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Friday, June 5, 2009
Table of Contents
Reflection letter
As we near the end of the quarter we are asked to reflect upon what changes and growth we have experienced so far this year. I guess that each student will have gotten something different out of the class. I had hoped for, or at least anticipated, an eye opening experience that challenged my assumptions. But for the most part I missed that. I have to say that I am a little disappointed coming to the end of class. Perhaps it was due to the nature of the online community the course is taught in. For whatever reason I feel that I haven't experienced any changes or growth... nothing that I have noticed anyway.
Maybe a little explanation about myself will explain why I haven’t felt any real growth in this course. I grew up in the area but moved away shortly after high school. I spent a year on the east coast, which was where I picked up some sort of weird traveling bug. After that I moved to Alaska where I lived in a Native American fishing village for several years. I am not a Native American and I found that this was an eye opening experience in diversity for me. I became familiar with their customs and practices. From there I moved to Florida, then to Colombia (the country not the district of which is spelt Columbia). Again I found myself the minority and I learned a lot about the differences in our culture (and the similarities).
After that I became a bit more nomadic and bounced around a lot from place to place. These places included but are not limited to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Great Brittan. That took up another year or two of my life. I tell you this because I think it shows that maybe, I have experienced diversity to the point of nausea. I found that most of the assumptions about diversity that the reading tried to break down were not assumptions that I shared.
I would like to say that I have grown as a person because of this course, if anything it would make this assignment easier. I feel that any statements to that effect would be disingenuous.
I think that the biggest challenge that I had in the course was trying to manage my time appropriately. I know that my writing suffered as a result of my inability to devote time to the assignments. I think that I would have done better at the course, if I did not have so many demands on my schedule this quarter. But, emergencies happen and work is work. I think that I would have gotten more out of the class if I had more time to devote to the assignments.
There were parts of the course that I enjoyed make no mistake. Firoozeh Dumas’ essay “The “F Word” was a nice start to the quarter, and as I had already read her book “Funny in Farsi” I felt that it was nice to return to a selected reading from that work. Also to look at it with a critical eye is always a change.
I also enjoyed watching the movie “Fight Club”; again I had read the book and found that enlightening. In a rare and unexpected surprise I found the movie to be as entertaining as the novel. There were other readings that I enjoyed as well, but in all I feel like I missed some revelation that I was supposed to find. Maybe it will come to me at a later time when I look back at this course.
The three different categories of focus for our course were Identity, Community and Tradition. From within those categories we are supposed to focus on four different writings that highlight our learning.
I have chosen the following works:
Critical Thinking:
Movie Review: Fight Club
Revision:
Blogging and the American Newspaper
Audience and Voice:
The “Museum of Me”
Writer’s Choice:
The “F Word”
Intro to Critical Thinking Piece
For this assignment I chose my review of the move “Fight Club”. I felt that this piece shows my ability to analyze an issue because I able to draw connections between the protagonist and the antagonist of the film to help support my response to the prompt.
The purpose of the assignment was:
Considering your own perceptions of non-conformity, how does the film and the group discussion that ensued challenge these perceptions?
I felt that I was able to succeed in this assignment because of my analysis of the film.
Critical Thinking Piece
Fight Club Movie Review
In the film Fight Club two main contrasting characters are shown juxtaposed to each other. The rebellious Tyler Durden is in contrast to the button down conformist (and unnamed) Narrator of the story. Durden is able to pull the Narrator into his lifestyle, and I as the viewer also found myself being pulled in. The film challenged my perception of societies willingness to follow a non-conformist.
In the film Durden is shown as free and uncaring of societies rules. In various scenes he is shown as a sort of urban terrorist, urinating (and worse) into peoples food before he serves them and splicing pornographic material into children's films. Durden is the ultimate anti-society rebel. He seems to be fed up with the blatant consumerism of that time period. As he tells the Narrator "the things you own, end up owning you". At this point in the film I began to identify with many of the things Durden was telling the narrator. I agreed that many of us have become to dependent on material nonessentials.
The Narrator, having just lost all of his worldly possessions in an explosion, begins to identify with Durden as well. The Narrator works in a cubicle in an office and never steps outside of the rules of society. Durden seems to be uncaring, even in the way he speaks to people or his small routine activities. For example when he calls the Narrator and he is eating while talking on the phone, the Narrator smiles as it is not something that one would consider polite.
As the film progresses more and more people come to follow Durden. After the success of their underground fight clubs Durden starts a group known as Project Mayhem. More and more young men begin to identify with his mentality and he is seen brain washing them as they work in his home. He shouts at them through a megaphone (or a recording playing over a speaker, it isn't clear which) as they labor in his house. These new recruits quickly adopt Durden's belief system.
