Adding to this weird commodification is the “New Age Drinks” aisle that I see at Shaw’s every day, with beverages like Rockstar and Monster. I don’t get it.

Pieterse theorizes that globalization leads to “global hybridity” and related phenomenon like “Thai boxing by Moroccan girls in Amsterdam, Asian rap in London, Irish bagels, Chinese tacos, and Mardi Gras Indians in the United States” (665). It’s definitely totally weird to hear a woman rapping in Mandarin, not least because you’d imagine a monotonous barrage of words to not translate so well into a tonal language. What’s even more interesting though, are the comments on YouTube like, “lol wtf is she sayin?” and “listen to these fagit ass posers.”

Durham, Meenakshi G., and Douglas Kellner. Media and cultural studies keyworks. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006

This talk of primitive, the focus on differences between people – one tries to believe society has reached the point of sameness, where race and color don’t mean a thing. Even in the previous sentence, I represented the point of view of the “whites” of America – “one tries to believe”…who is “one”. According to Richard Dyer and bell hooks, that “one” is indicative of white people – the people, in general, who have situated themselves as the norm. Dyer advocates the colorization of white people – making “white” a color in itself, a race or nation of people. There is a contemporary approach to the colorization of whites by acknowledgement by raced comedians. White people may laugh at the jokes, but don’t really accept the stereotypes as true and defining of their race. Because the raced comedians get a different perspective on white people as a race, they are more willing to bring attention and humor out of it. 

Both Dyer and hooks reference people of race as primitive, spicy, or different – the difference between raced people and the uptight white rulers of the nation. Today, there isn’t so much racial prejudice and segregation as there is commoditization – white people trying to come to terms with other races, their culture and customs, what makes them different and embrace it. There have been countless attempts on the surface, for example: foods. Today, white people have the convenience of dining on foods from different worldly locations. White is the norm, but there is something desirable about difference. Almost as if white people are bored with themselves as the people and need some spice in their lives. There is a boring connotation with the word “normal”; though it is socially acceptable, it brings with is a sense of dullness – difference is exciting. For example, the most popular music today is rap and hip hop, that has become the popular desire. To get as “loose” as black people. MTVs Made has produced a number of shows with white kids wanting to be made into hip hop dancers or rappers. Anything to make them more “loose”. 

http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/made/episode/episode.jhtml?episodeId=147299#bio

Marshall McLuhan would say that it is not what we are watching that defines the message of media, but it is how we are watching it. Back in the Golden Age of Radio, there was an outbreak of people who responded negatively to the radio program War of the Worlds. Staged as a news broadcast, people of the time had so much faith in the information that the radio provided, they had no other choice but to believe that New York really was destroyed by aliens. They didn’t have images to support the fake news broadcast and the entertainment was taken out of context. Stuart Hall discusses the Encoding and Decoding of media, how texts can carry a series of meaning possibilities, and the connection between the Texts and the Readers is formulated by the Producers and decoded in varying degrees dependent upon personal backgrounds of the Readers. Mediums bring key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views are changed by the adoption of new media. 

The Medium is the Message tells us that the dominant communication media of our time will shape the way humans think, act, and ultimately perceive the world around them – that modern media is an extension of the human senses. Today, we have multiple means of finding news. With websites such as CNN.com, or even the CNN 24-hour news channel on television, people are constantly up-to-date on what is going on in the world. That has become our go-to. Print Journalism is fighting to stay alive, while the introduction of the Internet has slowing taken over as prime news source. Even inventions such as DVR and TiVo have changed the viewing experience of entertainment. In the Age of Radio, families would gather around to hear updates of the first and second World Wars – it brought them together. Even the television played a crucial role in the Vietnam Wars, bringing direct images from the front lines and causing a backlash against the war. Now we can watch whatever we want at our own leisure. 

Durham, Meenakshi G., and Douglas Kellner. Media and cultural studies keyworks. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

Authenticity, Essence, Aura, Authority – we are living in a time that is said to be the end of all authority or authenticity. That nothing can be created any longer and nothing is “real”. We have to use what has already been created, the works of art that already have made their place in time, and bring them to our own time. Our contemporary “gotta have it now” approach to life has affected our perception of what is “real” and what is not. Any one of us could access an image, a digital image, of DaVinci’s Mona Lisa in a matter of minutes, maybe even seconds.

Google Image Search of DaVinci's Mona Lisa

To Benjamin, a work of art is unique to a specific time a place in history – it cannot be reproduced in its entirety. Though the image has accessibility and reproduction is possible, the presence of the original is something that cannot be touched. Benjamin believes that the aura is not present when neither is the original work of art itself. This is why he has trouble with the film and photographic forms of art, because they are so easily reproducible that the original lacks meaning.

This can be seen in the transition of performance art and how it is viewed. The musical Rent is based on the Opera La Boheme. Its premiere off and on Broadway revived interest in musical theatre, bringing much commercial success and popularity as the show began touring. Suddenly, it didn’t matter where in the country you were, Rent would come to you. As if this weren’t enough, the musical was then made into a film and distributed nationally. A viewing experience that once had authenticity an ownership, was now mass-produced and available at any time for viewing with DVDs and YouTube searches. A live performance is something that can not be recreated, it is specific to a time a place and could never exactly replicate another performance. With the DVDs, Movie Theaters, and YouTubing of the same scene of the film takes away from the authenticity of that art, that performance. 

