The Production of Culture

The Constitution was a document written “by the people, for the people,” but many people  do not believe that it is actually serving the people as it was intended. We have seen it today in class, cynical comments, eye rolls, and aggravation because what we saw written down did not match the actions we know the government to take. And their argument as to why that is? “The constitution is vague.” “This is how someone interpreted it, so that means their interpretation is 100% spot on with what the founding fathers meant.”

What kills me is that how the hell is some guy born within the 20th century going to know how the founding fathers from the 1700’s meant exactly? Regardless if you could know exactly what they intended when they wrote this document, times have changed since then. The Constitution was written to prevent government from getting too big, yet somehow it failed to do so. We do not live within a society that is “by the people, for the people” anymore. We live in one that is “by rich white men, for rich white men.”

As long as those in power stay in power, and stay wealthy, nothing else seems to matter. They don’t care about the thousands of Americans, men, women, and children, that live below the poverty line and are starving. They care about spending billions on wars over seas to secure oil for profit in the name of terrorism. That money could have been used to feed their own people, hell, even help feed the hungry of several other countries that are stricken with poverty.

I don’t mean to sound so anti-government, but it seems to me at least that when they can help the people, they don’t. Yet when it comes to situations that help their pockets, they go at it full force without a care about the cost…that we the people pay.

I could rant on this for a while, but ultimately, I think the constitution is used when it supports certain arguments, and then at other times (the court ruling for gay marriages) disregarded and ignored.

Attached is a website of people who believe the government should be overthrown, and they use The Constitution for support. Just food for thought.

http://www.overthrowthegovernment.org/ 

Regarding our discussion today on the Constitution, Amendments, etc., I found the video I mentioned about gun violence. Personally, I have not formed an opinion on citizens owning guns and although I thought this video was pretty powerful, it still did not manage to convince me. (But that’s just me).

We have all experienced the feeling of utter despair and agonizing boredom every time we realize we left our headphones at home. How else will we pump ourselves up for the gym or drown out the annoying tourist asking for directions to Grand?

Most of us, if not all have a preference of music which we have carefully downloaded on our phones, iPods, iPads, etc. We replay the same music over and over…and over. Personally, I have a set playlist for the gym, traveling music, cleaning music, etc. More than once I will put this playlist on repeat and I never get bored of it. In this article, Elizabeth Margulis explains the speech-to-sound illusion . It completely changes the way you listen to music and explains why we might tap our foot to a song that we hate. I played the two loops to my mom to see if she would react as I did (somewhat surprised at what the repetition did to my brain). She listened and at the end she told me that she did hear the “so strangely” in the first one as more of a song and in the second demo she already had it stuck in her head so she was expecting it to replay.

That repetitiveness is something we are so accustomed to in music that we just cannot help it. As she explains,  our brains originally focus more on the musicality of the song first rather than the words. How many catchy songs do you know that you actually know all the lyrics to, and not just the chorus?

It is also true that the more you repeat a word, the more likely it seems to lose its meaning. I think that is why people are inventing new slang words all the time. So many people repeat the other word and “wear” it out.

This is a short article I read on Repetition Compulsion.

URL: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/06/29/repetition-compulsion-why-do-we-repeat-the-past/

Here is an excerpt:

“Humans seek comfort in the familiar. Freud called this repetition compulsion, which he famously defined as “the desire to return to an earlier state of things.”

This takes form in simple tasks. Perhaps you watch your favorite movie over and over, or choose the same entrée at your favorite restaurant. More harmful behaviors include repeatedly dating people who might emotionally or physically abuse you. or using drugs when overcome with negative thoughts. Freud was more interested in the harmful behaviors that people kept revisiting, and believed that it was directly linked to what he termed “the death drive,” or the desire to no longer exist” .

“I love WL’s, love ’em to death.  They’re on our side…But WL’s think all the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves.  We don’t believe that.  there’s a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It’s what separates us from roaches”

This is said by Dr. Farmer, the righteous man who represents the suffering of the country Haiti.  And he is majorly correct in his thinking.  America has always played “World Police,” typically the first country to hop in when human rights are being violated.  But sometimes it becomes difficult to see whether the hand that is perpetually interfering, is one that has the best interest of the people it comes to “rescue” in mind.  And that is the Case in “Mountains,” Farmer is skeptical about American intentions, and even  sees it as a possible means of restoring their economy in order to create future business interests.  But the suffering of the average Haitian, even the topic of their suffering, is one left uncharted.

This would make anyone question these intentions.  Even when the soldiers had the opportunity to lock up Juste, the suspected murderer of the young assistant mayor, they released him much ot the disappointment of the people.  Because they did not have enough evidence.  But in a country lacking a functional legal system, constitutional laws were the furthest from any common Haitian’s mind.  Just lock him up would have been their vote.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a country that lacks compassion for the suffering people extend their hand to help.  It becomes a sort of pretend help.  The kind of help that gives you the opportunity to say, “hey at least we tried.”  Shrugging your shoulders, defending the failure of minimal efforts to save anyone from anything.  And so they left, the soldiers, all nine of them come and go, restored the government but left the country in the same shambles as it were found.

