Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Bob Marley's cultural politics and cultural policy.

Life is an illusion reflected by my voice. Language ads credence to this illusion because it is perpetrated and perpetuating by my voice. Let's destroy the illusion and make it a reality.

"Freedom Time" by Bob Marley suggests a new language in cultural politics must be obtained. His plea resonates echos from the past and, this still current day message, will continue to be valid unless we open our hearts, ears and minds to ideologies that we must teach to our children so their future generations don't make the mistakes of their previous generations. His words:

"got the news from the whispering trees,this is the time when man must be freed, no more burning in vain, all we lose we'll have to gain, get ready children, please, didn't I build the cabin, didn't I plant the corn, didn't my people keep holy, slave to this country, my sermon it was billed for freedom, the good lord said son you're a free man, I'm gonna talk that freedom talk, let me see you walk that freedom walk, when yah gets ready, children please, a tellya, got the news from a whispering tree...

Lauren Hill takes it one step further in her lyrics from "Freedom Time":

Everybody knows that they're guilty
Everybody knows that they've lied
Everybody knows that they're guilty
Resting on their conscious eating their inside
It's freedom, said it's freedom time now
It's freedom, said it's freedom time now
Time to get free, oh give us yourselves up now
It's freedom. said it's freedom time

Both songs want us to take a social action. Their language takes on a range of meanings and these meanings identify issues in our communities.  Unless we exploit the media, in this case music, we can't get "the truth" out there for all to hear. Sometimes exploitation is a good thing.

American Psyco and Cultural Politics and Cultural Studies

Is American Psyco the result of a hegemonic culture? I think it is. The group of men portrayed in American Psyco are powerful and wish to exercise social leadership and authority over a subordinate group-women. And they allow this to happen. The group of men win because the women give their consent. This is a sad commentary on our society if it is true. Is it?

But what about the movie Invictus? The movie is about Nelson Mandela.  Can there be more then one way to inspire?  Of course there is. One particular scene evoked a lot of emotion for me. It is when Francois meets Nelson Mandela for the first time and Nelson Mandela asks Francois how his ankle is feeling:

Francois: The truth is, Sir, you never really play at 100% no matter what.

Nelson Mandela:  In sports as in life. How do we inspire ourselves to greatness when nothing less will do? How do we inspire everyone around us? It is by using the work of others.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Who does this serve? Who does Nelson Mandela serve? South Africa? No, not just South Africa, everyone, everywhere. The poem, as well as Nelson Mandela touched the hearts and souls of the world.
The movie created the vehicle to bring it home.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Seinfeld-"The Group" and "Our Ultimate Finale"

Our group had "Many Episodes." For me it began with "The Watching of the Seinfeld Shows." Specifically, all of season one, two, three, five, six, some of season seven, eight, and nine and some comments from various special features at the end of the shows. Our group focused on "The Deal", "The Contest", "The Blood","The Maid","The Abstinence","The Mango", "The Beard", "The Invitations", "The Puerto Rican", and some of the finale. As a group we met several times, as well as several of us contacting one another through emails, and analyzed all the Seinfeld material and how it corresponded to the material of the class and then related the information to the functions of our society and more notably to radical romance and popular culture. I reread all the articles by Saussure, Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Rivkin and Ryan, Butler, Beauvoir, assigned in class, as well as corresponding details relating to the articles by Saussure and Derrida in our book "Cultural Studies" by Chris Barker book from pages 15 through 86. I then carefully aligned the episodes to the readings and drew a comparison and substantial summary for myself on the ideologies we covered in class as well as some outside resources. I formulated this summary into an outline for the rest of the group. This gave me a more intense enlightenment of language and how it related to our topic. I also reread parts of chapters 9 and 10 in our book "Cultural Studies" by Chris Barker and felt it was very important to focus on the accessibility of television and its global expansion and how we should talk about the media, television, in which Seinfeld is exposed in, and how it is exposed to us and who else it is exposed to. I felt we should not ignore this representation and also the inception of Seinfeld and ultimately the background and response of the market money and viewing audience. Also, I tried to categorize Seinfield and after careful discussions with the group we felt it didn't fall into any of the normal assumptions and as a sitcom the closest we could relate it to was a soap opera. I felt that Seinfeld had an immediacy in its presentation and we all agreed that in most Seinfeld episodes there is an indication that the characters are looking for immediate gratification and that the show builds upon itself. The group then came up with many questions that we each needed to think about and answer. Some questions I came up with as I formulated my opinions about the show were: Does Seinfeld relate to our consumer world?, Does what gets on television is as a result of what someone else deems important and who is that someone?, Is Seinfeld realism or melodrama?, What are the personalities of the characters?(George cheap, Kramer elusive, Elaine struggling for identity, Jerry condescending, judgmental and doesn't like himself as stated in "The Invitations"), Do any of us actually ever think about some of the things the characters talk about but would never say these things out loud?, Is the show about stream of consciousness without a filter? Are these believable social problems?, Does the show push current issues in our face, try to deal with them, and discover that society and life can't really change easily? Are these characters the norm or the other?, Is Seinfeld modern or post modern? Are the nature of the characters something our society readily accepts and is it O.K. to say the things the characters say? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

