Monthly Archives: May 2016

Media Influence

It’s actually really crazy how much media relates to body image. I’ve been researching it a lot for the project, obviously, and have found some pretty daunting statistics and videos about it. For example, did you know only 4 percent of the female population fit the ideal body weight and appearance most often portrayed in mass media. On top of that, only 2 percent of women consider themselves ‘beautiful’ while a majority of young girls between 10-13 consider themselves ‘overweight’. There’s endless material on film and in scholar articles about the correlation and I’ll actually link some so you can see for yourself.

http://stylecaster.com/beauty/surprising-statistics-beauty-industry/

Grizzly Man, Grizzly Death.

The way the documentary ‘Grizzly Man’ (Werner Herzog, 2005) is edited and narrated all aid to create a really interesting almost philosophical narrative out of footage that can be, at times, quite funny. We actually talked a bit about the humour of Timothy Treadwell and how it was used within the documentary. Lots of people, myself included, found it sort of hard to crack a smile until we’d gotten used to the kind of black humour of it all. Because yes – we’re allowed to smile! Some of the things he said were really, quite funny. My personal favourite was Treadwell’s endearing names (for example Mr. Freckles) for giant wild bears and the domesticity of his situation, despite everything.

Herzog uses many conventions of the documentary filmmaking to tell Treadwell’s story – such as voice over narration, ‘real’ footage, natural sound and lighting, and so on. Voice over and real footage are crucial elements of Grizzly Man and edited together, they manipulate the audience to take a certain stance on the character of Timothy Treadwell. For example, Herzog frequently shows footage of Timothy talking about death – his own, specifically – leading up to his tragic fate. This foreshadowing is imminent from the very beginning of the documentary – we know he is going to die, and this is only a reminder. This is especially evident during footage shown from just 5 hours before he was attacked, where Treadwell talks of dying for what he loves and his final resting place can be pictured in the background of the particular shot – Herzog wastes no opportunity by pointing this very fact out to the audience.

As the documentary unfolds, Treadwell is depicted to become slowly more unstable. Herzog manages to leak Treadwell’s unravelling sanity as the story plays on until we no longer see him as just a quirky, unusual but well meaning man (though I still feel this way despite the swearing rant scene).

Aside from the mostly naturalistic footage of Treadwell himself, much of the interviews with close friends and family feel… for want of a better word – fake. As we talked about in class, many of the acquaintances of his were ‘media savy’ with the pilot even being an actor, reinacting some of the events of when they found Treadwell and his girlfriend dead. The most unnerving being the Coroner – who is the one to tell the audience about the death in uncomfortable detail.

Vernon, the narrator, has a strong presence the entire documentary and even in many cases goes on a sort of… ramble, about the meaning of life. The best example of this is during the very ending where he talks of the ‘cold unfeeling’ eyes of the bears who were, in the end, Treadwell’s demise.

Instagram Update: Yay or Nay?

It was right after Thursday’s workshop when myself and some friends were having lunch and realised Instagram had updated their app – in a big way. We got to comparing the old interface and app icon with the new one (which looks like this by the way):

Screen Shot 2016-05-15 at 12.44.49 PM

The whole thing really struck me as good thing to post about, because like me and my friends from Workshop, the whole internet seemed to combust at the update. We definitely didn’t like the update – mostly the icon is what threw me. Instagram has never updated their application icon before – not in the 5 years since the app first launched. So as you can imagine, this was a deal breaker for many that the theme layout update just doesn’t compare to. With the internet being the way it is it became a kind of meme on several platforms. It reminded me a lot of the interaction of Audiences with a media product, especially social media, which we’ve discussed in Lectorials before. The controversy surrounding this has even gone to the extent of there being ‘hacks’ to get the old interface back!

This article at Forbes was quick to address that Instagram is simply trying to get with the times – and that the old icon has looked out of place with the regular IPhone updates for a long time now.

Media Characteristics

In the lectorial yesterday we got to talking about different media platforms – or institutions – like Facebook, ABC and things like community media. So what characterises these mediums into institutional? Facebook’s main values are to connect people. It’s personalised and focuses on communication with friends and family, sharing, community and the entire thing is very inclusive. Someone even pointed out the fact that even it’s emails use inclusive and informal language with sentences like ‘we’ve missed you’.

ABC on the other hand, is much more formal. They’re neutral politically and culturally – and although they’re funded by the government they tend not to favour one political side over the other.

I don’t know much about community media – but from what I know it talks mostly about non-for-profit radio and magazines. It’s less hierarchal than normal radio and doesn’t have an agenda. It tends to capture a wider range of voices and is less driven by commercial interests. It’s also somewhat of a training ground for newcomers.

Amber and I decided to do a little work before lunch today in Melbourne Central, of all places, but it’s early so there’s not many people around. I got to thinking about ‘noticing Media’ which I’ve been doing a lot whenever I’m in the city. I keep seeing that hand-painted billboard spot that now has a Star Wars DVD advertisement but had Batman Versus Superman just shy of 2 weeks ago. I think it’s interesting to note how much effort is put into advertisement and media in city ‘hot spots’ – that is to say, where I sit right now overlooks a far less busy street and there’s no where near as much posters or ads in the street than say, Swanson. I can see one radio billboard at the side of the tram stop but that’s about it. Compared to Swanson – which is complete with video advertising on giant plasma screens – this is nothing. It made me think about ads on TV in ‘prime time’ viewing and certain websites who get paid more to advertise things in the sidebars because it’ll attract more people.

