When Participatory Culture Attacks, Response to MC Guffee, "Henry Jenkins... returns"

Participatory culture can be a wonderful thing. Through the Internet, it allows people from around the world to connect with each other over something they love, as Jenkins writes, using “the shared framework of popular culture” (457).  The Internet offers a certain degree of anonymity that face-to-face interactions don’t. Users can often say whatever they want with little to no repercussions. They can freely say things that they wouldn’t think of saying in real life. The combination of anonymity and an audience can often bring out the worst in people. 

The Jackson Katz Yik Yak incident is just one example. Another example of participatory culture gone wrong can be seen with the backlash against feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian runs a YouTube channel called Feminist Frequency where she critiques popular culture from a feminist perspective, and recently she has been making a series of videos dedicated to deconstructing sexist tropes in video games. As soon as she announced this series, the angrier members of the gaming community found a common enemy. Many users across the Internet (but mostly from 4chan, the hotbed of scumbag Internet activity) banded together to barrage Sarkeesian with threats and hate messages. They’ve dehumanized her by viewing her as a sort of big scary villain hell-bent on destroying video games, and they’ve cast themselves as the heroes. The anonymity of the Internet has allowed them to act this way because they know they won’t face any repercussions.

Sports Panopticon ... post 11-20

"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power" (Foucalt, 98).

I idea of the Panopticon is a genius idea of controlling people in prison. The idea of having someone watching you is going to stop people from doing things. In sports they create a different idea of a Panopitcon to keep people "hungry" and to work hard when nobody is around. Coaches and motivators tend to control players by motivation of competition. What I mean is that they will compare us to our teammates who we are competing against for playing time but also every other player out in the world. Coaches will use tactics such as asking basketball players how many shots they shot today? After hearing the answer, a coach will then ask a basketball player how many shots the kids on our team shot, then kids from the next county, then the whole state, then the whole country and then the whole world. So as a an athlete our Panopticon is the threat of how hard another athlete in this world is working and we should out work them if we want to be better them. This Panopticon is what motivates young athletes to work hard even when they don't want to. At the end of each day I ask myself if I got better today? Then I ask my self if I out worked the pitcher at Tampa University and at the University of Florida. This Panopticon created in sports also helps to govern athletes from using drugs, hanging with the wrong people, and also missing out on a lot of social events because of getting necessary sleep or having an athlete's body recover.

"The Panopticon, on the other hand, must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men" (Foucalt, 99).

For sports in my life and others the Panopticon used to help reach our very unlikely goal of playing professional sports. "If you want to play professional sports then you must do 'this.'" It could be looked at as a way to keep kids the right path which I guess is not that bad of a thing.

Foucault Reflection

One of Foucault's main points is surveillance and how prevalent it is in our society. After hearing the stories that some people had shared in class made me realize just how frequently we're being monitored in all aspects in our life and how unaware we are of it. He wants us to critical and aware of this surveillance. He is critical of this constant surveillance that taps into our private lives and views it as highly negative. When discussing this in class I couldn't help but think about one of my favorite reality shows, Big Brother.

Big Brother 16 Clip

Basically, it starts out with 16 contestants and they have to compete weekly in competitions to guarantee their safety in the house. Each week, one person is voted off. The house is under 24 hour, constant surveillance for the entire duration of the show (the whole summer). The footage covers everything from them sleeping, eating, fighting, and making out. It's really personal. All the footage can be found online for anyone to view. Millions of viewers find entertainment out of this show but if you really think about it, the concept is extremely weird. We can basically stalk these people that we don't even know and hear and see everything that they do at any moment of the day. Reflecting on that, this is how the government works with the rest of us in society. It's a frightening thought that we are under constant watch, and that every move we make is possibly being seen. There's apparently ways for the government to turn on the cameras on our computers without us knowing, in order to watch us. This increased surveillance is a violation of our rights and privacy, yet it is only getting worse.

Kayla Salyer Foucault Reflection

I find it very interesting that surveillance is linked very closely to power. If a person knows he or she is being watched then they act very differently than they would if they knew they weren't. In our complicated world today, we are always being watched. From cameras to cop cars, there always seams to be an eye on us weather we want it or not. Many fight for this right to privacy, while attempting to still feel safe and avoid crime. We live in a world in which there must be a balance in this. We do not want our schools to be filled with cameras, yet we need enough surveillance to avoid certain situations. This is when things begin to get sticky. Many times the things used to spy are only in place so that we think someone is watching. We think that there is always someone in the cop car, or that the cameras are always working. This makes us always behave in a way that we are always being watched. It makes us act as though the law is always staring down on us, waiting for us to do something wrong.
This idea of a constant surveillance must make it hard for us to decipher between real actions, and those influenced by this notion. It fascinates me to think of a world in which there are no camera, no police, no prying eyes. How would this world be different? Would there be less crime and more trust? Would crime increase significantly, or would people give others the benefit of the doubt? The reality is that we will never be able to see that world in our environment. This notion of someone always watching us will forever be engrained in our society and the effects of it will last even if all the cameras are taken down.

