Thanksgiving/BLACK FRIDAY response

Thanksgiving is a time of celebration for the bountiful feast between American settlers and Native Americans, before the slaughter of course.  The way we celebrate this is by eating enormous amounts of food and giving thanks for all that we have.  America is known for consuming enormous amounts of everything and we're supposed to be thankful for that, meanwhile this over-consumption causes many problems such as overfilling landfills and using up many natural resources.

This is also the idea behind Black Friday, we all buy extreme amounts of material possessions to make us happy but we don't give back.  We buy buy buy to forget about the bigger things going on, we focus on the ipod on sale instead of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also choose to ignore the impact we have on our environment, we ignore all of our flaws by distracting ourselves with gifts and remaining optimistic about the things we do have and not focusing on what we can change.     

America also wants you to be thankful for the work they put into killing the natives and taking their land, without them we wouldn't be here and without their lack of immunity to small pox we wouldn't have their land.  America tends to do horrible things like storm into other countries and solve problems that weren't researched beforehand, and cover them up with humanitarian acts.  There are many examples of this, we invaded and bombed Iraq and then we dropped food, naturally we remember the humanitarian act before the slaughter.  The pilgrims raped and killed many native americans but we choose to remember the feast before that.

In short Thanksgiving is learning "hide the negatives" and be thankful for the positives.  While optimism is nice, we can't ignore our mistakes and problems, America like a small child needs to learn to take responsibility for it's actions and Thanksgiving is a step back in this case because we ignore our flaws altogether and we don't try to improve ourselves.  

Christmas Analysis

Christmas is one of the most confusing holidays, historically.  For the ignorant masses its a holiday about gift giving and santa, and somehow Jesus fits into this with santa claus.  In reality its not known weather or not Jesus was born on december 25th but around that time is the winter solstice which the pagans would celebrate.  In an effort to appeal to the pagans the christian missionaries promised them an equally joyous celebration around the same time, Jesus is the cover up for this.  Santa was an invention of the Coca Cola company which markets heavily around the holidays, Santa's story has been elaborated over the years by many many poorly written christmas specials and movies.

The idea behind christmas is that we come together by giving each other gifts.  This, like black friday and thanksgiving are tools to increase spending and fuel the economy.  However this can take away from personal connections because instead of giving gifts to those you love, you end up getting gifts for everyone just because you're obligated to and making people happy becomes a chore.  In other words, in our society to make someone happy at christmas time you have to spend tons of money, tons of time figuring out what they want and waiting in lines, and tons of effort trying to find their gift which is always remarkably sold out in most stores, do this for each family member and you'll get tired of making people happy.

On the flip side we're conditioned to expect gifts and expect that tons of stuff will make us happy, the company of someone else or their friendship doesn't cut it anymore, we have to have expensive and hard to find gifts from those people, pushing your loved ones to spend money on you and waste time in ridiculous lines.  Between shopping and having christmas specials and christmas ads shoved down our throats we have no time for actual personal connection until christmas day.  Even on christmas day our joy comes from some expensive item that we've sub-consciously forced someone to get us.

Not that I don't love christmas, all the points I made above referred to the majority of ignorant Americans that don't know the true meaning of christmas and don't care as long they get something shiny.  Christmas can be salvaged by individualizing it.  Most cultural blunders come from following the stupid traditions of someone else.  If its doesn't make sense to chop down a tree and put lights on it just to throw it out, then don't do, personalize your christmas so that its not all about having to get gifts for people, celebrate with the ones you love, take a break from school or work and maybe get your family and yourself a little reward.  Christmas is a valuable break from the work we're obligated to do so why not enjoy it.         

Marginal Corporate Messages

The film "Fox Fire" from Columbia studios has the dominant messages of a feminist movie however if the film is deeply interpreted there are different messages underneath.  The film's beginning shows a student being molested by a teacher, the victim and other female students say that they can't do anything about it, but a strong courageous woman convinces them that they can.  The strong female character had many masculine traits like her dislike of vanity, the clothes that she wore and the way she talked which implies that to lead you must have masculine traits.  The film relates leadership and power to masculinity and vulnerability to feminine traits therefore to live a good life with power and security you must be a man or have masculine traits.

