College Life and the Culture Industry

        When I came to college, I knew that I would be studying a lot and doing a ton of homework, as that is what I came here to do, but I didn't realize how mundane finals week would be. This is my third finals week of my college career, and I must say that it is tiresome and monotonous. This is different from how I pictured college, with the endless partying, yet somehow still getting my work done rather than sitting in Olin for eleven hours at a time writing papers left and right. In "Modernity - An Incomplete Project," Habermas states that "culture in its modern form stirs up hatred against the conventions and virtues of everyday life," meaning that we perceive our real lives as so bland as compared to what we see in the culture industry (Habermas). What we see in movies and on television about college is not how it really is; the constant partying and lack of homework are extremely unrealistic. Films cut out the "boring" parts of college life, such as studying, eating food in the campus center, and actually going to class, making college seem like one big party when that is not really the case at all. The culture industry makes everything seem so fast and new, which makes our everyday lives seem so mundane in comparison. Habermas argues that postmodernity faces an existential crisis with history, as it seems to have lost its historical reference. In the case of popular culture portraying college in an unrealistic light, we seem to have lost the referent, which in this case is even in the present. This makes us think that our lives are somehow wrong and unfulfilling, when they are really just messy. Our everyday lives may not be as exciting as those of the people in movies, but that is a distortion of reality, and should not be taken as seriously as it is. What is aggravating is that the only representations of college life that rising students get is what is shown in movies, and what these films show is blown completely out of proportion. So, when a college freshman moves in and starts school, they have unrealistic expectations, which are also an idea of Horkheimer and Adorno, who state that the culture industry filters everything in our world before it reproduces it for entertainment. The original is photoshopped and distorted, just as college life is distorted by movies in which the characters simply drink and party with no consequence. One film that stood out to me regarding college life was 22 Jump Street; the film doesn't portray absolutely outrageous college life for the most part, but its depiction of Spring Break is highly unrealistic. There is a chase/shooting scene during Spring Break in Miami, where thousands of scantily clad college students are drinking, dancing, and partying. I'm sure that some people experience Spring Break like this, but I know that I definitely have not. The culture industry, as Horkheimer and Adorno state, filters out what it doesn't find to be interesting, keeping in the "glamorous" parts of college life and, as Habermas observes, making us resent our daily lives because of it.

(Semi) Stream of Consciousness Blog Post

I am not completely sure what I want to talk in my last blog post. I always approach these assignments without knowing for certain what I will talk about. I let the words flow and my thoughts gather as I go, almost in a "stream of consciousness" style. It is a bit sad to think this is the last post, and I feel like there is nothing I can talk about that will be good enough for a finale.

Well! Concerning the last authors we saw, I have to say I really liked them! Herman and Chomsky and Bourdieu have similar lines of thought. They critic how our current media is being produced, and the effects of that form of production. These two texts might have been my favorites of the entire semester. Although I am a big fan of Althusser and Marx (and their founding principles and analysis of the capitalist system), I enjoy how Herman and Chomsky and Bourdieu go further. They use previously stablished concepts to analyze "current" processes and how our media is evolving within the system.

Foucault was extremely interesting as well. His language reminds me a bit more of Zizek. But they have one important distinction: while Zizek envisions our society as one os spectacle, Foucault sees us as beings of surveillance. The discussion in class on this subject was extremely interesting as well. As this surveillance evolves, and we start to keep tabs on each other, it seems that the definition of surveillance and spectacle start to get more entangled. What is a reality show, surveillance or spectacle? Maybe we have become so accustomed and addicted to the surveillance mode that now we crave it. Perhaps we want to be observed. Is this a natural condition? Or have we been programmed to feel this way? (I believe Bourdieu would agree that media and the systems conditions us; after all, ratings are not democratic because we are being conditioned to want to watch certain material. Or desires are not natural in our controlled environment).

This class has made me reflect about several aspects of contemporary life. I believe this critical foundation will be useful in many aspects of my academic and my professional life. We are CMC majors for a reason; we are here to look at the world critically.

