"Better Luck Tomorrow" and "Crash"

I have one main problem with both "Better Luck Tomorrow" and "Crash," which is that they both go to extremes. They use extreme violence, extreme language, and extreme situations ostensibly in the service of examining and deconstructing stereotypes. In BLT, the thriller/action/comedy stylings of the film help relate it to its target audience, young men, and as such expose certain viewers to ideas they may not have previously considered; however, although this extremism can be effective with certain audiences, but I think it alienates more viewers than it speaks to; I'm thinking in particular of the scene in BLT where the main characters kill Steve. To me, the visceral reaction produced by the characters' rejection of redemption (when they discover Steve is still alive after the beating) in favor of a violent "solution" to their problem overshadows the critique that is going on in that scene. Divorcing myself from the graphic nature of the scene, I can tease out the idea that social pressure and stereotyping has contributed to the characters' sense of invincibility, but that it has also in some way motivated their violence; they hate Steve because he's fulfilling the ideal they've bought into even better than they are. He's rich, he's popular, and he possesses what is constructed in dominant discourses as the ultimate achievement for people of color: a white girlfriend. Ben in particular wants to take out his anger on Steve because he can't have what Steve takes for granted (Stephanie's affection). While I find the violence of this film deeply disturbing, and there are a multitude of problematics relating to the portrayal of women and sexuality, this film does have something valuable to say, if audiences can see past the extreme situations. I personally believe that the idea of Justin Lin, an Asian American director who can make films with Asian American actors that talk about the Asian American experience, will prove to be more influential than the particular content of his films. I really hope that soon we will see more films created by and about people of color that can discuss race and racism in a more subtle and nuanced manner without being relegated to obscurity. For that matter, I would also like to see more attempts at the socially conscious action movie; I think Justin Lin has the right kind of ideas in play, but lacks essential critiques on gender and sexuality stereotyping, as well as falling into a mode of privileging the visual elements over the underlying themes.

"Crash," on the other hand, represents to me the shallowest kind of discussion of racial tensions. It employs the politically correct, oft-used idea that, to quote a popular musical, "everyone's a little bit racist." It has potential in that it shows the differences in power between the characters, but I feel it stops short of examining the logical conclusion: although all the characters have certain failings and prejudices, the white police and homeowners can go home at the end of the day with their careers and families mostly intact, while the people of color cannot divorce themselves from racism and "race issues." I find the juxtaposition of the scenes in which Matt Dillon's character assaults Thandie Newton's and the scenes in which he cares for his ailing father most disturbing, as though his personal struggles somehow justify his racist, misogynist behavior. This story comes to a deeply troubling end when he rescues the woman he previously assaulted from a car crash. She learns to trust those who have previously abused her; what does he learn? What about the privileging of the "Americanized," accentless daughter of the Iranian shopkeeper, who is more temperate and understanding than her one-track-mind immigrant father? There's also the complete lack of Asian American agency; Asian Americans are either nameless, cruel human traffickers or nameless, helpless victims. Certainly, there is a climatic "crash" in which all of the characters are forced to confront their prejudices and learn from one another, but there are still winners and losers: the young, idealistic white police officer may be shocked and appalled by his own actions, but the young black man is dead, simply for having been a particular race and gender in a particular setting.

While "Better Luck Tomorrow" may lack nuance, "Crash," to me, lacks any kind of substantive exploration of race issues because it tries to do way too much in one film, and thus explores none of the issues in the depth required to produce something that is thought-provoking, rather than heavy-handed and didactic. Thus it becomes that phrase I railed against so much in my comments on Trinh, "universalized." When I watch this film, I feel like I am being lectured to about racism, rather than provoked to consider my own subjectivity. The next question then, is who is lecturing me? Paul Haggis, a prominent mainstream director, and popular Hollywood actors and producers. It may be cynical, but to me this film seems like an excuse for mainstream cinema to pat itself on the back for talking about race issues without actually having to think too critically about its own role in reflecting and reinforcing stereotypes. "Crash" is both too extreme (racism is rarely as blatant as the film depicts, especially in a "liberal" bastion like L.A.) and too convenient in the way its plots intersect and are resolved, and the more times I view it, the more disappointed I become.

Trinh

Trinh T. Minh-Ha "The World as a Foreign Land"
The first part of Trinh's piece deals with "otherness," and the meanings and representations of the racial and sexual "other." According to Trinh, the attention now given to the study and theory of "otherness" is both exciting and worrisome, because it is being "reappropriated as a fighting ground by the named 'others,' and as a site of pilgrimage by the Master and his heirs." She goes on the describe the ways in which "otherness" can be co-opted and re-relegated to subordination by the dominant, explaining that "even when an other is being priviledged [sic], she is constantly, subtly reminded of the favor she enjoys." In this way, the dominant inscribes the other as forever subaltern, enjoying represenation only due to the generosity of the dominant. Trinh theorizes strategies of representation that can be employed by the "other." One possible strategy is repetition, the rehashing of stereotypes in order to criticize and de-naturalize them. Another is autobiography, the representation of the "other"'s own self, which invokes the subjectivity of the plural-I; the representation does not claim to speak for each and every othered individual, but bears witness to facets of the collective experience of the "other." Trinh also theorizes the anti-anti-limit text, a "text that acknowledges its experience of limits without being subjected to normalized limitations" as a strategy for representing the struggles and marginalization of the other without itself reproducing the subordination and re-relegating the othered subjects to a marginalized space. Trinh ends this section by stressing the importance of distinguishing between user-oriented and creator-oriented media, critically understanding the relationship between the "media-maker, media viewer, and media/image/word/sound," and understanding both media content and the features of media production when critically analyzing a media product.

"The Other Censorship"
The second part of Trinh's piece introduces the idea of the "other censorship," the erasure/ignorance of women/queer/people of color productions by the mainstream media. She begins by aruging that we must break down the artificial binary between artists and critics, in order to produce art that "upset[s] rooted ideologies, invalidating the established canon of artistic works and modifying the borderlines between theoretical and non-theoretical discourse," dissolving the division between critics and the works they criticize, experts and non-experts, art and non-art, and dominant and "other." Trinh criticizes theories that tend toward universalism and privileging "accessibility" as forms of intolerance, as they privilege the experiences and knowledges of members of the dominant culture, and erase markers of ethnicity/racel, gender, or non-normative sexuality. She also argues against separating issues of censorship, racism, sexism, and heterosexism, explaining that treated these as unrelated plays into "the colonialist creed of Divide and Conquer," and keeps marginalized subjects in subordination by diverting attention away from the interconnectedness of various struggles against censorship. She encourages utilizing the theory of the "third term": the alternative space that is neither the dominant discourse nor a direct reaction to it, but rather represents the vitality and creativity of othered individuals. If this alternative space is not cultivated, marginalized people will suffer from the "Other Poverty," a spiritual/cultural void caused by the Other Censorship.

The Trinh piece relates heavily to theorists I am reading/have read in Chicana/o Studies classes, most clearly Gloria Anzaldua, Chela Sandoval, and Emma Perez. Like Trinh, they all draw attention to the inevitable failure of revolutionary positions that position themselves as the "opposite" of the hegemonic institutions they struggle against, because they adopt the same power hierarchies as the entities they are fighting. Rather, we must acknowledge the multiple subjectivities of marginalized populations and incorporate all struggles against oppression, as they are inextricably linked. I really appreciate that Trinh draws in art specifically as a revolutionary practice, as art is often subordinated to theory in discussions of anti-oppression work. It's really important to me as a scholar, fan, and sometimes author of cultural productions that the critical and even revolutionary potential of all kinds of fields and practices be theorized and validated. I also appreciate that Trinh moves beyond theory to possible modes of practice in the first part of the piece; theory is only useful when we can apply it to our daily lives.

