Tag / social contexts

by harrietread

My Take on Medium Theory

For our PB4, my group has been given the subject of Technology and Mediums, and we seek to explore the evolution of cameras and photography since the beginning of the 20th century and its place within society as a media form. Relative to our topic of Mediums, I read through Meyrowitz’s reading regarding Medium  Theory.

To start off with, Medium Theory is the study of the distinctions between mediated forms (audio, print, text, visual, etc.) on social, psychological and physical levels. The simplest summary of the definition of Medium Theory in my opinion can be found in a quote by Marshall McLuhan, a literature scholar: ‘The medium is the message’ (1960s). The meaning behind this quote is that social influences that arise out of the media are influential not because of the message that is decoded, but because of the medium’s effect on recipients.

Distinctions made between different medium forms include the degree of verisimilitude (dictionary.com: ‘the appearance or semblance of truth[reality]”), the degree of human intervention and interaction required of varying mediums, and the degree to which a medium can be distributed or received simultaneously to many people in many locations at once.

Something that interested me in this reading was the history of medium theory being dated back to Socrates in ancient Greece. Now, first and foremost, I am someone who admires Socrates; my favourite quote by him is ‘All I know is that I know nothing,’ and it really feels relevant to my brain at this point of the year. Anyway, he argued that writing had negative effects on the mind; he believed that we literally no longer needed to use our brains to remember things because we could write it all down. This interests me in regard to the subject of mediums and medium theory because I see it as a fitting and humbling show of the beginnings of communication media studies, way before media was even a thing. Additionally, I find it ironic that Socrates thought writing was bad for you because if he was zapped across time to the present day, imagine his reactions to phones, tablets, laptops, smartboards, printing presses, etc.

 

by harrietread

My Take on Narrative in Documentary

My favourite documentary is Rize, dir. David LaChapelle in 2005. It follows the dance phenomenon of Krumping in South Central Los Angeles, a dynamic and revolutionary dance style that the black community turns to instead of violence and drugs. It stunned me when I first watched it, and I was inspired by the incredible dancing and enraptured by the stories of individuals in the community.

I think what struck me about Rize, and was reminded of in the M. Rabiger reading on drama and narrative in documentary, was the struggles that people went through every day in this community.  What struck me in particular was a quote from the reading by Michael Roemer: ‘Plot is really the rules of the universe at work.’ The way that I understand this quote is that although a complication in life, or of the universe, may be resolved, there is always another complication after that.

In Rize, there are many conflicts within the community that practices Krumping, despite their efforts to avoid things such as drug hustling and gang activity. After the Battle Zone event that goes successfully for Tommy the Clown, he comes home to find his house was broken into and robbed. In another incident, a young girl is killed and the grief felt by her family and the community reveberates through the film. These events of the documentary encapsulate the idea Roemer suggests, because in Rize, despite the fact that the community gets through incidents and crises in many shapes and with varying outcomes, there is always another complication that arises.

by harrietread

The Problem with the Cultural Appropriation Debate

A topic of discussion that I have noticed appearing frequently on social media lately is that of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is concerned with the ethics of appropriating different aspects of different cultures in art, pop culture, and media, particularly in a way that is exploitative.

First, let’s get some clarity, since I didn’t know much about the subject myself and had to do my research; The debate surrounding culture-appropriation typically involves the terms ‘appropriation’ that is, “to take or use (something) especially in a way that is illegal, unfair, etc.” and compares it with ‘appreciation’ (“to understand the worth or importance of (something or someone”).

There are two sides to this debate. One side believes that cultural appropriation can be disrespectful, offensive, and insensitive, while the other believes cultural appropriation is a mythical construct imagined by ‘feminazis’ and PC (politically correct) fanatics wanting something to complain about. There are plenty of shades between these polarised views, but on the internet, the extremes dominate.

On one level, I see the validity of arguments damning cultural appropriation: it’s never ok to make anyone feel bad about themselves, and it’s definitely not okay to exploit the cultures of others in demeaning and disrespectful ways. For example, I understand that an Indian feather head-dress will look rad with your next music fest outfit, but in Native American culture that head-dress was once only allowed to be one by warriors and chiefs who earned each feather by accomplishing one courageous deed at a time. Herein lies the difference between appropriation and appreciation; I cannot speak for all head-dress-wearing music-festival party legends, but I would venture a guess that most would not appreciate this, and therefore i question whether the choice of garment is really respectful.