As the film progress the director uses several techniques to help us identify with Durden. Durden is shown as wearing nice, if not a little garish, clothes. He is seemingly happy, where as the Narrator is almost always unhappy. Durden also seems to get progressively fitter, and cleaner through out the movie, where as the Narrator seems to get skinnier and worse looking. Even the fact that the Narrator remains unnamed throughout the story reflects the idea. The Narrator is a "Joe Every-man" just another face in the crowd. Where as Durden has an identity, he has a name and a personality.
As Durden tells the Narrator at the end of the film; "I am free in all the ways you are not". Durden has the ability to do whatever he wants, be it good or bad. He is not shackled with societies preconceptions and rules. While Durden took the concept to far and created a lawless, anarchist reality for himself I still identified with him. Durden was able to excel at what he wanted by stepping outside the boundaries of society and I wondered what else could be achieved by doing so.
Intro to Revision Piece
Selecting this piece proved to be problematic for me. Initially I selected a different paper as I had just chosen the writing that I received the lowest marks on. When I began looking deeper into the assignment I realized that it asked for the work that I felt could most benefit from a re-write. As I thought about the assignment I began to focus in a different direction. I selected my 3rd paper. This paper was an analysis of bloggings affect on traditional newspapers.
This was the paper that I felt could most benefit from a rewrite as it had the most to gain.
The assignment was:
Develop a 3-4 page paper, in accurate MLA format for presenting academic papers, that analyzes how a specific pop culture trend challenges cultural traditions and therefore has had an impact on society as a whole. In other words, explore the effects of the changes in some of the established traditions held by that culture. You must include at least one clearly related quote from any of the readings, discussion boards, or blogs of the quarter.
In the original draft many of my paragraphs failed to support or move my thesis statement forward. This proved to be a problem that I struggled with on all the major paper assignments.
In my rewrite I tried to focus the direction of the paper. Hopefully the new edits will keep it on track. To meet the requirements of the assignment I have dropped some of the paper to conform to the length standard (such as the heading and citations).
Original Piece for the revision
Blogging and the American Newspaper
One of the newest pop culture trends is an explosion of Internet web logs or “blogs”. Through blogs anyone can find a venue for their thoughts and ideas. Blogging websites have created a place for people to speak about what’s going on in their day-to-day lives. Many blogs report on current events, politics, sports and a variety of other topics. Author and blogger Dan Gillmor noted, “Blogging is sometimes viewed as a new, grassroots form of journalism and a way to shape democracy outside the mass media and conventional party politics” (qtd. in Nardi et al 629). Bloggers have become the reporters for our pop culture generation. This newfound voice of America has quickly eroded the traditional news media. Newspapers are going bankrupt and shutting their doors and other news media is being forced to change the methods in which they broadcast. Blogging has attacked the traditional ways that Americans get their news and information.
In the past Americans have relied on television and papers for their news and information. There was a time, not so long ago, that the typical image of an American on a Sunday morning conjured up a picture of a family sitting around the breakfast table with Dad reading the Sunday paper. Now that traditional image probably involves at least one computer, if not several. The paper is becoming increasingly unnecessary in the ideal since every aspect of that paper can be found, free of charge, online.
Everything from the front-page news of the day, to the comic section is at our fingertips in blog form. From video blogs on current events and politics to online web-comics the average American has found less and less reason to maintain their newspaper subscriptions.
As such, the newspaper industry has been the hardest struck by the blogging boom. In recent years revenues from subscriptions and advertising has plummeted. In an April 2009 article in the New York Times Richard Perez-Pena reported that advertising revenue for newspapers is down 30 percent from previous years. In the article; Perez states “Newspapers count on advertising for the bulk of their revenue, and for a decade they have been losing ads to the Internet, where advertising is much cheaper and there is far more competition for it” (B3). Many paper companies have now declared bankruptcy, or worse. For example, The Seattle Post Intelligencer recently closed after 140 years of publication.
The shift to online blogs has changed other news media outlets as well. Most traditional television news programs have some sort of online component now. However, even that hasn’t proven to be the savior of their profit margin. In an effort to recoup some losses many traditional media sites require users to pay a fee for an online subscription. But, blogs are free. Users put up content that is available for anyone to look at. Most websites that host blogs typically recoup their costs from pop-up advertising, or inset ads.
But, what has the loss of our newspaper empires cost us? It’s easy for youth culture to look at the traditional journalism industries as groups of tired and old men on their way to the grave. Wearing the green visors and huddled around archaic and noisy printing presses in smoky rooms. What is often forgotten is that these are the same people who uncovered the Watergate Scandal.
