10: the reflex

Since last night’s class, I’ve been thinking a lot about our potential for resistance and what resistance means for us right now. As soon as this was brought up, it reminded me of this interview Neil Young where he stated:
“The time when music could change the world is past. I think it would be very naive to think that in this day and age. The world today is a different place, and that it’s time for science and physics and spirituality to make a difference in this world and to try to save the planet.”

That statement has been a dark cloud for me over the past few days. I keep replaying the idea over to myself that if Neil Fucking Young doesn’t think that music can change the world anymore, the man whose music stood as a beacon for so many people, then what is it that we’re supposed to do?

I do not understand the math behind physics, and I vaguely appreciate spirituality to an extent, but music is something that I think I’ve come to understand, in some way or another. Music is something that most people can have access to. And, despite your politics, it’s something that is free. Anyone can make it, anyone can enjoy it. When taught in schools it makes kids smarter. It’s engaging. Maybe it’s not the music’s potential in and of itself to make a difference that’s past, maybe we’re just waiting for the right people to execute the medium correctly again.

Paraphrasing a quotation from a video we watched yesterday, that even if the effort is trivial, but contributes to happiness, then it might be on to something (I do not remember what it was called, help me out if you will). So yes, everything does get appropriated and everything sucks. Despite the fact that I’ve been pretty jaded and bitter about most things in my thinking lately, I think I’m finally getting that even if that is true, it’s at least worth a try to make some sort of change. And why not have fun doing it. It’s clear that we – our culture at large – love the idea of instant pleasure; why not use that for something positive? If everything gets worse and all of my worst fears come true (we all become bottled water drinking, hummer driving, bon jovi loving capitalists) then we can at least say we tried?

9

Last Monday. Lauren and I were discussing the relevance and importance of celebrity culture. Our discussion lead me to think about the content that is posted daily, and beyond that, the potential meaning it has on a grander scale. I readily admit that I engage in the cult of celebrity. I read Perez Hilton daily, I know about Patrick Swayze and what defamatory comments Jessica Alba has made recently. But is there something more to it than just that? Beyond all of the standard trash talk and music recommendations, we both saw the medium becoming something much bigger.

Every once and a while, Perez will deviate from his normal practice of drawing coke noses on paparazzi photos and give some sort of commentary on what's going on in the world -- be it reports on which democratic candidate is his pick, what the situation is Venezuela is, or what's the deal with the writer's strike.

All of this eventually lead me back to something that Duncombe said in the chapter "Recognize Everyone:"

"In the absence of a unifying moral textbook, celebrity gossip becomes one of the places where we work out what is right and what is wrong and, through our interpretations of the actions of these characters eke out a moral code to live by"(Duncombe, 113-4).

When Hilton posts these pieces of non-celebrity text, there's usually the typical wave of offensive comments, but what I'm beginning to see is real, thought out responses and commentary on what has been written; actual engagement with the information that Hilton has provided. While it may not be completely constructive or rational, it still is providing people with a forum to express their responses to the content that has just been published. What does this do to the shape of the moral text book that we create? I'm really beginning to see that there could be more to this entire thing than just the notions that" cocaine is bad, adoption is great” that people have typically been getting from the gossip provided. If this can be used as a tool to shape mores, then can it be a jumping point for readers to become actively involved in the world outside of junk entertainment? And, if social norms are being established, along with interactions with the political, will this become a forum to make politics something to be more readily engaged with, rather than something tedious and out of reach?



Duncombe, Stephen. Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy. New York: The New Press, 2007.

net neutrality

just a quick post,

I had never encountered the concept of net neutrality, and therefore didn't really understand much about it. But I was hunting around on digg and found this video that explained what it's about. So if anyone is as clueless about it as I was, I've posted the video. Hope it helps!

7: reaction to dream, part one

The Stephen Duncombe book really struck me at a level that surprised myself. Mostly because I could see myself in it. And not in a particularly flattering way.

When my mom, sister and I were making the trek back from Guelph to my hometown (which, may I preface with the fact that my town loves its conservatism, gas guzzling luxury vehicles purchased with sweet, sweet, nuclear power money and large trucks for the country kids thrown into the mix for kicks) for reading week, we were being tailgated by someone driving a Hummer. This garnered my response of: “Driving a Hummer automatically makes you an asshole,” and thusly started my shtick about why SUVs are killing the planet, blah blah blah.

Later, I went on to yell about why I thought drinking bottled water made you an asshole, all while making my eloquently planned out argument about how you shouldn’t try to commodify something that is a right, further blah blah blah.

My sister finally looked at me and said “So okay, in your world, there would be no sweet cars or ways to drink when you are not near a fountain. Your world would be terrible, and you are the asshole.”

