11/19 Bourdieu

  Pierre Bourdieu provides fascinating research and hypotheses in his 1984 essay titled, The Aristocracy of Culture. The science or sense of culture and how it develops is an interesting concept because we can understand that culture is something that is divided between the mainstream and the vast array of subcultures. Bourdieu infers that culture is broken up into “class.” This is and will always be inherently true due to the different tastes and preferences of a variety of different consumers. As Bourdieu says, “To the socially recognized hierarchy of the arts, and within each of them, of genres, schools or periods, corresponds a social hierarchy of the consumers. This predisposes tastes to function as markers of ‘class’” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 250). This will always be true because different classes have different luxuries and availability of time to embrace and recognize the caste system of cultural trends and tastes. 

It seems that from Bordieu’s concepts this is one of the founding points that we see as cultural appropriation. This is the concept of adopting from other cultures, and often times are seen as insensitive. Cultures develop based on the mere fact that those apart of a specific culture were born into it. Within the caste system, we see the lower class, middle, and upper. There are subclasses within those big three that are purely based on the level of income and the life you are able to live. 

In Bordieu’s second essay of this section titled, On Television, he denotes that the news is the unifying entity of culture. Television and more specifically, the news is meant to be unbiased and to not harm or offend anybody. This is an extremely difficult job to do given the sensitivity of culture.   

11/12 Jameson

 In Frederic Jameson’s essay titled, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, he discusses concepts of postmodern architecture as a form of expression that shapes the world to an extent. It is a cultural dominant, and by this, we can infer that Jameson is trying to address that in “late capitalism” we see structures so grand and so momentous that there is a correlation with cultural norms and trends that are linked directly to the grand structures. It is about understanding geometric patterns as well as the spaces that they fit in to. For example, we see a building that looks quite futuristic with many curves and high glass walls, we know that this is a piece of modern architecture. This sets the tone for inspiration and more to follow in the footsteps. 

The production of aesthetics will always have influencers and be influenced to create new trends. Objects and shapes provide more structural reorganization. Jameson mentioned, “What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to airplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover, now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovation and experimentation” (Jameson, 1984, p. 409). Although Jameson is quite difficult to boil down, this quote sheds some light on his concepts of aesthetic production and the influence that the reproduction of commodities does on society. 

Lastly, Jameson offers how art and culture commodify symbols and gestures within art. This is through what he calls, The Waning of Affect. He chooses the best example as human beings are commodified as symbols within the culture itself, in turn marking its territory within capitalism. For a final quote, Jameson offers, “The waning of affect is, however, perhaps best initially approached by way of the human figure, and it is obvious that what we have said about the commodification of objects holds as strongly for Warhol’s human subjects, stars - like Marilyn Monroe - who are themselves commodified and transformed into their own images” (Jameson, 1984, p. 412).      

Post from 12/10

 “Mediascapes refer both to the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (newspapers, magazines, television stations, and film-production studios), which are now available to a growing number of private and public interests throughout the world, and to the images of the world created by these media.”

During class, we discussed what Appadurai calls “mediascapes”. He uses this term to describe how technology surrounding the media has allowed for media to travel far and reach more places. Without the technology today, information would take significantly longer to travel across the globe. When we were discussing how the media is able to share information and images faster and more efficiently than ever before, I thought about Walter Benjamin’s idea of technical reproduction. The media is able to disseminate texts, images, and videos of events and other news, but viewers are only seeing a copy of reality. Technology has evolved to further be able to enhance mediascapes. While viewers are only seeing a copy of reality when they experience the different mediascapes, they are able to have similar experiences as if it were in real life. There is evolving technology in the virtual reality sector of technology that is starting to produce software that makes viewing the copy more realistic than ever before. In my theory praxis essay, I explored this concept in great depth and analyzed the different ways the copy of the original can be beneficial in today’s world. Mediascapes along with technology have made communication faster, easier, and more accessible.

11/12 Post Class Blog- Horkheimer & Adorno

 “Entertainment makes itself possible only by insulating itself from the totality of the social process, making itself stupid and perversely renouncing from the first the inescapable claim of any work, even the most trivial: in its restrictedness to reflect the whole. Amusement always means putting things out of mind, forgetting suffering, even when it is on display. At its root is powerlessness. It indeed escapes, but not, as it claims, escape from bad reality but from the last thought of resisting that reality”

In this quote, Adorno and Horkheimer discuss how amusement will, even if it comments on the suffering of a group or a particular issue, will not acknowledge the pain the people are going through. It is a coping mechanism, in essence. The people making the entertainment don’t know how to fix the suffering and to avoid facing it, will make a joke out of it. 