Ideology and the Gender Binary: There is No Escape

        Luis Althusser states that "there is no practice except by and in an ideology;" we are unable to step outside of ideology, because it is so entrenched in our society because of ideological state apparatuses, such as educational, religious, family, media, and political apparatuses, among many others (Althusser 45). We create binary oppositions that exist in society, which we believe to all work on us simultaneously (fast vs. slow, new vs. old, active vs. passive, etc.). Another binary in our ideology is the gender binary; Judith Butler discusses the gender binary in her book Gender Trouble. While we read an excerpt of this book during this class, I read the entire book for my Sex, Violence and Religion class last semester. Butler describes the gender binary as something that must be abolished, as it is constricting and unrealistic. There are other genders other than simply cisgender male and female, and we as a society need to acknowledge this. The gender binary is a form of ideology, and while Butler argues for a world in which gender, a social construct which was contrived by the dominant forces in society, meets its end and is no longer a reason for sexism, persecution, or violence of any kind. However, Althusser argues that it is not only incredibly difficult, but impossible for us to step completely outside of our ideologies because they are so powerful and so ingrained in our collective minds. Althusser states that "those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology," but we cannot escape it (Althusser 48). Nothing is not ideological, including gender behavior and norms. When these norms become naturalized, they are much harder to work against. For example, for someone who has grown up in American culture, it can be difficult to change their ideology and their habits by acting or dressing differently from the societal norm. There is a pressure for one to conform, especially to binaries. People like binaries, because they are easier to understand. Butler argues that people are uncomfortable without the gender binary, because the ambiguity that results from a lack of the social construction of gender makes us uncomfortable. We like to categorize people into one gender or another based on their looks, dress, and actions, and we do not like it when a person appears too ambiguous to categorize. By combining Althusser and Butler's theories, one can conclude that it will be extremely difficult for us to shed the gender binary and repressive ideology behind it.

The Cult of the New and Controlled Obsolescence

        Habermas's idea of the "cult of the new" is something that is problematic for Habermas himself. The idea of the need for constant innovation and progression, such as the controlled obsolescence of Apple products, dominates our consumer culture. Rather than worrying about important world issues, we as a society worry about inventing a new iPhone with the newest technological innovations. This controlled obsolescence is a symptom of the cult of the new, as we are encouraged, often by advertising, to buy more because it is bigger, better and faster. We as consumers feed into this cult of the new by waiting outside of Apple stores for new releases of their products and preordering them months in advance. There is societal pressure for consumers to conform by buying into the hype. Lately, I have felt the pressure to upgrade my phone to an iPhone 6, even though my 5S is less than two years old and is generally undamaged. However, after one owns one generation of iPhone for an "extended" period of time (aka less than a year, even though this is not actually a long period of time - the cult of the new and our ever-progressing culture make us think that this period of time is lengthy), one is left behind by society, as everyone else has already moved on to the next big thing. We experience a pressure to conform, which means advancing with the rest of the world. There is also pressure from a social standpoint, as having the newest technology is a status symbol in our society. We see celebrities who have the iPhone 6, and we want to get it, too. Once a sizable enough number of people have bought the new gadget, we feel pressure to buy it as well so that we can fit in.
        There is a saying stating not to fix something if it isn't broken, and while new innovations in technology are a positive thing for the world, the technology industry abuses this notion by rolling out new technology that isn't fundamentally different from its previous version. We think that we are getting something new and exceptional, when in fact the product that we are buying is extremely similar to the generation before it. Habermas warns against the cult of the new, and I think that this is one of the reasons why; this constant innovation without meaningful change can be a negative thing for our society.

The Metanarrative of Rollins College

        There is a metanarrative that describes all Rollins students as rich, upper class white kids who wear Vineyard Vines and Lilly Pulitzer; we are all high-functioning alcoholics and cocaine addicts who surprisingly do well in our studies despite our partying habits. The Urban Dictionary definitions of the school is a supposedly all-encompassing narrative about students at Rollins, calling the college a "country club." My personal favorite part is in a sample dialogue, in which a student says, "Lets do some coke and lay by the pool and look at all the hot girls while occassionly watching some sweet wakeboarders on the lake."

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rollins+College
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rollin&defid=1482733

        While these definitions do make a caricature out of Rollins, they do contribute to the school's reputation, which is a part of a metanarrative about Rollins. Lyotard argues that we must "wage a war on totality;" he was completely against metanarratives, as they claim to completely describe a group of people, though they never really can. Lyotard believes that we as a society must destroy these metanarratives because they are no longer all-encompassing, and are therefore no longer necessary. This is true for Rollins College; while I had never experienced Rollins before I came here to go to school, and therefore don't know if the Rollins metanarrative applied to the school as a whole before I came here, it is true that the stereotype of the typical Rollins student is not all-encompassing now. While there are definitely many people at Rollins for whom this stereotype applies, there are also so many people like myself who are not rich and who do not wear "preppy" clothing. There are many students who are the complete antithesis of the Rollins stereotype, who study hard and do not go out drinking every night. Lyotard has a very postmodern view in advocating the abolishment of the metanarrative, because his ideas divide themselves from the idea that society requires an all-encompassing metanarrative in order to define itself. The postmodern belief rejects the idea that our modern society is uniform enough to fit under the umbrella of a single category, as Rollins students are not all the same preppy, well-off students who act out that the metanarrative states we are.

The Last Post

After studying a semester's worth of theorists, I find Bordieu one of my favorite theorists that we have done so far. As I read his essay, I was reminded of how similar news channels are in different parts of the world — be it a news channel from China, Singapore, or United States, and be it in Mandarin or English, Bordieu's argument bears strong in all cases: TV news "suits everybody because it confirms what they already know and, above all, leaves their mental structures intact" (254). Weather forecasts, hurricane alerts particularly, are able to manipulate mass viewership through fear. For example, a family will be more likely to stay in if the weather forecast suggests a 70% chance of precipitation. Similarly, this reminded me of news segments on the recent acts of violence all around the world — people watch news anchors report on the "anywhere, anytime" nature of mass shootings (or bombings) and become hesitant to go out the door. My friend has told me on many occasions that she never feels safe in public environments anymore; she no longer goes to movie theaters for fear of being a victim of a shooting. To live in a society too terrified to be a society sounds much like a plot line out of a cheap movie, but it seems to be slowly turning into reality. 

