Popular Culture

Doesn't have to be said:
Culture
General process of intellectual,spiritual and aesthetic development
works of significance
base
Forces of Productions
relations of production
Superstructure
Social Institutions
Form of consciousness
Capitalist pyramid
All mass Culture is identical

I will not write up gaze, panopticon, censorship or psychoanalysis due to the task be on those theories

Subculture and Style

same as before:
Subculture is a group with a culture unlike the larger culture
Skaters, parkour etc
Graffiti artists
Your Graffiti speaks for you
Bike Girls
Hells Angels see girls and g.f or mom figures
21st century demonisation one sings praise other curses
Skin heads and the threats of subcultures

Celebrity Culture

Same layout as the last one:
Celebrity Portraits in the Pictorialist tradition
Poets and artists were celebs in 1875
Famous for what they did rather than just being
Males Photographed differently
Josephine Baker 1906-1975
acted in films
pet cheetah
spied on nazis
resistance helper
imitated by people
Bette Davis owned a great servicemen club
celebs become brands
paparazzi are our envy and greed
twitter bring a new outlet

Globalisation the Media

Only i can read my notes so i will write the basics below:
Definitions of Globalisation
Socialist & capitalist
American Sociologist George Ritzer coins the term McDonaldization
to describe fast food places taking over the world

Centripetal Forces bringing the world together
Centrifugal Forces Tearing the world apart

Globalization
three problems
Sovereignty
Accountability
Identity

Cultural Imperialism
Ownership
Sustainability development
Eco vs NON Eco

Psychoanalysis of Au Chien Andalou

First what the hell now that is out of the way Au Chien Andalou or in english An Andalusian Dog is a surreal trip rather than a movie saying that with salvador dali it isn't surprising it is to say a little bit odd but yeah on to the review.

Now i will admit i had not heard of this 'interesting' movie before but when i watch it and compare the year i could see how it was so big and so groundbreaking with it's filming and and how far it would go when it wanted to show something. Now while watching this i feel like i am in a messed up dream which from what i have heard these are all pieces of dream sequences anyway so i guess it does deliver itself very well but i tell you dreams in media are either weird gruesome or really well done i think this one is a combo of gruesome and well done.

While saying that it feels like it is the beginning that gives that feeling and the rest is a limping dog trying to keep his back end up with his healthy front but that may just be my opinion but i think this really lets it done since most of it i have no clue what is going on what really doesn't help when watching it with others since you want to lean over a go 'did i miss something','huh why is he doing that' which no one enjoys listening to while watching something.

I am not sure if i have the long version but it is about 15 minutes which when it gets to the last five minutes i get really bored. i will be fair though i believe this was the director's first movie and normally no director can get there first movie as the one they are gonna be sitting on the green/money because of it but what i think is that though it seems like a cult classic which can go either way by being so bad it's good or just being bad, It seems that unlike most cult classics people have good things to say about it which i guess is a major praise keeping in mind the age and the length of it.

You know besides that it is worth a view for you to judge yourself after all you may love it, myself i think i would maybe see it again in a few years time but i tell you no rush to do that also have fun trying to make sense out of it all, i assure you it is impossible to understand it completely.

Censorship and the Truth

What do we really know, that is a powerful statement since we are now in a world were people only need good photographs to build non existent castles in the countryside or giant sharks attacking helicopters. Those examples are silly but the lecture proved one thing that most people should know and that is people tell lies. The examples they gave were such as mashing two photographs together to make it look like a soldier is threatening a iraq man with a child which is a very good mechanism to create fear or uncertainty.

The Censorship for news definitely seem to come from a few very manipulative people who know what they are doing for example the Gulf a Tonkin incident which kick started the vietnam war was twisted to benefit the president/Government now this may be a very cynical view but i know that when i am not supposed to know something i won't find out.

Now Censorship this is a funny topic for me since some of the arguments or how they are changed to make it fine just make me laugh, like if a woman has a flake in her mouth someone thinks of a sex act all i can say is jesus christ are you that dirty minded it's a flaming chocolate bar for god sake. but the line i start to draw is when it comes to kids naked now myself i don't find it wrong since if you have a kid you see that sort of thing hell it is natural but using it to shock or advertise something is bad in my opinion. Saying all that though i think the thing about kids in adverts i think you need to be smart about it and unfortunately the smart ones sometimes get picked out rather the non tasteful ones.

