Cockfights and Demographics - Schulze; Exile of Britney Spears - Smit

Name of author, name of essay/chapter reporting on: Cockfights and Demographics by Quentin Schulze; The Exile of Britney Spears by Chris Smit, prologue.

Your articulation of their thesis (i.e. in your own words):

Cockfights and Demographics:

Schulze posits that there are two main groups of communication theories: transmission theories and cultural theories. Transmission theory explains communication as originating from social and natural sciences using very physical, literal terminology, while cultural theory views the process in a very creative, imaginative, subjective way. He analyzes some of the benefits and weaknesses of both views before discussing some of his own views on communication theories from a Christian perspective.

First, he explains the two purposes of communication theories: 1) to show the reader how the theorist understands communication, and 2) propose a way that we should communicate and helping us understand the process so we are capable of doing so.

Transmission theory: senders influence receivers, audiences are passive and easily receptive to manipulation, people believe incoming stimuli automatically – “we are what we receive.” The biggest problem with this theory is the absence of God from the process – in the closed system of senders and receivers, where do we put a God whom we believe talks to us and whom we can talk back to? Communications cannot be seen as a strictly scientific study. Another obvious problem is that humans aren’t really passive receivers – humans add their own interpretation and creativity to everything that is communicated to them. Adding to this, communicators have a specific motive when they send a message, which must be taken into consideration when analyzing the content of their communications.

Cultural theory: communication is a communal activity that everyone takes part in. Through communication, we create, keep up, and change culture itself – instead of messages being a sending/receiving action, it is a co-creating activity between many different participants to form shared meanings. Cultural theory is especially appealing to Christians because communication with God becomes a shared conversation/discussion between the person, God, and other people.

The Exile of Britney Spears

            Smit argues that although media may seem like it is simply forcing information upon its consumers, with no participation on their side apart from the passive act of receiving it, people do participate in media, and are being shaped by it everyday – the way we relate to the world, understand it, and act within it are all affected by the media and our participation within it. Simply by using technology like computers, phones, and smart devices, we are accepting and perpetuating a system of communication – we are making media cultural by making it such a big part of our lives. We participate so much that we use it as a way of identifying ourselves, giving it so much value and devoting so much of our attention and time to it. Fandoms exist because groups of people all agree that the same thing is meaningful and interesting – but who first assigns this meaning? Who has the power in media? Advertising giants? Celebrities? Or do we as consumers assign meaning to things based on popular interest first, with fame coming afterward when the fanbase has grown? This, Smit tells us, is the ultimate question.

At least three links (websites, blogs, articles, music) or images that illustrate the ideas of the article:

1. Obviously, propaganda is a big part of the transmission theory of communications that Schulze talked about – senders doing their best to manipulate receivers into doing or believing something that the sender plants in their mind using a communication device. I just really liked these propaganda posters for the Harry Potter book series as an example of how communicators send messages to their audience in disguise (no matter how bad the disguise is) in an attempt to control them or steer their thoughts and/or opinions. In this case, the messages (unite against the common enemy, don’t lose hope, we’re on the “right” side, etc.) are flimsily disguised as art. 

2. As I read Schulze’s section on cultural theories and how communication is not simply a message from a sender being impressed onto a passive receiver but a dialogue between the two, who are co-creating the message together, all I could think about was a quote by my favorite author, John Green. Green is very technologically-savvy and loves to answer questions from his readers about his books – he has a separate blog for each of his 5 novels (so those who haven’t read some of the other books won’t be spoiled on plot points) where he answers reader-submitted questions. He prefaces a large number of his answers by reminding us all that “books belong to their readers”—yes, maybe Green had a certain message in mind when he wrote a certain scene or a specific character, but it’s okay if that message changes when it gets to the reader – in fact, that’s what it’s supposed to do. Green doesn’t want everyone to find the same meanings in his texts as he does. He wants them to find their own meanings and explore deeper within themselves to find out what is being communicated.

3. Smit, in his prologue to The Exile of Britney Spears, describes fandoms. A fandom is a group of people who are united in their love of something – whether this thing is a TV show (such as NBC’s Community), a movie (like Marvel’s The Avengers), or a project/idea (for example, NASA’s Curiostiy rover on Mars). Smit mentions fandoms on his way to discussing where the power of creating meaning lies in the media – does it lie with the fans? With the people involved in the creation of the thing being appreciated? With media wizards, working behind the scenes to create a false image for the fans? This is a question that I’ve definitely noticed in a specific fandom recently – the fandom for the teen pop sensation band One Direction. A group of five boys who are all very close to each other, suspicion is always rife among their literal millions of fans whether or not there are any secret, romantic relationships between any of the boys. The most popular (nonexistent) romantic relationship is the one between Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. This “bromance,” (assigned the portmanteau ‘Larry Stylinson’ by fans) is under continual discussion on twitter and fanblogs, with every look, touch, and conversation shared by the two bandmates being relentlessly dissected and analyzed by every 13-year-old girl with an internet connection. Tomlinson—whose girlfriend (of over a year) has received nasty tweets and messages from fans asking her to please cut the act and stop pretending to be Tomlinson’s girlfriend so that he and Styles can “come out”—recently angrily tweeted to the fandom regardingthese rumors, telling them that ‘Larry Stylinson’ is not real and that he is happy with his girlfriend. It is obvious that in this fandom, the boys of One Direction itself have lost their power (if indeed they ever had it), with the majority of it in the hands of their fans, who are abusing it to get what they want, uncaring of who the upset or what relationships they damage along the way.  

At least two discussion questions that will help your reader develop the ideas of

the article (i.e., keep us talking):

1. What do you think was God’s intention for human communications – did He want them to be transmissional or cultural? What about His interactions with us?

2. Who do you think usually has the power in a fandom? The fans? The creators of the product (be it a media item, a person, a cause, etc.)? The advertisers? 

What is Culture - Warren

Name of author, name of essay/chapter reporting on: Michael Warren, What is Culture?

Your articulation of their thesis (i.e. in your own words):

Warren expresses his frustration with the overuse of the word “culture” and sets out to detail the history of the word and the most accurate description of it possible. He starts by stressing the importance of seeing culture as something ever-changing and continuously growing, not as a finished product, and also emphasizes how hard it is to clearly define separations between two cultures due to the confusion over what really defines any single culture. In turn, he emphasizes the fact that culture is created by people and the things that people create – likewise, it affects all of us, forming us as much as we form it. It affects judgments that we see as “personal,” even when we’ve only made them because of what society tells us is the right decision.

Before delving into the history of “culture,” Warren makes it clear that culture is directly tied to the ideas of society and economy – they all work together to shape each other and evolve alongside the others. Then he analyzes the history of the word culture itself and how it grew from meaning simply the growth and tending of crops and animals to include the growth and tending of human faculties – Warren encourages us to think of culture as a work of human hands, and to ask what humans are at work (and why) when we hear the word “culture.” Warren continues through the evolution of culture – at different times, it means “civilization,” “refined,” “nature,” and finally, “the individual” and inner, spiritual development.

Finally, Warren gives us a definition of culture (the one that he uses): “the signifying system through which a social order is communicated, reproduces, experienced and explored.” He helps us to look at this complexly by saying that although it is a signifying order, that order is shaped by how it signifies things – if a mostly-consumerist society’s culture is very advertisement-heavy, that may leak over into politics and economics.

At least three links (websites, blogs, articles, music) or images that illustrate the ideas of the article:

1. While I was reading this excerpt by Warren, all I could think of was the culture of celebrities today. They manufacture their own culture, of wealth and power and freedom, but their culture bonds with society to manufacture them, to tell them that they can have all the freedom, wealth, and power that they want with no consequences. This often leads to abuse of that, because the culture today in Hollywood is so accepting of bad behavior, almost seeming to encourage it and reward it, with scandalous news stories getting much more attention than news of, say, charity sponsorships do. One such case recently of celebrity culture getting to someone’s head is what Billy Joe Armstrong of the band Green Day did yesterday – he had a meltdown onstage, screaming at the management of the venue Green Day was playing at before storming offstage. He has since sought treatment for substance abuse. This is such a good example of how celebrity culture and society affects people – most typical 40-year-olds are not abusing drugs or treating other people with so much contempt that they stop whatever they are doing because of a perceived slight and pitch a hissy fit. 
2. What Warren said about the origins of the word “culture” and all the different meanings it has held was absolutely fascinating to me, and what he said about how when we hear the word “culture” we should think “What humans’ hands are at work here, how, why?” I immediately thought of cultured pearls. Cultured pearls, according to Wikipedia, are pearls created by a pearl farmer under controlled conditions. In other words, they are man-made, hand-made pearls. I really like the idea of culture as a pearl – beautiful, and it would have come into being anyway, but with a little help from humans, it can be made extra beautiful. Of course, this analogy doesn’t exactly work out – culture is just as broken as the rest of our existence – but I still like to think of it like that. 
3. When Warren gave an example of how society, economics, and culture can all work together and affect each other by mentioning how America's consumerist society can spread to politics, I was reminded immediately of political ads such as this one. It's not so much the content of this short video, but the way it is made - it's essentially trying to sell Romney to the viewer. It picks one positive issue about Romney to focus on, just as a car ad would pick the fast acceleration or admirable safety rating of its newest SUV. It throws in gratuitous shots of Romeny with his family, Romney out being "the people's man" - even when it has nothing to do with the issue being addressed. This ad exists because our culture has grown and expanded to include our society's obsession with advertising and consuming, precisely as Warren says.

At least two discussion questions that will help your reader develop the ideas of the article (i.e., keep us talking):

1. Have you noticed any “cultures” in your day-to-day life that you think probably don’t fit the definition that Warren gives us? If so, what are they, and why don’t they fit?
2. If all cultures are affected by economics and society, and all cultures are created by people, then why aren’t all cultures completely different or completely the same? Aren’t we all people? Don’t we all live in societies and use the same basic rules of economics? Or maybe since every person is different, every culture is totally unique in every way?

Rhetoric in Popular Culture ch. 5 - Brummett

Name of author, name of essay/chapter: Barry Brummett, Rhetoric in Popular Culture,  chapter 5.

Thesis:

In this chapter, Brummett talks about three lenses through which you can rhetorically criticize a text: feminist, dramatistic/narrative, and media centered. Feminist criticism starts with the assumption of an inequality between male and female, then attempts to explain where it comes from and how it is reinforced by culture and texts. It also searches for instances of female empowerment and emphasizes the equality of females and males. There are different approaches to this school of thought – liberal feminism, for example, focuses on reforming society, while Marxist feminism discusses the way economic inequality and gender inequality can unite to form areas of empowerment and disempowerment. Radical feminism explores the innate differences between male and female and attempts to assign certain characteristics specifically to females. Dramatistic/narrative criticism is based loosely around the idea of language as a connecting factor in basic human reality and motivation. This criticism adheres to the belief that the signs and symbols that are most important to our lives guide us and prompt us to react to them with different motivations. Thus, our reality lies in the symbols we use, especially the larger groups these fall into/link themselves with, such as a drama or a narrative. D/N critics study the way these signs work together with each other, along with what happens when these connections are broken. They use many different types of analyses to call attention to the meaningful and motivational functions that language performs. This criticism first places a text into a genre, then analyzes the language (vocabulary, structure, etc.) of its explanations for why things happen (is it because of the scene, a person, an establishment?). Media-centered criticism believes that texts should be analyzed with the medium in which they were published in mind; a videogame should not be treated the same as a scholarly journal. Television and computer media are easily the two most prevalent types of media in the world today—thus, every person has (consciously or unconsciously) internalized a generalization for the ways they are used and the way he/she should interact with them.

