black kids in white houses

I know this class is basically over but I wanted to post one last thing on here before we call it quits.  I am sitting at home trying to finish all my final papers and I just read the latest issue of my favorite online newspaper: The Stranger.  Usually I head straight for "savage love" because frankly I just like awkward sex questions, but this time I decided I would actually read the other articles first.  Good thing because I found an excellent one.

The topic of this article?  Black kids who live in white houses.  No it's not a pun on Barack Obama, it's a look into transnational adoption.  I've met Angelina Jolie's son Maddox and I think he has to be one of the most adorable kids ever but as this article points out, Maddox is just part of a trend.  What is the argument here you ask?  Think about the fact that in transnational adoption the parents are generally rich white people who are asking for small young children from foreign countries.  The parents of other races are completely out of the picture and the children are subordinate to their white masters.  What the hell does this look like?  

But I don't think it is that cut and dry.  Who is going to pay a lot of money to adopt a kid they don't really want?  Who is going to spend hours upon hours doing paperwork and having their entire life held under the microscope so they can adopt a child of color unless they legitimately want that child?  I'm just about certain that the answer to these questions is no one.  But there still is one problem, white people raising children of color presents these children of color with problems of which race to identify with and if it is not the white race how they learn identity tactics of their own race.

I have not done a ton of research on this topic but I think that it seems like something the class would be interested in.  If you care to read it at all you should definitely check it out at http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/black-kids-in-white-houses/Content?oid=787542

Two Crazy, Totally Unrelated Things

Ok, so we're getting on towards Christmas and of course the ads start rolling in in order to convince you that the power bill can wait and that you really need those shoes.  Great.  But I did just see a first in an ad...deaf love in a diamond commercial?!?  A white heterosexual couple is sitting by the Christmas tree exchanging gifts and signing to each other while subtitles tell you what they're saying at the bottom of the screen.  This blew my mind..I just wouldn't have thought of it.  So I was very happy to see a very marginalized group get some air time. I think it was a Jared commercial or one of those mainstream diamond retailers if anyone wants to try and find it.

Also, I was just amazingly disgusted to read the motto "we tame our women with the banana," tossed out flippantly and with a tongue to the cheek.  This little gem was spoken in reference to one cultures practice of gang raping any woman who goes against her gender role.  While the man who said this was part of a tiny subculture in New Guinea, it is too easy to dismiss those cultures as backward and determine that to be the root of this evil approach to life.  Look at what this idea really says.  This is a view that gender role is law and that any breach of that law is punishable and the punishment is always gang rape in order to return to the status quo.  You think we don't have that here?  The sad thing is that I have to say that we do this in the United States as well.  While it seems that the culture in New Guinea doesn't have the same kind of conflict between the "whore/virgin" aspect to their culture, it seems as though many men unconsciously rape because they are trying to enforce the "laws" of manhood and gender role that we are conditioned to abide by.  I absolutely hate that someone could say something like that and have a cavalier attitude about it.  But this asshole's comment actually helped further my thinking for my paper so I guess I can be happy about that.  Any thoughts peeps?

Our Culture

Ok so we're supposed to make this our space, and I've been meaning to for a while, so I'm going to.  I've spent a little bit over 45 minutes on YouTube watching Def Poetry Jam videos and wanted to share a few that I thought were of particular meaning to me.  I'm going to put up 3 videos, the most striking of which is one of Suheir Hammad and her poem "First Writing Since" which deals with her experience as a Palestinian woman post 9-11.  These 3 poems gave me a lot of perspective and a lot of food for thought about the topics of religion, the word nigger and it's use today, and how we deal with living in a world after 9-11.

Here's the link for the Suheir Hammad video-

This is Julian Curry "Niggers, Niggas, and Niggaz"-

This is Talib Kweli with "Hell"-

I think sometimes that we can get caught up in a lot of things that detract from the real root of the issue, and that these poems helped sum up a lot of the feelings that I've been having about these issues and cutting through a lot of the spin and opinion presented as fact.

I hope that these links work...

Cult-ture?

This video that Matt mentioned on facebook had me interested in writing a blog about..religion.

Religion always seems to be a touchy subject, alongside many other taboo subjects. I've found that it's hard to talk to a lot of people about religion, because there are those that try to push their religion on you, those who believe so deeply in their own religion they won't listen to you, those that live their lives how their religious leaders say they should and it all just turns into a huge mess.

I don't think religion should be a touchy subject personally. But then again, not everyone is open to listening to opinions.

With the elections, and particularly Prop 8, many have turned to religion, using it as a kind of fire power to convince people that same sex couples should not marry. Because it says in some part of the (new testament CHRISTIAN) bible that homosexuality is a sin. And I would just kind of laugh when I heard things like this, coming from people driving in their luxurious cars, pending divorces or previously divorced, wearing their clothes made of multiple fabrics, eating their hamburgers with the buns made from more than one grain, and outwardly slandering someone because they are not the exact same as themselves. To turn around and say that two people who love each other are not allowed to take part in something that all people should be allowed to take part in if they want to or not, it's laugh worthy I thought (alongside severely pissing me off). People so easily fall for something they think is religious because someone tells them it is, whether it's right or wrong. And many people consider religion as part of their "culture" and "heritage". Which led me to the interesting discovery I wanted to touch upon.

Culture has the word cult in it, I don't think it's at all related. But, cults are generally seen as those thing where people are like wearing all black and chanting nonsense and all killing each other at the same exact time...but I decided to look up the definition and find out what the meaning of cult is. And, ironically enough, the Oxford English Dictionary defined it as:

1. Worship; reverential homage rendered to a divine being or beings. Obs. (exc. as in sense 2). 2. a. A particular form or system of religious worship; esp. in reference to its external rites and ceremonies.

Religion. This also made me laugh as I thought about all the people who go to the big "The Rock" churches and the Mormons (Latter Day Saints) with their large temples...Cults. Religion.

Hypocrisy.

I guess I don't really have a point to make. I would rather get people's opinions on what they think about religion as a "Cult-ture" because I find this interesting...

close read to the Desis Reprazent article.

There is a paragraph in the reading by Desis Reprazent that I am curious to see how everyone is responding to. The paragraph is the second full paragraph on page 361 starting with "The Gendered edge of this popular culture is laced..." So I was just thinking about how the particular culture is defining gender roles, how the members are responding to these definitions, and how or if it changes between races? There is a particular sentence I'd like to discuss, "Fantasies of sexual purity and fears of polluting seductiveness are part of a larger ideology of ethnic authenticity at work in this popular culture are linked to a larger moral and political discourse about ‘pure’ tradition and ‘corrupted’ hybridity." As well, I was thinking about how the article is talking about race relations within the subculuture and how everyone is responding to that?

Also, take a look at this video its a Bhangra music video featuring Bally Sagoo who is mentioned in the article and tell me what you think. And then the second one as well is a little different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PScUxGkgKQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVcEiVJDzCw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlu20VUz-rg

Obama for change?

Given the fact that Obama just made history I thought it might be appropriate to talk about him in context of the readings we had for class last week.  

The readings last week were about black homophobia and what is meant about black popular culture.  Obama fits into both of these categories in one way or another.  Stuart Hall says that "cultural hegemony is never about pure victory or pure domination; it is never a zero-sum cultural game; it is always about shifting the balance of power in the relations of culture".  How much more true could this get?  Obama just shifted the balance of power in favor of democrats, in favor perhaps of all minorities, in favor of being "the other".  While it is still true that he is not "the blackness (that) is most black" that Isaac Julien wrote of the congregation answering with, he is black in at least some meaning of the word.

Obama has now shifted the balance of power and he is the destined to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world (you can feel free to disagree).  My question is what this means in terms of cultural hegemony.  Does Obama now have a hegemonic rule over this country?  He clearly has a group of dedicated supporters but has he really changed anything yet?  My answer is that yes it's easy to say that he has changed some hearts and some minds.  However, I qualify my answer by saying that because it has been such a long road to get to that shift, he is going to have to be nearly perfect.  He not only has to do better than Bush (such a difficult task right?) but he is setting a precedent whether he likes it or not. 