Now kid pictures are fine i think if they are the whole family album thing but for the love of god don't put kid pics on facebook when naked or do it in a gallery that is just wanting a reaction or worse some sick bugger who will look for those pics, it just isn't right but one thing that was a very good point with the lecture was why is a painted kid with his Colonel out fine but a picture with a trouser snake isn't well i guess 'it's Art'. Now unfortunately this came as more of a rant but when i look into such pieces as Venus, Cupid, Folly & Time i do see art funny really i guess it's the theory of what is real since you know it is a painting it for some reason doesn't feel real but a photo in a weird way feels like it is real now this i my thought but it may not be this that causes the controversies that always appear but all i know is people need to be a bit smarter with such things and what can be shown be it news of death or showing nude pictures.

The Gaze

SEX.... Now i have your attention the Gaze i won't pretend i am not a person that isn't roped in to something by this since i am the type of bloke who would look back to check what i just saw but this is more than that. Now what i got from this was the idea of making something a sexual object and not a person one example they gave was lara croft now i won't lie i own lara croft games and enjoy them but they put too much emphasis on the butt and chest so while you are playing a little bell rings in your head going 'damn she is hot' and the rest of the brain is like shut up i'm listening to the cutscene.

The Gaze causes a lot of psychological issues due to it stemming from humans finding themselves wanting to be attractive and also those who are interested in the person and if any evidence of this was needed look on social network sites since the idea of gaze is seeping from the sites. Now i will not pretend that i am not a guy who doesn't appreciate looking at a girl i find attractive BUT how i perceive most occasions is 'She is an attractive girl i wonder what she is like' which i think is the combination of the idea of the abolishment of the gaze and the gaze itself together which is probably the best way to do it since it isn't bad wanting to be found attractive.

So is the gaze good answer is yes and no i'm afraid and a lot of people would be arms about it but looking into games again if you created a really sexy character and then after you use the gaze to objectify here she has a great personality, she makes you smile and you care for her at that point she is no longer a gaze since you do not see here as an object in theory so the idea can be toyed with.
The bad now and the best example i can think of is my ex since she was really effected by how see should be seen which wasn't good because we will be sat eating a nice meal and see will stop eating and say i am on a diet so i can't eat anymore, first thing to my head why the hell are you on a diet you are perfect in my eyes and the gaze strikes making her not see herself as a human who has feeling but seeing her self as some guys do and just becoming an object.

At the end of the day it sucks it can work but it is not just the people who implement the gaze which are in the wrong it is the "victims" since will power can move mountain so i am sure it can ignore rubbish in the paper.

Panopticism

Now this was one my favourite theories so far because when doing a comparison to other theories this one felt like it had proper research and actually did happen. I am jumping ahead Panopticism is the Theory of a form of stimulant such as a camera and believing you are being watched which form your behavior to react to the simulant being by behaving in a certain manner which is normal been drilled into the ‘victim’ before. I feel that I can personally vouch for this since one of my friends used to smoke in school and she always avoided camera areas and tried to hide things when she saw a camera but the odd thing is you didn’t know if they were even recording. Lets take a step back though the original idea originated for prisons and it is evil but genius at the same time since there will be always more prisoners than guards and with the circular design which was the panopticon and the tower in the center it caused the prisoners to be alone effectively which meant it may cause some psychological difficulties with the prisoner but it also keeps them abandoned alone and weak which is a basic idea in warfare and with the tower being a way to trick the prisoners you could only have one guard and they would be none the wiser. I looked into this in a more playful sense than others that led to me looking into videogames when it hit me that quite a few bosses in video games use this theory or at least a part of it that is the design. Seems a bit far fetched but thing of legend of Zelda quite a few bosses are in circular rooms in the center which means less control over yourself and your environment since when you move you have to have your back to them or be moving something while they just slightly move and watch you. Now this may be me over analyzing things but the theory is still implemented in modern life be that the security cameras in town centers and such especially the ones with four camera giving a 360 view or the one which looks 360. We are a observed country which is not good but security cameras and panopticism is good and can be really helpful such as identifying thieves or being able to track people for the police. With the internet and computers now you can be watched any time hell I could be watched while typing this but in this world were a lot of bad stuff can happen with a lack of security, it isn’t bad even though it is over the top and if I have to be recorded on the high street 1000 times and I get attacked once and saved by the camera hell it would be worth it.