Trinh's condemnation of universalizing impulses is particularly heartening to me; I've become quite unpopular in several classes here at Stanford for suggesting that not all theorizes or pieces of art are directly addressing all audiences. I sincerely believe that there are certain productions which are meant for a particular audience and best engage that audience's knowledge and experiences, and that insisting upon generalizing productions to apply to all audiences necessarily devalues the specific experiences and struggles out of which the works arise. I could go on for a long time about this issue, but I feel it's not productive to express the full extent of my frustration in this blog.

Super Special Awesome related materials

I'm working through all the stuff I have to say about this week's articles, which is a tremendous amount. In the meantime, I thought I'd share something I've been enjoying over the past year that's somewhat related to what we read. "Yugioh: The Abridged Series" is a fan-made parody of the Yugioh series that's entirely edited, written and voiced by one British man. I'd never actually seen Yugioh before a friend showed me the parody, but it's a fairly generic series, so it's easy enough to catch on to what's he's making fun of. There are also a ton of amusing pop culture references, and the fact that one guy does all the voice acting (quite well, I might add) is extra humorous. It's also really quotable; I'm pretty sure I don't talk to some of my friends anymore, but rather just quote this series at each other.

Anyway, if you need a study break, I'd recommend you check it out for some laughs: www.yugiohtheabridgedseries.com. It's also an interesting study in copyright issues, as the creator's videos were pulled from Youtube many times by the company that produced the English-language dub of the series.

Ito's article on Yugioh also mentioned doujinshi, or fan comics produced by adult fans who are amateur artists, or sometimes even professionals working under pseudonyms; the content ranges from G-rated parodies to extremely explicit. It's an interesting industry in that's a legal gray area that's become a staple of fan culture and is generally accepted by companies in Japan; it's also an industry that is largely populated by female fans and artists. Here's an example of the kind of product Ito is talking about that I found on a website that sells doujinshi.

Ito Readings

I've decided to tackle Trinh and Ito in separate postings, since my responses are quite lengthy.

Ito

- "Mobiles and the appropriation of place"
Ito discusses the impact that cell phones and other wireless technologies are having on Japanese youth. She argues that these technologies are changing the terms of co-presence, "augmenting the experiences and properties of physically co-located encounters rather than simply detracting from them." In contrast with pre-wireless generations, youth today rarely set fixed times or places for face-to-face meetings, but rather call or text each other shortly beforehand. This allows for quick changes of venue, and for people to run errands, check email, or do other tasks while they are waiting for their friends. Wireless technologies also shift the terms of inclusion and exclusion; people who are not present at the face-to-face encounter can be included by calling or texting them for their input, while people who are physically present can be excluded, such as students texting each other about a teacher during class. Ito postulates that "young people are in social contact even when alone," and that these technologies, rather than being isolating as some might fear, help youth to "personalize" their environment in an age of increasing co-optation of public spaces by corporations in the forms of advertisements and sponsorships.

- "Intimate Visual Co-Presence"
Ito examines the usage of photo-sharing via handheld devices, primarily cell phones, and the ways in which images are being integrated into social encounters. Ito notes that while camera phone users tend to take a large amount of pictures, they send only the "interesting" or "newsworthy" photos to their contacts; sending photos is somehow seen as more intrusive than texting, as many users text mundane messages (such as "I'm tired") to their friends, a practice that Ito calls "ambient virtual co-presence." Photo uploading sites such as photobucket allow users to upload their photos without seeming intrusive; friends can browse their photos at their convenience, which Ito describes "ambient monitoring of the visual stream of others." In a study conducted with young Japanese couples, Ito found that couples were much more likely than friends or acquaintances to participate in ambient visual virtual co-presence, sending each other more "mundane" photos; however, like in the case of photo uploading sites, they tended to send the messages at a time when they expected their partners to be unavailable, so that they could peruse the photos when they returned. They also sent photos to establish contact and make their partners feels as though they were together when they were not physically co-present.

It may be unusual for someone my age, but I don't use cellphones very much. The majority of my cellphone usage is calling friends to find out where to meet them; I fully agree with Ito in that wireless technology has changed the terms of physical co-presence by including non-physically-present members (I often phone absent friends during meetings to get their input on an event or next meeting time) and allowing for meetings to be organized quickly. The largest example I can think of is organizing the sit-in last year by creating a text-tree, which culminated in a 50-person rally being convened in less than ten minutes through the use of text trees, in which each person on the tree was designated to text or call several others, allowing communication to occur extremely rapidly. I can't comment much on the other article, having never sent a photograph with my camera phone, but it seems natural to me that couples would share more mundane aspects of their life, including photos, than others. Having had a roommate who spent hours upon hours with a long-distance boyfriend chatting on the phone about how she needed to vacuum and other such topics, and being guilty of equally inane conversations with significant others in the past, the desire to establish ambient virtual co-presence among couples seems to stem naturally from the broadening of the boundaries of co-presence.

"Technologies of the Childhood Imagination"
Ito discusses the children's media phenomenon Yugioh, which includes a card game, video games, television program, clothing, and other media. She describes its "multiple sites of consumption" as a "media mix," encouraging consumers to integrate various forms of media in their consumption experience, and providing interactive ways to customize participation in the series. She cites Arjun Appadurai in conceptualizing these phenomena as "collective social facts," which engage the imagination of consumers and bring them together in "imagined communities," such as fan communities. She also differentiates Yugioh from other similar children's media phenomena, such as Pokemon and Digimon, explaining that children relate to it in a different way because Yugi and his friends live in a reality that parallel viewers' own; like viewers, they purchase the cards and play the game with one another, rather than battling with monsters that are real in the series' own universe. Ito argues that media mixes like Yugioh encourage hypersociality rather than alienation, as children gather together to play the game, trade cards, and participate in other aspects of the series. She also discusses the various forms of "remix and revaluation" that occur in the series' fandom. Children remix the series through customizing their card decks and video game characters, choosing from hundreds of possible monsters to build a "team" that suits their playing style. Adult fans have also remixed the series through avenues such as BL (boys' love) doujinshi produced by mainly female amateur artists that depict the characters in romantic relationships, or male adult fans' obsession with collecting rare cards for the thrill of searching them out and purchasing them, rather than playing the card game.

I find it interesting that Ito makes a note that most anime media mix phenomena are geared toward boys and filter over to girls. It seems that lately this focus has been changing; I recently read several articles and interviews with manga authors from the "Shounen Jump" magazine, the most popular boys' manga magazine, that indicates that authors are catering more and more to female fanbases, especially fujoshi, or female fans of boys' love. A large percentage of doujinshi are based on series aimed at younger male audiences (often because they have large, mostly male casts of characters), but recently authors have been conceding that they include certain scenes in order to build subtexts that these female fans will enjoy. It will be interesting to see if this trend becomes large enough to shift the terms these series to the point where they are largely influenced by female fans and "trickle down" to male audiences.

Hobbs and Luke

Hobbs, Renee. "Multiple Visions of Multimedia Literacy: Emerging Areas of Synthesis."