The film "Pump Up the Volume"  shows a rebellious teenager named Mark (Hard Harry when on his radio) who plays music and talks over the radio on a pirated signal.  Mark's father represents the dominant messages of corporate culture, while Mark represents the marginal messages.  Mark listens to unknown music and stands out from the crowd, he's weird and has weird things and rebels against society and chooses not to conform to society's expectations.  One marginal message that can be taken from this movie is that you shouldn't be like everyone else, living a good and meaningful life means being different and standing out.  However the film shows his uniqueness through the things he has, tapes of unknown bands, radio equipment, exotic pets etc. To have a meaningful life and to be different you have to buy things that make you different, you have to have different things along with being a different person.           

Dominant Corporate messages

Dominant messages are the most obvious and are the most intentional messages in media.  These messages are specifically put there by the creator to get a point across, these messages are in everything regardless of weather they are intentional or not.  The dominant message of "Game pro" magazine is that life is upgradable, they advertise the newest gaming systems and games, gadgets and other electronics.  This implies that we should improve themselves, the way that we do that as Americans is to buy bigger and better things thus a meaningful life according to Game pro magazine is to have the newest and best electronics and games.

"The Economist" made its own statement about what a good and meaningful life was.  The economist encourages the reader to buy things, not only commercial goods like the cars they advertise but they influence investing as well through stock data graphs and market predictions.  The Economist not only emphasizes the need for material possessions but also states that money on its own is important through its use of investment information.  There are also pictures of business men and other rich people to entice readers to become like them.  To the economist a good and meaningful life includes expensive things, money and power in the form of a high paying career.      

Essay Intro/background info

“What is a Good and Meaningful Life?”

            People define what a good and meaningful life is based on their culture.  Culture can be grouped into several categories.  Corporate Culture, any culture that’s sold for example, TV, news, products and other kinds of media are corporate culture.  Another part of culture is folk culture, culture expressed by word of mouth, this is usually based on family and friends who may have told you stories like “the 3 little pigs” which is passed on by word of mouth and is folk culture, unless its sold as a book.  The last part of culture is called “big-sub-culture” a big sub culture is a culture that most people know about that’s a part or is contained in a larger culture.  Big sub cultures like Christianity in America are part of American culture and most people know about it but not all people are Christians.

            Each of these categories can then be broken down into sub categories based on their messages.  These are dominant messages that are obvious and noticeable, marginal messages, which may be harder to pick up on and are sometimes unintentional, and unacceptable the “bad” messages that are prohibited based on that culture’s values but still make their way into society.

            Dominant corporate messages in society are the most obvious messages to perceive, this is usually the moral of a story or the main theme of a song, article etc.  Depending on where you look you can find totally different messages in culture.

Reaction to Black Friday trampling

Insights

-Human life isn't as important as possessions to Americans seeing how they trampled over and killed someone to save money on stuff

-America has lost its ethics and morals to consumerism, America has learned to sell morals to people through corporate culture for example: disney makes a profit off of selling morals in movies, not only do they shape and mold America, they make money by doing it

-The mob itself is a metaphor for society, if the shoppers could communicate with each other they could have said "stop this man needs help" and stopped trampling him so he could get medical attention, America as a whole has forgotten how to communicate with itself because we're all distracted by material possessions  

The Meaning of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time of celebration for the bountiful feast between American settlers and Native Americans, before the slaughter of course.  The way we celebrate this is by eating enormous amounts of food and giving thanks for all that we have.  America is known for consuming enormous amounts of everything and we're supposed to be thankful for that, meanwhile this over-consumption causes many problems such as overfilling landfills and using up many natural resources.

This is also the idea behind Black Friday, we all buy extreme amounts of material possessions to make us happy but we don't give back.  We buy buy buy to forget about the bigger things going on, we focus on the ipod on sale instead of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also choose to ignore the impact we have on our environment, we ignore all of our flaws by distracting ourselves with gifts and remaining optimistic about the things we do have and not focusing on what we can change.     

America also wants you to be thankful for the work they put into killing the natives and taking their land, without them we wouldn't be here and without their lack of immunity to small pox we wouldn't have their land.  America tends to do horrible things like storm into other countries and solve problems that weren't researched beforehand, and cover them up with humanitarian acts.  There are many examples of this, we invaded and bombed Iraq and then we dropped food, naturally we remember the humanitarian act before the slaughter.  The pilgrims raped and killed many native americans but we choose to remember the feast before that.

In short Thanksgiving is learning "hide the negatives" and be thankful for the positives.  While optimism is nice, we can't ignore our mistakes and problems, America like a small child needs to learn to take responsibility for it's actions and Thanksgiving is a step back in this case because we ignore our flaws altogether and we don't try to improve ourselves.       