I recently downloaded the CNN app onto my iPhone and receive notification blurbs about new articles every hour. With the recent updates on the mass shooting in San Bernardino popping up every five minutes this past Thursday and Friday, I noticed how much more fearful I was of the outside than I ever had been in the past. It's interesting that the power of the news anchor on television has shifted to the simple ping of a notification on my iPhone — in every moment that my phone vibrates with a notification, the bubble of fear and hesitancy grows ever so slightly.

Social Media and Exhibitionism

        After temporarily losing my cell phone and not having it for a weekend, I was even more aware of Bordieu's concept of voyeurism and exhibitionism than I usually am. I confess that I am addicted to scrolling through Instagram and watching my friends' Snapchat stories; these platforms to peer in on people, and to be peered in on, are a large part of our culture today, especially for people who are my age. The absence of being able to view what people were doing during this weekend left me oddly at a loss. I think that it is pretty damaging when one feels like they are missing out just because they can't check social media. I think it's interesting how people on social media distort their life to show only the best parts; this exhibitionism shows a "virtual reality," rather than the "actual reality" of events that occur outside of the sphere of social media. I admit that I am incredibly guilty of this, as I pick and choose the most photogenic pictures of myself for my Instagram profile and the funniest videos for my Snapchat story in order to make my life seem interesting and exciting. We are a generation of narcissists, and we hope to instill in one another a sense of envy through selective self-presentation. While social media can help people to connect with other people who are on opposite sides of town, the country, or even the world, it can be abused.
        The pressure to impress people on social media through exhibitionism is further intensified by the "followers" and "like" features on Instagram, and the "viewed by" feature on Snapchat stories. We are validated by a high number of followers and likes, and try to have interesting stories on Snapchat in order to gain the most views. Personally, if I don't get 100 likes or more on a photo, I feel invalidated in posting the photo. I have heard many times throughout conversations with people in my generation (and participated in conversations like this, too) about feeling invalidated and inadequate because one didn't get as many likes on a photo as they had wanted to. We scroll down our Instagram feeds and "like" photos according to the quality of the photo, as well as how well they know the person who they are following. We are amateur critics, validating only what we deem as worthy. This concept of exhibitionism and voyeurism through social media applies accurately to our generation, as we often depend upon social media in order to validate ourselves and improve our self-esteem.

The Macy's Parade Is One Big Advertisement

        Pierre Bordieu states that "the farther a paper extends its circulation, the more it favors such topics that interest 'everybody' and don't raise problems. The object - news - is constructed in accordance with the perceptual categories of the receiver" (Bordieu 254). This can apply to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which I watched a couple of weeks ago on Thanksgiving for the first time in years. When I watched the parade, I was appalled by the blatant capitalism throughout it. I hadn't noticed this in previous years, as I hadn't thought as critically in the past. The parade, which reaches 22.3 million viewers, makes no political stance or sends important messages; instead, it presents advertisements in the form of floats, balloons, and performances. These meaningless, capitalistic advertisements are extremely elaborate. From a balloon featuring the Pillsbury Doughboy to a float advertising Build-A-Bear workshop, the pageantry and entertainment factor just barely mask the fact that the parade is just one big advertisement. These floats and balloons are advertisements as well as entertainment, and they are part of a system of "homogenization, which smooths over things, brings them into line, and depoliticizes them" (Bordieu 254). This also falls in line with Chomsky's assertion that "advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the 'buying mood'" (Chomsky 213). If the Macy's parade was a controversial event, it would never get the number of sponsors and advertisers that it gets today, as it is not a politically charged event.

        Rather than reporting on real news, the newscasters report on trivial things, such as which float is coming down the street in New York City, and interview stars of new television shows on the NBC network, advertising further programming on their channel. The newscasters themselves are examples of Bordieu's criticism on the celebritization of news anchors, as they "are treated with a respect that is often quite out of proportion with their intellectual merits" (Bordieu 254). Americans know Matt Lauer and Al Roker, and look forward to seeing them on their television screen. We as a society idolize news anchors such as Lauer and Roker, and during the parade, we trust them to host with integrity and without politicization. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has truly changed in my mind from a purely fun event to one that involves blatant advertisement and idolization of news anchors.

A Final Afterthought and a Big Thank You

As you all know by now, I am not a CMC Major. In fact, the only CMC class I had taken previous to this one was CMC 100 my Freshman year. With that said, I absolutely loved this class and I owe that to all of you. I had previously not been in a class with such engaging discussions that truly challenged the realm and depth of my critical thinking skills.  This class has been an extremely uplifting, enlightening, cathartic, and even therapeutic experience for me, one that I really had been searching for throughout my  time as a Rollins student.

This course taught me a lot about my self and the perceptual lens through which I experience the world; more so than I was ready for. As a senior, I kind of just took this class because I needed credit and I wanted to have a class with Dr Cummings. As the course progressed, I realized how much I was learning from my peers as well as from the course material. In my experience, there are typically only one or two people that add  substance to class discussion, at least in most communication classes. With this class, you all challenged my perception and pushed me to look through various lenses rather than my own. Furthermore, being able to genuinely discuss such a variety of complex works with so many perceptions was fantastic.

As far as the material goes, I can definitely say I look at the world through a very different lens I previously did, especially in regards to media. With so much theory in the back of my brain now, I will never be able to see any form of media as simply “entertainment,” I know that everything is deeper than that. I certainly will never be able to look at Disney the same either!

You all made me grow a tremendous amount this semester. You gave me everything I really needed from a college course, for the first time since I began at Rollins. Thank you all so much for being integral parts of such an amazing experience.

Social Prison

I really enjoyed the perception Foucault wrote from and many of his concepts particularly stuck out to me. The strongest part about his work was his was of paralleling our social construct to a prison.

The idea of a panopticon, as it relates to a prison, is that if the security tower is in plane sight, the inmates will assumes that they are always being watched. A perfect example of a panopticon can be seen in the prison scene in Guardians of the Galaxy, as we discussed in class.

In his work, Foucault relates the physical idea of a panotpicon to the confines that define our social norms. Although I had never heard these kinds of ideas put within the context of a prison, my mind instantly went to the idea of “Big Brother” always watching. Especially now, in the age where googling is an oxford-official verb and everyone from age six to sixty has a Facebook account, the idea of a social panopticon has never been more real. 

“Power should be visible and unverifiable” (98), which is what makes it so terrifying. The scary part about power now is that everyone has more of it at the tip of their fingers. The idea of privacy on the internet doesn’t exist, and that is largely do to the fact that once you put something out there, it will be out there forever.

In doing some outside research, I came across a very interesting video on youtube that did a very a good job of explaining a social panopticon in a modern context. I may come of a bit over the top at times, but it addresses some key topics we discussed in class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVTKHI5ovyc

Propaganda in the 2016 Presidential Campaign

        In doing research for a political science assignment, I came across a blog about propaganda throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. Herman and Chomsky discuss how propaganda "manufactures" public consent for economic, political, and social policies; candidates looking to be elected are a prime example of this, as they are vying to get the consent of the public to run the country through spinning their political policies in the most positive light possible. Following the propaganda model, a political campaign is essentially a business looking to sell its product to the voting public. This campaign season is particularly fascinating because there are so many GOP candidates, and because of this, any candidate needs to stand out in order to gain media coverage and in turn gain votes; this results in propaganda, most of which is positive and focused on the candidate's own campaign. It is unusual for a campaign to launch negative propaganda, but during this campaign season, Chris Christie issued a negative piece of propaganda in the form of a bumper sticker aimed at Hillary Clinton. The sticker says, "No Way in Hill," and it includes both Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign logo and Barack Obama's 2008 logo.

        While most candidates try to get the public's consent through positive propaganda for their own campaign, Christie has decided to make voters consent to his opinion that Hillary Clinton should not be elected through this bumper sticker. 

        Rand Paul is also utilizing a form of political propaganda in his campaign; he created a campaign poster that looks like an eye chart, asking the public to see him as an eye doctor (which he really is, but which does not actually apply to his presidential campaign) who can "correct their vision" regarding American politics. His website states, "Dr. Rand Paul is an ophthalmologist (eye doctor), serving in the US Senate. Professionally, he has corrected the vision of thousands and now will do the same thing in the White House.. and we're not talking about a new prescription for President Obama." I find this to be a pretty odd statement; maybe it is my political bias, but while it is creative and plays into something that makes Paul unique from other candidates in the race, the metaphor doesn't seem to apply to Rand Paul because his policies don't seem like the most "clear" out of all the candidates'.

https://store.randpaul.com/index.php/rand-paul-eye-chart.html

Here's the link to the political blog:
http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/programs/cmd/blogs/posters_and_election_propaganda/tags/2016_election/

Top Gun Revelation

        I must confess that I had never seen the movie Top Gun until last night when my boyfriend forced me to watch it (only under the agreement that we could watch my favorite movie, Tangled, another night). I was not impressed with the film at first, mostly because I couldn’t get over my bias against Tom Cruise, but also because the script itself was extremely corny. I’m aware that at the time the film was made, this type of stuff wasn’t corny, but it is to me today, and I strongly disliked the romantic aspect of the film. However, after we watched the movie and I had expressed my distaste in the film, my boyfriend showed me a slip from the film Sleep With Me, in which Quentin Tarantino analyzes Top Gun, claiming that it is the greatest film script ever written. It’s actually an extremely funny clip, and I would recommend it to anyone who has seen Top Gun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSV35A1cQDM