- Students' use of media is continually expanding
- Students need to learn to use symbol systems as well as language
- Various conceptions of expanding literacy studies: visual literacy, media literacy, critical literacy, information literacy, technology literacy
- Using multimedia and popular culture texts as tools for K-12 learners
- Visual literacy: aesthetic dimensions of images and how they shape viewer response; subjectivity of images
- Information literacy: locating information from a variety of sources (research); skills-based -- criticism that it doesn't "emphasizes the ways in which meaning is constructed through interpretation" (limited to fact-finding)

• attempts to expand: digital literacy; synthesizing ideas and facts rather than just finding them
  

- Media literacy: encouraging viewers to critically analyze mass media and popular culture messages; emphasizes "situated action learning" (Freire and Macedo) -- creating new messages using new media tools
- Critical literacy: analyzing social context, effects of media; exploring themes of "power, identity, pleasure, and transgression"
- Possible synthesis of diverse forms of multimedia literacy
- Categories of multimedia literacy:

• AA: authors and audiences
• MM: messages and meanings
• RR: representations and reality

-Differences in emphasis, pedagogy, and ideology among various conceptions of new literacies
- Studying media literacies improves students' reading comprehension, writing skills, critical reading, critical listening, critical viewing, knowledge of media production, history, economics, and terminology
- Central objective for media education: "the ability to apply knowledge and skills learned in the classroom to the world of everyday life"
- Recognizing the difficulty teachers have implementing media literacies curricula: schools are often underfunded and/or resistant to changing their curricula; as standardized tests become the measure of schools' performance, there is less time for the existing curriculum, let alone something new

Luke, Carmen. "What Next? Toddler Netizens, Playstation Thumb, Techno-literacies."

- The information revolution and early childhood

• concepts of development
• media and information technology literacy
• critical criteria for software selection
• issues of equity and access

- Different concepts of childhood and development: "miniature adult," development stages based on age, psycho-sexual development (Freud), cognitive development (Piaget), moral development (Kohlberg), language development (Chomsky)
- Reactions to and fears about any new media development (the written word, books, movies, television, now IT): parents and educators have been wary of every new development in media
- New concepts of youth and childhood now emerge in tandem with new technologies, rather than taking years to become incorporated into academic and popular thinking
- Early literacy and development are shaped by media usage/exposure
- Hypertext environments = parallel cognitive demands, rather than linear, serial processing (Jenkins' example of Pokemon); having to follow multiple storylines
- Software quality: problems with gender, racial normativity, intellectual stimulation and interactivity vs. yes/no, point-and-click responses
- Need for critical analysis of media in other forms besides print/film
- Access: IT and analytic skills must be taught to all students in school
- IT-mediated learning and socialization: importance of parents and educators paying attention to children's media consumption

Both Hobbs and Luke engage the questions of how to mediate the influence that new media technologies are having on youth. Hobbs' suggestion is that in order to successfully teach children how to use and how to be critical consumers of new media, we must integrate the various approaches to media literacies that have developed into a more comprehensive whole, and that it would be optimal to teach children media literacy in school. However, she recognizes the difficulty that instructors would have in implementing new media curricula. I'll bring up for I think the third time the issue of standardized testing, and how its predominance as a marker of academic success leaves little room for teaching anything that isn't explicitly covered.

Luke delves further into the issue of exactly how new media are affecting children; like Jenkins, she suggests that new media are not inherently harmful, but rather simply different than the old in that they require more parallel rather than linear processing, and tend to be more interactive and demanding of consumers. However, she is less celebratory than Jenkins in acknowledging the possibilities for reinforcing existing power hierarchies and noting the prevalence of facile interaction in even "educational" children's media. I would also note the stronger potential for overuse that new media have; Luke briefly mentions "Playstation thumb," but I would like to see a stronger emphasis on overuse injuries. Freshman year of college, I developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands to the extent that I was ordered by doctors not to type for three months or risk needing surgery. I still use wrist braces for long periods of typing (I'm wearing them as I type this) or writing, and I can no longer hold heavy objects (like grocery bags) for more than a few minutes. More than the psychological damage parents usually worry about (which Luke indicates tend to fade as soon as the next technology emerges), I think physical consequences are a big concern. Luke also addresses the problem of access, arguing that new media literacy must be taught in all schools in order to improve access for children who might not have the newest technologies at home. However, neither Hobbs nor Luke provide much insight into how schools could go about implementing media literacy curricula. Not knowing a whole lot about public education or education policies, I must say I can't really provide any suggestions beyond scaling back the emphasis on standardized testing. Any ideas?

Lister and Kellner

I'd like to apologize for the strange formatting of the summaries. For some reason, Blogspot decided to erase all my formatting when I published this post, so I tried to fix it as best I could, but to me it looks a bit distracting.

Kellner:

- Culture wars: conservatism vs. "political correctness"
- new technologies: possibility for isolation, social control
- production for profit and articulation of conflicting social positions to appeal to diff. demographics
- media culture is the dominant culture
- "new modes of experience and subjectivity"
- work declining in importance as pleasure is derived from consumption, not labor
- dominant conservative (Reagan) discourse
- "Culture has never been more important and never before have we had such a need for serious scrutiny of contemporary culture"
- 1950s on: various forms of post-structuralist theory
- postmodern nihilism vs. postmodernism of resistance
- critical social theory, practice-oriented social theory, dialectics
- cultural studies: text and context, transdisciplinary approaches
- Frankfurt School and culture industries

• - shortcomings: no analysis of political economy of culture, high/low culture binary, mass culture = pacification of audience (dulling down, brainwashing)

- British cultural studies: Gramsci - hegemony/counterhegemony (displays of raw power vs. induced consent)

• - materialist
• - subverts high/low culture distinction (but tends to erase high culture)

- Terminology: mass culture (elitist) , popular culture (ignores fact that most popular culture is created by corporations, not the people), media culture
- US cultural studies often omits political economy and social context, focusing exclusively on text-audience relationship
-Problematics: unproblematized celebration of oppositional readings/resistance and fetishism of struggle, resistance, audience pleasure

• - need for critical analysis of what kinds of opposition, struggle, pleasure are occurring

-Stuart Hall: cycle of production - distribution - consumption - production
- making visible the processes by which culture becomes dominant
- not letting cultural studies become "celebratory" and "uncritical"
- postmodern as a buzzword, undetheorized: the "postmodern sandwich" and other throwaway uses of the term
- Hebdige and neo-Gramscian theories: non-teological, no "grand plan of emancipation," but hopeful for emergence of new solidarities and radical change

Lister, pp. 219-279

New Media in Everyday Life
- not cyberspace vs. everyday life; new media permeates everyday life
- "for some observers, new media offer new creativities and possibilities; for others they reinforce and extend exisitng social constraints and power relationships"
- Emphasizing everyday life in the study of media technologies and their uses foregrounds the following key issues:

• Media are the products of already existing social and economic structures and forces (Williams)
• Meanings and uses of new media are negotiated by various social agents, not fixed
• New media technologies have to find their place within more stable and established social structures often characterized by existing media
• Practices of consumption are integral to the commercial success and methods of use of new media

- possibility of the Internet not being a cyberspace: email and other communication "concrete and mundane enactments of belonging"
- "smart homes," ubiquitous technology, and consumerism: the home is still the privileged site of consumption
- black box theory and convergence
Theories of new media's relationship to everyday life
- Cyberculture: newness and emancipatory possibilities of consumption of digital media
- "Business as Usual": new media reinforce and extend existing power hierarchies; repressive potential of new media technologies
- Populists and postmodernists: consumer culture = only culture; no sense of technologies as "material or instrumental"
- Cultural and media studies: new media not "fundamentally distinct" from old media; not privileging consumption or production
- media technologies are not deterministic, but do invite or facilitate certain uses
- Ethnography of home computers (Mackay)

• the significance of consumption of ICTs for domestic lives and relationships
• how ICTs are implicated in shifting individual and family identities
• the relationship between household members' public and private worlds
• how technology (as well as the household) is transformed in processes of domestication and incorporation

-Screen Play research project: placement of computers in homes, gendered placement and usage, sharing and negotiating usage time, parental anxieties about cost and possible danger of Internet (but, Internet often purchased in response to perceived increased danger of physical environment)
- Edutainment: clashes of "low culture" and educational materials; tension between those who argue that entertainment value "dumbs down" educational aspects and those who believe adding entertainment more effectively engages learners
- "Knowledge stock" vs. capital and intellectual property: ideas taking primacy over money and the commodification of knowledge
- Instrumental progressivism: new philosophy/methods of education and training that acknowledge "broader relations of power" in relation to technology usage
- Global networks: subjects are not autonomous, but "embroiled in networks, in intimate relationships with machines and media"