Foucault and Santa Claus, BoredCaitlin, 11/20

Foucault writes that “our society is not one of spectacle, but of surveillance” (Foucault 101). Quite often the mode of surveillance won’t even truly exist, but it exercises its power nonetheless. I remember in class someone mentioned a story of having a cop car sounding a siren but no one was actually in the car (or something along those lines. My memory is a bit foggy), or “security cameras” that aren’t cameras at all. Oddly enough, this made me think about the entire concept of Santa Claus. 

Santa doesn’t exist, but parents still use his “existence” as leverage for their children’s good behavior. They make kids believe that if they behave badly, they’ll be getting lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings. Why is this? Because a magical bearded fat man is surveilling their behavior from the North Pole, watching their every move. As Foucault puts it, “a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation.” It’s their way of using an imaginary force to exercise discipline with their children, and until they’re old enough to realize Santa can’t exist, kids go along with it because they don’t know any better. To them, behaving well is another way to get a toy. 

Discipline ....yeah cause I break all da rules

I am very interested in how the author argues the discipline used by the Repressive state apparatuses. The use of empty police cars, use of cameras that may not work, or even the use of a bible. I am a religious person, but that does not mean I can't see where an atheist is coming from. I have a problem with uneducated atheists, that formulate arguments for stupid reasons. However, the bible when created could have been a way to discipline and control the masses. All religions have the same goal, to achieve salvation for a peaceful and plentiful after life. Repressive state apparatuses could have helped to shape "rules" in the bible in order to keep the masses in line. Disciplining the masses through a totalizing meta narrative. Using the 10 commandments as a way of having the masses self discipline themselves. According to Senior Lyotard, totalizing meta narratives don't work anymore. Our society is to pluralistic, so we have seen the transition into the surveillance of the masses. Whether it be through cameras that work or not and empty cop cars. Foucault is saying that these disciplines are there inorder to keep us in line because without the discipline than we will steal and deceive.

Foucault 11/19

Foucault talks about sexuality and what constitutes as a definition for that term. He argues that sexuality, although the term has changed over the years, has mainly held the same meaning because of the ideologies that are attached to it.

"The essential features of this sexuality are not the expression of a representation that is more or less distorted by ideology, or of a misunderstanding caused by taboos; they correspond to the functional requirements of a discourse that must produce its truth." (104)

In our society, there are a lot of stereotypes or expectations that are tied with sexuality and gender. If you are a woman, you should be feminine, a good cook, motherly, and enjoy beauty products. If you are a man, you should be masculine, good at fixing things, the dominant figure, and enjoy cars and beer. Obviously those stereotypes don't hold true for each and every male and female in our world. In fact, many men and women do not go along with these stereotypes.

Here we see this famous poster that portrays this woman as strong, masculine, and independent. This is a perfect example of how the gender and sexuality stereotype does not hold true and shouldn't be further expressed in our society.

As time has gone on, our world has been more involved and recognized the LGBT community, which also goes under the umbrella term of sexuality. Sexuality doesn't just involved the vanilla boy and girl. It has become a very fluid term that has become up to the individual on how they choose to identify. 

This is Gigi, a famous youtuber who goes by the tag name gigigorgeous. She identifies as a woman and is interested in men. However, years ago she had surgery to look this way because she was born a man. Gigi is another prime example of how sexuality is more fluid than initially thought of because it is a very complex topic. We shouldn't be so quick to stereotype, categorize, or assume things that go along with being a man or woman because often they are not true.

Trying Desperately to Find Something to Say About Foucault, BoredCaitlin

“The constant division between the normal and the abnormal, to which every individual is subjected, brings us back to our own time, by applying the binary branding and exile of the leper to quite different objects” (Foucault 97)

Foucault asserts that society has many binary oppositions that it forces onto individuals (“mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal”). He believes that individuals aren’t held back by these binaries but they construct themselves within them. I think this is true in some cases. For example, let’s look at the classic “pink/blue” gender binary.

This is a perfect instance of society applying a binary to “quite different objects,” as Foucault puts it. I’m not denying that there are some girls and boys out there that are perfectly happy with pink and blue respectively. They have no problem defining themselves as individuals within that binary. However, there are plenty of others who don’t identify with the binary, or actively go against it. I know that as a child, I would much rather play with my brother’s dinosaurs than with Barbie dolls or My Little Ponies. Even though some reject the binary, in a way, they are still defining themselves by it. They are defining themselves as individuals by acknowledging that the binary exists. This is just one example of the way our society doesn’t usually entertain the idea that things are grayer or more complex than they appear. It is easier to apply a simple black-or-white, this-or-that way of thinking to a situation. 