This quote connects me back to arguments I’ve had with my parents about film and theater. They argue that film is used for entertainment and escapism, nothing more. However, as an artist within theater and film, movies and plays are more than mere entertainment; they are methods in which people express how they view the world and the issues surrounding us. However, I do agree with my parents on several things; there are pieces of media that “make itself stupid” and focuses on amusement. I think of offensive stand up comedians partially. Stand up comedy is one of the most difficult things to do in the creative world. How do you know what will offend one person and not another? However, the truly “amusing” jokes will put the suffering of those the joke is referring to away. Instead of actively engaging with the issue or people at hand, entertainment will write it off. This type of entertainment is not what a good, challenging piece of media is.

Post Class Blog 12/10- Appadurai, the technoscape, and information

 “By technoscape, I mean the global configuration, also every fluid, of technology and the fact that technology, both high and low, both mechanical and informational, now moves at high speeds across various kinds of previously impervious boundaries.” (515)

After our discussion of Appadurai in class today, his concept of technoscapes  (and in extension, mediascapes) was the one that resonated the most with me. In this quote, Appadurai talks about how technology, in our modern times, is able to rapidly move across country borders, both physically and digitally. When we receive information now, it is almost instantaneous. News stories have reports written about them minutes after an event happens. This idea of rapid technological exchange is one, Appadurai argues, causes the disjuncture in our current global landscape. 

Currently, I am in a political media class with Dr. Schoen. We just read about climate change as a topic and how it is approached by the media. In the article we read for the class, argues that the reason climate change has become a partisan issue is that the facts of the case are never presented.People did not understand the reach of technology and are not told about it. The reason I bring this up is that the article talks about many people, within the United States and other countries, are unaware of the technology and resources we could use to help with climate change. People do not have access in some countries to the technology that would make their lives easier, as well as help the environment. In my opinion, this is the “disjuncture” that Appadurai brings up. Even though we live in a “technoscape,” where technology and digital information can be sent in a matter of seconds, different parts of the world are out of the technoscape. Thus the disjuncture present in the current

Jane Denson, 12/10

        Last class' discussion of Appadurai's global cultural flow of technoscapes got me thinking about the growing phenomenon of virtual reality, again going back to Poster, becoming more socially engaged in and universally accepted as part of the norm. This year alone has proved to portray Appadurai's theoretical insights in a new light, which alludes to the idea that we are in the midst of a technological explosion. So much has changed since the 1990s and 2000s regarding how quickly we send and receive information via devices (e.g. cellphones, computers, etc.) that it is safe to say that technology is fundamentally integrated into our daily lives. There really is no escaping it, we simply must recognize that it will likely hold a permanent place in society as a cultural necessity. Furthermore, our dialogue in class about this matter, as well as the notion that the flow of the global economy drives where the tech goes, helped me realize the disparity between different countries and their ability to access and/or observe the utilization of technology. For example, in my Spanish class, we learned about how indigenous people in the Amazon region were not exposed to technology like the United States was. It allowed me to understand divergent perspectives and the central idea that certain areas of the world are more digitally connected, while others are more in touch with their environmental surroundings. With the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, you would think that countries like the United States would use their economic resources wisely and attempt to create a substantial change there, but it seems like the avarice of the U.S. continues to prevent any significantly positive changes from manifesting, since a great deal of money goes towards things of lesser importance. Perhaps now that we are experiencing a pandemic, countries like ours will rethink their social and economic paradigms for the better.

Pre class 12/10

“The transnational movement of the martial arts, particularly through Asia, as mediated by the Hollywood and Hong Kong film industries (Zarilli 1995) is a rich illustration of the ways in which long-standing martial arts traditions, reformulated to meet the fantasies of contemporary (sometimes lumpen) youth populations, create new cultures of masculinity and violence, which are in turn the fuel for increased violence in national and international politics.”

Hollywood and China’s relationship is especially fascinating in the time of big budget superhero movies where studios will pay careful attention to the content of their movies so that they sell well overseas, even if they’re not necessarily successful in America. Movies will often incorporate Chinese movie stars with American ones and have product placement of both American and Chinese brands. This leaves American viewers puzzled because they do not recognize most, if any, of the Chinese elements of the movies. Conversely, Chinese viewers likely recognize both because of the global proliferation of American pop culture. Movie stars like Tom Cruise are well past their heyday in the American mind, and we have moved on to the stars in recent superhero movies. Overseas, these action heroes of old are still able to net a large audience because they are seen as synonymous with American action films. The American viewer may wonder why these worthless big budget action movies continue to be churned out despite how badly they do in America, but they fail to recognize the power of the international market. Movies that may have flopped in their home turf are still able to break even through global ticket sales, which shows that there is indeed an audience for them. These movies then are no longer made for Americans, but for the Chinese instead. This prospect scares Americans because of how villainized China is in our culture, leading to the slippery slope that China will eventually take over all of American cultural output, but I think this is unlikely. If Americans were never interested in these movies in the first place, then I hardly call that a cultural takeover. The film studios are simply playing with the cards that are dealt to them, and if vapid special effects extravaganzas are all it takes to make profit overseas, then why not continue to make them?