        The subversity in the text, he claims, makes it such a great film because it is not a film about a fighter pilot who goes to flight school, or about his relationship with his instructor. Instead, the film is about a man’s struggle with his sexuality. Tarantino goes on to explain his reasoning, saying that there is sexual tension between Maverick, the protagonist who is played by Tom Cruise, and Iceman, his rival in th flight school. Supposedly, Iceman is tempting Maverick to “go the gay way,” while Charlotte, Maverick’s love interest in the film, is trying desperately to convert him to complete heterosexuality. The best part is that Tarantino's observations actually make sense.
        Tarantino’s analysis of the film is an extreme example of Barthes’ pleasure of the text; while it doesn’t seem as if the film leaves too much room for interpretation when it comes to Maverick’s love life, Tarantino has found a space in the film where it leaves a gap and has given it his own meaning. I hadn't considered Top Gun as a writerly text, but I can see how Tarantino does because it is able to be interpreted differently by many people. While I was watching the movie, I did not completely formulate a romantic subplot between Maverick and Iceman, but I think that Tarantino's analysis makes sense. Tarantino takes great pleasure in filling in these gaps in the text; Barthes calls this jouissance, or the French word for pleasure. Barthes discusses the eroticism behind this filling in of the gaps, saying that this is what the reader takes pleasure in because it gives them freedom to be creative. The interpretation also goes hand-in-hand with Macherey's "Theory of Literary Production," in which he states that what is left out of a work is what is most important, because it allows its readers to make interpretations and to decide for themselves the meaning of a text. Like Barthes, Macherey values the writerly text over the readerly text. I think that what is so entertaining about this clip is that Tarantino does take so much pleasure in his interpretation; he is visibly excited throughout the film clip. I haven't seen Sleep With Me, but if the rest of it is anything like that one clip, then I think I would enjoy it more than I enjoyed Top Gun.

Jake Gyllenhaal hates Bourdieu

Returning to reflect upon a theorist gone by, I really enjoyed Bourdieu's reading, "On Television."
 It immediately called to mind the film Nightcrawler (check out the trailer, it's a great movie), in which Jake Gyllenhaal plays a man looking for a job who stumbles upon an accident on the freeway and realizes that bloodshed is a lucrative business in the news world. When he can't find a position in the business, he decides to go DIY with a camera and his old (but speedy) car.

There are plenty of gory lines in the movie that immediately call to mind Jameson's quote: "The underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and horror," such as "If it bleeds, it leads," and a newscaster's disturbing advice to "Think of the news as a bleeding woman running down the street with her throat cut." In fact, the movie's grotesque media spectacles and commodification of terror can relate back to numerous theorists, especially Baudrillard and Zizek. Jake Gyllenhaal's character eventually finds success in manipulating the scenes of crimes and accidents to make them seem more spectacular, even arriving before the cops and manipulating evidence for the most shocking shot (blurring the line between media, fiction, and reality - back to Baudrillard). However, I'd like to give Bourdieu domain on this one; he seems to be much more optimistic.

He argues that no singular journalist can really be to blame for this phenomenon, because media and society as a whole has created an immense pressure through "the race for the scoop." As Bourdieu points out, "This means that news which might prove dangerous to those involved can be broadcast simply to beat out a competitor, with no thought given to the danger" (258). This is essentially the premise of Nightcrawler: news is a business of speed and spectacle, with victims becoming objects of consumption. The audience of Nightcrawler is then entitled to sit and watch in horror, realizing the poignancy of the critique and thinking self-righteously about the callous nature of the news industry; essentially "opining and reclining," as Chomsky would put it. However, Bourdieu is more optimistic. He believes that if people become aware of the system that necessitates this behavior and the mentality of "if it bleeds, it leads"reporting, change will be made possible. A refreshing view in the face of so much cynicism. In his words, "[If] people became aware of them, conscious action aimed at controlling the structural mechanisms that engender moral failure would be possible" (258).

However, I'm sure Jake Gyllenhaal's character resents Bourdieu's optimistic vision; its realization would mean he's out of a job.

A Modern Day Panopticon

        In class yesterday we talked about the Panopticon, which was originally designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1785 and analyzed by Foucault, who applied it to society as a whole. We spoke about its use in the recent film Guardians of the Galaxy, but I was wondering if there were any real examples of its utilization within the past century. The most recent example I could find was in the design of the Statesville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, which was built in 1925 and is still used today. It is the only currently working example of the Panopticon in the U.S. The correctional center has two "roundhouses," each of which houses a tower in the center, surrounded by cells. A "fun" fact about the center is that it was also used for executions from 1928 to 1962; thirteen people were executed on the electric chair during this time, adding to the cruelty of the center. It was also the only center where executions were carried out when the form of capital punishment was changed to lethal injection until 1998.

