Video on the Circuit of Culture.

I hope everyone is studying well for their finals. I think Kai Lin has made a exceptional effort to translate the circuit of culture to us.

Recently, I came across a video that may help you all recap Paul Du Gay's concept of circuit of culture in describing what can possibly be a cultural product - different from a cultural artifact. Hopefully, this video will help her illustrate her points  in the blogspot dated back on Feb 23, 2012  in a visually interactive manner and help all in your revision.

To add, personally, I think that circulation can be a new axiom on this concept. As with new media these days, it is so easy to re-circulate and reproduce the consumption of a cultural product. This can relive the cultural product experience for second time users or pass it on to new users.

- Louis

Military Propaganda in Katy Perry's Music Video "Part of Me"

In Katy Perry’s recent music video for her single: “Part of Me”, she is shown joining the US military after discovering her boyfriend has cheated on her. Some may analyse the video on its artistic merit - the use of the military as a good metaphor for relationships in real life maybe – but I shall be analysing how on a sociological level, this music video unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?) serves as propaganda for the US army.

Katy Perry’s status as a celebrity first of all, makes her a strong influencer of behaviour in society, especially among children and the 14-25 demographic. It is a well-noted social phenomenon that impressionable teens tend to emulate their idols, and treat them as a source of information in understanding the world around them. At this young age, they have not have fully formed views or opinions on the issues of their society, and they tend to lean towards the same kind of political views of their idols, with celebrities leveraging on their popularity to push forward their own ideas and agenda on a new generation of teens and future adults. For example, Lady Gaga has constantly mobilised her fan-base, which she dubs her ‘little monsters’ to support the LGBT agenda by protesting Proposition 8 in California, as well as fighting for and celebrating when same-sex marriage legislation was passed in New York.

The music video itself shows Katy Perry going through the United States Marine Corp training and then fighting a all out battle with her new comrades, and these scenes are presented as the backdrop to lyrics about empowerment and standing up for yourself.

So when Katy Perry talks about the great service that soldiers have provided for her country and her admiration of their service: "Even though I was sore and exhausted, I was so educated on people in the service, who I've always respected but the stuff they go through, and the kind of loyalty they posses, it's very communal, and community. Not to sound weird, but it seems like the heart of America. Seriously, the heart." This, combined with the elements present in her video, firstly, implants the suggestion in her fans’ minds that she appreciates people who join the military, and the subliminal implication of if I were to join the army, it would please my idol Katy Perry.

The immediate consequence of this is a greater interest in the armed forces, and in the age of social media, many positive sentiments and feedback aired online. One can imagine hordes of rabid Katy Perry fan responding on forums, video sharing sites or social networks with comments such as: “My brother is in the army, I’m so proud of him and I am so glad Katy is showing appreciation for these great men and women! God bless our troops!” Indeed similar comments have already been aired on Youtube.

In society, one’s understanding of the world directly co-relates to their field of experiences, and what they are exposed to. That’s why isolated Mormon communities in the United States for example still has misogynistic views of women, and subjugate girls as young as 9 or 10 to be sex slaves for the old patriarchs of their community, under the guise of being a dutiful wife.

So now, the large communities of Katy Perry fans online, and teenagers and children (yes, a large portion of Katy Perry’s fans are between the ages of 7 and 12, hence her appearance on Sesame Street) who don’t know any better at their relatively young and naïve age and deliberately expose themselves to this point of view, have this idealised idea of the army and recruitment.

Needless to say, these ideas could change as they grow up and learn more about the world, but given the fanatical nature of a lot of these fans, and their almost religious devotion to their pop idols, it would be no surprise to me that if Katy Perry were to continue producing pro-army content, it would foster a pretty strong pro-army conviction in her fans as they grow into adulthood.

It’s not that hard to believe: Look at the kids who grew up in the cold war generation when pro-war, and pro-army propaganda hit them in all directions from movies like Rambo and Red Dawn to animated children’s shows like GI Joe, kids from their generation grew up wanting to be soldiers for the US military and dying for their countries to defeat the ‘commie bastards’

Since such explicit propaganda cannot pass through our censors anymore these days, the propaganda machine has to use more nebulous ways to inculcate their message, and Katy Perry would be a good choice to help them along, if she hasn’t already been employed to do so. Besides, why do they think the US military so willingly allowed Katy Perry access to such a large range of their facilities and equipment? Of course, they didn’t do it so that Katy Perry could execute her artistic vision for the song, they did it because they saw there was some good propaganda purpose in allowing Katy Perry to do so. So Katy Perry unknowingly or quite likely knowingly, let herself be used as a pawn for the US army.