The other article we read about black homophobia that related to the movie by the same man is an interesting idea when thought about in terms of Obama.  We now have a cultural minority leading this country but he has taken virtually no notice of the gay community, much less the black gay community.  And why not?  Seeing as how he is the most "liberal" man in the entire senate I am going to dare to say he is probably not a gay basher, that his personal beliefs are probably pretty close to where gay people would like them to be.  The problem is what Julien writes of on pg. 257, that the family and church are two major institutions in African-American communities.  This is not just true of African-American communities, however, this is true of a large part of America and it's the ticket that Obama really ran on.  He was a family man, a church going man, someone that did these things that the rest of America is doing.  Though I'm not by any means a political genius, I think it would be incredibly difficult for Obama to have won had he come out and been a vocal gay supporter.  He never made any negative comments but instead chose to simply ignore the subject, part of the true problem with homophobia.  

I guess that sums up my comparison to Obama and the two articles from last week.  I hope everyone is getting ready for change because in just a few months we are going to see some great things happening.  SWEET!

Role of the Audience

We didn’t have much time today to talk about what black art is but I had brought in a series of poems from the “Voices from Leimert Park: a poetry anthology” for us to look at and interpret. Can black art and even art as a category be more than what we perceive? What role does the audience play in how the art is produced? What happens when your intended audience is not your actual audience? When we talked today in class about the Harlem Renaissance I thought it was incredibly interesting where the artists were getting the money to survive, which was of course the white population. I wonder how much that defined what the artists produced and how the actual black community viewed the art. And then to talk about the role of audience a little more I think it would be an interesting dialogue to have in class about certain pieces of art, and try and understand the meaning behind them. Here is a poem Mikael Ahadou called “Armed Camp.”

Armed camp
Occupation army

We must find a solution,
they say, as the barricades fo up;
stop traffic! That's not oppression;
spend the night handing out citations.
We'll turn Crenshaw into a gaunlet;
Let those who dare, run the rapids;
If the Motorcycles miss them
Its certain the cruisers will sink them.

Armed camp
Occupation army

Highway patrol on the one hand
and LAPD on the other;
to turn Leimert, they'd rather,
into an armed camp; if need be
we'll call on the deputy.
The occupation army
Has to stay up late
Workng strenuously
to keep up the pace.

Armed camp
Occupation army
It's not enough to cite the poor sucker
We'll make sure he can't get out from under.
We'll tow his vehicle
And make him walk home.
With taxes and penalties
He'll be sure to stay broke.
If he recovers his vehicle
One thing is for certain;
Without fair and equitable law
We'll just do it again.

Armed camp
Occupation army
Revolution army.

On a slightly different topic I want to bring up the importance of audience in film. For instance the movie Boyz in the Hood. The movie was critically acclaimed, nominated for both best director and original screenplay in the 1991 Academy Awards and said to be made to inspire the youth in these poor neighborhoods. The movie was the first of its kind creating a new genre that inspired many movies after its release. However after the movie was released the black population in inner-cities were infuriated, not only did the movie sugarcoat what was actually going on in their neighborhoods but it was aimed more for an outside audience than the actual people being portrayed in the movie. Less than two years later Menace to Society was released in response to give a more realistic portrayal of “the hood.” Although the two movies were very similar in theory the intended audiences were incredibly different. This difference in audience created one movie that was seen by the rest of the world as a masterpiece and incredibly inspiring, but who exactly did it inspire? Who were the speeches in the movie, given mostly by Laurence Fishburne’s character, aimed at? When you watch both movies there is a very big difference in the way they were made. While Boyz in the Hood was incredibly inspirational and a seemingly insightful view of how ‘the hood’ really is or was, Menace to Society is incredibly violent, real, and sad portrayal instead of apparently inspirational. The monologues that occur in Menace to Society deal with survival and telling a seemingly more real tail of how things were at the time. Was it just the fact that they were two different movies, or was it the different audiences or even intentions?

Just thoughts

Just wanted to put a few things out there that I was thinking about class and haven't had a chance to try and process.

What did people think of the man holding the seashell to his ear?  I thought of the seashell as an amplifier.  Since when you put your ear into the seashell you hear everything more clearly and can pick up more I thought that this may be related to the gay black male voices that hadn't been heard by mainstream society.  I was also struck by how out of the norm it was to have a seashell like that laying around for use like that so I wanted to think about it in a bit more depth and see what people thought.

Also what role does poetry play in this film?  I thought it was difficult to read each scene because there seemed to be so many layers to each part.  Not only do you have the way in which it is filmed with light, color, depth, spacing and much more to consider, but also the poems being laid on top of those.  To me it was a lot at once, but wondered if anybody had any thoughts of how the poetry changed or added meaning to each scene?  Or any one scene in particular?  I wish we had gone over the poems and looked at them a bit before we watched the movie so we had a bit more of an idea what the movie was trying to say before we saw them combined.

I think it was one of the first poems that was read, but one of the poems mentioned fields of poppy and specifically red poppy [I think another was mentioned as well] and I was wondering if anyone had any idea why poppy's were chosen?  I thought it might have been because poppy's are in cocaine and that's a drug commonly associated with homosexuality?  Also I thought it was interesting to have color mentioned in a poem overlaying a black and white film and it just stuck with me.

So lots of questions coming from someone that felt a little overwhelmed by the movie...but oh well, go vote.  Obama.  Not McCain.

embedded.net

After my anxiety attack in Priya’s office today I calmed down, sat down at my computer, and really searched for information on my topic. And I found some really interesting stuff, but one site really stood out to me, http://www.unembedded.net/main.php. This project that these four independent photojournalists are doing in a sense, is what my project is about. They have written a book and started an exhibit where they are trying to show the American public what is really going on in Iraq. The photos that I looked at were all really interesting, but the ones that were really moving (even though they were pretty bloody) was Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.

This exhibit is traveling around the country right now and the crazy thing is, it could come here. They have made it so accessible to the public. All they have to do is accept it.

Mulvey in the standard Hollywood shoot-em-up

Mulvey's characterization of the use of (and literal, erotic viewing of) female figures in cinema as an oppositional force to the male-driven narrative that must be overcome brings to mind two similar recent flicks: "Hitman," starring Timothy Olyphant, and "Casino Royale," the most recent James Bond movie starring Daniel Craig. 

In "Hitman," Olyphant portrays what else but a genetically engineered hitman who is very good at what he does. There is a very funny scene involving the female interest of the movie, played by Olga Kurylenko, in which she has become very drunk and attempts to seduce '47,' the hitman. It's very much the 'sex scene' of the movie, and can easily be described through Mulvey as a scene that "unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy" and a glimpse at the pair's hotel room existing as a "private world" (324). Kurylenko's character has been sexualized throughout the movie until this point, and it would seem only inevitable. While Mulvey's theory of the female as causing a "castration anxiety" is a bit extreme, this movie turns the hero on it's head in a funny and poignant way: Instead of what one would be presume the 'cut to our hero and woman, having a post-coital cigarette,' '47' knocks her out with a gadget or tranquilizer of some kind--he's very awkward throughout the whole scene, the implication that he is somehow sexless or refuses to have sex with by merit of the science fiction of his being a clone and genetically engineered for one purpose: to kill. He continues to drive the narrative, but this shortcoming remains unresolved: is he castrated by her? Does Mulvey's theory fall short for this movie? Or is it simply taken as a humorous resolution to the obligatory 'sex scene' of the movie, the voyeuristic filmmaking opprotunism that seems so common in almost any R-rated movie?

http://www.impawards.com/2007/posters/hitman_ver3.jpg

Similarly, in Casino Royale, lothario James Bond's love interest, Vesper, also seems to present a threat of castration in the sense of disallowing the male figure to not continue driving the narrative: in this origin story of James Bond, he actually falls in love with her after a rather horrific part of their adventure and what amounts to a torture scene involving literal castration. Interestingly, Vesper becomes to Bond a reason for leaving his globe-trotting, womanizing and killing-laden career with British MI6 and there is a scene where he actually tenders his resignation to the higher-ups while planning on how to live his life out with Vesper. This could also be viewed as a castration of sorts, the manly figure of James Bond brought to retirement not by the Russians but by love? No longer shooting his gun and his mouth off at every opprotunity, but rather living a peaceful and monogamous life? It's a nice thought, but short-lived: It turns out that Vesper is *SPOILER ALERT* working with the bad guys, and even though James kills them all, he cannot save her in the end. The end of the movie offers Bond in a return to being a bad-ass, with revenge on his mind, once again fully in control of the narrative with a finger on the trigger.