Bourdieu and The Lorax, BoredCaitlin, 11/11

When I walked into class on Tuesday, I overheard Spencer and Matt talking about the CGI animated version of The Lorax. Thus, I had the movie on my mind when we were talking about Bourdieu.

I may have been a Once-ler fangirl at one point. But hey, can you blame me?

In the movie, the town of Thneedville is a boxed-in plastic paradise. Almost everything in the town is fake, and as the Lorax describes at the beginning, “they like it that way.” The air outside has gotten so polluted that the town’s inhabitants buy bottled fresh air without question. They’re unaware that the world outside Thneedville is a desolate wasteland, and O’Hare, the corrupt CEO who basically rules the town, makes sure that they stay unaware.
What O’Hare makes them believe, as Bourdieu puts it, “confirms what they already know, and above all, leaves their mental structures intact” (Bourdieu 254).

Welcome to the desert of the real...

What bothers me most about the movie is its ending, when Ted introduces the tree to the town, and all the townspeople turn on O’Hare in an instant. They figure trees would be better for Thneedville, but they don’t really try to understand why. They simply accept it because a kid got on a soapbox and told them what to think, and they give him “respect that is... quite out of proportion with [his] intellectual merit” (Bourdieu 254).  Their thought process is along the lines of, “hey, let’s plant a tree, because this kid says trees are cool.” Ted is just another person telling them what to think, just like television tells us what to think.

Bourdieu Television...You're an expert? psh

"People talk so much about the weather in day-to-day life because it's a subject that cannot cause trouble" (254).

Our society is full of conversations that are intended to not ripple the waters. Our society has began an era where topics that can cause trouble are told not to be talked about. The problem is that our media outlets begin to output news that does the same thing. Our news then becomes everything that we want to hear versus events in this world we need to hear. In daily conversation we are told not to talk about religion, politics, and family because these topics tend to provoke arguments. Our society begins to change to conversation that is superficial that has no depth.

 

 

What is an expert?

 

I love that Bourdieu attacks the creditability of some of these "experts." Our culture is obsessed titling people as experts. What makes a person an expert? Does having a doctorate in psychology make that person an expert in psychology? Probably so. The problem is that people shown on our media like journalists or news anchors are viewed as experts because they are the ones talking about the issues. If we title people as experts and then let them say what they think to our public it can cause major problems for our future. I would be like someone who was talking about major league baseball and how tiring the season can be but if you are not a person who has experienced this then how can you be an expert on the issue?? Well this is me unless I get the opportunity to play major league baseball. So hopefully when I get the chance to go into the field of being a news anchor I will be labeled an expert even if I don't get to experience baseball at the highest level. The biggest problem with calling people on our television experts is the fact that most people do not question whether someone is an expert or not. Even if you don't have a doctorate in psychology, you can still be classified as an expert. Not good.

 

 



Kayla Salyer -- Bourdieu

Bourdieu's essay purposes the idea that television is changing the way we look at the world. It is hurting us, our critical thinking, and our overall knowledge more than doing good. We can see this loss of knowledge every day we look at our televisions. We stop thinking critically because the news anchors are telling us exactly what to think. This stops the need for us to formulate our own opinions and ideas. This leads us back to sameness in a way that may be detrimental to our individual ideals, for if we are all only following the information, and the biased opinions that the so called 'news' gives us, we are simply all swallowing the same pill, and eventually, spewing out the same results.
Not only does news follow sameness, but also agreement. News reassures the things we already know, it makes us in agreement with what they are saying. If the news broadcasters are really giving us various opinions on different matters, than we will eventually disagree with one thing, and stop watching it all together. If the news is confirming what we already know, we will be less likely to question what they are saying, therefore, they can more easily manipulate the public. What they say are very different opinions are actually very similar and have the same undertone; pushing you to see what they want you to see.
This, although not perfectly on track, shows us how similar various news channels may actually be, and that they may all be wanting us to see the same things.

Much of our lives are built on what the media wants us to think. They teach us what middle class morality looks like, how we should behave, what we should wear, and what we should think are the real social problems. The news chooses the issues they want to examine each day. For example, there is always homelessness, but they only choose to show it when it perpetuates their agenda. This agency is very important to think critically about so that we do not get sucked into what they want us to believe, without a second thought.

We must not just take the easy way out and follow whatever they are saying is morally correct to believe. We must look at facts ourselves and think for ourselves. We must form our own opinions so that we will not fall into sameness, so that we can make a difference, and grow as a whole.

Brooke Bumgarner --- Bourdieu (Again)

Last week I wrote about Bourdieu because I accidentally mixed up the readings on the schedule when I was sick/absent from class. However, after our discussion in class on Tuesday, I'm going to briefly talk about him again, especially because I'm unsure if we are supposed to be doing blog posts this week.