Three links to illustrate the point of this chapter:

-          The Music Industry and It’s Best Friend: Sexism – this blog article really seems to connect with the ideas about feminism that Brummett outlines in this chapter. The author of this article talks about the sexism of the music industry and how an artist like Katy Perry, who sings sexist (towards women) lyrics in her songs and is very over-sexualized in the media, has many more fans than a more honest, feminist artist like Amanda Palmer. I really thought this fit with the idea of the patriarchy that Brummett talks about – in our patriarchal society, it is more accepted (and even desirable) to be a thin, sexy, feminine popstar who sings about fulfilling the “teenage dream” of a younger man than it is to be an independent, honest, sassy artist who is confident with her body. The article also dips a very tiny little bit into queer theory when it talks about Kary Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl” – it is frowned upon in this society for one woman to kiss another, so even though that is the entire premise of the song, Perry includes a line about how she knows ‘it’s not what the good girls do.’

 

-          The Lizzie Bennett Diaries – this project is absolutely fascinating to me. It is a scripted, filmed version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, played by actors and then posted to the web in the format of a video blog. The writers of the LBD have taken Pride and Prejudice out of its original medium and transplanted it into the medium of the Internet (and kind of television, too, with the visual element), and thus many things have changed. The language has had to change – from old-fashioned, formal, Victorian-age English to modern-day, informal, slang English – along with the storytelling itself – the narrative is no longer told from a 3^rd person POV, but in an almost 1^st person POV? The medium of Pride and Prejudice very much affects the way the story is told, and when that changes, as with the LBD, many other things must, too, which I found very interesting to watch.

-          Rewind that last part – I thought this little cartoon really illustrated what Brummett was talking about with different mediums and the way we as a culture can get so used to receiving information and interpreting experiences through one medium – the child in this cartoon is so used to television and the way a television functions that he is applying it to the rest of his life. 

Two discussion questions:

1. How does the medium of a text affect your interpretation of it - does a book unconsciously hold more authority to an audience than an article on the web? Does a news segment on your television seem more trustworthy than a magazine article? Why does this occur?

2. The genre of a text seems to change how people approach it (for instance, nobody reads a mystery novel the same way they read a New York Times article). Why is this - what is it about a New York Times article that makes us take it so seriously? Where did we learn to do this - assign different meanings to something based upon its genre? 

On Worldviews - Olthuis

Name of author, name of essay/chapter: On Worldviews by James H. Olthuis

Thesis:

Everyone has their own worldviews (based upon their answers to questions about the human condition), and these worldviews affect both the way we see the universe and how we act and react to things within it. (Philosophers and psychologists alike disagree on whether or not the ideas behind a worldview affect the way we act according to them or vice versa, with our actions affecting the things we believe.) These worldviews can be in a constant change of flux, ever-changing based on new experiences, revelations, education, etc. For religious people, their faith is either confirmed or challenged by these experiences, and they have the choice to either allow their faith to remain static in the face of these events or force their beliefs to grow and change based upon them.

Three links to illustrate the point of this article:

-          Atheist PostSecret website post – this person’s worldview, though lacking the “roots” that faith gives to worldviews, still prevents him/her from ending their own life. The first comment in the discussion thread below this image is especially interesting—this person’s worldview drives them to do good things for the world, and their lack of faith means they believe they only have one shot, one chance to improve the world as much as they can. This made me think about what Olthuis says about how all worldviews are rooted in faith – is this person’s faith simply the belief that there is no God? Or are they faith-less?

-          Miracle Drug by U2 – At the beginning of this song, the songwriter wants to see the world from another person’s point of view – wants to see how the world would look using another worldview. He goes on to talk about God and how he can hear Him everywhere in his life – “in science and in medicine” – illustrating how his faith-based worldview affects other aspects of his life and permeates everything he believes with his underlying belief in God.

-          Old/young woman optical illusion – every person sees something different when they look at this picture for the first time – either the young or the old woman. This is a simplistic illustration of how peoples’ different worldviews can set them apart from each other, but it still applies to Olthuis’ arguments. In addition, most people eventually come to be able to see the other image that they didn’t immediately pick up on – a person who first saw the young woman will be able to find the old woman if they are given some time to locate her. I think this is part of what Olthuis says about how worldviews can grow and change – we assimilate information and experiences into our existing worldviews when we are shown something new or have a flaw pointed out to us.