The general question I'd like to raise, then, how do these females work in Mulvey's model? Are they set aside by "active voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms," (331), in effect rendering them ineffectual through objectification? They both remain central to the plot, whether their castration threats come to fruition or fall through, and in the case of "Casino Royale," the female interest, very well fetishized, remains a driving force for Bond straight into the next movie: he's out for revenge on the people that took away his love and cemented his position as a good-looking British killing machine. 

meet dick

His website has a popular following and women actually line up to date him.

oh and by the way ALL women have tourettes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEJRwIf1FF0

http://www.menarebetterthanwomen.com/

Who's fault is it?

Todays' discussion about Tucker Max and "fratire" really made my mind whirl.  I think on one hand it is really hilarious and if it is means as satire that's great, but I have a suspicion that Max is likely serious, at least in part.  When Jalena made the comment about a guy from her high school having a similar reputation I was rather shocked....for a moment.  In the time to took to blink my eyes a few times I realized that this hits close to home, that I also know young men like this.

It's pretty easy to say that these men are simply trying to regain their masculinity but it's not so easy to place any of the blame on women.  But I am going to blame the women, myself included, for letting this trend continue.  It does not have to be as blatant as the women who write to Max and ask for a date the self proclaimed asshole.  It is as simple as laughing it off when a guy says these things in front of you instead of giving him a piece of your mind.  These are not isolated incidents, Max did not just appear from nowhere, there ahs to be a root cause for him and other men like him.

I think Priya made an excellent point when she referred to Maria Shriver speaking out on Larry King about a National Women's Conference that is going to be taking place as a form of feminism beginning to rise again.  The fact that feminism is rising is going to mean a conservative backlash.  For every action, there is going to be an equal (maybe?) and opposite reaction.  There is no difference here as feminism is beginning to rise again, to get more organized, there is bound to be a conservative backlash.

My evidence on this lovely backlash is easily identifiable in Max but furthermore it is evident in the fact that some of the most adamant supporters for Proposition 8 (amandment to ban gay marriage in California) and against abortion are young people.  Young people of the "progressive" generation?  Yes, these young people are not as progressive as some of us might hope.

I have a small theory about this and I'm going to try it out on you guys and hope that you will give me your feedback.  Lauren Sandler wrote a book entitled "Righteous" in which she details the Christian Youth Movement and their political viewpoints.  This is an obviously large movement and it has continued to gain populariity in the past 10 or so years with the advent of music festivals such as Spirit West Coast that combine music and and politics in much the same way that something amazing like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival does every single year.  The difference?  This is a youth movement, they are breeding this doctrine into a group of young people who will be growing up, voting, and eventually becoming the generation that has power.  Is there anything comparable for youth on the left?  I don't think there is, I think as Matt said recently in class about feminism, we lack organization.  I'm not saying that certain political figures do not have great organization, I'm simply making the point that there is not a liberal youth movement that even begins to compare to the Religious Right's youth movement.  How do we compete?  I haven't figured out an avenue in which it would be plausible to compete, but this concept is something I think about on a regular basis.  

I want to see women rising up and saying things that need to be said.  This is not a post-feminist society and "tolerance" is not enough.  It's absolute bullshit to say that Max is only making money because he is funny.  He knows that he is making money at this point in time because gender issues are at the forefront of a revolutionary fight that involves gender and sexuality.  Men do not need to reclaim anything except for equality for everyone.  Yes men need to be held responsible for these action but it takes surroundings telling them that they are wrong for them to begin to change.  

More than 2 ways of thinking?

I was really stunned in class yesterday when we were talking about the concept of gender and Priya read something about there being 8, yes 8, different possible genders.  I think it would be something worthwhile to look up but as of right now my research has led me only to the main concepts and as I do not know enough to fully explain I will try to keep my blog entry focused mainly on the reading.

Both Tasker and Lury contend that there is a difference in feminine oriented writings or TV shows as opposed to masculine.  Feminine stuff is very emotional and thus left open with no real absolute resolution.  On the other hand masculine oriented media is very resolute and has a genuine ending within a one hour TV show.  So there are some binary opposites here for sure, that is the point of what we read, but is there more than just these opposites?  

If there are more than 2 genders I feel like there must therefore be more than 2 explanations of TV shows and writing.  Do we have a section of work called transgendered media?  If we do it's not in the public eye to the point that both masculine and feminine are.  I realize this is an obvious point and there might be no need for me to make it, but it is something I have never thought about before.  For every gender and/or sexual orientation there must be an entire body of work and thought and probably opposing thought that we do not really get to notice unless we actively seek it out.  And is it our responsibility to try to account for all of these different people?  I think the Gaines article makes a good point when it says on pg. 201 that it is not our responsibility to try to account for all of these but rather we should simply try to learn about these "other" people for who they are.  

The best example of this that I can think of is something I know I have talked about in class at least a few times: that is, teaching a subject in which you are not actively a "member".  For instance, Priya teaching African-American Studies or a straight teacher trying to teach an LGBT related class.  These teachers are often not trying to account for these different groups of people but they do have a genuine interest in them and are making a concerted effort to teach diversity in spite of the fact that they are not a member of these minority groups.  

The "Routan Boom"???

I don't know if anyone has seen these commercials, but Volkswagen has recently put out these commercials for their new car the Routan, and the first time I saw one I was baffled by what was said.
The promo is done by Brooke shields, and although I know it's meant to be as a joke, I thought it was kind of ridiculous. Please check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDZSxFLcMVg

I know it's kind of long, but there are pieces from it that are cut out and turned into commercials so it's all pretty crucial.

So a little bit about what's going on here: Brooke Shields opens up and starts talking about the rise of childbirth which is a result of the VW Routan. She says somewhere in there how people are so in love with the Routan that they are having babies just to fill it up. And thanks to fertility drugs and reverse vasectomy's, they can have as many babies as they want in the name of german engineering! And then she goes on to say in the commercial not to have babies for the sake of german engineering, but for love instead.

I know it's all a joke, but when we were talking about gender studies/feminism today this sparked in my head. It just seems so shallow and materialistic that I didn't even know what to think about it. Are these things you can really joke about? I mean, the fight to end sexism is not over and yet VW comes out with a promo that takes serious issues (such as fertility drugs, reverse vasectomys, the rise in childbirth) and makes it, essentially into a joke. Take for example her opening claim: "US birth rates are at a 35 year high, and the reason why may shock you. Is it out of love? No. Is it for companionship? Wrong. Every day in our country, more and more people are having babies simply for german engineering. Is this the next baby boom? Yes. Join me as I tell the most important story of our time." Why does it become okay to mock childbirth for advertising purposes? I just didn't see the humor in it at all. I was more offended and confused than anything.

So, I guess the moral that Brooke Shields has to give to you in this mocumentary is : "You know, you really should only have children to bring life into the world, not to bring German Engineering into your driveway."

Gendered Genres

I was rather intrigued by Yvonne Tasker's discussion of 'gendered genres.' It has always seemed to me that there were women's genres, romance novels, chick lit, etc, but no real 'men's genres' aside from porn, and maybe the show 'cops' which was a genre unto itself until fairly recently.

I sort of figured that men didn't need genres because in a patriarchal society everything except that which is specifically for women, is for men.

Then, I discovered Tucker Max and 'fratire.' Fratire is a genre developed in the 21st century characterized by political incorrectness and overt masculinity. It tends to focus on alcohol and sexuality, and has been characterized by Melissa Lafsky of the New York Times as "misogyny for sale."

The genre is considered by some to be a backlash against the popularization of the beta-male and the "feminization of masculinity."