• - consumption choices and identity formation
• - communication: many to many, vs. one to one (telephone) or one to many (broadcast media)
• - Personal webpages: identity construction, bricolage
• - New media is fundamentally changing identity: we are being "Borged" (so entangled with technology that we are becoming cyborgs)
• - different theories indicate various degrees of new media influence on individual and group identity
• - theory of the "virtual age": everyday life, corporeality in opposition to identity as constructed through virtual means (declining significance of the physical body as center of identity)
• - postmodernist cyberculture theory: McLuhan-influenced; "overthrow of passive consumption by interactive communication and creativity" -- technological progress as positive
• - postmodernist politics of identity theory: media as one site of constructing and contesting identity (Stuart Hall)
• - postmodernity as crisis: hyperreality and erasing of the physical, "real" world; we lose direct access to the "real world"
• - subjective change in relation to history and specific trends and eras
• - Mediated experience and or vs. lived experience
• - Case studies: cyborgs and cyberfeminism -- "Woman is a virtual reality"
• - MUDs and explorations of "ambiguity and androgyny" (but whiteness, youth, and attractiveness are still normative); performed identities not free-floating, but consciously constructed

-Commercial popular culture: the role of consumerism in theorizing and constructing identity
- The impact of video games

• - "othering" of video games: anxities about impact of violence on youth; video games as encouraging antisocial behavior
• - video games presented as a problem to be solved, contrasted with educational potential of Internet, CD-ROMs
• - Instrumental vs. exploratory play and hacking as consumption
• - Huizinga: Play integral to everyday life; play = "stepping out of 'real' life into a temporary sphere of activitiy with a disposition all its own"
• - Caillois' fundamental types of play: competitive play, play involving chance, role-play, play involving shock and disorientation
• - underlying axis of adherence to strict rules vs. creative play
• - playing with video games as interactive consumption; simulations rather than representations
• - pleasure derived from intervening in/controlling the game's action
• - learning: decoding the game's controls and conventions
• - identification: identifying with the computer itself in games like SimCity, awareness of one's subjectivity as the player of a game

- Complex interactions between the physical world ("real life") and new media technologies; meanings of the consumption of new media cannot be separated from "fantasies and dramas woven around it"

Both the Kellner and Lister readings were full of so many theories and ideas that I found it hard to keep track of everything they were discussing, so I used brief bullet point notes out of necessity; trying to summarize all their main points in sentence form seemed a rather daunting task. Despite its density, I appreciated that the Kellner article provided a historical context for the development of cultural studies, and emphasized cultural studies as a critical discipline; I've seen it too often dismissed as a flight of fancy or the pet project of a small group of intellectuals rather than an essential field for understanding societal development. I was unaware of the various strains of cultural and communications studies that have evolved into the discipline used today, which seems like a loose version of British cultural studies. My personal experience with cultural studies has been something like the neo-Gramscian model Kellner describes himself as belonging to; to me, it's very important to maintain possibilities for social change while at the same time rejecting the teleological, often deterministic view of history that I see as one of the biggest problems with Marx.

The aspect of the Lister reading that I found most interesting was the application of theories of identity formation and consumption to video games. My parents subscribed (and still subscribe) to the idea that video games are fundamentally non-educational, vapid entertainment, and never allowed me to own a game console when I was younger. As a force of habit, I still don't own one, nor do I frequently play video games. I instead channeled my desire to intervene in and control virtual situations (which Lister situates as one of the main pleasures of video games) into participating in online fan communities, a major component of which is taking characters and situations from existing "old-media" productions such as comic books and television shows (which you cannot change the content of once it has been produced) and rewriting them in a manner that satisfies the viewer (which may be an individual or the collective fan community). I'm also wondering whether this desire for control-centered play and identification with a kind of omniscient/omnipotent position stems from new media developments which enable individuals to do so, or whether it is something more instinctual. Did we want so much control over media products before we knew we could have it? Is that desire a product of increased consumerism and valuation of individual consumptive power, or is it more related to the desire to transgress the boundaries of one's own social situation and identity? This question in particular reminds me why it's so important to, as Kellner suggests, maintain a critical lens on audience participation and not simply valorize every kind of popular usage of new media technologies.

Henry Jenkins

"Fans, Bloggers, Gamers, and Participatory Culture" and "Welcome to Convergence Culture"

Jenkins major ideas in both of these pieces revolve around convergence and commodity culture vs. participatory culture. Jenkins identifies one theory of convergence, "the black box theory," an example of which is the modern cellphone: it collapses a multitude of gadgets into one. However, he believes that it is unlikely that ALL media will converge into one device, as some theorists have suggested. He points out that despite having things like the multi-use cellphone, people today generally have more devices than ever before: televisions, dvd players, computers, cellphones, iPods, etc., all in use simultaneously. He thus suggests that the major point of interest in convergence is participatory culture vs. commodity culture: the top-down structure of corporate production and ever-increasing media ownership consolidation vs. the grassroots, mainly Internet based phenomenon of fan/"layperson" production. He states that convergence is the "the flow of stories, ideas, information, communities, brands, intellectual properties... across media platforms," including both commercial and fan-produced properties.

Jenkins theorizes online fan communities in terms of collective knowledge; "no one knows everything, but everyone knows something," and fans pool their knowledge and resources to create online databases of knowledge and productions. He gives the example of a film critic responding to The Matrix by asking, "Is Joe Popcorn supposed to carry a Matrix concordance in his head?" According to Jenkins, the moviegoer doesn't have to, because he can utilize the collective knowledge databases of online fan communities to remember and make predictions about the plot and characters. Examples of the ways this collective knowledge has been utilized is fans figured out the entire cast, settings, and results of Survivor before the show's airing, or fans becoming bored with Twin Peaks because they could predict plot developments too easily with all the available knowledge. Jenkins also emphasizes that the complexity of today's entertainment necessitates this collective knowledge and also requires more engagement by the viewer; he cites Pokemon, where kids must remember over 200 unique characters' names, appearances, and abilities. He supports the argument presented in Everything Bad is Good for You that this complexity creates a more active and thinking consumer, and goes on to suggest that it also leads to increased participation in fandom (a large portion of which is comprised of the pooling of collective knowledge into easily accessible online databases). He also cites a potential for increasing formal educational skills, such as reading and writing, giving the example of young people writing and "beta reading" (editing) each other's Harry Potter fanfiction, which he suggests helps develop reading and writing skills in a possibly more interesting way than classroom instruction.

He goes on to describe the influence of fan participation on commercial properties, and the tension between corporate ownership and different modes of fan participation. One example he gives is fan-subbing creating an American market for Japanese animation where one had not previously existed; he also mentions the Internet's role in promoted other foreign media, such as Bollywood films and Nigerian-produced videos, as well as petitions by fans to bring back or continue canceled shows exclusively online. However, consumers' apparent willingness to pay for niche market content has not yet been embraced by media corporations; rather, they threaten lawsuits against fans who share programs (including those which have not been picked up for television or licensed for the American market). Jenkins asserts that this stance is hypocritical, as media corporations promote certain forms of fan participation (such as Marvel comics putting pictures of people dressing as The Incredible Hulk on its website) while sanctioning others (suing the developers of the game "City of Heroes" for allowing players to create a character identical to The Hulk). He also suggests that companies have been "ripping off" the intellectual property of others for a long time, citing memos from Marvel to Jack Kirby to make The Hulk look like Universal's Frankenstein. While corporations deem it acceptable to co-opt ideas from one another, they penalize fans for doing the same.

