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: 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, culture, media everyday media | Tags: animal rights, fingerprint, kfc, murder, PETA, squid, stupidity, Te Papa, vegeterianism
Two signs of immense stupidity for today, one is the “world’s largest eye” and the other is the “finger lickin’ campaign”.
The later is apparently coming back, not that I noticed the first time, but this time I just could not ignore the huge poster ads on bus stops. while cycling by. That is from Falmer to Brighton and you can see there the impression of a chicken leg in a bloody backround. KFC, who did the ad, has a history of unethical treatment of animals and of cruelty when the Kentucky Fried Cruelty campaign launched some years ago, with Pamela Anderson as their animal rights activist and some lettuce over her bosom. I have difficulty in grasping the meaning of ethical in farming little birds who are captured and can’t fly, fed to death and then slaughtered and dismembered, their limbs sunk into pulp and fried. I really can’t locate where the ‘ethical’ could be placed in this chain of events, cause it seems to me that the problem in this process is not if the bird was happy during its life but the fact that you murder it.
Filed under: aristea, culture, space and everyday life, theory | Tags: anarcho-punk, crass, cultural history, experience, may 68, situationist, squatting
Apropos Sam’s notion, here is my culture, experience and history paper
‘Squatting is more than just living’: Squatted Spaces of the UK Movement and, hopefully, others will follow. This paper is an approach to cultural history methods which, at least as far as I understood it in the short period I had the course, uses diverse sources of evidence, sources that may seem un-scientific since it formulates obscure research questions and is clearly interdisciplinary.
Filed under: commodities, culture, media everyday media, sam, space and everyday life, theory
model living: experiencing the ideal home from the great exhibition to ikea (culture, experience and history)
- this one traces a cultural history of exhibited model interiors, finding that the home exhibition has, in the late C20th, moved beyond the exhibition hall, informing a specific type of commerce and providing images that have become ingrained in the consumer’s imagination.
limitless postponements: the changing presence of control (media theory and research II)
- this one offers an addendum to the foucault-deleuze discourse on control and discipline, arguing that the contemporary regime of control is pre-emptive and encourages living for tomorrow over living for today.
anyone else want to offer up their term papers?
Filed under: commodities, culture, sam, space and everyday life | Tags: Daily Mail Ideal Home Show, IKEA, model living
For anyone interested, over on boredom… I’ve posted up a few notes on this year’s Daily Mail Ideal Home exhibition. Its related to a paper I’m writing called “Model Living: Experiencing the Ideal Home from the Great Exhibition to IKEA” which I’ll post up here after hand-in if thats what we’re going to do.
Filed under: anne, culture, media ethics | Tags: development, media ethics, NGO, third world
This is just a short and a “linked” post following the idea of ethics and the display of dead bodies through the media. It was virtuously connected with the idea of porn and the fact that dead bodies resemble the male ejaculation – in a porn the spectator gets to see everything but the ejaculation. In a war, if we didn’t get to see the dead bodies, it would be like showing everything but the end of it. It thus would resemble the narration of porn. Please correct me, if I missed out on something.
I was intrigued by the idea of “porn” outside of porn, leaving the spectator to gaze at something/someone who is exhibited in front of the spectator and its connection to media ethics. I and started looking for resembling thoughts of “porn” imagery – and found an interesting article :
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,488/
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