Monthly Archives: May 2015

The Giver and Receiver of Envy

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The older I get, the less I seem phased about the apologetic platitudes surrounding one’s proclamation about being ‘a shameless self promoter’. It is a statement that is void because it cancels itself out. In essence, what you’re doing is saying sorry to someone for something that you haven’t done or said yet, but… you’re going to say it anyway. So… why waste oxygen?

The tacit disquiet that surrounds ‘blowing one’s own trumpet’ can plunge a person into an unnecessary state of self flagellation. Granted, nobody likes a show off but if you’re with peers who are intelligent and engaging human beings and you are offering an insight into something that others didn’t know before now then, why the hell should you hold back? All this is doing is chastening you for your hard work which intern may incite apathy.

According to Peter Kalos, a former acting coach of mine, (a worldly man who is not one to shy away from a name drop or ten) this fear of self promotion is a cultural thing. He says that it is rampant in Australasia, where as, in LA, to be coy about your achievements will only secure your plane ticket home.

For me, I have let so many opportunities slip away because I had thought that I would be judged if I vocalised my achievements… I believed that I would be  viewed as a ‘big shot’. See, I  too suffered… and still suffer envy triggered by the achievements of others, so the word ‘wanker’ slips into my vocabulary at times. But what I’ve come to realise is that, if by chance I am in the company of those who will judge me in this way, it’s the wrong company. If I get envious, I go against the grain and congratulate them. I’ll be miserable otherwise.

If I’m going to talk about myself nowadays, I reel off in internal monologue along the lines of, “Brace yourself, here it comes”.

I’ll only be sorry if I sell my self short.

Group Appellation

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To avoid a messy cardinality issue whereby by a group is comprised of sets of individuals rather that one unified ideal, I thought it might be good to suggest that we give our group a name rather that referring to each member every time the collaboration project is brought up in conversation. We jammed on a few ideas but sort of lost momentum because, well, our Project 4  premise dominated but, as I had some rare time to think about a group appellation, I came up with the following anagrams composed of the letters in each of our names;

Anagrams for…

Sally Tim Daniel

Sly Tiled Animal

Alias Mind Telly

Yield’s Tin Llama

 

Sally Tim Dan

Mildly Satan

Tiny Small Ad

Sand Tam Lily

Mild Analyst

Malty Island

 

Sal Tim Dan

Mint Salad

Dial Ms Ant

Mind Atlas (though it is already a company)

Tam Island

Malty Island

Mail Stand

…But which one to choose!!

My Media Consumption = Enough % ?

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Social media 1 hour per week 1.68% – being less engaged in social media like Facebook, Pintrest and Instagram than I once was maybe 2 years ago, a have resorted to these forms as more of a quick message check each morning to see what the world is saying.

TV 14 hours per week 23.5% – admittedly, my vice consists of The Simpsons, Futurama, Big Bang Theory, The Antiques Roadshow and The ABC News. I’m always trying to justify if my TV consumption as a relevant means to my growth and… hell yeah! It is helping me grow! It’s satire, it’s progressive, it’s full of fables and emphatic meaning. I am viewing my toons in a different light now that, I’ve started analysing narrative, semantics and the mise-en-scene.

Print 7 hours per week 11. 8% – which I worked out as being primarily research books for school and the MX on the train travelling home.

Cinema 2.33 per week 3.9% – I’m including screenings for cinema studies and perhaps 1 movie that I might catch each month at the Como.

Internet entertainment 7 hours per week 11.8% – this HBO series model has had me imitating Portlandia’s 2012 sketch where a couple obsessively view until their regard for a world outside becomes futile in their minds. Yep, that’s me and many of my friends and family! I blame Breaking Bad for my Dad’s dog’s weight gain.

All up, I’ve worked out that 52.3% of my life is taken up by media consumption and though it may seem like a lot, still, I don’t think I have enough.

My Paper Became a Medium When I Wrote On It

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Sal’s research unveiled a gem in the sand. It was Niklas Luhmann’s analogy about when an artefact becomes a bonafide medium. He likened it to a footprint  embossed in the sand, where, without the embossed message that someone has walked here, the sand is just, well… sand. This will be the foundation for our group collaboration.

Minutes on Paper

Minutes on Paper

Broadcast Purgatory

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José van Dijck and Thomas Poell’s paper, Making Public Television Social? Public Service Broadcasting and the Challenges of Social Media (2015), holds significant pertinence for me as it is a central theme to one of our team’s P4 mission statements. Aside from the many notions that have been discussed in our group’s correspondence about our assigned topic, mediums, Marshall MsLuhan’s The Media is the Message being among many, José van Dijck and Thomas Poell’s discussion on evolving platforms in media bares semblance to one of our own themes of adapting to media change.

Alterations in societal thinking, be them good or bad, must be acknowledged.

It is admirable how the BBC stepped back from an editorial logic to embrace the inexorable progression of contemporary society to make public the thoughts of those fervent enough to contribute through Twitter and the likes but, was this social model masked with company propriety? According to José van Dijck and Thomas Poell, the filtering of realtime tweets and comments in programs like the BBC’s Up For Hire, may have been biassed, tipping the scale toward the beliefs of the production company officials and ostensibly the ‘button pressers’ in the control room. Such imbalances were investigated, ironed out through policy and placed into a new mantra. But if the BBC had rejected this, they would have undoubtably lost an integral social voice and gained a new place in broadcast purgatory.

For our team, and again I really want to get a name like Team Antimatter or something like that, we seemed to gravitate to this notion of adapting to change.