A world without money

So today's class was very interesting, but what was more interesting to me was the last discussion we had on the capitalistic system we live under. Marcie's point really resonated with me in so many different levels because it is something I always think about.
In class, Marcie was saying that there are so many different concepts and ideas 'out there' that have to be explored before saying that capitalism is the only way, or the right way. On the other hand, Jack (or John?) was saying that if we want to come up with a new system, it has to include some way of capitalism (I might have misinterpreted their angels, so I apologize if I did, but this is what I understood).

I always have discussions about this with people around me and myself because it is true, it is extremely complicated! How can we live without money?? How does that work?? Some people literally cannot conceive the idea of a world without money. However, I don't understand how this is possible... If you really think about it, when we humans first existed we were very animal-like. The first homo sapiens sapiens to ever be on earth were primitively surviving, satisfying their basic needs with natural resources. Then they started finding ways to communicate... I guess corporal expressions, pointing at stuff, drawing, etc. until they reached a point where they created their own language in order to be able to talk to each other, right? Well, I think this is where the problem began.
Throughout the years of evolution, communication became more complex and we started creating concepts and giving value to things. My question is, how did we go from exchanging goods to monetary currency? who gave a coin or a bill (which is nothing more than a piece of paper, that comes from trees) its value? how did this happen?
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that WE CREATED MONEY AND WE GAVE IT VALUE; therefore, there IS hope: there IS a reality without money. If we hadn't created this complex and fancy communication system, we would have never been able to attach value to un-natural things - money in this case. Why can't we go back to how things were at the begging?

Okay, I have a crazy theory. I believe that once we started communicating with each other, we started over-evolving. I believe we humans as we are today, so 'civilized', complicated and fancy is not what was meant to be for this world. We were supposed to play the role of the mammals (let's say, maybe more advanced than animals) that we are, but we weren't supposed to become this monster to the world. I believe we weren't supposed to evolve so much to the point in which we started creating artificial things and giving value to unnatural stuff.

I dont know if any of this makes sense anymore, but I'll conclude with Fight Club. In my opinion, if project mayhem was to be executed in every country of the world, capitalism would be eliminated and we would HAVE to come up with another system. The reason why we haven't, is because we haven't had the need... those who control it don't need it (or want it) to change.
But what if one night all the corporations with control over capital were burnt down, meaning the records of each person's bank account would be lost, all the stock exchange data would be lost, etc. All of those numbers that people worked their whole lives saving... poof! gone! what would the world do then? Life would still happen, we would still be alive, breathing, hungry, sleeping, etc... so realistically speaking, there HAS to be a way to live without money because that is how we started in the first place! The problem is, convincing those with financial power to understand this. If this were to happen, it wouldn't matter how much money you used to have, because now nobody has any anymore...

Right now, this is the only alternative life-style that is realistic in terms of how our society is already established. Capitalism is and will be extremely complicated to defeat, unless we rebuild ourselves from scratch, creating new, healthy communities, and maybe then, changing society. This is a link of my dream place to live in :) It supports my views and ideas on how much we have over-evolved and become so greedy that we have created this unhealthy, unnatural space to live in, with a superficial and unnatural society as well. Please scroll down the page and watch their video, it is absolutely incredible!

https://kaluyala.com

Confession.

I have a confession to make: I have never seen Star Wars.

I have read a lot about it, done some research for different purposes, heard many different opinions, but I have never watched to movie. I personally don't like Sci Fi films that much, I've never been too into them, but I definitely appreciate film and everything it has to offer. The reason why I have never seen this classic before is because I have heard so many different approaches of different fans I have met, that I am already too biased to watch it. I feel like i'm not going to enjoy it as much, I am going to be reminded of everything i've heard and learned, and I don't know... I guess I should watch it at some point, and after Jenkins article I feel like I HAVE to.
My problem with Star Wars is that it is so famous and popular, it has been used too much to my taste. I am specifically referring to an Ecuadorian YouTube user who posts a parody called: "La Guerra de Las Hallacas" (I will try to explain this as clearly as possible)
In spanish, Star Wars is translated as "La Guerra de Las Galaxias" (meaning the war of galaxies). Some ecuadorians made a parody of star wars by making short episodes in spanish using typical ecuadorian slangs and jargons to make it funny. The name they assigned to this is "La Guerra de las Hayacas." Hallacas is a typical ecuadorian dish, very popular in the poorer areas of the country. The parody can be considered funny by other people, but to me it is extremely rude, not funny at all and just very dumb. Let me highlight that the title is "Hayacas" and the word is really spelled: Hallacas; so they are misspelling the actual title with the purpose of it being funny; which in my opinion looks dumb and spreads grammatical misuse as something funny. After watching this shallow and ignorant fan's version, I never felt like watching Star Wars. I consider that to be very disrespectful and it degrades the real film piece!
People back home are obsessed with these episodes that keep being posted. I honestly don't understand what it so funny. They kind of make ecuadorians sound stupid and it just takes away the artistic and inspiring component of the original classic, turning the Star Wars experience into a dumb, empty parody. My problem with this, is that many people I know love this parody thing much more than the movie, even though they have seen it.
It is shocking to me how this movie influences people from all over the world including people for the poor areas in Ecuador. On one hand, the parody is disrespectful and decreases the "aura" of the film; its essence and context is not taken in account and its whole value is degraded. However, it is amazing how fans are so connected to this classic that they can get away with their own versions of it, including parodies...