Two discussion questions:

1.      Olthuis talks about the way worldviews are rooted in faith (although he states they don’t stem solely from faith). Do you think it is possible to have a strong, clear worldview without faith?

2.      A worldview based on faith could be shaken by things that challenge that faith – what kinds of things, then, could shake a worldview that is not based on any faith? 

Rhetoric in Popular Culture ch. 3 - Brummett

Author, title, chapters: Barry Brummett, Rhetoric in Popular Culture,  chapter 3.

Thesis: Brummett argues that a text can give meaning to an object, event, or action, whether it is a meaning that struggles against the meaning another text has assigned to it, or a meaning that has been taken by the person who read the text and changed to fit their personal view of the world. In order to detect and analyze this meaning, one must use critical interpretation, which digs beneath the surface appearance of an object/text/etc. and asks questions about the complexity and meaning of it, seeking to discover the message the text is trying to communicate. Brummett then goes on to illustrate the ways one must carefully dig for the meaning, starting with how to classify a text, finding what the context of that text is, searching for ways the author tries to influence your opinion (through sentence structure, their phrasing, and the things they say), and remembering to keep in mind that your own personal experiences come into play when determining the significance that the text is trying to place on the occurrence, object, or event. 

What Brummett was talking about really made me think of celebrities and how every little move they make can be interpreted as something that it's not, or discussed and pored over and carefully dissected to extract any tiny bits of meaning. The entire time I was reading this chapter, I was thinking of this picture of Harry Styles (of the band One Direction):

Whenever Styles wears this shirt, speculation abounds about what it means: is he subtly confessing his homosexuality? Is he trying to make a point about gay marriage and its legality? Is he wearing it ironically? Is he secretly trying to express his love for fellow bandmate Louis Tomlinson (there are an inordinate number of rumors flying around on news websites and fan blogs of their alleged secret relationship)? 

Meanings such as these can be assigned so easily by the author of an article or a blog post, and I don't think any celebrity has escaped these kinds of speculations and instances of people reading things into their actions. 

Recently, Miley Cyrus got her hair cut and dyed. 

For almost anyone in the world, this would have sparked a few comments from friends and family: perhaps "Nice haircut!" or  "Love the new hair color!" For Miley, the reaction from fans, interviewers, news sites, etc. was instantaneous. People were outraged, confused, disgusted, adoring; nobody could agree on whether she was just doing it for the attention, or because she was trying to separate herself from her clean-cut, teenage pop-star image, or if she was heading in the same direction as Britney Spears did with her legendary head-shaving episode. So many meanings from a simple picture of a new hairdo!

To me, the most interesting aspect of Brummett's chapter was where he talked about how to read a text carefully and analytically for all the ways in which the author is trying to impress their own ideas of the meaning/significance of an event, object, action, etc. upon you as the reader: I had never before realized how simplistically I had been reading articles, books, even just my friends' opinions of a new blockbuster movie. They are all trying (whether they themselves realize it or not) to spread their own meaning to me, and some are less subtle than others: for example, when I read this review of the movie The Social Network, I was struck by how some of the language of the author affects my opinion of the film - just the words that they choose to describe it are already affecting the meaning that I'm assigning to it, and I've already seen this movie! The adjectives used to describe the movie and its cast are exciting and animated, and the writing style is fast-paced and enthusiastic - like the author is trying, with his/her own passion, to spread it to me. And it works! I find myself telling people how much I loved the movie for the same reasons as the review's author, while before I read this review I would probably have told you that it was a pretty average movie with a nice-looking cast that did a good job. 

Some further questions that I came up with on this reading are:

1. To use the Hunger Games as an example of the way in which people can struggle to assign something meaning, what is one action in the Hunger Games whose meaning changed/was struggled over? What were its different meanings and who was trying to assign each meaning to it?

2. Do you think the meanings that are assigned to things are out of your control, with media and pop culture ceaselessly pouring their own meanings into your head? Or do you assign your own meanings to everything? Somewhere in between? Explain.

CAS 140 Honors (fall 2012)

Obligatory first post:

This is Katie's response blog. Hooray!

Have a song as a reward (caution: it's a bit sad):