Why do we care?

After class I was looking more into the different kinds of celebrity online.  I found a definition that talked about a celebrity being a person of public fascination.  I couldn't help but wonder what kind of about people make the public fascinated with them.  I mean why do we seriously care about the Jersey Shore cast when all we do is watch them drink and have sex on television.  Why do we care that Tiger Woods was cheating on his wife?  Why do we care that Andrew Luck is very athletic?
In class we obviously learned that there are different ways of becoming a celebrity: attribution, achievement, and attainment.  But when it comes to something like achievement. why do we care about a person's achievements?  People make personal achievements every day so what about celebrities makes theirs so different and fascinating?  After some thought I have come up with a few theories, nothing solid though.  So, why do we care?

Fandom

Last year I had a friend take a class all about fandom at another university.  As a part of her final she had to pick something a fandom obsession she had and write about it.  She was frustrated because she could think of everyone else's fandom obsessions but could not think of one for herself.  I told her that I didn't have one but she told that in fact I did, I had the tv show Friends.  I argued that I was not obsessed with the show and began comparing it to Trekkies and she told me that it was the same thing.  When you think about it, it really is the same thing.  There is a show I love watching, I have seen every episode and can reference it all the time.  I can talk about it with other people that know the show well and in the past I have gotten together with my friends to watch the show. So really, we all have something that we have a fandom obsession about and as minor as it may appear to us, it really isn't different from what most might consider an "extreme" obsession.  We all have a great love of something in main stream media in which we know a lot about and share with in most cases friends but overall with a larger community that we share this obsession with.  I think where the greatest difference lies is the way in which we "celebrate" and share this fandom.  Some people watch or listen or enjoy the fandom, some make references to it in their everyday life to others, whether they are fans or not, or they gather with other community members to celebrate the obsession, whether it be through reenactment, text viewing, etc.  We all have a fandom obsession.

FRIENDS

After watching the documentary about class and TV, I realized that there are many different ways of approaching class on television.  I think the show Friends has good examples of a lot of the different types.  Generally the show appears to be about a group of twenty something friends that are middle  to upper-middle class Americans living in New York City.  However, after examining it and looking at the show throughout the all ten seasons we see that it actually does have many examples.  Joey is a working class citizen of Italian heritage.  He has that typical ethnic background of someone who has to work hard like was displayed on television shows before they became overrun with advertisements.  Then there is Rachel who is the example of the working class citizen who starts at the bottom and after a lot of work ends up making a lot of money for a designer in Paris at what she says is her dream job.  While these show examples of diversity in class amongst Americans, but we still see them all striving for a similar lifestyle.  They are all striving to upper-middle class Americans.  This is something that can be lead back to hegemony with a small group of upper class in our society putting these messages of ideal lifestyle into our homes and our heads.

The Cost of Utopia

In bell hooks' interview about Madonna, she brought up a lot of interesting points.  She talked about how Madonna began her career as a huge feminist trying to change the music scene.  However, as time went on she needed to reinvent herself as a way to remain profitable.  In reinventing herself, she fell back into patriarchy and became a prime example of greed. It's pretty apparent that money is something that has a leading role in our society and culture and everyone seems to want more money.

We can think back to this idea of Utopia in which everyone is judged based on who they are as an individual.  This is really as ideal world, but as I previously discussed, I don't find it to be a realistic thing. When you put bell hooks' Madonna discussion it brings another interesting point into the mix.  Not only do people use sex and gender as a form of identity, they also use it as a way to make money.  Choose almost any media text and I'm sure that there will be some example in which a person is being paid for being a certain sex or gender.  Because we are such a money driven society, I believe this just adds to the unrealistic idea of Utopia.  We are constantly striving to make more money and this is something that is making many, many people money so I can't imagine it ending any time soon.  As ideal the concept of Utopia sounds, I don't think greed is something that will ever go away and if using one's sexuality and/or gender means making money, I can't imagine people turning away from it.  As unfortunate as it is, sexuality and gender is a business and it looks like it's here to stay.

Utopia?

