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 Habermas argues that postmodernity faces an existential crisis with history, as it seems to have lost its historical reference.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.