I really tried to downplay the fact that I got metaphorically body slammed by my younger sister and her shoddy argument, but the fact was, in all respects, I was being an asshole. When I read this passage in Dunbcombe’s book, I stopped and said to myself “Dear god, this is you.”

Think of how progressives often frame their demands for ending dependence on fossil fuels: don’t buy a sport utility vehicle, don’t drive over 55 miles per hour, don’t waste gas. Don’t, don’t, don’t. …It’s fun to drive fast: one feels invincible in an SUV, and bare skin is sexy. This doesn’t mean that wasting energy should be celebrated, only that it is worth figuring out way people do it before simply condemning, regulating, and repressing (34-5).

So for all of my good intentions, I was actually coming off as an elitist to both of them. Everything that I feel was positive that I had to say was paired with this looming negative. Rather than demonstrating what was positive about my ideas, such as the all important ability to breathe freely, I was completely isolating them and probably making them feel as if they were the targets, and therefore wanted no part in it.

When you’ve become disenfranchised with the way things are going, I guess it’s easier to feel the negative because, at your most base level, sometimes that’s the only thing that you feel you have. I lead myself to believe that all of the injustices and reprehensible things that I saw as an immediate issue would resonate in the same place for everyone as it did for me.

My intention was completely lost in the fact that the only thing that I knew how to do was to preach: Preach about how Hummers make the atmosphere cry sulpheric tears, how bottled water will probably give you cancer –cancer you paid for, at that. And it didn’t stop there. For as long as I’ve distanced myself from my family’s politics in lieu of my own, I’ve probably been slapping them in the face with my rhetoric rather than finding ways for them to relate with them. Rather than guiding, I’ve been sort of punishing them with my ideas.

I think on a whole, I’m going to be able to apply Duncombe’s book on a much smaller level to myself. He states: “…progressives need to think less about presenting facts and more about how to frame these facts in such a way that they make sense and hold meaning for everyday people” (10). If I can’t be fun, if my message can’t be interesting or engaging or anything to anyone else but myself, then what’s the point of having a message?

6: p.s.

Just following up the comment I made in class, I really want to mention that I don't think that shows like The Daily Show, or fake news in general isn't important or making an important contribution to the way we view news and the potential activism that follows. I eat parody and fake news up. I think that putting too much stock into the idea that it will somehow revolutionize the way we perceive media and interact with it is just a little too idealistic for me. I've been reading a lot of Emma Goldman lately, and because of this I've been thinking a lot about fetishism and what that means. I think, in this case, to fetishize the importance of something like The Daily Show is harmful, because if too much stock is put into something being the answer, being empowering, it's more than likely to aid in keeping you apart of the system.

I don't know if I completely buy into that, but I think that's the sentiment I was going for. Except I worded it poorly and couldn't find the words to rephrase myself and convey what I meant properly.

fin.

5: presentation

here is the full length version of my presentation. minus the nervous jokes that weren't any good. promise.

About The Campaign

The Bushin30Seconds.org contest was created by MoveOn.org, a website that raises money and awareness for the democratic party. The contest was open to the public, with submissions that critiqued and reflected the creator’s opinion of the Bush Administration. The winning ad would be played on a major American channel during the Superbowl.

There was one overall winner, Child’s Play, but an additional 6 categories with top submissions were listed as well. The website additionally gave viewers access to the best 150 entries from the over 5000 that the campaign received. The ads were evaluated and ranked by a panel that included celebrities that have been vocal about their political affiliations, including Jack Black and Moby (http://www.bushin30seconds.org/judges.html)

There was controversy over the campaign when two ads that compared Bush’s administration to Hitler and the Nazi party were posted on the website, which ended up gathering protest and great concern from three anti-defamation groups. Originally, CBS was to broadcast the 30 second short, but declined. The ad was then picked up by CNN, and was still broadcast during the Superbowl. (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2004-01/07/content_296513.htm)

In 2005, there was a follow up campaign by Moveon.org called “Bushin30years.org,” that had over 140,000 entries that were to inform the public about Bush’s changes in Social Security laws. This time, the winning entry would get an Apple computer and their short would be run on several “youth websites,” with the opportunity for the public to contact the winner, if the winner so desired. http://www.bushin30years.org/rules.html.

So What Does This All Mean?

