Blog Your Way to Beat-dom

Pick me! Pick me! An interesting article I came across in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago said that blogging can be a useful tool to help you get a new job, as employers have begun to scan the blogosphere searching for potential employees. So the article on networking was right: “Human beings are, and always have been, diversely motivated beings. We act instrumentally, but also noninstrumentally. We act for material gain, but also for psychological well-being and gratification, and for social connectedness.” And blogs happen to fulfill all of those goals.

The material gain comes from having something tangible that potential employers can assess (although this presents a danger as well, as it means employers can see everything you say, so if they happen to disagree, you’re doomed.) The psychological well-being comes from having an outlet to rant, rave, and ramble nonsensically about whatever it is you care about that day. And the social connectedness comes in as people read each other’s blogs and share their thoughts on the web. In addition, interesting sorts of blogger friendships have begun to emerge, as bloggers that address the same topic or have the same opinions offer links to each other’s sites in their sidebar. One example is in the sports sector of the blogosphere. Yankee bloggers offer links to fellow Yankee bloggers, sports bloggers offer links to other sports bloggers etc. Even more intriguing is the dialogue that goes on between them, as bloggers reference the other blogs in their posts. A sort of sports blogging network or community has emerged, and these people now have friendships with people they have potentially never met. On top of that, faithful readers of the blog get to feel like they are part of the group as well, even if they have no idea who is sitting behind the computer screen.

(Interesting aside: the rise in celebrity bloggers. The NBA has tapped a few of their star players to write blogs for the NBA’s official website throughout the playoffs, and actress Alyssa Milano has started a blog that appears on the MLB’s website because she is apparently a die-hard LA Dodger fan. But wait, I thought blogs were supposed to give the little guy a voice? The ones that didn’t have access to a printing press or anybody that would write up their thoughts and print them in the tabloids. Some bloggers have reacted quite negatively to stars “encroaching” on their medium, saying they already have enough ways to get their message out and be heard.)

Back to blogging, employment, and sports. So the article in the Wall Street Journal got me thinking about sports writers. Normally, people have a favorite columnist or “beat writer” they turn to for coverage of their favorite sports team. (George King, NY Post and Peter Abrhams, Journal News for the New York Yankees). An interesting new trend has emerged, however. A sports journalism professor wrote that “Well, here's the question about SportsBlogs Nation: Could it turn out to be a Craigslist for sports columns? If not SBNation, then maybe AOL Sports' FanHouse. Because you don't necessarily need the local newspaper. You just need a local, devoted fan who can write well.” SportsBlogs Nation, AOL FanHouse, and many other sites like it unite sports bloggers from around the country, making it easy to find somebody blogging on you’re favorite team. These people are normally die-hard fans quite devoted to the sport, so the coverage is deep, insightful, and relevant, meaning that you don’t necessarily need the newspaper beat writer because these fans are offering the same type of coverage: for free.

Newspapers have responded by having the beat writers blog themselves, which has turned out to be a brilliant idea. While some of the blogs are shallow one liners and have flopped, other more devoted columnists have created blogs that are flourishing. The blogs give the writers a place to address the sport more in-depth than they can in the paper, as they can assume that they are writing to a far narrower audience. They write casual, insightful, and entertaining blogs just like regular bloggers, yet have the resources of a big-time newspaper behind them, so they get to see batting practice and go to the press conferences.

On top of that, the two different types of bloggers have begun to co-mingle. The Average Joe fan blogger talks about the beat-writer’s blog in his postings, and the beatwriters have begun to do the same, referencing the premier fan bloggers out on the net. Entire blogging communities have developed around certain sports and teams, all of which the article on network described beautifully.

Speaking of piracy...

I just came across this news story about a sports-radio talk show host named Colin Cowherd who is apparently known for stealing content from blogs around the internet and presenting it as his own material on the show.

A few blogs have called Cowherd out for his plagiarizing (the ugly cousin of piracy). It seems that to show his "superiority" he told his listeners to flood one such blog "The Big Lead," with hits, causing the server to shut down. The blog was off line for two days because of the technical failure, yet Cowherd will face no punishment even though his action is beyond reproach. Why, you might ask? Well, because he works for a big time company (ESPN.) Since he works for ESPN, nobody will call him out on stealing opinions for the blogosphere or being a jackass and shutting one down.

Now imagine if a blog were to steal one of their broadcaster's opinions? ESPN would be livid, and since they are a big company, you can be sure that a lawsuit would ensue. And if a blogger ever did such a thing to a big media channel or retaliated by shutting down ESPN's website? Perish the thought.

What this really is is just another example of traditional "big" media being petrified of the little guy. Cowherd's job is being threatened as more and more people realize they can get the same rants or raves for free on the blogosphere. When people get scared, they do stupid things, like try to shut the competition down and rebel against the blogosphere.

It will be amusing to see where this goes, because I know sports fans, and most are pretty dedicated people. Pair that type of personality with the blogger's enthusiasm and this writer's apparent displeasure with authority...this could get interesting.

It’s not Piracy if You’re in the Navy…

Or why it’s alright for the big companies to do it, but not little old me.

Now I am not against copyright law by any means, but it seems outrageous to me that the TV networks and other big companies bemoan the evils of piracy when it is the very thing that founded their entire industry. Then again, I suppose I should expect such hypocrisy from those in positions of power. I mean just consider the metaphor here: pirate- somebody who robs at sea. Yet if the gentlemen happened to be a sailor in the navy looting and plundering the enemy’s ship…no worries. So once you have power and authority, I guess whatever you do is no longer piracy.

Which is why corporations have no problem taking content from us and stealing from the little guy. They won’t hesitate to screw you in a second if you don’t happen to read before signing the dotted line. Networks, recording studios, big media companies- they can all take our content in a second, but if we want to share some of their’s? Forget about it.

While the fact that they don’t want us sharing the things we like with other friends that might then buy the content as well silly, it is the loss in creativity that this virtual lockdown creates that is the far greater travesty. I linked to a particularly well done Jimi Hendrix/ Jay-Z mashup earlier in a blog post earlier in the semester, yet the track cannot be purchased or even obtained for free from anywhere because it is considered illegal. It might be one of my favorite songs of all time, even though it isn’t an original, yet for me to listen to it in my car is such a hassle that I only hear it sometimes when I sit down at the computer. That discourages creativity, prevents good music from being released, and will stop us from going forward. Eventually everything is going to be done (witness the repetitive boy-bands…you can only make the same bubble-gum noise so many different ways before you run out of different note combinations and clichéd lyrics) Then what? Well, right now we’d be left with nothing, since things like mashups are discouraged, and actually considered illegal.