This is an Hallaca

This is a link to the 2nd episode of "La Guerra de las Hayacas" (its in spanish, sorry)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHoQdWj9xjo

Crazy Post: Escaping Reality with Disney and Video Games

I loved reading Poster this week. I believe he is a psychic and doesn't know it. Twenty years ago, he literally described our current world. He said, "[T]here is every reason to think that virtual reality technologies will develop rapidly and will eventually enable participation through the Internet. Connected to one's home computer one will experience an audiovisual 'world' generated from a node somewhere in the Internet and this will include other participants in the same way that today one can communicate with others on bulletin boards in video-text." In my opinion, this is the reality of the online gaming community. This community, however, is in constantly evolving and it still has space to expand, making it possible for the multiple realities exposed by the author to grow.

It is a scary, but fascinating future. Maybe the virtual reality will reach a whole new level and open space for new ones. There is an anime called Sword Art Online (me being a nerd again) that explores this exact concept. In the series, video games have become so advanced that people are able to immerse themselves in the game as if it was an entire new world. They feel the grass, they feel emotion, and eventually they even feel pain.

Why are we so fascinated about escaping our own realities? Why do we constantly seek to create new ones? This contemporary search for the "perfect" virtual realm juxtaposes what is exposed (and fought against) in The Matrix. In the movie, humans are trying to escape a fake reality to live a real one. However, in our present situation, we do the exact opposite.

This concept is explored by Dorfman and Eco when they talk about Disney. For Dorfman, Disney represents an escape from reality. People immerse themselves in a fake environment to escape everyday life. It is almost as if these individuals walked into a theme park to feel nostalgia for something they never had. Disney is not a reality lived by any real person. Still, people feel a sense of longing relating to every aspect of the franchise. Although Disney is not the real world, some people only seem happy when immersed in this sea of (capitalist) make-belief. Following a similar path to Dorfman, Eco talks about the safety we feel among technology. Disney represents the hyperreal, the fake, and the electronic as the desirable. Technology provides more reality than nature and contemporary people are more comfortable in this environment.

Some people immerse themselves in Disney to escape "normal" life; others immerse themselves in video game simulators. These virtual realms are each time more "real," but, at the same time, further from our own universe, toying with the possibility of creating an entirely new one. I wonder what circumstances (cough cough capitalism) led contemporary people to feel this intense need to escape from our own world.

I Am 90's Grunge

Tumblr is an extremely versatile social media platform that, in my opinion, serves a purpose for any and all types of bloggers. In this sense, Tumblr can be seen as a huge online community, and within it multiple subcultures have bred through the years since it went online. Undeniably, I'm part of my own subculture, one that posts about Halsey's heart-wrenching song lyrics to cat/dog Vine videos that (I find, at least) are (un)intelligently funny. Being a part of this subculture has been an extremely interesting experience; people have been speculating as to what it's called, labelling their aesthetic as anything from "plants," "soft grunge," to "halloween 4eva."

An interesting trend that I've seen going around is the comeback of 90's fashion—cheap plastic black chokers and pastel jelly shoes are back, y'all. I've seen people on Tumblr revel in the its return and others abhor it; as Hebdige (131) states, "[s]tyle in particular provokes a double response: it is alternatively celebrated (in the fashion page) and ridiculed ore reviled..." But what sparks my curiosity, and perhaps also the general public distaste for the return of chokers, is the fact that 90's fashion is brought back not by people who were actually born in the 90s, but instead after. In other words, it is mostly 14-15-year-olds born in the 2000s that dominate this subculture of 90s fashion in 21st century society.

