Module 10 Example: Postmodernism...It's Complicated!

PROMPT

This week's video tackled the subject of postmodernism and it did so on the same week in which we tackled radio.  One could argue that a device like the radio could be seen as being a bit postmodern in that, for the first time in history, people could have these ominous and strange noises enter into their houses from far away and thus, the world is made smaller and stranger--information exchange took on new and potentially more ambiguous forms (what are the "airwaves" over which news traveled?).  

Anyways, postmodernism is a tricky subject and much has been written about it.  The video for this week addresses some of its attributes but I'd like students to get some more substantive understanding of postmodernism.  So to that end, for this week's prompt, students will select 1 video from this playlist to watch and learn about postmodernism.  Your blog post should consist of:

1. Linking/embedding the video that you watched into the blog post.
2. Providing a substantial explanation of what the video is about (1 paragraph).
3. A discussion of what you learned about postmodernism and popular culture (1 paragraph).
4.  Identifying some idea within the video that you then can identify or apply within popular culture  (1 paragraph).

(Keep in mind, with #4--if the video is "Postmodernism and Pulp Fiction" or the like, you need to identify something different than Pulp Fiction.)

If you have trouble understanding the specific video that you choose, I recommend first re-watching it.  If that doesn't help, then try another video. However, avoid posting to the blog a post that says you didn't understand the video.  This is why I included many different videos on the playlist.

 
Relevant Labels/Tags:  postmodernism, [specific popular culture you are identifying], [if your video addresses a specific form or aspect of postmodernism]

EXAMPLE

This video focuses mostly on the where postmodernism comes from and its response to modernism.  Postmodernism comes from a place of criticizing the modern world and modernism and its inability to actually solve the problems of the world and rather only amplifies them (more death, war, disease, etc).  Postmodernists move away from the focus on conquering a rational world and admit to a highly irrational world and draw attention to the ways in which traditional knowledge and structures have only reinforced the elites, rather than empowered everyone.  Thus, with any concept of "progress", postmodernists identify the ways in which such progress is still perpetuating inequalities and marginalizing people. 

In applying it to popular culture, I think of the many commercials out there that seemingly have no real connection to their product.  For instance, in the video below, we have Paris Hilton somehow washing and making love to an expensive car all while eating a Carls Jr burger.  The connections are incoherent as one generally doesn't associate food with lovemaking, car washing, or driving, but somehow the creators of this advertisement that this message would be worth the $100,000s it cost to make. It suggests that we are not by any means rational people and that we find nothing wrong with the irrational suggestion here and throughout the advertising world that encourages us to get excited about things that have little connection.

GO Warriors*... no really... GO!

People often ask me why it is I am studying what it is I am studying. Why am I working on a thesis that explores the intersection of Education Policy, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit (FNMI)--or Native American--culture, and Pop Culture? What is the point? And each time someone asks me this, my head explodes just a little bit. These questions are Hegemony at work!

One of the common analogies I bring to the table when I am asked, is the following:

"How would you feel if someone were to wear Blackface to a costume party?" and I get the expected answers, something along the line "who would do that?", "That's fucked up!", "Only a racist would do that!" or something along those general lines.

And so I ask them, "Well, why does that offend you?" To which I get some variation of: "That is obvious, you don't do that, because that is racist behaviour, just like you don't use 'The N Word'".

So, then I ask, "Well what if a kid wears blackface out on Hallowe'en? Is a five year old racist?" Then I get lots of eye-rolls.  I am often scoffed at for proposing such a ridiculous idea because "what parent would let a child dress up that way? Who would encourage that?"

And this is the point I have led them to and I go one step further: "Well is it ok for a child to dress up as an Indian Princess/Indian Warrior?" and this usually gets the answer "Well, why not?"

So, it's ok for someone to dress up in Redface but not Blackface; what is the difference?**

This usually gets the answer, "It is just make believe", " Everyone does it" or my personal favourite, "It's celebrating Native culture". SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!