I can understand individual artists getting angry if somebody were to copy their work or steal from them. I can understand companies getting angry when the piracy isn’t something like peer to peer sharing but legitimate theft, or if somebody were to burn a pirated CD and then sell it for profit. There are plenty of instances where piracy is legitimately unacceptable. Yet if companies were smart, they would start figuring out ways to incorporate “piracy” as they define it into their business strategy…using p2p networks as a way to market or mashups as a way to get new creative material.

Global Flows of Visual Culture

The Global Flow of Visual Culture

It goes both ways, you know. First, I’d like to point out that the commonly held belief that globalization = Americanization does not take into account the full situation. Yes, McDonalds and Mickey Mouse have gone to China and other nations around the world. Yes, American culture has seemed to dominate the global flow of culture in somewhat of a one-way stream for many years. And yes, sometimes Americans are a bit more resistant to allowing other cultures to flow this way.

But that is not to say it does not happen. Witness the flow of Latin musicians to America (Shakira, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias…the list goes on. There are actually some good names too, but you have to go back a few years.) The U.S. has imported music and images from Latin America and the Caribbean for years. And it doesn’t stop there. Just open up and U.S. newspaper or magazine, and I guarantee that you will find the latest craze…Sudoku. Other evidence of the back and forth nature of this flow can be seen by turning on a TV or looking at popular trading-card games among kids. Japanese animation has basically overtaken Cartoon Network, and has produced shows so popular among kids in the U.S. that the characters are now part of trading card games.

Another thing I’d like to mention about the global flow of visual culture is this new invention “The Slingbox.” Originally developed by displaced baseball fans yearning to see all of their team’s home games, the Slingbox allows viewers to connect to TV streams wirelessly around the globe, so I can follow the New York Yankees here in Los Angeles (if they didn’t have an evil monopoly on their TV coverage with the YES Network, but that’s another story…) This has allowed for an even great free flow of visuals and cultural elements from nations around the world to follow citizens wherever they may go, whether it be a different state or an entirely different country.

Now what has enabled all of this, you say? Well, one major force behind it has been the internet. The internet has allowed greater connectivity around the globe, opening up channels for these visuals and cultures to flow. No longer is an immigrant completely cut off from their home country. They can easily go on the internet and get news, visuals, media, and converse with those back home, all at the click of a button. So is this internet a good or bad thing? So far it sounds good, helping people cope with being displaced in a foreign country, giving them new communities to turn to on the World Wide Web. Yet it can also be isolating. Imagine somebody new to a state or country, no friends in the locale. So they go on their computer. All the time. And do nothing else. They may have a community on the internet, but personal connections…not so many. That is not to say the internet is evil by any means, however. Many argue that these online communities are great things that help members build self-confidence and interact with likeminded people that they might not be able to find where they are located. The book mentioned a woman named Sherry Turkle, who wrote a book titled “’Life on the Screen,” discussing the various pros and cons of this new world of simulation that we live in. I actually read the book for another class I took here at USC and found the different arguments and perspectives very interesting. Some cited online environments as places people suffering depression could turn to for help or help them develop the self-confidence they need. Others discussed the way the internet allows people to connect with others around the globe that they would have missed otherwise.

The internet is a great thing that has allowed us all greater access to a number of terrific things. Now I can be exposed to virtually whatever I want from around the world. I can Google a certain culture from somewhere around the globe, and a visual will pop up immediately. I can then wikipedia it, and learn all about my new favorite painting or cartoon. The only problem with this greater connectivity is that it can get pretty confusing pretty fast. With people around the world all being exposed to visuals from different cultures around the world, a lot can get lost in translation. Just think back to those Mac ads we saw in class on Wednesday. So how people navigate and cope in this new global atmosphere will be interesting. Will many niches develop? Will one global culture emerge? Who know…I certainly don’t.

Advertising = Identity

The Manufacturing of Desire: I am What I Buy

This chapter was terrific, and has motivated me to try to take an advertising class while I am here at USC. I find this topic to be very fascinating, and love the way Sturken and Cartwright dealt with the issue.
They began by talking about the way advertising no longer sells the products themselves, but the images and characteristics associated with them. This has caused us consumers to attach meaning to the products based on the way they are depicted in the ads. I remember when I was out buying a watch as a little kid, I wasn’t shopping around for the one that would tell the time the best or that was easiest to read. I wanted a Rolex or Omega; not because it was expensive, but because it was “The James Bond Watch.” The same holds true with BMW a few years ago, and of course, the Aston Martin. People don’t buy these things because of their functional ability. They buy them because they want to be like Secret Agent 007.

This occurs all the time. Products gain meaning by either being attached to a celebrity or depicted in a certain light during their advertisement. As Sturken and Cartwright say, “such advertising images are central to the construction of cultural ideas about lifestyle, self-image, self-improvement, and glamour.” The way products are displayed in ads makes consumers feel like they can buy the product and acquire those characteristics themselves, whether this be the beautiful and carefree attitude of Herbal Essence, or the bad-ass attitude of James Bond. We are supposed to buy these products with the idea that doing so gives us these characteristics. The book describes this by saying that people have come to, “…derive their sense of their place in the world and their self-image…through their purchase and use of commodities which seemed to give meaning to their lives in the absence of the meaning derived from closer-knit community.” More interestingly, we buy products as a way to fit in to certain groups. For instance, I generally shop at Abercrombie and Fitch or J-Crew, while my best friend frequented Hot-Topic and other stores like that. We were best friends around the neighborhood, and hung out with each other all the time, but we belonged to two totally different groups. I was seen as the preppy, by the rules kind of guy, while he was a punk-rock rebel. Because of the clothes we bought, music we listened to, and media we consumed, people made various assumptions about our identities as people. If you saw us both at random, you would never believe that we were best friends because of this. Yet I have more in common with him than anybody else I know. We just happen to buy different things, so we have different identities and belong to different groups.

It’s interesting the way advertisers have played into our identity crisis. They constantly make us feel like we need the latest, greatest newest thing to hit the market to be cool and belong. If we wanted to hang out with the punk rock kids, you needed the latest CD. If you wanted to be with the video-gamers, the latest software, and the jock the latest jersey. Advertisers have made it so that we feel like we need to buy their products to gain membership in various groups we want to belong to because their products will help us develop our identity to fit those standards.

So are ads making us shallow, teaching us to value unimportant things? Probably. Are they the only thing responsible? Probably not. But it certainly does say something about who we are as a society in the way that we are marketed to. Rarely do you see a “buy this product because its good for the world,” advertisement or even a “buy this product because it is the best, cheapest, or safest available.” Instead, it is “buy this product because it will make you X,Y, or Z.”

Ads like this promising to make us things we aren’t are prominent everywhere. Product placement has brought it to a point that sometimes we don’t even notice, like with the Rolex and Aston Martin in James Bond, or Coke drinks on American Idol. We assign labels to products without even realizing it. For instance, Slice orange soda appeared in the TV series “One Tree Hill” frequently, so without even realizing it, consumers have come to liken Slice to One Tree Hill, assigning the same characteristics to the soft drink as they do to the show.

