Last But not Least

For my last blog, I think it is suitable to dress a conclusion about this exercise of writing blog. Before writing it, I quickly visited my classmate blogs to have an overview of how they did it. I have been agreeably suprised to see that most of them spent some time on it, they included pictures, videos and made some researches , when a simple rough paragraph would be enough to get the credit that they were looking for. What should we deduce of that ? First of all, well done Mr. Pernisco ! Obviously your excercise of asking to your students to write a blog entry every week is working, since the students seem to be highly motivated by doing it. We can first think that students dont have enough opportunity to give their opinion about the news the society and media. This frustration appeared in some student’s blog under the form of some very engaged articles. As a foreigner I can understand this frustration by comparing the place of the youth in the US and in France in the democratic debate. Here students, as much as citizens have a very restricted right to strike. Media are quickly calling a strike a “riot” to make it more sensational, and police is more likely to intervene to stop it. That a lack of democracy, because while the representatives have an average age of 60 years old, and with an pretty old administration, it seems that the power is not aware of the interest of listening the youth opinion.
For example the last year budget cut-off in smc would probably generate some big strikes in France, and finally the governor would probably have to moderate his politics. Except to very small movements in UCLA I didnt hear about a such thing in California. So this excercise was as entertaining as it was necessary to learn how to use the clues that we got in class in service of our different causes.

Black Friday

Unemployement, education, public health, conflict in Korea … Many are the reasons which could me make us call this friday a black Friday. But the one that we commonly use is to create a day when, under the pretext of a “huge discount”, we try to create a little bit of extra growth in time of recession. What is funny is that i dont know how or why, but black friday is supposed to be realted in a way or another to thanksgiving. Since this hollyday doesnt exist in my country i was curious to discover how important thanksgiving is in here. I was suprised to notice that i ve heard more about this black friday that thanks giving from americans. It seems to be a fashion, every special days are becoming just a new capitalist subterfuge to create consumation such as chistmas, st valentines, birthdays, and since it was pretty hard to find an interpretation of thanksgiving’s meaning which assumes that we have to buy something else that industrial quantity of turkey, now there is the Blackfriday. COOL.

With Obama are the afro-americans still discrimnated ?

While I was watching a music video from the rapper Lil Wayne, I realized that undercover to have a black president, I was no longer hearing from discrimination against Blacks (except in my com10 class). Is it because racism has disapeared ?

A quick overview of tv channels content can give some elements to answer to that questions. If blacks are i think still discriminated in our society, as a foreigner without any statisctics about that I am not capable to debate about this topic. But what I ve seen on tv can make me think that black people are now filling up a function in the white capitalism. Indeed in 15 minutes of tv I ve seen 3 types of blacks (+ ophra winfrey). Some athletics, some artist from the hip hop culture and some criminals ! There are more than 40 millions of afro-americans in USA are they 39 999 998 rapers,athletics and criminals plus Obama and Ophra winfrey ? I dont think so. This portrait is a sign that blacks are still used in media to generate some buisness (sport buisness, music industry and media (which sells those “juicy” story of criminality)). Obama is far to be the best thing which happened to afroamerican community since his election just blurred the debate about racial discriminations in USA.

The alternation phenomenom

Francois mitterand a french president from the 80″ said “the less you govern the most you are popular”. Since we are in a democracy where media are free to criticize the government, I think that it is very true fro the simpel reason that the opposants, since they are not ruling, can not be slandered as a president. If I am talking about that today that is because republican and tea partisans have won the mid term election this week, and I was looking for a reason to explain that. Because i cant imagine that health care, end of war in Iraq, end of the illegal prison of Guantanamo or so many logical and reasonnable actions that Obama’s government could make him so impopular, even yesterday we learnt that 150 000 jobs were created in October. Are the Americans nostalgic of George W. Bush ??? I dont think so,, or at least I refuse to think that.

So I tryied to analyze (with my only very little skills of french students) the reasons of this failure for the USA, since it is a real drama in this time of recession to know that neither democrats or republicans will be able to reform the country for the next 2 years during USA are loosing their leadership(Hu-Jin Tao is now the most powerful man according to Forbes). It is funny by the way to see that the ones who pretend to be the most patriotic, which means the republicans, are also the ones who are responsable of the end of american power, indeed Bush by refusing to reform the financial system stand with cross armed when the crisis was about to show up. The same president ruined the image of the USA in the world by lauching some unnecessary wars which he lost, and by showing the weakness of the USA with his incapility to help the New Orleans citizens during Katrina. So to explain this republican victory besides the bad communication of Obama, there is a phenomenom of alternance made by the media due to the fact that it is much more easier to criticize rather than ruling a country. I didnt hear during this campaign any arguments from the republicans other than the one to systematically and in a autistic way say no to Obama. In their position, the Republicans could focus only on their communication, when democrats were trying to fix Bush’s mistakes. And I think to avoid in the future this kind of populist and demagogic election, and that is the project of Obama (rather that Sharron Angle from the TEA PARTY who even wants to remove the United States Department of Education), to invest more in the education of the american youth.

I have nothing to write about, is it bad doctor ?

If finding some topics to write about in this blog was easy at the beginning, it is starting to be harder and harder for me. So much that thinking about my week’s topic became my hobbie when I am in the bus or when i wait in the line of the Albertson’s checkout. So I thought about how journalist does to fill their rubrique? Because everyday is not always full of events interesting enough to be a topic. That is a default of standardization of media, the format is the same so everyday we are flooding of informations in the same way than the day before. How more impactive would be informations if they were not daily released ?

Internet contributed a lot about the creation of this stream of informations.I am regretting the time when Tv news were replaced by some 20″ weekly documentary plaid before the movies like in the 50′s. Or the time where there was not only way to be a journalist ,which is today to have a stable wage by working for the same media at a fix frequency, but when journalists were making some deeper investigation which was released in books or documentary. Of course that still exists but sicne informations became a mass market, most of documentary have to be vulgar to seduce the public, and books are only about topics which the mass would call “juicy”

Are we living a breaking up between Art and Media ?

Last time by looking for a film to watch on Netflix, I realized that Movies made from an original screenplay were becoming more rare espically in Hollywood. And after few thought, I got to the point that by transforming Art into an industry like for cinema or popular music, we were inversing the process of art producing. In the past time movies were made by some artists who had a message to say to the crowd such as Fritz Lang in Metropolis, Charlie Chaplin in the Dictator or Costa Gavras in Z, movies were designed in the heads of cineasts first. Today movies are first designed in the head of the audience who creates a market for the movie that they want to see and then studios are reacting by developping a some movies for this market.An example would be the super-heros movies or the 7 Saw movies made in 7 years !

In this context, it is legitimate to ask if movies are still a media. Because according to the definition that you gave us at the beginning of the semester a media is anything which brings us informations. But since movies are made upon informations that we gave to the studio by spending our moneys by consuming a specific movie rather than an another one, blobkbusters are not longer a media, and by the way, Iron Man 2 did not bring me any informations ! I’ll even go further by saying that I think that for a sociologist, when a blockbuster releases the media is not the movie, but US, audience which gives a lot of informations to the observer by choosing a movie rather than an another one.

Breath

I noticed that by dint of being flooded by tons of information from the media we were not taking the time enough to think about the deep meaning of those informations.If tomorow the television news would start to treat only one topic a night, I think that our general education would still increase despite the paradox.

So the point of my article today is the square bellow which includes none information at all. Use the time that you would pass to read my 4 paragraphs blog entries to think by yourself. Stop to be a passive thinker, be an active one !