The Spectacle in 2012

For my final project I decided to delve back into the world of professional wrestling by using Barthes’ “World of Wrestling” text as a base. I will be looking to analyze the text which is near 60 years old and compare and contrast it to todays current form of professional wrestling. There will be great attention placed on the modern day wrestling fan and how they in some ways comply with Barthes idea of the fan, and in other ways have far surpassed the level of participation that Barthes’ describes.

My fascination for professional wrestling is at this point known by more or less everyone in the class, but this project will allow me to develop a full and complete understanding of the phenomena. It is a fascinating topic to dissect and by using Barthes’ theory to make the connection you begin to break down just how there may still be a spectacle, however it may be presented in different ways now.  The discussion of the bastard will be broken down in todays wrestling landscape and just how roles have been reversed in the eyes of the crowd. Specific moments will be mentioned to help support this shift. I also will use testimonies from other fans and look to incorporate that into the discussion as well, this way we get the words straight from the horses mouth. I feel by using Barthes as a foundation I can really delve into the connection between the fan and the product.

 

Facebook, Democracy, and Hegemony

For my research project, I have been investigating the extent to which Facebook in particular (but also other social media) has changed the relationship between the producer and the consumer. We have often spoken in class and written on the blog about how the advent of social media has given the consumer the ability to produce and to react to content in way that older forms of media such as books and television did not. For instance, on Facebook users can post on their creations and share them with others. While these new tools may seem trivial, and indeed, are often used in a trivial manner by Facebook users, many media commentators have noted the potential role of these tools in the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement. So, the main question that I am trying to answer is has the emergence of social media led to a democratization of the media market place, or has this emergence helped to solidify the hegemonic role of media producers by giving them a more advanced and potentially effective medium to broadcast their media products on? 

So far in my research, I have found that when one  looks at Facebook as a social arena of identity, it tends to reflect the normalized behaviors of the physical realm. For example, in keeping with societal notions of beauty, women tend to update the profile pictures more often and to emphasize attractiveness in their pictures. Furthermore, expressions of deviant or socially dubious behavior on Facebook are minimal as users do want to offend or disturb colleagues, friends, and family; in fact, users tend to police other uses in order to make sure that no one is breaking or bending the rules too much. So, as a social mechanism, Facebook probably does not liberate its users from their normalized day-to-day behavior; on the contrary, it tends to reinforce those kinds of behavior. However, in the political arena, Facebook has potentially allowed more people to participate in greater depth. In the 2008 election cycle, there more than 1000 groups dedicated to either Barack Obama or John McCain. But, as Julia K. Woolley and Anthony M. Limperer noted in their article,”The 2008 Presidential Election, 2.0: A Content Analysis of User-Generated Political Facebook Groups,”  “the presentation of these [political] opinions may mirror the dominant frames presented by other forms of mass media.”

So the question remain wide open, but I am leaning towards the opinion that Facebook (partly because of its normalized social structure)  has not fundementally democratized the media environment. Questions, thoughts, and reactions are welcome. Sorry, this is tad bit late – currently in California, and I momentarily forgot about the time difference

Media Responsibilty

This is a pretty broad subjec tot attempt to tackle but I’m going to try my best to discuss crap like this:

I’m still not 100% sure how I’m going to discuss this as an example of media IRRESPONSIBILITY : I’ve considered focusing on the evolution of the “black minstrel”, stereotypes across ethinc/cultural minorities in media, or exploitation by the media power structure. I figured it maybe best as a presentation, or paper.

This too pisses me off – so maybe I could narrow my topic to Hollywood’s desire to see black men in drag:

I know this is a topic that can easily delve into a very sensitive area but I think as we’re going out to become media professionals, its important to keep in mind the messages that are being created and sent out, that we are being responsible when we selling product, creating brands and attempting satire.

Any suggestions or help on hte best way to present this topic would be greatly appreciate.

Charles L

The Real Housewives of Disney

This SNL skit was hilarious!

For the final project, I plan to act as a TV critic reviewing Bravotv’s The Real Housewives franchise series based on four different theoretical approaches such as subculture, myths, globalization, and Certeau’s “Making Do: Uses and Tactics” and “Reading as Poaching.” Based on the theories, I am interested in exploring how the franchise began as a subculture and developed into a media commodity and spectacle which I will define based on Roland Barthes “Mythology Today”, Dick Hebdige “Subculture: The Meaning of Style”, and Angela McRobbie’s “Girls and Subculture” to expand the subculture theory to gender norms.