As Boler stated in her article, “visual satire offers an ideal form to transmit to post-911 contradictions because irony turns on the unsaid; is uses the dominant forms of logic to express what is otherwise silenced as dissenting didacticism; it expresses horrors in forms that are palatable; it creates a sense of shared meaning and community by using the unsaid to create a recognition of the dominant culture as misrepresentation (Boler, 1-2)

Bushin30Seconds is a perfect example of this sentiment. With this campaign, the voices of the submitters are actually put into motion. While The Daily Show feeds on its viewers’ fundamental longing for the objective, the alternative, Bushin20Seconds.com is a direct representation of what the participating public felt about the Bush administration. This campaign dealt directly with parody on several levels. It wasn’t just the Bush administration’s blatant lies on display that were the subject of the critique, it was a reflection on politicians’ ad techniques as well; when one views these audience submissions, they can see the similarity. The Bushin30Seconds campaign heavily relies on its participants’ prior knowledge of how political propaganda works, and therefore these ads are a citizen’s comments on the effectiveness of the political campaign and how the public is interacting with these advertisements.

Furthermore, In The Death of Media gives a comprehensive list, directing the reader as to how they can aid in the formation of a democratic media. Step number nine, in particular really represents what the Bushin30Seconds campaign really strove to achieve:

“9. Become the media – develop media-making skills including video, photography, and
websites. Democratizing media is not just about what they do, it’s about what we do.”
(Schechter, 151)

Questions are raised with this sort of media though. When extremist views were put on the website, the effects were off putting. Did this extremist view of the Bush administration and the negative exposure the website got because of these entries?

Does this vilify the alternative media? Because of the views of extremists, does this isolate the public, and make them weary of trusting that which is not mainstream? Will occurrences like that scare people away from being exposed to groups whose agendas are really to inform the public?

Contemporary Comparisons

The user-based parody is obviously still prevalent. With the growth in popularity of “fake news,” and YouTube, it is clear that there is serious support for fair, non agenda pushing media representation. One example of this is the Rick Mercer Report’s online exercise where viewers are given an image of a politician / politicians and are asked to manipulate the image in a humorous and satirical manner. While the images are usually camp, there is meaning there. Why does the user chose to put said politician in this reworked image? What does it say about their role in society? What meaning does it have for the state of politics at the time?

Another example of user based political satire is the endless number of YouTube videos and other viral websites that have user made parodied videos. Such videos include a scantly clad woman parodying “In love with a stripper” with “I’m in love with Obama.” Another video compares the moronic answer that a Miss Teen USA finalist gave about the state of education in America to Republican frontrunner, McCain. Will Farrell’s comedy, user based video website, FunnyorDie.com, has an entire section dedicated to videos that are political, and clearly reflect the thoughts of the 18-30 demographic that the website appeals to.

As the article states, in the case of The Daily Show, one must be informed of what is going on in the MSM, what information has become public knowledge to really grasp the effect and meaning of the daily show (Boler, 2). If you aren’t informed, are you truly getting the meaning behind the message? Or, if the satirical is relied on solely for information, does the parody become a form of “Infotainment” rather than a legitimate source of alternative news? Does it become Perez Hilton like in value? If one was not fully aware of what the political climate was at the time of the making of the Bushin30Seconds.com shorts, would the message still be as effective, as important to the viewer? Would it still have meaning?

*p.s. i will properly cite this as soon as possible

4: response to death of media

I’ve been slugging away at The Death of Media for the past three days now. I attempted to read it all in one go to save myself some time. But after starting it, I realized that it was something that I should pace myself with and really contemplate, because it had a vast amount of information in a small amount of space. I think this ended up benefiting me, since I could contextualize and process the information and think of examples for myself.

With this in mind, I immediately thought of Manufacturing Consent. I studied a little bit of Noam Chomsky last year (nothing extensive, just enough to make me seem cool), so the majority of the information that I was reading – big corporations having even bigger choke holds on media ownership and diversity, infringement on journalistic freedom, etc – wasn’t completely foreign to me. However, it did a fantastic job of reinforcing the things that I had already read, and putting them into a more relatable and frankly, a more enjoyable, context.

The last two sections really sold the book to me. With the steps to contribute to the democratization of the MSM included, it made seeing examples of progress clearer. On page 145, Schecter spoke of “the advent of ubiquitous …community wireless networks…mobile podcasting...and other interactive media, [that are] dedicated to the principle that all citizens have the right of access to, and the right to speak in, the public sphere.” This reminded me of an interview with Michael Geist that I had watch on The Hour’s podcast about the impending changes on Canadian Copyright legislature:

I think this example is the above concept really put into motion. Using social networking and new forms of media, the message about a law that will ultimately impede on the privacy and rights of citizens is getting out to people. Through the facebook group, which has been joined by over 40, 000 members, people are actually getting information about how to contact MPs and getting their ideas from forms that are accessible to them; in means form that are popularly used, related to, and understood. With the interest over the internet, the message is finally pushed into the MSM, as demonstrated by the video, and there is widespread access to the information.