You’re Not Ready

The website “We Feel Fine” is broken up into six discrete movements, each revealing a different aspect of a chose population.  Madness is the first movement that holds around 1,500 particles.  Each particle represents a single feeling coming from a single individual.  The color of the particle corresponds to a tone of the feeling.  “This networks of many tiny colorful particles, was designed to echo the human world.  Seen from afar, Madness presents a massive number of individual particles, each colored and sized uniquely, proclaiming its own individuality.”  (We Feel Fine)

The second movement, Murmurs, is a highly structured environment in which human feelings are viewed.  “The strict formal constraints of Murmurs help to emphasize the gaping polarities in the types of feelings present in the world.” (We Feel Fine)

The third movement, Montage, was created to answer questions like: What does sadness, happiness, or loneliness look like?  Montage presents feelings from a population in the form of photographs.

Mobs are the fourth movement, which are broken up into five smaller movements and utilize a self-organizing system.  The five smaller movements are: Feeling, which displays the most common feelings in a population, Gender, which displays a gender breakdown in a population, Age, which displays the number of feelings from each age range, Weather, which displays different weather conditions, and Location, which displays the geographical breakdown of a population.

The fifth movement, Metrics, consists of again, give smaller movements.  “Whereas Mobs expresses the notion of “Most Common”, Metrics expressed the notion of “Most Salient”.” (We Feel Fine) The five smaller movements are the same, yet, approached in a different manner.  They are: Feeling, which displays the most representative feelings of a population, along with statistical data, Gender displays a comparison between men and women of a population indicating if a gender is salient, Age displays the most representative ages indicating if an age is salient, Weather displays a comparison between the four weather types indication if the weather is salient, and Location displays the most representative locations given the location is salient.

Mounds is the sixth and final movement and is independent of a given population.  Mounds displays many feelings and is scaled and sorted in order of frequency.

The website, We Feel Fine has been increasing dramatically on human feelings.  Many blog entries start with the phrases, “I feel” and “I am feeling.”  If anything learned in this class, there are many different ways to express yourself without giving away that beginning phrase.  Just simply describing your actions without actually telling someone, “I am feeling this way or that way”.

Like many social networking sites, typically, you learn about them through your friends, who have learned about them through their friends.  “Perhaps today’s youth will be far better equipped to handle gossip as adults.”-Maybe not. Today’s youth is most definitely not ready to handle gossip as adults.  Young individuals are too caught up in equality.  Yes, we should all be treated like individuals and equals, but there are laws and rules that keep people out of trouble.  Why is it so easy nowadays for Mommy or Daddy to bail children out of trouble?  Why can children get away from being punished because they seem to be treated unfairly?  If Dan had to pay for his mistakes in 1979, why doesn’t Todd have to pay for it in 2011?  The youth’s of our society are incapable of handling the future.  What individuals think and know are two completely different things.  The social network does not prepare the youth for the future.  It didn’t forty or fifty years ago, what makes someone think it would now?

What’s better than this?

Sensationalism is the ideology of fun.  There are only so many ways you can produce shocks and thrills that you see in movies in order to expand on the essential message of: “It’s all in fun” (De Zengotita, 620).  What is so fun about killings in a movie?  Trying to understand this leaves a reader baffled.

One movie in particular, Kill Bill, revolves around a woman who was part of an assassination squad.  She tries to flee from her past and begin a new life which means starting over.  The members of that particular squad want her dead.  For what reason?  Is it because she wanted to have her own life, and rid herself from her past?  She is the intelligent one in this movie.  In the movie, she is referred to as ‘The Bride‘.  Right before she decides to leave the assassination squad, she becomes pregnant with the leader, who is also her love, Bill.  Does Bill really know she is pregnant with his child?  If so, why would he want her dead?  ‘The Bride’ meets a new man.  They intend to marry and raise a family.  At their wedding, Bill shows up unannounced.  He is there to kill ‘The Bride’ along with the other members of the squad.  ‘The Bride‘ is shot in the head and ends up in a coma.  When she awakens, four years later, she comes to find that her baby is gone and her husband are gone.  ‘The Bride’ wants to seek revenge the best way she remembers how.  Which is to kill the squad members, leaving Bill to be the last of her victims.  She feels this is the only way to get her life back on track.  How?  Since when is violence the only answer?

If fun means killing, I can not imagine the idea’s that go through people’s minds who also want revenge on someone.  De Zengotita states on page 622, “violence and the plot twists are designed to elicit that I-can’t-believe-I’m-seeing-this reaction, which is what you get when a how-can-he-top-that moment.”  How can one top that moment?  What would one want to do that would even want to top that?  How can someone think like that?  What is the main reason for movies to be scary, or want pain inflicted upon someone, or even killing people?  Is it to warn us that, this could happen? Many things could happen to someon, such as a car accident, teen pregnancies, finding out you have cancer.  Make a movie about that!  And how someone deals with that aspect or bump in the road of their life.

Clearly, I am not a fan of the gory and violent movies, as I expand on some opinions.  It is disturbing to be under the impression, that this is a source of entertainment in our American culture.  I ask, why?  Personally, I’d rather be entertained by a comedy, or even a baseball game, or why not a love story.  All of which are very interesting to watch, yet the only thing that could go wrong could be either, laughing until you cry, a lazy fly ball hit by a paid athlete, or even a break up.  Nothing seems too excruciating.

Trashed

“Hip-Hop is dead because we as music artists no longer have the power” (Nas 253).  “Music is subjective and it’s all opinion therefore, negatives outweigh positives” (J-Zone 254).  Not true.  You cannot please everybody.  So why try?  Good music and good albums are about the vibe they give off.  If you like what you hear, then what was produced was a success.