Cultural icons like Katy Perry are extremely adept at propagating ideas or desired behaviour because of their possession of an in-built target audience of unbelievably loyal consumers, who wittingly or unwittingly - most of the time it is the latter – subscribe to their view and understanding of the world. Given that Katy Perry has already shown some success in imbibing these pro-army sentiments among her followers, I’d reckon the US army would be more than willing to let her continue using their facilities and resources for her next video if she so chooses, which I have a good feeling she will, if not sooner, then later.

PS: This follows the trend among our current music and pop culture icons of using military elements in their videos, Rihanna's music video for her single "Hard", almost seems to fetishize the army.

The Blair Witch Project film

Hi everyone,

Not sure if anyone saw this, but I recently came across a segment of the 8Days magazine that mentioned about a 1999 American psychological horror film, entitled The Blair Witch Project. Thought this film was quite interesting on several counts, which i'd like to raise and share with the class.

Image Credit: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blair_Witch_Project.jpg)

The Blair Witch Project was an independent film written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez in 1999. Taking the lazy man's way of borrowing what wikipedia has (quite nicely) summed up, The Blair Witch Project film was essentially a film that appears to be "pieced together from amateur footage and relates the story of three student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams) who disappeared while hiking in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland in 1994 to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The viewers are told the three were never seen or heard from again, although their video and sound equipment (along with most of the footage they shot) were discovered a year later".  You could read more about it in detail by googling it or something if you like. What was particularly distinct about this film was the debate that it stirred up among the audience and viewers who were speculating on the authenticity of the film - whether or not this film was a work of fiction or was it really based on an actual event. Of course, as we know it later, it was merely an advertising gimmick used by the producers to draw the attention of a wider audience.

This film was one the most profitable films in history when it was measured by its return on the initial investment; starting with a low budget of $50,000, the film ended grossing over $100 million in US theatrical-box-office alone. Astounding figures aside, what drew my attention to this film was the use of media deception and manipulation to garner audience interest in the film. This film was successfully marketed by publicizing the film on the internet a year before actual release in cinemas; on the website, they uploaded additional material such as footage presented as outtakes from "discovered" film reels, police reports, the "back story" on the missing film students, and a history or mythology of the Blair Witch legend, to create a false impression that this film might just be a "true" story to confirm the viewers' suspicions, and to create a feeling of suspension among viewers to keep them incited by the film. Additionally, they also cleverly omitted any explicit admission or demarcation of the promotional material as fiction or as promotional advertising to leave the audience to question the authenticity of this "mockumentary". What made the advertising of this film all the more effective was the official Blair Witch Project Website, unofficial Websites and fan pages that elaborated the film's mythology and offered original narratives, in which case we can see how audiences are manipulated by the producers/advertisers to generate buzz with regard to the promotion of this film.

Furthermore, what was even more interesting to me was to see the role of the Internet in the film's commercial success, in effectively blurring the boundaries between actual and fictional nature of the film, as seen in the incessant buzz among the viewers that were created on online forums after the film was promoted via the internet - which caused some to actually believe that this film is a real event up till today!! (Something I thought was quite hilarious!) In an article that I came across while researching more on this film, it was mentioned that this film actually instigated a paradigmatic panic among some Hollywood executives (a.k.a. the Culture Industry at large that we often like to refer to) due to the important role of the Internet in this film's commercial success. The Blair Witch Project used the Web as its central medium or primary text for the film's narrative and its reception, as well as its marketing or "franchising" more than a year before the film's major cinematic distribution. This caused the Hollywood executives, who saw themselves as being in the mainstream film industry, to fear the potential shift in using the Web, which it considers to be supplementary to established media outlets (such as mainstream TV advertisements, billboard advertisements etc.), as the main mode of publicity for films. This is quite a logical fear on the part of the Hollywood executives, who's profits from the films they produce hinges largely upon the profits generated from advertisements that accompany the films. Again, this draws us back to the profiteering-nature and tendencies of media as an Industry.

