Irony

Last class, Ian gave a lecture. I wish that he would have presented before our semiotic papers were due because he addressed some aspects of my topic. He spoke of irony in advertising. The lyrics in the song I choose for my semiotics paper were in every way ironic, but before Ian`s speech I did not think to represent the lyrics as ironic.

Burma Activist Project

For our activist project, me and my group wanted to raise awareness of what is happening in Burma. "Burma is ruled by a highly authoritarian military regime. In 1962 General Ne Win overthrew the elected civilian government and replaced it with a repressive military government dominated by the majority ethnic group. In 1988 the armed forces brutally suppressed prodemocracy demonstrations....The country had a population of approximately 50 million. The country was extremely poor; the estimated annual per capita income was approximately $300. Four decades of military rule and mismanagement resulted in widespread poverty, poor health care, and declining educational levels. Primarily an agricultural economy, the country also had substantial mineral, fishing, and timber resources. Extensive state influence over the economy, widespread corruption, and poor infrastructure has led to rapidly deteriorating economic conditions.

The regime's human rights record remained extremely poor, and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses. Citizens did not have the right to change their government. In ethnic minority areas, security forces continued to commit extrajudicial killings and rape, forcibly relocated persons, used forced labor, and conscripted child soldiers. Disappearances continued, and members of the security forces tortured, beat, and otherwise abused prisoners and detainees. Citizens were subjected to arbitrary arrest without appeal. Arrests and detention for expression of dissenting political views occurred on numerous occasions" (Country Reports).

In North America there is not a lot of media coverage on the issues in Burma, therefore most people here do not know about the issues at all, me being one of them. So in order to raise awareness we decided to hold a benefit concert.
In total we had 7 bands who graciously volunteered to play at Reilly's in Toronto. Once we had the band line up and the venue, it was time to get to work promoting the concert and its purpose. We set up a facebook event in order to promote but also to gage how many we could expect to attend the concert. "http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=6804651173" Facebook acted as a online invitation that people wouldn't loose and could reference for date and location. We then created beautifully crafted tickets which we went door to door in residence selling for only $10. We had no intention of raising money necessarily, but we had to pay off the costs of renting the bar lounge. We also handed out and hung up posters around residence. We made announcements in the GH Atrium and in class about the concert, and reminded everyone we knew.

The night of the concert was exciting. Because we had done a lot to promote the event I was confident that people would come out to support the cause, but I have to admit there was some doubt in my mind that we wouldn't be able to pay off the down payment for the venue. However, we ended up making close to $1000!!!! All proceeds were donated to a charitable organization in support of Burma. Jeremiah did an excellent job getting video footage. I was went around getting guests to sign petitions and a large banner as keepsake of the evening. I really hope that we can make this an annual even, maybe every year we could host a similar event for different projects that are not getting the recognition they need. I really enjoyed doing this activist project and I'm glad I was part of the group. I originally had a completely different idea, but I joined this group because I liked the idea of hosting a benefit concert, and after watching a documentary and doing research on Burma, it seemed like a very worthy cause.
When first presented with the task of an activist project my original plan was to host some sort of environmental challenge. I wanted to do something like have a line up of cool prizes which people could win by bringing me and my group as much garbage as possible. The people who brought us the most garbage would win the biggest prize, etc. I found some neat websites that sold some really neat decorated fabric shopping bags, and some other neat little environmentally products that could be given as smaller prizes. However, I decided to join team Burma because the cause was something that I had never heard about. I thought our group did a good job of raising awareness, even if it were on a small scale. Everything went surprisingly smoothly and we even ended up raising money for our cause.

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. October 18th 2006.
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18237.htm

Cause Knowledge is Power!!!!...Cheesy But True.

We were told in class that literacy is defined as being able to read the instructions on a prescription bottle. Some of the population can and will follow these directions; they are the literate part of the population. Some cannot,they are illiterate. But those who can but choose not to are Aliterate. Sadly I fall into this category. I used to be proud went that I had gone through all my high school English courses writing essays and exams on books I had never read. Now I realize how easily I could have gotten 80's and 90's if only I read the books. But beyond the marks, I would have grown as a person. Not only would my writing and reading skills be sharper, but I would be able to express myself more clearly, and reading has the ability to expands your knowledge of the world, of people, and places and ideas and history. I realize that I have missed out on a lot. When I thought I was being clever cheating the school system, I was actually really dumb. I was only cheating myself. There is a difference between reading cause you have to, and wanting to read. My goal now is not only to read everything I get for class, but also to want to read those readings, and from there, read related and opposing readings.