Collectivist

I made some notes about Media institutions from the lecture. They are ‘enduring’, have regulated and structured activities, develop working practices, the employees and people associated are expected to share values and the public is aware of the status. The word Brian used to describe these ‘shared values’ was that media institutions are collectivists – that is to say, each individual must reflect the values of the group as a whole. When I was thinking of examples of this, I got to remembering a few times in which people have publically been racist or homophobic and ‘doxed’ to the point of being fired from their job.

This happened quite frequently as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement – from at least what I’d been seeing on social media and news outlets (though news tended to favour white perspectives). I saw a few incredibly racist people being tracked down via the web for comments on their Twitters and Facebook’s that resulted in companies cut affiliations with them as they do not reflect the values of the firm. I think that’s a perfect example of ‘collectivist’ media institutions – or at least, the good side. The other example I can think of is when singers or bands cancel shows/performances in regions as a result of the place’s not LGBT+ friendly laws or regulations as a sort of protest.

Marriage as an institution

In the lecture yesterday Brian pulled up a photograph of a man and a woman, clearly on their wedding day and posed the question of Marriage as an institution. We then had a discussion with our peers about what marriage means to us, or what it generically symbolises. I thought this was an interesting idea, because the way media portrays the concept of marriage and the way it is reduced to things like a white dress and a black suit is often quite fair from the actual ‘sanctity’ of it. But I digress.

By talking about what marriage symbolises, especially with the rest of the class, helped get a sense of peoples’ perspectives. I think most people were pretty cynical, myself included and my friend even said “50 percent of marriages end in divorce” which sort of summed up the mood.

I wrote a few dot points down about what I was saying and what others were too. The most obvious is that it symbolises a union, a legal contract and monogamy. It has generations worth of rituals – like hen’s night and the rings and depending on the religion of the two individuals in question, a church. I think mostly though, it represents a very outdated social expectation and as someone said we are socialized to aspire to marriage as the ultimate relationship achievement. Whereas for many, marriage is just a legal contract and doesn’t consider things like gender and sexuality – rather it reinforces a gender conforming ideal of wife and husband. Don’t even get me started on the fact that Australia, among 174 other countries haven’t even legalized gay marriage yet.

So after going through everyone’s ‘strong’ points in the group, I’ve pretty much been assigned to make the video, which I’ve mentioned earlier. I started on it pretty apprehensively, mostly because it’s hard to have that kind of responsibility to make something that the rest of your group will like. We all decided on a song – ‘Piece of Me’ by Britney Spears, as the soundtrack. Mia and Bronte have started helping me source clips from all over YouTube and I’ve downloaded all of those, and started putting them into Premiere Pro. I have a 40 second introductory clip of Victoria Secret models and… well I don’t want to spoil it. But if you hadn’t already guessed, our project, themed Audience, is focusing on Beauty standards by Media and its impact on individuals consuming it. So you can imagine many of the clips sourced are relating to the beauty industry – fashion, make up, dieting, etc. With those clips I’ve also got professionals giving their opinions on the impact and giving statistics – all of which I’m cutting down and editing to what we need so that when I start putting it together, the process will be a lot smoother.

Memes? Memes.

The guest speaker, Anne Lennox, spoke to us about copyright. One of the things she said that got me (and quite a fair few other students) laughing was ‘there’s not much we can do about memes’, in reference to copyrighting laws. She made a good point though – starting initially by explaining that the gif feature in Facebook messenger is breaching laws. When we got onto the internet phenomenon that is ‘memes’, I couldn’t help but relate it to my own life. I admit it – I’m not ashamed – I love memes. All kinds. From Pepe the frog to personal inside jokes with my friends. And it’s actually pretty funny to think of something so, well, kind of stupid and ridiculous in a context so official and serious such as copyrighting laws.

I was actually a meme once, technically still am – when I posted a photo of myself last year that my dad had taken years ago, on my 9th birthday surrounding a barbie laptop with my 4 other best friends. I had always found the photo kind of funny, because our expressions were ridiculously uh – bitchy, I guess is the word. The picture went pretty viral – currently it has over 260,000 notes on the website I originally posted it on and countless other hits and likes and comments on Facebook, Instagram and the iFunny app (I only know this because people kept sending me links with the photo edited with different hilarious captions), reposted endlessly to the point that I can’t even keep up.

But the funniest part of it, and what relates back to what Anne Lennox was telling us about copyright, is that my dad is a professional photographer and now one of his works was an internet sensation. He was a little confused by it (memes aren’t exactly his generation’s thing) and especially frustrated with how quickly people repost and re-blog a photo without crediting the artist (even if it was a private at home photo rather than one of his official works). That’s the thing with the internet and copyright, sources are very easily lost in the feed.

What is copyright?

We had a guest speaker come in yesterday and talk to us about Copyright. I found it all very interesting, and I can tell I’m going to be caught up in it as I go through my degree. It’s all very confusing. First off, copyright is automatic, it is law – Commonwealth Law to be exact. In other words, as soon as you create content, you don’t need to add any ã for it to be copyrighted, nor are there any registration requirements in Australia. However, facts and ideas aren’t protected by copyright – so you can’t have an idea for say, I don’t know, a boy wizard with a lightning scar and expect that you will win a law suit against J.K. Rowling for writing the Harry Potter series (though I’ve seen a few idiots attempt it).

Ideas can only be protected if you mark with a statement like ‘the information in this folder is confidential and must not be used without first obtaining (name) written consent’.