I will explore the global cultural implications of homogenization, indigenization, and the disjuncture of various landscapes, particularly ideoscapes. Lastly, I plan to evaluate the franchise’s producers according to Michel de Certeau’s theories using tactics and strategies to distinguish power and make meaning of the content. This theory fascinates me because within the reality television realm, producers claim the reality stars are not following a script and the stars are responsible for creating the content. Therefore, I will explore whether or not the producers or the stars use strategies which makes the series popular. The last part is a bit difficult and I think is more suited for a research paper, so I may alter it if I find it hard to investigate this.

final paper

All of you should probably be familiar with the classic ‘white savior’ narrative by now, even if you’re unfamiliar with that terminology.  The specifics of the story differs but the central arc remains the same: white person rescues helpless brown victims from their impovershed circumstances.  Prominant modern examples include “Avatar”, “The Help”, “Dangerous Minds”, “The Blind Side”, and “Born into Brothels”.  The dynamics established in these pieces is then reproduced in the form of what I like to call ‘social media saviorism”, typified by the recent KONY 2012 viral marketing campaign, and also present in ‘slacktivist’ campaigns for Save Darfur and Haitian Earthquake relief.  By the mere act of viewing and sharing (framed here as ‘raising awareness’), the viewer/participant in these campaigns steps into the savior role that’s already been defined in society through white savior oriented media.

This isn’t to say that those who participate in these campaigns have bad intentions, which is beside the point.  What’s important here is the role this fantasy plays in perpetuating histories of white/Western domination – going back to the dawn of the colonial era, one can see the missionary figure as the original white savior, justifying the brutal colonization of the Americas via showcasing European’s self-imposed duty to save the backwards native heathens.  Now, thanks to the convienence of social media, one doesn’t have to jump on a ship bound for a ‘new world’ to pat one’s self on the back, as the world’s dispossessed can be miraculously saved by a college student’s benevolant ‘liking’.

For the paper, I intend to further delve into this phenomenom by placing it in a theoretical context.  There’s definately a complex web of ideology at play here (orientalist, post-colonial, etc), which is why I’ll be utilyzing Marx, Gramsci, and Althusser’s key investigations.  Social media campaigns also contain many inscribed semiotic meanings and strategic encodings, I’ll be pulling from Barthes and Hall as well.  McLuhan and Adorno are also relevant (for examining the significance of the media forms working here), and Baudrillard and Eco seem like they could prove interesting in making the connection to the hyperreality inherant in the whole situation. Finally, I’d like to highlight a few ‘detournements’ (to use Debord’s term) that flip the script for oppositional purposes, often highlighting the voices that the dominant narrative marginalizes as perpetual victims.

It would be too ambitious to do all of the mentioned theoretical frameworks justice given the constraints of the paper’s length, so I’ll be focusing mainly on applying them to the social media saviorism in vogue right now.  I hope that in formulating an analysis, it may lead to fostering useful counter-hegemonic practices – how can compassionate Westerners act meaningfully and in solidarity with the global poor without undermining their agency and perpetuating paternalism?

Any constructive feedback would be most appreciated – thanks!

Final Presentation

Hi everyone! My final is based on analyzing the Reality TV Series phenomenon. I am incorporating text, video clips, and a few interviews that will examine:

-Understanding the appeal of reality tv series, and recognizing the over saturation of “reality” based tv series

-How do media consumers define and interpret real and unreal? This question connects to our discussions about perception, reality, and whether viewers truly believe that what they are seeing is reality. It also connects to our hyppereal, simulation, and simulacra discussion week.
-What role fantasy plays in the development of reality tv programming- I will be examining our texts and other texts in regards to romance novels, the fan culture, and dating themed reality tv series.

 -How does the presence of social inequity and injustice play in the demand for the images and concepts played up in reality tv series. Though many may find reality tv series deplorable, many people are in fact watching this type of program and are invested in the lives of the casts of these shows. There is a constant increase in the amount of new programming each season that is “reality based”. I plan to explore the link between disillusionment with one’s own reality and how this condition breeds a need for escapism. I am asserting that the dismal state of class, race, and social relations have contributed to a demand for more and more escapism based media in this country.

These goal is to connect these ideas with  our discussions all semester about how media impacts people and their behavior.

I am soliciting feedback! I think any thoughts would be helpful and I’m open to hearing what my peers have to say 🙂

Thank YOU!