To conclude, I just thought that through this Blair Witch Project film, we could draw some analysis and insights pertaining to this whole notion of Media as a Culture Industry in the modern day context (although not quite "modern" and up-to-date anymore since this film was released 12 years ago). Hope this was an interesting read for some of you, and got you to find out more about it just as I did!

Interestingly, while researching, I found that Singapore had an independent production released in 2010, entitled Haunted Changi,  running along a similar vein as The Blair Witch Project. It also tries to use Web-based mediums to facilitate buzz and publicity for this horror documentary. Maybe somebody who knows about this might like to share more about this here, since we are encouraged to bring in some non-Western context in this module.

Matilda

Hi everyone! Nicole here.

Introduction

After today’s mind-blowing and rather abstract discussion on the topic of “Influence”, I’ve just decided to draw up a brief summary of the concepts and issues that we have discussed as well as bring in a few ideas that I have stumbled upon while trying to break down this complex term.

From what I gather from today’s tutorial, the notion on how the mass media influences its consumers can be categorized into two large groups. The first group concerns that of the producer and the second, that of the consumer.

Media Producers

When addressing the producers of media, we need to consider the intention of why the producer has come up with a certain movie or piece of news or video clip etc. It could have the purpose of persuasion, propaganda or just a mere form of entertainment.

Persuasion has been defined as the attitude change that results from being exposed to information that is put in place by others while propaganda, as defined by Ross, is an ‘epistemically defective message with the intention to persuade a socially significant group of people on behalf of an organization, institution or cause.’ Thus, it is pretty obvious that when the producer engages in persuasive communication or propaganda, he does have the intention to influence the audience in some way or another. With respect to media as a form of entertainment, the idea of influence is not so straightforward and largely depends on how consumers interpret these forms of entertainment, which I will be touching on later.

We talked about a few techniques that producers make use of with the intention to influence and two of them would be the idea of framing and agenda-setting. Tankard defines a frame as ‘a central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion and elaboration.’ This then led us to the issue of power relations as frames, more often than not, are defined by those who have a say, those who have power.

Media consumers

As for media consumption, I’ll like to expand on this concept of interpretation of media by the audience. I think we have established that ‘The Bullet Theory’ is no longer as applicable to society as consumers are no longer as vulnerable to media messages as we have different ways of interpreting a text.

 Some characteristics of audiences are as follows:

1.     Audiences are selective people.

2.     Audiences have their own background knowledge and views of certain issues.

3.     Audiences are not isolated individuals and their surrounding plays an important part in crafting their views.

4.     Audiences live in different social contexts.

All in all, audiences are not passive and they are a heterogeneous group.

To what extent?

Our discussion then led us to the question on the degree of how media influences us. I think for starters, we can address the people who consumes the media. There is this concept known as the ‘four rings of defense’ as to how audiences filter and interpret messages.

The first ring is that audiences perform selective exposure in the sense that they only expose themselves to communications that are in agreement with their existing attitudes and avoid those that disagree. The second ring is that audiences perform selective perception which is the tendency for people’s perception to be influenced by wants, needs, attitudes and other factors. The third ring is that of selective attention, where the audience only pays attention to those messages that are in agreement with their views. And lastly, the fourth ring is selective retention, in which the audience only retains information that they find to be more favourable.

I guess we can use this model to evaluate to what extent the audience is influenced by the mass media. There are I’m sure many other concepts and issues that are not covered, however, I feel that this is just one of the many frameworks that can help us through the complicated process of media interpretation.

Conclusion

So these are just my thoughts on what we discussed during tutorial today! I’m sorry if some statements that I mentioned are sweeping ones or too generalized as I’m still a bit fuzzy with this concept myself, so do correct me if I’m wrong! :)

Nonetheless, I know this post is rather lengthy haha but I hope it managed to help in some way or another! :)

Have a good week ahead everyone!

P.s. There is a ‘comments’ link at the end of every post, so please feel free to comment on the other posts that our classmates have written!

Narratives in Reality TV

Hi all. Following from yesterday's (Week 7) lecture, where we discussed how CNA created a narrative with the way it selected its shots, presenters, interviewees etc -- I thought it would be good to share the following 5min video I came across recently.