A few summers ago I took a gender communications class.  One day we had a guest speaker from the UIC Gender and Sexuality Center.  The first thing she had us do was go around the room and introduce ourselves and say what gender specific pronouns (he, she, etc.) we chose to be identifies by.  From what I have seen on television and and documentaries, I know that there are many, many people that for what ever reason don't identify with either gender or sex but this was the first time that I had personally been asked to state what I identify as.  It was initially and odd experience but very eye opening at the same time.  This guest speaker also taught us about different classifications of sex and gender other than the binary as well as different pronouns to use.

It's interesting reading Judith Butler's article about this. She describes this Utopia in which there is no binary code system for gender and sex and everyone is seen as an individual.  We talked in our class about whether this was actually possible someday and I really don't think it is.  No matter how we look at it, gender and sex is something that identifies people whether they are children, adults, or seniors.  What I find even more interesting is that there are definitely people that don't fit within the black and white classifications of gender and sex and so there have been different classifications used to help define them. There has even been a new pronoun created, ze, to help identify the people who don't fit into the male/female or man/woman categories.  But even so, they are just creating new categories that are expanding on this binary system.  These aren't things that are getting much attention, especially in the media, today but the word is slowly being spread.  I think over time, and with much more attention by the media, that there could be the creation of more universally accepted gender and sex classifications.  However, at the end of the day everyone seems to need to identify with something.  In the past we have seen it important to identify with a religion, social class, or movement.  But gender and sex is something that will always be there despite what is going on in the world and something everyone tries and wants to use and an identification.  So despite the desire for this Utopia, I really don't think that this is something really achievable.  

Meghan O.

Color Blindness

I saw an informal study done on the news a few years ago about who landlords would rent apartments to.  The researchers had people of different backgrounds call the landlord over the phone using different dialects and accents and had them say and ask the same things.  When the people called using the African American dialect and a Mexican accent the landlords would tell them that the living space was no longer available.
Whether or not the landlords were aware of what they were doing, racism was obviously at work.  I could not agree more with Bonilla-Silva that Colorblind Racism is an issue and is more detrimental than helpful. Racism is and issue and ignoring any issue it not good.  Most people would agree that ignoring an issue is not a good idea and could only make things worse.  So why does society ignore racism? I know that we want to believe that we are past this but I think everyone could think so something that would show that racism still exists.  I wonder if we made society more aware of the issues still prevalent that we could work together towards improving them or if racism is something that society will never be able to rid of and colorblind racism is just a coping mechanism.  

Tyler Perry's "Other" Movies

This weekend I read bell hooks, article "Eating the Other" (1990).  While it isn't the easiest text to comprehend, it brings up many interesting points.  She talks about how a white person is always the main focus in mass media texts.  There are many examples she brings up and even more that we could thing of in all aspects of mass media.  However, this was something she discussed ten years ago and since then society has evolved and  I wonder what her stance would be on on media focused on Others like television shows and movies by Tyler Perry.  He has created many popular texts that have the focus on the Other as opposed to white people.

Initially I wanted to say that she would say that white people as using this as a commodity and watch these texts in order to gain something and find some sort of fulfillment from it.  But the fact that they were created by a member of the Other and not a white person makes it more complicated.  She talks about how rap and break dancing were created as a way for black people to tell their story and pain.  Using this, I wonder if she would argue that Others like Tyler Perry are creating their own media texts as a way of also telling their story and pain.  So to the Others it is an expression but to white people it is a commodity for gaining something.

There are many different ways to pick apart and examine texts created by members of the Others.  We also see such iconic people that are members of the Others, for example Beyonce and Denzel Washington.  While we can make assumptions based on her old articles, it would be interesting to hear hooks' views on modern mass media's depiction of the Other.  Society has changed a lot in the past twenty years and I wonder if her views have as well.

Meghan O.

