The Internet is for Girls?

With the rise of the Internet in the 80's, women were becoming more heard, and less restricted in speech. Women started blogging, and posting amateur videos. Men did these things also, but numbers brought up in class mentioned that more women blog than men. Feminization became of a public spirit, even though commercial media still restricted women's voices.

Women could blog for many different reasons - just as there are many types of blogs out there. For instance, take the movie "Julie & Julia" the entire movie is bent around this idea that Julie is making a blog of her accomplishment/task of cooking her way through a Julia Chide cook book, and through her expression over the Internet she becomes famous for it. At the same time this movie came out, there was an ad on TV degrading women - sending them 'back to the kitchen' after working so hard to get out of there. It shows women in a powerless position - the woman who has no backbone and takes what she is handed - or the "ideal women" in the eyes of most men. Linked on the side of this blog is the Shaw ad that I'm referring to.

Again, though, relating back to things I learned in my last semester Communication’s cour

ses – it is not necessarily the message (the advertisement or the blog itself) that determines how the audience receives a message. Each audience member can take something different out of contemporary media depending on their situation, their cultural baggage, their other baggage – or basically who they are. For instance, I, being a female could watch the Shaw ad and feel degraded as a female – and not understand the part of the advertisement the company was trying to relate to me (which is the fact that Shaw does not use contracts).

Another idea brought to us in class was the question:

To what extent do the conditions of PRODUCTION determine the conditions of CONSUMPTION?

Dr. Strangelove talked about the point that Karl Marx was an economic materialist, and philosopher. Marx believes that one determines the other (with his organization of Base à Superstructure) Where the Base = production, which determines the superstructure (the conditions of consumption).

To what extent? Nobody can know for sure – its not something that can be measured. One thing is for certain – to get a message or point across, there needs to be a lot more production (more advertisements, and different types). I’ve produced and worked publicity for many different events back in Sault Ste. Marie, including concerts, banquets, musicals, fundraisers, etc. and one thing I know most is that to get people to know about an event, you need to market! Market! MARKET! The amount of advertising needed for even the biggest or smallest events is HUGE to get a desirable turnout. And that’s just in a small city, where everybody knows the other. I wouldn’t be able to imagine the difficulty of trying to plan an event in a larger city – the amount of advertising needed to get the point of the event across must be immense.

Women in Society

The argument is made in Dr. Strangelove's class that women live in a patriarchal society. Women in this society (our society) are subject to violence and sexism. They don't make as much money in the workplace, and are subject to being under the control of men.

That is not to say that women don't hold power. Women can have power in our society - they just need to LOOK the part. By looking "pretty" a woman is less of a threat to man's dominant position in the workplace.

Along with this idea of women in the workplace needing to be attractive, there is the idea of "commercialized femininity" where all the women look like the idealized Barbie figure, and likewise, all the men look like the idealized Ken figure. TV shows like "Sex in the City", "True Blood" and almost any other show in the world choose actors that portray this ideal figure so as to make women think they need to look attractive to hold a position of power. In all honesty, I believe thats true. People know (even if its only subconsciously) that more attractive women get the job they are looking for because they give off a certain stereotypical image that people enjoy.

Even I find its 'easier' to work with someone more visually appealing. I feel as though in a workplace, work ethic could go up, because the incentive could be attempting to impress or please the attractive other. Even in the place of a female-female/male-male situation, work ethic could still increase because of the desire to one-up the other.

Two interesting comments of the lectures of the week made by Professor Strangelove:

Canada expresses their religion by “getting all bendy on yoga mats"

This is the age of concrete.

What is Popular Culture?

Welcome to my blog! First post, pretty exciting. Over the next 11 weeks, I will attempt to have 11 different posts about Communication and Popular Culture, how they tie together, and a discussion of what was learned in Dr. Strangelove's 'popular' CMN 2180 class.

Dr. Strangelove defines Popular Culture as that what the masses look at which is immoral and distasteful.

Culture is a better means of understanding, and the popular aspects plays to the contemporary aspect of understanding the shared values and meanings in a modern society.

People used to think that popular culture was a waste of time. A good deal of people used to believe that anything contemporary was not 'high culture' and therefore was distasteful or immoral. If you were to type "High Culture" into google image search, the first things you see are violinists, famous works of art, ballerinas, pianists and other ideal images of a 'hoighty toighty' life-stlye. These lifestyles are generally people of a wealthy background brought up by aristocrats, or aristocrats themselves.

Popular culture is a way of fighting back from the normative culture - a response (or even rebuttal) to the highly aristocratic society. Typing "popular culture" into google image search, you see images of current TV shows, music artists, and magazines along with some famous "pop art" - such as the Andy Warhol/Marilyn Monroe painting.

Images like this help us understand what popular culture is. Personally, I prefer a mixture of pop culture and of high culture in my life. Some people only prefer one or the other, but to live a full lifestyle, each person should be able to appreciate each type of artistic culture. For example, I'm fully aware of famous composers and their musical works, I used to be a dancer (tap jazz and ballet), and I frequent the theatre (if I'm not in a play/musical I'm watching one). At the same time, I also love modern art, enjoy popular TV shows and listen to a lot of popular music.

Discussed in class was the point made by John Fiske: “Popular culture can be progressive” (1980’s). I agree with this point entirely - there are good aspects to popular culture (admittedly as well as bad ones), and quite often the good aspects of popular culture. Examples of "bad" aspects would be the negative image associated with a lot of popular stars in todays society, but a "good" example could be the fact that exposure to the arts - modern and other types - help shape the mind of the human being for the better.