"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/fashion/sundaystyles/16CADS.html?scp=4&sq=tucker max&st=cse"

This is an interview with Tucker Max, one of the founding writers of fratire. His blog can be found at "http://tuckermax.com/">

Are we in an era where men need a genre to assert their masculinity, much like women may need autobiography to assert their agency and represent their experiences?

Bollywood to bring credit crisis to big screen

I saw this news article this morning...


By Rina Chandran 30 minutes ago

MUMBAI (Reuters) - The global credit crisis has found echoes in an unlikely quarter, India's Bollywood, known more for its love of lavish musicals and racy thrillers.
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The crisis, that has inspired "credit crunch" chocolate bars and "meltdown" parties in the West, is reflected in a new Hindi film "EMI," or Equated Monthly Installments, by debutant writer-director Saurabh Kabra. It is set for release later this month.

EMI is an acronym that millions of middle-class Indians are familiar with, as it allowed them to buy everything from washing machines to fancy cars, homes and vacations at a time when banks were eager to lend and credit was cheap.

But as interest rates rose -- with the central bank raising key interest rates by 125 basis points in 2008 alone -- borrowers baulked and banks began to tighten the leash on lending.

"EMI," which stars actors Sanjay Dutt, Urmila Matondkar and Arjun Rampal, is a tale of the lives of disparate characters who live off credit cards and personal loans, and a recovery agent who makes them realize the folly of their ways.

"The movie is really about ordinary, middle-class people who get caught in an endless cycle of loans and credit cards," said Gayatri Singh, creative head for distributor Sahara One Motion Pictures.

The characters include a DJ who defaults on more than a dozen credit cards to impress his girlfriends, a man who takes a loan to send his son abroad to study and a socialite who charges her indulgences to her credit cards.

Sattar Bhai, the recovery agent who chases down defaulters, is "soft-hearted," Singh says, in contrast to agents who have come under fire in India for being aggressive and using force.

Credit card use is still low, but expanding at a fast pace in the country and Indians, traditionally credit-averse, are embracing their use more easily.

The film also comes on the heels of a mass suicide by a family of four in Mumbai, India's financial hub, who reportedly killed themselves over mounting debts on dozens of credit cards.

"We wanted to keep it light and release it in time for the festival season when everyone is buying things, to remind people they should be careful about extending themselves," Singh said.

(Editing by Bappa Majumdar)

well...

So much information, ideas and criticism in one night! I sat there taking it all in not really knowing how to process it all. I don’t even know exactly what to write about there was so much I wanted to talk about. I liked most was that she gave hope, she gave concrete ideas on how to change what is going on and inspire the audience. There aren’t very many outlets out there that bring this subject to light but as a speaker, a writer, a journalist she invokes a lot of attention. What she is doing is what I feel Allessandro was doing in his article Reading the Past and she is living in the moment of crisis to truly understand and criticize what is happening so that we ourselves can dictate the outcome and not leave it in the hands of an other. So many things fascinated me last night and first was the government sing the shock doctrine to create a “blank slate” in Iraq and trying to turn Iraq which was an incredibly closed market into one of the most open markets in the world. Then the idea of what Disaster Capitalism is and how it works. From using a disaster to push unpopular views to pushing privatization. I think we can have amazing conversation today!

Who's ideas get used anyway?

I want to explore my topic further in class today but for right now I'm just going to post it on here and hope it gets seen in time for a class discussion.

Naomi Klein referred numerous times to the "ideas lying around" at the time of a disaster.  I know at least one U of R student made the point that this was not solely a republican endeavor but I would like to think a little deeper about what ideas we have lying around on a consistent basis and how they get implemented.  At any given moment there are likely thousands of think tanks working all around the country, many coming up with different and new ideas.  Which one of these ideas is going to "make" it and get implemented into policy?  It seems at times that the answer is anyone's guess.  But is it?  Isn't just the decision of those in power?  I know that we choose who is in power and thus we are also responsible for some of what they do but past that I am curious as to how the ideas get implemented.  Are they always self serving as in the case of Cheney and Halliburton?  Or is it really just a matter of overall ideals as in the case of true free market radicals?  

I thought Naomi Klein was fantastic last night and I was so stoked that she came to our campus. She brought up a lot of thinking points and I sincerely hope that her purpose of giving us a way to think about these issues and understanding them before they happen is put to great use.    

Naomi Klein

Last week you asked us to write a short response blog on Klein, so here I am!
It was fantastic hearing her speak, she was a lot funnier than I expected her to be. I must admit that I felt there were some parts where she lost me and I found myself drifting off from her speech, but she would grab my attention again eventually. She didn't speak exactly on The Shock Doctrine as she wrote it, but rather how it is being applied to our current situation. Although I found this very interesting, I kind of felt myself wishing that she would talk a bit more about why she decided to write about this exactly, the process of her researching this and getting it published and the kind of media it received. It was still interesting, though, to hear her talk about our current financial crisis and how the Shock and Awe theory is being applied to it. She started by defining the shock doctrine as "a political strategy that has been used to overcome the popularity of public programs" (I'm not sure how to cite this...Klein's speech, 14 Oct 2008) and then proceeded to explain how it could be very beneficial to current candidates because the crisis could be used as an excuse to break all the promises the candidates are making right now. This is something I hadn't really thought about yet, so it really got me thinking about all the promises both candidates are making and how, currently, they are rather empty promises because the economy does not seem to be heading in a positive direction anytime soon. Would they be as easily converted from their ideas for change as Clinton was when he became president? It's hard to tell in such a time of desperation. I can't help but wonder if we will fall into the counter-revolution Klein said we were heading into, which would mean that we're turning our country back over to the government and the power-businesses of our nation. If we do follow this counter-revolution, would it be a result of the shock doctrine of the financial crisis? Are we being forced to resort to falling into the hands of the shock doctrine because we have no where else to turn? Can Hank Paulson convince America like he convinced people to vote for the bailout? Will Obama be defeated by McCain because the people won't trust his promises due to the economic crisis? Or are we so desperate for change it doesn't matter who's in the office as long as it's someone other than who's there now? These are all questions that Klein's speech brought up for me. Just some food for thought, what do you guys think?

Idiotic Frustration

From the very start of the election I have found increasingly frustrating to follow. It has been a parade from the start, a circus of silly banter and stupid comments from all parties. Remember when the democratic debates were aired and Hillary and Borack continuously exchange blow after blow at each other in a never ending she said he said battle that in the end made both look like five year old kids. I just get discouraged when I watch a presidential debate and instead of the candidates conducting themselves as grown men all that occurs is subtle slandering of the other. And every time I try to immerse myself in the election I am baffled by the actions of our potential future president and vice president. In actuality I am talking just of McCain and Palin. However, I feel from this point on we are choosing the lesser evil. Like Matt had said in class Obama’s policies are unrealistic and irresponsible but we cannot stand what McCain stands for and embodies. Then I feel that choosing Sarah Palin as a vice president was a slap to the face. She is being exploited to the max. She is being used by McCain it seems to not only because she is a woman but because she was inexperienced and because she appeals to particular group of “middle class women” with her soccer mom lifestyle. Bullshit, I can’t believe after how many statements about how inexperienced Obama, McCain turns around and picks an extremely inexperienced WOMAN! I feel like this election is incredibly irresponsible and exploiting huge gender and race issues present in America. Even in the 2004 election no one wanted Bush to stay in office but we couldn’t vote for Kerry because he was an idiot. I do understand that I am being immature, close-minded, and idiotic for not wanting to be a part of this election but honestly, where have all the honest, responsible, great people to run our country?? Why cant we have an election where we are debating on who is better because we LIKE both candidates instead of choosing the lesser evil?!

Questions for Ms. Klein

I think I remember Priya saying we needed to post on the blog a question we would like to ask Naomi Klein.  I would really like to ask her where she came up with the idea to connect electro shock therapy and the economics behind the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism.  It makes plenty of sense but they are two concepts that I would never have put together myself.  

