The Matrix Binary Grid

To The Reader (Professor)

2006-12-10T23:33:00.000-08:00

"We must invent a new language, a new form of writing..., a language of a new sensibility, a new reflexivity, a language which refuses old categories, a language which reflexivelyand parasitically, in a rhizomatic manner, charts its own course against. . . repressive structures of history, economy, religion,race, class, gender. This new language, poststructuralist to the core, will be personal, emotional, biographically specific, minimalistin the use of theoretical terms. It will allow ordinary people tospeak out, and to articulate the interpretive theories that they use to make sense of their lives. . . This language will be visual,kaleidoscopic, rhizomatic, rich and thick in its own descriptive detail, always interactive as it moves back and forth between lived experience and the cultural texts that shape and write that experience."
(The Lessons James Joyce Teaches Us, unpublished paper,1993, p. 17-18).
The above quote is the mission of this blog. While it likely doesn't succeed in every manner, there are certainly some aspects that were successful. You'll find some of these blog posts to be interactive, a new form of writing, reflexivity, personal, emotional, biographically specific, hopefully somewhat minimalist in the use of theoretical terms but likely not minimalist enough.
Much of the theories and readings are more covert than overt in the posts. Nevertheless, here's a "user's guide" of sorts on how to navigate this blog.
The first post was made back in November. To begin at the beginning, you must click on the "November 2006" archive on the right hand side under "archives" and then scroll down to the bottom. To read in the order blog posts were entered, you have to work backwards sort of, from the bottom up. Of course, you can choose to read however you want. But if you wish to follow in successive time order, you would go from bottom up, working backwards. After reading the November archive entries, you could go on to "December 2006" archive entries. Also, each hypertext link in the blog will take you to another site or another area. At least one link is to a powerpoint presentation (which you've already seen). Other links go to relevant sites pertinent to the posts.
There are other links on the right hand side independent of the blog posts which are relevant to the class and may be of interest. They are self explanatory by the name on the links. Although if I really wanted to follow Barthes and signifier/signified I could list words that don't correspond to the link. But I didn't do that.
Anyway, I think that's about it. Basically navigate this blog as you see fit. Hopefully it makes some sense. If not, feel free to write a post in the comments section. I guess that brings up one other point. Some of the posts have comments at the end of them. To my knowledge, no one outside of me has posted, but they might have. I didn't edit any of the comments. I believe one comment is spam in the form of an advertisment. Other comments are additions I made to the original post.
Class is now over but this blog will now remain (at least for awhile). In that sense, this is the unfinished... This end has also become a beginning...ENJOY!

-GG

More Strange Thoughts

2006-12-10T23:25:00.000-08:00

I figured I'd do one last post before wrapping up this project for class. Right now is sort of surreal. I'm sitting in the Student Learning Center typing this entry, while watching cartoons on a digital screen in a hyperconnected classroom. I'm connected to a library of past Peabody entries and to a world of information and people. Yet I'm alone. I'm the only one in this room now. It's 2:27 a.m., but I have lost sense of time and place. I think of Lunenfeld, time and space, narrative, images, media, manipulation, celebrity. I'm not sure why but all these thoughts feel my head. This show is pretty funny. It's called Freakazoid. I think Spielberg did it. Right now, they're talking about "SCREAM-A-VISION." It's involving the audience, changing the narrative. That's all.

Academic Citations

2006-12-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

Here's the poached list of readings from the class. There's a few not on here but more or less this is the class reading for the semester. It is from these works that many of the ideas in the blog posts are influenced from or referring to either overtly or covertly. It's listed in the order of time in which we read them:

Carey, James (1997). Afterward: The Culture in Question. From JamesCarey: A Critical Reader. Eds.: Munson and Warren. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press. pp. 308-339.

Richardson, Laurel & St.Pierre Elizabeth A. (forthcoming). Writing: Amethod of inquiry. In Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln (Eds.),Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Barrett, Michelle (1999). Introduction: Culture, Theory, Writing.From Imagination in Theory. New York: NYU Press. Pp. 1-34.

Love, Lisa L. & Kohn, Nathaniel (2001). "This, That, and the Other:Fraught Possibilities of the Souvenir." Text and PerformanceQuarterly, 21:1, January 2001, pp 47-63.

Mills, C. Wright (1959). "On Intellectual Craftsmanship." TheSociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.195-228.Week 2SEP 11

McLuhan, Marshall. (1964) Understanding Media. New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 3-32, 308-337.

Tichi, Cecelia. (1991) Electronic Hearth. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. pp. 3-41.

Baudrillard, Jean. For a Critique of the Political Economy of theSign. pp. 164-184.

Stevenson, Nick. (1995) Understanding Media Cultures: Social Theoryand Mass Communication. pp. 114-143.

Williams, R. (1974). Television: Technology and Cultural Forms.London: Fontana. pp. 7-77.

Weinstein, Deena and Weinstein, Michael A. (1993). Postmodern(ized)Simmel. London and New York: Routledge. pp. vii-x, 203-226.

Baudrillard, Jean. (1988). Simulacra and Simulations. From: JeanBaudrillard: Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press. pp. 1-9, 166-184.

de Certeau, Michel (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley:University of California Press. pp. Title page - 42, 165-176.

Lefebrve, Henri (1971). Everyday Life in the Modern World. Trans: S.Rabinovitch. Allen Lane The Penguin Press: London. pp: 64-85,143-93.

Morris, Meaghan (1990). Banality in Cultural Studies. From Logics ofTelevision: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Ed.: Patricia Mellencamp.Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pp. 14-43.

Agamben, G. (2005). Intersections and Divergences in ContemporaryTheory: Baudrillard andAgamben On Politics And the Daunting Questions of Our Time--Form ofLife...(g.agamben...with introduction by g.coulter)http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol2_2/agamben.htm

Minh-ha, Trinh T. (1991). "Yellow Sprouts" and "Cotton and Iron."From When the Moon Waxes Red. London and New York: Routledge. pp.1-28.

Tomaselli, Keyan (2001). Contradictory Subjectivity: Movies,Apartheid, and Postmodernism. Cutural Studies\u003dCritical Methodologies,1:2, November 2, 2001, pp 139-156.

Appadurai, Arjun (1993). "Patriotism and Its Futures." PublicCulture, 5: 411-429.

Bhabha, Homi (1994). The Location of Culture. London and New York:",1]

Baudrillard, Jean. (1988). Simulacra and Simulations. From: JeanBaudrillard: Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press. pp. 1-9, 166-184.

Cixous, Helene (1994). Helen Cixous Reader. Ed: Susan Sellers.London and New York: Routledge. pp. xv-xxxiv, 37-45.

Auletta, Ken. (1998). "In the Company of Women." The New Yorker,April 20, 1998. pp. 72-78.

Prose, Francine (2000). "A Wasteland of One\'s Own." The New YorkTimes Magazine, February 13, 2000, pp 66-71.

Butler, Judith P. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the DiscursiveLimits of Sex. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 121-140, 223-242.

Auletta, Ken (2001). "Battle Stations: How long will the networksstick with the news?", The New Yorker, December 10, 2001.

Kellner, Douglas (1995). "Reading the Gulf War:Production/text/reception." From Media Culture. London and New York:Routledge. pp. 198-228.

Virilio, Paul (1989). War and Cinema. London and New York: Verso. pp. 61-89.Virilio, Paul (1991). The Aesthetics of Disappearance. New York:Semiotext(e). pp. 9-39.

Baudrillard, Jean (2003) The Violence of the Globalhttp://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id\u003d385

Denzin, Norman (1993). "The Lessons James Joyce Teaches Us." Unpublished Paper.Denzin, Norman (1997). Interpretive Ethnography: EthnographicPractices for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks: Sage. pp. 199-227.

Kohn, Nathaniel (19980. "Wonder Never Seizes.""Routledge. pp. 1-18./vol1/Iss2/articles/kohn/kohn.htm

Chow, Rey (1995). Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality,Ethnography and Contemporary Chinese Cinema. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. pp. 176-202.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1996). On Television. Trans: Priscilla ParkhurstFerguson. New York: The New Press. pp. 1-67

Andrews, David (1998). "Excavating Michael Jordan: Notes on aCritical Pedagogy of Sporting Representation." In Rail, Genevieve,Ed. Sport and Postmodern Times. New York: SUNY Press. pp. 185-220.