The final point worth mentioning is counter-bricolage; or why I will never be able to buy a normal-quality pair of pants again. Counter-bricolage is essentially the producers and advertisers appropriating the latest subversive teen fad into their own mainstream style. For a while, the thing to do was buy vintage or beat up your clothing. My favorite stores figured that they could sell more clothes if they started making them that way, so now they sell ripped jeans, pants with paint on them, and hats that look like they’ve been through a war. I actually had a hat that I wore for nine consecutive years, and people would constantly ask me if I bought it that way. It was ripped, dirty, and quite nicely broken in; yet the clothing was now coming this way because of advertisers trying to appropriate the latest fad. They are manufacturing vintage clothing…which seems like it shouldn’t work. “Hey, I have a great idea. Let’s make clothes that look like they’re really old and have already been worn by at least eight different people.” Even more outrageous, is that these “distressed” clothes are usually the ones that are most expensive. Why can they get away with this? Because they aren’t selling the products themselves. They are selling the image. If a consumer was out buying jeans for the sake of being covered up and protected from the elements, they certainly wouldn’t want a pair with rips and tears, and paint and holes all over them. But since they aren’t shopping for function, but image, they crave the distressed pair because of the identity that goes along with it. This pair makes them cool, and fit in with the latest crowd. The fact that these jeans can be more expensive than a legitimate well-crafted pair say volumes about our motivation as consumers and what we assign value to. Clearly, the image the clothes portray is more important to us than their actual physical quality.

There is No Escape: Pop Culture is Everywhere and we Have no Choice but to Participate

Postmodernism and Pop Culture

This chapter was full of excellent material that I found quite interesting. I love the fact that Sturken and Cartwright point out that “the concept of the modern has been used over and over again by societies since as long ago as the late fifth century,” to explain that “to be modern is not to be contemporary, but to fit within the framework of modern art movements…” This provides a good definition of what modernism is, because the term is somewhat misleading, as “modern”: is a constantly shifting concept. As time passes, things change, and a new style becomes en vogue, which somewhat of a synonym to modern, yet is not what is meant by the modernist movement.
It was also fascinating to see the factors that have gone in to bringing these cultural forms to fruition. For modernism, it was industrialization, urbanization, and changes in technology that made the style relevant. Technology gave the tools, and industrialization and urbanization provided the audience. The framework responsible for creating the post-modern movement has been the diffusion of technology to the masses, allowing us all to become producers. As the chapter pointed out, we can no longer escape culture, we are all part of it every day.
With this shift in our role, a few interesting patterns emerged, like Sturken and Cartwright refer to as “the copy, pastiche, and institutional critique,” and “addressing the postmodern consumer.” Because of our shifted role and constant participation, content creators in the postmodern world adapted. The book talks about the “twentieth-century world of endless reproduction,” as producers discover things that subjects like and try to recreate them. CSI is the perfect example. There are so many different versions of that show that they ran out of major cities to name it after (see CSI: New York, CSI: Miami, and I think there are a few more with titles that reference something other than the location because they started running out of them.) The storylines and concepts of the original, highly successful CSI have been reworked into different versions so many times, that it is no longer clear which is the original. In order to figure that out, you need to figure out which one happened to air first, but beyond that, there is really no way to tell where it all began or where it will end.
Another thing producers of content have begun to do is recognize us as viewers, addressing us directly via parody or other elements the book defines as metacommunication. This is their way of trying to wink at us and let us in on the joke saying, “we know you know, now we’re all in on it together.” Since they can no longer fool us, they figure they may as well include us, which causes us to lower our guard. Advertisers have been doing this for ages via their use of humor in ads. TV shows have begun to do it now as well. Fox’s “The O.C.” did it quite frequently by having the main characters watch “The Valley,” a teen fad soap/drama that followed the same Dawson’s Creek formula as “The O.C.” The characters would constantly make jabs at “The Valley,” as a way of making fun of their own show, showing that it didn’t take itself too seriously, so viewers shouldn’t either. Instead, it was all in the name of good fun and entertaining the viewers. Unlike modernists that tried to distance viewers from the content, postmodernists have tried to bring viewers into the fold.
This has led to the absolute profusion of pop culture into our daily lives. In International Relations the week before spring break Warren Christopher came in to guest lecture. When I was calling back home to tell my family about the experience, my little brother chimed in and said, “Hey, I know that name. He’s the reason there’s no more war.” My brother is an avid Simpsons fan, and has Tivo-ed just about every episode that has ever aired. Apparently, in one episode, the bartender, Moe, mentions Warren Christopher in that context. So my younger brother knows about a major political figure because of a Simpsons reference, which shaped the way he thinks about him. He isn’t Warren Christopher the Secretary of State, or Warren Christopher the political figure…he’s Warren Christopher, the guy Moe the bartender said is responsible for ending war.
HESS has sort of done the same thing. It can no longer be Christmas without the unveiling of a new Hess truck, and the company knows this. That is why their little jingle includes the “time of year” line. Even more remarkable is the way Hess trucks have become engrained in our culture, copied and remade multiple times over, turned into icons…yet what they really are are marketing tools for a gas station. Most people I know are more familiar with Hess as a truck than Hess as a gas station, and I actually had no idea there were Hess stations until I was probably in the 5th grade. The toy truck became a fixture of our culture and our daily lives, at least annually around Christmas time, showing the intense interaction between art, commerce, and advertising characteristic of the postmodern world.

Media and the Public Sphere

Agenda setters: So many streams of information nowadays that its hard to avoid a flood.

Since I’m exposed to mass media everyday, I could go about a million different ways with this blog, but I’ll try to stick to just one: the way people have organized around the various media in what Sturken and Cartwright refer to as “public spheres.”
In the Journalism and Communication classes I took last semester, we discussed the traditional theory of the media as “agenda-setters”, being responsible for setting the agenda and determining what people talk and care about that day. Just think about it. What kinds of conversations typically go on around the water-cooler? Whatever the headline of the day is, which is usually determined by newspapers or whatever the big story was on the evening news the night before. There’s also the talk about the developing prime-time storylines, what’s happening on Grey’s Anatomy, and of course, who was voted off American Idol. The media helps people figure out what they should care about, and helps them determine what they need to know if they want to carry out a conversation.

This was a lot less confusing a few decades ago, when there were much fewer sources of information to choose from. Everybody was pretty much exposed to the same stream of information, and had at least a similar media source setting their agenda. Now with all the different radio stations, TV networks, and most importantly the internet, there is a far slimmer chance that you are tapped into the same stream of information as the other people you might run in to that day. This makes it a bit harder to carry out a “water-cooler” conversation with that person. How do you know what to care about if it seems like all these different sources care about different things? The situation gets much more difficult. It pretty much depends on who you want to talk to, or which “sphere” you want to engage in.