Hipsters Hipsters everywhere

I heard the term hipster for the first time this summer when we were at a concert in Santa Cruz, apparently home of the “hipsters” and “scenesters,” We were leaving the concert, which was in a small bar and the band was a group of girls singing punk rock.
As we left one of my best friends sighed with relief and said “God, that place was filled with scenesters, I am so happy to get out of there.”
“What’s the difference between a scenester and a hipster?” I asked.
“Well, a scenester follows the trends and what is cool. A hipster, well, kinda does that but follows their own trend too, and sticks to what they like.”
“Which are you?” I asked.
“I guess I would call myself a hipster,“ replied my friend Morgan. I proceeded to ask the rest of the girls in the car what they were, and each replied that they were a hipster, or at least kind of.
And that was the end of our conversation, I never even though about hipster again until I came to Redlands. When I cam here I got called a hipster for the first time. I don’t remember what I wearing, but someone told me they liked how I dressed, that I dressed like a hipster.
It was a complete curve ball for me. I had never thought of classifying myself in some sort of group before. I mean, of course I own skinny jeans and shop at American Apparel. And I’m proud to say I love thrift store and Urban Outfitters.
But does this really make me a hipster? I wear what I like, because I think that dressing is a way to express myself. But then, being classified as a hipster? Well, that’s okay I guess. Or it was at least until I read Adbusters article.
In my town, there are no hipsters. And if there were, we would be them. My friends smoke American Spirits and listen to music that is unheard of by many. A few drop off their support when they make it big or become popular, but usually we stand by. MGMT has been blaring through our rooms for years now, and Santagold and Le Tigre, oh how we love them. But we remain by them, even though you can find their albums features in Teen Vogue.
And those parties, oh how we love them. Dancing in the corner with your best friends like there is no tomorrow. And, hoping that no one will remember your awesome dance moves, which are somehow always are.
Looking over my rant, I guess I am a hipster. I love skinny jeans because the hem never drags in the mud and can easily fit into boots. A scarf looks good with anything, and everyone knows it can hide whatever happened the night before, along with those huge sunglasses. And if you happen to sleep in the bush the night before, who cares. You were going for the grunge look anyway.
I guess I have friends in that group at school who tries to act like they don’t give a shit. And here’s the thing, most don’t. And those who say, “I’m not a hipster,” “I’m an individual,” and “I liked Santagold last year, but now they are so overplayed.” Those are the hipsters that care, and the article is talking about. But I haven’t met one yet, because I haven’t been searching for one. But according to my friend who says, “I’m not a hipster, I just dress like one. You should meet the hipsters in New York, they are really annoying.”
Maybe, in those little towns, the true hipster is still alive. It’s just us being us. So fuck it I guess. I think this whole hipster thing may be blown a bit out of proportion. It’s just kids trying to be different, and then a few following the crowd. Just like with any subculture.
I should stop know, otherwise this will become a full-fledged rant. I think I will go get my nose pierced now, or at least some sort of facial piercing. It seems to be the hipster thing to do these days.

"Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization"

Published on Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters (http://www.adbusters.org)
Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization

By Abdul

Created 07/29/2008 - 15:11

• Cover Story
• 79
• counterculture
• hipster

East and West [1]

79

Douglas Haddow [2]

We’ve reached a point in our civilization where counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum. So while hipsterdom is the end product of all prior countercultures, it’s been stripped of its subversion and originality. (Cover story of Adbusters Issue #79, on newsstands now.)

I‘m sipping a scummy pint of cloudy beer in the back of a trendy dive bar turned nightclub in the heart of the city’s heroin district. In front of me stand a gang of hippiesh grunge-punk types, who crowd around each other and collectively scoff at the smoking laws by sneaking puffs of “fuck-you,” reveling in their perceived rebellion as the haggard, staggering staff look on without the slightest concern.

The “DJ” is keystroking a selection of MP3s off his MacBook, making a mix that sounds like he took a hatchet to a collection of yesteryear billboard hits, from DMX to Dolly Parton, but mashed up with a jittery techno backbeat.

“So… this is a hipster party?” I ask the girl sitting next to me. She’s wearing big dangling earrings, an American Apparel V-neck tee, non-prescription eyeglasses and an inappropriately warm wool coat.

“Yeah, just look around you, 99 percent of the people here are total hipsters!”

“Are you a hipster?”

“Fuck no,” she says, laughing back the last of her glass before she hops off to the dance floor.

Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

***

Take a stroll down the street in any major North American or European city and you’ll be sure to see a speckle of fashion-conscious twentysomethings hanging about and sporting a number of predictable stylistic trademarks: skinny jeans, cotton spandex leggings, fixed-gear bikes, vintage flannel, fake eyeglasses and a keffiyeh – initially sported by Jewish students and Western protesters to express solidarity with Palestinians, the keffiyeh has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory.

The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.

This obsession with “street-cred” reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.

Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.

“These hipster zombies… are the idols of the style pages, the darlings of viral marketers and the marks of predatory real-estate agents,” wrote Christian Lorentzen in a Time Out New York article entitled ‘Why the Hipster Must Die.’ “And they must be buried for cool to be reborn.”

With nothing to defend, uphold or even embrace, the idea of “hipsterdom” is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.

***

Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.

“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she replies.

Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s just…”

“Offensive?”

“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why then you just shouldn’t even use it.”

“Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight after this party?”

“Ummm… We’re going to the after-party.”

***

Gavin McInnes, one of the founders of Vice, who recently left the magazine, is considered to be one of hipsterdom’s primary architects. But, in contrast to the majority of concerned media-types, McInnes, whose “Dos and Don’ts” commentary defined the rules of hipster fashion for over a decade, is more critical of those doing the criticizing.

“I’ve always found that word [“hipster”] is used with such disdain, like it’s always used by chubby bloggers who aren’t getting laid anymore and are bored, and they’re just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable,” he says. “I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda.”

Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it.

***

“He’s 17 and he lives for the scene!” a girl whispers in my ear as I sneak a photo of a young kid dancing up against a wall in a dimly lit corner of the after-party. He’s got a flipped-out, do-it-yourself haircut, skin-tight jeans, leather jacket, a vintage punk tee and some popping high tops.

“Shoot me,” he demands, walking up, cigarette in mouth, striking a pose and exhaling. He hits a few different angles with a firmly unimpressed expression and then gets a bit giddy when I show him the results.

“Rad, thanks,” he says, re-focusing on the music and submerging himself back into the sweaty funk of the crowd where he resumes a jittery head bobble with a little bit of a twitch.

The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.

***

Perhaps the true motivation behind this deliberate nonchalance is an attempt to attract the attention of the ever-present party photographers, who swim through the crowd like neon sharks, flashing little blasts of phosphorescent ecstasy whenever they spot someone worth momentarily immortalizing.

Noticing a few flickers of light splash out from the club bathroom, I peep in only to find one such photographer taking part in an impromptu soft-core porno shoot. Two girls and a guy are taking off their clothes and striking poses for a set of grimy glamour shots. It’s all grins and smirks until another girl pokes her head inside and screeches, “You’re not some club kid in New York in the nineties. This shit is so hipster!” – which sparks a bit of a catfight, causing me to beat a hasty retreat.

In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the photoblogger’s snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and immediately re-experience the previous night’s debauchery. Red-eyed and bleary, they sit hunched over their laptops, wading through a sea of similarity to find their own (momentarily) thrilling instant of perfected hipster-ness.

What they may or may not know is that “cool-hunters” will also be skulking the same sites, taking note of how they dress and what they consume. These marketers and party-promoters get paid to co-opt youth culture and then re-sell it back at a profit. In the end, hipsters are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged cultural livelihood.

Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.

An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization’s well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain existence and start over.

***

“If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck!” chants an emcee before his incitements are abruptly cut short when the power plug is pulled and the lights snapped on.

Dawn breaks and the last of the after-after-parties begin to spill into the streets. The hipsters are falling out, rubbing their eyes and scanning the surrounding landscape for the way back from which they came. Some hop on their fixed-gear bikes, some call for cabs, while a few of us hop a fence and cut through the industrial wasteland of a nearby condo development.