This is a clip from Charlie Brooker's "Screenwipe" series. It deals with how "real" reality TV actually is and how easy it is to construct a narrative which is actually completely different from... well, reality.
There are concrete examples and illustrations given. I believe the video's purpose is to get us to question just how many of these documentaries/info/reality TV programmes are as real/factual as we think they are - thanks to how much control the producers do have over what makes the final cut and how it is presented.

Warm regards,
Charis

Circuit of Culture

Hello!

Since Dr. Ivan breifly mentioned the circuit of culture, I thought I would share my notes on it from another module. Paul du Gay's notion of a circuit of culture is an attempt to rethink how cultural forms work. It is a model different from the production produces consumption model (unidirectional, deterministic). Each moment has a very important relationship with another moment. The way to fully comprehend a cultural product is to take into account all of the 5 moments and their articulation (the connection between the moments/the process where the moments will form temporary or meaningful unities). The 5 moments are as follows:

-1. Representation: how signs are used to present a meaningful concept (e.g. advertisement)

-2. Production: how does the product come to be/how is it made

-3. Consumption: how this product is used, what meaning people give to it when they use it, what kind of social context it is used. Often consumption happens in very different contexts

-4. Identity: once meaning is constructed, how is the product used to construct individual/group identity. Often created through the assertion of sameness and difference. Also reproduced through systems of representation. Often incomplete (e.g. if you identify yourself as singaporean, you are missing out other identities such as male/female, chinese).

-5. Regulation: not just government (e.g. censorship). To do with the norms and values of society. Influences how the products come to exist in society.

In his article, Gay uses the example of Sony Walkman to illustrate the 5 moments and their articulation. I'll be using the case study of Apple to illustrate the 5 moments.

What’s in a Name? i

-encampulastes contemporary cultural capitalism

-nobody knows what the “I” in ipod means.

            -central to the company’s image

            -”I”: individual, intelligence, internet, etc

Representing Apple

-The “1984” Commercial. (you can watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhsWzJo2sN4)

-“It had broken every rule of the advertising  game.”

            -only tells the product at the end of the commercial

-draws on knowledge of Orwell’s 1984

-IBM (Big Blue) was the “Darth Vader of the digital world.”

- IBM: international business machine

-corporate, bureaucratic, compartmentalized, entrenched, hierarchical.

-Apple was “friendliness, flexibility and adaptability to creative work.”

-Lady: the one to break IBM’s monopoly, to end “big brother” regime

-creative people, men and women, integrated life, casual, informal.

-“Buying is revolutionary”

            -Oxymoron. If you buy apple computers, you can go against big brother.

-substantial impact (when it was released, 200 000 were sold)

-Think Different (1995-2000)

-PC vs Mac (2006-2009)

Apple Identities: The Cult of Macintosh

-Steven P. Jobs (1955-2011).

            -his identity is tied to apple

-Eulogies at his resignation late last month:

            "Steve Jobs was the Leonardo da Vinci of our age” (The Straits Times)

-Brand cult – akin to religion

-The Creation Myth

            -he has been liken to Jesus

            - biography titled the second coming of steve

-The Hero Myth

- Steve Jobs as the new American hero

-Epitomized Silicon Valley capitalism

The Satanic Myth

-ibm as satan

-Evangelizing

-“Macheads”

-consumption of product becomes part of their identity.

 Consuming Apple

-mobile music.

-1.Music soundtrack, song selection.

-More control over music and song selection.

-2. Portable jukebox, portable music collection.

-Facilitates greater social interaction around music.

3. Mix and match tracks.

-Create soundtracks and mixtapes unconstrained by CD or tape.

 -music has become mobile (in a greater way) and social

-the ways in which people end up using ipod shows how products go beyond their initial meaning

Design – Articulating Production and Consumption

-Look and functionality of the iPod.

-Individual and social uses.

-Links visual appearance, through tactile engagement, to aural immersion.

-Apple: design, systems integration, marketing.

-Others: technological research.

-“It struck me as so unbelievable that these incredibly great people had come together to make this collective work of art.”—Steve Jobs on the Apple II in 1984, Good Guys and Bad Guys, Joe Nocera.

Producing the iPod and iPhone

-“reflecting the global way business works today” (Mail on Sunday)

-Globalization, and out-sourcing.

