While glamorization and framing are often spoken about when discussing the media, the fact that "public interest rarely remains sharply focused upon any one ( ) issue for very long" or more accurately, the fact that audience focus climaxes and wanes, is not accounted for as often. Which is what Downs is interested in. While the article was informative, I couldn't help but think that the issue of fragmentation might have been mentioned, as the splicing-up of an event/topic into consumable news size chunks plays a role in this waxing and waning. Fragmentation makes following an event extremely difficult and I'd say even dangerous.
The violence being inflicted upon Native Caledonians, and the splicing of this story into unintelligeable (?) bits by the Hamilton Spectator is a good case in point. The past few weeks the Spectator has had covers which bolster sympathy for white/non-native Caledonians, while at the same time are anti-Native. It is an enraging situation to say the least, while hearing anti-Native/pro "development" opinions from 'regular folk' is even worse.
Inevitably it gets you (and by 'you', I mean....err..me) thinking about how difficult it is to get an entire (accurate?) story, as opposed to one that is c-sectioned to fit the doctor's clock. This past Saturday's Spec shows a picture of a middle-aged, white, hetero couple standing stony-faced in front of their Caledonian home with the headline reading: 496 Days of Hell, while last Saturday's featured a close-up of a man (also a "developer") who was injured by Natives. The only images of the Natives on the cover (2) are much smaller and work together with headlines to perpetuate anti-Native sentiment: one shows the roadblockers in army camo, and the other shows an overweight man in disarray (half-toppled over, shirt raising with belly exposed) being led away by two white police officers. All the headlines mention apologies on the part of the Six Nation's chief for the violence taken upon the developer.
How one could piece together a two-sides story from this paper is not only difficult, but impossible...which is not news to anyone. But I wonder if people could even reliably string together any narrative of this issue with only resourcing the Spec....
but of course, that is not what we do...next post: intertextuality, racism and mythologies/semiotics.....
Monday, September 24, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Apres lecture- Augustinian Theodicy/ Good Link
We spoke today about Dr. Svenson's idea of "Theodyssey" as incorporating three aspects,
theodicy, pilgrimage and tourism, wherein pilgrimage is the new mission...
he related his theory to the conception of hurricane katrina, and mentioned two types of theodicy linked to it...that is the religious frame through which the event was conceived,
and one of this was 'Augustinian theodicy' wherein those who suffer are seen to deserve it as a punishment (sent from God) for being 'bad' (ungodly, decadant, immoral) people....
we also spoke about the idea of blame - as a narrative and journalistic structure, as well as perhaps a human phenomenon/'need', and it brought to mind a documentary about a religious group operating in the U.S who who seem to embody all of this.....
http://www.tv-links.co.uk/ -then click on documentaries, then 'Louis Theroux', then "The Most Hated Family in America"
...it is a riveting documentary--just trust me and watch 5 minutes of it, and see if your not hooked.....and let me know what you think...
L
theodicy, pilgrimage and tourism, wherein pilgrimage is the new mission...
he related his theory to the conception of hurricane katrina, and mentioned two types of theodicy linked to it...that is the religious frame through which the event was conceived,
and one of this was 'Augustinian theodicy' wherein those who suffer are seen to deserve it as a punishment (sent from God) for being 'bad' (ungodly, decadant, immoral) people....
we also spoke about the idea of blame - as a narrative and journalistic structure, as well as perhaps a human phenomenon/'need', and it brought to mind a documentary about a religious group operating in the U.S who who seem to embody all of this.....
http://www.tv-links.co.uk/ -then click on documentaries, then 'Louis Theroux', then "The Most Hated Family in America"
...it is a riveting documentary--just trust me and watch 5 minutes of it, and see if your not hooked.....and let me know what you think...
L
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Reply to Taylor's "Modern Social Imaginaries"
The part of Taylor's piece that grabbed MY own imagination was near the end where transforming the social imaginary is disussed. He writes;
"What I'm calling the long march is a process whereby new practices, or modifications
of old ones, either developed through improvisation among certain groups and strata
of the population [ ], or else were launched by elites in such a way as to recruit a larger
and larger base [ ]. Alternatively, in the course of their slow development and
ramification, a set of practices gradually changed their meaning for people, and hence
helped to constitute a new social imaginary ( the "economy" for example). The result in
all these cases was a profound transformation of the social imaginary in Western societies
, and thus of the world in which we live (30)"
This got me thinking of how the mainstream has/is beginning to now think in terms of the globe; now it is not only the upside of the so-called 'global village' that is in public consciousness, but also the oft-disavowed underside. Indeed in my class, "The Optical Unconscious; Aesthetics in the Age of Photography", we are going to be talking about the postmodern critique of landscape photography- the valorization of panoramic nature photographs over those that show 'nature' as both a beautiful, BUT ALSO a industry-abused entity, or more accurately, these critiques want to explore the fact that nature is overwhelmingly thought of/treated in terms of RESOURCES.
Although my teacher did not see her project as a form of anti-civ activism ( I asked), it nonetheless is a potent form of activism. For the project, my professors, Maria Whiteman and Imre Szeman took the Trans-Siberian express (which crosses Siberia, Mongolia and China), "a journey that fits the genre of adventure travel," traversing "spaces of great natural beauty across two continents." It is also a journey through a zone of intense factory production, and it is this human imprint within nature that they are interested in within their photography and analysis. When I spoke informally with Whiteman, she was interested in showing the side of production we don't always see or think about. She wanted to look at the relationship between product and its origin. Where does this enter human thoughts?