We live in a society that was built by the process of colonization--both in Canada and the USA--on the premise of eradicating a culture for the purpose of acquiring the land and its resources. Stereotypes were deliberately perpetuated to ensure that if not a hatred, an ambivalence towards a population was firmly entrenched into mainstream culture.

Consider we have a white dominated society legitimizing mascots, and products that persistently marginalize a population of people that continue to reside in North America. Author Thomas King discusses the idea of Live Indians and Dead Indians. Dead Indians "are the stereotypes and cliches that North America has conjured up out of experience and out of the collective imaginings and fears" (King, 2012, p. 54).

King goes on to describe war bonnets and fringed deerskin as examples for the reader. These examples act as signifiers. These signifiers have in essence created a simulacrum; a false reality that we assume is reality, that we can no longer recognize as false.*** Dead Indians are found at rodeos, PowWows, movies, and television. King refers to Live Indians as those who did not die out. "Live Indians [are] neither needed or wanted. They [are] irrelevant, and as the nineteenth century rolled into the twentieth century, Live Indians were forgotten, safely stored away on reservations and reserves... out of sight, out of mind" (King, 2012, p. 61). And society is completely okay with that.


We know that when settlers first arrived, encounters were positive and harmonious, and yet at some point, as the governments' demands for more land continued, relations turned ugly as the ideals of the government perpetuated the savage. Those ideas persist today.

This past week we saw the new budget in Canada revealed and after the breakdown, and despite promises of the Trudeau government to remove inequities, Live Indigenous students in Canada are still receiving less per student than their non-Indigenous Canadian counterparts. So I have to ask: how could any child feel good about about themselves when they are still worth less because of their ethnicity? That mainstream continues to accept this reality, downplay it, and say "it's ok, at least it is better than it was" is Hegemony at work in today's society.

* Get rid of the concept of the Native American "Warrior" in the war bonnet. This is such a stereotypical image! The "warrior" in traditional Mohawk culture refers to the responsibilities of the men to follow the dictates of the War Chief and protect their community from threats. The War Chief followed the dictates of the Clan Mothers (Cross & Sévigny, 1994). (Yes, the women made the decision as to whether or not the community would go to war, not the War Chief, and not the warriors).

** Interesting to note that as I typed this in the Blog Dashboard, Blackface is a recognized term, however Redface is marked as a typo.

***check out the movie The Matrix; Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is featured prominently in the opening scenes. Baudrillard's post modern theories figure prominently in the movie.

Works Cited:

Cross, R. and Sévigny, H. (1994). Lasagna: The man behind the mask. Vancouver, British Columbia. Talonbooks

King, Thomas (2012), The Inconvenient Indian. Canada. Anchor Canada.

#LoveWins

For this weeks blog I am going to discuss the #LoveWins debate that was so highly publicized and controversial during the summer of 2015 and its involvement with cultural hegemony. I’m sure everyone has heard about this controversial debate, but if you haven’t the #LoveWins campaign came about during and after the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling involving same-sex marriages to grow awareness of the newly accepted feat homosexuals gained. During June 2015, The Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages were to be recognized nationwide in a 5-4 decision. The #LoveWins campaign came into conflict with the mainstream culture because many people oppose same-sex marriages and did not support the idea at all. Homosexuals and also family members, friends, acquaintances took a stand and created a media frenzy showing the support Homosexuals deserve and get. I believe the #LoveWins campaign has created significant change because of the attention we have seen it has brought nationwide. Around that time you could find peoples profile pictures on the popular social media site Facebook changed to a rainbow filter. If you happened to have a twitter account during summer 2015, every time you would refresh your twitter page you would see the hashtag #LoveWins. #LoveWins became the most viral Hashtag of the same-sex Marriage ruling. The Hashtag reached 6.2 million tweets within six hours after the decision.  This is cultural hegemony at work.  The conflicted group, homosexuals, gains awareness through social media outlets with #LoveWins to increase resistance of same-sex marriage, although some people will still be against it. 

 http://www.ibtimes.com/how-lovewins-twitter-became-most-viral-hashtag-same-sex-marriage-ruling-1986279

Module 9 Example: #OscarsSoWhite

PROMPT

This week's video tackled the concept of hegemony and it's totally ok if you're still having a bit of trouble with it.  Here is another video that summarizes the idea really well with a visual metaphor: Cultural Hegemony (2:24 minutes) along with this one: Hegemony: WTF? An Introduction to Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony (6:26 minutes).