The half-built condos tower above us like foreboding monoliths of our yuppie futures. I take a look at one of the girls wearing a bright pink keffiyah and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, “If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we’d look like revolutionaries.” But instead we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet – oblivious to our own impending demise.

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

-----

This is the article I mentioned in class about Hipsters. I think it's a really interesting article for a couple reasons, one being that I never actually heard about Hipsters before reading this article. I realize now that I've come in contact with many Hipsters, but I never heard about this "Hipster Counterculture" until I picked up this magazine. I realized though that it was probably because so many Hipsters would not proudly announce themselves as Hipsters. Or, to take it a step further, it is probably because so many Hipsters don't even realize or recognize that they are being Hipsters because "in the end, hipsters are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged cultural livelihood."

I think the paragraph following this particular quote becomes important as well:

"Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance."

This touches back on a couple ideas that we read with Hebdige's "From Culture to Hegemony." Hebdige says "[...]the challenge to hegemony which subcultures represent is not issued directly to them. Rather it is expressed obliquely, in style" (151). He then continues on saying "style in subculture is, then, pregnant with significance. Its transformations go 'against nature', interrupting the process of 'normalization'. As such, they are gestures, movements towards a speech which offends the 'silent majority', which challenges the principle of unity and cohesion, which contradicts the myth of consensus" (152). I guess this brings me to the question: are hipsters like the punks who were challenging hegemony with their style? I mean, in the end, the punk subculture was absorbed by the advertising industry and seemed to have lost a lot of its original meaning, but the hipster "counterculture" so it is called was born out of the advertising industry. And according to Hebdige's definition of hegemony (the "[...]situation in which a provisional alliance of certain social groups can exert 'total social authority' over other subordinate groups, not simply by coercion or by the direct imposition of ruling ideas, but by 'winning and shaping consent so that the power of the dominant classes appears both legitimate and natural[...]'"(Hebdige 150)) I wonder if hipsterdom is the subordinate group in this situation, being ruled over by the advertising industry.

And it leads to my final question which is found in the very last sentence of the article: does the hipster represent the end of western civilization as a culture that has become so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new? I can't help hoping that it's not true, but hipsterdom seems to be a perfect example of a consumer culture and so I wonder where we go from here.

P.S. Please visit the Adbusters site for more amazing articles and fun things to look at. I particularly enjoyed the picture of the corporate US flag. I really like what Adbusters does and maybe you will to =D

Is humanity lost?

Over the past 24 hours or so I've read all of the Naomi Klein excerpts as well as a few other parts of "The Shock Doctrine" simply because I could not get enough of this concept.  I felt almost as if Ms. Klein and I were having a one on one conversation and she was simply highlighting so many of the awful things going on in the world and how they are intrinsically tied to capitalism.  

Klein's analogy of shock therapy being related to the blank slate in the wake of natural and/or human born disasters fascinates me.  I instantly understood her point but still soaked up every page simply so I could be further convinced and educated on this matter.  What really threw me for a turn was the history of shock therapy and the idea that it was somehow going to give doctors a clean slate to work with in terms of actual patients.  Susana Kaysen's book "Girl, Interrupted" fits into this context perfectly as she details her time spent in a mental hospital in the 1950's.  There are tales of shock therapy in this book and for the first time (I've read this book 27 times) I finally understand a bit more about the history behind what results Kaysen's doctors may have been thinking they were eventually going to get.  Kaysen got lucky and she got out relatively unharmed but her friends in that hospital were not all as lucky and many of them may have been part of shock experiments in some way or another.  What I struggle with is the fact that Kaysen was unwillingly put into a psychiatric ward as were so many other people at this time and that many likely never consented to any of these experiments being done on them.   

I was at a loss of words as my body quite literally began to hurt while reading the chapter on shock therapy out of Klein's book.  Matt just asked where our morals have gone and I second that question.  Cameron was absolutely crazy to believe he was going to help these people but further than that we are now using these ideas to extract information out of "enemy combatants" as we call them in order to legally torture them.  We are taking away humanity from an individual and justifying it with whatever excuse sounds good for the day.  This is not okay and it is tearing at me to consider myself a pacifist at heart while living in a world that has somehow allowed powerful men (mostly men, anyway) to take away the ability to be human.

Breaking down Klein's analogy a little further, the world is in a state of shock.  America is in a state of shock even if it is 7 years after 9/11.  There are endless stories to be told of weapons manufacturers making millions and private security firms getting insane contracts but my concern is the people who are being erased.  An entire population of people are being erased be it in New Orleans where the public school system has almost entirely been turned over to private charter schools or in any other disaster ridden town where property prices are on a space rise and the former residents will never be able to afford to live there.

In, "Dear Mr. President," the musical artist, P!nk, asks George W. Bush "How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?"  I ask the same question of everyone who has made money off of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the countless earthquakes and tsunamis that have wiped out tens of thousands of people and their homes.  How do you live with yourself?  And furthermore, how do we live with ourselves for letting this happen?  How do we even begin to fix this?  I ask these questions not to be negative but to hopefully think about what we as a human community mean to each other.  

Shock Doctrine

Alright well I just finished the first part of the reading by Naomi Klein and I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed in the U.S. and to a lesser degree, the whole world.  Yes, I know, that's taking on a lot of people, but oh well.  While it is clear to me that the idea of war profiteering and making a buck off of disaster is not a new idea, I'm appalled that it is being done to such a wide degree and with such success.  It seems that everywhere I turn there is new news of another company making record profits in a time of great economic distress, but also during a time where it seems like profits and the bottom line should be the last of our worries.  When foundations of American culture like the public school system come under attack and those who are proponents for public education are dubbed as having an "irrational attachment to a socialist system," I think we're in trouble.

I believe that Klein's use of the torture analogy was quite apt.  It really showed how great shocks to a country and it's inhabitants can give rise to change that would otherwise would not have taken place, for better or worse.  I do get the feeling that the average American citizen has been a punching bag these past few years, that we are being softened up for more major changes that could prove debilitating to our way of life.  We were scared into approving things like the Patriot Act, told to be afraid, that the only way we could help was to go out and spend.  And now looking back it all seems like colored bubbles used to distract away from this great change that took place, without the consent of those that are governed by the laws.  I feel disenchanted with government and the way I have always envisioned it working.  That, for me, is a lot to say growing up in a family that lives in the D.C. area and is still thoroughly involved in politics.  When war can be seen as a 'for profit model' and as a great way to diversify, I think it's safe to say we've crossed a threshold that is followed by a precipitous drop.

Where are our morals?  When even aid being given to other countries, which should be given-but out of the goodness of our hearts and out of necessity, is seen as another way to make profit, it makes me cringe.  The Bush-Cheney camp calls people that operate on this level "pioneers," well it seems to me that the Chilean translation would be more appropriate-"piranhas."  When the man who finds a way to make money by providing supplies to the sick and needy after a disaster of historical proportions like Hurricane Katrina or the Iraq War [oh wow, both overseen by Bush] is called a "pioneer," it makes you question what they will call the new land that a man such as that would find.

I rambled but I'm not happy with where we are as a country right now.

Obama '08, and register to vote if you haven't already.

Can a piece of art be mass produced, reproduced, inadvertently exploited?

So this is my very first blog ever so excuse the scatter-brained writing and here it goes. I wanted to write about Benjamins and Durham’s articles because I feel like much of what they argue has great potential to create great debate. Anyways I bet there is so much of the article’s that I didn’t grasp or write about but here it goes.

            I think that Benjamin makes an incredibly great point that art cannot be reproduced without deconstructing its intended aura but I can’t say I totally agree. I feel that art is a great mode of communicating what an artist is feeling but I feel that art is great because of the feeling and meaning a person receives. I think the best part about art, as a method of revolution, depends solely on the way it makes the audience feel. Because there is such prominent class divide the reaction will never be the same. Each class creates and practices its own set of ideologies that they carry, as Durham states, unconsciously which directly affect the way people of each class react to things.