The best example I can think of to illustrate or explain this comes from my experience with sports talk. Here at USC I’m involved with the TV station and sports radio department, yet I’ve found it incredibly difficult to figure out exactly what is that I should care about if I want to carry on an informed conversation with these guys. I don’t know which sports they like or teams they care about, and I’m not sure what media sources they are tapped in to, so I’m not sure what it is that I need to know if I want to be a member of their “sphere.”

Back in Connecticut, I knew exactly what I needed to know because I listened to New York sports talk radio on a daily basis. Here I feel like I am part of a group, not unlike the national audience Sturken and Cartwright describe, only on a much smaller scale. I am surrounded by newspapers, radio, and TV all with the same information about the major sports in the region. I know which teams are doing well, which sports I should care about, and what storylines I need to know to consider myself an informed fan and adequate member of the “NY sports sphere.” The talking heads on TV, the radio, and even in print all help me figure out what is important. In New York, I know which shows are on when, which stations cover which teams, and which columns appear on which days. It adds structure to my life, and makes me feel like I am part of a larger unit or community. Here in LA, I know none of that, and the fact that the students at USC come from all over the nation, even the globe, only complicates things further. For all I know, the people I want to talk to couldn’t care less about the California teams, instead favoring their own hometown heroes. With such a diverse group of students, everybody is sort of coming from a different sphere.

Where you live also determines which sports get the most media coverage, as different areas have teams that are better in different sports. For instance, in Canada, it’s hockey. You probably don’t get a lot of basketball talk, but if you live in Canada, you better know your hockey. It’s a similar situation in New York. While you may not get the biggest soccer fans in the world, when baseball season rolls around its nothing but Mets and Yankees. Since New York has some of the best baseball teams around in the Mets and Yankees, the media features them, while paying less attention to the struggling teams in the region. In California, the baseball teams might not be as good, but basketball sure is, so the Lakers and the Clippers get a lot of coverage. If you live in New York, you’re going to get baseball. If you live in LA, you better know your basketball. Different regions have different “public spheres” where they care more or less about specific sports based on how their teams are doing in them.

The different media create different communities around their respective sports as well. Going back to my New York sports radio example, when I’m back home I feel like I’m part of that community. I know the big names of the players on the teams, I feel like I know the guys talking on the radio, and of course you even get the “regulars” like Vinny from The Bronx and Leo from Brooklyn that call in every day. I’ve actually heard some broadcasters get worried when a frequent caller doesn’t call by a specific time, thinking that something bad might have happened to them. Primarily these guys talk about the sports and teams that they live and die with, but they also talk about their families, lives, and pretty much just about everything. They have organized a public sphere around a sport, and beyond that a specific media, the radio; building a sort of sports family.

In different states, you get entirely different radio ensembles. Each station has a different set of shows, different frequent callers, and essentially, different “families.” They talk about different things, yet no matter what state you go to, it’s still serving that specific purpose: creating a public sphere for sports fans to organize around.

So back to my initial question: how do you know what it is you need to know? Well that depends on the different group you want to interact with, or “sphere” you want to be part of. As awkward as it might seem, the best way to figure out what people care about and are interested in is to ask them what newspapers they read or media they consume. For instance, I asked the guys at the radio station what sports website was their favorite. They said ESPN, so now I read that frequently, and I know what I need to know to be part of their sphere.

The problem comes when you aren’t quite sure what “sphere” the particular people you want to talk to are part of. In my international relations class, one of the things we do is go over current events for the first fifteen minutes of class. The professor asks us what has happened in the week that passed since our last class, and we get graded based on our participation in the discussion. Now the world is a pretty big place, so how in the hell do you figure out what you need to know to carry out a discussion about what went on in the world in a given week? Sure, you check the major headlines, and sometimes you get lucky; there is one story that dominates the day and is being covered everywhere. But other times it is not as clear cut. Different newspapers talk about different things, different stations feature different stories. Since there are so many different media options out there and the class is so diverse, it is almost impossible to predict what we are going to talk about that day, so it is quite hard to make sure that you are informed enough to discuss the topics that will dominate that first fifteen minutes.

So with so many sources of information at our fingertips, what do we do? Well, the internet has presented me with an enormous difficulty. Do I go out and buy a newspaper, knowing that by the time I am done reading it, essentially everything I read has changed? Or do I turn to the internet, where I can get up to the minute content, yet the stories have no background or depth? Do I want to know what happened the minute it happens? Or do I want to know the importance behind it? In an ideal world, you could get both. But that’s just simply not the case. As a college student, I only have so much time to read about what is going on in the world, so I need to be selective with the stories I choose. Do I spend the time reading the story just published, knowing that it is still a developing story? Or do I wait until tomorrow when the story’s impact and implications have been sorted out? Should I read everything the second it is published, or wait for things to develop further? But by the time the final story is published and all the developments are over with, there is a new hot breaking story that I need to know about. It is quite difficult to figure out what to pay attention to, and makes choosing which stories to read and follow extraordinarily difficult, especially when you start asking questions such as these.

I find the internet to be both a blessing and a curse. It gives me up-to-the-minute information, yet there is so much of it that it is impossible to go through. So what do you do? One option is to simply read everything. Read the full length-feature that talks about everything the story means, and the late-breaking headline on the new and developing story. The other, less admirable option is to simply resort to apathy. There is too much going on too quickly to even begin to know what to care about or figure out what is important. Walter Lippmann said that “it was not possible for average citizens to keep abreast of political issues and events and give them due consideration given the chaotic pace of industrial society,” and that was in the 1920s. I think he would have an aneurysm if he saw the state of things now. The world-wide-web is so expansive and confusing that it is easy to spend the entire time you have devoted to reading the news simply clicking and clicking, trying to figure out just what the hell is important enough to take the time reading.

I’d be interested to hear what newspapers, websites, magazines, TV shows, radio stations, etc. everybody in the class watches, reads, and listens to. I think it is very interesting to see the variety of sub-spheres people belong to, and it is always fun to find out that you are a member of the same sphere of somebody else unknowingly. It feels like you instantly have a common bond and know that person so much better simply because you watch the same TV show or listen to the same sports radio show. You feel like you’ve been through the same things as that person and had a similar experience because of this shared source of media. Amazing that something thought to be cold and detached (technology) can actually strengthen the community and help people forge strong, familial relationships through public spheres.