Kohn, Nate (1995). Exposed and Basking: Community, spectacle, and thewinter Olympics. The Journal of International Communication, 2:1. Pp.110-119.

Goldman, R & Papon, S. (1998). There are many paths to heaven. FromNike Culture. London: Sage. Pp. 146-167.

Minh-ha, Trinh T. (1991). "The Totalizing Quest for Meaning" and"Mechanical Eye, Electronic Ear, and the Lure of Authenticity" FromWhen the Moon Waxes Red. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 28-62.",0]
http://acjournal.org/holdings/vol1/Iss2/articles/kohn/kohn.htm

Chow, Rey (1995). Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality,Ethnography and Contemporary Chinese Cinema. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. pp. 176-202.

More Binaries

2006-12-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was also a day confined to "binaries." In some cases, I suppose binaries were broken.
I arrived to class a few minutes late and found some classmates laughing.
"Speak of the devil," Matthew says. "We were just talking about you."
"Oh really? What were you saying?" I reply.
"We were just saying how 'that bearded fellow' is missing," Matthew replies.
"Oh. OK." I respond.
"We're confining you to the binary," Kimberly interjects.
OK so I'm now officially "bearded guy."
When I shave will I be "clean shaven guy?"
It's funny to think of binaries in this regard, this desire to categorize.
Later, the binary continued.
After class I went to the computer lap to post yesterday's blog post.
While there, I ran into some classmates. When I left I told them I was going to Atlanta for a concert.
"Who are you going to see?" Judith asks.
"Robert Randolph and the Family Band," I reply.
"Must be white people music," she replies.
"What did you say?" I asked my African American friend, somewhat dumbfounded.
"I've never heard of them," she says. "They must be white people music."
"Umm...actually the lead singer is black and much of their music is influenced by black gospel," I reply. "It's sort of gospel-funk-rock-R&B-fusion."I say.
"Oh. I feel ignorant," she replies.
"You should check out their website and see what they're about," I tell her.
That discussion got me thinking more about binaries.
What is "white music" or "white person music"? What is "black music"? What is "black person music?"
Three of the four members of Robert Randolph and the Family Band are African Americans. The music is heavily influenced from black churches and the gospel tradition and other black musicians. Yet, much of the audience is in fact white.
Even the music itself somewhat refuses to be confined to individual "binaries" or categories if you will. This whole idea of "fusion" and blending different elements into a unique and distinct sound. Even more ironically perhaps is the group's latest album is called "Colorblind" which would imply a shattering of racial binaries.
As I was at the concert, which was a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity Atlanta, I looked around at the audience. It was unlike any audience I had ever been to a concert with before. At least it was unlike any other Robert Randolph audience I had been with. I think the fundraiser nature influenced the crowd.
There were a lot of older people in the audience, which is ironic given the youthful nature of the band's namesake, who I think is in his mid-20s.
Nevertheless, it was an odd experience- this coming together of people from different backgrounds, cultures, musical interests (binaries?) to groove to the sound of music.
It was sort of like being at a wedding, dancing around with people of all ages, many of which you don't know.
Nevertheless, yesterday was a day of binaries. It made me think about these categories and also everyday life and how our everyday life differs depending on these binaries. It also made me realize how difficult it can be to break these binaries and how music and entertainment are distractions (albeit for me, enjoyable distractions) from the stress, rigors, and cruel realities of the world we all live in.

More Self-Reflexivity

2006-12-04T13:37:00.000-08:00

I returned to North Carolina today.
Well, not really.
But in several ways I sort of did.
North Carolina emerged in class.
Several times.
I'm a Tar Heel born and bred.
That means I'm a North Carolina native.
I lived in North Carolina for 27 years before moving to Georgia in the fall.
Today in class, while watching a clip from Home and Garden Television of all things, the couple on the show was from Cary, N.C.
I had an internship at the Cary News many years ago.
My late grandparents lived in Cary for half their life.
It's funny how academia becomes personal.
If I've learned nothing else from this course, it's that the Self can be important. The Self is important.
I write about myself. It's what I know best.
Later in the class, we watched several clips from "Junebug." This was a contrast to the image of the south shown in "Sweet Home Alabama."
I really want to watch Junebug.
Junebug is set in- you guessed it- North Carolina.
"Ryan" from "The OC" plays a character in the film. He's wearing the Carolina Panthers hat in the scene we watch.
I have a Carolina Panthers hat similar to that. I'm a Panthers fan.
I'm from Carolina.
Junebug is set in North Carolina, filmed in North Carolina, maybe even written by a North Carolinian?
From what I saw it seemed to be a realistic portral of my homestate and its citizens.
I could relate to this film.
This course on postmodernism, critical studies, the binary, the matrix, deCerteau and Foucault in some odd way took me back home.
The scenes showed the family gathered in the kitchen. I flashbacked to my mom's kitchen, or more importantly my mom's mom's kitchen. My mother's mother and father, my grandmother and late grandfather, encapsulates The South to Me. They're from Warrenton, N.C., a small town of now about 800 people.
It's Southern through and through. Family and Place are important.
Another Junebug scene shows the characters at the church at a supper. The church supper reminded me of my father's mother's funeral. Her church prepared a feast for our grieving family in the church supper hall.
I associated food, big meals with death. But really it's more about hospitality and looking out for one another.
Church is also important to me. My family prays before meals, at least on big occasions such as holidays. Just as the Junebug characters did.
I really want to watch that film.
The other aspect that struck a nerve with me, that resonated was the educated one from Chicago trying to fit in in the South.
I'm not ashamed of my roots. I'm proud of where I'm from. But language also plays a role in the South. Language and cultural norms I guess is what you'd call them.
As far as I know, I'm one of the first ones in my immediate family to study in graduate school. I can't talk about what I'm learning without sounding like an ass.
I don't want to drop names of some of these philosophers or talk about scientific research terminology like reliability and validity. I don't want to sound like a pompous person who is educated.
I don't want to sound like an educated elitist.
I'm not. Not by any means.
I'm not smarter than many of the rural folks that are my kin. There are different levels of sophistication and intelligence. It's just different knowledge bases and ways of life. It doesn't make one better than the other.
I personally rail against the language that is academia.
As a newspaper reporter, I sought to tell the story to the everyday man. In common everyday language. Keep it simple. Keep it real.
I wish academia allowed for simplicity.
These sentences are short. They are simple.
I hope one can understand what I'm saying.
Sometimes I don't understand what i'm saying myself.
This very style is different. This blog is different.
But this is academic. At least that's what I tell myself.
This has also turned into self consciousness, train of thought flow.
I will stop now. I've become lost. I forget why I chose to write to begin with. I was moved to write, compelled to reflect on class and what it has meant. What it means.
I was on the third floor of Grady in the Peabody suite today.
But really I went home.

Daring to be Different

2006-12-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

It's sort of wild to think how far we've come in terms of technology. It's also wild to think this is a final paper. It's definitely different.
The last time I did a unique paper for class was seven, almost eight, years ago at UNC-Wilmington. Like this class, that class very much fostered creativity and allowed a great amount of flexibility in terms of the final project. That class was on French poet Charles Baudelaire and as I've mentioned in a previous post the professor believed that "everything connects." As some of the readings this semester have mentioned Baudelaire, I really wanted to find that old paper and post it on here.
But I can't find it. It's lost in technology. It's probably saved on a floppy disk or some device no longer compatabile with high-tech computers. That or it's saved on an old Compaq laptop that I used back then. It's so "ancient" that it requires a telephone line to DIAL up to the Internet. No wi-fi, no wireless, no broadband, limited connectivity. It's a strange interconnected digital world we're living in.
Anyway, for this particular class, like I said, a great deal of latitude was granted. If you so desired you could write a traditional academic paper. Or you could make a movie, write a poem, do performance art, make a painting. Do whatever. One guy did paint instead of write a formal paper. I wrote a paper but it was different.
For that class, I compared modern pop/rock singer Dave Matthews with Baudelaire. That my sound ludicrous on the surface, but in terms of their work there were surprisingly quite a few similarities. At least in terms of the themes. Much of Matthews' work at the time focused on death, dying, time as the enemy and even people and people watching. Likewise, Les Fleurs du Mal focused on many of the same concepts in Baudelaire's poems.
I forget the length but it was somewhere between 12 to 20 pages long, which I considered quite a feat.
I wish I could find that paper. I want to "publish" it on this blog.
I was proud of that paper because it was creative. It was different. It was an attempt to forge a new writing style far before I ever read some of the pieces in this class encouraging the same thing.
It was a cultural study of sorts, kind of a postmodern piece, long before I knew what postmodernism or cultural studies is/was.
I'm still not entirely sure but at least now I have more of an idea.
In short, I can't write an academic final paper without injecting myself. My whole experience with this class has been subjective. My view of the class has differed from my classmates and vice versa.
This blog, like that Baudelaire paper, represents my views, my take on the "reality" of the project. There was a reason I chose Dave Matthews as a comparison. I'm a fan of the singer, obviously. You know that from previous posts too where I saw him in concert in Vegas.
But I also became a fan of Baudelaire.
And now, I'll forever associate Baudelaire with Barthes, Baudrillard, postmodernism, cultural studies, Richardson, Kohn, others. But not The Other.
Everything does connect. And now with this it hyperconnects too.