Bourdieu has many very interesting arguments, however the one that seems most important is in line with Horkheimer and Adorno and the idea of perpetuated sameness. In Bourdieu's theory, he argues that media representation, specifically television and news, has this connotation of being "basic" in part. This is due to the mentality that television hosts and news anchors are just "giving the audience what they want to see/hear".

A very important quote from Bourdieu's essay states how television news "suits everybody because it confirms what they already know, and above all, leaves their mental structures intact" (254). This not only perpetuates the idea of sameness, when we receive the same framing of news stories no matter the specifics in each event. This makes it so that we are desensitized to what is really going on out in the world, as we maintain the mentality that the terror is over "there" not here. Essentially, what we cannot see or hear we do not perceive as "real"- we are detached and this enables us to only approach cultural problems and events of horror elsewhere on a superficial level- we do not perceive these problems as our own. There is no authentic attention because in a society where news has been tailored to keep citizens in their comfort zone, we do not encompass an attentive and critical approach to the issues of the world for fear of having to emerge from our safety nets which could cause potential fear and further controversy in our society.

Bourdieu

I'm not entirely sure that I have to do a reflection for this week, so I'll make it short. I'm choosing to reflect on Bourdieu and the discussion we had in class Tuesday.

We talked about how Bourdieu argues that television and the news has desensitized us as a culture. News anchors and castors tell us how to feel and how to react to certain situations that they highlight and bring to our attention. Because of this, the things that we see in the news don't typically come to a surprise to us.

Bourdieu argues that TV news "suits everybody because it confirms what they already know and, above all, leaves their mental structures intact". This ties in with what Zizek is saying, that the media directs our attention to specific events and situations, distracting us from other things that are more important. The media acts like a puppet master, controlling what we do and how we think.

BoredCaitlin, Herman and Chomsky

“The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news ‘objectively’ and on the basis of professional news values.” (Herman and Chomsky, 205)

Reading this quote reminded me that there really is no such thing as an unbiased news source, because no one is truly unbiased. People like to think they can be completely objective, but it’s impossible. Anyone publishing a news piece is going to present it from their point of view, and one point of view can’t be representative of an entire population. This is especially true when you’re looking at mainstream news media. Mainstream news isn’t only reporting news, but projecting ideological messages onto its audiences. Complexity usually isn’t the order of the day. Stories will be presented in the simplest, most easily digestible way possible. Audiences don’t usually question what is presented to them, because they think what they’re seeing is objective. Unfortunately,  truly objective interpretation of events is probably beyond the scope of what any single news outlet can do. It’s best for viewers not to take any single viewpoint in isolation, but to look at many perspectives and come to their own conclusions.

Propganda Model and Connor Mumford

"A Propaganda Model"

What does mainstream media to do us from a young age? My brother visited this weekend and it was nice to see him. He was able to hang out with older people and my hope was that they would rub off on him. I had a couple of my teammates talk to him about himself and his life. One of my teammates is from a bad area in Miami, another is from Brooklyn, and one of my teammates has a dad in a drug unit. I just want my brother to hear these things from other people that are not his parents or brother.

While he was here, he really got me thinking about how mainstream media and advertising has affected him and the youth in this country. As a family we were walking down park avenue on Friday morning, my brother would pass every "nice" car or motorcycle pointing out the name saying "Ohh snap that is so niceeee." I begin to think why did I not care about what car I was going to get when I got older? I would ask my brother what is so nice about that Mercedes or Ducati? He would give the answer that Capitalism would want people to say. An answer that has no meaning except for "it is nice and the best." I asked my brother "why is that motorcycle or car nicer than that one?" He couldn't really answer except for luxury and comfort. I was just sitting back this weekend and realizing how engulfed my brother is in Capitalism. Capitalism attacks people like my brother starting at a young age.

Big Mergers have helped to affect my brother, actually everybody in America. As big mergers become more popular it only begins to become fewer people at the top. When there are fewer people at the top then fewer ideologies will be spread making it seem like there is only one way to live. Who are the people who check these people on "the top." It is scary to think that through media, advertising, and movies there is a narrowing gap making the top thinner. People like my brother don't realize this, so he is more acceptable to media affecting him. How do I get my brother to understand how is ideologies and views have been formed by media and movies? Unless my ideology of not thinking this way is wrong and we should give in to media and propaganda. haha

Herman and Chomsky -- Kayla Salyer

"In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda" (Herman and Chomsky 204). Herman and Chomsky focus their essay "A Propaganda Model" on our mass media  as a systematic propaganda. It invites us into the ideological structure of the world, and keeps us there. Our capitalistic society needs class struggle, we need both a lower class and an upper class, and we also need a way to keep this in place. This is why we have systematic propaganda. Herman and Chomsky lay our five essential ingredients of our propaganda model:
1. Size, wealth, and concentration of media.
2. Advertising as income.
3. Reliance of media on institutional information sources
4. FLACK
5. Anti communism as a control mechanism.

