In response to Jasmine (#1)
I will admit that politics have never really excited me. I really couldn’t have cared who the president was once I became old enough to vote and because of that attitude never bothered to register to vote. I believe that most of my aversion to the whole political process is purely from negative ads. I think that the candidates could and should be spending those hard earned political contributions to actually make positive change (before elected since they run on a platform that is full of hot-button issues and dreams for how they would make life better – it would be nice if their words matched their actions)not negative vibrations in their constituencies.
I do agree that there is a certain amount of bias towards and leveraging of certain candidates over others on certain networks but I am not sure that is what tips the scale for most voters. Especially in the most recent election.
It was full of firsts and I think that really threw off the status quo in how past elections have been handled in the media. It was my first time registering to vote and even though I didn’t set out to pay more attention to the debates I found that the debates were seeking me out. I was confronted with them at my place of employment, (The Washington State DNC held two rallies during the primaries in our banquet rooms – and yes they were simultaneously watching CNN and FOX), newspapers, radio, conversations on the bus, even in several job interviews I had. No matter where I was I couldn’t get away from it. And yet I somehow still did not know what the issues were – I was terrified to vote I didn’t know what to do – I was probably one of the only people who liked Palin and if I said I liked her I was instantaneously attacked. So consequently I didn’t vote even though I had all the intentions to go out and rock it.
The main thing I noticed was that the conversation seemed to be slightly fixated on race and I once again found myself not knowing or understanding what the issues were about. I knew for the most part where the candidates stood but their ultimate visions for the country was not so blatant.
I think that it is the media’s responsibility to introduce us to the candidates but it is our civic responsibility to get out there and be pro-active. To write letters to the candidates, to attend town halls where they will be speaking, to pore over public records from their home states where they have previously held public office, to demand their attention, to let them know that the American public does not need nor want their smear campaigns but there assurance that what they say they are going to do they do and if not they should step aside, admit defeat and hand the reins over to someone who is more capable.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Questions for 2/10
Casey Penaluna
Questions for 2/10
1. In Charles Larsen’s book Modern Media and Persuasion he writes, “Literacy opened the remarkable door to opportunity for Franklin and for many others, but it also enslaved us to some degree.”
Larsen goes on in the paragraph to talk about how with this new and great advent of the written word we would have to dedicate large numbers of hours to “’learn’ all the things that literacy had led to and as a result we had to invent ‘childhood’”. This seems a strange statement to me because I have never been aware of a time, especially in the pre-literate days when people were born as adults.
I know that there were not many options for children in those days to have much leisure time considering that without the advent of modern machinery, gas stoves and food processors many of the children had to assume the same responsibilities as their parents to help out with the chores at home so that their family could continue to eat, be sheltered, stay warm and in many cases prosper.
Children were still children it is just that literacy afforded a new reality of what childhood could be and what it has become. But still many children in the early days of the written word could not afford to attend school, nor could the family afford to lose them during the crucial harvest seasons and if that wasn’t bad enough teachers were in short supply since many of the adults knew barely more than the children they sought to teach.
And I am not sure what he means by remarking, “Naturally, the length of childhood has had to be expanded several times as the amount of information to be learned has increased.” I guess if you think about the fact that child labor was a daily practice in early America and that schooling was not seen as a necessity and contrast that to today’s society where even the most mundane household chore can be perceived by some as child labor and school takes up an eight hour “work” day then sure it makes sense we have merely swapped the school for the work. Today’s reality is not the same as that of the pioneers coming up in the new literacy and I think that Larsen has failed to take that fully into account as he wrote this particular passage. I feel that he is not acting in good faith by glibbing over the subject in such a manner and recklessly making this particular comparison between generations.
2. Moving on to Larsen’s thoughts on the sight script. He talks about how advertisers use an ad campaign in such a manner that the information they are trying to get you to “buy” into is presented in a form which “resonates with the experiences stored in the conscious or unconscious minds of the audience” (consumer). This is the most highly effective way to guarantee that you will indeed think of their product the next time you are out shopping.