A Messy Text

2006-12-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

In many ways, blogs sort of serve as a "messy text." Blogs are not a traditional writing style. It's informal, it's interactive. Links build upon links. It's not traditional academic writing style. It's different. This is my "messy text."...

Blogging About Blogs

2006-12-01T13:02:00.001-08:00

I attended a lecture the other night on "Blogging Pros and Cons" here at UGA. Much of the discussion reminded me of the community and ideas of "withness" discussed in the Kohn piece and some of the technology concepts discussed by Lunenfeld.
"The great thing about blogging is everyone's all connected," said Lindsay Loughman, an undergraduate journalism student here at Grady.
She's a PR student. She spoke about "faux blogs" which touch on the concept of hyperreality and simulacra and simulacram. Captain Morgan had a blog on the life and times of Captain Morgan, but it became too difficult to do. This whole notion of a company creating a fake character with "real" life telling "real" stories to a true audience on the World Wide Web.
Wrigley Gum also tried to maintain a faux blog but it didn't have characters to center around so scrapped that idea.
According to Dr. Richard T. Watson, who holds a Chair for Internet Strategy in the Terry College of Business, people blog to document life, commentary, as catharsis, as musing, and as a community forum. Watson is head of the Global Text Project, whose goal is to create a free library of open content textbooks for students in developing countries.
"I'm trying to build a community," Watson said. Watson uses his blog as a way people can come into the community and find out what's going on.
Another panelist was "Laney," a fake identity of a real life copy editor/blogger at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Laney runs the "Misadventures in Atlanta" blog on dating for AJC.com.
The AJC even has an "interactivity editor" who oversees the blogs, etc.
Each blog site has a bunch of regular readers/users who interact with the blogger and with each other. They even meet in person. Some have gone on dates. Some become friends.
"These communities really do form," "Laney" said.
Watson said he viewed the "reinvention of newspapers", reinvented around informal communication as opposed to formal communication.
"Laney" acknowledged as much. Blogging is a much different writing style that goes against everything she learned in journalism school.
One person in the audience said that we're "HYPERCONNECTED." The problem she said is that through blogs and the connectiveness of the web it's like we're TOO CONNECTED.... Something tells me she probably didn't have this in mind.

December?!?!?!

2006-12-01T13:02:00.000-08:00

It's December 1 and it's 70 degrees. That's wild. December should be "cold weather." Not hot. It feels like summer. In Georgia, December won't be confined to the binary of cold weather.

Biz Culture

2006-11-30T14:44:00.000-08:00

It's interesting to see "cultural studies" and many of the humanistic teachings applied to other fields where one might least expect to find them.
That was my experience earlier this week. For my "Media Management" course I read a journal article on organizational culture. Most of the piece was from a cultural studies perspective. Personally, I didn't think that Foucalt and Habermas would have anything to do with the world of business. But I was wrong.
The article, "Organizational Culture: Beyond Struggles for Intellectual Dominance" by Martin, Frost and Oneill, did a good job discussing management and critical theorists and summarizing the tensions that exist between the two methodolgical camps.
Here's some excerpts/summaries from that piece...
"Postmodern scholars argue that attempts to create meta-theories, or to establish any form of intellectual dominance, are futile because multiplicity will always find a way to flourish. If taken seriously, this postmodern critique challenges the premises of the competitive game. Although this post-modern position can be configured as the ultimate move in a game of intellectual dominance, it also can be interpreted as a call to stop participating in struggles for intellectual dominance." ...
"There is not just one postmodernism. It is not a unified theory, in part becaue it has attracted such a diverse group of advocates, including architects, philosophers and literary critics. In all its varieties, postmodernism challenges ideas that constitute the foundation of modern science: rationality, order, clarity, realism, truth and intellectual progress (e.g. Derrida, 1976; Foucault 1976; Baudrillard, 1983; Lyotard 1984; Marcus and Fischer, 1999). Postmodernism argues that any point of view carries the seeds of its own destruction. Some find this conclusion dangerous because it gives postmodernism the capacity to undermine the ideologies of opponents (e.g. Calas and Smircich 1990; Martin, 1990). In its relevance to cultural studies, perhaps postmodernism will offer more as an ideological and theoretical critique than as a theory of political action."...
"Truth therefore becomes a 'matter of credibility rather than an objective condition.' "....

"Many would not want to engage with postmodernism, asking, 'What positive contribution does it make?' In the 1990s, many dismissed it on grounds that it is esoteric, reactionary, a-political, too relativistic or nihilistic (e.g. Reed 1990). This reaction has been particularly strong among some empirircal, relatively positivistic culture researchers, perhaps because postmodernism represents a deep challenge to basic tenets of the scientific method." ...

The authors then state how many contemporary organizational cultural researchers have embraced postmodernism much like anthropology has done. ...

"Reflexivity is encouraged, researchers' and study participants' views can be contrasted, and multi-vocal texts can represent a variety of points of view." ...

The future?
"The types of organizations able to be examined as cultures grow to include even wired communities of people who meet only online, but nevertheless may have a discernible cultural identity. Such an expanded view will encourage us to ask not just what a culture is, but also what an organization is." ...

"We suspect, however, that regarding cultural studies as a conversation will be far more generative and perhaps, more fun."...

Sports and Stuff

2006-11-27T19:22:00.000-08:00

Today's class presentations and discussions focused a lot on sports. The professor even remarked how many of our telecommunications programming analysis centered around sports content. One presentation today was about the performative discourse of Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC). We watched a video of Judy Butler text scrolling across the screen of a montage of fights with the "Love Me, Love Me" song from the Romeo and Juliet movie remake playing in the background. It was interesting to say the least.
Another presentation centered around the shows, "Friday Night Lights" and "Two-a-Days," both about high school football programs.
Sports and the media have become so intertwined it's scary. The athletes, the cheerleaders, even the fans are peforming for the TV cameras. Even those privileged few (thousands) who get to participate in the event in person still look for the video reaffirmation. They want to relive the moment on SportsCenter.
For example, this past weekend I attended the UGa-Ga. Tech game. I watched dumbfoundedly as Tony Taylor picked up a fumbled football from a heap of players sprawled on the ground and then ran into the end zone untouched for a touchdown, the Bulldogs' first score of the game, which ignited a comeback victory for the hometeam. Later, I watched "SportsCenter" to see if the play had made the Top Ten plays (it had). I needed reaffirmation of witnessing this spectacle.
As we talked in class today about sports, I couldn't help but think about an article we read by the professor.
The "Baring Withness" article talks about the magical shared experience of these old cinematic theaters, how coming together in these grand old theaters has a unique withness factor that unites the community.
The same could be said about sports. Many of these old football stadiums, baseball fields and basketball arenas have the same mythic, magical quality. There's something special about going to Fenway Park or Wrigley Field for baseball. There's a historic awe-inspiring feeling about watching college basketball at the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill. And Georgia fans certainly gush with pride about Sanford Stadium.
I've now lost my train of thought. Nevertheless, sports and media are intertwined. I can't wait to watch UNC play Ohio State in college basktball on ESPN on Wednesday night..... :)

Today is Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

"The probablility of any event ... is never exhausted. And it is this, this actual grace of coincidences- and never a chain of causality- which makes the event of a life. When this grace is lacking, history grows old and repetitious, all possibilities are fused, and life slops back into an undifferentiated vegetal or animal state." -Baudrillard
****
Today is thanksgiving. That means many different things to many different people. To some it's a religious holiday. For others it's an American holiday. For some it's a time for family. For others it's a day of dread and despair, of loneliness, or gluttony or exaggeration. For others it's a day of joy and revelry. For others a day of pain.
As one classmate put it Thanksgiving is "aka the celebration of the time when white men came to the "new world" and wiped out/subjugated/assimilated the 'restless natives' "
Regardless, thanksgiving represents some of those concepts of cultural studies, the idea of "the other," the notion of numerous "realities."
Here's an article from the Richmond paper that also strikes to the heart of some of these matters:

Holiday troubling to Va. Indians
Many see an inaccurate portrayal of their culture during Thanksgiving
BY ROBIN FARMER
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Nov 23, 2006

Like most Americans, Gerri Reynolds spends Thanksgiving Day celebrating with family around a traditional dinner.
But as a Virginia Indian, her thoughts about today are conflicted.
"The most important lesson our parents taught us was, 'You are an Indian every day, not just on Thanksgiving Day. Be proud of your heritage and give thanks every day.'
"So when Thanksgiving rolls around each year, I have very mixed emotions," said Reynolds, a member of the Rappahannock Tribe who lives in Blue Ridge, just east of Roanoke.
"Yes, it's a time to be appreciative of God's gifts, eat too much, visit with family and friends, and to remember so many good things. It is also a sad time, however. It is 2006 and the majority of our commonwealth and our nation still do not believe we are here!"
For many Indians, Thanksgiving is a bittersweet illusion.
"The first Thanksgiving . . . is one of those feel-good myths that teach little children about individualism, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and manifest destiny," said Beverly Slapin, executive director of Oyate.
Oyate is an organization based in Berkeley, Calif., that works to portray American-Indian life and history accurately in textbooks and other media.
On the organization's Web site, www.oyate.org, Slapin and Judy Dow, a member of the Abenaki tribe, have written an article titled, "Deconstructing the Myths of 'The First Thanksgiving.'"
"The reason we're doing this is to try and put a stop to it," Slapin said. "We have hundreds of children's books we went through that are being used today and were used 50 and 100 years ago. It's the same myths, the Pilgrims were seeking freedom of religion, Columbus discovered America, this notion of people coming over not to steal the land . . . but to bring freedom and wonderfulness.
"Things have got to change if we want children to think critically. We have to teach them to look at this stuff in a critical way and stop perpetuating this awful stuff that has translated us into becoming the bully of the world, which we are now," Slapin said.
One myth is that the legendary "first" Thanksgiving occurred in 1621. But people have given thanks for as long as they have lived. "To say 'The First Thanksgiving' is to disappear Indian people. It's saying you weren't here first," Slapin said.
Dante Desiderio, tribal director of the Sappony, who live in an area that straddles North Carolina and Virginia, said, "When the Europeans first arrived, they seemed to feel a sense of entitlement to gifts and the lands, even our existing settlements."
These days, he added, there is still a sense of entitlement in the way Thanksgiving is presented.
"The story is taught in a manner that conveys the American world starting with the arrival of Europeans, and that the Indians are lucky or should feel lucky that we are paying attention to them at all. Why not use the opportunity to honor our contributions and teach the children who are adorned with fake feathers about Indian culture and at the very least the spirit of Thanksgiving?
"[How] about teaching the history or telling the story in a way that conveys heartfelt gratitude or in a way that treats the Indians like a real people and culture instead of cartoon characters?"
Telling an accurate history and eliminating stereotypes, especially around Thanksgiving, is a role for teachers, said Gregory A. Reinhard, chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Indianapolis.
"What children are learning is what their teachers learn, and it goes back to American history. There is a continuity of misconceptions," Reinhard said.
The visual representation of Indians is often stereotypical. For example, students are still told to sit Indian-style or to make headbands with feathers out of construction paper or to engage in war whoops or other "Indian" sounds for Thanksgiving pageants.
"We no longer create these stereotypes for any other minority groups, at least not shamelessly," Reinhard said.
Reynolds, a retired principal, recalled visiting a kindergarten class where she was to speak. A 5-year-old asked if she was an Indian. When Reynolds said yes, the child said she should "be on a reservation."
That child's perception was likely shaped by adults who are misinformed.
"I do not perceive [those adults] to be prejudiced," Reynolds said, "but [I] do hope they will take the time to learn the real truth from a Virginia Indian"
***

Various Observations

2006-11-21T23:34:00.000-08:00

Not really sure why, but I paid a lot more attention to the signs around me today. Whenever I see signs I think of Barthes and signifiers and all that good stuff. Being on a college campus, we're bombarded by signs. Advertisements, fliers, flashing message boards. The rolling message boards on the buses were out in full force. They had a lot to talk about with a holiday AND a football game coming up. There was the "Wreck Tech" signs scrolling coupled with "Happy Thanksgiving."
Football and turkey. What a combination.
I'm not really sure of the "cultural" relevance to any of this. Just the rambling posts of a tired, silly graduate student I suppose.
On an unrelated topic, I also saw a blog post on the AJC about how Fox News plans to unveil its own version of "The Daily Show." Should be interesting. Somehow I don't think it'll be nearly as funny/witty/successful as Jon Stewart's baby.
It's kind of funny, though, to think that a "real news" station would take the "fake news" concept and use it to create a program on its own network. There's something weird and disturbing about that cycle, if you ask me. I'm sure there's something Baudrillard or another theorist could articulate much more brilliantly and concisely than I ever could about that. It just seems strange to have a spoof of a show spoofing the news on the real news. "Real news" became "fake news" which in turn became "real news."
I wonder which will present a better reality. Will there be more "real news" on the "fake" Daily Show than on the "real" Fox News' "fake" show? I don't have the answers. I just ask the questions....

The French Love Ladies

2006-11-17T08:30:00.000-08:00

As part of the class, we've read a few writings about feminism and in class discussions talked about the "binary" (hence part of the name of this site) and how people can often be placed into these categories. Here's an article from the New York Times that illustrates that point. The bold emphasis is my own.