The Guts of Baseball

Baseball has always occupied a significant place in American culture–at its peak it began to mirror with its own progress events in the culture at large.  Baseball was, then, a “puzzle” for which all manner of different personality archetypes could approach and attempt to “solve.”

In the last 25-30 years, however, the relationship between baseball and larger American culture has shifted as the identities of both have evolved.  Where baseball was once boyish and enterprising it is now more neurotic and exacting, a booming business that is paradoxically seen as a cultural dinosaur; a game who’s need to sell itself reflective of it’s past and the nostalgia that it can always awaken is often in direct odds with the new ways in which competitive advantage are gained.  The game sells itself at odds with how it now attempts to succeed.

In the tradition of Dan Okrent’s Nine Innings, I’m going to take ten separate and unrelated regular season baseball games from the 2012 season and use the action of the game and the particulars of that exact broadcast to draw themes from the semester out in the blog format.  This will allow me to update events they may carry over after a game, add media from the game, and reflect the dominant form of conversation on baseball online.

Baseball exists parallel to American culture, but also has a vibrant (and often odd) one of it’s own.  As the world (and baseball) globalizes, the shifts in perspectives and power create a really interesting dynamic.  Baseball still largely reflects the same jumble of cultures that consumes it, now even moreso; in watching games from different markets and with different broadcasters, I’ll be looking to draw contrasts in how events, ideas and actions are communicated, how this fits into the larger picture of how baseball sees itself, and how the world sees baseball.

My Final Project

Being inspired by Appadurai’s work, I would like to answer the following questions in my final project: How new trends of immigration (physical versus virtual, ideospace versus  ethnospace, etc.) are affecting our world? What does it mean to look for a ‘home’ which is not based on a common locality within a diasporic community? In other words, how do we reproduce common meanings in a deterritolized context? How are the homogenizing and heterogenizing processes of globalisation influencing the minority communities in a metropolitan city like New York City?

Since I believe the trends explained above can be visualized and as a result grasped more easily and also think the contradictions and similarities of homogenized and heterogenized local-global communities need to be pointed out and depicted, I have chosen to present my work in the format of a series of photos taken around New York City. Ideally I would add audio to it in order to give a better sense of our globalised city to my audience.

My purpose in this project is first to understand the ideas of globalisation and then to study this social trend, with its different aspects discussed especially by Appadurai, in diasporic communities as one of the ultimate groups which influence and get influenced by it. Also, in technical terms, this would be my first photography project which makes it a challenging and hopefully educating experience.

Final Project Idea

My final project is going to be an interactive performance piece. I am going to give the class complete access to the forms of media I use everyday, my social networking pages, my ipod, my cellphone. I want them to look through and come up with their judgements about what type of self, I perform outside of the classroom through the usage of my media. In order to create a documentation of their thoughts, I am going to ask them to write down their views on my body in order to create a physical representation of my virtual self. I am going to make a spectacle of self.

A Fanatic’s Diary

As I posted about Korean teenager fans, the fandom which is one of subcultures is an interesting part in media studies. If I briefly explain, I will make my project which is a handmade portfolio connected to these fandom and subculture materials from our class. In order to express realistically, I will set up a fictitious character as a fan who is a 15 year old girl, and this portfolio is actually made by this character. I will compose the contents using my own experience when I was a fan of a star, so this fandom culture is based on the time when I was 15 years old and on my own country fandom culture. Each pages will have decorations and scraps of pictures as if the fan is recording of her favorite star’s work. Thus, the portfolio could be a history book of the star. It will show not only the fan’s “love” to the star and the activities of fans (outdoor-concert and club, etc. and internet), but also the business of the entertainer(television).In terms of the star, I have chosen a singer group who created a teenager fandom first in Korea because the culture made by them is still repeating to other stars so far.

My project will show the culture with actual images and activities, so the theories the text based will be represented visually. Also, some parts will include notes linked to the social issues such as media marketing targeting to fans and protesting of fans to the media company, etc. However, because the notes will be the format of journal of the teenage girl, the notes will imply the issues of the society with images. Moreover, the teenager fandom culture is obviously categorized to the subculture, so the relation between fandom and subculture is also implied though their behaviors and activities. Finally, my project will suggest readers to think about a right direction toward the teenage fans in future.

I am considering only Korean teenage fandom as one of examples, so you can compare with your fandom cultures. But, one of my concern is that my project is taking care about the fandom culture of quiet long time ago even though same situations are still happening.

If my explanation is not enough to understand or if you have something to let me know, I am willing to hear from you.