Discussion of Last Class

I noticed that a lot of negative images were used in all of our movies. These images did not necessarily portray teenagers badly, but seemed to communicate that teenagers have a pessimistic world view. For example, almost everyone used the jail image, and a few groups used the sepia image of the boy looking contemplative among his CDs. Of the images we picked, there were few overtly positive ones to choose from, so perhaps our videos were a function of these choices. People also seemed to gravitate towards the images about free - and sometimes angry - expression, like the WTO protest, the people jumping up and down in front of the poster (was it of a rock star? a movie star?), and the graffiti image. I have to admit, these are the images I liked best.

I had a great time using I-movie during class. I hope we do more activities like this in the future.

doh!

all hail homer simpson, the man of the decade.

for more discussion, see also:
http://anya.blogsome.com/2005/10/25/only-in-amer-er-britain/

media and human rights

if you're interested, there is a teacher training institute sponsored by youth views and the human rights watch coming up next month that will "offer teachers the opportunity to engage with filmmakers, human rights researchers and educational media experts to learn about available resources and how to integrate independent documentaries and human rights curricula in the classroom."
the deadline for participation has been extended until october 21st.

for more information, goto: http://www.listenup.org/newsblog/archives/000651.html
and here: http://www.pbs.org/pov/utils/youthviews_instit_app.html

stay on top of youth media related events here:
http://www.listenup.org/newsblog/archives/cat_events.html

tv in the palm of your hand

literally: (and not in the previously clunky or microscopic way)
http://www.apple.com/ipod/ipod.html

you can download a few shows now, with the expectation that apple will give you access to download many more in the future, in partnership with the networks.

and we thought text messsaging was a classroom distraction...!

feeling conflicted

so we ended tonight's class by watching "curry-n-rice girl" performed by indian rappers ludakrishna and mc vikram to the tune of "hollaback girl" by gwen stefani. in it were all the familiar (to me) references about the kind of girl (fair, slim and who can cook) a "nice indian boy" would want to marry. familiar b/c i would read the personals in the back, front and middle of the indian newspapers that would be readily present in my childhood home. but that's not from where my conflict arises.... rather, it is tied to the very video itself, and what i understand it to represent.

as someone who has maintained a healthy distance from her culture of origin, i find it unsettling to watch this odd hybrid of east-meets-west-meets-immigrant. if i were to deconstruct this reaction, i might go in a few different directions: i didn't like the original, so why do a remake? why use media to make this when you one could follow in the tradition of "born into brothels"? why would indian people help make themselves the butt of the joke? and why, oh why, do i laugh and think it's funny?

i remember ian mentioning that one of the reasons given for dave chappelle's departure from his tv show was tied to his inner conflict over whether his intentional un-pc-ness was perpetuating some of the negative and hurtful stereotypes that currently circulate. a similar thread runs through discussions of "all in the family" when tv historians critics muse what happened when the "uninformed" viewer watched the show.

so i return to curry-n-rice - as a meal, it's quite nice. as a performance, i'm not sure.

media that matters

here's the url for the last two media that matters festivals:

2004: http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/mtm04/

2005: http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/mtm05/

the pizza surveillance video i mentioned in class is film #3.

media urgency

we're reading two interesting pieces for class this week - one by david buckingham and julian sefton-green and the other an excerpt from steven johnson's controversial book: everything bad is good for you. both are talking, broadly and specifically, about media in our lives - and suggesting, perhaps, that something is happening because of just how much media we engage with on a regular basis. in both there is an urgency surrounding their discussion of media - of poḱemon and television, respectively.

buckingham and sefton-green assert the following:
"the texts of Poḱemon are not designed merely to be ‘consumed’ in the passive sense of the word. On the contrary, they are designed to generate activity and social interaction. Indeed, they positively depend upon it" (2003, p. 389).

they are claiming there is an assumption of "social interaction" that is embedded in the media and media texts associated with this cultural phenomenon. if so, then how does this impact our view of media - of popular culture media as well as media, broadly speaking. (i make this distinction intentionally because media is so often associated with "low culture" - and when media is invoked, too often, as brownwyn williams (2002) notes, we are quick to qualify our media engagements, i.e., yes, i watch tv, but mostly PBS.

so what? so what that as we get older we have qualms about what we watch? and so what that media texts expect us to make connections across multiple forms? perhaps it's true that we need "a change in the criteria we use to determine what really is cognitive junk food and what is genuinely nourishing" (johnson, 2005, sec. 5, para. 3). maybe the urgency make sense - are too many people are spending too much time convincing themselves and others about what they don't do instead of critically and thoughtfull engaging in what they are doing...?

in the spirit of narrative divergence, i have certainly diverted. but a question remains: what does media want/expect/assume of us? and where is our power/space/imperative to talk back? maybe we should embrace the urgency and create our own "world on fire" videos...

Brands and Television

Did anyone see this article in the Business section of the Sunday times?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/02/business/yourmoney/02place.html
It's all about product placement in TV shows, and how it's becoming commonplace. If you click on the graphic on the lefthand side (it says Multimedia on top and Brave New Advertising on the bottom) you get a list of the TV shows with the most product placements, and a list of the most placed products.

"curriculum of prevention"

in her book, tuned in: television and the teaching of writing, brownwyn williams says the following:

"This stance, of defining anything emerging from mass popular culture, particularly television, as not falling withing a definition of legitimate cultural capital, begins in grade school and is reinforced through the educational system (Dyson 1997, 3). Indeed, as Joseph Toobin poings out, if television or other media education make it into elementary schools at all, it "is taught along with sex and drug education, as a curriculum or prevention rather than appreciation" (2000, 5)."

this gets at one part of what susan was saying (see comments under "are we better off?"), one part of the bigger issue of how the not-so-new medium of television continues to be situated within broader educational discourses - and the distancing that persists between the value of 'textual literacy' and popular culture, writ large.