Side Note: How the Media Helped me Overcome Homesickness

For the first few weeks at USC, I was incredibly homesick, and didn’t really know what to do. When I was home for Thanksgiving, I turned on the radio while driving around in my car, and realized just how badly I missed listening to NY sports talk radio. I’m not one of the “frequent callers” or any type of radio freak by any means, but it is something that I did every day before coming out here. I would listen to WFAN and 1050 ESPN radio on the way to and from school or to and from work every day. Here at USC I couldn’t do that since A) I don’t drive b) I don’t have a radio and C) Even if I did, it’s not New York. But when I was home for Thanksgiving I realized that this was something that meant a lot to me, so I had to find a way to stay connected to that sphere. Luckily, I found a solution: Podcasts! ESPN radio and iTunes both offer podcasts of all the New York shows, which I listen to while I’m at the gym or walking around, and it really has made a world of difference. Before I started listening to these podcasts, I felt somewhat disconnected and almost isolated. Now I feel much more grounded, like I have been able to tap back into that stream of information and remain a member of that NY Sports radio sphere, even though I am across the country.

My Experience Gaming and (Virtual Reality....Can virtual be Reality?)

Breaking All The Rules: My Brother and I as Nonconformist Gamers

Reading the “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” got me back to thinking about the videogames I used to play back home with my younger brother, and just how angry the people that designed them would probably be if they ever saw the way we played them. I’m just about certain that I have never actually “finished” a video-game or completed one of their stories; in fact I rarely, if ever, play games the way they are supposed to be played to go along the narrative the designers laid out.
Whenever my brother and I played Grand Theft Auto Three, we would just drive around and blow things up, seeing who could evade the police the longest. The point of the game was actually to make money and complete different missions presented by characters in the game, but we never did those. We didn’t find those particularly fun or interesting, so we made our own rules and constructed our own narrative. We appropriated the virtual world that the creators of GTA 3 designed for us, and made up our own way of playing in that virtual space, completely ignoring the complex storylines and intriguing narrative the designers included.
My favorite type of video games are the ones that leave you free to do what you want, like the multiplayer levels in the old James Bond games, for instance. I found it much more fun when my friends and I were free to come up with our own way of playing the games.
It’s interesting, because in a sense, what we are doing by making our own rules and designing our own type of game play is essentially what kids across the world have been doing for ages. The only difference is they normally did it outdoors. The Calvin and Hobbes clips we saw in lecture just made me think of this; but kids have always taken old games, made up new rules, and essentially created their own game or style of play. Normally it is with more “traditional” things, like when Calvin and Hobbes come up with new ball games. Everybody knows the real rules of football or baseball, yet that didn’t satisfy Calvin and Hobbes, so they adopted the basic system, recreated the rules, and made their own type of game-play. People have done it in their backyards forever. Just think of any time you aren’t tagged “It” because you were standing in the no-tag-backs-yet-only-for-me zone.
The way my brother and I played our video games was the same thing, only in a different space that hasn’t existed quite as long. We are remaking the rules of games in a virtual space on the television. It’s interesting to see the way our tendencies have transferred. We are doing the same thing in the game world that we do in reality: creating our own rules and making our own games. It is almost frightening to pair the two, thinking about a classic game of capture the flag transposed with videogaming. It shows just how far we have come in terms of technology. It has diffused around the globe, with video game spaces becoming just as frequent as backyards; and kids are learning to navigate them both in the same way they always have- by making their own narratives.
I just hope that these video games and other virtual environments don’t make the classic space for your own narration extinct: the cardboard box. Kids aren’t going to need the cardboard box to play rocketship if they have videogames that can make them appear on the screen. It will be interesting to see the way things turn out as technology becomes more widespread and more and more people turn away from reality. Perhaps traditional things like playing outside, making up imaginary stories in cardboard boxes, and building forts will go to the wayside as technology enables us to play games where we can create our own narratives, play in ways not physically possible, and build entire civilizations. How will kids learn to navigate this new virtual space? Will they transpose the same tendencies they have in reality to these new games and devices? It seems like that’s what my brother and I did.

It's interesting to see what the creation of this new virtual space has made possible. Will we just project our real-life tendencies onto the screen, or will we begin to create new ways of interacting in and with this new environment? Also, what will happen as images and experiences in these games on the screen begin to become "more realistic" than reality? After all, watching an IMAX film of shark attacks is much more exciting than just going and watching sharks swim in tanks, even if the sharks in the film aren't real....right? I know typical essays, responses, and blogs probably aren't supposed to be so question-based, but that is pretty much all I can do at this point. I know this blog poses more questions than answers, but that is my response to this new virtual space at this point; a plethora of questions that I don't think I can answer myself, or can be answered just yet for that matter. Maybe they never will be able to be fully answered, as new spaces are constantly being created and "virtual visuals" just keep getting closer and closer to the real. I've actually heard people say that the images on the screen looked more realistic than the real thing....so I'd like to end with that, because it is something that has been knawing away at me since I heard it. What does it mean when the virtual has become more realistic than the real? Is that possible? I'd love to hear what everybody thinks, so feel free to post comments answering the many, many questions brought up in the blog. After all, it is for us to decide how we navigate this new space that we have been given. This is going to the the world we live in. We get to make the rules and figure out how to interact in it...so let's work together to figure out just what that should be.

If it Can be Done, It Will Be Done...Why you can get the view of a NASCAR driver without ever leaving your living room

NASCAR, which many consider a fairly simple sport, if one at all (go fast, turn left, repeat) is ahead of the learning curve when it comes to media coverage and giving their audience advanced options for viewing their races.
Scanning the headlines this weekend, I saw an article titled "As Daytona arrives, TV networks give viewers more options." I had been hearing buzz about the way NASCAR was changing the coverage of its races to make them more exciting and appealing to viewers, but had pretty much ignored it because I am one of those still unconvinced of NASCAR's validity as a sport. I don't even like being a passenger in a car...why in the world would I want to watch somebody else driving on TV? Personally, I think if you watch an entire NASCAR race you either a) are amused way too easily as seen by the fact that cars making left turns all day keeps you excited, or b) are simply waiting for a nice firey crash.
Anyway, I kept reading this particular article because of the sentence that followed the headline. "Future generations might be amazed that people used to have to attend NASCAR races to see the action in three dimensions. If so, historians might look back to this weekend as the turning point." Now this just lends itself to a blog entry the very week our reading was on visual technology changing the way viewers see things. Apparently, a new technology has been developed that will allow viewers to see the cars in a new type of 3-D coverage, allowing them to see things they have never seen before. The way it works is through a new system that collects various information about the car's speed, position, etc. via satellite, and then uses it to create what Fox Network called, "a camera shot that basically floats-like in a video game-so users can choose between three virtual views."
I'm not sure which amazes me more; the fact that we now have the technology to do something like this, or the fact that we are using this technology to do something like this for a sport like NASCAR. I guess that proves the famous maxim that if it can be done, it will be done. Either way, it represents a significant moment in that it presents an entirely new way to watch a sporting event, giving the viewer much more control over what they see. Technology has enabled viewers to basically attend an event without ever leaving their homes. Advances in visual technology have changed the ways these races will be watched, allowing viewers to not only see more, but choose what they see.
The technology available has also been adapted to suit NASCAR culture in an interesting way. Apparently NASCAR fans are famous for their loyalty to specific drivers, so various networks have taken advantage of the new technology, and developed driver-specific coverage that allows viewers to become way too involved with their favorite drivers. "ESPN will use 60-75 cameras..Each driver's channel will include two announcers — one in a TV production truck and one in the driver's pit — and will let viewers flip among such shots as a driver's in-car camera or a camera focused on his crew chief." Networks have made use of the new media options to basically allow fans to feel like they are sitting right next to the driver, seeing what they see and hearing what they hear.
This has drastic implications for the way sports are viewed. The new technology has made coverage much more driver-centric, and has given fans many more options. It has also made the entire experience of viewing a race seem much more "real." It's amazing to think that you used to actually have to go to a racetrack to see these things. Now you probably get a more complete or detailed experience by staying at home and watching on your couch.