Being blind to the positions of minorities and less fortunate cultures and religions and furthermore being disrespectful to these cultures, direct or indirect, is also not okay. On another level, I believe that harmonious coexistence between races and cultures will flourish through appreciation and sharing of different cultural ideas, designs, artefacts etc.

Ultimately, however, I struggle to show my support for any of these ideas simply because I do not want to get involved in unnecessarily hyped up, hostile and often greatly misinformed internet fights.

Many people refuse to believe cultural appropriation exists simply because they do not want to be associated with SJWs (social justice warriors) or feminazis. They also discredit and remain indifferent to these ideas because the way that they are presented is often in an hysterical, OTT mindset that is, ironically, socially unnacceptable.

The whole debate, thus, has turned from a well-informed discussion about respecting each other as human beings into a petty argument often confused by individual egos and opinions. The environment that the internet offers for discussing ideas like this can easily become hostile and unpleasant when frustrated people feel they aren’t being heard. It’s like two people covering their ears and screaming across a room at eachother. If we’re to have any chance of taking full advantage of the amazing potential of the internet for communication and connection, we need to find ways to ensure that everyone feels respected, that everyone feels heard, and that the outcome is not to prove a point, but to learn.

by harrietread

Should we Prioritise Psychology in Media Studies?

In 2015, the subject Psychology was the most popular subject among VCE students; at the school I attended, there were two full classes out of our 80 student cohort studying the subject. However, only a handful of these students studied Media as well, or went on to study a Media based subject after high school. I did not study it with an ill-informed prejudice against science subjects, and now I wish I did.

In my New Media New Asia class, our current assessment is to pitch an idea for a mobile app that informs its users of how they can be more sustainable citizens. One group came up with the idea of getting users to donate to charities, however the idea would have some flaws if put into action.

Firstly, human beings, as put by my tutor, tend to be selfish. By understanding this inherent selfishness that is evident in human nature, the designer of an app like this could give incentive for the user to donate, and also feel as though they have been personally fulfilled in some way.

Take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge for example; the campaign to  raised over $100 million in donations, and was immensely succesfully. My understanding is that the challenge, while allowing all sorts of people globally to raise awareness and donate money, also gratified some subconscious selfish desires to be noticed or admired.

What the Ice Bucket Challenge did was that it had people showing off that they had been nominated, indicating that they had popularity. Secondly, it involved people showing off that they were ‘generous’. In fact, many people who did the challenge did not necessarily donate, but rather they wanted to simply show everyone they knew, and the whole world, that they had done an uncomfortable and amusing challenge.

In summation, the brains behind the challenge knew that they could make a campaign successful by creating a rewarding incentive for anyone who joined. The challenge placed ordinary people on the same level as celebrities and movie stars, becoming one of the most successful social media campaigns in the last few years. Understanding psychology was key to making the Ice Bucket Challenge go viral.

by harrietread

My Take on Story-Telling

Today’s lectorial on storytelling really got me interested in my own experience with storytelling. Since I can remember, I have loved to create and imagination stories and worlds and fantastical journeys, and expressed these in drawings and attempts at writing books. Whatever I came up with, I had to get it down in some way, and I could spend a few hours or weeks obsessed with an idea; one of my primary school teachers thought I’d be CEO of Puffin or Penguin books. As I entered middle school and high school, that passion waned a little; I spent less time creating and more time consuming media, which isn’t so bad really. But now that high school and VCE is over, I want to get back and create again.

Something that I think became a weaker point in my productions towards the end of highschool was my ability to create a strong story, and instead spent all my time trying to impress myself and others with what I thought was avante-garde film techniques, cool editing and an unusual and difficult to function piece of steadying gear I got for ten bucks on eBay. It wasn’t until I looked back on these old films I’d made, and also until this lectorial, that it became apparent to me that the techniques, gear, cinematography and visuals that go into a film don’t mean anything without a solid story.