        As Foucault states, "all that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy" (Foucault 97). It is interesting to know that this type of prison is still around today, as the intimidation tactic that it employs is effective, but damaging to its inmates, who believe that they may be constantly under watch. However, as Foucault observes, this is merely a reflection of the constant observation that we conduct of each other in society. Because of this, is living in the physical Panopticon really much different from living in the figurative Panopticon of society? Obviously, those of us who are not incarcerated do have much more freedom, but we are all under the same pressure to perform. We are told to act a certain way, and we are all under a microscope. Especially with the introduction of social media, we don't always know when we are being watched (for example, I am not aware that someone is scrolling through my Instagram photos until they like one of them, so as a sort of unwritten rule of social media, I should always put my "best foot forward" when posting pictures). Foucault is so right in comparing the prison to our lives; the societal pressure to conform is exactly like the Panopticon that he so acutely compares it to.

Plato's allegory of the cave

"He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection." (99)

Focault talks about ideology and power in a very interesting way. His description of the panopticon is somehow similar to Plao's allegory of the cave: he describes a world where prisoners live chained in a cave.  The puppeteers cast shadows on the wall and these shadows construct reality for the prisoners.  One of the prisoners breaks free and leaves the cave.  At first, he is blinded by the sun and apprehensive about the new world.  The shadows in the cave had always seemed so real to him.  After he has spent some time in this new world, he realizes that his entire existence has been controlled by others and he now knows the truth.

Similarly, ideologies and their power creep up on us throughout the years without us noticing how strongly they influence our lives and shape our identities. As the panopticon and the puppeteers of the cave, ideologies show us what we should see and help us make sense of 'our realities.' The problem with this is that people get too fixated on the ideologies they have adopted (consciously or unconsciously) to the point in which they get blinded by them. For example, people that strongly believe gays are condemned to hell who have been taught to believe this and consciously accepted this belief. Another example is people who grew up a certain way and unconsciously adopted a certain ideology; I found myself in this position a couple days ago: I was reading an article titled "Gendered Comments You Probably Faced At Thanksgiving" and all of them resonated with me!! I didn't go back home for thanksgiving but I remembered all those Christmas dinners we had... I certainly heard all those comments such as "Honey, that's not very lady like" or "Girls cook, guys do something manly" or "Honey, you should wear a little more makeup."

 Sure, I love my family; but the gender ideologies are so unconsciously deeply rooted in the back of their minds that they say things like this with the best intentions as if they were giving me a good piece of advice (by telling me to wear more makeup to look prettier...). What's worse, there is no way in the world I can point this out to my elder family members because "most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone that points it out" (I got this quote from the video I copied the link to, check it out!)

It is very interesting to see how very palpable ideologies are, but most of the time we aren't aware... I wonder what ideologies I have accepted unconsciously and therefore, live by without even noticing them... This scares me a little and goes back to-I don't remember the name of the theorist-who says that in order to understand ideology we have to stand outside of it...


Link to an explanation of Plato's cave allegory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA


Link to the article about gendered comments on thanksgiving:
http://theodysseyonline.com/rollins/gender-norms-thanksgiving/234116

Roger and Me: A Foucauldian Love Story

This week in class I shared my encounter with the enchanting and mysterious Roger. Pure boredom and a 4-hour drive led me down the path to 855-FOR-TRUTH, but the resulting hour long conversation was truly heaven ordained.  Run by GospelBillboards.org (do yourself a favor and listen to a few of their audio clips explaining the billboards, they're hilarious), the call service gives you the option to talk to a representative about any questions you may have and be told you're going to Hell free of charge! Obviously I wasn't about to let that opportunity pass me by, and soon enough I was on the line with someone who was soon to become a friend and confidant.

Roger was immediately charming - in his thick southern drawl, within the first 10 minutes he had compared my lifestyle to beastiality (I just looked that word up to see if I was spelling it correctly, which was INCREDIBLY dumb and I highly advise against EVER doing) and pedophilia. I posed (only occasionally sarcastic) questions for Roger about his beliefs and received increasingly outlandish and offensive answers. By the time I hung up, I was feeling amused but vaguely nauseous. Nothing he'd said was anything I hadn't heard before, but that didn't make it much better. Driving down I-75 you're barraged by these same messages over and over by billboard after billboard, but these messages certainly aren't limited to antiquated forms of media exposure. Scrolling through Facebook or surfing through channels on TV, it's never too hard to find some good ole' religious fundamentalism, almost always of the Christian variety.

Screencap from the Gospelbillboards website

Foucault's concept of surveillance is directly tied to our exposure to these messages everyday. In his words, “THE GAZE is alert everywhere.” Foucault believes that we're trapped in an ideological relationship with power, and I'd have to agree with him. So many of the ways we're entrenched in the power dynamics of ideology aren't as obvious as a 40 foot billboard along the highway - the way that ideology is conveyed is often much more insidious. Religious ideology has occupied and even guided our national rhetoric for so long, it has become essential to understanding how we perceive normalcy. I articulated in a previous blog post that were are being constantly scrutinized both by media and by each other to make sure we adhere to societal norms. Those that are seen as 'Other' are perceived as deviant and dangerous, and for years the solution to this danger has been to lock it out of sight, whether in a prison or mental institution.