Jenkins suggests that corporations need to embrace fan participation more fully, and not underestimate the desire of fans to generate their own content. He gives examples of successful ventures such as The Sims video game franchise, the Second Life computer game, and the "30-Second Bush" user-generated ad campaign of Move-On.org, all of which depend heavily on users producing new content to keep the game/website/etc. going. Jenkins suggests that the old paradigm of corporate-media-influenced passive consumers vs. "culture-jamming" anti-corporate and media-resistant producers is deficient because it fails to incorporate the idea of fan production and co-optation facilitated by the Internet and other new media technologies; fans seek to influence and shape the media they consume rather than simply accept it or throw it out all together.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I have been a member of many online fan communities and continue to participate to some extent in fan communities to this day. As such, I can relate first hand to Jenkins' frustrations about media corporations resistance to certain modes of fan participation. In my opinion, if fan-produced works provide more publicity for a franchise, why would a company want to block them? I think Jenkins gets to the root of the problem, saying that it's a result of corporations applying old media paradigms to new media products. Jenkins' advocacy of fans shaping corporate content relates back to Freire, emphasizing a populist ideal of consumers (of literature, television, film, etc.) critically interpreting knowledge, rewriting it, and sending it back out into the discourse.

As I've mentioned in other blog postings, I'm also excited about Levy's idea of collective knowledge. I've never thought about how difficult it would be to follow certain programs or understand certain films without the Internet and pooled fan knowledge...I can't image trying to watch something like Heroes, which has multiple complicated plot lines, without being able to go online and catch details I missed or read others' theories about what certain scenes signify. For me, the next step in theorizing collective knowledge is how do we figure out who owns it? I'm definitely in favor of the idea of collective ownership. I was discussing this with my Economics major roommate, who agreed with me, but explained that collective ownership is inefficient because you would have to gain too many people's consent to use the image for profit. My thinking is that it's not necessary or even desirable to profit off of collective knowledge and collective productions, but perhaps that's too idealistic. I do think that removing the profit angle would encourage more experimentation and creativity when it comes to content generated by amateur artists (certainly professional artists need to be able to make a living off of their works). But with the line between professional and amateur increasingly blurred by new media technologies, what is the future of art?

Reading as Social Practice and Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke

- Whose positions, voices, and interests are at play? Which are absent/silent?

The strongest message in the film is ecological; man's greed and hatred is destroying the natural world, ultimately destroying themselves as well. Ashitaka's statement of purpose, "to see with eyes unclouded by hate," is realized when he chooses to preserve/restore the world to its "natural" order (by returning the head of the elk god). The opposing viewpoint, Lady Eboshi's vision of progress through industrialization, is cast mostly negatively. Her demeanor is arrogant; her town small and full of foreboding smoke and shadows. The idea that the women of Iron Town have been liberated through industrialization is briefly mentioned, but ultimately overshadowed by Lady Eboshi's increasing arrogance and selfishness. The film's vision of progress is a return to a past in which humankind lived in accordance with the dictates of nature; technology is most rendered as harmful and polluting, with its benefits only briefly explored.

- What are the cultural meanings and possible readings that can be constructed from this text?

A culturally-specific reading: cautionary tale about the possible outcomes of increasing industrialization and secularization in Japan. Tokyo is often regarded as the epitome of urbanization and detachment from the natural world (the dominant picture is one of neon signs, pavement, and electronics, not cherry blossoms or gardens). A move away from traditional animistic/nature-centric (Shinto, and to a lesser extent, Buddhist) religious practices has accompanied industrialization in Japan. Lady Eboshi's most serious transgression, which leads to her downfall, is that she is so arrogant she believes she can kill a god. As she explains to Ashitaka, "the trick is not to fear him." Although her disrespect for the sacred inflicts serious damage, it is ultimately superseded by Ashitaka's decision to honor the elk god by re-membering/remembering him and consenting that the highest power in the natural order of things does not lie with humankind, but rather nature itself.

I feel like I should state that I think Princess Mononoke is an amazing film; the animation and soundtrack are gorgeous, and the message is complex. The readings I've come up with above are not meant to suggest that film's themes are oversimplified or negative; for me, problematizing a text is one of the best ways to understand it. I also feel like I tend to agree with many of the texts(see the post below for my unending enthusiasm for Freire) for this class, so I wanted to provide a more critical reading for Mononoke, a text I'm reasonably familiar with and have enjoyed immensely on each re-viewing.

Freire and Macedo; Luke and Freebody

Freire and Macedo

- "language and reality are dynamically interconnected": Reading is not just words on a page; it is connected to the ways in which you interact with and what you know about the world around you.

- "reading" environments -- objects and signs: learning how to interact with and understand your environment
- dispelling fears by learning to read one's environment

- world vs. "word-world": disconnect between what you experience and the texts that you read.

- understanding in context vs. rote memorization: making texts, words meaningful
- "Mechanically memorizing the description of an object does not constitute knowing the object"

- quality of reading vs. quantity: critical understanding and exploring of the text is more important than reading but not analyzing a large number of texts; longer texts do not necessarily contain more meaning and are not necessarily "better" than shorter ones.

- teachers don't fill students' "empty heads" with knowledge: learning as a creative, collaborative process

- students should learn what is important to their experience, not the teacher's experience

- reading should involve rewriting of what is read (Gramsci and counterhegemony): the purpose of literacy is to develop a critical consciousness and enact social change

I've explained before in my own blog and on comments on the other blogs my strong support for Freire's ideas about popular education. I feel it's important to stress, as Freire does in this piece, that his project is educating adults, specifically those are marginalized/disadvantaged. While his approach, which stresses political involvement and social change, might seem simplistic or idealistic to some, I have seen through work with various organizations that it is actually quite practical and effective. While it might take years to teach someone how to read and analyze classics of modern social theory (most students barely touch these topics until undergraduate study), the basic ideas of these texts can be summarized and explained to someone quite briefly. Especially for adults who work long hours and have little time for or access to books and internet resources, the most effective method of teaching critical literacy is providing summaries of key social theory ideas and then having people engage in dialogue about how these ideas related to their own experiences. As Freire suggests, understanding is more effective than memorizing; for example, you don't need to memorize the term "means of production" to understand Marx's idea that laborers don't own their workplaces or work equipment. Having only had experience with adults, I'm not sure how these techniques could be most effectively applied to working with younger people, but Freire's idea of popular education for social change is a highly effective (and, importantly, non-condescending) way of encouraging critical thinking and organizing people for social justice. Rather than having adults feel like they are being lectured, popular education empowers people to take foundational pieces of knowledge and apply it to their own battles for betterment of wages, working and housing conditions, and a host of other social justice issues.

Luke and Freebody

- Models of reading based on models of the social order and how literate individuals should fit in to that order
- individualistic; "capabilities defined as individual possessions": in our Western capitalist societies, literacy has been perceived as a personal belonging and a commodity useful for improving one's individual conditions (better education, better employment, more opportunity for promotion, etc.). Which individuals have access to literacy education is defined by the power dynamics of the specific society (e.g. colonial education allowed access mostly to men for the purpose of attaining desirable employment). The psychological approach to literacy also emphasizes individual experiences of texts and is thus isolating; more progressivist approaches have recently developed, emphasizing the readers' interpretation of the text in relation to other texts and social context.

Luke and Freebody have several propositions for how literacy education can be better theorized:

1. Reading and writing are social activities.
2. All texts are motivated - there is no neutral position from which a text can be read or written.
3. We learn about appropriate reading and writing positions within the relationships that take responsibility for our learning (we learn which practices are valued by virtue of our participation in particular institutions, which encourage/reward particular forms of literacy practice).
   
4. Institutionally purpose-built repertoires of "selves" are represented to us explicitly or otherwise in all of the texts we read and write (we learn which ways of being are valued).
   