PARIS, Friday, Nov. 17 — Ségolène Royal moved a step closer to becoming the first female president of France early Friday, crushing her two male rivals for the Socialist Party nomination in next April’s election.
With most of the vote in, Ms. Royal, 53, a regional president and former minister, won 60.6 percent of the vote of the party’s nearly 219,000 members in an unusual primary.
Her closest rival, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 57, a former finance minister, received 20.8 percent of the vote, and Laurent Fabius, 60, a former prime minister, 18.5 percent.
The tally in France ended around 1:30 a.m. and will be complete after overseas territories finish voting.
"I am living intensely this moment of happiness," Ms. Royal said after the preliminary results were announced. Thanking the party’s "grass roots" members, she added, "The fact of receiving this momentum, of being chosen in this way, this is something extraordinary. I think that the French people have written this story."
The victory helped validate Ms. Royal’s standing as the only candidate capable of beating the right’s frontrunner, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who is seeking his UMP party’s nomination for the 2007 presidential election.
An Ipsos opinion poll released on Thursday put Ms. Royal and Mr. Sarkozy in a dead heat if they were to face off in a second round of voting.
Ms. Royal’s victory followed months of mudslinging and maneuvering in a campaign that pitted her against the party’s older, more established — and male — "elephants," whom she had dared to challenge.
Campaigning on a platform of "rupture" with the status quo, she has also capitalized on her femininity while accusing her competitors of chauvinism.
"Gazelles," she said last May, "run faster than elephants."
Responding to voters’ disillusionment with traditional elitist politics, she is promising more power to the people, giving local governments more authority, subsidizing small businesses, creating affordable housing and encouraging citizens to submit their ideas online, for example.
Even her opponents agree that her looks help. Published photos of her in a bikini while on vacation underscored her youthfulness and glamour, while in poll after poll, her telegenic smile and elegant profile have appealed to a French public yearning for a new style of leadership.
Ms. Royal, president of the Poitou-Charentes region in the west, has also cultivated an image as a grass-roots nurturer, taking her campaign to the countryside to listen to concerns about social issues such as educational reform and youth crime.
With a portfolio that includes stops at three second-tier ministries — Environment, School Education and Family and Childhood — Ms. Royal has been criticized as lacking the experience and gravitas to lead a country that is a nuclear power.
Her inexperience in foreign policy issues surfaced last week when she said during the last campaign debate that Iran should never be allowed to have a civilian nuclear energy program. As her opponents quickly pointed out, Iran enjoys that right as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
But the party members’ enthusiasm for Ms. Royal seemed to trump any slips on policy issues.
"Her victory means that the Socialist Party is still under the shock of April 2002 and is looking above all for a candidate who can win," said Dominique Reynié, a professor of political science at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. "Much more important than a doctrine or a program is the look of a champion."
In the April 2002 presidential election, the Socialist candidate, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, was eliminated in the first round, trailing even the far-right National Front candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Going into the primary, Ms. Royal enjoyed a strong lead in the polls, although she had lost ground steadily in recent weeks to Mr. Strauss-Kahn, largely because of his performance in their six policy debates, three of which were televised.
Ms. Royal was helped by the withdrawal from the race in September of Mr. Jospin, a fixture in French politics for nearly three decades.
The fourth of eight children, Ms. Royal was born in Dakar, Senegal, where her father was an army colonel, and earned admission to the elite École Nationale d’Administration.
It was there that she met Francois Hollande, her partner of 25 years and the father of their four children. The head of the Socialist Party who is believed to have harbored presidential aspirations of his own, Mr. Hollande has remained neutral.
Ms. Royal was repeatedly attacked in the campaign as naïve and inexperienced. In addition to questioning her foreign policy background, her opponents and other critics mocked her proposal to create "citizens" juries to pass judgment on the work of elected officials, calling it dangerously populist, costly and irrelevant. At one rally in Paris last month when she discussed the issue, she was booed repeatedly.
During one debate, she defended her call for a less centralized, more representative form of government, saying: "Democracy is like love. The more there is of it, the more it grows."
She has also been criticized by her rivals for playing the woman card. At a rally in Paris last Monday, she quoted Mr. Strauss-Kahn as having said after their final debate that "she would have done better to stay at home instead of reading from her recipe cards."
Asked by Europe 1 radio Wednesday whether she was a liar, Mr. Strauss-Kahn replied, "That, or she is ill-informed."
While opinion polls put her far ahead as the vote approached, it had been impossible to say whether those projections would be borne out in Thursday’s primary. Only party members who pay about $25 a year to register officially were allowed to vote in the primary. Their views had never been polled because the Socialist Party refused to give its membership list to polling institutes. In addition, a full third of the party’s members joined this year after a campaign to register new and younger members.
There have been two Socialist primaries before, but they were low-key affairs and they did not follow a campaign to enroll new members or televised debates similar to those in the United States.
In January, the UMP party will choose its candidate in a primary for the first time.
Despite Mr. Sarkozy’s overwhelming lead in the polls, there are signs that 12 years might not be enough for President Jacques Chirac. In an interview in the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, his wife, Bernadette, suggested that he might seek an unprecedented third term.
As a former president, the 73-year-old head of state has the right to sit on the country’s Constitutional Council once he is no longer president.
"Yes, he’ll take it up," Mrs. Chirac said of the council. "In five years’ time."
Mr. Chirac himself has said he will not make his intentions known before next March.

You can access the story at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/world/europe/17france.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

There's also a photo of her on the site.

Reflections on The Self

2006-11-16T22:16:00.000-08:00

The authors of the first few readings in this class seemed to want us to embrace The Self.
In "Afterword: The Culture in Question," James Carey notes the emergency of objectivity in journalism as a "struggle journalists faced" which "deprived (them) of a point of view from which to describe the world they inhabited.(335)" In essence, journalists abandoned their inner Self.
In Laurel Richardson & Elizabeth St. Pierre "Writing: A method of inquiry," the authors ask us to likewise tap our inner self in writing.
"Poststructuralism thus point to the continual co-creation of Self and social science: they are known through each other. Knowing the self and knowing about the subject are intertwined, partial, historical, local knowledges. Poststructuralism, then, permits — nay, invites, — no, incites us to reflect upon our method and explore new ways of knowing." (6). The authors offer a number of new writing methods and techniques, such as writing "writing stories" to tap into that Self.
In describing "the cultural turn" in "Introduction: Culture, Theory, Writing," Michelle Barrett notes that "the cultural is bound to the senses" (15). It can be argued that recognizing the importance of sensory perception is not only how we "make sense of the world" but also ourselves and our role in it.
And what more is a souvenir if not a declaration of Self? While Lisa Love and Nathaniel Kohn label a souvenir as a "thing of the Other" in "This, That and The Other: Fraught Possiblities of the Souvenir," the interviews, surveys and results clearly show the item to be a revelation of the Self- of places traveled, of hobbies and interests, of quirks and memories. C. Wright Mills' idea to keep a "file" in "On Intellectual Craftsmanship" also advocates an exploration of self. A file is the very essence of maintaining the work of Self.
Of all the pieces, Carey's writing on journalism resonated the most with me. The idea of journalist isolated from the world to some extent is absurd. "A return to practice leads one away from abstractions such as objectivity or the people's right to know to the actual doings, the activities whereby journalists make the world," Carey writes (331). "Journalists do not live in a world of disembodied ideals; they live in a world of practices. These practices not only make the world, they make the journalists."
I would argue that "partisan journalism" has made a return of late. Blogs, in particular, have abandoned the idea of objectivity. Blogs such as the Daily Kos, Huffington Post and Instapundit wear their political affiliations openly on their proverbial sleeves. And despite being neither "fair" nor "balanced" as its slogan would imply, Fox News has also attracted a huge following with clearly slanted coverage.
Blogs are also a component of "citizen journalism" that Cramer, via Jay Rosen, is clearly enamored with. Blogs lend power to the everyday citizen. Blogs can also be an incredible declaration of Self.

Questions
James Carey: Afterword/The Culture in Question
1. Is nationalism still the principle power among men and women in today's "terrorist culture" of cross-state idealogy?
2. Are there positive aspects or advantages to living under the common systems of communication that have put us on the "same" time and same purposes?
3. Should journalists abandon the concept of objectivity?

Laurel Richardson & Elizabeth St. Pierre: Writing: A method of inquiry
1.How is writing "validated as a method of knowing"?
2.Do you agree that "creative" and "analytical" are NOT "contradictory and incompatible modes"?
3.What, if any, are the shortcomings of language in postmodernism?

Michelle Barrett: Introduction: Culture, Theory, Writing
1.Why is idealogy "problematic"?
2.Can there be any order in postmodernity?
3.What, if any, are the downsides to using a "less didactic, more imaginative form" to get across the message?

Lisa Love and Nathaniel Kohn: This, That and The Other
1. Can a souvenir become meaningless?
2.Is a souvenir ever "just a souvenir"?
3.Do souvenirs reveal anything about a society or period of time?

C. Wright Mills: On Intellectual Craftsmanship
1. Why is there seemingly such a negative reaction from the academy toward "anyone who tries to write in a widely intelligible way"?
2.Can anything be done to change the status quo of "academic prose"?
3. How has money, or in some instances lack thereof, hindered academic studies?

24, Terrorism and Everyday Life: A Programming Analysis of FOX’s Popular TV Show

2006-11-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

“Today is the longest day of my life.”- Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland), 24