With this in mind and the examples that I identified in this week's video on hegemony, your goal is to identify a hegemonic struggle, past or present between the mainstream culture (e.g. the white and pure milk within the video above) and a subculture or counterculture that has found some way to infiltrate but not necessarily changed. For this, it is probably useful to link to an article or blog post (note: this should be news-focused, not information focused), that discusses the issue.  I don't recommend searching merely for your topic AND hegemony--trust me, that won't really work. Instead, look for articles that talk about how a marginal group is trying to impact the dominant culture.  

Within your post, you should include the following:

1. Identify the subculture or counter-culture that you're going to discuss. (1 paragraph)
2. Identify how and why it comes into conflict with the mainstream culture. (1 paragraph)
3. How this conflict has created some but not necessarily significant change and how we can understand the hegemonic forces at play within this scenario.  (1 paragraph)

Be sure to be specific with your example and to use the language and ideas from the video.

Relevant Labels/Tags:  Hegemony, dominant group, subordinate group, [specific arena/topic that you are exploring]

EXAMPLE

I'm going to talk about the #OscarsSoWhite debate that heated up in the announcements of the Oscar nominations for 2016 within this idea of cultural hegemony.  For those unfamiliar with what it was about, here is a basic primer.  Now, since their inception, the Oscars have been almost overwhelmingly white.  On this site, you can see the breakdown of nominations and actual wins, which shows winning is a pretty rare concurrence. Like many areas of popular culture, a white dominant culture has largely controlled the decisions (what movies get made), and prestige (who gets recognition).  This year, after the second year in a row of no African American nominations in the major acting areas, despite there being strong contestants, struck a nerve among the African-American community and other allies.  

The tension gained enough attention to warrant news reports in major publications and news stations of people boycotting the Oscars.  It became clear that the interest in and purity of the Oscars as the leader in the film cultural tastes was being challenged.  So they did react in two particular ways.  The first is that they made commitments to change their selection process, making there was much better representation of diverse identities among the Academy voters (currently, it is 94% white & 77% male).  The second is that they allowed Chris Rock to perform some rather controversial remarks as part of his role as host to the Academy Awards.

Now, many would look at both of these and believe that this was legitimate progress and celebrate it.  After all, the judges are more likely to be more diverse in the future and Chris Rock did at times throw some hard punches at the Academy Awards with regards to the history of racism and even false-categories of films.  Both seem to challenge the status quo, but do they?  In the case of making the pool more diverse, this is often the reaction that dominant institutions take when charged with not being inclusive of minorities.  And while this inclusion is good, it's a hegemonic practice to lessen the threat but not to do anything about it.  

Supreme Course Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said the following about women on the Supreme Court:  “So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. And when I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that."  This is an example of actual change.  By including a few women instead of radically changing the institution, the institution knows that the dominant values will still stay in place and to a certain degree, the injustice will continue, but there is less concern about it since there are representatives involved.  So we have superficial but not necessarily substantive change.  It's an interesting question for the Academy Awards--if they entirely reversed the racial and gender make up (6% white, 23% male) of the voters, would there be significantly different films being selected?  And if so, what does that say about those who are currently voting and why they are voting?

Even with Chris Rock's appearance, he may be critical of the concept, but by still performing and still making people laugh, he alleviates the issue rather than raises it.  He makes people feel slightly uncomfortable with his remarks, but in the next moment is onto the next joke.  Again, he superficially challenges them, but things stay largely the same.  