These five essentials keep us following the crowd, and keep us in agreement so that the class system will remain. Within these, we find ourselves convinced that we have free will. We think that we can perceive things in any way we please, and that the media is only giving us the plain and simple facts. In reality the news has an agenda, and chooses to show us things and leave out others. It chooses its words carefully in a way that will make us lean towards one way or another. The conception that we are simply getting the facts, must lead to detrimental circumstances. We have no free will, no right to choose, because the products and opinions have already been chosen for us. With the number of media outlets lessening, and wealth of the media industry growing, we may find ourselves digging a deeper and deeper grave for free will. The perpetuation of inequality of the wealth and power of the world is shown indiscreetly in media. When unpacking

it, we can see the deliberate propaganda that is simply hidden under a thin sheet. 

Since I was sick last class, I'll be reflecting on Jameson and how I think his ideas relate to every day life. From his reading, and especially the part that I had to examine in class with Spencer, it seemed like Jameson was asserting that the world has become so advanced and not necessarily in a positive way. The rapid changes that we are experiencing in our world are happening so fast, particularly in relation to simulations, that we have come to prefer these synthetic ways of real ones.

This makes me think about technology and how much it has changed over the years, affecting the way we act and live our every day lives. We get our news from technology, we interact through technology, and we can even date with technology. Such advancements are harming the way we are as humans because it is creating a culture that is becoming more lazy and less active with poor social skills.

Not only are there websites for dating, but now there are now apps that help you connect with people in your area that allow you to talk and possibly date. In the past, before this was an option, people mainly met other people the old fashioned way. They met in person, had face-to-face conversations, and went on normal dates. Now, it has shifted to the point where you can hide behind your phone and have a full blown conversation with someone you matched up with, but when it comes to meeting in person, people are scared. They get awkward and there are silences because we don't know how to properly communicate anymore. Everything has been facilitated with technology that it is stripping us from our basic social skills.

And to think that the world keeps progressing towards more technological revolutions... What will communication be like then? It's scary to think of the direction in which we are heading.

Brooke Bumgarner -- Reflecting on 11/4

Since I was out of class sick on the 6th, I guess I'll be talking about Jameson and what I did, and did not understand as I left class on Tuesday.

Jameson has a lot to say, and it is a lot to wrap your head around. I think one of the big things I remember thinking as I left my groups discussion was that it's fairly difficult to put into words how Jameson's theory is indeed reflected in our everyday lives. One of the first ideas that really stuck out to me was the idea that postmodernism comes from a radical break. With this thinking, we can see that Jameson is saying something against Habermas because he is claiming that Modernism has indeed ended.

Jameson continues in this line of thinking in explaining that we have had a break from the classics, and the past. He explains that postmodernism is saturated with new kinds of texts that are infused with culture industry that is no longer about the authentic genuine aesthetic forms, but about what can be mass produced the easiest, thus perpetuating capitalism the most.

It's not just culture he says, it's all of society that is altered in a way that relies on consumerism. This is especially relevant to my everyday life I do believe because a lot about the society we live in today is the "bigger, better, faster" mentality. Jameson conquers in this thinking when he explains that it isn't about the actual product or art form anymore; instead it's about how our society relies on a frantic economic urgency which produces fresh waves of what Jameson calls "ever more novel-seeming goods" (409).

This couldn't be more true today. Every six months Apple comes out with a bigger, better, and faster iPhone. Material goods are competing to make it to the top of the market every day, and in order to do so, items need to progress at a greater turnover rate. The faster the better!

It's important to realize that the postmodernism era is much different from classical modernism, essentially because of the economic system of capital. Postmodernism has turned society into a cycle of capitalism and consumerism. It's a totalizing economic system.

This is what I really got out of the first part of Jameson's text, and it is truly visible in our society today.

MC Guffee, Henry Jenkins... returns

“People who may not ever meet face to face and thus have few real-world connections with each other can tap into the shared framework of popular culture to facilitate communication” (457)

Henry Jenkins argues that through the social media, communication is fostered through cyberspace, which subsequently, lacks face-to-face interaction. Losing face-to-face interaction strips the real from human interaction in multiple ways. Namely, it strips the norms of face-to-face social interaction to allow each individual to say whatever they desire. Conversing in such a manner has no true consequences, which then causes social media users to feel a strange sense of anonymity.