Anchorman

            When I was in middle school the movie Anchorman came out.  All my friends saw it in the movie theater but my dad did not allow me to go.  Once it came out on DVD my mom rented it and I watched it by myself.  My friends always talked about how it was the funniest movie ever but when I watched it I really didn’t think it was all that funny.  A few years later I watched it again with a group of friends and I laughed so hard.  I think this goes to show how different a movie can be perceived based on the audience, their surroundings and even their background.  Because I was older I was able to understand more of the jokes.  People of different ages, who grow up in different cultures, and overall have different experiences and different are going to interpret things differently.  The best example of this is The Office.  The comedy on the British version is very different from the comedy on the American version and people watching the version from the opposite culture might not just not find it humorous may also just not understand a lot of it.  

Meghan O.

Children's Media

When taking about the effects of mass media on people, most of the time children will be brought up because they are considered to be the most susceptible to this media.  They don't have as much knowledge and information of the world so they don't necessarily understand what not to believe and such.  There have been studies trying to gauge the effects of violent media, sexual media, and media in general on children.  There has even been studies done on the effects of Disney movies on children.  I do believe at the time that there is a correlation and that children will believe what they see in the media in that moment.  I remember seeing a Disney princess movie and wanting to also wish I was a princess as a child.  However, I think it is important to consider that what we believe when we are young and what we believe as adults it vastly different.  I know now that I will never be a princess and I don't think that being the princess is necessarily they best thing ever.  I even heard about a study that said that the Disney movie Lion King was teaching racism and the idea of having a superior race, shown between the superior lions and the lower class hyenas.  I think before we take any study done with these studies shouldn't be taken at face value.  I think most media that is aimed towards children are purely entertainment.  Going as far as saying the Lion King is teaching racism.  It seems like everyone is so enamored with finding out the effects of everything, especially media, for whatever reason.  But I think some things just are and don't need to be scrutinized, for example children's media.

Doritos Superbowl Commercial

One of the key ideas of a Marxist analysis is the idea that there is a small ruling class and they are the ones that control all mass media and advertising.  When you stop and think about it, it is has been very true throughout history.  Whether it be back in the sixteenth century deciding what would be an acceptable play to be produced or today deciding what tv shows will be aired or what stories will be covered on the news, there is a small population of people that are deciding what the masses will be exposed to.

However, for this years Superbowl Doritos held a contest for the commercial that would be aired.  Instead of having the head honchos in the advertising, promotion, and branding departments work to put together a commercial that they would then expose to the masses, they allowed the masses to put together a commercial and then vote on their favorites.  Initially I looked at this and thought that this was challenging this Marxist idea. The masses were being allowed to chose what they would be exposed to; they had the power.  

However, after some more thought I realized that this may not be the case.  I'm sure that Doritos got hundreds of entries for the contest and they had to narrow it down to a few options for the public to vote for.  By doing this, they are flat out filtering out what would be available to the masses to vote on.  They were once again able to control what was going out to the masses.  They make it feel as though the masses have the power but ultimately it is still the small ruling class.  In fact, this is actually reinforcing Marxist ideas that the ruling class is making the masses think that they are making their own conscious decisions but it ultimately is still the ruling class. This is a prime example of the masses having a false consciousness because they think that they have the power and are thinking for themselves but ultimately the ruling class is really feeding them things and making them feel as though they are in control when they are not.  

After thinking about this, it really makes you think about all of the other times in which different groups from the ruling class have given the power to the people (masses).  I can think of numerous times I have heard different products or companies say that they are giving the power back to the people, but are they really?  Do the masses ever really have the power or is it only a false feeling of power?  I don't have the answer but it is something we should all think about and question when situations like these com up in our daily lives.  

Meghan O

Language: The root of it all!

