting themselves in some way, or stirring up disturbances in public areas. The people involved are personified as stupid and reckless, and for the most part they try to fufill that personification. This movie is a compilation of unused clips from the 2006 film "Jackass number 2" and the ones excluded. An example of some of the stunts in the movie are painting and dressing up one of the actors as king kong and standing him up on top of a port-a-potty to "defend" the damsel in distress, who was another actor, a dwarf dressed as a woman. The other actors were made to fly hand-controlled RC planes into the two standing atop the port-a-potty so as to reenact the final scene in King Kong. This kind of stunt serves the purpose of dissuading people to do something like this, and serves the purpose of being a mainstream message; don't be a fool. Don't try this stuff in front of your friends or anybody. At the same time it also says that it is reallt cool to hang around with your friends and do whatever you find to be really fun. by not saying that explicitly, they get the message across indirectly, making this a spokesperson for the mainstream message of don't be stupid on the outside, and the marginal message of do it because it's fun and you'll make people laugh.
The last bit of corporate culture I examined was an Ad for the Wii game "Wii Music". The ad features many different kinds of people using the Wii controller to make various notes using various instuments to contribute to the general Super Mario theme. The ad featured people like an elderly couple, many teens, and several young adults, aged 20-26 or so. There seemed to be a lack of emphasis on the child audience for once, showing that Nintendo is trying to make its product more relatable to more people of different age groups. It had many teenagers performing music with "cool" instruments like drums and electric guitars, and it had the nice-looking sensibly dressed people playing instruments like the fulte or the piano. It profiled all these age groups into musical preference, and had everyone beaming ecstatically, as though they were enraptured by the game, as though it were something never witnessed before, when in actuality it is just Nintendo trying to tap into an already successful francise of musical video gaming. The message was wordless, and was very mainstream- buy this product so you can be happy and have fun! You want to be like all these smiling people because they are all just like you!
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Election Reflection
The votes have been cast, the campaigning is finally finished with, the ballots are final. Barack Obama stands today as our new President-elect, now a piece of this country's history, America's first black president. The iconic "Yes We Can" campaign has proved superior to McCain's mud-slinging style of promotion. Barack Obama is very much the best president the country has had in a very long time, if not the best of all, period. So why don't I feel as hopelessly ecstatic as everyone else? I mean I did in the rush of the nation's first black man for president and also the Palin bullet being successfully dodged, but now that I have time to reflect, I can see that there is very much work to be done. With the economy in the toilet and with the US fighting the good ol' fight and losing on both fronts, the future of America seems grim. Granted, Obama is the morale boost that many needed and will put the good foot forward in making something out of this mess, but it is key that he delivers some sort of appeasment in his early months in office, if only to keep people satisfied in their new president.
Something that actually makes me nervous is the fact that ballots still have to be counted, states to be ACTUALLY won, and ultimately what scares me most (however unfounded the fear may be) that Obama being declared the winner is a projection. When it comes down to it, McCain may still hold more votes than Obama. Scary thought and I admit I may be misguided in my thoughts, but I won't feel safe in Obama's presidency until he actually sits behind the desk in the oval office.
Something that actually makes me nervous is the fact that ballots still have to be counted, states to be ACTUALLY won, and ultimately what scares me most (however unfounded the fear may be) that Obama being declared the winner is a projection. When it comes down to it, McCain may still hold more votes than Obama. Scary thought and I admit I may be misguided in my thoughts, but I won't feel safe in Obama's presidency until he actually sits behind the desk in the oval office.
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