I also got this epiphany watching Casey Neistat’s vlogs and films, in which he encourages aspiring filmmakers to care less about the gear and equipment you use, and more about developing a story or idea. Story is what drives the film, and the equipment, regardless of whether they are a point and shoot camera or an expensive camera drone, are just the tools we use to present the story.

by harrietread

My Take on Text Analysing in Culture

One of our more recent readings in Media 1 explored textual analysis from a media practitioner’s perspective. I have to say, it blew my mind a little bit; What made sense to me is that every cultural product made by humans is a text, and every text can be analysed.

These texts are analysed through semiotics; Semiotics and media are intertwined and depend on one another, allowing to make connotations, suggestions and representations that are communicated to audiences.

What I think caught my interest however is the notion that the language of signs differs among cultures; every ethnicity, religion, nationality and culture has their own language of signs and symbols that correlate with their social rituals and cultural beliefs. For example, in Western cultures such as Australia or the United Kingdom, the colour white is used as a symbol or connotation of purity, chastity, hope, etc. However in Eastern cultures, such as China or Japan, the colour white is a symbol of sickness and death, and is used to represent negative ideas. While an English woman may wear a white wedding dress for purity and happiness, in China white is worn to funerals.

This language-barrier, or perhaps a ‘semiotic barrier,’ is something I want to investigate and understand further in my studies. An example that I can think of surrounding how different cultures are represented by eachother comes from the 2013 fantasy-drama epic 47 Ronin, directed by Carl Rinsch. In the climactic battle scene that takes place during the wedding of Mika (Ko Shibasaki and Kira(Tadanobu Asano), the bride Mika is shown in a white wedding dress. On one level, this contradicts the source material’s Japanese heritage; a Japanese bride would wear red, as white is a colour of misfortune and illness. On another level, however, the film may have been written in this manner to connote a sense of Mika’s despair at an enforced marriage.

This is what I love about text analysis; any number of ideas and theories can be unpacked from a text, and it’s not wrong or right. It’s just another theory, which can be agreed or disagreed with, but cannot be negated outright.

by harrietread

My Take on Burgin’s ‘Looking at Photographs’

From this week’s reading, Looking at Photographs by Victor Burgin, I got out two major ideas concerning the relationship between people and photography.

Firstly, there was a clear emphasis on the significance of subject and subjectivity. There is a lot of distinguishing between the ‘other’ and the ‘self,’ between the subjects being represented and the viewing subject. Secondly, there were many mentions in the text of how there is a ‘visual language’ in photography and imagery, a sense of there being a semiotic nature to it full of language and symbols.

My interpretation of the reading has led me to understand that these two factors are intertwined and interdependent.

The reading explored how, at a certain age, infants become self-aware; they are able to recognise themselves as a self in the mirror, and can distinguish separate beings as others. This is a trait believed to be unique to humans, and also elephants and dolphins. A product of this self-awareness is, as Burgin argues, the ability to reject reality and indulge the imagination; this becomes significant in the semiotic nature of photography.

This self-awareness gives way to encoding and decoding visual cues based on individual subjectivity. When someone observes a photograph in an album or a gallery, they view or recognise the subjects based on their own experiences and understandings that are unique to them only.

How this connects to the semiotic visual language of photography is that the human mind understands photography on a subjective level, and additionally on a unanimously cognitive level. For instance, Burgin summarised that the reason why composition is important and aesthetically pleasing is because it lets the viewer ‘prolong their imaginary command of the point of view.’

Essentially, on a cognitive level, the rules of composition in photography allow the human mind to become more invested in the subject and reject their reality for the sake of the representation. This is the same for all humans; we unanimously receive and decode representations using the same cognitive formula that is recognised in photographic and cinematic composition.

On a subjective level, our experiences, made more unique due to our self-awareness, shape how we experience the world and absorb visual language, and influence how our imagination runs and shapes our ‘frame of mind’ in which photography is remembered.