- Reading and the teaching of reading are "connected to and transformed by political and economic outcomes": emphasis on individual experience of a text cannot account for the ways in which access to literacy is limited, and which kinds of literacy practices are encouraged.

- Cultural constraints on reading/teaching literacy -- power dynamics, what kinds of reading is valued: taking into account social norms and power dynamics when attempting literacy projects across various cultural contexts.

- Invisibility of ideological positions in pedagogical texts (e.g., history books): primary education does not generally emphasize examining the ideological position of texts, thus valuing specific viewpoints and approaches to various subjects.

- Psychological vs. sociological perspectives on reading: individuation vs. sociocultural interaction, power structures, knowledge

- The Elements of Reading as a Social Practice: ideas on how to implement a sociological approach to literacy
- Coding, meaning, pragmatic, and critical processes: not levels or a progression of understanding, but all integral parts of reading a text. One element should not be emphasized at the expense of others.

- Foregrounding the ideological positions of texts, comparing and contrasting texts

I wrote my blog comment about Freire's ideas on adult popular education before reading Luke and Freebody; they provide a helpful praxis for implementing a popular education-style method of teaching literacy in the context of formal education for younger students. They are less concerned with politics and social change than Freire, but I suppose that makes sense in that it is difficult for young students to apply social theories to their own lives, as they may not yet understand their own social position in the same way that adults do. However, students can certainly learn to examine critically the ideological assumptions of any text, as is demonstrated in the example from the history texts regarding Third World peoples and colonialism. I firmly believe that our formal education system needs to spend less time on memorizing dates and facts and more time on understanding social, historical and ideological trends. Knowing the exact date that Columbus landed in the Americas is an irrelevant factoid if divorced from the historical context of European colonialism. Unfortunately, the recent predominance of standardized tests has left little time for instructors to encourage critical literacy; it seems as though we've taken a step back toward the factory system of memorization and recall rather than the creative thinking and critical understanding our school systems have claimed to promote. Until we figure out a method of evaluating learning progress that is different from the current standardized test system, reading as a social practice and the development of critical literacy will surely take a backseat to text-as-artefact memorization.

Sin City and Multimodality

For me, it is much easier to see the ways in which Sin City relates to new media than doing the same for As Tears Go By, as the unconventional filming techniques of Sin City were highly publicized during its release; having been a fan of the graphic novels, I was paying close attention to the trailer and promotional materials for the film in months leading up to its release.

As I understand, Sin City is revolutionary in that it is the first film to be shot entirely in front of a green screen, with all the background digitally added. Additionally, the film is mainly in black and white, with occasional color added to an object to emphasize its importance; I have only seen this technique utilized previously in Schindler's List, and not to the same degree as it is used in Sin City. The visual mode of representation used in the film communicates the particular style of the graphic novels: stark black and white provide high contrast, giving it a different feel than black-and-white films where the majority of the colors turn out as shades of gray. I find this technique particularly interesting in the scenes of extreme violence, where the majority of blood spilled is represented as solid white. It aids in stylizing violent scenes that may otherwise have been perceived as much more graphic. For example, the images of Marv covered in red blood and red blood splattered on Miho's face stand out vividly in my mind, despite many other scenes containing much more onscreen violence. However, I noticed the multimodality of the film as a text most strongly in relation to these scenes; despite the use of the white blood making the depictions of violence less realistic, the movement of the actors' bodies and sound of their voices still suggest pain and suffering, rendering these scenes in the film more disturbing than their graphic novel counterparts, which rely solely on visual representation and written language. I found myself cringing quite frequently during the film (even on this, my fifth viewing), while I rarely found myself reacting so viscerally to the same sequences in the graphic novels.

Despite the film's problematic representations of violence and gender roles, I still enjoy watching it, mainly for the pleasure of seeing such an aesthetically distinct, two-dimensional world replicated so faithfully in a three-dimensional sense. The incorporation of digital effects into films can at times call attention to the film's constructed nature (break the fourth wall), but Sin City demonstrates that these techniques can also bring to life in a believable manner a world which visually differs so drastically from that which we experience and consider to be natural.

Literacy Autobiography

I just wanted to reflect briefly about the experience of writing my literacy autobiography. I had never really considered just how personal writing about my experiences with literacy and new media would be. I found myself wanting to shy away from thinking about why and how I used technology, especially the Internet, during my middle school and high school years. I never thought about my relationship to technology as being so inextricably linked to some of the most personal facets of my identity, as well as some very trying times in my life. More evidence for new media as a social process with which we interact and shape, as well as allowing it to shape ourselves.

Week 4 Readings

Kress, Gunther. "Multimodality."

Gunther begins with the idea that in order to understand multimodality, written language must be dislodged from its position as the central mode of public communication. He provides the examples of music and art as other modes of communication, which he asserts have thus far only been theorized as modes of expression, and should be reimagined as modes of communication in addition to expression. He also examines the idea of different modes of representation, stating that sight and sound have been specialized to focus on speech as an aural representation and written language as a visual representation of communication; our senses have been trained to privilege representations of language. Kress goes on to suggest that we should view language as a multimodal form of communication, rather than a single mode, positing that graphology (the physical aspect of writing) can have a different meaning-making potential from lexis (word order), and thus should be regarded as separate modes. Thus, because it is comprised of more than one mode of representation, language is a multimodal form of communication. Language is the result of integrating different modes to form a complex but coherent message.
Kress asserts that the focus on written language engages the visual sense, but closes of the other senses; in this manner, he seems to agree with McLuhan's premise that print culture is fragmenting and alienating. He also suggests that the phenomenon of privileging certain sensory modes (such as the visual mode) disadvantages cultures and individuals who are more adept at utilizing different modes for learning. Kress provides three ways to think about multimodality:

• All texts are multimodal
• There are texts which exist in a (multi-)mode other than language
• There are systems of representation which are acknowledged in the culture to be multimodal, when in fact all such systems are multimodal

Kress believes that recognizing the multimodality of all systems of representation will help to undermine the privileging of written language and create more texts that engage multiple senses. He also challenges the assumption that language can express anything within the realm of rational thought, citing the inability to articulate certain tastes and smells using only language. He theorizes that any grammar, linguistic or otherwise, must be able to:

• Communicate about events and states of affairs in the world

• Communicate about the social relations of the participants in a communicational interaction

• Have the ability to form internally coherent entities (messages)

Thus, language is not the only mode of representation that can be used for communication; for example, visual arts can communicate all of the above with utilizing written language.

I strongly agree with Kress' idea that language is unduly privileged as a mode of communication; I know that when I watch films, the most poignant and meaningful scenes are often those with no dialogue. Similarly, I find myself highly affected by certain pieces of visual art. For example, I used Frida Kahlo's painting "What the Water Gave Me" in an essay last year; it took me nearly page to explain everything I felt was communicated in the painting. It would seem to me that sometimes a picture truly is worth a thousand words. I do not necessarily agree with Kress' interpretation of print culture as alienating, but I appreciate his ideas on how to move beyond focusing solely on print culture and appreciating other modes of representation as equally valid methods of communication.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Massage.

McLuhan's book engages the reader in a variety of ways. Emphasizing his belief that print culture alienates the other senses, McLuhan prioritizes images over text, and forces the reader to examine their tactile relationship to the book through techniques such as mirroring text, or placing text upside-down on the page. These techniques, as well as the predominance of images, also deemphasize the content of the text, reflecting McLuhan's anti-content thesis.