He goes on to talk about a clever ad that TV Guide used on one of its covers. The celebrity on the cover was Oprah Winfrey and the message was basically – look how good Oprah looks after her latest diet. The issue I have is that the cover image was not a true representation of how Oprah really looked after this latest diet. Yes it was her head and she did look beautiful with all the make-up and hair styling but her head was sitting atop Ann-Margaret’s body.
What I don’t understand is how anyone can say that the ads messaging, about Oprah’s weight, is neither true nor untrue only memorable and has no more relevance to the public except that this particular “planted” audience resonance can be drawn on at a later date to sell any number of products (diet I assume).
Isn’t this blatant false advertising? I guess super-imposing one star’s head onto another’s body is o.k. as long as that body is clothed and as long as that image is being used to help promulgate the yearly stock-dividends of the various companies that make up the diet industries empire.
3. Larsen then moves onto the age of the computer. He talks about how the computer has turned many of us into anti-social members of something he calls the “lonely crowd”. He laments that computers have driven us inward “to a world occupied only by the self, the machine and the task at hand”, but how is that possible when there are millions of people on line? When there are countless social networking sites, online book clubs, weight loss meetings and photo sharing communities. We can make contacts and perhaps life-long friends with people in Europe, Asia or even Antarctica who many of us would never have had a chance to meet otherwise. We can self-publish our memoirs, locate lost relatives and even obtain a college degree.
Our work duties have been sped up through the invention of the internet, meetings can be held via webcam, client interaction can be done totally online in a real time chat session and many companies employ an inter-office IM policy.
Gaming which in its early onset was very much a solitary pursuit has busted out into the virtual world courtesy of WI-FI capabilities and the ability to represent yourself to the online gaming community through a personalized avatar. Gamers have the ability to not only play with someone in their own living room but they can challenge someone on the other side of the world.
Now I ask Mr. Larsen how do these examples of the use of the internet via the computer lead to his conclusion of the “lonely crowd” and his theory that those of us who choose to spend our time on a computer are wallowing in isolation and don’t desire human contact?
Questions for 2/10
1. In Charles Larsen’s book Modern Media and Persuasion he writes, “Literacy opened the remarkable door to opportunity for Franklin and for many others, but it also enslaved us to some degree.”
Larsen goes on in the paragraph to talk about how with this new and great advent of the written word we would have to dedicate large numbers of hours to “’learn’ all the things that literacy had led to and as a result we had to invent ‘childhood’”. This seems a strange statement to me because I have never been aware of a time, especially in the pre-literate days when people were born as adults.
I know that there were not many options for children in those days to have much leisure time considering that without the advent of modern machinery, gas stoves and food processors many of the children had to assume the same responsibilities as their parents to help out with the chores at home so that their family could continue to eat, be sheltered, stay warm and in many cases prosper.
Children were still children it is just that literacy afforded a new reality of what childhood could be and what it has become. But still many children in the early days of the written word could not afford to attend school, nor could the family afford to lose them during the crucial harvest seasons and if that wasn’t bad enough teachers were in short supply since many of the adults knew barely more than the children they sought to teach.
And I am not sure what he means by remarking, “Naturally, the length of childhood has had to be expanded several times as the amount of information to be learned has increased.” I guess if you think about the fact that child labor was a daily practice in early America and that schooling was not seen as a necessity and contrast that to today’s society where even the most mundane household chore can be perceived by some as child labor and school takes up an eight hour “work” day then sure it makes sense we have merely swapped the school for the work. Today’s reality is not the same as that of the pioneers coming up in the new literacy and I think that Larsen has failed to take that fully into account as he wrote this particular passage. I feel that he is not acting in good faith by glibbing over the subject in such a manner and recklessly making this particular comparison between generations.
2. Moving on to Larsen’s thoughts on the sight script. He talks about how advertisers use an ad campaign in such a manner that the information they are trying to get you to “buy” into is presented in a form which “resonates with the experiences stored in the conscious or unconscious minds of the audience” (consumer). This is the most highly effective way to guarantee that you will indeed think of their product the next time you are out shopping.