“What is at stake today is life.”- Michel Foucault

When it debuted five years ago, 24 brought a unique formula to the television landscape. Having an entire series take place in one day with each of its 24 episodes covering one hour and told in real time was a different concept. Time and space became vital notions to the show.
While writing about new media, Peter Lunenfeld’s ideas about the digital derive in “The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media” can also apply to the 24 storyline. Story, space and time woven together all contribute to this idea of the “unfinish.” You certainly see that notion interwoven into the show’s plot. Each hour in the day brings a new obstacle and each day (season) presents a new set of challenges. Seemingly, federal agent Jack Bauer and his cohorts can never rest. It’s also worth noting that the show’s logo and the continuous counting down of time is done through a digital clock.
Novelist Don DeLillo has noted the connection between narrative and time.
“There is a tendency of plots to move towards death... the idea of death is built into the nature of every plot. A narrative plot is no less than a conspiracy of armed men” (Lunenfeld, 1999).
Lunenfeld’s ideas aren’t the only ones worth applying toward 24. Other various cultural study readings and theorists can help further illustrate some of the concepts explored in 24.
The first season of 24 focuses on Counter Terrorist Unit agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland)’s efforts to stop an assassination plot against presidential candidate David Palmer and also to save his teenage daughter from kidnappers in the process.
“Life in the state of nature is defined only by its being unconditionally exposed to death threats,” writes Giorgio Agamben in “Form of Life” (Agamben, 2005).
24 illustrates this notion, where there are numerous threats to the lives of main characters, including Bauer and his daughter Kim, Palmer and his family members and other CTU agents. 24 has become synonymous with death. Lots of no-named characters are killed during various operations and even major characters die. The first season of 24 ends with the death of Bauer’s pregnant wife, Teri.
“Life originally appears in law only as the counterpart of a power that threatens death,” Agamben writes (Agamben, 2005).
24 represents the struggle for life, this daily battle between life and death. Whether it’s an assassin with a rifle, an exploding telephone, a militia of armed men, a knife-wielding psychologically scarred lover of a terrorist, an arsenic-set fire, or a triggered bomb, threats are constant to the characters in 24.
“Biological life, which is the secularized form of naked life and which shares its unutterability and impenetrability, thus constitutes the real forms of life literally as forms of survival: biological life remains inviolate in such forms as that obscure threat that can suddenly actualize itself in violence, in extraneousness, in illnesses, in accidents,” Agamben writes (Agamben, 2005).
While there are numerous ways in which characters die in 24, murder remains at the heart of the show. Terrorists are trying to murder Bauer, Palmer, and Bauer’s wife and daughter.
“What impulse, deep down in the species, lies at the origin of this ruthless murder, this ruthless suicide?” asks theorist Jean Baudrillard in “Cool Memories IV.” (Agamben, 2005).
In the Introduction to “Intersections and Divergences in Contemporary Theory: Baudrillard and Agamben on Politics and the Daunting Questions of Our Time,” Gerry Coulter writes that we can no longer avoid the question of fatal destiny in light of the “death factories of our time”— Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Darfur (Agamben, 2005).
It is within this backdrop that 24 is set. Bauer’s target is Victor Drazen (played by Dennis Hopper), who we are told carried out war crimes for Milosevic in Serbia. Bauer, who used to work with special forces in the military, was responsible for leading an operation to assassinate Drazen that was authorized by Senator Palmer. Unbeknownst to Bauer and Palmer at the time, Drazen’s wife and daughter were killed in the attack but Drazen survived.
Revenge motivates Drazen and his sons to orchestrate a plot to kidnap Bauer’s daughter and go after Bauer and Palmer. We can view the various plots, plans, and maneuvers between the two sides as a game of sorts. In “The Practice of Everyday Life,” Michael deCerteau describes how chess grew out of the aristocratic “art of war.”
“Games give rise to spaces where moves are proportional to situations,” deCerteau writes. “…Games formulate (and already formalize) rules organizing moves and constitute as well a memory ( a storage and a classification) of schemas of actions articulating replies with respect to circumstances.” (de Certeau, 2004)
In one scene, CTU agents offer to trade the terrorist mastermind’s injured son, who they have in captivity, in exchange for Bauer, who has been captured and held hostage by Drazen. This represents a game between the two sides.
Neither Drazen, the terrorist, nor Bauer, the federal agent, however, always play by the rules. In one scene, Bauer pulls a knife on the daughter of one of Drazen’s dear friends. Bauer attempts to use the girl to escape. By holding the knife on someone whom Drazen presumably cares about, Bauer tries to get Drazen to drop his gun.
But Drazen instead shoots the girl in the head, killing her himself, and then kills his friend who protests at the murder of his innocent daughter. In doing so, Drazen is not playing by the rules.
In another “game,” Bauer wants the terrorists to believe that Palmer has been killed so they will keep his daughter alive and buy him time to try to save her. Government officials tell the media that Palmer has been killed, which is then reported on television news.
This strikes at the heart of media credibility. Both Agamben and Baudrillard cite the example of a faked, and much televised, massacre at Timisoara, Romania in the 1990s to show how the media “compounds the depths of uncertainty” (Agamben, 2005).
“Never again will we be able to look at a television picture in good faith,” Baudrillard writes in Illusion of the End. (Agamben, 2005)
The TV media report Senator Palmer’s death during an explosion in his hotel room. The media, of course, were duped by the government officials who wanted the terrorists to think that Palmer was dead.
While examining the first season of 24, it’s important to note the context of the real world. Over the course of the first season, the show about terrorism aired at a time when the world was focused on a “war on terrorism.”
24 debuted on October 29, 2001, less than two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. The first 13 episodes were written before Sept. 11, including the pilot episode which ended with the explosion of an airliner in flight. The scene of the plane’s explosion was edited out of the premiere. (Hark, 2004).
As Dennis Broe points outs in his article, “Fox and Its Friends: Global Commodification and the New Cold War,” 24’s narration changed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“The show began as an example of the paranoid government series,” Broe writes. “Its first eight episodes (those presumably written before Sept. 11) tracked the exploits of an X-Files like lead character who suspected there was a conspiracy in the government to assassinate an African American presidential candidate. The series took on a different cast following the declaration of the war on terror. Agent Jack Bauer went from fugitive outsider to vigilante cop in a matter of weeks, with the right-wing, inside-the-government threat to assassinate the presidential candidate converted to the outside threat of ‘Serbian terrorists’” (Broe, 2004).
Now entering its sixth season, 24 has continued to entertain while following the now familiar format outlined in the first season. As the U.S. “war on terror” continues to rage on, Americans have stayed glued to the fictional characterizations of terror depicted on the Fox television show, which has ultimately helped serve as a distraction from the everyday life.

WORKS CITED
Agamben, G. (2005). Intersections and Divergences in Contemporary Theory: Baudrillard and Agamben on Politics and the Daunting Questions of Our Time—Form of Life. Accessed online September 25, 2006 at http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol2_2/agamben.htm
Broe, D. (2004). Fox and Its Friends: Global Commodification and the New Cold War. Cinema Journal, 43(4), 97-101.
de Certeau, Michel (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. Title page-42.
Hark, I.R. (2004). Today is the Longest Day of My Life: 24 as Mirror Narrative of 9/11. In Ed.: Wheeler Winston Dixon. Film and Television After 9/11(121-141). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Lunenfeld, P. (1999). Unfinished Business. From The Digital Dialectic. Ed.: Peter Lunenfeld. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 7-22.

Hey Mr D.J., Play Me That God Song?

2006-11-15T05:49:00.000-08:00

Here's an excerpt of an article in today's Wall Street Journal that's along the lines of Lunenfeld's idea that "we're all DJs." and also the whole concept of "poaching"....

"That Sermon You Heard on Sunday May Be From the Web." by Suzanne Sataline...

The Rev. Brian Moon says he has come up with ideas for his sermons after water-skiing, while watching "My Name is Earl" on TV and while working on his 1969 Buick music car. He also finds inspiration on the Internet, as he did in August when he preached about "God's math."
"People are drowning, drowning in their marriages, drowning in their careers, drowning in hurtful habits," Mr. Moon told his congregation at Church of the Suncoast, in Land o' Lakes, Fla. "They need someone to rescue them and bring them on the raft. They need people driven by God's addition."
Those words, it turns out, were first uttered by the Rev. Ed Young, pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. His Web site, creativepastors.com, sells transcripts of this and other sermons for $10 each.
Mr. Moon says he delivered about 75 percent of Mr. Young's sermon, "just because it was really good." That included a whitewater rafting anecdote similar to Mr. Young's in the original. Mr. Moon, who has now been a pastor for seven months, didn't give credit to Mr. Young, and he makes no apologies about recycling the sermon.
"Truth is truth, there's no sense reinventing the wheel," Mr. Moon says. "If you got something that's a good product, why go out and beat your head against the wall and try to come up with it, yourself?"
These days, a lot of preachers would agree. The sermon- an oration traditionally expressing the thoughts of the cleric doing the talking- has entered the age of reruns (emphasis added). Topics and transcrips are available on sites like sermoncentral.com, pastors.com, sermonspice.com and desperatepreacher.com. In the old days, when a preacher wanted to pinch a sermon, he had to consult a book, a magazine or a sermon anthology.
The offerings have a multidenominatinal appeal, allowing Presbyterian traditionalists or megachurch evangelicals to download talks on faith, hope and charity for a few bucks, or even free of charge. Torah-Fax, in Davie, Fla., runs a sermon email subscription service for rabbis. Sites pay the authors for individual sermons (about $50 apiece) and sometimes buy up sermon libraries.
The widespread buying of packaged wisdom has touched off a debate about ethics, especially after incidents in which pastors have resigned over plagiarism allegations. Some members of the clergy say sermon sales diminish religious oratory and undermine both scholarship and the trust between ministers and their flocks....