This is cultural hegemony at work.  The conflicted group (in this case, African Americans and allies), raise up resistance but by this time next year, given the superficial inclusive changes, they are likely to not be as resistant.

Gears of War's Logo

Image Source

Gears of War released in 2006 for Microsoft's Xbox 360. The soldiers in the game are referred to as "Gears", and they work for the Coalition of Ordered Governments, or C.O.G (Get it? Gears, COG? Heh.). This small amount of information is actually all we really need to make sense of their logo, a blood red skull inside of a gear.

The logo in question
Image Source

First thing's first, here's the breakdown of the logo.

Sign: Gears of War Logo

Signifier: Blood-red colored gear and skull
Signified: Gears of War series
Myth: War and death

We obviously know the sign is for the series Gears of War because it is paired with the title in the image above and on the cover art for the series. It's seen on all four of the games (Gears of War, 2, 3, and Judgment) covers, and will also be included in the upcoming Gears of War 4.

Breaking the logo down now, we can look at the signifiers. What makes this logo relevant to the game series? We know from the title and the basic premise of the game that the soldiers are the gears that make the C.O.G. operate, hence their name, and why it's present in the logo. Then we look at the word "War". War implies death, and blood. Since blood is red, we can pretty easily figure out why they colored the logo red; they want to imply that the game is bloody, and there will be violence and death. Inside of the gear, we see a skull, which we know as the symbol for death, because when a person dies and their body breaks down, left behind at the top of their skeleton is the skull (the symbolic properties of the skull could be a blog post all on its own).

By applying these three elements together in the logo, we know what the game is about before we even play it. There will be blood, and there will be death. Since this is the key element of the gameplay in the series, the logo is now synonymous with the series itself, and becomes the game's signifier.

The Mighty* Red Mittens!

This week we have watched, from both sides of the Canadian-U.S. border, the state visit of Canada's newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the White House. President Barack Obama has honoured the Canadian leader and his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau with a state dinner, something which has not been done for a Canadian Prime Minister in 20 years. Trudeau it seems has ushered in a fresh sense of Canadian pride which has crossed the 49th parallel in the form of curiosity and wonder (and maybe just a little bit of envy?!). However, it is my belief that this new found "Canadian Pride" began in the early spring months of 2010.

Canadians have never been thought of as boastful, loud, or spirited. I'm sorry, but we tend to be the quiet neighbours to the north, something of a curiosity, at times referred to as "the socialists", and apparently we all are born with hockey sticks in our hands. We eat poutine, drink maple syrup, and have pet polar bears running on tread mills to power our igloos (and yes I jumped from sarcasm to hyperbole in one small sentence; we actually find the stereotypes quite amusing). We are renowned for our lumberjacks (cue Monty Python pls), Mounties in red serge, "monopoly money" for our currency, and my personal favourite "free" universal health care. We are considered a peaceful nation and we share the longest undefended border in the world with the U.S.A. However, Canadians have also had an identity crisis. Our military is muuuucccchhh smaller than that of the US, we are highly dependent on your entertainment media, and I would hazard to guess most of us--if not all of us--know at the very least most of the words to your national anthem as we hear it so frequently when we watch sporting events taking place in the U.S. At times we get caught up in the American pageantry in lieu of our own.

But this all shifted during the Canadian Winter Olympic Games held in Vancouver in 2010. Canada embraced these games and Canadian Pride surged. The Oxford Online Dictionary (serious Canadians often prefer Oxford over Webster's) defines pride as: "A feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired." I would argue that pride is also associated with identity, self-esteem, and loyalty. Due to the media consortium in place for these games and the significant advancements in the world of telecommunications, Canadians at large connected with our athletes in ways we have never been able to in the past, and celebrated the personal successes of our athletes. We became stake holders in our national team that year. 