Durham, Meenakshi G., and Douglas Kellner. Media and cultural studies keyworks. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

Althusser also speaks of the individual’s obligation to engage in practices and rituals that art consistent with that individual’s ideology. For instance, “if he believes in God, he goes to Church to attend Mass, kneels, prays, confesses, does penance, and naturally repents and so on” (82). Individuals who act differently than what is expected of them for their proclaimed beliefs, are “either ‘inconsistent’ or cynical, or perverse” (82). I’d venture that most college students are familiar with the ideological dilemma of knowing the importance of education and a good work ethic, and still not being able to get stuff done.

Durham, Meenakshi G., and Douglas Kellner. Media and cultural studies keyworks. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006

Recently, with multimedia artists like Cory Arcangel, modified video games have arisen as a postmodern artform. Arcangel directly alters the connections inside old game cartridges to reprogram them, and his simplistic works have been on display at The New Museum, The MoMa, and the Whitney. Here is an example of his work called “I Shot Andy Warhol.”

More PoMo than Arcangel’s 8-bit popculture salad, is the plethora of game modders all over the internet. Many of these unrecognized artists produce much more interesting and poignant work, but their forum of choice is YouTube, not a gallery. This video of a modded version of Doom seems really postmodern to me, as there is the simulacrum element, as well as the ironic combination of Doom’s extreme violence with Super Mario Bros’ childish sounds and visuals.

Durham, Meenakshi G., and Douglas Kellner. Media and cultural studies keyworks. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006

In semiotics, disassembling signs is a true science, because we can come to a practical understanding of how humans connect words with other intangible notions. An example is, “To determine what a five-franc piece is worth one must therefore know: (1) that it can be exchanged for a fixed quantity of a different thing, e.g. bread; and (2) that it can be compared with a similar value of the same system, e.g. a one-franc piece, or with coins of another system (a dollar, etc.). In the same way a word can be exchanged for something dissimilar, an idea; besides, it can be compared with something of the same nature, another word” (de Saussure 10). Essentially, words can mean something along the lines of what another word means. Some things can differ from each other, but still be exchangeable, while other things mean the same and are comparable to one another. When de Saussure began talking about phonemes it made me think of whenever someone tells me to pronounce a foreign word a certain way, but not mess up a particular part of the pronunciation, as it would completely change the word within its language. It always seemed bizarre to me how the subtle change of a tongue movement can completely alter a word’s meaning.

Things that don’t involve speaking or verbalizing thoughts are still considered to be speech. For example, whenever my best friend, who wants to be a painter, tells me the things he’s trying to say through his art that contains nothing but color and patterns. Sign Language comes to mind with semiotics and the relationship those that use it have with one another. It became clear that sign language was a good example of semiology, because “in myth, we find the tri-dimensional pattern, which [is]…the signifier, the signified and the sign,” (de Saussure 17) exemplifying it within the act, as the signifier would be the hand and the speed it relays the word; the signified would be the concept that the word stands for, and the sign would be the signifier and the signified put together. 

De Saussure, Ferdinand. Ferdinand de Saussure from Course In General Linguistics. Ed. Antony Easthope and Kate McGowan. A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1992. 7-13.

Durham, Meenakshi G., and Douglas Kellner. Media and cultural studies keyworks. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

The Twilight franchise is the perfect example of how “film and radio no longer need to present themselves as art” (Durham 42). It started as a teen vampire book series and turned into a blatant aspect of the culture industry with movies, merchandise, and advertising. The first part the franchise tackled is how “advertising and the culture industry are merging technically no less than economically” (Durham 69). The promotion of the movie involved a lot more than just showing trailers and posters, mainly with the use of Myspace to show never before seen trailers and other websites selling merchandise and having special offers for consumers (LATimes.com). The advertising and promotion were so extreme that when sitting in the theater, pre-teen girls were squealing at the sight of male characters and reciting lines they already memorized, completely familiar with the material.

The use of the star system also contributed to the squealing. The use of actors for promotion is “the mechanical reproduction of beauty—which, admittedly, is made only more inescapable by the reactionary culture zealots with their methodical idolization of individuality” (Durham 54). Robert Pattinson was already known from the Harry Potter movies (which are another example of the culture), but was really promoted as his mysterious, sexy, dangerous character. An example is that photographs in magazines had him either in his pale, vampire makeup or the signature brooding “Edward” look.

Finally, there is Twilight merchandise everywhere. There are the books, the movie, calendars, T-shirts, purses, jewelry, posters, companion books, the soundtrack, dolls, etc. All of this is part of how “mechanization has such power over leisure and its happiness, determines so thoroughly the fabrication of entertainment commodities, that the off-duty worker can experience nothing but after-images of the work process itself” (Durham 52). From October through today, Twilight has been inescapable. Every bookstore has at least one Twilight table and some have more than that; if a store doesn’t have the books, it will at least have the five variations of posters. 

"Edward" and "Bella"

As Mysterious and Sexy

Durham, Meenakshi G., and Douglas Kellner. Media and cultural studies keyworks. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

Verrier, Richard. “‘Twilight’ Leaves Its Box-Office Mark.” LAtimes.com 24 Nov. 2008. Los Angeles Times. 20 Apr. 2009 <http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-boxoffice24-2008nov24,0,2796210.story>.