Evie 12/8

 “Is there some commonality among ‘women’ that preexists their oppression?"

I found our discussion on men and women’s fashion today very interesting. I would like to use this blog post to elaborate more on my example of pockets. When we examine women’s pockets today, they are either too small to hold anything of significance or fake, simply existing for style. The podcast that brought this idea into my head was “Articles of Interest,” created and hosted by Avery Trufelman. Trufelman examined the phenomenon of pockets by first traveling to a police supply store. She found that women have to wear men’s uniforms because the pockets on the women’s uniforms are too small!! That is something we as a society would never think out. However, that police supply store hardly has any women uniforms because they are inefficient and rarely bought by women. Pockets give us a sense of security, they allow us to move comfortably in public. They are secretive and internal, as opposed to bags that are exposed and able to be stolen. When something is in your pocket, you forget about it and your belongings become a part of you. Having pockets is an incredible advantage. One woman noted in the podcast that her son is better equipped than her daughter when they go out in public simply because of the security of his pockets. Women are exposed in several ways in our society and not having pockets furthers their exposure. The podcast noted that pockets are a metaphor for privilege “not only because they are so easily taken for granted by the people who have them, but also because, like the categories of race and gender themselves, pocket disparity is construct” (Trufelman, 2018). I found this metaphor to be fascinating, there is no real reason women should not have sufficient pockets.

Here is a link to the podcast: https://99percentinvisible.org/aoi/

I highly recommend checking it out, it is very relevant to our class!

Jane Denson, Cixous & Butler, and Irigaray

"Woman finds pleasure more in touch than in sight and her entrance into a dominant scopic economy signifies, once again, her relegation to passivity: she will be the beautiful object" (Irigaray, 1985, p. 255).

        This quote has so many layers to unpack and appears to be a heavy critique of the social construction of gender. While reading Irigaray's work, I found her argument to center around the disconnection from masculinity's reign over sexuality and suggest that there is an independence within female sexuality. What immediately comes to mind when perusing this specific section of her writing is Laura Mulvey's commentary on the male gaze [in cinema] and how that relates, rather prominently, to Irigaray's overarching theoretical insights surrounding the objectification of women. Both of them indicate that there is scopophilia, or pleasure in looking, that continues to cement itself in masculinity. Furthermore, the male sexuality's dominion over society shapes the perspectives of the texts that comprise our culture, like film and television. Usually, stories [from said types of texts] are told from a male point of view and exclude women in such a manner that essentially pushes them into passivity. In other words, women are often portrayed as spectacles and only serve the purpose of pleasing a man. I cannot count how many times I have seen a film, typically one from the 20th century, depict women as two-dimensional objects who are silenced into submission by their male counterpart. It is truly appalling and shows how far we, as a society, have come. However, there is still a great deal of work to be done and this theorist is cognizant of this. Her analysis alludes to the notion that femininity possesses its own unique depth that is significantly more than physical splendor. She also insinuates that women are held to different expectations than men and that female needs are neglected because they are believed to be negative when compared to their male counterpart. Finally, this quotation captures the larger idea that women are stripped of their agency as a subject, which is crucial to understand before any change can be made.

Jane Denson, 12/3

        Last class' discussion of Foucault and the Panopticon got me thinking about ways we, as citizens, are being surveilled on a daily basis. I feel like it crosses into the conspiracy theory realm, but many seem to believe that we are kept tabs on by the government, mainly through technological helpers (e.g. Alexa, Google Home, Siri, etc.). It is certainly a scary thought and makes sense because advertisers always know what to show us just by listening to what we say. For example, I know people who purposely talked about their favorite soda in the presence of their phone and eventually received ads for said soda product. I think Foucault raises many interesting points surrounding the notion of an invasion of privacy when it comes to surveillance and simultaneously suggests that people fall in line, thus permitting power to function without anyone [physically] being there. Yes, power structures can allow for government officials to protect us from danger, but the question of ethics never disappears from the overarching conversation. Personally, I feel like I am being watched, which does not mix well with my mental health issues. It simply makes feel uneasy knowing that facial recognition is so prominent in our society to extent that we can be tracked and monitored. What is perhaps most horrifying is that Foucault's ideas insinuate that surveillance is insidious, but also acknowledged, yet ignored at the same time. We know we might be getting "spied on," but we continue our normal routines without resistance. Furthermore, pop culture likes to expand upon Foucault's theoretical analysis and make references to his work quite frequently. There is even a television show called Big Brother that acts as the embodiment of Foucault's insights on the matter. Not only that, but it is incredibly common for pop culture, especially film, to display its subjects [obsessively] surveilling their surroundings. Recently, I watched Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936) and Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) where these notions manifested in some form or another. In Chaplin's film, there was a scene where the factory's corporation president was observed to be flipping through a camera feed of the building where he was monitoring the employees. As for Hitchcock's film, Foucault's thoughts are littered throughout it. With the pandemic still surging across the globe, I wonder how surveillance will continue to factor into people's lives.