A Brief Ethnographic Narrative

2006-11-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

"How's it going Geo-fray?"
I suddenly stop what I'm doing, cock my head to the side, as my roommate has stumbled upon me while I feed my latest addiction.
"Oh, not too bad. Just working on homework," I reply.
"Man, you sure do work on homework a lot," Stephen says.
"I know. I know. It's tough work but somebody has to do it."
Hours pass. Days go by. My eyes hurt from staring at the work. My head pounds from the constant focus on one subject. Schoolwork. Classwork.
But it's great. I love this. I can't escape it. I need to feed this addiction. I can't stop.
It's Saturday afternoon. I stop watching football and pull out the homework. I know what I must do.
The hours continue to pass. My attention has been on nothing but this homework until I hear Stephen's voice yet again and I'm brought back to reality.
"Hey, Geo-fray. A couple of us are going out tonight for drinks. We're starting at the Wine Bar. Wanna come?"
"I'd love to but I can't," I reply. "I've got this homework you know. Really, it's tough work. But I got to do this homework assignment."
"Wow," he says. "That seems like tough work. How much homework do you have to do?"
"Well, for this assignment I'm doing 24 hours worth of homework. Although really it's only about 16.8 hours actually."
Day after day throughout this week I've focused on this assignment. I can't put it away. It's too addicting. And when I say it's addicting I mean it. I really am pulled to this "work."
I look forward to the pulsing beat in between assignments. The countdown of the clock excites me. I know what to expect from the content. "DAMN IT!" "PUT DOWN THE GUN! DROP IT! I SAID DROP IT!"
The characters from the homework resonate in my head.
I can't stop. Who will die next? What twists is there in store? I must find out.
I must feed the addiction. I've got more homework to do.
I must watch 24.

Simpsonslacrum?

2006-11-14T07:47:00.000-08:00

Sunday's episode of the Simpsons poked fun unmercillesly at the U.S. Army with a not-so-subtle message about Iraq. Nevertheless, there was a scene where the Army led a "simulated war games" scenario against Homer's troops of the Army's dimmest soldiers. They invade the streets of Springfield. When Kenny inquires about what's going on he's told, "don't worry. it's not real. it's just a simulation."
A tank then proceeds to roll over Kenny's car crushing both him and his vehicle.
"Wow, the pain sure does feel real," Kenny says.
"It is," the soldier replies.
This reminded me yet again of Baudrillard and the simulacram.
As I've mentioned before, Baudrillard talks about how you can't stage a robbery because it becomes "real." This is the same concept. The "simulation" resulted in real pain for Kenny.

Lunenfeld Visit

2006-11-13T21:34:00.000-08:00

Peter Lunenfeld visited our class today. Here's some notes from his visit:

Lunenfeld works on the faculty for a Media Design graduate program at a school in Pasadena, Calif.

Says the program tryies to avoid "the cardinal sin of repurposing," which is often common in TV and print online products

Lunenfeld is a digital media theorist but has tried to narrow his focus the last few years.

He has a book coming out called "The War Between Downloading and Uploading", which he says is designed to combat "cultural diabetes" from downloading too much.

He finds it a challenge to write an essay in a new media environment; may add photos in the next edition

-belives in a "materiality of information"

-says there is often an economic incentive to go 180 degress from what a media theorist says

-"Everything Bad is Good For You", book by Stephen Johnson, Lunenfeld disagrees with

-Henry Jenkins at MIT a major proponent of convergence, Jenkins is an advocate of "fan culture" as opposed to "elite culture"

-Lunenfeld says the problem with media is everything is a love/hate portrayal; it's either utopian or oblivion

-talked about Web 3.0 (and Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 too)

-talks about Bruno Latour and his work and another guy who believes email is poised on its death because spam is so bad and younger people prefer text messages

-recommends checking out creativecommons.org, which rethinks the idea of "copyright" and "copyleft"

-everything is about retelling, reuse and remix
we are all DJs
You are a DJ now whenever you hit shuffle or make your own playlist on the iPod, that is DJ
we are all DJs/curators now
Curation is picking six or seven pieces from a whole body of work, it's about the juxtaposition of time and space

-Unfinished Business-how objects that are both virtual and real

-Time-based media is going to have to change how research is designed and taught

-60s and 70s- theory revolution in publishing built on a hermeneutics of suspicion

-free speech movement attacked the megaversity

-recommends "The Machine Must Stop"

-Don't get caught in technological determinism, where you chase the technology.

-Narrativity and interactivity don't go as well together as people who like interactivity would like for it to

-We've been bathed in narrative in the 20th century. As a culture, we're completely addicted to the narrative.

-Talks about "the slow food movement"

Le Fin

Digital Dialectic

2006-11-11T11:02:00.000-08:00

Just read some of Peter Lunenfeld's "Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media." I thought of blogs as I read some of this piece. Lunenfeld talks about how "to celebrate the unfinished in this era of digital uniquity is to laud process rather than goal- to open up a third-thing that is not a resolution, but rather a state of suspension." Blogs, by their nature, are not supposed to end. They are supposed to represent an ongoing conversation. To blog is to partake in a process without an end goal necessarily in sight. To blog is to write. To blog is to share. To blog is to express. Blogs are part of this unresolved "third-thing."
Lunenfeld later talks about "one of the most noted qualities of hypertext is the way it offers a never-ending variety of ways through material." That's true too. For instance I could link to another site, which will link you to other sites. You could continue on indefinitely. In that sense, the "story" never ends.
Lunenfeld also poses the questions of how in this digital derive "is a reader reading or is a user using"? Can't someone in the digital world do both? If you choose to post a response here, you are a user. You are using after reading. You are both a user and a reader. That's kind of the whole point of interactivity spawned by the Internet and other technologies.
On an unrelated point, it's interesting to me how when in the world of academe, much of what one studies blurs together. For example, Lunenfeld discusses new media technology much from a cultural studies perspective.
Earlier in the week, I attended a speech by Lee Rainie, founder and director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Lunenfeld talks in his piece about theory and application. Rainie very much represents application. His center has done numerous studies on Internet usage, very much from a scientific quantitative approach.
But there's common ground between the two. While they may be diametrically opposed in idealogy, they address similar issues.
Sorry to leave that idea unfinished and move on to another idea but in reading Lunenfeld I also thought of other examples or theories we've previously discussed in class. In discussing narrative, Lunenfeld quotes novelist Don DeLillo: "there is a tendency of plots to move towards death... the idea of death is built into the nature of every plot. A narrative plot is no less than a conspiracy of armed men." I thought of 24 when reading this. Perhaps because it's on the mind from watching it for the programming analysis piece, but think of death in 24. Lots and lots of characters die on this show. Even "main" characters die. The idea of death is definitely built into the plot of 24.
Later in the Lunfeld reading, he talks about the Extropians, which believe that "eventually we will develop core memore technologies so sophisticated that we will be able to upload (their more positive and upbeat version of download) our consciousness into the ethereal realm of pure information, leaving our bodies behind and slipping from the clutches of death."
This reminded me of the film, "The Matrix." Sounds futuristic and whatnot. And of course, "The Matrix" was based in part on Baudrillard. "Simulacra and Simulacram" is even shown in the film.
This reminds me of what one of my professors used to say: "Everything connects." He taught a course on Baudelaire and while technically we were studying "Les Fleurs du Mal" we talked about everything under the sun because of his belief. Ironically, Baudelaire has now been mentioned in some of my readings for this course. In that regard, it has come full circle. Everything does connect. The story remains unfinished.

Not To Keep Dwelling on the Hyperreal...