In the new technologically friendly world, where every piece of information is only as far away as your I-phone, what is the harm in relying on blogs for our news? Well, bloggers aren’t held to the same standards as journalists. Journalists have a supervisor that they must answer to. As an employee of a news agency, a journalist has a certain responsibility to check facts and ensure an accurate account of events. In the past journalistic integrity has been challenged by the public as well (ironically, even by bloggers). Bloggers are unlikely to break open political corruption. Their narration of events is almost always going to be skewed by personal views. It doesn’t seem likely that our next presidential candidate will sit down for an interview with your average blogger.
To say that blogs shouldn’t try to report on the news isn’t accurate either. It’s important for people to voice their opinions. After all, one of the founding principals of America is the right to public forum. Blogs could surely be described as the Internets answer to the town hall meetings of the past. People can share their ideas and ideals on blogs. Visitors to blog sites can post responses to the stories they read. This helps to encourage discussion and open peoples minds to new ideas. They allow for greater cultural diversity as people from all over the world can connect and learn about each other.
The outlook for America’s newspaper seems bleak. It’s unlikely that they will have the resources to recover from the financial damage that has already been done to them. When this happens America will loose a great part of its history that blogs will not be able to replace. Blogs can be entertaining and educational, but we must look at them with a skeptical eye so as not to be led astray by someone’s personal beliefs.
Revision
Blogging and the American Newspaper
One of the newest pop culture trends is an explosion of Internet web logs or “blogs”. Through blogs anyone can find a venue for their thoughts and ideas. Blogging websites have created a place for people to speak about what’s going on in their day-to-day lives. Many blogs report on current events, politics, sports and a variety of other topics. Author and blogger Dan Gillmor noted, “Blogging is sometimes viewed as a new, grassroots form of journalism and a way to shape democracy outside the mass media and conventional party politics” (qtd. in Nardi et al 629). Bloggers have become the reporters for our pop culture generation. This newfound voice of America has quickly eroded the traditional news media. Newspapers are going bankrupt and shutting their doors and other news media are being forced to change the methods in which they broadcast. Blogging has attacked the traditional ways that Americans get their news and information.
In the past Americans have relied on television and papers for their news and information. There was a time, not so long ago, that the typical image of an American on a Sunday morning conjured up a picture of a family sitting around the breakfast table with dad reading the Sunday paper. Now that traditional image is being fundamentally changed by blogs. The paper is becoming increasingly unnecessary in the ideal since every aspect of that paper can be found, free of charge, online in blogs.
As such, the newspaper industry has been the hardest struck by the blogging boom. In recent years revenues from subscriptions and advertising has plummeted. In an April 2009 article in the New York Times, Richard Perez-Pena reported that advertising revenue for newspapers is down 30 percent from previous years. In the article; Perez states “Newspapers count on advertising for the bulk of their revenue, and for a decade they have been losing ads to the Internet, where advertising is much cheaper and there is far more competition for it” (Perez B3). Many paper companies have now declared bankruptcy, or worse. For example, The Seattle Post Intelligencer recently closed after 140 years of publication. One of the main reasons for the downturn of the American newspaper has been the up rising of blogs. Blogs appeal to the hip and now pop culture of America and are changing how people get their news.
The shift to online blogs has changed other news media outlets as well. Most traditional television news programs have some sort of online component now. However, even that hasn’t proven to be the savior of their profit margin. In an effort to recoup some losses many traditional media sites require users to pay a fee for an online subscription. But, blogs are free. Users put up content that is available for anyone to look at. Most websites that host blogs typically recoup their costs from pop-up advertising, or inset ads.
It’s easy for youth culture to look at the traditional journalism industries as groups of tired and old men on their way to the grave. Wearing the green visors and huddled around archaic and noisy printing presses in smoky rooms. What is often forgotten is that these are the same people who uncovered the Watergate Scandal. Bloggers are not conducting the same kind of investigative journalism that brought these stories to national attention. Bloggers tend to write reactively, and are not proactively trying to uncover new stories.
Another issue of concern is that bloggers aren’t held to the same standards as journalists. Journalists have a supervisor that they must answer to. As an employee of a news agency, a journalist has a certain responsibility to check facts and ensure an accurate account of events. In the past journalistic integrity has been challenged by the public as well (ironically, even by bloggers). Their narration of events is almost always going to be skewed by personal views.
To say that blogs shouldn’t try to report on the news isn’t accurate either. It’s important for people to voice their opinions. After all, one of the founding principals of America is the right to public forum. Blogs could surely be described as the Internet answer to the town hall meetings of the past. People can share their ideas and ideals on blogs. Visitors to blog sites can post responses to the stories they read. This helps to encourage discussion and open people to new ideas. They allow for greater cultural diversity as people from all over the world can connect and learn about each other.Everything from the front-page news of the day, to the comic section is at our fingertips in blog form. From video blogs on current events and politics to online web-comics the average American has found less and less reason to maintain their newspaper subscriptions. Blogs have become a part of Americas pop-culture and they are changing the way that Americans learn about the world.
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