In light of Hip-Hop being dead, what’s that about?  “Rap is supposed to be a way to have fun and get away from everyday stress, while not limiting yourself,” stated J-Zone.  Has he not heard of other genres of music?  Such as Country, Punk, Rock, Pop, etc.  Is it all about Hip-Hop?  I sure hope not.  If so, what has our society come too?  Why does J-Zone choose to focus solely on Hip-Hop?  He chose to address his feelings by purposely breaking grammatical rules and using nonacademic language to support his purpose.

Was his point made?  To an extent, yes, but gave reason to argue his purpose.  “But sometimes things need to fall apart to give birth to greater things” (J-Zone 261).  How would recreating the art of music help, knowing that there are new technologies able to recognize a star quicker?  We are in a century of new technology and it will only become larger as time goes on.  How did the Internet kill rap’s number one asset?  Was it because you did not have the technology we possess now?  What is it that makes J-Zone so angry?  J-Zone states, “It’s virtually impossible to stand out.”  If you know the right people, it’s not.  Maybe it took longer for you to get recognized because technology is not where it was when you were first starting out.

When googling music blogs, many things came up.  I chose to focus on a country musician that I have become a huge fan of.  Winning my heart after Season 4 of American Idol, Carrie Underwood has taken country music to a different level.  She embodies what J-Zone feels is missing in Hip-Hop.  J-Zone spoke about Hip-Hop being dead.  His purpose was to get reactions from his comments and thoughts.  He mentions that, “Rap is supposed to be a way to have fun and get away from the everyday stress, while not limiting yourself.”  Yet, isn’t he limiting himself to what he is listening too?  Why not broaden your musical ear by branching out to other genre’s? Becoming focused on one genre of music limits you to your knowledge of the rest.  Could you explain if there are other genre’s “dying” as well?  Is it just Hip-Hop that surrounds itself with quantity over quality?  Is America really dead if Hip-Hop music isn’t as successful as it has been in the past?  I think not.

When reading one of Carrie Underwood’s blogs, as she has multiple, it was stated one of her songs was good, but not great.  That is hard to believe considering how well Carrie is as a musician and song writer.  The song being trashed was “Mama’s Song.”  Honestly, nothing than the best has ever been written about this song as it portrays a daughter helping her mother let go, thanking her mother for what she’s done, and praising the man she’s marrying to her mother.  Nothing short of what a mother needs to know as she finally lets go of her daughter.  No matter how a critic reacts to a song, performance, etc., should never underestimate how good of a song, performance, etc. really is.  Although what one person may write lingers, should not effect the future.  How one person thinks of something is completely different from, let’s say, how I think of it.  If I trashed J-Zone for a song he has just produced, and someone reads it, thinking the complete opposite, they form an opinion.  Everyone has opinions.  How we express them is completely different.  There is always a better way to approach something in a positive light.  How J-Zone approached how Hip-Hop was dying, was completely inappropriate.  There is an alternative way he should have reacted, that would not have stirred readers away from his points of view.

Blogs – Carrie Underwood

http://www.countryuniverse.net/2010/08/27/single-review-carrie-underwood-mamas-song/

http://www.carrieunderwoodofficial.com/us/news

http://blog.cmt.com/tag/carrie-underwood/

 

“You’re Soaking It In”

“Advertisers know what woman power is,” explains Ladies’ Home Journal. The pulse of a woman’s desire relies in her woman power, sales power, will power, and purchasing power. Kilbourne argues, “That we are inundated with ads telling us that products can meet our deepest needs, that we can be happier, more popular, more successful – more anything, it seems – simply by buying the right products.” I feel the primary message from these advertisements has remained unchanged.
In the movie, What Woman Want, the movie displays a commercial saying, “That women who are unhappy with the quality of their relationships can ease their frustrations by literally forming a more satisfying relationship with the road.” It seems there might not be change in their human relationships to improve, yet the road will love her anyway. There seems to be a need for a connection between relationships and a woman’s need. “Advertising actually encourages us to have relationships with our products” (Pozner 105). Why is that? Do we not have a mind of our own?
We are what buy. Most people like to think that advertising doesn’t affect them. It is true it does, but we should not revolve ourselves around it. It even sounds silly that we let advertising affect us. Advertising will always be around us, but it should not control us. There is a lot of emotional violence in advertisements. Therefore, try not to let advertisements take over your life or even take them too literally.
What shocks me the most in our society is teen pregnancies. I googled ‘teen sex advertisements’ and scrolled until I found one that was super interesting. Graphic teen sex ad that shocked the nation, and I read a partial description. (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/classmate/graphic-teen-sex-ad-that-shocked-a-nation/story-e6frewti-1225713323832) It read, “May 19, 2009…A FILM clip made for the UK’s National Health Service has drawn criticism for its graphic depiction of a schoolgirl giving birth…” I then read the article and watched the video. The message made it clear that if this is not what you expect, being a teenage parent might not be either. It worries me to think of what my children will be growing in to. It seems to me that this past decade, there have been many more teen pregnancies than normal. Out of high school, the one thing I frequently heard was, “Did you hear so-and-so is pregnant?” NO! – I haven’t. Maybe I was just blind to it in my own teenage years, but I have never been surrounded by more friends with babies.
Kilbourne mentions living in a “toxic cultural environment.” There are many advertisements which pity women. Viewing the advertisement on teen pregnancy upholds the truth on why these women are pitied. She feels she is raising her daughter in a toxic cultural environment. She hates that, “Advertisers cynically equate rebellion with smoking, drinking, and impulsive and impersonal sex.” She wants to teach her daughter about rebelling and defy femininity. She would also like to keep her daughter from danger. Kilbourne must realize that we do not live in a perfect world, nor can she shield her from this so-called “toxic cultural environment” we live in.

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Jessica Maciolek

ENG330-80

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