2006-11-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

Is anything "real" anymore? I've attended several journalism conferences where Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are discussed ad nauseum for presenting so-called "fake news."
That term's a bit off the mark as the news they are presenting is real. It's the comedic spin they take in parodying the established mainstream media anchors that's "fake."
If you ask me, the character of Stephen Colbert is a comedic genius. Although now this Bill O'Reilly-spoof is hard to distinguish from the "real" Stephen Colbert.
When you think of Colbert, you think of this hyperreal creation of the "talk show host" he plays on Comedy Central each night. You don't think of Colbert the "reporter" on "The Daily Show" or Colbert the comedian, or Colbert the actor, or the "real" Colbert.
You may recall the uproar from earlier this year when hypperreal Colbert, in character, attended the White House press speech and basically roasted the president.
Well, the midterm elections took place a few nights ago and in addition to all the news and cable outlets providing live coverage of the results, Comedy Central's tandem of Stewart and Colbert also joined the fray.
Colbert's character was over the top with the hyperreality. But it was hilarious. Colbert had a cake made to congratulate the Republicans and another smaller cake made to congratulate "the terrorists."
The broadcast even flashed arabic writing over top of the text, and Colbert continued to hammer home the "Democratic victory is a victory for the terrorists" theme throughout the show.
In that one broadcast, you've got everyday life themes, terrorism themes and hyperreality.
I think I like hyperrreality. Even if I don't fully understand it and am missuing it, I like it. It seems to be everywhere. Baudrillard was right in many regards about this.
For example, I mentioned "Borat" in an earlier posting. To many viewers of the film "Borat," Borat is in fact real. He's a real Kazakstan journalist. He's not a character created by Sacha Baron Cohen.
And "Borat," not Sacha Baron Cohen, has been appearing on talk shows, conducting newspaper interviews, etc.
It's sort of like that whole idea of staging a bank robbery. It can't happen because it becomes real. By never breaking character and appearing on TV shows, "Borat" becomes "real." To some extent.
Just another thing to think about from the cultural studies world of journalism and mass communication....

Everday Life in Programming

2006-11-07T14:47:00.000-08:00

I've been watching episodes of "24" for a class programming analysis paper. While most of my analysis will use writings on terrorism that we read in class, in this particular episode I noticed similarities/overtures on the de Certeau readings on Everyday Life. De Certeau and Foucalt often write about a "grid," and a "binary." Many of the feminists often use these terms to describe how women are being limited, restricted to these particular binaries. A few of our educational doctoral students often mention the binary and the grid.
In this particular episode, Senator David Palmer is running for President of the United States. If elected, he would become the first black president. Quite a few of the scenes focus on this binary, his blackness.
I also watched the brilliant film, "Borat," over the weekend. This too had many binaries. The humor revolves around exposing people's hatred, bigotry and prejudices, revealing our dark natures and reflecting how idiotic and small minded they are through ridicule. Sacha Baron Cohen's Kazhakstan journalist character exposes people's fears of Jews, blacks, gays, etc. All are binaries. All are limiting. ....

It's all about the (hyperreal) Brand

2006-11-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

Basketball season has begun. I saw this recent blurb in the local paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"Hawks guard Joe Johnson is officially a member of the Jordan family now. He was added Friday to the roster of high-profile athletes wearing the [Michael] Jordan brand of footwear and apparel.
He joins New Orleans point guard Chris Paul and Dallas guard Josh Howard as the latest additions to the Jordan team. Denver's Carmelo Anthony, Seattle's Ray Allen, San Antonio's Michael Finley, Sacramento's Mike Bibby, Detroit's Rip Hamilton and New York's Quentin Richardson are other NBA players on the Jordan roster...."
Jordan has his own BRAND and now Jordan alone does not encapsalate those hyperreal images, but he has an entire stable of athletes to carry on the image.
This is relevant to the cultural studies piece "Excavating Jordan" by David Andrews. I did a powerpoint presentation about it, which you can access here.
If for no other reason, the links to old Jordan commercials are funny.

Hyperreal to the Extreme

2006-11-03T15:36:00.000-08:00

Last week I was in Las Vegas for fall break. I kept thinking of Baudrillard and the whole simulacra and simulacrum. This whole idea of hyperreal.
Baudrillard likes to talk about Disney World. This fantasy world, this hyperreal, that becomes real. Another example Baudrillard uses is a simulated robbery. Try to create a fake robbery and suddenly it becomes real.
Everything in Vegas is fake. It's not real. Yet it is real. It's very hyperreal. Does anyone REALLY believe that "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."? I'm sure some people do.
This appeals to the hyperreal. You can be anything. You can be anyone.
I wanted to dress the part. I wanted to act the Vegas act. Afterall, I was in Vegas, baby, Vegas.
I wore a casual sports coat. I wanted to convey I was a high roller. I wasn't. I'm not.
But I looked the part. It was very hyperreal.
While in Vegas over the course of the week I traveled to New York (New York), Italy (Caesars Palace), France (Paris), back in time to the Medieval ages (Excalibur) and Egypt (Luxor).
I visited places of grand opulence, towering casinos such as the MGM Grand, the Bellagio and the Wynn.
These casinos are so unreal, so hyperreal, they become almost reality.
New York, New York has the statue of liberty, the Manhattan skyrises, delicatessans (sp?) and even a tribute to Sept. 11, 2001 victims.
It's as close to the real thing as some will ever get. I watched Asian tourists snap photos of Lady Liberty. Perhaps foreign viewers will see it and think it's the statue of liberty that sits near Ellis Island. You know, the REAL statue of liberty. To them, it will be real.
The Luxor looks like a pyramid, is shaped like a pyramid and shoots a ray of light out at the top. I've never been to an Egyptian pyramid but the sphinx and mummies at the top of the Luxor are (hyper)real to me.
I also went on a mob tour. The same company conducts a haunted tour. It became a combination of both. I supposedly saw the home haunted by Redd Foxx's ghost, the original site of the Flamingo hotel (where Buggsy Siegel's ghost allegedly roams the foliage at night), and the site of Tupac's murder. Apparently, Tupac's ghost haunts the streets of Vegas and the mansion of Suge Knight.
To these tour promoters and some of the tourgoers, all this is real. There sure seem to be a lot of ghosts congregating in Vegas. Hey, it's Vegas baby, it's Vegas. Why wouldn't they want to go there?
Even the town is a hyperreal, exaggerated illustion. While there I watched Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds perform.
"You're in the desert, but you forget you're in the desert because there's so many bright lights blaring everywhere," Matthews said.
A tour guide told me that ONE HOTEL spends $1 million dollars A DAY on lights. I'm not sure I believe that. Nevertheless, the numerous flashing lights along The Strip, the light show in downtown Vegas screams hyperreality.
The restaurants, shows, attractions, casinos are all exaggerated, all inflated. They promise everything. They deliver little.
Hyperreal. Hyperreal. Hyperreality. Hyperreally?
I love Vegas. I hate Vegas. Vegas loves me. Vegas hates me.
What am I talking about? Why am I typing? More questions than answers. Stream of consciousness flows. This isn't academic writing. Is it? Can it be? Should it be? Am I writing? Am I really writing this? Richardson would approve. She says writing should not be limited. We should express ourselves.
Think of Vegas as a freeflowing writing experiment. We discover parts of ourselves. Sometimes dark, sometimes jovial, but parts of ourselves that aren't necessarily exposed elsewhere. This crazy bizarre hyperreal desert Oasis. This land where people have died for money, lost their lives for the illusions, started their lives together at a shady chapel.
I saw numerous brides gambling in the casinos. Nothing like a wedding and honeymoon in Vegas. Nothing says romance like hitting the slot machines after tying the knot.
Even some marriages are hyperreal. Remember Britney's wedding to Jason Alexander? Didn't think so. A quick exaggeration. A fake reality that became real? Before it was annulled. Strike it from the annalls. Didn't happen. Who cares anyway? It's a distraction.
What happened to news? Real news. I'm a journalist. I want news.
I read news. Real news. Scandal. It's Vegas afterall. The mayor used to be the attorney for the mob. The governor is involved in a sexual harrasment scandal. It made the front page news.
I also read about Vegoose. It's a music festival. It's happened twice now. Both times at Halloween. Both times I've gone. Lots of music. Lots of fantasy. There's an evil pumpkin. A really really evil pumpkin. There's also an Elvis pumpkin. Elvis. Ah, Elvis. Who could forget the entertainer?
Entertainers love Vegas. They get a lot of money, don't have to travel and get to perform. People flock to them. Oh well. I've rambled on too much. Way too much for a final project. hahaha.
This is a blog. Blogreality.
I made it back from Vegas. I'll go again. My cousin has a bachelor party coming up soon. It's Vegas baby, Vegas.

The Beginning...Or Is It?

2006-11-03T15:27:00.000-08:00

If you've stumbled upon this little piece of cyberspace, heaven help you. This whole blog is basically a class project. This creation is a final project for Dr. Kohn's Telecommunications Programming graduate course at the Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia.
I'm one student in the course. This is my project.
It will contain my observations and musings and insights related to our readings. If you stumble upon this site, you can look forward to remarks about about Foucault, Baudrillard, Baudelaire, Agamben, the grid, the matrix, simulacra and simulacrum, and a bunch of other French writers and some cultural studies readings. Enjoy!