The visual language of photography is, as I understand it, a complex intertwining of the cognitive and psychological aspects of the human mind. Our ‘point of view’ or ‘frame of mind’ is a melded combination of how human reception of visual cues occurs and how our self-aware natures allow us to reject reality and substitute our own imagination, whether we are the author of a text or a receiver.

by harrietread

Baz Lurhmann’s Use of Sound

I like to think of Australian film director and former music video director Baz Lurhmann as a king of sound design. He uses diegetic sound in a way that is powerful and gripping, creating vibrant worlds that seem to assault the senses with exaggerated noises, foley and sound effects.

A scene that perfectly embodies the Lurhmann use of sound is from his 2001 film Moulin Rouge, early on in the narrative when protagonist Christian (Ewan McGregor) enters the Parisian nightclub for the first time.

Here, Lurhmann’s experience in making music videos is shown clearly; this is essentially an enormous music video. We hear several different songs, all MODERN songs, not of the year the film is set in (1899): Because We Can (Fatboy Slim) Lady Marmalade (P!nk, Lil Kim, Christina Aguilera, Mya) and Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana). Lurhmann often uses contemporary, catchy and rhythmic music in his films regardless of whether or not they fit with the time period; this is seen and heard in the Great Gatsby (2013). The use of modern music, particularly music associated with dancing and partying, creates a surreal atmosphere. It feels surreal in the sense that despite being in a different era and time, we can relate across time periods to the partygoing atmosphere.

Additionally, throughout the scene, the diegetic sound is clearly pronounced; the partygoers stamp in time to the beat, their clothes rustling is exagerrated, and as the scene progresses these sounds become more exaggerated, and emphasise a sense of the wild, rambunctious and unbridled excitement of the club. Additionally, the audience feels sucked into this hypnotic psycadelic whirlwind of the Moulin Rouge, and the use of the modern upbeat soundtracks allow them to relate to the scene; a wild Friday night at a bar or club.

Baz Lurhmann’s unbridled and indulgent use of sound and music sets him apart from other mainstream filmmakers, making him a king of sound design.

by harrietread

Cartoons are Just for Kids

That title probably “triggered” a few people out there so let me defuse the situation first and foremost: You just got clickbaited, without the clicking and redirecting to another page, unless you actually clicked on my blog, in which case: good for you!

Now. Are cartoons JUST for kids? How about we discuss what makes up a “cartoon.” From Merriam-Webster online dictionary:
Cartoon: (noun) A film or television show made by photographing a series of drawings : an animated film or television show

What part of this definition restricts cartoons to children? From this definition, anything made up of a series of drawings could be a cartoon; it could be gory, horrifying, lewd, surreal, anything. So why do we assume that anything that is ‘cartoon’ is something appropriate for children?

Let me elaborate: one of my all time favourite films is Hayao Miyazaki’s anime classic, Princess Mononoke (1997) which I first watched when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At the time, I believed the old “cartoons are for kids” thing, and imagine my astonishment when I saw limbs being lopped off and heads being slashed off at that tender age? It wasn’t until my parents actually checked closely did they realise that this cartoon was rated M15+ – i.e. Big no-no for 10 year old me (sidenote, I knew the whole time what its official rating was. I think the opening scenes with the big wormy boar gave it away; but it was a fantastic film, so sue me right?) Anyway, they decided the damage was done and let me watch it anyway.

Basically, what I am trying to get at here is that parents need to be more aware of a) how to check for and understand media classifications and b) they need to work out what they’re okay with their kids watching and consuming. I’ll also point out that I think I’m fairly liberal with what I believe younger people should and shouldn’t be allowed to consume, within reason. It’s so simple for us to assume at a glance that a cartoon is kid friendly, but the fact is there are so many animated films and television shows out there that parents would never let within 50 feet of their children if they knew what they were getting into; and they’re a click away from us all.

Parents need to be told that classifications aren’t put on movies, cartoons or video games just for decoration; the graphic designers probably hate having to ruin their gorgeous cover art with a little 18+ sticker. I’ve heard too often of kids going into stores like JB Hifi or EB Games etc. with their parents and getting copies of stuff like Princess Mononoke, Deadpool, Dead Space 3 or other media texts with ratings of R18+ simply because we are made to believe too easily that video games, superhero films and animated series are ‘just for kids.’ No, they aren’t all for kids. Check your ratings; it’s not the media company’s fault that parent’s don’t take classification ratings seriously.