Technology Changing the Way we See...and Not Just Through Corrective Eye Surgery

Reproduction and Visual Technologies…where in the world to begin. I have lots to say about this topic, so I apologize in advance if the blog seems disjointed or rambling.

First, I would like to thank Sturken and Cartwright for giving me a profound new understanding or appreciation for Modernist art styles like Impressionism and Cubism. Previously, I dismissed them as strange paintings done by somebody either half-drunk or severely disoriented. Well, that’s a bit extreme. I thought that the paintings did have value, but I just couldn’t see it. Now I do. While they may not look like the more “realistic” perspective pieces that accurately depict an image, they depict the act of looking. As Practices of Looking says, Monet used light and water in his Impressionist style to show the complexity of vision, which I think is a much harder task than simply trying to paint something the way it looks. In my mind, I see one representative of the end result, while the other focuses more on the process. Perspective pieces focus on what we say, but the modern abstract pieces focus on how we see.
It’s interesting that many people consider the perspective pieces more valid or true to the real world, despite the fact that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. These pieces completely lack and recognition of just how complex the looking process is, and disregard how our vision works.
More recently, people have come to recognize or assume that photographs are more realistic or truthful representations of the world than any painting or drawing would be. For some reason, they are more confident in digital photography because they are more confident in computers. They probably feel that the computer remove a certain element of human fallibility. What they forget is that there is a human behind the camera or computer operating it, many times with more control and opportunity to manipulate the image. I have a very limited artistic ability, placing several constraints on anything I might try to draw or paint. But with a camera and computer at my disposal, I can make anything look exactly the way I want it. People have created images like sharks jumping out of the water at helicopters, and they have some validity because they appear to be photographs. It is much easier for us to dismiss paintings as representing fiction, even if they may happen to represent real events. Technology may make us able to make images that look more valid, and it may seem like it allows us to more accurately depict reality, but really, it has opened the doors and increased our ability to manipulate images, only making fiction look more real.
Technology has also led to the reproduction of images, and Sturken and Cartwright talk about the implications this has for images as political tools. After reading this chapter, I came across an interest article in The Economist titled “Rebranding Canada…Tenacious, smelly- and uncool.” After double-checking to make sure I was still reading The Economist, and not The Onion, I read on. The article was about Stephen Harper, the country’s prime minister, trying to decide which animal best captured the national image. Apparently, after much deliberation, Harper decided that “…the national image was best captured by the wolverine, a sort of weasel.” In making his decision, he said that he wanted an animal that accurately depicted all that is Canadian. The wolverine shows that “Canada is no mouse beside the American elephant, but a wolverine next to a grizzly bear. We may be smaller but we’re no less fierce about protecting our territory…”
The article went on to describe Harper’s political agenda, and then discussed other animals that serve as images for different countries, like the American bald eagle or the Russian bear. It was interesting to read the way Harper was encoding the image of the animal with the traits that he believes to be Canadian. Personally, when I think Canada, I think moose or hockey, but maybe that’s just me. (Note to self: pitch Moose holding hockey stick to prime minister Harper as Canada’s new national animal). I had never really thought about the process of selecting an animal to convey the image of a nation, and it is amazing to think that Canada is now going to reproduce this image of the wolverine to sell the public on just what it means to be Canadian.
So aside from enabling nations like Canada to try to cast their image through an animal, what else has technology enabled us to do? Well, as Practices of Looking says, “the question of artistic ownership becomes increasingly complex in digital media, which make accessible to the average consumer many of the processes of reproduction.” Essentially, technology has made it so we have all become producers. In the past, there was one painter and many viewers, or one producer and many consumers. Now we are all both. Sure, there remain a select few that get paid the big bucks for what they do, i.e. Lucas and Spielberg, but with the advent of the digital camcorder and simple computer editing software, we can all do it. Visual technology has made it so anybody that wants to can produce, for better or worse. This has created an environment where creativity can flourish.
Some may argue that this technology has mainly resulted in reproduction, and hence, creativity dying off as people are just copying other people or appropriating somebody else’s ideas. That is not necessarily true, as many times the reproductions are far more creative than anything entirely “original” would be. Take “mashups” for instance. I am not a big fan of rap music, but there is this certain song that combines Jimi Hendrix’ Voodoo Child with Jay-Z that is simply amazing…far better than any supposedly “original” entirely redundant rap song with the same kind of beat about the same kind of things would be. New technology is stimulating creativity, not hampering it. It is just manifesting itself in new ways, like compilations and altered reproductions. http://http://www.timgmusic.co.uk/ (There's a link to the site where you can check out a bunch of different mashups in the "Streaming Bootleg" section. Enjoy.)

Power Flows Both Ways

Times have changed, power has shifted hands.

In “Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge,” Cartwright and Sturken discuss the idea of spectatorship and the gaze, and describe the relationships of power involved. Traditionally, male spectators hold power over the female images they gaze at. Cartwright and Sturken do mention that the concept of the gaze has changed greatly, as women are stepping behind the camera and taking on positions of power. They also mention the different ways subjects can confront or avoid the gaze to take some of the power away from the spectator. What the authors did not bring up, however, is that maybe sometimes the relationship of power between spectator and subject isn’t what it appears to be. Many times, today’s relationships of power between the spectator and subject does not fit the traditional model at all.
Traditionally, it is thought that it is the male spectator gazing at the female subject that holds the power, or more recently the female spectator gazing at the male subject. Neither of these formulas takes into account the possibility that it is the subject, not the spectator, that really has control in the relationship. Think about it. Who is really the dominant one in this relationship: the viewers that flock to gaze at various star subjects, or the celebrity subjects that quite literally command our attention? I think it is them in control, not us. They command our attention and direct our gaze…we are simply passive viewers anxiously awaiting what ever image or video they churn out. While it may appear that the man is in a dominant position when he is staring at a picture of Paris Hilton, it is really quite the opposite. She is the one that has made the man stop in his step to look at whatever poster or ad campaign she is part of now. He had to buy the magazine or find the picture. All she had to do was sit there; and she is the one getting paid.
The subjects have turned the table on spectators to a large degree. Just think about all the crap we watch on TV. Who is really in the submissive role in that relationship; the no-talent B-lister appearing on some new reality show, or the viewer that puts time aside every night to watch devotedly? While viewers do get to choose what they watch, and may feel like they have the upper hand on the cast they watch fighting on TV, many times those actors or nobodies are laughing all the way to the bank. Sure, they may be getting humiliated on national TV, and viewers may feel superior as they get to peek in on these people’s lives, but look a bit closer at what is really going on. Viewers are taking time out of their lives to watch what Nancy Nobody or Loser Larry will do next. The subjects are humiliating the viewers by constantly drawing their gaze with things not really worth a modicum of their attention. Viewers of reality TV shows spend time gazing at what these subjects are doing instead of being invested in their own lives.
This change in the dynamic of power between spectator and subject has also been accompanied by a change in who spectators and subjects are. Traditionally, the government and people of authority have been spectators, while we citizens are the subjects being gazed at. This relationship of power was discussed in Michel Foucault’s “Panopticon,” which described the effective the omnipresent gaze of authorities in power is in disciplining populations and keeping people in line. This goes for prisons, hospitals, and even schools. We are subjects in this Panopticism every day. Just look at the signs in many of our classrooms; “Class may be videotaped.” Is it or isn’t it? We have no idea if anybody is actually really watching or filming the class, yet many times this sign alone is enough to keep students from cheating or vandalizing the classroom.
The flow of power in this Panopticism has been somewhat reversed recently with as the traditional occupants who occupy the roles of spectator and subject have changed. Technology has made us all spectators. As digital camcorders have become more affordable, we have all become directors. More importantly, with the advent of the video phone, we can all be spectators recording our subjects at any given time. And these subjects aren’t just our fellow students or citizens; they are people in positions of authority as well. Now everybody has to tiptoe around, not knowing if they are on or off camera. Video phones have enabled us to hold those in power in check in the same way they do to us: by having them feel that there is always the possibility that we may be looking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs
It was because of the video phone that we know what happened during Saddam Hussein’s botched hanging. This same technology has been responsible for a plethora of evidence in police brutality cases, and more locally, the UCLA taser case. Slowly, authorities are realizing that they are going to have to be more careful in upholding their responsibilities and acting appropriately because there is always the chance that somebody is watching, waiting to capture any sort of travesty on their video phone to quickly be posted on YouTube. They now must realize that citizens are looking back. Panopticism isn’t just one way any more. It flows both ways ast hose that are spectators and those that are subjects have changed.

Leaflet Explanation

My leaflet is going to be dropped on USC football fans at the Coliseum. The message I want to convey is that while they appear in droves to support the football team, which has always been great, they are completely disregarding the basketball team, which is on the rise.
To get this message across, I put a picture of Quarterback John-David Booty, a packed Coliseum, and football fans on one side to show the support the football team gets, with O.J. Mayo (the number one recruit in the nation) and an empty Galen Center on the other to highlight the lack of support the basketball team gets. I then inserted text to make the message abundantly clear: support the basketball team.
I made cards out of the pictures of the players to enhance the fact that they are star athletes, and chose cardinal and gold, which are USC’s colors, because they are symbols of the teams. The indices are the pictures of the stadiums and the fans, or lack thereof, as they prove who was and wasn’t there. The pictures of the players are also indices, and the fact that Mayo is wearing a Trojans jersey proves that he has been recruited by USC. The players also function as icons of their respective teams, as they are the stars that represent the squad. I also included leather from a football in Booty’s card and the hardwood floor of a basketball court in Mayo’s card as icons to make it clear what sport each of them plays.

Studium/ Punctum Strategies

When I started the studium/punctum assignment with the image of the woman holding the baby, the first thing that came to mind was, “where are her kids?” To highlight these racial and class elements of the image, I pasted in another image from the Robert Frank series of black children riding in a car. The image of the black children in the car is a stark contrast to the white baby, who is quite literally being babied by his black nanny. The black boys in the car seem to be unruly and unhappy, suggesting a sort of social chaos.
While the two are clearly different images, by merging them together it gets the viewer thinking about the social dynamic. Perhaps the black children would not be so unruly if they were receiving the same treatment as the white baby, but that white baby is the very reason they are not receiving that attention. The black woman, potentially their mother, has to look after the white child, so she doesn’t have time for them.
In addition, the children in the car are all looking away from the woman holding the baby, showing that the two are living in completely different worlds. The way one of the children in the car sticks up in-between the woman and the baby’s face strengthens this sentiment. It is clear that this image is a composite of two separate images, but they seem to fit together perfectly to relay the racial and social message that I got from the image.

When Decoding Goes Terribly Awry

Lost in Translation

I’m not sure if I should be laughing or crying about this http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1254327.php/Aqua_Teen_Hunger_Force_stunt_brings_Boston_to_a_halt story I heard in the news today, but either was it illustrates Cartwright and Sturken’s idea of viewers making meaning beautifully. Essentially what happened is a woman in Boston saw something that she believed to be a bomb, and called the police to report a terrorist threat. What she failed to realize was that her “bomb” was really just one of the pieces of electronic art figures that Turner Broadcasting put around the city as part of a marketing campaign for their show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” This panicked phone call shut down the city of Boston for hours, created a widespread panic, and wound up costing thousands of dollars.

So why did this happen? I mean how in the world is an electronic sign of one of the characters on Aqua Teen Hunger Force in any way menacing? Well, it all comes down to the viewer’s interpretation. As Practices of Looking says, the “factors that impact meaning…include age, class, gender, and regional and cultural identity…political and social events in their respective worlds…” This provides insight into at least two aspects of why this entire situation occurred.
First, the woman that reported the threat was a middle-aged woman on her way to work…probably not a regular viewer of the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” program. Because of her age, class, identity, and experience she has a certain set of knowledge that she uses when decoding images and trying to decipher their meaning. In this case, the character depicted was not in her repertoire. Instead, she saw the wire and lighting as something that presented the potential of being a bomb. The signs had been up in various cities throughout the nation for days, so others walked right past them fearless. They were either oblivious to the facts the signs were there or happened to be familiar with the characters the signs were representing. In either case, what the image meant to the viewer was significantly influenced by their background.