Semiotics for Beginners Modality and Representation

This Section of Semiotics for Beginners, Modality and Representation, reflect some of the ideas found in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. I love thinking about how absorbed into the media we really become. For instance when watching television, there is no denying that we get so attached to the main characters, and of course this is no accident. Everyone involved in making a movie or television show, or writing a novel or even the artist for a painting knows that they must stimulate some emotion in their audience that will attach them to the main character. When we read a book we become so absorbed that we feel that we are the main character. We can relate to them, we imagine their journeys in out minds eye and draw our own picture of what that character is doing, where they are going, who they met etc. And of course this is exactly what the author wanted. The author may have pictured the scenery in his novel differently, but as long as his readers grasp the concept of his characters actions and motives, it really doesn't matter what we picture. Even when authors but great detail into describing the setting, we are all going to picture it a little bit differently. But this is the power that words and images have. Words become such a vast art form because no two people could possibly have the same image in their minds.
Movies and television on the other hand are obviously different from books because more of our senses are stimulated. We see and hear exactly what the producers wanted us to. However, the viewers may still comprehend the message or themes of the show very differently, even if we don't necessarily realize it. We will see images that may seem normal, something we might see everyday, but there also may be a whole different spectrum we don't even notice we are seeing. Almost like some sort of subliminal message. racism, sexism, "isms" of all sorts, dominance, power struggles, very common debates found in society all the time may be so strongly enforced in an image, but we completely miss it because everyone involved in making the movie or show, has a way in making us see only what they want to see. It is not until you take a closer look that you realize the underlying images and their true meanings.
In this site, Daniel Chandler talks about how absorbed we become. He says that in one experiment children were asked to fill in the blanks, and a large percentage of them tried to pick up the pencil in the drawing. Scott McCloud has the same idea when he says how easily we relate foreign objects to our own image, he explains why we can how we can relate two dots and a line: " :|" to a human face. Both examples show how absorbed in the media we can become. An image no matter how realistic or not, is still easily recognized as the actual object. At the same time however, as universal as some symbols maybe, our vocabulary and they way we recognize the word we live in can never be simplified to just symbols. I agree with this completely because as abstract as words and images maybe, that is their art. Humans have created this language to express themselves, and even if our messages are not always perfectly clear, atleaste we can allow other people to think about what they are seeing and hearing.

Killing Us Softly

"Killing Us Softly" is a documentary presentation of gender representation in the media by Jean Kilbourne. Although this topic is generally discussed to death, this documentary is so well done. Kilbourne discusses the objectification of both men and women in the media through very specific advertisements she finds on television and in magazines. Her approach is unique because she shows exactly how advertising depicts constant power struggles in society.She does this by showing how womens bodies are literally portrayed as objects, and how society reacts to and interprets these messages. This objectification contributes to violence towards women because men begin to view women as objects and not human beings. Not only does Kilbourne talk about objectification, but she also talks of the gender roles in society of both men and women. She explains how advertisements contribute to how both men and women are supposed to be presented in society. Men are put in this macho strong image. When men don't live up to this image they are criticized and insulted by being compared to women ( being called a pussy, bitch etc). Kilbourne shows how women are constantly depicted as submissive and meek. We see constant images of women with their mouths covered in some way, or being always dominated by the make role in some way. Even when the women is in front in advertising, if there is a male in the picture he will have control in some way. She also shows how this control is reflected in race and class. The white women is constantly overshadowing a black women or black male.
Some of the images Kilbourne shows are very shocking, even though if you saw them in a magazine you wouldn't have thought twice about it. She pin points very obvious clues to how the media displays gender and race, and how in return we respond and conform to it.