We then decided that there was so much information that we should break down into sub groups. Rachelle and I decided to tackle the idea of language and radical romance together. We met for several hours and Rachelle broke down the extensive outline, that Jackie had put together and emailed for the benefit of the group, and Rachelle redefined the outline. Rachelle minimized and condensed our group discussions and out of that we created an elaborate outline for our language and radical romance discussion which included Anna's segment on homosexuality. Bre also redefined the outline and condensed and reformed our ideas into an understandable spectrum. Rachelle incorporated information from the McDonald book about sexual desire and pleasure, Jeff made the information cohesive with his stand up routine, and Jackie spent many hours detailing the segments she would show of the show itself so the class would have some basic understanding of our discussion. Patriccia, Jackie, Lanisa, Jeff and Bre spent time deciding weather Seinfeld is modern and post modern. Patriccia, Jackie, Jeff and I met the morning of the class with Rachelle's notes and several ideas from Lanisha and Anna and ya da ya da ya da... a new perspective was born and the rest is Seinfeld history. Not that there's anything wrong with that!!!!!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Does Seinfeld imitate life or does life imitate Seinfeld?

According to the philosophies of Plato, art imitates life where as Aristotle states, life imitates art. According to our popular culture, Seinfeld is a reflection of radical romance which breathes life into our daily existence and is an art form created for the masses. It attaches itself to the philosophies of the philosophers from previous generations. George resonates sounds of Beauvoir, while Elaine echos the words of Saussure and Derrida, Jerry provokes thoughts of Baudrillard and Kramer, well Kramer, he might be an excellent case study for Foucault and Judith Butler's article "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" addresses them all when she states that "there is no "proper" gender."

I have a voice and that voice is speaking about radical romance. In speaking about radical romance we must speak about language. Saussure, a Swiss linguist, speaks about structuralism. A structuralist understanding of culture is concerned with a "systems of relations" of an underlying structure (usually language) and the grammar that makes meaning possible. Does Elaine, from the show Seinfeld, live in a culture where there are shared meaning practices? Is Seinfeld a cultural phenomena? What signs does Elaine give and does her meaning only exist in relation to her groups meaning? Language is social and essential. Speaking is individual and accidental. According to Saussure language is not a function of the speaker, it is a product that is passively assimilated by the individual. It never requires premeditation. Speaking is an individual act. Elaine is carving out a place for women by shedding light on the condition when she gets inside the language of the male. She is being defined by "what she puts out there" and what she "puts out there" is being heard by the other male members of her community.

The language of Seinfeld is created by the group. Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer reflect what they perceive to be true and then reflect their ideals onto a larger cultural group. Their "social side of speech" is associated with a concept that is "outside" each individual in the show because it exists as a result of an unwritten contract by the members of, not just the community of their group of 4, but the community at large. We all understand what they are saying and what their meaning is so Seinfeld is a reflection of our society.

Language is concrete, not abstract, according to Saussure and although Seinfeld appears to be abstract, it is not, because we here in the United States have collectively understood and approved what is stated on the show. The language of the show has become a reality, as a result of association through the characters brain functions, because we understand the signs they use to express ideas.

These four characters have created a Seinfeld society with Seinfeld signs and symbols creating not only a social psychology amongst these four characters but a general psychology which is perpetuated through the mass media of television. Television created a cultural convention and our culture works like a language.

In contradiction, Derrida does not follow all the beliefs of Saussure. In relatiion to Seinfeld the show always has a trace of previous articulations. The differences of the characters and their articulations show that meaning is never fixed and their words that they use to express ideas to each other carry echoes and traces of other meanings. The show itself follows some sort of radical pattern and then traces this pattern back to previous language weaving other language in so the viewer picks up on innuendos and we are inundated with subliminal thought from each of the characters and eventually we relate these thoughts to other textual locations.
What appears to be innocuous, the articulation of unstated expectations, is actually an organized set of rules psychologically contracted and organized by the four characters of the show.

In the true meaning of Derrida, Seinfeld is like a postcard that has gone astray. Seinfeld has become the true metaphor for subliminal thought. There is a stream of consciousness conveyed through each character in every episode that we do not allow ourselves to become privy to in everyday life. This in turn is exploited through the mass media of, again, television. Seinfeld reaches many people and generates meanings to others that it is not intended for and who may not understand the concept. The true meaning may be displaced but who are we to say what true meaning is. We understand the character's thoughts but do we apply them to ourselves and our everyday lives?

Oh, one more thing: From Shakespeare's "As You Like It":

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwilling to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow...

Team America

I was a little disturbed at the content when I watched the scene from Team America but I'm hoping because it was just one small scene and it was taken out of context. Although, the first thing i did was ask my daughter if she saw the movie and was quite relieved when she told me she had not.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Herald the Masses

There is mass hysteria, mass destruction, and mass media. Mass media is probably able to do as much harm as the other two. Given its globalization it reaches many people who don't always understand its content and its message may be taken out of context. Sometimes instead of being taken out of context it should be taken out of circulation.