-Just in time production.

-obscures the actual production of the products

-Foxconn: Taiwanese company

-Suicides of factory workers

-these suicides could potentially undermine the image that apple has carefully crafted

Regulation of Culture – Piracy.

-Ownership of culture, intellectual property, fair use, digital technology.

-Diminishing of the space for creative cultural exchanges and free scientific communications.

-Greater surveillance of cultural consumption.

-Stifling of technological innovation.

-Retardation of the digital economy.

- Lawrence Lessig: for fair use of intellectual property

-“Rip. Mix. Burn” slogan from 2001

-Music industry saw it as an endorsement of priacy

-Debate over intellectual property, music, copyright

-Rip, mix, burn: users can be producers. Playing with the distinction between producer and consumer.

-The slogan was changed later.

-Now apple has iTunes and it sells music.

-Apple has changed positions in the debate over cultural production/copyright/intellectual property rights

            -apple from counter culture to large corporation

-changing identity as it becomes more popular

I hope this short example of Apple illustrates the 5 moments of the circuit of culture. If you wish to read Gay's work on the circuit of culture and Sony Walkman, you can locate it in Central Library. The title is Doing cultural studies : the story of the Sony Walkman (1997), ISBN 0761954015 (cased) \ 0761954023 (pbk). 

 

Cheers,

Kai Lin

 

Disclaimer: All of the above are notes that I have taken during a lecture for a sociology module, SC2214. All copyright belong to their respective owners.

Where are your texts now?

This article looks at a writer who had gotten away with plagiarism, until someone dug deep enough to uncover his latest 'crime': a spy novel cobbled together from various sources, ranging from Fleming, Ludlum to even a nonfiction book about the NSA.

Copying is nothing new. As discussed in our last tutorial, the idea of tropes (WARNING: DO NOT CLICK UNLESS YOU HAVE THREE HOURS TO SPARE.) and classics make our world a much easier place to make sense of. 'Songs' by Girl Talk, which are the creative rearrangement of sections other popular songs, take the mash-up genre to new heights. The poetic medium has examples like Eliot's The Wasteland which references other poems and texts, and newspaper blackouts, where paragraphs from articles, horoscopes and books are subject to some extreme editing.

What did Quentin Rowan do that we aren't already doing anyway? Creating a personal narrative from existing sources and material from mass media seems to be how we interact with our social world. We decide what links to post and like on our online social networking profiles, which and whose other posts to repost and which song lyrics to cryptically sum up our last 12 hours of living in existential angst... WITHOUT CITATION. What a convenient label and reference point for only those 'in the know'!

Varying in degrees of 'copying', but all raising the same question: with so much existing text, why bother making new ones?

There is an obsession, especially in the academic realm, with making your mark in the world with an original idea. The arts don't seem to care, especially if there is a disclaimer that the act of outright copying is a 'tribute' and 'homage', critical satire or just plain tongue in cheek.

Or maybe: we actually encourage copying. Why else self-identify as 'neo-Marxist' or 'Weberian dabbling in some structuralism'? See what I did there? The latter label has no meaning because it hasn't reached label status. These labels only make sense if they are copied and if the labelled is close enough to the 'original' to be recognised as such. Why are these sacred texts are cited again and again? A cynic would gripe something vaguely about money and power and influence. Would anyone care where an idea is from if it was good, worked perfectly well independent of interpretation, and brought no fame and/or money to the person(s) behind it? A believer would declare because it is True. An academic would say because the 'times cited' count is high, and by reliable and authoritative journals, so hey why not.

We can safely say that referencing texts lend credibility and add dimensions to otherwise simple ideas. (Would The Simpsons be funny without pop culture references?) This post is not about exploring the differences between simple allusion and quoting/lifting, but offers the possibility that nothing is really original anyway. Stinchcombe (1982) looks at how the classics are important and even instrumental to the discipline, that, in my own understanding, there are benefits in being 'unoriginal'.

Drawing on Stinchcombe's idea of "intellectual small coinage", we may postulate that 'cultural small coinage' is how we see the world today. As mass media provides the means for a wider circulation, breaks it down into varying denominations and sets an exchange rate of sorts for this currency, texts that become tropes become 'legal tender'; they are accepted and traded, valued both in and of themselves as well as what they may be used for.

eliel