Post Class 12/3

We are quick to say that propaganda proliferates more easily on social media, but there is some work being done to counter it. Like we discussed in class, information on the BLM protests over the summer was heavily shared on all social media platforms. Many posts promoted protestor safety, shared donation links, and accounts offering radio relay for various protest hot spots appeared. There were also many contradictory accounts of the events, as news outlets wanted to break the stories as fast as possible. One of the top sources of these stories were police departments themselves. Details were often warped and misreported, usually at the hands of the victim narrative the police wanted to send. Protestors were framed as aggressors and rioters, while the police were victims of the protestors’ violence. On social media, police departments would also post out of context footage of the protests, but users who witnessed these events themselves and recorded them would often reply with their own videos. The videos from these eagle-eyed protestors would usually show the incident from different camera angles as the police video and also show some events shortly before and after what was shown in the police department’s video. These videos unveiled the true intentions of police departs and showed that the videos reported by police departments were often highly staged and edited in such a way that removes the involvement of the police at all. These users act as alternative news sources, and it is much harder to repress social media posts because of the visibility offered by social media platforms. If one post is taken down, multitudes of reposts will appear in its place, putting evidence of doctored videos in front of more users eyes. The spread of ideas on social media is faster than ever, but this is not always a bad thing. 

12/8 Pre Class Blog- Irigaray and Female Sexuality

 “For women, it is traditionally used-value for men, exchange-value among men… This makes her the guardian of matters whose price will be determined by “subjects”; workers, tradesmen, consumers, according to the standard of their work and their need-desire. Women are marked phallically by their fathers, husbands, procurers.” (Irigaray)

Luce Irigaray’s essay “The Sex Which Is Not One,”  which discusses the plurality of female sexuality, is an interesting one. Though I struggled to grasp what Irigaray was arguing at several points, her point still rings across clearly: female sexuality (which is vastly different from male sexuality according to Irigaray) has been limited to what men consider sexuality. Women’s thoughts are not captured by the current philosophical teachings about female sexuality and women in general. Though Irigaray discusses primarily female sex and sexuality in this essay, the conclusion she reaches is applicable to the female experience in general. In general, people have observed the difference in leadership styles. Women tend to be more pluralist in the way they approach leadership skills, using more democratic means to get the group to work. Men, in general, are more goal-driven and take singular control in a leadership role. Though Irigirary talks in binaries (male vs. female) and some of her assertions could be considered outdated due to our modern gender politics, I still argue that she makes compelling points in terms of how women function in our society.

Even within film, there is a specific lens of criticism in film called the “male gaze” theory. In this lens of critique, critics will look at films and see how the camera's frame women. With filmmakers like Michael Bay, the way that women are filmed makes them look at how a traditional heterosexual male would look at women. For me, this is reminiscent of the different world view that men and women can have in our world (the singular view vs. the pluralist view).

12/3 Post Class Blog- Hooks and "The Sheik"

“The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream culture” (Hooks)

Michael brought up in class the connection to Cinema and Modernism last semester with primitivism and “otherness.” This made me think of the paper I wrote about the film The Sheik. In this romantic film, Rudolph Valentino (the sex-icon of his day) plays an Arab bandit who captures an English woman who travels to the desert for a journey one day. The film effectively “others” Arabs and other ethnic groups coming from the Middle East and Africa through its portrayal of the titular character and the other bandits in the film. Though Rudolph Valentino is the main love interest of the film, he only becomes desirable when it is revealed that he has been European all along. When he acts horribly (almost raping Diana or forcing her to wear revealing clothing), he is still identified as an Arab man. However, when he starts to become more humanized and Diana starts to fall in love with him, he is revealed to be European all along. In construct, the bandit that steals Diana from The Sheik and almost rapes her is still an Arab man. In the subtext of the film, a European-descended man is saving an English woman from the “other” Arab bandit.  In essence, the character of The Sheik is a perfect combination of “mainstream white culture” with an ethnicity that adds “spice.” That’s what made him such a popular and romantic figure in the 1920s. Though I argue that the representation of ethnic groups has gotten better since the 1920s, The Sheik still offers an interesting insight into the “otherness” we still see in contemporary times.

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A picture from the Sheik, with Rudolph Valentino