This is a connection that people are making more and more these days, and we are currently seeing people begin to think about the origins of their food. We don't just eat eggs anymore (free range? organic? etc) and hardly anyone can honestly tell themselves that their bbg burgers came from a happy, pasture-roving cow. Indeed, one milestone of such thought happened not in food, but in clothing, as Kathy Lee Gifford and her K-mart clothing line made foreign slave labout, and child slave labour common knowledge. Corporate accountability both at home and overseas was made an issue, as we continued to see with outcries with Coke, Nike, McDonalds and their brethren. And we are currently seeing this accountability continue on to food: 'Eat Local!' and 'Buy Organic!' are no longer only the cries of the dreaded, but slogans you can see at Fortinos and on greasy spoon menus. I forecast that the next issue in this ongoing food thought will be GMO's (genetically modified organisms), which are brought to us by Monsanto- who like to do things like put fish genes in our tomatoes.
Anyhow, all this is an example of how questioning where our food and our products come from, AND how they are produced, both of which have been thought of for awhile now, has entered what Taylor would call a 'transformation', where we rarely think of the former without the latter, and have almost even entered the realm of the "taken-for-granted shape of things too obvious to mention" (31).
"What I'm calling the long march is a process whereby new practices, or modifications
of old ones, either developed through improvisation among certain groups and strata
of the population [ ], or else were launched by elites in such a way as to recruit a larger
and larger base [ ]. Alternatively, in the course of their slow development and
ramification, a set of practices gradually changed their meaning for people, and hence
helped to constitute a new social imaginary ( the "economy" for example). The result in
all these cases was a profound transformation of the social imaginary in Western societies
, and thus of the world in which we live (30)"
This got me thinking of how the mainstream has/is beginning to now think in terms of the globe; now it is not only the upside of the so-called 'global village' that is in public consciousness, but also the oft-disavowed underside. Indeed in my class, "The Optical Unconscious; Aesthetics in the Age of Photography", we are going to be talking about the postmodern critique of landscape photography- the valorization of panoramic nature photographs over those that show 'nature' as both a beautiful, BUT ALSO a industry-abused entity, or more accurately, these critiques want to explore the fact that nature is overwhelmingly thought of/treated in terms of RESOURCES.
Although my teacher did not see her project as a form of anti-civ activism ( I asked), it nonetheless is a potent form of activism. For the project, my professors, Maria Whiteman and Imre Szeman took the Trans-Siberian express (which crosses Siberia, Mongolia and China), "a journey that fits the genre of adventure travel," traversing "spaces of great natural beauty across two continents." It is also a journey through a zone of intense factory production, and it is this human imprint within nature that they are interested in within their photography and analysis. When I spoke informally with Whiteman, she was interested in showing the side of production we don't always see or think about. She wanted to look at the relationship between product and its origin. Where does this enter human thoughts?
This is a connection that people are making more and more these days, and we are currently seeing people begin to think about the origins of their food. We don't just eat eggs anymore (free range? organic? etc) and hardly anyone can honestly tell themselves that their bbg burgers came from a happy, pasture-roving cow. Indeed, one milestone of such thought happened not in food, but in clothing, as Kathy Lee Gifford and her K-mart clothing line made foreign slave labout, and child slave labour common knowledge. Corporate accountability both at home and overseas was made an issue, as we continued to see with outcries with Coke, Nike, McDonalds and their brethren. And we are currently seeing this accountability continue on to food: 'Eat Local!' and 'Buy Organic!' are no longer only the cries of the dreaded, but slogans you can see at Fortinos and on greasy spoon menus. I forecast that the next issue in this ongoing food thought will be GMO's (genetically modified organisms), which are brought to us by Monsanto- who like to do things like put fish genes in our tomatoes.
Anyhow, all this is an example of how questioning where our food and our products come from, AND how they are produced, both of which have been thought of for awhile now, has entered what Taylor would call a 'transformation', where we rarely think of the former without the latter, and have almost even entered the realm of the "taken-for-granted shape of things too obvious to mention" (31).
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Research Assignment Proposition
Hello,
So far I have thought that I'd like to do a project about some of my activist friends experiences, which could be general, or case-studied, and pretty much run the gamut..... and would like to link up with a person interested in that---possibly someone interested in having a multimedia component to the project--if anyone has experience with that. My own background includes visual art and zine-making....video might be good----music???
.....however this is the first thing to pop in my head , mostly i 'd just like to brainstorm with someone dynamic, who wants to go beyond the typical write up stuff--if that is possible, so i am flexible and interested in other folks ideas.
L
So far I have thought that I'd like to do a project about some of my activist friends experiences, which could be general, or case-studied, and pretty much run the gamut..... and would like to link up with a person interested in that---possibly someone interested in having a multimedia component to the project--if anyone has experience with that. My own background includes visual art and zine-making....video might be good----music???
.....however this is the first thing to pop in my head , mostly i 'd just like to brainstorm with someone dynamic, who wants to go beyond the typical write up stuff--if that is possible, so i am flexible and interested in other folks ideas.
L
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