When you sit back and think about language as a system of codes it’s actually quite interesting.  It’s a code with share with groups of people, whether it be everyone that speaks the same language as us or the we share a different lingo with at work.  Together we learn the codes both literally and culturally and we can use it to communicate with one another.  Many people talk about how we can look at different aspects of a culture to learn about and study it.  However, most people fail to realize that just by looking at the language of a culture we can really learn a lot about them.  Most people have that the Eskimo language has many different words for different types of snow where as we just have one. By looking at this we can tell or in the least infer that snow was very important to the Eskimos and not so much to us.  This idea as well as other concepts can be used to teach us a lot about modern day cultures as well.  Someone studying our culture may look as see that we have many different words for money such as cash, currency, moolah, bucks, dollars etc, and use that to figure out that our culture finds money of great importance.  A study could also be done looking at a variety of things such as facebook, books, newspaper articles, meeting transcripts, or any other variety of things and possibly find a pattern or high frequency of a certain word or topic.  These can also lead the researcher to more knowledge on our culture.  I think this is something people really tend to ignore but I feel as though language is the base of our culture and it should really be given more attention.  What we learn about our culture through language can then be applied and examined even more in almost every aspect of our culture.  In the case of pop culture, we can take the money example and see how this ideal is reinforced and displayed in pop culture.  When examining pop culture, we should really stop to think deeply about the language root and how it is all interconnected.  

Meghan  O

Artificial Reality

In the essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, the authors discuss the idea that the masses have difficulty distinguishing reality from culture.  At first this was a little confusing and hard to wrap my head around.  After some thought, it made sense after thinking about it in terms of reality shows.  We can look specifically at reality shows like the Jersey Shore, the Real Housewives Series, and others that ultimately create this fictitious culture to capture as reality. 

            These shows are shows in which the people are specifically chosen and the environment set.  Then in order to create what the producers would consider the best show, they are able to edit everything in order to show only certain parts of this “reality” giving a skewed perspective to the audience.  These shows are labeled as “reality” shows because they are “real” people in “real” environments and that are supposedly unscripted.  Despite the artificial culture, the masses really don’t distinguish it as a separate culture.  This “culture” they are watching on television is not a reality as they tend to perceive it. 

            When I think about it, I think it’s kind of crazy that these shows are not separated from reality.  I feel as though it has become fairly well known that these shows aren’t as “real” as people thought when they originally started airing on television.  I wonder if this is something that is naturally engrained in us or is it something more.  In the article “The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the authors discuss how there is a small ruling class and they are the ones that chooses what ideas and concepts go out to the masses.  Essentially, this ruling class has a great influence over the masses and can basically manipulate them.  So there’s also the possibility that the ruling class is manipulating the masses making it difficult for us to distinguish the reality and culture.  While this is something that would be quite difficult to research specifically I think this is something that would be quite interesting to think about and possibly look more into.   

Meghan O.

Fame and the Masses

This Tuesday in class we discussed the quote “In the future, everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame” by Andy Warhol.  Most adults in the United States have heard at some point in their lives heard someone having “their 15 minutes of fame.”  There are so many of these little clichés within our culture and cultures all over the world that to stop and really think about them is interesting. Who is credited with this quote and when? What was the intended meaning when this was quoted?  How does that his intention differ from how we use it today? What does it really mean to our culture? Is it something we really believe to be true or something we just say? 

Andy Warhol was a great pop artist and commercial artist known around the world. His pieces were able to reach the masses in a way others couldn’t.  He is a man that I greatly admire and I find his work inspiring.  But what his intentions were when saying this, I really am not sure. Because he was known for reaching out to the masses it leads me to believe that he was talking about fame in a large scale way.  At the time technology like the television and telephone were advancing which in turn was connecting the masses like never before.  Thus, I would believe Warhol intention was that everyone would have large scale fame. 

However, I feel that today our culture interprets this slightly differently.  Fame and be defined in many different ways.  Fame can be good or bad, local or international, for days or decades, etc.  What fame means is different for every person.  So while a person can be considered famous with the masses by getting on a reality show or becoming a You Tube sensation, one can also gain fame by being a local hero for helping a hurt child or becoming the first person in your family to graduate college.

Reaching the masses in a way Andy Warhol did in the mid 1900’s is so much more common today and we really don’t realize the scale of it all.  What this is showing is that not only to the definitions of words like “fame” change over time, but concepts such as mass media and pop culture can also change.  Thus, it would be hard to truly define these concepts that are so broad and changing in meaning.  We can do our best to put a simple definition to these but ultimately, these concepts mean different things depending on the time, person, culture, place, etc.