“Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?” by Henry Jenkins is a very interesting commentary on modern culture and modern filmmaking. Jenkins writes about how with today’s technology, the way culture is shaped and the way Hollywood is run is extremely complex. He talks a lot about how much the average person can participate in culture, and can even make a large impact. Take Perez Hilton for example. Just an average person who decided to write a blog became so famous and is now so influential because he decided he would provide his two sense on pop culture. So by just writing his stories, Perezhilton.com takes in about $45,000 dollars a day in advertisements alone and is viewed millions and millions of times.
The internet in itself has become a huge catalyst for the way today’s popular culture and movie making are developed. It has taken amateur movie making to a whole new level- anyone can become a celebrity on youtube. Jenkins wrote how instead of the home movie being the main use for a camcorder, and its distribution only being to the immediate family, we have tons of people of all ages making movies and writing scripts for videos that can be put on youtube for free to be viewed by the masses. Jenkins uses Star Wars as an example of this- that now amateur film making is like an art form and people put take pride in their parodies or reproductions of Star Wars as if they were a movie genre in themselves.
To think that now, some of our most popular and interesting movies are all based on parodying and reproducing previous movies or series is so accurate it’s almost scary. How many times do we hear about how a movie is “the next Alice in Wonderland” or “the next Wizard of Oz”? Its so true how Jenkins writes about how directors like Tarantino and Groening and Smith all promote media texts that they admire and in doing so, allow their films to be extremely relatable, and in turn very successful. When people in movies are doing what people do in everyday life- like trying to think of as many different episodes of gilligans island as possible or debating over which archie comics characters are gay and straight- we automatically laugh and duplicate that. So basically, in modern culture, all we have is recreation after recration of the same movie/movies. And also, we have movies that combine a few different movies and turn out to be a brand new, very clever, classic.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Hebridge- "Subculture: The Meaning of Style"
Bricolage- Construction or creation from a diverse range of available things
Throughout the whole essay by Hebridge, the most interesting section was “Style as bricolage”, meaning that subcultures are the parent culture expressed in unconventional ways. A subculture takes the same available things that the whole of a society is made up of and creates its own. It uses symbols, language and codes and gives them its own meanings.
Subcultures are basically movements within a culture that take the dominant focuses of a society and spin them. Usually, these subcultures react to the dominant culture by either distancing themselves from it or taking it too far. Punks, for example, took the parent culture of Britain and acted in exact opposite ways. Instead of throwing away safety pins they wore them, and instead of seeing a white-collar lifestyle as successful, they saw it as empty and worthless. They saw desire as undesired and ugly as beautiful. So, in doing this, they created their own order in anarchy and created a family/ society of people who all could identify with the same ideas.
The Nightmare before Christmas is a good example of subculture formation and the reason why people remain in subcultures. The citizens of Halloweentown saw things like coffins and skeltons as wonderful and beautiful, but the citizens of Christmas town saw things like colors and Christmas trees as beautiful, just like Halloween-towners thought of being frightened as happiness. Both towns created different meanings from a range of diverse things. For example, when the citizens of Halloween town made gifts they made scary things and in their town they thought they were great and enjoyed giving and receiving them. But when they sent them to Christmas town, the people of Christmastown thought they were being attacked because they were used to getting cute stuff like dolls and trains, not skulls and snakes that ate their Christmas trees. Just like if the people of Christmastown sent happy gifts to Halloweentown, they would have absolutely no used for them because their idea of a “gift” is completely different.
The two places can represent a dominant culture, Christmastown, and a subculture, Halloweentown. Halloweentown took Christmas and created it in a different way, but both towns went about constucting it with the same ingredients. This could be compared to how a dominant culture functions in virtually the same way as a subculture. A subculture finds its coherence in a different form than its parent culture, but both find coherence in something.
Throughout the whole essay by Hebridge, the most interesting section was “Style as bricolage”, meaning that subcultures are the parent culture expressed in unconventional ways. A subculture takes the same available things that the whole of a society is made up of and creates its own. It uses symbols, language and codes and gives them its own meanings.
Subcultures are basically movements within a culture that take the dominant focuses of a society and spin them. Usually, these subcultures react to the dominant culture by either distancing themselves from it or taking it too far. Punks, for example, took the parent culture of Britain and acted in exact opposite ways. Instead of throwing away safety pins they wore them, and instead of seeing a white-collar lifestyle as successful, they saw it as empty and worthless. They saw desire as undesired and ugly as beautiful. So, in doing this, they created their own order in anarchy and created a family/ society of people who all could identify with the same ideas.
The Nightmare before Christmas is a good example of subculture formation and the reason why people remain in subcultures. The citizens of Halloweentown saw things like coffins and skeltons as wonderful and beautiful, but the citizens of Christmas town saw things like colors and Christmas trees as beautiful, just like Halloween-towners thought of being frightened as happiness. Both towns created different meanings from a range of diverse things. For example, when the citizens of Halloween town made gifts they made scary things and in their town they thought they were great and enjoyed giving and receiving them. But when they sent them to Christmas town, the people of Christmastown thought they were being attacked because they were used to getting cute stuff like dolls and trains, not skulls and snakes that ate their Christmas trees. Just like if the people of Christmastown sent happy gifts to Halloweentown, they would have absolutely no used for them because their idea of a “gift” is completely different.