Here is the outline from Jeremy’s presentation on coding in case you want to check out some of the resources he described:

Web Development

1. Terms
   1. Languages
   2. Frameworks
   3. Stacks
      1. Databases
      2. Servers
2. Resources
   1. Getting Started
      1. http://teamtreehouse.com/
      2. https://www.codeschool.com/
      3. http://www.codecademy.com/
      4. https://www.udacity.com/
      5. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
   2. Next Steps
      1. http://stackoverflow.com/
      2. https://github.com/
      3. Google a lot
   3. Language-specific
      1. ios
         1. https://developer.apple.com/
      2. android
         1. http://developer.android.com/index.html
      3. javascript
         1. Javascript – The Definitive Guide (Flanagan)
3. Tools
   1. Inspection Tools / Console (Web)
   2. Text Editor
   3. Terminal

I stumbled upon this video, which I thought was fitting to our discussion about our unconscious mind, and the side-discussion on unconscious racism from our last class about Visual Pleasures. This video shows 3 persons undergoing an extensive make-over that changes their skin color, and facial features. Although the video is in French (I think), just watching the end product really shocked me not only because the make-over seemed so realistic but also my perception on these three people changed! Before I watched the video, I made some guesses about the backgrounds and personalities of these three people, but when I saw their “after” look, I felt differently about them!

When you watch the video, try imagining their lives before they undergo the make over, and then do that again in the end. See if you have different perceptions about them. I feel that this goes to show how dependent our perceptions are on visual information.

The Documentary “ShowRunners- The Art of Running a TV Show”, focuses on the Pop Cultural phenomenon created within the TV Series/ Web Series Industry which, in recent years, has brought more fame and recognition to the writers, producers, and developers of TV Shows, also as opposed to Network television. With the success and availability of subscription streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and even Red Box, these television shows have a larger at-home “Theater” market and fan base. These shows are so cinematic, that each episode serves as a scene to a great season-long movie. Some sources say because of the demand of these shows, Some can cost up to $4 million dollars an episode. Series such as “House of cards”, Orange is The New Black” (just under $4 mil.), and “Hemlock Grove”($3.5 million). These TV show creators have become the new Spielbergs and Scoreses only, through weekly episodes. Marketing tools and networks such as Comic-con, and social media create platforms where these Creators can sell themselves as well as their productions to their following audiences. As ratings increase so does the popularity of the ShowRunner. This then poses the question we’ve discussed throughout the course, as to what is considered by society as “high art”. Are Network TV shows and Webisodes high art? Are their “ShowRunners” High Artists? Nowadays, the creators, writers and directors of these TV shows receive just as much of a fan base as the actors within these shows themselves.

The reading “Difficult Men” goes over the history and the evolution that is associated with film production. Brett Martin, the author, talks about the early popular TV shows starting from The Sopranos and how much things have changed since then. For instance TV shows were known to be dominated by men both on and off screen, and when women were given roles to play they were usually being depicted as the love interest. But things have changed significantly and now there are movies and TV shows where men do not hold the main role furthermore there are many producers in Hollywood who are not male. In my opinion this evolution has benefited the film industry and it has started a new creative spark.

A movie that kind of reminds me of the evolution in film is “The Proposal.” This movie tells the story of a movie woman who holds a high position job and how she ends up proposing to a man. This movie definitely shows how far movies have evolved .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFL8b1p1ELY

Video games are an interactive form of art and storytelling. In Tom Bissell’s article Extra Lives, he explores two different ideas of why video games matter from two different perspectives. I was mostly intrigued by his description of Resident Evil. He compared the video game to a horror film, “Great Horror movies are almost always subterranean in effect. They are the ultimate compulsion–you must watch–and they transubstantiate social anxieties more sensed than felt. The sensed rather than the felt, is the essence of the the horror film.” In video games I feel like the gamer experiences the “felt” part of his anxiety. They are directly connected with experience and emotions that make one so addicted. You are completely immersed in the art and visual aspect of the game that draws you in for the next couple hours of your life.

“But I am fairly sure that no game before Resident Evil allowed such violence to be done to specific limbs. It provided gamers with one of the video-game form’s first laboratories of virtual sadism, and I would be lying if I did not admit that it was, in it’s way, exhilarating. (They were zombies, you were doing them favor.)”

Video games take you through a narrative that is completely different from literature and films. You get a create a perfect world of your own and take yourself through a journey of an “extra life.” You get away from your present real life. I remember when I was younger, I would completely lose myself in Mario Cart and Sims2. I would spend hours and hours trying to solve puzzles and win games and create characters who’s lives I could dominate and control for the rest of my day. 8 hours would go by and I wouldn’t even notice. Where did my day go?

For me, the most interesting part of this article was the life logger. I never heard this term before. I find it to be a little extreme to record almost everything that occurs in your life. Although Bell is able to recall everything from years ago, I don’t think he’s able to truly enjoy the moments as they happen because he knows in the back of his mind that he will be able to just replay them on his computer later. It kind of takes away from the “Special” moment.

However, I can also see the positive side to this. In Roy’s experiment, he was able to see his father play with his son all thanks to technology. It just goes to show the more positive benefits.

Even after reading this article, I am not convinced. Having all this information at our fingers is great and has made strides for humankind but it is also overwhelming. Everything piles up and there is no where to put it except in the trash. Honestly, how many people still look at their million vacation photos from 5 years ago? Or how many times do you flip to you child’s first birthday party during the year. We store these memories in our computer because we convince ourselves that it will always be there and we will eventually get around to looking at them again.

I would rather enjoy the moment and try to hold on to the memory as long as I can until my brain decides to replace it with a new one.