Election Reactions

While I was watching the election, mainly the last speech made by Obama, I was overjoyed and inspired and interested.  I wanted to see how these next few years would turn out and what would happen.  I know that Obama is much smarter than president Bush so these next few years will definitely be better than Bush's terms.  However I think Obama promised a lot and I don't think he'll be able to accomplish all of it in 4 years of office (hopefully 8).  However I think he'll be able to do a lot of good for the country even if he can't do everything that he promised.

Having a black president will inspire many blacks and other minorities to succeed and take part in politics and other fields that were before dominated by white men.  Hopefully his presidency alone will change how America acts socially and inspires equality on a personal level.  While this is all great I'm concerned with his safety.  During McCain's speech the crowd booed and some shouted "kill him" when McCain said that Obama was a good man.  I expect many assassination plots to be made, hopefully unsuccessful.  Overall his presidency alone leaves me hopeful and eager to see not only how Obama leads the country but how other minorities will achieve more following his example.       

Video Analysis Comments

Henry’s blog comment

 

I liked your analysis, I think it important that when we analyze these songs we get passed our bias of "this song is really annoying an pointless" and get to what the artists try to say.  I'd like to take your analysis a bit further and ask when she says "what you know bout me ..." that does imply that in the popular crowd they don't care about "her" as a person, my question is "Does she mind? does she care that people don't really know her? does this outweigh the joy of popularity?"

 

Rachel’s blog comment

 

Very short and concise, a good and simple interpretation, much like the video, very simple and concise.  I think your point in the end about costume changes and room changes isn't an artistic decision but a technological set back.  Keeping in mind this video is from the 70s their options in terms of visual effects are limited

 

Katherine’s blog comment

 

In the beginning you said that Lil' Mama wants to be popular so people will "hate" her out of jealousy, this is interesting because she's promoting  popularity with the prospect of jealousy, implying that no one can admire someone anymore, we live in such a self centered society that we can't have admiration for someone, we have to be jealous

Music Video Response

"Good Life" by Kanye West Featuring T. Pain

1- The basic idea of this video is that Kanye lives a good life, which he defines as owning material possetions and having sex

2-one main contradicting idea I see is when he says "the best things in life are free" when at the same he throws specks that turn into diamonds, which obviously aren't free.  Kanye is trying to visually express the importance of material items, throughout the video he's seen with expensive cars and money.  He's also seen with a woman who wears very little clothing implying that sex also defines a good life.

3-In the chorus Kanye says "I got for mine, I got to shine" which implies that fame is important, hence the "i got to shine" which refers to shining like a star.  The video which was done in a sort of marker/paint style expresses that this is a dream, much like a kid would draw out their dreams, and what he dreams of to have a good life is expensive cars, women, money and other expensive things

4-This video seems to build off of the common idea of Money+stuff+fame+women=happiness that we have in America, on his list of things that define the good life he doesn't have family, friendship or any sort of "free" source of happiness.  Kanye and by extension pop-culture defines happiness as status and the person who shows status in the best ways ie: things like solid gold cars and other ridiculous things, is the best and lives the better life.     

Is meaning Subjective?

                                                  

When I asked people what in their lives were meaningful, most people said that almost everything in their lives were meaningful.  My sources Granit, and Joe both said that everything in life is meaningful; this leads me to extend their point that you can potentially learn from any situation or make anything a meaningful experience.

On the other hand my brother Guido said that “anything you don’t learn from or don’t enjoy [is meaningless]” this adds the factor of enjoyment into the equation, he believes that something you enjoy gives your life meaning, he implies that meaning doesn’t always always come from self-improvement, he states that on some scale the person has to enjoy themselves to have meaning in their lives.  He also brings up the point that some things are meaningless, this differs from the more positive outlook of the majority of the people I’ve interviewed.

            When asked to rate their meaning on a scale of 1 to 10 the majority of the people I interviewed said that they were fairly meaningful, most saying that were between 7 and 9.  These people such as Granit and Joe say that everything is meaningful to an extent and that human life is especially important and meaningful based on their own criteria.

                                           

            When I interviewed my brother who again took the side of the minority said there’s a difference between meaning on a global scale and personal scale.  He said that on a personal scale he was between 8 and 9  because he was significant to those around him, but he said that on a world scale his meaning was 1 “because I don’t have that much of an impact on the world”

                                                                   

My sister Sandy disagreed with this saying that every small action can have big effects and she cited the “butterfly Effect”.  She demonstrates that everything has meaning because everything can have an effect on the world, this is reminiscent of the argument made before by Granit and Joe that everything is meaningful.   

