Filed under: culture, media everyday media, sam | Tags: baudrillard, newspaper, simulacra, tabloids, the sun
media technologies and sense perception… baudrillard and the precession of simulacra… ethnic cleansing vs frontpage aesthetics… representation of difference… where to begin?!
Filed under: aristea | Tags: ma blog, non-communication, statistics, utilitarianism
I am not sure of the day exactly but it was around the 19th, 20th of January that the blog was set up, so this is a six-month birthday and I want to give a few statistics. This blog came after the meeting of five people, including me. So far post are 41. This makes a frequency of 6.8 posts per month. The blog was announced in the MOO, emails were sent to the convenors of the 2 other MA’s of the film&media department so that more people come over from othar MA’s. (more…)
Filed under: anne, sensuality, space and everyday life, spirituality | Tags: blogging, private, public, virtual diary
This post might be yet a bit more lyrical than analytical; however, as I have been pondering about it, this post shall become part of what I aim to think of today.
Filed under: culture, sam | Tags: emos, general butt naked, goths, mods, punks, rockers, subcultures, tupac army
For the most part, I’m not personally interested in studies of subcultures or alternative factions of people within society. I tend to side with the argument that critical deconstruction primarily weakens these types of identities, de-mythologises them and leaves them mundane and phoney. I’m referring to the sort of studies by Richard Hoggart and Dick Hebdige, then right through to endless productions either indie or mainstream that approach cultural movements that are generally music-based, white, predominantly middle-class and invariably of American original.
That said, with this post I don’t want to provide a critique or a commentary as such, but just share a small collection of moments when forms of cultural movements seem to escalate beyond simple consumption or teenage self-identification. Here are a few examples of various ‘urban tribes’ in real, physical conflict; situations which seem like sci-fi films coming to life. I’m not necessarily saying that each of these scenarios is based on similar dynamics, but I do suspect that cultural sectarianism is something that will become increasingly prevalent in ever greater spheres of life, and increasingly important in the functioning of postmodern consumer capitalism.
Filed under: aristea, cinema, gender | Tags: gender, katharina blum, media, new german cinema, paternalistic state, terrorism, whore virgin dualism
I am here referring to the Volker Schloendorff and Margarehthe von Trotta film and not the 1974 novelle by Heinrich Böll. Katharina, a woman that leads a quiet life, meets an anarchist -evidently linked to the Red Army Faction- and takes him to her house where they make love. After he escapes, her life is completely destroyed by the journalists and the police investigations.
Part of the New German Cinema of the 1960s, the film is the work of German filmmakers from the left who “challenged the Establishment history of the terrorist movement” (Hoerschelmann, 2001 : 86). I will not go into the theme of the imagined terrorism and the hysterical reaction of the state. I am more interested in the dualism ‘virgin-whore’ as that is represented in the film and the ideas of gender in general.
Filed under: anne, media everyday media, theory | Tags: body, discourse, foucault, health
This question seems to become increasingly important within everyday life, not only as a polite way of starting a conversation, but even more so for media and public bodies to check on the nation’s health. TV shows on public and private broadcasting showing the daily diet of a 150 kg man chewed up in a see-through tube or the likely development of an overweight child in a more than disturbing computer simulation have become daily family programme.
Discourses surrounding a person’s body and how to stay fit and healthy have not only swamped tv, but also pretty much any other medium I can think of. One recent, rather funny element of the whole health frenzy, I think, is Nintendo’s wii console where people can exercise playing virtual golf or doing a boxing exercise. The pinnacle, however, is the new wii balance board, enabling people to do pushups in their living room on this board while keeping the balance and, at the end of the exercise, measure their weight “more accurately than with a typical bathroom scale.” You can ski on the board, too. What once was a game console for people / teenies and 20/30 somethings has evolved into a DIY fitness studio.
Filed under: aristea, human rights, media everyday media | Tags: bloggers unite, disability, human rights, waterboarding
Today is the day of blogging for human rights and apart from reminding people that women are humans, I would like to urge people towards a campaign. It is the Amnesty International Campaign called Unsubscribe-me: Unite against Human Rights Abuse in the war of terror and
Right now all unsubscriber eyes are on the practice of waterboarding. President Bush says it is an acceptable ‘enhanced interrogation technique’
So far 32639 people have un-subscribed. Another issue is
The bill to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days will shortly go to a vote in the UK Parliament. Please make a difference by dropping your MP a line.
And in a very different tone, the 37th edition of the disability blog carnival. Enjoy!
On Friday (9th May) I went to see Control at the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton. I went with a keen movie-going friend of mine. My interest in the film was piqued by the fact that I’ve been impressed with some photography I’ve seen by the director Anton Corbijn. I’ve also seen one video by Anton Corbijn which I really liked. This was not a music video but rather an artistic video build around an interview with the alternative pop/rock icon Captain Beefheart. Anyway this was Anton Corbijn’s first feature film and is focussed on the short life of Ian Curtis, lead singer with the late seventies group Joy Division. (more…)
Filed under: aristea, media everyday media, space and everyday life | Tags: brighton festival, genre, multi-sensory experience, promenade performance, the bell
I went to the Wild Park at Moulsecomb last night and had a multi-sensory experience with the ‘Periplum with the World famous The Bell‘, which, for those who missed it, is repeated tonight. There is no way one person or small party of people, can have the same experience as another in this kind of event. Begginning with the way you reach the place the event takes place:
