The OLD Media Shield

The OLD Media Shield

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I am moving this blog

When I started this Blog I did not fully understand how Tumblr worked. For various reasons I am moving this blog. I intend to reblog all of my posts.

http://themediashield.tumblr.com/

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Hegemony, Facebook, and you!

In Marxist theory, there is this idea called Cultural Hegemony and what it is the idea that the people in charge (the bourgeoisie) control the average people via culture do to their ability to produce products such as entertainment, resources, and often transportation. We see this every day, even if we are not aware of it. Let’s take the Fox broadcasting company as an example, Fox is owned by the politically conservative Rupert Murdoch and because of Murdoch’s political views, his popular news network, Fox News, tends to report news with a conservative slant. This may seem benign, but this one wealthy mans view points are having an effect of the views of thousands of Americans. Everything from your drinking Pepsi to wearing Nike has a semiotic and cultural reason that wealthy puppet masters control.

With the addition of social media to the average lifestyle comes the phenomenon of average working class people propagating the influence of the wealthy “producers” all on their own. We want the whole world to think that we are cool, informed, and interesting because of the products we buy, shows we watch, and viewpoints we have and so we “like”, “share”, and “tweet” about such things to appear a certain way. Tonight I saw a Facebook post where a girl said that there would be “chaos and anarchy” if Lupita Nyong’o did not win the title of People Magazines most beautiful person of 2014. The idea that there would be such discontent about a magazine telling people who they think is the most attractive is a perfect example of the hegemony that passively controls our day to day lives. This magazine and the people who own it are telling us which all powerful celebrities deserve the most attention from us and we just consume the idea and then pass it along to our friends so they too can think just as the magazine wants them to. Is beauty not in the eye of the beholder and do we really need to conform to what a group of people, who make way more money than we will ever see, view such things?

(I would like to point out that I think that Lupita is extremely beautiful and this has nothing to do with her, but everything about the post I saw on Facebook)

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After making my last post I logged onto facebook only to find the same person spamming his thoughts as if even half of this friends list cared.

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Just about everyone has a Facebook profile these days and with it everyone is able to broadcast thoughts, feelings, ideas, and all sorts of things to everyone on their friends list via the “Facebook status” but often people get seduced by the power that the platform allows them to have.

 Because ones Facebook profile is all about the user what with their favorite movies, TV shows, Books, and even food on display in the form of “likes” it can be easy to start to think that because you have this little spec of the internet dedicated completely to you that you are somehow special or important. This sort of narcissistic thought process leads to one of the most annoying aspects of Facebook these days, the arbitrary use of the Facebook status.

 Let’s say that you are having a really bad day or you are excited because your favorite football team won a game, would you gather everyone on your friends list around you and announce those feelings to every single one of them? Certainly not, but that is effectively what happens when you broadcast such things on facebook. In reality, there are probably some people who really are interested in hearing about your depressing day, your thoughts on some movie, or how excited you are about the big game and before the days of Facebook only telling those people about such things was not a problem.

 The fallout from this is that after a decade of seeing people post about such annoying things on Facebook people are sick of it. People are seeing aspects of friends that they would never normally see if they were not Facebook “friends” and simply don’t like it. Relationships and opinions are changing due to the narcissistic effect of Facebook making people see “Friends” as Fans.

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I think in the 10 years that Facebook has been around that people have become more narcissistic. I think that the Facebook status is a large part of that because it gives you this platform where you can tell "friends" anything instantly. Facebook tricks you into thinking you are a celebrity that has something worth saying because your "devoted fans" (the people you call friends) are able to casually show your approval by hitting the "like button".

The reality is that no one really cares what you have to say or at least not all 800 of the people on your friends list. There may be a small group of people who care that you are at the gym but not very many.This may speak to the idea that nothing is valid in the information age unless it is posted for all to see and if that is the case then perhaps we are doomed to hear about every gym outing our "friends" have until the world ends.

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There is a Facebook group for students at my school called “Purchase Missed Connections”. Its intended purpose is for people who are too shy to say something to someone in real life to be able to write a post about it for the person to see online. Or at least that is what I am getting from the description that reads as follows:

“Saw some one eating at terra ve but too shy to ask them to the stood? Post about it here and maby you will meet up again Post here”

Now, for the most part the posts on this group have to do with complaints, outrage, and missing items. It is because these types of post are much more common than actually seeing someone use the group for its intended purpose that when someone actually uses the group to try to reach out to some person they desire, it stands out. It is because someone recently reached out to someone else via this internet group that I started to think about the intensions of such an act and what it says about our society in the internet age.

In reality, talking to someone in person should be easier than telling an unsuspecting person that you like them via the internet. It is much less awkward to start idle chit chat with someone in person while you are both at a place like the gym where you obviously have something in common then to call them out on Facebook. It is because of this that I posit that the reason why people decide to make their first impression online is because in a way, it puts the ball in the other person’s court in the way that the Facebook poster no longer has to initiate the interaction. It is sort of like casting a fishing line out and waiting for the fish to bite. It’s an understandable tactic because talking to someone new is hard but in the grand scheme of things it may not be easier.

Another aspect of taking to the internet, and more specifically Facebook,  to make first contact with someone new is that the version of you that is on the internet is not the real you. Where as one day you might have a pimple that you would not want the object of your desire to see, on the internet you can choose how you come across by picking only the most flattering pictures of yourself. Online you can make yourself your (or others) ideal type of person but this really is not you. The problem is that the digital version of a person can’t actually interact with people in the real world and at some point people are going to find out what you are really like and the results of that can run the gambit. Once someone finds out what you are really like they may like you even more but they can also be disappointed because they have this false identity that they expected you to be. With all these potential issues is the convenience of internet social interaction really a better option than doing the time tested method of just talking to someone?

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People always seem to amaze me by the sheer ignorance of the things they say. I can recall an event in high school  where a black student in my biology class walked into class and upon taking his seat said “Miss, you got to be nice to me today because Rosa Parks died” . Even at age 15, I took some offense in this comment. By saying that our white teacher had to be extra nice to him or any other black student more so then any other day of the week because an American civil rights icon died just showcased a lack of understanding of equality. I knew that what Rosa Parks did for the civil rights movement was not exclusive to a certain group of Americans but for the betterment of all American society. I can’t remember if my teacher ever took the time to actually respond to the comment of even paid attention to it but I knew that any honor that my classmate may have been trying to give to Rosa Parks upon her death failed and he did not even know it.

            I think it is fair to say that race relations in this country have vastly improved since the days of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks even though they are far from perfect. Just the fact that in most of the country a black person can do what they please without fear of being attacked or lynched on racial grounds should be enough to extol our former civil rights leaders on a yearly basis for helping to make life better in this country. Of course if you look hard enough you can still see that we have a lot of work to do. I could look into any class in my high school and tell you if it was a lower level, higher level, or honors class by the racial makeup of the students and that should be troubling enough to spur another movement to close the educational racial divide in the country. Another troubling occurrence is that every so often we are reminded that race still matters in this country via death, rape, and other horrible crimes like the shooting of Travon Martin or when Stephen Tyrone Jones was shot by a white supremacist while doing his job as a security guard at a holocaust museum. These events shake us and remind us that there is still an active element of racism in this country that should have been fixed years ago.

            Along with the actual horror stories that make us shudder to think of what horrible event might happen tomorrow, there are the events that make mockery of real racial injustice. These events hurt the cause because they are falsehoods or so trivial that it makes the noble goal of civil rights seem like a news media annoyance. An example would be how Tawana Brawley lied about being raped by a group of white men in the late 80s or the Henry Luis Gates incident”. It is almost as if we as Americans look for something to stand for or something to be enraged about.

            This kind of superfluous and not helpful attempt at trying to be political or important does nothing but hinder and hurt progress on every front.  Today a black student at my university made a comment on a University related Facebook page about how the header in a school e-mail about Martin Luther King Jr. day featured two white college students rather than any minorities. Now, in reality the header is probably just some generic image that the university uses that probably also doesn’t even feature any real students at the school.  The post the student made is as follows:

“To whom it concerns, How come this email is about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and the banner used has two Caucasian girls? Is it that hard for Purchase College to find two black girls boys or one boy or one girl for this email? I am offended. I came to this school in 2010 because of the way the school was represented diversity. The layout captured my attention along with the diverse students on the website. I saw two African American students. I remember their faces perfectly. One was a girl with braids and beads with a creme v-neck sweater, the other was a black male, maybe even a dancer, the way his arm folded around his head was so artistic and creative I admired and appreciated him as a representation of the artistry of the school. I was overwhelmed with joy and applied to SUNY Purchase and Hunter College. The layout of the website at that time was eccentric and colorful. The website consisted of Asian/Pacific Islander students as well. Now, the layout seems pretty bland. I am glad this is my last semester. I understand times changed, but can we put diversity back in the school's slogan? "Think Wide OPEN." Let's be open with how we represent the student body. Sincerely, An African American Anthropology/ MSA Senior- (Name removed). P.S If I am writing this to the wrong individual(s) please forward or send me the email address of the appropriate individual(s).”