Comments and Insights Assignment #2

Video Comments

Gavin's Video

I like it alot when you say "life isn't always meaningful, we just need to believe it does" That brings the question to mind that "if humans create and define meaning, then can't we make our lives meaningful by adjusting the criteria and definition of meaning?"

Jace's Video

I liked the video and the choice of music in the background.  I also liked how how you showed improvement in the video.  Your point about meaning being enjoyable and good for you is simple and agreeable

Henry's Video

It was good, I liked the editing on it and how yu listed what was and what wasn't meaningful in your life and you gave good explanations why.

Maxiel's Video

Cool, I like how you've put everyone in the video, everything fit together well and it showed what a close relationship you have with people which looked very sincere and that's very meaningful.

Ian's Video

I liked it, it was very relaxed and calm.  You explained well how somethings are meaningful and others aren't and they aren't always entertaining.  I'll make sure to pass on the hugs for you :D

Insights and Conclusions

1-When people know the purpose of their lives it drives them into depression and misery -Gavin (roughly) This leads me to question this and ask, does someone's life still have meaning when they're aware of it? Will the knowledge of your purpose cause you to not fulfill it?  This sort of brings to mind to conundrum about Pinoccio saying it's opposite day and his nose grows.  There is no answer to why it happens and the situation would present itself in a loop which would define the event as impossible, in short its impossible to know the meaning of your own life and knowing that meaning will take it away.

2-We each have our own definitions of meaning but most of them all boil down to 2 things, things that we enjoy and things that are god for us.  From watching these movies I've realized that the enjoyability of something has nothing to do with its significance.  Somethings already significant like reading, will always be meaningful if you like it or not, whether YOU do it or not is based on how much you enjoy it.  Entertainment may make you think that something meaningless is meaningful, people enjoy video games (as do I) but I can admit that they aren't meaningful, whereas someone else may view them as significant.

3-Meaning in my and some other's opinion's is a significant change, to challenge that thesis I ask "Is a significant negative change also meaningful?" I say that yes it can be meaningful and can sometimes be more meaningful than a positive experience.  experiencing the death of a loved one can have a great impact on someone's life and possibly change them for the better, but better or worse, its still a meaningful and significant event.  This is yet another example of how something meaningful isn't always enjoyable.        

Marco g Life Meaning

                                                                   Description

1-In this Video I've included some video of myself talking to the camera about my personal criteria for meaning and my opinions on it.  I've also included photos of things that I find meaningful or meaningless that I've put voice over to and talked about.

2-I've related the internet in terms of information, communication and research in the meaningful side of my life, things like google, wikipedia and sometimes youtube can be used to learn things.  I also talk about Myspace and Facebook as good sights for communicating but they can take away from real face to face conversations.  I listed storytelling (reading in my case) as meaningful because it serves as a form of entertainment and as a way to learn about ourselves through other characters 

3-If I had the technology I would have included better video than the kind that can be taken with the camera and microphone on my computer, I also would have liked to put in more pictures and made more commentary about the meaning of life with those pictures.  All of these regrets are due to technological errors.  I would have also liked to get video of me doing things in my spare time, like practicing martial arts, playing videogames etc.  and been able to decide which were meaningful and which were meaningless.        

                                         

                                                             Insight and Analysis

4/5-I asses meaning as something that has an impact on our lives, to further that definition it has to change our lives, preferably in a good way.  A sign that something is meaningful is that its remembered.  While this is debatable I feel that if something is recognized by many people its meaningful, take the American Revolution for example, it changed every Americans life and we all know about it, that would be a series of meaningful events based on my definition.  Another thing I say in the video is that the line between entertainment and meaning gets blurry because people want to say that whatever they do, which entertains them, is meaningful, therefore their life is meaningful.

6-I don't see this as a fairly good depiction of my life because, due to technical difficulties, I couldn't show my whole life the way I'd like to, I wasn't able to get video of the things I do in my spare time nor was I able to take photos since I only had my computer to use.

7-From an outside-in perspective it may seem meaningful but I wasn't able to show my love of videogames which would have likely tipped the scale in the other direction.  From an inside-out perspective I see it as meaningful because I have changed peoples lives, not in a big way or a "life changing" (other than the literal term I use above) way but enought that their lives would be different without me, as any other kid who goes to school and has friends and family could say.

8- N/A