While reading the book, I was acutely aware of the ways in which the layout of the book demonstrated McLuhan's ideas on the nature of media; he quite effectively makes a case for his anti-content thesis and the alienation caused by print by communicating these ideas through the act of reading rather than the information gleaned from the reading. I was tempted throughout my reading to skip the text entirely, read pages out of order, or even stop reading completely because I felt that I could understand McLuhan's message without paying careful attention to the written language he includes. While I found the book extremely thought-provoking, I still disagree with McLuhan's essential claims about the nature of media (I still believe they are social processes rather than artefacts) and the alienating effects of print culture. For example, we are all coming together tomorrow to talk about this book. While I understand that the act of reading can shut off the other senses, print materials can facilitate discussion as well as the creation of non-verbal artistic expressions (based a piece of music or art on a piece of literature is quite common). McLuhan's radical claims are provocative, but I believe that the nature of media and how it functions in society is more complex than he suggests.

Blog Egalitarianism

I believe I've fixed the settings of this blog to allow anonymous users to post, and I've posted the comment Fiona sent me earlier today via e-mail under my last post.

It's pretty weird that you can only use Gmail accounts to post. Anyone know what kind of connection Blogger/Blogspot has to Google?

Week 3 Readings and Film

Goodman, Steven. Teaching Youth Media Ch. 1

Goodman begins by recounting a story of his son's teacher using corporate logos to teach the class about reading and identifying symbols. He expresses both admiration for the incorporation of literacy skills beyond reading and writing and trepidation that frequently no critical analysis of the pervasiveness of corporate symbols accompanies these kinds of lessons. He advocates critical media literacy, much in the same vein as Freire's ideas about the importance of critical consciousness. Goodman describes his work facilitating youth film workshops, which he believes can especially help marginalized youth learn to mediate the divide between their backgrounds and experiences and hegemonic social practices. He believe that the "all-too-fossilized world of the large urban schools" fails to teach youth, especially "at-risk" youth, about how to function successfully in society.
Goodman also discusses the history of educational models, comparing the earlier "factory" system of micromanagement and rote memorization to the "cooperative" model, which puts less emphasis on obedience and recalling facts and encourages questioning and debate. He also recalls the history of community media projects, notably student films and other projects produced by youth in the 1960s and 70s.
Although the modern American school system purports to utilize the cooperative model of education, encouraging critical thinking and debate, it is interesting to examine how well that model is being implemented in this new era of emphasis on standardized test scores as a measure of success at both the school and individual level. Many parents and students in my high school district were concerned about the phenomenon of "teaching to the test" rather than having in-depth discussions, but the school district insisted that standardized tests had to be the focus of our classes in order for the school to receive federal funding for arts, music, and science classes. It seems to have become a vicious cycle of sorts: students have to sacrifice time that could be used for creative projects or research in order to get the money necessary to do creative projects or research.
As far as Goodman's work with youth film projects, I think he is absolutely correct in his belief that these kinds of workshops can help youth understand themselves and their relationship to the greater society. One excellent example of this type of project is the documentary "A.K.A. Don Bonus." It was produced by filmmaker Spencer Nakasako (with the East Bay Asian Youth Center's youth film program) and a Cambodian American high school student, and presents an engaging and poignant portrait of his difficulties growing up in low income areas in the Bay Area. I would highly recommend that anyone who found Goodman's work even remotely interesting view this film; it beautifully demonstrates not only what these projects do for the youth working on them, but also how they help educate the larger public about the issues that these students face.


Lister, et. al. pp. 72-92
Lister's main topic of dicussion in this section is the differences between McLuhan and Williams' ideas about the nature and effects of media, in particular technology and new media. Lister describes the general academic opinion that McLuhan is "theoretically unstable" yet thought-provoking, while Williams' conception of the relationship between society and media is more sound.
According to McLuhan, new media guarantee profound social and cultural change. This view is opposed by Williams, who resists "technological determinism" and suggests that new media and new technologies do not necessarily result in any kind of change. McLuhan suggests four types of human societies as determined by which media were available at the time, which he labels the "four cultures":

1. Primitive oral/aural culture: speaking and listening are the primary media for early human civilization, which results in humans being intimately connected with the happenings of their surrounding environment. People are forced to relate to others and to their environment.
2. Culture of literacy: writing is privileged, and is often read by elites to the masses. Visual symbols are also important in relating information because the majority of the population cannot read nor write. Thus, humans must still interact frequently with their surroundings.
3. Print culture: McLuhan suggests that with the invention of the printing press, which enables more and more people to learn to read, humans become alienated from sensory perception of the world around them, losing tactile, aural, and oral connections with their environment. As McLuhan explains, "Gutenberg culture is hypnotized by its eye." McLuhan regards the dominance of print culture as a negative effect on society because it is isolating and disconnects readers from interacting with their surrounding environment.
4. Electronic culture: McLuhan regards electronic culture as a rebirth of the primitive oral/aural culture, as people again begin to interact with one another and become reconnected to the sensations of their surrounding environment. He envisions the world of electronic culture as a "global village," in which people in disparate locations are connected through the use of technology.

McLuhan defines a medium as an "any extension of the self;" thus, for him, technologies such as the wheel (which he sees as an extension of the foot) and electric light are media. He emphasizes the irrelevance of the content of a medium, asserting that the medium is the "message;" what is important is the medium itself, not what it is used for or what it has to say. In this manner, he views media more as artefacts than as social processes. In addition to the ideas that technology is an extension of the human body (the "extension thesis"), and that the content of a medium is irrelevant (the "anti-content thesis") another influential theses has developed from McLuhan's work: the environmental thesis, which suggests that man lives in a world so influenced by and saturated with technology that he cannot perceive it. Technology is not a "bridge between man and nature," but rather is nature itself.
In contrast, Williams insists that media are social processes which are developed to serve social purposes, and that their effects are largely the result of "existing systems of wealth and power." He argues that "what a culture is like does not directly follow from the nature of its media," and emphasizes understanding the societal context of a medium and the ways in which it is used to further the goals and aims of a particular group/groups. As Lister explains, the majority of modern studies on media and new media in particular use Williams as their theoretical base, regarding McLuhan as interesting but flawed.

Although Lister points out that Williams' conception of media is more generally accepted, looking at the amount of space both Lister and this blog devote to McLuhan vs. the amount we devote to Williams suggests to me that it truly pays to be a provocateur. There exists a similar situation in many of the social sciences; for example, while Freud is arguably the most famous and most studied name in psychology/psychiatry, the modern professional and academic consensus seems to be that the majority of his theories are incorrect. Which is ultimately more interesting: being radical, innovative, and thought-provoking, or developing a theoretically plausible model for a particular phenomenon. While I think it's important to understand McLuhan's ideas, even if only to theorize in which ways he is wrong, I think it would also be prudent to devote more space to examining Williams if his ideas truly are regarded as more sound than McLuhan's. As to whom I agree with, my previous post on why I didn't major in linguistics explained how I believe social context and literacy to be intextricably connected; thus, I am inclined to agree with Williams that media are social processes rather than artefacts. I do not believe that media would exist without societies inventing them for a specific purpose (such as the wheel, which I don't believe would have been invented were it not for humanity's need to transport goods more efficiently). The anthropologist in me views technological progression as derived from changes in the way society operates, and not the other way around as McLuhan suggests.

Wong Kar-Wai, Wong Gok Ka Moon (As Tears Go By)
I was glad for the opportunity to watch this film again. I'm a huge fan of Wong Kar-Wai's work, and I hadn't seen this film in a few years. Watching it again, I am reminded of why I haven't watched this film numerous times as I have some of his later works. There is just so much going on in this story that, for me, it's difficult to put all the thematic threads together; however, I can see the beginnings of themes that are continued in Wong's later films: the tentative relationship between Ah-Wah and Ah-Ngor seems like the predecessor of the dynamic of In the Mood for Love and 2046, while the theme of destructive loyalty as seen with Ah-Wah and Fly is revisited in Happy Together. For me, As Tears Go By foreshadows greatness that is to come, but does not quite reach that level itself.
As far as the relation to new media and utilizing new technologies, I am finding it difficult to figure out what is technically innovative about this film, as my knowledge of film history is relatively minimal. However, I did notice the prominence of artificial light sources in the film. The lighting from the neon signs and fluorescent indoor fixtures give the gang-related scenes in the film an unnatural feel; they especially serve to make the actors' skin tone look almost sickly, which draws my attention to the way in which brutality and death have become natural to the characters. These scenes are contrasted with the shots of Ah-Ngor and where she lives, which looks very bright and natural. I'm not sure how much of this technique has to do with technology, but it is very different from other Hong Kong gangster movies I've seen which make use of a more film noir style with light and shadow or a more typical action movie style of bright colors and flashes of light. I'm really interested to discuss more about this with folks who have more experience with film techniques and film history. I've taken film studies classes before, but always from that same anthropological perspective where I'm focused more on the content and social context than the technical aspects of production and aesthetics.

BitTorrent

At our last class meeting, we brought up BitTorrent, and so I thought I'd post about my experiences using it.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer filesharing service that works by breaking up the files you're downloading into packets; while you're downloading from users who have the file (or have more of it than you do), you're simultaneously uploading what you have to other users. This way, it doesn't put a huge strain on the bandwidth of just a few people who have the whole file. One interesting thing about the way it works is that your download rate is directly proportional to how much you upload. The more you allow others to download from you, the faster your download will go, thus discouraging people from downloading without uploading in return. This seems to enforce quite effectively the essence of filesharing -- it's more difficult to take files without, to use a cliche, passing the favor forward. There are even certain torrent tracker sites that require you to maintain a certain download/upload ratio in order to download from that particular tracker. Of course, there are always ways to get around this, but given how popular BitTorrent is as a method of filesharing, it seems like the majority of users respect the "rules".

I'm certain than everyone has an opinion on the ethics of filesharing, but I'm more interested in how other people feel about various forms of Internet etiquette. How important is it to respect the rules when you may be using the service for extralegal purposes? Is it an example of "honor among thieves?" Am I reading too much in to this whole phenomenon (given that we're in a class about new media, I'm going to go with "no")?

Week 2 - Lankshear and Knobel, Lister et. al., and Street because I have an opinion dying to get out.

Street, Brian. "The New Literacy Studies."
Street's article explains the history and development of the fields of Literacy Studies and New Media Literacies. The field emerged out of a desire to revision the traditional emphasis on "language arts," or more specifically, reading and writing, in a way that could account for differing cultural practices as well as better account for the social meanings of reading and writing. Two models emerged out of this new emphasis on "literacy."

• The autonomous model, which more closely resembles its "language arts" predecessor in that it focuses on the transformation of spoken language into written text (bridging the "divide" between orality and literacy that Street cites as a fault of the language arts model), which is seen as fundamentally different from the spoken word and generally "indifferent to attack" (Ong). The original format (book, website, etc.) of a published text cannot be altered except by its creator releasing a new edition; thus, the text is viewed as autonomous rather than in dialogue with other texts or forms of communication.
• The ideological model, which emphasizes the relationship between literacy and power structures. This model emphasizes discourse analysis, the study of communications in societal context, rather than traditional linguistic models of analyzing conversations at an isolated level (sentence, word, or even morpheme level).

This comparison between the linguistic and cultural anthropological approaches was the facet of Street's article that I was most interested in. Having begun my Stanford career as a linguistics major (sociolinguistics focus), I completely agree with the ideological literacy model's contention that context is critical to understanding literacy. Literacy represents a form of cultural citizenship, having access to and being able to participate in societal discourses. The linguistic focus on isolated speech events can be insightful when combined with ethnographic information on the context of the speech event, but otherwise is so specific to the speaker/writer that it cannot be extrapolated to understanding and ultimately shaping social structures (which I believe to be a critical aim of the social sciences). The example Street provides of the control of written language by elites in Sierra Leone clearly illustrates the importance of relating any study of language use to broader sociocultural trends/events; studying these writings without applying knowledge of their social purpose would produce information that would have little use outside the specific group of elites responsible for its production.
Street's critique of the sociolinguistic method of studying language use and literacy addresses all the reasons that I ultimately chose to major in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity rather than Linguistics; to me, the anthropological approach (which the majority of CSRE-related classes employ) seems much more suited to producing research that could remain relevant over time and potentially effect social change.

Lankshear and Knobel, "From 'Reading' to 'The New Literacy Studies'"
Lankshear and Knobel, like Street, also explore the development of "Literacy Studies" from the traditional emphasis on "reading and writing." They postulate reasons for the birth of this new field:

• Paulo Freire's emphasis on educating people to develop a critical consciousness about the societies in which they live and their relationship to their society. Freire used reading and writing as tools for reflection as well as communication, developing a model of "popular education" that differed from the traditional emphasis on consuming "culturally important" (as defined by elites within academia) texts.
• The "literacy crisis" in Anglophone nations. As the concept of "literacy" began to evolve beyond the abilities to read and write, concern that many citizens (especially in the U.S.) lacked a vaguely-defined body of essential cultural knowledge prompted the development of literacy programs, many of which were aimed at adults.

I was particularly interested in the idea of the American "literary crisis." I believe it is necessarily connected to the emergence of the idea of "cultural literacy." One of my high school English teachers recommended that all her students purchase E.D. Hirsch's Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, which Lankshear and Knobel mention. The Dictionary prompted my interest in epistemology -- where does our knowledge come from? Who determines what is important? Who is this knowledge designed to serve? While certainly encompassing an impressive body of historical, literary, and scientific information, the Dictionary clearly privileges Western cultural products :the Bible and Western mythology each have their own section, whereas "World Literature, Philosophy, and Religion" are all combined in one section; it also excludes information about both popular and alternative cultural products in favor of "fine art." While I understand that every work has its failings, the idea that one book can purport to be "What Every American Needs to Know" (the Dictionary's subtitle) must be examined critically.

Lister, et. al. New Media: A Critical Introduction pp. 9-37.
Lister examines the various aspects of what types of communications or technologies qualify as "new media." He identifies the following characteristics of new media:

• Digitality: new media can be represented numerically and manipulated algorithmically. Thus, new media tends to be more quickly accessible and more easily edited than its predecessors, which Lister deems "analogue media." An example of this characteristic is Wikipedia, which can be edited an infinite number of times and quickly, unlike a printed encyclopedia.
• Interactivity: users of new media can "directly intervene" in media that they access (20). There are "extractive" methods of interaction, in which the reader forms a text that is useful to them by choosing readings that are linked in any kind of database, as well as "immersive" methods of interaction, which includes a visual/sensory environment for the user to explore.
• The simple act of a user registering on, for example, a message board or newsgroup and adding their own opinions and information is also an example of interactivity. Thus, this blog exemplifies interactivity, as well!
• Hypertexuality: there are pathways leading to and from new media texts to other texts. For example, a hyperlink leading from one webpage to another represents a pathway from one text to another. Hypertextual organization allows users quick access to varied information.
• Dispersal: new media, in contrast to its predecessors, is decentralized, which has created a more individuated method of consumption, as well as allowing more people to produce and distribute media.

I was most interested in the case study that Lister presents on problems of authorship and ownership with digitization. I am particularly thinking about who can claim to own various materials that have wide circulation on the internet, such as Wikipedia articles (which are supposed to be open to editing by the public, but can be "locked" by administrators), anonymously posted poetry, or even popular image macros (such as the pictures of cats with funny captions). Are these texts collective knowledge and information, or can they be traced to a particular author and thus subjected to copyright? What would a truly collective knowledge look like? I'm perpetually interested in the idea of collaborative/collective products and ideas, so I'll likely be revisiting that idea as I learn more about new media.