This just seems like the pettiest reasons to want to come to a school or also why you would want to leave an educational institution. Beyond the point that an e-mail header or website shouldn’t represent the school as much as the actual students at the school with their own diverse identities and their own ideas I think that the student who posted this is missing the point that equality doesn’t not equate to one race. Diversity is not owned by people of  any skin color and I think by complaining that two people on an e-mail header of all things is somehow racist is just as racist as complaining that two people on a e-mail header are black. I can already see people using the Facebook “like” button to show that they favor this student’s post in some regard despite an earlier post by the same girl where she insulted the former Director of Resident’s Life at the school by calling him a “damn former jock. A prejudice comment one day and cries of racism the next. People always amaze me.

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Just to be clear, I do not watch the VMAs (Video Music Awards) and that is mostly due to two things:

1.      I simply do not watch music television of any kind because the music that I listen to rarely produces music videos and when they do they are most certainly not shown of MTV, MuchMusic, or FUSE.

2.      I have very little interest in award shows because I have my own opinion on what music, movie, or TV show deserves accolades and I find that my views and those of whoever decides who wins these award shows hardly match up.

That all being said, it has been nearly impossible to avoid hearing about the VMAs and Miley Cyrus doing something called Twerking all over the son of the actor who was the Dad on Growing Pains. I am going to ignore the semiotics and insanity of a former child star shoving her hardly dressed butt on the crotch of someone much older than her because I feel like we all know that rather than a cry for help, it is in reality just her attempting to distance herself from her bubblegum image of her pre teen years in the most ostentatious and attention whoring way possible. What I would like to focus on are the cries of racism and that this former Disney star is stealing a coveted aspect of African American culture by “Twerking” all over the place.

It is fitting that I write this on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream speech” because I sometimes feel that people take the concept of hate and racism and just use it as a way to take a pseudo stand on something. Do I think that Miley Cyrus, a white pop singer, took the “Twerk”, an African American dance and used it for her own ends? I do! BUT this is really nothing new at all, America’s media producers are always looking for what is hip and cool to repackage and sell back to society, everything from Punk Music, to hipster glasses. Even beat boxing had underground origins and were discovered as “cool” by someone and then made sellable and mainstream. In a capitalist society there is always a search for the next hot selling product but a lot of that time the product they are looking for is not a tangible one but more of a conceptual one. Think of young African Americans beat boxing during the 1980s and how unique and cool it must have seemed then, it was cool because it was not something you could turn on the TV and see, it was cool because it was unique to one facet of American culture but now that thing that was cool and unique has been taken by the producers of main stream media and repackaged for White, middle class, preschoolers on shows like Yo Gabba Gabba where Biz Markie beat boxes every day. Because African American culture has always thrived in densely populated and urban areas, new ideas on culture and cool are made every day and that is a goldmine for the vultures who desperately want to find the next “in” thing to sell to teenagers. This phenomenon can be seen all over American Pop culture, even Elvis, the “King” himself made it clear multiple times that his style of music and dress was influenced by blues musicians. Elvis is the perfect example of what was deemed as obscene lyrical styling’s and dance moves that originated in African American culture and repacked into a young white singer who would be more marketable then the black creators.

The bottom line is that what’s “cool” has always been stolen by some culture and made tame for the masses. Punk and rap music started off as something that would scare you’re mother to death but now we have it in our insurance and children’s clothing commercials. To be clear, credit should of course be given to the people, who create a type or music, dance, or whatever but to act like Miley Cyrus is “Twerking” all over African American culture and it is some heinous and offensive crime is silly. Don’t be offended by something and ignore that it has been done all our lives. If artists like “Bounce Queen Big Freeda” wants recognition for something that they feel that they created then expose the whole mining operation of your culture and not just one tiny drill.