Media Hegemonies

For this project, my group and I planned to map out a celebrity and determine what they own and their net worth. We decided to map out the Olson twins net worth because they are the richest teenagers in the world.
The twins are co-presidents of their own company and their merchandise includes:
Dolls, books, school supplies, videos (both straight to video and feature presentation, make up, hair accessories, CD players, music CD's, games, electronics, bedding, clothes, etc.

*40 million dollars worth of copies from direct-a-video-titles

*1400 sq. feet in every Wal-Mart is dedicated space to their products

*Co-presidents of Dual Star Entertainment Group (their own company)

*They will begin to branch overseas to Britain, Mexico, France, Germany and Japan to sell products there as well.

We realized after getting as much information as we could, that there just wasn't enough. So even though we were trying so hard to be creative, we decided that we might as well map out Time Warner as well.
We were astonished to learn of all the companies that Time Warner owns. Some of their companies include:

Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks, 82.4% of CNN, live from the situation room, Larry King live, Anderson Cooper, TBS, TNT, The Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, Court TV, animation 25% of A&E, licensing for Loonie Toons, digital boxes owned by, local news channels, new line cinema corp. time, Turner Home Entertainment, Braves Clubhouse, People, sports illustrated, essence, southern living, cooking Light, parenting magazine, mad magazine, popular science, AOL, alliance with Google, Movie phone, Map Quest. NASCAR, PGA, 50% of DC comics, 50% of America’s Talking, Oxmoor House publishing, Sunset Books, Little, Brown and Company, Time-Life Books, Warner Books, 50% of Central Comedy, Warner Brothers Television, Asia Week, The Warner Brothers Stores, 50% of Bravo, Baby talk Magazine, Warner Brothers motion pictures and the Six Flags Amusement parks.

- In 2000 Time Warner receives 40% of revenues from outside the U.S

- It has the second largest book publishing business in the world

- One of the largest music businesses, with nearly 60% of revenues from outside the U.S.

- A library of over 6000 films and 25 000 television programs, books music, and thousands of cartoons.

It was really fascinating, and kinda scary, to see how many businesses one corporation could own. It proves how easily our news and information can be distorted, especially if one company owns hundreds of different mediums and news companies.

Hazen, Dan, and Julie Winokur. We the Media. New York: The New York Press, 1997.

Life Decisions International- Press Room. Life Decisions International. Retrieved October 19, 2007. http://fightpp.org/show.cfm?page=press&action=display&ID=129

Worthless, Valueless Money.

Reading "Cultural Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping the Empire of Signs" made me realize people don't care about "real" things anymore. It seems that work, power and money are the only things that hold any substance or value in our culture, and the saddest part about this is that when we die, those are the only things that don't mean anything. But television blinds us into thinking that these things are so important, so vital. When in reality, what is money, really? Humans made up money, its paper for God sakes; and if you really think about it, money doesn't even exist. "Money" whizzes through electric wires, through our debit and credit cards... we don't even have to see it or touch it, and yet it runs our lives. And because of this imaginary thing we are beginning to loose ties to our family values. We loose touch with what reality is. We live to work. Live to make money. Is that the purpose of why we're here? Were we created so that we could wonder around in a money hungry daze? But this is what the media tells us is important. Success to the media is wealth and fortune, the media glamorizes the rich and spits on the poor. Having money equals power.
I realize this is not what the article was about per say, but this article made me realize how much value we put into meaningless things. It also made me realize how much the media controls our lives. Popular culture tells us what is right and what is "normal" and we begin to depend our lives on things that don't actually exist just because that is how our culture evolved and thats what the media deems as important. We need this paper that we call currency for everything. We need it to live. But the only reason it holds any value at all is because humans pretend that it does. We have the resources we need right here, made for us by the earth and yet we are too greedy to divide it fairly, we need "money" to control everything we were given for free. Really it's a shame. I not talking about communism, but when cavemen roamed the earth we didn't need money because everyone took what was theres. They could get anything they needed to live by their animal instincts. But now we can't do anything without money, if you left a human being out in the wilderness with absolutely no tools, they would be screwed. They wouldn't know how to live.
Really it comes down to us wasting our lives trying to obtain money. I find that so funny because in the end, when your lying on your death bed, would you rather be surrounded by people who actually give a shit, or by your worthless valueless money?