Sunday, September 30, 2007
Ways Of Seeing, John Berger
Advertising is a huge industry in our day and age and to be able to see what it does to us is important. Advertising has become a very detailed and complicated process of figuring out what makes people want what they have to sell. There are millions of different choices out there and advertisers want you to buy their stuff. The pictures that are now used create a culture of envy. When billboards are everywhere, stores surrounding us, there is no way to avoid what the advertisers assume is the ideal human. With all these things around us it becomes a cycle of consumerism, you work to make money, to buy what advertisers sell. These advertisers advertise happiness and it makes you want happiness, but to obtain this happiness, you must work, and working for most people is not the most pleasant thing. “The interminable present of meaningless working hours is ‘balanced’ by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment. In his or her day-dreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consumer self.” Here Berger emphasizes the fact that advertising gets into your head. It is all over the place nowadays, in our newspapers, on our TV’s, on the internet, there is no way around comparing yourself to someone you assume is ideal. In class today we talked about the 2nd commandment, which tells humanity to avoid making images so that we can prevent idolatry, this seems to be our problem. Its funny that even God predicted what we would become or at least knew about human weakness.
Group Work So Far
I seem to be a little rusty on my group skills because I ended up doing a lot of the project. It was my fault though because I didn’t realize that the task I told people I would do was most of the project. So it seems some from my group have ditched me for another group, but that is fine! To fix this in the future I definitely need to plan more and actually get familiar with the people in my group. Those seemed to be the two big problems, once I figure out how to organize the work we are supposed to do in an even amount and get to know my group better, then I think I’ll be set.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Amusing Ourselves to Death, McLuhan
This book and the Playboy interview are theories and concepts that are hard to comprehend. What these authors are saying is that without these forms of medium, or to stick to our basic forms of discourse (phonetic alphabet, printing press) our race would be alot better off. I don't really agree with this point of view because I myself am knee deep within our modern forms of medium. Also the alternative, which McLuhan puts forward, is that we would live again in an undemocratic tribalized society where our individual freedoms would not exist. "By their dependence on the spoken word for information, people were drawn together into a tribal mesh; and since the spoken word is more emotionally laden than the written -- conveying by intonation such rich emotions as anger, joy, sorrow, fear -- tribal man was more spontaneous and passionately volatile." (pp. 6) To go from where we are now to that lifestyle doesn't seem very reasonable or in any way better than where we are today. Being passionately volatile is not something that is accepted in our culture anymore. McLuhan's theories definitly struck something in me, although, and made me wonder why we actually watch TV so much, what is so appealing about TV? 15 Minutes of commercials every 2 minutes, shows that give us no solid opinions or observations on the world around us and the fact that if you step out your door, something called fresh air will fill your lungs and give your lungs some satisfaction. I like the fresh air, and hopefully we can all figure out someday that the air outside is nice and that the TV is a good form of getting information, it shouldn't be the only form.
Mass Communications
I must say that this is the most intimidating class I've ever been involved in. I think my level of overwhelmedness has shot through the roof. Even though I am in a rut about this, I'm fairly sure that I will make it through and on the plus side the class is very interesting. I think the overwhelming part has to do with having every assignment in which we will be doing has been explained to us in class so I've crunched all that information together in my head and I guess it's ready to explode. When I actually looked through the syllabus step by step and broke down all the other info my heart stopped racing and I realized that this class will be a good challenge for me and I am definitly looking forward to doing the assignments.
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