Multiple department stores have begun selling chokers and platform shoes; I've seen endless rows of 90's-inspired clothing fill the racks of Forever 21. Similarly, small businesses have opened up Etsy shops, selling handmade patches that accurately depict you as a government-hating, self-loathing, cat-loving feminist. With the sale of such items by large fashion companies, these "original innovations which signify 'subculture' are translated into commodities and made generally available, [thus] they become 'frozen'" (Hebdige 132). It seems, then, that the subculture has shifted into the world of capitalism—the aesthetic itself has been commodified. How ironic (or rather sinister?) is it that nostalgia of the buying public can be manipulated for the purpose of capitalism?

Nazi Disney

I very much enjoyed Dorfman’s perspective on the Disney phenomena from a cultural perspective.  We all grew up on Disney so we become desensitized to the fact that Walt Disney was far more than “merely a business man” (110).  History does not hide Walt Disney’s political views and the fact that he was an avid supporter of the Hitler and the Nazi movement, yet that reality is consistently brushed under the matt. If one is able to strip away the cuteness factor from Disney films there are distinct ideological consistencies prevalent in almost every film, such as unrealistic portrayals of gender roles.

Disney perfected what Hitler aspired to do with the use of film and media in regards to promoted ideologies. In Nazi Germany, Hitler relied heavily on media propaganda to help spread his ideologies. He placed great emphasis on the power of film as it related to cultural perception. Disney took that model and mindset and applied it to promoting ideologies to children.

“Disney has been exalted as the inviolable common cultural heritage of contemporary man; his characters have been incorporated into every home… they constitute a little less than a social environment inviting us all to join the great universal Disney family…” (110).

In Hitler’s time of power, he presented a similar ideology of the perfect society in Nazi Germany. Much like in Disney’s work, Hitler used film and art to inspire community and patriotism. Furthermore, both Disney films and the parks themselves promote an unobtainable interpretation of what reality “should be.” However, Dorfman brings up the point that despite all of the apparent ideologies Disney consistently promotes, his legacy is engrained in our culture and therefore to say “anything against Walt [Disney] is to undermine the happy and innocent palace of childhood, for which he is both guardian and guide” (110).

I find it almost unfathomable that we as a society still see Walt Disney as somewhat of a guardian of childhood dreams. I think Dorfman’s instructions on expelling someone from the Disneyland Club is genius; sometimes the only way to get someone to see the truth is smack them in the face with the facts. If someone is a diehard Disney fan, “ACCUSE HIM [or her] OF REPEATEDLY OF TRYING TO BRAINWASH CHILDREN WITH THE DOCTRINE OF COLORLESSNESS SOCIAL RACISM, IMPOSED BY POLITICAL COMPARISON.”

The best example of taking a stand against Disneyfication through calling attention to Walt Disney’s Nazi affiliation is from an old Family Guy episode. The clip can be seen here:

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

In Defense of Fandom

Jenkins’ article really resonated with me this week, because it touched upon something that is very dear to my heart: the world of fandom. In high school, having struggled with finding a community in which I could be myself, I turned to the virtual community for solace and support – and I got more than I bargained for. In addition to a community of individuals, virtual culture is a community of worlds. Anime, television series, and works of fiction I’d always loved suddenly took on entirely new dimensions, as the characters were recreated, resituated in other worlds and relationships, and explored over and over through fanfiction, fanart, video, and AMVs (Anime Music Videos). 

Crossover art of Steven Universe and Neon Genesis Evangelion by Gembattlefield

I’d say that the most important theme surrounding fan culture is one of reclamation; as Jenkins puts it, fandom offers a “radical alternative to dominant media content, providing space for various minority groups to tell their own stories or to question hegemonic representations of their culture” (457). Because there is such a lack of queer characters of color in media, virtual culture has allowed fans to recreate characters as reflections of their own identity; fan culture was so important to normalizing queerness in my coming out process. It also provided a platform for me to create and share work with an incredibly supportive community. I improved so much through writing fanfiction as a teenager – I learned more from the comments and constructive criticism I received  online than I did from any of my public school's English courses. Even now, some of the most talented authors I know are ones who I’ve discovered through fanfic. I get upset when people disregard fanfic and fanart as a valid art form, because the time, effort, and passion that goes into its creation is just as legitimate as any other creative process. Which brings me to another point of discussion: stigma.