Take for example, the Jackson Katz presentation and how students utilized Yik Yak to publicly antagonize Katz on both his physical as well as personal attributes. Free from owning what is said, Yik Yak users can break social norms of conversation to condemn, harass, and terrorize in ways that are horrifically problematic. Yik Yak turned a public event, intended to help students grow as people and members of our society, into a destructive roast of a prominent public figure. This roast was not only destructive towards Jackson Katz, but also towards the Rollins College community. As a reflection of our student body, Yik Yak users offensively condemned Katz and in turn rescinded the hard work of Rollins College to create our brand of global citizenship.

From name calling to profane language, social media gives users the opportunity to enact the most offensive instances of racism, misogyny, and other social injustices to terrorize others. Although social media can have many positives, its loss of referent to reality and face-to-face interaction is detrimental to our evolution as a society. A sense of respect for oneself and especially others is lost when the social norms of human interaction are boiled down to communication through social media.

In my opinion, and in accordance with Jenkins, social media allows users to “other” others by dehumanizing them and revoking their right to be respected as real people out in the world somewhere. In summation, social media removes the referent of reality from human interaction to create a new form of interaction that has the potential to dehumanize users without any repercussions.  

BoredCaitlin, 11/6

When reading Jameson on Thursday, I thought a lot about the differences between Van Gogh’s “Peasant Shoes” and Warhol’s “Diamond Dust Shoes.” Jameson describes his reading of “Peasant Shoes” as “hermeneutical.” (Jameson 410) The piece gives the viewer “a clue or a symptom for some vaster reality which replaces it as its ultimate truth.” It allows the viewer to come to their own conclusions about the shoe’s origin, it’s story, so to speak. One could connect this back to Barthes and Macherey, because what’s most important here is what the work doesn’t say, and that “the work of art emerges within the gap between Earth and World.” In contrast, “Diamond Dust Shoes” leaves little room for interpretation. “Diamond Dust Shoes” has a specific purpose for existing, and what the viewer sees is essentially what they get. One can find similar differences in Disney theme park attractions. For example, let’s look at the Haunted Mansion.

While most of Disney’s newer attractions have a definite story, the Haunted Mansion focuses more on giving its viewers a memorable experience. It doesn’t have much of a story at first glance. It’s essentially some scenes of ghosts doing what ghosts do. However, the attraction’s appeal comes from allowing the viewers to fill in the blanks on their own. Why is this strange house haunted? Why is this room stretching? Why is a ghost following me home? The attraction doesn’t explicitly answer these questions, but allows the visitors to answer themselves.

         In comparison to the Haunted Mansion, newer Disney attractions leave little to the imagination. By telling a definite story, they leave little for the viewer to interpret. Dinosaur’s premise is clear from the moment the visitor enters the building. In fact, the attraction’s preshow states directly to the viewers what they will be doing and why. It’s a different approach, but it’s not quite as appealing or invigorating as something like the Haunted Mansion.

Ivan 11/6 Freddy Jameson

Jameson's reading has been the thickest reading I believe I have encountered so far. That being said, I believe this reading has shown me just how far I've come as a theorist and at the same time how far I still have to go.

Jameson stated that contrary to what other theorist had said, modernism was indeed done and what replaced it was an era of excess and overabundance. For the majority of the products introduced to the common consumer, fewer and fewer ended up being huge improvements and instead boiled down to being bigger and newer.

What really stood out for me during this reading was the example between "Peasant Shoes" and "Diamond Dust Shoes". Whereas the Peasant Shoes held a story, the Diamond shoes no longer had a deeper meaning. Although the excess newer shoes could reach more people, they made no connection to who the people were. The diamond shoes went "wider" but the peasant shoes were "deeper".

I have to agree with Jameson in that nowadays, it seems that things are replaced/upgraded weekly. There is no more time to grow those deep connections between the user and the item because the item's life expectancy is greatly reduced. Products are no longer build to last years, they are built to last until the next update. And even then, the new upgrades are superficial. The new system depends completely on the consumer wanting the new. Without people reaching for the next thing, no one would spend the excess money on minor changes.

Jameson and the Wizard of Oz

Since we're talking about Jameson in class again tomorrow, I thought I'd write about him. When reviewing my section in class, pages 425-433, Jameson spoke a lot about Bonaventura and how it's this hotel that is representative of something bigger. It has glass mirrors on the exterior to repel whats outside and it hides what is going on inside. "A repulsion for which we have analogies in those reflector sunglasses which make it impossible for your interlocutor to see your own eyes and thereby achieve a certain aggressivity towards and power over the Other." Then he talks about the elevators inside. "Here the narrative stroll has been underscored, symbolized, reified and replaced by a transportation machine which becomes the allegorical signifier of that older promenade we are no longer allowed to conduct on our own..." 

After trying to dissect what Jameson said, I believe that he's paralleling the Bonaventura with capitalism and how greatly it impacts our world without us even being conscious of it. We don't really know what goes on behind the scenes, but we are active consumers that help capitalism thrive and that is what our world has become. 