Now, the second part of the Practices of Looking explanation indicates why the woman and all the other panicked citizens of Boston believed that what they saw was a bomb. Their interpretation of the image was based on the “political and social events in their respective worlds,” which at this point in time, is dominated by the “war on terror.” Because of this pervasive fear of terrorism, any unknown mechanical object with wiring was assumed to be a deadly weapon designed to be used in some grand terrorist scheme. It is this same attitude that allowed the fear and confusion to spread as rapidly and easily as it did. In our culture, where the threat of terrorism is constantly looming in the back of our minds, our interpretation is largely shaped by this fear.

This entire situation is terribly unfortunate for Turner Broadcasting and the advertising agency behind the campaign. I’m pretty sure terrorist threat wasn’t the message they were trying to convey, which highlights Sturken and Cartwright’s “Producers’ intended meanings,” quite well. They were aiming for humorous ad campaign designed to promote their show. Instead they got “terrorist threat.”

Sadly, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Producers failing to convey their intended meaning to the audience got Paramount Studios in trouble this spring when they placed MP3 players in newspaper stands to play the Mission Impossible theme song in anticipation of the release of Mission Impossible: III. A customer purchasing the LA Times thought the device looked like a bomb, so they called the police, who proceeded to neutralize the threat by blowing the stand up.

Why can this same sort of thing happen twice in such a limited time? Because of the way we have come to make meaning of things. Had this been ten years ago, the people that didn’t understand the images would probably have just kept walking, thinking they were some silly something or other. But after September 11th, anything unknown and electronic has immediately become a dangerous device. This really highlights the way the specific time, place, a current events influences the way we make meaning.

Now, on to the question that everybody is asking: how should Turner Broadcasting and those responsible for the ads be punished (if at all)? One interesting article said that they shouldn’t be reprimanded in any way. They believe that it is us, the viewer that needs punishment because of our paranoia and gullibility. All the advertisers that produced the Aqua Teen Hunger Force images were trying to do was increase the popularity of their show. They were going for a laugh, not a scare. It was us, the misguided viewer of the image that was responsible for the panic that ensued. That is a very interesting way to look at the whole situation. After all, is it their fault the meaning they wanted to convey was lost upon the viewer that had never seen the character before? If it is the viewers that make the meaning, then it was the viewer that created the scare, not the company.

Making Meaning Part 2

I was channel surfing this morning and inadvertently stopped on Fox News just as they began a story on the arrest of a Russian man caught trying to sell highly enriched uranium in Georgia during a string operation. During the broadcast they ran footage from one of TV show “24”’s most recent episodes, in which a nuclear bomb went of in Los Angeles. They aired this footage and then cut to a picture of Jack Bauer as they described the real-life nuclear threat posed by this potential uranium sale. At first I didn’t know what to think. I was a bit confused over whether they had gone to commercial or the story was real, although I quickly caught on to what the network was doing: using a cheap entertainment ploy to garner interest.
It sickens me that a news channel believes that it is appropriate to mix footage from entertainment programs with real-life news broadcasts. I am unaware of when it became acceptable to make comparisons between the threats posed on “24” and those in real life, and it speaks volumes of the quality of the Fox News broadcast.
This connects quite well to the first chapter of Practices of Looking, is it pertains to how different viewers make meaning from images. Since I was watching the news, I expected what I was seeing to be reality. Instead of the informative images based in reality that I was expecting, I got fictional shots from a television series I happen to be a big fan of. Now, had I not been an avid viewer of “24,” would those images have affected me differently? Maybe somebody that doesn’t watch “24” would have panicked, thinking a nuclear attack had really just transpired, since they were watching the news and expecting the stories and visuals to be accurate and informative.
This mixing of Jack Bauer into the broadcast says a lot about the blur television has created between entertainment and the news. This was a technique used to try and make the news more interesting, hoping to draw in fans of “24,” to the story. It was sensationalization of a serious story, which seems to be all too typical in today’s news. It also shows that we have come to see fictional TV series like “24,” as serious, perhaps even accurate, reflections of the world around us. We are going to be a very confused crowd as the lines between news and entertainment, fiction and reality continue to blur like this, as television and the news seem to be holding themselves to lower and lower standards. People will need to begin to shift the way in which they treat visuals and make meaning from images, as sources no longer hold on to their traditional roles. It is amazing to think that many of the things that come almost second-nature to us, like treating a news broadcast as credible, are rapidly eroding. It is going to be much harder to decode images in the future as sources multiply and leave their traditional functions. It's happened before, but can it happen again, with pictures and TV?

Making Meaning

After reading the introduction to Practices of Looking, I am quite excited about this semester, and look forward to dealing with the material outlined in the author’s chapter guide. I’m particularly interested in getting to Chapter 6, dealing with advertising images and how companies use different strategies to add meaning to their products with them. That is probably why the section in Chapter 1 dealing with how we negotiate the meaning of images was what interested me most in this week’s reading.
The section detailed how viewers interpret images and make meanings with them, describing the way we use “codes” adopted by society to understand them. While I was at least somewhat aware that different people look at images differently and draw different meaning from them based on their individual experience, I had no idea how profound or remarkable those differences could be.
The Benetton clothing company ad was particularly powerful in showing the way interpretations can change drastically over time. Somebody looking at the picture in the seventies might see civil unrest, but nowadays the first thing somebody would think of is terrorism. It is amazing how much the meaning of a car on fire can change over thirty years based on the circumstances the viewer is used to in everyday life. It was also brilliant of the Benetton company to choose such a basic image open to multiple interpretations like that.
I wonder if they did that on purpose, knowing that an image of a car on fire would still be relevant, albeit for different reasons, to an audience all these years later. It is amazing how the image can adapt like that, having its meaning change with the times. It doesn’t really get pinned down until you start searching for details in the photograph and begin to determine some sort of timeframe.
The longevity of the Marlboro man as a sign of masculinity was just as impressive, although for different reasons. This shows the staying power certain symbols or signs can have. It would be interesting to see how people would react to the ads if they were completely unfamiliar with the cowboy symbol. It must be pretty confusing to some people unfamiliar with our sign systems when they watch TV or look at magazines with advertising that utilize our systems of code. Now that I think about it, I wonder how many ads I don’t really understand or think are stupid simply because I am not familiar with the signs they are employing. I guess that is the job of a good advertising executive; know your target market and the kinds of symbols or signs that resonate highly with them and that they would be most likely to understand.
The Most Confusing Ad on Television
That pink-haired, animated superspy is selling what?
By Seth StevensonPosted Monday, Nov. 13, 2006, at 7:27 AM ET
"The Spot: A cartoon man and woman are players in some sort of futuristic football game. They wear spacesuits and helmets. Their opponents are large, menacing robots. One of the robots shoots snow out of his chest, coating the field in big white drifts. The cartoon woman—who has pink hair—runs with the football, scores a touchdown, and then topples one of the robots. As all this is happening, the man and the woman are having an ongoing conversation about … something. I never quite catch what it is."