Roger consistently referred to homosexuality as an illness throughout our conversation, something to be cured. In the context of today's more liberal media views, this might be shocking to some, but the correlation between queerness and mental illness still exists in our society. It has too much history to be shed so easily; homosexuality wasn't even declassified as a mental illness by the APA until 1973. People were still institutionalized (and frequently administered electroconvulsive therapy) less than 45 years ago - not nearly long enough time for the stigma to disappear. People like Roger act as vessels for the stigma to carry on and continue to be inscribed in expectations of behavior and of the body. As Foucault states, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance.” Although blatant
homophobic media spectacles have become less common in recent years , surveillance on the basis of normative performances of sexuality and gender (among many other things) remain interactive and pervasive throughout society.

Roger just checkin up. What a sweetie.

Jameson and "Kick a Ginger Day"

South Park is a fascinating and controversial show regarding satire; the show satirizes people and events throughout popular culture (often in a crude manner, pushing the limits arguably farther than they should be pushed), taking an ambiguous political stance, but still making a statement nonetheless. From the Tiger Woods Scandal to the pervasiveness of social media, South Park has left few areas of our culture untouched, commenting on these issues by creating crazy scenarios that blow them out of proportion. However, we talked in class about how the show’s meaning can be misinterpreted by those who are less educated in satire and who are less able to read and determine whether a work is making a positive or negative comment on something. This misinterpretation happened recently my former middle school, where students made national news by instating “Kick a Ginger Day.” They had gotten the idea from an episode of South Park from 2005,  in which the young characters persecute red-headed red-headed children. The episode was an example of satire, as it was commenting on the cruelty of children in schools, but the middle school students, who range from sixth to eighth grade, were clearly unaware of this commentary. We discussed in class about how satire can be damaging to society when people are too uneducated to realize that it is poking fun at the thing it is satirizing, rather than agreeing with it. This instance of student violence and bullying is an example of the potential harm caused by satire when one is ignorant.
        Jameson says that “depth is replaced by surface,” which can apply to the meaning garnered by the middle school students from the episode of South Park. They took only the surface meaning from the episode, unaware of the real meaning behind what the episode was stating in its satire. Jameson also talks about the hermeneutical, or what can be interpreted; the events in any given episode of South Park can either be interpreted literally or consumed with an awareness of its parody. While South Park creates satire by making something seem over-the-top ridiculous, there are definitely people who will take its message seriously and act similarly to the characters on the show. Although I think that South Park is not overall a destructive television show, it can cause issues because people interpret it incorrectly.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/25/melrose-middle-school-investigate-bullying-incident-that-targeted-redheads/Q146cjVZzU82amJ2gbyLHJ/story.html

https://grovetogrub.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/south-park-the-greatest-modern-satire/

Jungle Cruise vs. Kilimanjaro... Also, Eco Has Ruined Disney World For Me

On a recent trip to Walt Disney World, I realized that Umberto Eco has completely ruined Disney for me. This was most apparent on my most recent ride of the Jungle Cruise, which is a perfect example of Eco’s assertion that Disney tells us that the simulated is better than the real. The audioanimatronic animals do not even attempt to mask themselves as real; rather, they are cartoon-like, suggesting that the cuteness of cartoon animals is preferable to the possible grotesqueness of real animals in the jungle. I also found it interesting how the predictability of the Jungle Cruise, as Eco talks about, is preferable to the unpredictability of a real safari. As humans, we would rather know what is going to happen, as we take comfort in predictability; the Jungle Cruise offers this, while nature does not. This means that the Jungle Cruise can give us “more” than the real-life safari, on which there is no guarantee that guests will see any animals. In fact, we can control the animals, as demonstrated by the holiday version of the Jungle Cruise, “Jingle Cruise.” I had never been on this version of the ride before, and I found it funny that the animals, many of which were wearing Santa hats and scarves and playing with Christmas presents, give us “more” than real animals do. They are even more Disney-fied, as they are aware of the holiday season, something that real animals in the wild are obviously unaware of.
The Kilimanjaro Safari ride in Disney’s Animal Kingdom is another ride on which guests trek through the jungle in search of animals; however, this ride actually contains real animals. The animals are kept in enclosures that the guests cannot see, so they are always on display. Guests are made to believe that they are lucky to see the giraffes and lions so up close and “uncaged,” but these animals are always visible to guests on the safari.  The Kilimanjaro Safari does offer more unpredictability than the Jungle Cruise, as the animals are real, sentient beings that can act how they please, but they must do so within the constraints of the enclosure. This still feeds into the idea that Disney can give us more than reality can; by controlling where the animals are able to roam, Disney makes a planned sequence of viewing animals seem unplanned and unprecedented.
        Guests at Disney World do not have to worry about unpredictability, as they know that they will be able to see everything that they have come here to see, with no unforeseen changes or lack of entertainment possible. Everything at Disney World is timed to a T, from the audioanimatronics of the rides to the exact moment a parade begins down Main Street to the beginning of the fireworks show, “Wishes.” This predictability makes Disney World the ideal place for people who have grown up in our passive consumer culture, as they merely have to visit the parks in order to experience everything, rather than searching for these experiences in the real world.