This made me think of The Wizard of Oz.

In the movie, the Emerald City contains this shiny green building where the great and powerful Oz works. No one has ever seen the wizard of Oz, and no one really knows what he does, but he controls those around him and they actively and passively obey without question. That's how capitalism works. We are programmed to be consumers, regardless of if we know exactly what is going on behind the scenes or not, and it runs our world. It has power and control over us. It practically makes our decisions before we even have a chance to make them ourselves.

Sorry Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

Jameson that Guy.... I thought I could write about him because we are covering him again tomorrow.

Jameson was really hard to understand from page 425-433. First, I am going to focus on the part that I found most interesting that wasn't space or cognitive mapping because I am struggling to understand that nonsense.

"This historical novel can no longer set outt to represent the historical past; it can only 'represent' our ideas and stereotypes about that past (which thereby at once becomes 'pop history')" (419). Our history is learned through simulacra of what we portray as history. Learning through history books, we will only continue to focus on certain aspects of our history.

Jameson focuses on capitalism's affect on all the systems that are in place. I don't know how he critics everything through capitalism because he is never straight up.

- cognitive mapping
- disjunction
- simulacra
- semiautonomy - capitalism has replaced self-governance.

"It also suggests that some of our most cherished and time-honoured radical conceptions about the nature of cultural politics may thereby find themselves outmoded" (430).

Jameson says a lot of things that all the previous theorists are talking about. This is a terrible blog post. I feel that I am re-reading Jameson and I am understanding it but I don't know how to talk about it. Jameson uses the spheres quite often like Appaduri was using when we read him. I am excited to hear about space and how ideologically it affects us or is us. Also cognitive mapping. Jameson ties in with Appaduri more than I realized.

Brooke Bumgarner -- Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu addresses one of the worlds biggest issues, that of class structure. Other theorists have attempted to confront this issue of "high" and "low" culture, however, I believe Bourdieu elaborates on it in a way that is more understandable, and perhaps observable in our culture.

"Even in the classroom, the dominant definition of the legitimate way of appropriating culture and works of art favours those who have had early access to legitimate culture in a cultured household, outside of scholastic disciplines, since even within the educational system it devalues scholarly knowledge and interpretation as 'scholastic' or even 'pedantic' in favour of direct experience and simple delight" (Bourdieu, 250).

This is an extremely important quote, not only in relation to the framing of what Bourdieu calls "legitimate culture" but also in the structure of classes. He is explaining that the dominant way of classifying "legitimate" or high culture is dependent largely on who has access to high culture in the beginning. Think about it this way, the cycle of wealth circulates among the same percentage of people predominately in the US. Unless by some unexpected fortune, someone who has a 9-5 job is not regularly attending the New York City Opera or Ballet.

However, what is interesting to think about on a more personalized basis, is how exactly, and who exactly gets to decide what this "legitimate" culture is. Bourdieu explains that the reading of art demands a certain level of logic and intelligence. He further notes that "a work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded. The conscious or unconscious implementation of explicit or implicit schemes of perception and appreciation which constitutes pictorial or musical culture is the hidden condition for recognizing the styles characteristic of a period, a school or an author, and, more generally, for the familiarity with the internal logic of works that aesthetic enjoyment presupposes" (250).

So, he argues, that one cannot enjoy such legitimate culture within the arts without the proper level of competence which gives us the ability to decode art in a way that allows for the enjoyment of its deepest parts.

When he begins to speak, on page 251, of how "nothing could be obscene on the stage of our premier theatre, and the ballerinas of the Opera, even as naked dancers, sylphs, sprites or Bacchae, retain an inviolable purity" my mind begins to wonder how this relates to our class structure.
 
In this meme, we see this scene on the bed, in full dress, and the caption jokes that it is "basically porn". This makes light of what Bourdieu argues. "The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile-- in a word, natural-- enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane. That is why art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences" (Bourdieu, 251). This, is what makes Bourdieu's theory particularly interesting. And this is, he says, is how society validates the creation of social classes.

Kayla Salyer -- Jameson

"This historical novel can no longer set out to represent the historical past; it can only 'represent' our ideas and stereotypes about the past" (Jameson 419). Jameson puts a lot of ideas forward, yet I think that this quote captures a large part of his piece. One of his main ideas is that we are losing our history. We have manipulated and changed it so much through media that we can no longer see it for what it truly is. Films portray history through a lens, which only capture parts of it. This lens makes us biased against the truth, and confused about what is real history, and what is just a story. When the actual truth is given to us, we have too much junk stored in our minds to see it clearly. Because it is seen through a lens, we only see one side of the story; we see it how we want to see it. We twist the facts so much, in a way that makes history far better than the present. This causes us to be nostalgic for our false history. When we see these films, they cast a sort of spell over us. These films must be entertaining, and spectacular. This causes them to give us a false take on history, and makes us believe that is was something far different than the truth.
Going back to the word nostalgia, Jameson makes a different point pertaining to this. We will look at history and see, through the lens, that history was better. At the same time, we look at our lives and see that there is something lacking. Going back to Benjamin, we can see that this is due to mechanical reproduction. This causes us to have a sort of nostalgia for the present, as well as the past. We are always longing for something more than our lives can give us in the here and now, because postmodernism has taken away a huge chunk of what has made us who we are.