                        Just imagine a great artist who wants to create a revolution because he is unsatisfied with society. So he creates this grand piece of work that is disconnected and/or portrays something he didn’t intend. Or imagine an artist that creates something totally meaningless but inspires a mass group of people to ban together. Because of different life experiences, socio-economic status, geography a reaction to a piece of art, no matter the time, place, or original intention the aura is not destroyed but changed. Changed because the aura was open for interpretation in its original state so in another time, place, context the reaction of the audience is all that originally mattered anyway, so its purpose and aura is unchanged.

            The point I’m trying to make is that art is open to interpretation for a reason, it doesn’t matter in what state, context, meaning the art was created in, its how the audience reacts to it. In most cases the authenticity of a piece of art is not degraded by its reproduction but simply allows for a greater audience. And while exploitation is bound to happen in any space, reproducing art can be used as a way of expansion of audience but is easily exploited for any one groups purpose. 

I’m going to restrain form diving too deep into the topic I have in my head because it could turn into a long paper but I want to say that after reading Durham’s article it is hard to say whether reproducing a piece of art is just art to get a reaction and to express an artist’s emotion to a greater audience or if it is a way to manipulate the masses. And I’m stuck…

             

Judge Me by Your Own Code

The encoding/decoding points that I was trying to make in class were not coming out of my mouth very well so I figured I would try to explain myself better with writing.

In Inga Muscio's book entitled "Cunt" she talks a lot about humans, women in particular, tearing other women down through the use of unannounced codes.  This sparked my interest again into Stuart Hall's essay on encoding and decoding and the use of language to do this.  I searched for some connection to what Muscio was pointing out but had a hard time grasping what Hall was saying and putting it into actual viable words for myself.

Hall says this: "The codes of encoding and decoding may not be perfectly symmetrical.....that is, the degreees of "understanding" and "misunderstanding" the communicative exchange - depend on the degrees of symmetry established between the positions of the....encoder....and decoder." There is not always a clear code, we have instituted our own unique codes for our individual situations and these may only be known to certain people inside of our chosen social groups.  Muscio's entire point is this small section of Hall's essay!  We all have our own set of unique codes and thus our own set of biases and judgements.  What is acceptable to me may not be acceptable to me.  The problem with this is that as human beings we judge each other based on these rules and codes inside of our own minds and not the codes inside of the person in question's mind.  

I think for the first time I have actually connected this theory to my everyday life.  I walk down the street and without thinking I instantly sum people up according to my personal standards of beauty, to my personal standards of activity, to my personal standards of dress.  I am reading (decoding) what another individual is doing based on the codes I have created in my small social group.  It's not quite fair is it?  Codes get misinterpreted and this in turn creates division amongst people.  I guess what I am really grasping at here is this idea that somehow codes have forever separated us.  It is obvious in terms of language barriers and things of that nature but it took a lot of work for me to relate it back to unconscious thoughts about people I may not even know.   

Benjamin and Dadaism

I don’t quite know where to start with my blog, so I guess I will just start. This year I am a scared little freshman and everyday I go to class and sit there in awe. I never thought a college class could be like our cultural studies class. There are so many amazing ideas being thrown around and people instantly responding. All I can do is madly write down people’s thoughts so I don’t forget. And then I think about the day when I may be brave enough to speak up. So, this is the beginning. Here is what I have come up with.

From what I understood of Walter Benjamin’s article I am obsessed with (hopefully what I understood is right). I am not in full agreement is with his stance on Dadaism. Benjamin seems to hate it. He says, “What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproduction with the very production” (31).

Benjamin says this as though it is a bad thing. But this is where art has brought us today. Dadaism is making a statement about our society while using as little as possible. The artists at the time where so upset and angry with western culture and the horrors of war that had been shown through the media. It’s complete lack of order and sense was its theme. I don’t know much about it other than the art that was created, but from it came cubism and other art movements. This was one of the art movements that really freed the artists from any sort of restraints, a urinal became famous, and anything at the time was possible.

Benjamin goes on to say, “Dadaistic activities actually assured a rather vehement distraction by making works of art the center of scandal. One requirement was foremost: to outrage the public” (32).

In my mind, this is the one of the main purposes of art. If an artist feels that there is something wrong with the world, he should show it. Post WWI people were horrified at what had happened and they had to find a way to express it. This happened to be Dadaism.

The painting may enrage people or disgust people, but at least it makes them think. I would much rather stare at an apple in vinegar for an hour and wonder what the artist was thinking then watch another mindless chick flick acted out by terrible screen actor with fake boobs.

The rest of the article I loved. I just felt I had to defend Dadaism because up to last year I hated it. And then I had a crazy art teacher with her crazy ideas. And we spent an hour talking about a urinal and the thousand things it could mean.

This idea of reproducing production is still a hard thing for me to grasp. I still don’t quite understand. Does it mean that I could glue to forks to a piece of paper and ask the class to analyze what I’m thinking and hopefully be offended or revolted by it? I think not. But, maybe it is worth a try.

Hopefully I didn’t miss what Benjamin was actually saying. 

Awkward Decodings

Because of the fact that I had some trouble articulating my thoughts in class on Wednesday and because I haven’t posted anything yet because the site got my two emails confused and then I got confused (sorry, I won’t go off on a “Sami fails at technology” tangent…), I am going to write a blog out of turn.

After watching Flight of the Conchords on Wednesday, I made a connection between Jemaine and Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice. Besides the obvious—the awkwardness, the ridiculous complements, and the obliviousness—they have something more subtle in common, the inability to transfer the meaning of their messages to the receiver. The language they have encoded with a particular message has been decoded according to the dominant connotations of the day, rather than with the meaning originally encoded.

For example, at dinner Mr. Collins (and I’ll go off the recent movie, since I’m not sure if everyone has read the book and I don’t have a copy of it handy anyway) complements the Bennet’s cooking and asks which one of the sisters prepared the dish. Although to Mr. Collins this was meant to be a complement, Mrs. Bennet was insulted by the implication that they could not afford a cook. In the episode we watched in class, Jemaine makes similarly inelegant complements to the “most beautiful girl in the room.”

Both characters, in trying to articulate their idea of talent, beauty, etc, unwittingly pass on a message coded with a negative connotation. The connotations or implications are determined by the “dominant cultural order” according to Stuart Hall. However, as Hall points out, “[…] it is always possible to order, classify, assign and decode an event within more than one mapping”(169).

This is where the confusion lies for Mr. Collins and Jemaine. Although neither one may necessarily pick-up on the misinterpretation, we as spectators can, as Hall suggests, “[…] refer, through the codes, to the orders of social life, of economic and political power and of ideology” in order to “clarify the misunderstanding” (169). We have the advantage of knowing (or being able to find out) that in 19th century England, to suggest that one is not in a position to keep a servant is to suggest that they are of a low class, a terrible insult in a very class-conscious society. Although Mr. Collins lives in this time, he is not necessarily aware of the “dominant cultural order” that pervades his own society (which further examples of his mishaps would demonstrate). Jemaine also seems unaware of the dominant cultural connotations of todays language. To him, a high-class prostitute is beautiful (anyone seen “Secret Diary of a Call Girl"?). However the dominant cultural order would says a high-class prostitute is still a prostitute, someone contemptible with few morals.

What is most interesting is what these misunderstandings say about a particular culture and I would like to explore this further as we get farther along in class.

Nice Aura, man!

Walter Benjamin. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Probably best if read out loud (okay, I love Benjamin and especially reading his work out loud!)
Before launching into any preliminary discussion of his work, check this link out. I think it'll be instructive as you try to decipher the essay.
I'll begin with some preliminary quotes from Richard Kazis, in an evaluative essay on Benjamin's work
"“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” has become a standard reference for any attempts to analyze and understand the interrelation of political, technological and artistic development under capitalism. His insights are especially useful for the political analysis of film."

"Benjamin felt that the task of the proletariat and the task of the revolutionary intellectual were “to make the continuum of history explode.” The intellectual—the historical materialist—should reveal the significance of the present historical instant, should analyze the explosive convergence of past and future in the presence of the now, so that it can be transformed."