Harry Potter fanart of The Golden Trio by Loquaciousliterature, portraying Harry and Hermione as people of color

There is so much stigma surrounding fan culture; as Jenkins puts it, it is “marginalized or exoticized” and the assumption is often made that “anyone who would invest so much creative and emotional energy into the products of mass culture must surely have something wrong with them” (454). However, recreating mass culture plays a hugely important role in challenging the lack of diversity in popular media, and is a natural response from marginalized communities that are forced to create their own representation. I'd never considered the parallels between fan culture and folk culture until reading Jenkins, and I think he captures the essence of the intentions behind and root of fandom: "Fans respond to the situation of an increasingly privatized culture by applying the traditional practices of a folk culture to mass culture, treating film or television as if it offered them raw materials for telling their own stories and resources for forging their own communities" (457). So yes, fandom springs from traditional, hegemonic mass media, but it also has foundations in a strong sense of grassroots community, and is based upon principles of constant change and reinvention. In this way, fandom is a powerful reflection of postmodern society, and I believe that as fan culture gains traction and continues to grow, it has the potential to challenge notions of identity, representation, and diversity in popular media. 

A Little Fat Girl from the Midwest

Jenkins essay on changing technologies within the film industry and the increased accessibility of amateur filmmaking was particularly significant to me, as in the past couple of years I have attempted my own amateur filmmaking. While I may not be “making a beautiful film with my father’s camcorder,” the increased availability of lower-cost filmmaking has greatly influenced my ability and desire to make short films. I loved the quote by Francis Ford Coppola in the beginning of Jenkins’ essay: “For once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed and it will really become an art form” (452). This quote particularly resonates with me because in my process of making my own short films, I have completely disregarded any sense of movie-making professionalism. I have made two short films that have appeared in local and regional film festivals, and both films were made on a combined budget of $15 (to buy the burnable DVDs) and filmed entirely on an iPhone 5. I had a crew of one, myself, and I had no prior film experience. While I’m not sure if I would consider my films to be great forms of art, I believe that similar filmmakers like myself can help destroy the rigid professionalism of Hollywood, and bring forward the organic, genuine quality of film. In our discussion of Baudrillard and fiction/reality, we discussed the sterility of CGI – with the emergence of amateur filmmaking, there is a potential to distance filmmaking from generic CGI films and franchise films and push towards much simpler and more narrative cinema. The prospect of increased amateur filmmaking is also promising as these films can produce more innovative, imaginative, and diverse filmmaking – particularly more films from female and racially diverse filmmakers. If you’re interested, I’ll include a link to one of my short films that I was lucky enough to be selected for the Florida Film Festival Brouhaha Sidebar 2014.

https://vimeo.com/79007362

Baudrillard, horror, and the death of the gap

An interesting idea that briefly arose last class was through our discussion of Baudrillard’s question: “Does reality outstrip fiction?” An accompanying question was brought up as to whether, in response to our desensitization to violence by the spectacle of media, horror movies had become too realistic. With the advent of computer-generated imagery (CGI), movies have gained the ability to make the unreal real (although, as Baudrillard would argue, the definition of those two terms has become increasingly unclear). However, with this new, hyper-realistic graphic imagery that is constantly in competition with itself, vying for our terror and positive ratings, have we lost something? This brings back Barthe’s idea of the “pleasure of the text.” In old horror movies, classics such as Rosemary’s Baby and Psycho, there is a certain element of anticipation. The true strength of the movies lies within where the garment gapes; the directors depend upon the gap to provoke feelings of suspense and then terror from the watcher. It’s an artful manipulation of what isn’t there—the graphic, hyper-realistic imagery isn’t necessary to evoke a response from the audience.

That’s not to say there aren’t still elements of suspense in good horror movies today; I would argue that cinema is both part of the cause and one of the victims of a more and more desensitized society. Because the audience has been exposed to “real” terror in the form of media imagery, the audience has come to expect horror movies that will surpass the terror they consume every day. Thus, movies (horror and action movies in particular) are no longer about the gap—they are about the spectacle. The death of things unsaid, of content in absence, seems to be a looming threat, at least in cinema, in a society that determines what is real by what is seen.

This feels like an incredibly cynical observation, and I think it’s also important to note that there are still great movies being produced that don’t rely upon spectacular graphics to give them substance. However, this is a theme that seems to be spreading throughout popular culture, television, and movies, especially in the genres of horror and action. I believe that, like Baudrillard, it’s important to interrogate how this reflects upon our society as a whole.