BoredCaitlin, Bourdieu

“Even in the classroom, the dominant definition of the legitimate way of appropriating culture and works of art favours those who have had early access to legitimate culture in a cultured household, outside of scholastic disciplines, since even within the educational system it devalues scholarly knowledge and interpretation as ‘scholastic’ or even ‘pedantic’ in favour of direct experience and simple delight.” (Bourdieu 250)

In my blog post about Hebdige, I attempted to discuss the separation of high culture and low culture and why I consider the separation problematic. I tried to articulate why it bothered me but I feel I wasn’t entirely successful. When reading Bourdieu’s pieces, the reason hit me right in the face. 

It’s not necessarily the separation of high and low that bothers me. It’s the pretentious assumption that low culture isn’t worthwhile and that someone is lowbrow for enjoying it. Here, Bourdieu doesn’t even call them “high culture” and “low culture.” He refers to them as “legitimate culture” and “illegitimate culture.” My question here is, what makes culture legitimate? A Shakespeare play and a Disney movie might be two very different cultural products, but they’re culture nonetheless. They come from two different art forms, but does that mean one is inherently better or more worthwhile? There is likely just as much scholarly analysis of Disney as there is of Shakespeare at this point. It’s not hard to find someone who finds just as much (or almost as much) worth in a play as they do in a Disney movie. (I say hang out in the theatre department for a while. You’ll find plenty.) I like to think that a text is a text no matter how it’s conveyed. Reiterating and rephrasing from my previous post, the medium of a text doesn’t automatically dictate its worth.

MC Guffee, 11/4

“This historical novel can no longer set out to represent the historical past it can only ‘represent’ our ideas and stereotypes about that past (which thereby at once becomes ‘pop history’)." (417)

            Frederic Jameson posits two separate versions of history: the historical past, and “pop history.” Comparatively, the historical past is meant as the exact replication of history that harbors no agenda except the truth of the past, whereas “pop history” is meant to represent history through the popular ideas and stereotypes of the past. Working in opposition, pop history and the historical past consequently represent the rift that the loss of the referent has created. Rather than a concrete history that holds true to when that history was the present, Jameson argues that every retelling of history is selective and therefore, heavily biased.

           

“Cultural production is thereby driven back inside a mental space which is no longer that of the old monadic subject, but rather that of some degraded collective ‘objective spirit’: it can no longer gaze directly on some putative real world, at some reconstruction of past history which was once itself a present; rather, as in Plato’s Cave, it must trace our mental images of that past upon its confining walls.” (417)

To further this comparison of the historical past and pop history, Jameson cites Plato’s cave. Plato’s cave explains the relationship between the enlightened and the unenlightened, in addition to how these two will understand and retell what they’ve seen differently. Drawing from Plato’s cave, Jameson finds we “must trace our mental images of that past upon its confining walls” in order to remember the historical past. However, in doing so, we acknowledge that the history is retold from the perspective of the individual retelling it. Thus, it is virtually impossible to retell history from an unbiased, all-inclusive and accurate perspective. Meaning historical pasts are accounted for with some sort of political or ideological stance that sways the event. From this popular view of the historical past, society’s created a “pop history” that lacks referent and neutrality with the historical past.

        

            My experience in AP U.S. History in high school is exemplary of our biased relationship with history because it is history offered through the lens of the United States. Subsequently, catastrophes like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Vietnam war, are retold from the perspective of the U.S. My teacher refused to acknowledge the Vietnam war as a loss or even a tie for the American people. Moreover, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are depicted as unavoidable and what had to be done to win the war. This style of teaching leaves students at a disadvantage because it is biased history, which in turn blurs the student’s relationship with the historical past to a point of no return.

“If there is any realism left here, therefore, it is a ‘realism’ which is meant to derive from the shock of grasping that confinement, and of slowly becoming aware of a new and original historical situation in which we are condemned to seek History by way of our own pop images and simulacra of that history, which itself remains forever our of reach.” (417)

            In summation, Frederic Jameson believes that any realism left over from the pop history phenomenon will be in accordance with the realization that society has confined itself to mere “pop images” and “simulacra” of the past. Therefore, Jameson concludes that there will be a “crisis in reality” once society realizes the historical past in its genuine form is lost forever and all that is left is the popular ideas and representations of the past.