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