He goes on to talk about a clever ad that TV Guide used on one of its covers. The celebrity on the cover was Oprah Winfrey and the message was basically – look how good Oprah looks after her latest diet. The issue I have is that the cover image was not a true representation of how Oprah really looked after this latest diet. Yes it was her head and she did look beautiful with all the make-up and hair styling but her head was sitting atop Ann-Margaret’s body.
What I don’t understand is how anyone can say that the ads messaging, about Oprah’s weight, is neither true nor untrue only memorable and has no more relevance to the public except that this particular “planted” audience resonance can be drawn on at a later date to sell any number of products (diet I assume).
Isn’t this blatant false advertising? I guess super-imposing one star’s head onto another’s body is o.k. as long as that body is clothed and as long as that image is being used to help promulgate the yearly stock-dividends of the various companies that make up the diet industries empire.
3. Larsen then moves onto the age of the computer. He talks about how the computer has turned many of us into anti-social members of something he calls the “lonely crowd”. He laments that computers have driven us inward “to a world occupied only by the self, the machine and the task at hand”, but how is that possible when there are millions of people on line? When there are countless social networking sites, online book clubs, weight loss meetings and photo sharing communities. We can make contacts and perhaps life-long friends with people in Europe, Asia or even Antarctica who many of us would never have had a chance to meet otherwise. We can self-publish our memoirs, locate lost relatives and even obtain a college degree.
Our work duties have been sped up through the invention of the internet, meetings can be held via webcam, client interaction can be done totally online in a real time chat session and many companies employ an inter-office IM policy.
Gaming which in its early onset was very much a solitary pursuit has busted out into the virtual world courtesy of WI-FI capabilities and the ability to represent yourself to the online gaming community through a personalized avatar. Gamers have the ability to not only play with someone in their own living room but they can challenge someone on the other side of the world.
Now I ask Mr. Larsen how do these examples of the use of the internet via the computer lead to his conclusion of the “lonely crowd” and his theory that those of us who choose to spend our time on a computer are wallowing in isolation and don’t desire human contact?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
response to questions 3/3
Response to Shelsea’s first question:
I agree with you. On the surface we are all autonomous creatures. We are all able to think for ourselves, we claim that we can make our own decisions and when the heat is turned up to high through violence and sex in movies and television we are convinced that we can just change the channel – or turn it off all together. So it would stand to reason that we are smart enough to control what seeps into our psyche.
But I beg to differ if you peel back the superfluous layers that pass for our daily niceties and freedom of choice you will see that we are all truly media driven. In other words media has so saturated our everyday lives that even
Our weight, our standard of beauty, our conception of how our peers live, even how and when to spend our money is all carefully orchestrated by media and the corporations that own it. The news spews out story after story all warning us about the newest cancer, the latest kidnapped child, or delivering death to our doorstep all to keep us in fear and to keep us buying products that we really don’t need but are guaranteed to keep us safe (i.e. GPS trackers, cell phones for our eight-year-olds,
Media messages on how to live and look even creep into those avenues of entertainment that we are viewing as a release from our everyday lives.
The best example I can think of right now is the movie The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep tells Anne Hathaways character that she didn’t hire the normal type of girl but instead “went with the smart, fat girl”. The subtle weight issue comes into play again in the film when women’s sizes are being summed up as 2 is the new 4 and 0 the new 2. Hathaway states that she is a size 6 and Stanley Tucci replies “which is the new 14”. I mean do we need any clearer proof that media is promulgating an unhealthy, unrealistic version of women?
When shows like The Hills take a nineteen year old fashion design student and film her life and pass off an edited 20 minute glimpse of the glamour and glitz ,the heartache and house-hunting, the clubbing and back-stabbing we are lulled into being not only passive observers into her and her friends lives but passive observers of our own. I mean really how many fans of The Hills have really taken the time out to think about how she afforded to buy that home in the Hollywood Hills (that was priced in the millions) and then move onto her new condo which comes with a rental price of 15,000 dollars. How many actually believe that she afforded a 15 hundred to two-thousand dollar a month apartment while being an intern (even if paid) at Teen Vogue? Then there are all the nights she was out at the hottest clubs partying – underage mind you; and the designer clothes. How many of those kids that are watching right now any of the numerous reality shows and coveting the glamorous feel, the glossy look and thinking that they are going to be in that same spot the second they get out of high school?