The two places can represent a dominant culture, Christmastown, and a subculture, Halloweentown. Halloweentown took Christmas and created it in a different way, but both towns went about constucting it with the same ingredients. This could be compared to how a dominant culture functions in virtually the same way as a subculture. A subculture finds its coherence in a different form than its parent culture, but both find coherence in something.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
National Culture / National Identity
After reading "Introduction: On Interpreting a Javanese Art Form" by Ward Keeler I noticed that the Javanese shadow plays are really unique to their culture and hold a large place in Javanese society. Also they influence a lot of other forms of art in Java and is revered as highly prestigious.
For example, Keeler wrote that the plays are often used in Javanese conversation: "In a religious mode, people often remark that we are all really just puppets, moved by the ultimate dhalang, God." And also, just by watching Javanese Shadow Plays, Keeler learned a great deal about Javanese society. He was able to note through thick description that Ki Cerma rode to his gig on an old German motorbike, while wealthy dhalang ride to their gigs in a car or in a minibus with an entourage, because Ki Cerma who was old and losing the intensity in his voice was less in demand than other dhalang and therefore less wealthy.
I really liked that Keeler wrote that he used the concept of relationships approach to form a better understanding of Javanese Shadow Plays as an artform. So, without relying completely on the indiginous people's view of the plays and also supressing his western preconceptions, he could see how this art form interacts with the rest of the culture. For example, he looks at the relationship between the artist and the audience and observes what kind of reaction the artist wants from his audience and in turn what the audience wants from their artist. He then understands what is considered a good show to the Javanese and can start thinking of other relationships within the art form that can give him more clues to the culture.
I thought that this was really interesting, because I tried to come up with an art form that was unique only to American culture. I thought of what kind of art Americans might spend their money on when it comes time to plan for their weddings or birthdays. I thought maybe theatre, like Broadway, but most Western cultures have that, and then I thought, maybe movies and Hollywood are quite unique to American culture but they are embraced by most Western cultures too. So what is the national art form of America?
So I turned to pop culture and thought what kind of American would I be if I didn't discuss Britney Spears' heinous performance on the vmas. As an art form in America, music is extremely influential, especially pop music. And I just wonder if the Javanese ever applied Keeler's concepts of relationships to Britney Spear's performance what they would draw from it.... As an artist and audience relationship, the people watching the vmas, or the performance on youtube reacted to the "artist's" awful job with great interest and most likely laughter. So do they think that we think art is a joke? Or do they just think that us Americans are insensitve and silly and dont have any clue what good art is? All these questions made me realize that when looking at Eastern art or any kind of performance art, we need to take tons of situations and circumstances into consideration before we characterize it and not just look at one example of anything.
For example, Keeler wrote that the plays are often used in Javanese conversation: "In a religious mode, people often remark that we are all really just puppets, moved by the ultimate dhalang, God." And also, just by watching Javanese Shadow Plays, Keeler learned a great deal about Javanese society. He was able to note through thick description that Ki Cerma rode to his gig on an old German motorbike, while wealthy dhalang ride to their gigs in a car or in a minibus with an entourage, because Ki Cerma who was old and losing the intensity in his voice was less in demand than other dhalang and therefore less wealthy.
I really liked that Keeler wrote that he used the concept of relationships approach to form a better understanding of Javanese Shadow Plays as an artform. So, without relying completely on the indiginous people's view of the plays and also supressing his western preconceptions, he could see how this art form interacts with the rest of the culture. For example, he looks at the relationship between the artist and the audience and observes what kind of reaction the artist wants from his audience and in turn what the audience wants from their artist. He then understands what is considered a good show to the Javanese and can start thinking of other relationships within the art form that can give him more clues to the culture.
I thought that this was really interesting, because I tried to come up with an art form that was unique only to American culture. I thought of what kind of art Americans might spend their money on when it comes time to plan for their weddings or birthdays. I thought maybe theatre, like Broadway, but most Western cultures have that, and then I thought, maybe movies and Hollywood are quite unique to American culture but they are embraced by most Western cultures too. So what is the national art form of America?
So I turned to pop culture and thought what kind of American would I be if I didn't discuss Britney Spears' heinous performance on the vmas. As an art form in America, music is extremely influential, especially pop music. And I just wonder if the Javanese ever applied Keeler's concepts of relationships to Britney Spear's performance what they would draw from it.... As an artist and audience relationship, the people watching the vmas, or the performance on youtube reacted to the "artist's" awful job with great interest and most likely laughter. So do they think that we think art is a joke? Or do they just think that us Americans are insensitve and silly and dont have any clue what good art is? All these questions made me realize that when looking at Eastern art or any kind of performance art, we need to take tons of situations and circumstances into consideration before we characterize it and not just look at one example of anything.
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