The Mental Production of the Food Industry

Marx and Engels speak about how the ideals of the ruling class become the ruling ideas, because the group that controls the material forces of a society also controls the intellectual forces of that culture. They state that “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production” (Marx & Engels 39). I was recently having a conversation with my friends about the food industry and how the rich CEOs of the industry are connected to high-up members of our government, and because of this, the most unhealthy and most processed food that is sold in our country is the cheapest, while freshly made, organically grown food is much more expensive. There are harmful chemicals going into our food, and people who have lower income cannot afford to avoid these substances because they do not have enough money to spend on organic, healthy food. The convenience and cheapness of fast food, paired with the expensiveness of food that is actually healthy and a povery-level minimum wage, forces low-income families to compromise their health and put harmful chemicals and un-nutritious food into their bodies. The wealthy CEOs of the food industry, who are connected to the government, are able to alter our food however they please, raking in millions while the poor have to eat the cheapest food available because there are few regulations in place regarding food. The food industry, being so intertwined with the U.S. government, has prevented much in the way of food regulation, and because of this, the less wealthy suffer. However, they present their interest as that of the common good, benefitting all members of society, with advertisements showing their “contributions” to society, such as McDonald’s Ronald McDonald House charity. McDonald’s, a corporation that has billionaire CEOs, is a huge contributor to obesity in the United States, yet it paints itself as doing good for society. This is not atypical of fast food corporations, which are doing much more harm than good. The promotion of the processed, un-nutritious fast food that is produced throughout the United States is an example of how the wealthy and influential rule our ideologies through their material influence.

    Also, if anyone hasn't seen Food, Inc. yet, you definitely should! It is extremely eye-opening regarding the food industry and the corporations behind it. It's pretty graphic though, so just a warning, but it truly opened my eyes to how we as consumers are taken advantage of and led not to question the food industry and the chemicals put in our food. The film discusses the genetic modification and poor nutrition of animals that are raised for slaughter and consumption, and how this is bad not only for these animals' quality of life, but also for us humans who are consuming them. It also talks about how involved in the government many food corporations are, which affects legislation made regarding food. This film inspired me to go vegetarian because of its powerful message and fact-based arguments (although that only lasted about six months, haha).

This photo shows the evolution of the genetic modification and poor nutrition of chickens that are being raised for slaughter; chickens in 1950 used to be much healthier, and were fed grass and other food that chickens are supposed to eat. They also had a much longer lifespan and were killed to be eaten later in their life. Today, however, chickens have been bred to be fatter so that they yield more meat; they are extremely unhealthy because of this, and because they are fed only corn, which is not all that they should be eating. This is messed up, people!!!! Marx and Engels were (unfortunately) right!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/

The Disneyfication of my Childhood

According to my parents, for a full year of my early childhood, I would watch The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh every single day. I grew up surrounded by Disney; my childhood was extremely Disney-ified, as I owned dozens of Disney VHS tapes and countless Disney stuffed animals and toys; the first movie I ever saw in theaters was A Bug's Life. This seems not to have been outside of the norm. In fact, it is often considered strange for a person in my generation not to have seen a classic Disney movie such as The Little Mermaid or The Lion King. Dorfman and Mattelart talk about Disney as “the inviolable common cultural heritage of contemporary man” and “the great supranational bridge across which all human beings may communicate with each other” (Dorfman & Mattelart 110). In the Western world, everyone knows and loves the classic Disney characters; they have become so entrenched in our culture that we don’t even realize it. Every child has his or her favorite Disney movie and character, and every kid dreams of someday making the pilgrimage to the Great American Holy Land, Disney World. Disneyfication is prevalent in our society, as Disney is the largest media conglomerate in the world, and is both horizontally and vertically integrated into our culture, with theme parks, Disney stores selling an array of Disney products, and Disney’s control over programming such as ABC, ABC Family, ESPN, Disney Channel, and other television channels, as well as its purchase of Marvel Comics and Star Wars.
    It is impossible for me to fathom a world in which Disney does not exist, and honestly, I don’t think that I would want to live in that world. Although I am aware of Disney’s imposition of its values and ideals upon impressionable children, Disney did help shape my childhood. Maybe it’s because I grew up surrounded by Disney and cannot step outside of its ideology, but my childhood memories mostly involve some aspect of Disney. While I know Disney commodifies childhood nostalgia by selling tickets to its theme parks and merchandise with our most beloved characters on them, I still succumb to it, and I admit that I will probably never outgrow the “happiest place on Earth.”