They too will meet local celebrities and be invited to all the right parties and meet their most-excellent boss at the bar-top while they are ordering rounds of tequila shots.
How many of these kids don’t look closely enough to be able to see where the money is coming from? To be able to see that this girl would not be where she is now if it weren’t for some chance location decision back when she was a junior in high school – and that she has only advanced so far so fast because of the ties held between the networks and magazines. She is a great commodity for which the network and her various employers have made quite a pretty penny on – which of course takes me back to how she affords her life-style. The network pays her for her life; she is nothing more than an actress – living the life which has been purchased for her by the media. – In essence inventing her reality and keeping us behind the curtain of consumerism.
Her life has been packaged and compartmentalized served up to us through a very scientific information gathering process called demographics. Whether Nielsen, truckads.com or tracmedia.com they have us and whether we like it or not, entertainment and media, will always have a hold on us.
I agree with you. On the surface we are all autonomous creatures. We are all able to think for ourselves, we claim that we can make our own decisions and when the heat is turned up to high through violence and sex in movies and television we are convinced that we can just change the channel – or turn it off all together. So it would stand to reason that we are smart enough to control what seeps into our psyche.
But I beg to differ if you peel back the superfluous layers that pass for our daily niceties and freedom of choice you will see that we are all truly media driven. In other words media has so saturated our everyday lives that even
Our weight, our standard of beauty, our conception of how our peers live, even how and when to spend our money is all carefully orchestrated by media and the corporations that own it. The news spews out story after story all warning us about the newest cancer, the latest kidnapped child, or delivering death to our doorstep all to keep us in fear and to keep us buying products that we really don’t need but are guaranteed to keep us safe (i.e. GPS trackers, cell phones for our eight-year-olds,
Media messages on how to live and look even creep into those avenues of entertainment that we are viewing as a release from our everyday lives.
The best example I can think of right now is the movie The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep tells Anne Hathaways character that she didn’t hire the normal type of girl but instead “went with the smart, fat girl”. The subtle weight issue comes into play again in the film when women’s sizes are being summed up as 2 is the new 4 and 0 the new 2. Hathaway states that she is a size 6 and Stanley Tucci replies “which is the new 14”. I mean do we need any clearer proof that media is promulgating an unhealthy, unrealistic version of women?
When shows like The Hills take a nineteen year old fashion design student and film her life and pass off an edited 20 minute glimpse of the glamour and glitz ,the heartache and house-hunting, the clubbing and back-stabbing we are lulled into being not only passive observers into her and her friends lives but passive observers of our own. I mean really how many fans of The Hills have really taken the time out to think about how she afforded to buy that home in the Hollywood Hills (that was priced in the millions) and then move onto her new condo which comes with a rental price of 15,000 dollars. How many actually believe that she afforded a 15 hundred to two-thousand dollar a month apartment while being an intern (even if paid) at Teen Vogue? Then there are all the nights she was out at the hottest clubs partying – underage mind you; and the designer clothes. How many of those kids that are watching right now any of the numerous reality shows and coveting the glamorous feel, the glossy look and thinking that they are going to be in that same spot the second they get out of high school?
They too will meet local celebrities and be invited to all the right parties and meet their most-excellent boss at the bar-top while they are ordering rounds of tequila shots.
How many of these kids don’t look closely enough to be able to see where the money is coming from? To be able to see that this girl would not be where she is now if it weren’t for some chance location decision back when she was a junior in high school – and that she has only advanced so far so fast because of the ties held between the networks and magazines. She is a great commodity for which the network and her various employers have made quite a pretty penny on – which of course takes me back to how she affords her life-style. The network pays her for her life; she is nothing more than an actress – living the life which has been purchased for her by the media. – In essence inventing her reality and keeping us behind the curtain of consumerism.
Her life has been packaged and compartmentalized served up to us through a very scientific information gathering process called demographics. Whether Nielsen, truckads.com or tracmedia.com they have us and whether we like it or not, entertainment and media, will always have a hold on us.
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