May 2008
1 post
Final
Firstly, I like being able to put names to concepts. Before becoming ‘media literate’ I was only able to look at images and advertisements and get certain feelings towards them. Like, “this image makes me feel this way etc. But after this course I can look at all different types of media and understand why they are illiciting such responses from me. Is it propaganda? A...
April 2008
3 posts
Glamour
Glamour, according to Practices of Looking, is a desired state of perfection. Glamour has a powerful presence in images and advertisements because it exemplifies the ideal. It plays on the consumer’s innate desire to acquire a sense of beauty, perfection and more abstractly, happiness. Images of glamour in our society portray beautiful people with beautiful possessions doing beautiful...
March 2008
1 post
February 2008
10 posts
Our Desire to Want
I’m not sure if this is ‘too philosophical’ but when I think about the collective desires of our society, I think about our shared concept of ‘wants’. The media would like us to believe that the hero that will save us is our own tendency to acquire more. The characters in television programs we love are wearing clothes we should buy, eating food we should eat and...
The Century of the Self Response
Learning about the person Edward Bernays was a very interesting process for me. I didn’t know whether to praise the man for being a genius or condemn him for penetrating and exploiting the psyche of the American consuming public. Nevertheless, all the information presented in this documentary was completely new to me. I never understood the importance that Freud’s psychoanalytic...
Class
The discussion on the existence of high and low culture in today’s society got me thinking. The book, Practices of Looking, argues that presently the lines between ‘high and low culture’ are being blurred by popular culture and the media. Culture really is the ideas and tastes defined by a certain group of people. In the past, performances such as Ballet and foods like caviar...
January 2008
6 posts
Qtrax
One of the more fierce digital battles being fought today is that ongoing conflict between record companies and online pirates. Let’s face it, pirates just aren’t going to get caught. Aside from a few scare tactics and freak arrests, illegal downloaders are making out like bandits with their videos and music. It’s gotten to the point now where the record companies have lost...
This call to the bullpen is brought to you by...
I am a New York Mets fan. There, I said it. This may very well be the first time I’ve made that bold statement since the collapse of ‘07. Oh well, I guess time does heal. Anyway, having watched many baseball games in my day, I have decided to post regarding an interesting form of media that I typically have overlooked. Virtually everything in baseball has some sort of sponsor,...
"Hey that ad's in the way of-Ooooh! Macy's is...
This past fall (BEFORE all the writers decided to go on strike) my friends and I tuned into NBC Thursdays to watch the latest episode of The Office. It started out like any normal television program, then suddenly Denzel Washington’s face popped up in the bottom left hand corner of the screen to advertise some new dramatic action movie-whatever. I thought it might have just been a fluke,...
Streaming Video
Streaming online media is a very popular medium for both entertainment and news (see a little site known as Youtube). While Youtube is certainly the juggernaut of user generated content, there are plenty of other websites that provide streaming video content. For instance, www.launch.yahoo.com provides music videos and websites like www.mtv.com and www.vh1.com both have personalized media...
Pizza Box Advertising!
Many times this past year, I ordered pizza from various pizzeria’s in my Connecticut hometown. To my surprise, I began noticing advertisements for Cingular Wireless telephones on the pizza box. Somewhere between Belini’s Homestyle Pizza and Fresh Ingredients was that familiar orange logo and a cell phone that I could own for FREE if I SIGNED UP NOW. The first time I noticed this I...
WatchVoice Thread