Another great link to get us going from a professor at UPenn

Rather than asking some questions, I would like to propose the two keywords for us to discuss
- aura
- authenticity

Listen to the Laurie Anderson song "The Dream Before". Now, watch the performance of the song by performance artist Meow Meow
Take a look at the lyrics below to help you:

Laurie Anderson The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin) lyrics

Hansel and Gretel are alive and well
And they're living in Berlin
She is a cocktail waitress
He had a part in a Fassbinder film
And they sit around at night now drinking schnapps and gin
And she says: Hansel, you're really bringing me down
And he says: Gretel, you can really be a bitch
He says: I've wasted my life on our stupid legend
When my one and only love was the wicked witch.
She said: What is history?
And he said: History is an angel being blown backwards into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken But there is a storm blowing from
Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future
And this storm, this storm is called Progress

Laurie Anderson The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin) lyrics


I would like you to, if you have time, to think about an image and to discuss its significance vis-à-vis Benjamin's essay.

How would you characterize art today?

How might Benjamin's critique be relevant in the study of hypermedia/internet?

Come in with one of your own questions

"the wire" and encoding/decoding

i came across an interesting criticism of the show, "the wire", formerly of HBO and now cancelled/ended. as a preface, the show, without doing an injustice to the plethora of issues it covers, is an investigation into the extent that corruption invades all walks of life in Baltimore. season 1 explores the drug trade in relationship to police and other institutions (such as the court system, ports, and school system), with the idea being that if you follow drugs, you have a drug case, but if you follow the money then you find a hydra.

while reading on wikipedia, i found a criticism of the show stating, "Despite the critical acclaim, The Wire has received poor Nielsen Ratings, which Simon attributes to the complexity of the plot, a poor time slot, heavy use of esoteric slang, particularly among the gangster characters and a predominantly black cast.[2]" 

Essentially this criticism is that, because of the coded dialogue, heavily influenced by actual code (systems for how to call another drug dealer b/c of fear of a wiretap) but also a perverbial code of slang about and because of drugs, it is hard for viewers to decode this encoded language. Ironically, one of the major attributes of the series is the need for the viewers to actively participate in this decoding of language, to engage in critical investigations through the characters that allows the viewer access information they would not otherwise have given to them; information concerning typologies and idiosyncrasies of characters that helps to explain actions that are otherwise inexplicable. As Professor Jha has mentioned at times, we live an anti-intellectual climate that stifles insightful or difficult discourses, coded explicitly or implicitly. The direct reference to the nielsen ratings, which do not rate or value HOW viewers participate in and through the show, just that they have the tv tuned to a particular channel, also illuminates an example in our current cultural/social/intellectual terrain of a lethargy that now is manifested into a real refusal to engage language as a chain of signification, in any forms.

below is an example of how this decoding/encoding plays out and involves the viewer- do not watch if you have a particular grudge against the f-word. sorry i couldnt post the video directly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsnSVM1zM

Hall, FoTC, jokes, Lost

I know this blog is late--we all have to start somewhere.

Hall's theory of the process of television communication as a process of encoding and decoding through meaning structures comes to an interesting conclusion that I'll apply to Flight of the Conchords: that "broadcasting structures must yield encoded messages in the form of a meaningful discourse" and thus, on the viewer's end, "decoded meanings ... 'have an effect,' influence, entertain, instruct or persuade, with very complex perceptual, cognitive, emotional, ideological or behavioral consequences" (165).

Looking at the scene of the party and song we analyzed in depth today, it's easy to say that it was entertaining, and below the surface, a scathing parody of love songs and the culture of 'hooking up' in America; this is what we have decoded. The first question I'd like to pose is, how can we trace Hall's process (fig. 13.1, p. 165) backwards in an attempt to elucidate the "frameworks of knowledge" and "meaning structures" (encoded) used in the production of that particular song? Hall states that the "meaning structures" on the production and reception side may not be the same (166) but certainly they must be related, tied together with a common sense of pop culture--without appeal, the decoded message would fall flat. What I'm trying to grasp at here is what Hall calls the "moment of transformation into and out of the discursive form" (166). It causes imperfect transmission, "distortions" or "misunderstandings" from the "lack of equivalence between the two sides in the communicative exchange" (166). 

We deconstructed the song "Most Beautiful Girl in the Room" to such detail and I have to wonder--does this make us more equivalent to the production side? Did we get somehow inside the minds of Bret and Jemaine, did we gain an insight as to their purposes for the song? How does the production crew of the show fit into their creative message? What about the guiding force of HBO? Or was it all a misunderstanding, a distortion, is it possible to read too much into something like this hilariously parodized love song? I had never heard of Jemaine being "ogreish" or more ethnicized before today's class, but the revelation has distorted my view some.

One way that we can gain a familiarity with the production side and--I would think--try to avoid distortions or misunderstandings is through simple loyalty. The show has a great many running jokes; it would seem that all the characters have repeated behaviors that we laugh at, they entertain us on their own but also by the merit that we can see them coming. This ties to the show Lost--I'm not an avid viewer by any means, but there is a framework of knowledge that is constructed from the very first episode of the show, a whole convoluted and complicated world is the result, and it seems to shut out the potential first-time viewer if they attempt to enter a new episode without a command of the framework. It's all coded as meaningful discourse, but it is aimed in a way that anyone attempting to decode without the proper knowledge is left in the dark--how does this affect viewership? Certainly it works, as it's an immensely popular show, but how can they justify to their network TV infrastructure a show that doesn't seem to have a method for increasing its fan base? DVD is one outlet, but the model of Lost seems to be increasingly oppositional to Hall's model (from a commercial standpoint) as the number of episodes and seasons increases.

Oh, Those Silly Americans and their Cars.

Reading the chapter from Storey's Cultural Theory and Popular Culture on Marxisms had a particular part in it that really caught my attention. On page 58 Storey brings up the new kind of car advertisements that have been seen for the past couple of years that depicts cars in both wide open spaces and in a clean, pollution-free environment. "This mode of advertising[...]" Storey argues "[...]is a response to the growing body of negative publicity which car ownership has attracted (especially in terms of pollution and road congestion" so "therefore, showing car in both nature (unpolluted) and space (uncongested [of traffic, etc]) confronts the claims without the risk of giving them a dangerous and unnecessary visibility" (Storey 58). Thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense. Take a look at the advertisements that Storey displays on pages 58 and 59 with the cars in these very natural scenes where there really is no traffic. Because people are beginning to feel so guilty about the effects cars have on the environment, car companies are starting to try and trick them mentally into believing: "Well, maybe this car isn't so bad after all..."

A perfect example of this can be found in this Toyota Prius Ad. Check it out- the ad does a very good job of depicting that the Toyota Prius is nature friendly and even....biodegradable? No, the ad is just trying to show the world that this car is good for the environment because it's a hybrid, and it can obviously be built from stick by a lake in the middle of nowhere by people who disappear...It's all very corny. Search for more Prius ads on youtube if you'd like, they're all very similar, it's kind of funny actually.

Going off that, there has been a very obvious boom in the hybrid department lately, but oddly enough it doesn't seem to be because of the depleting ozone layer or the pollution littering the air. Instead it is because (some) hybrids save money on gas, or rather allow the gas that they fill the car with to last longer than a non-hybrid car. Interestingly enough, I was browsing Yahoo! yesterday when I stumbled upon this interesting article. A car that can get 65 miles to the gallon? And it comes with a cute, sporty frame?? It seems like a dream come true, right? Well, they won't be selling it in the U.S. Why? Because it runs on diesel. The article tells you plain enough that "diesel vehicles now hitting the market with pollution-fighting technology are as clean or cleaner than gasoline and at least 30% more fuel-efficient." It surprised me too when I first read it because like many other Americans, I'm sure, I affiliated diesel with "a fuel still often thought of as the smelly stuff that powers tractor trailers." Despite it's amazing mpg and more ozone-friendly nature, Ford doesn't think it will sell in the U.S. as well as it will sell in the UK, where it is hitting the markets this November, because of its fuel of choice. It seems to me like the U.S. just needs to suck it up and look at the facts: diesel could be very good for our environment and possibly our economy if we were just willing to embrace it. Which leaves me with the question that the Toyota Prius commercial actually ended with:

"Why not?"