Now when a country applies to host an Olympic games, it is a strategic goal of the games to instill an increase in the National Pride, particularly if the games are successful. Additionally, pride by its nature is a self promoting feeling; the better one feels about your allegiance, the more pride you will feel, and so on. That the Olympics are a contest generates additional excitement, also a positive emotion. Our national team had a very high medal count during that Winter games, and thus  many discourses deemed the games a success, at least for Canada (others may argue that the games were not a success as tax payers are still paying for many of the venues, but that is a different argument altogether). However, I would argue that pride crossed from the realm of sporting identity to that of a national identity that included success. For once Canadians celebrated themselves! In the lead up to the games, the torch relay crossed Canada and managed to reach 95% of the Canadian population.** Media itself had achieved technological advancements that permitted multiple online streams of events during the games. This resulted in broader access to live events that would otherwise be covered in sound bites during news updates. Social media was also utilised by the Vancouver Olympic Committee by means of Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, all of which acted to increase the audience engagement and connection to the games. In a country who prides itself as a cultural mosaic rather than a melting pot, this Olympics made Canadians feel they were connected with Canada and Canadians in a common goal.

During the 2010 Olympics a very simple, understated, and very recognizable sign emerged that represented this new found Canadian Pride; the Olympic Mittens.

These Hudson Bay Company Vancouver 2010 mittens signified support for the Canadian Olympic athletes, and became so popular, even Oprah Winfrey was swept up in the frenzy. The mitten has now become an annual tradition of sorts across Canada, no longer representing the 2010 Winter Olympics, but rather Canadians/Canada.

2011 model

2013 version

2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games

This venture (showing 2015 design) has become an annual fundraiser for Canadian athletes since it's inception in 2009 and as of the fall of 2014 more than $26 million dollars had been raised (not bad for a country whose population is just over 35 million).

The intent of the mitten was to both show support for the Canadian athletes competing in the Olympic Games and to raise money for Canadian Athletes, however the mittens have taken on a new mythos that imply not just national sporting team support but Canadian Pride. Every fall The Bay and its subsidiary companies sell these mittens. They have become a winter fashion statement. These modest mittens are worn proudly to winter events, not just sporting events, to demonstrate pride  for our country. They lack the physical presence of jerseys, but their diminutive size is made up for with their bold designs. They have become a symbol that demonstrates inclusiveness and participation in Canada's national identity.

my own pair of 2010 mittens still with their tag! ( I have another pair that I use)

For a country, so accustomed to living in the shadow of their American neighbour, these little mittens have taken on a higher meaning; not only do they keep our hands warm throughout our endless and bitterly cold winters, they signify a pride for our country and all that we represent on the world stage.

* 10 points to those who recognize all of my sarcasm embedded in this blog post!

**The Torch Relay selected a route that would see the torch come to within 1 hour travel time to 95% of the country's population. This does not mean 95% of Canadians participated, but they had the option to do so and this translated to media coverage in much smaller, unnoticed communities across Canada. The little guys had their 15 minutes of fame and felt more connected to the upcoming games.

PEACE

This week I am going to discuss the Peace Sign. The Original peace sign pictured on the left consists of a circle, a vertical line, and two downward sloping lines. This peace sign was something seen on clothing, necklaces, notebooks, and nail art in my elementary/ middle school years. Now more often we use the two fingers (index and middle) pictured on the right as the "Peace Sign." The finger peace sign became more prevalent when it was seen in the popularly known iPhone keyboard option called the Emoji. We now use the term peace as a form of a greeting. When leaving from your friends, or acquaintances often times people will hold up the peace sign with their fingers as a form of goodbye. Not only has it been seen as a greeting sign, but it is also seen in pictures for some odd reason as a pose. The cool thing to do was hold up a peace sign during a photo with a group of your friends. Many known people have been seen using this symbol like Richard Nixon, Winston Churchill, and Yasser Arafat. The peace sign was founded by a man named Gerald Herbert Holtom. Gerald Herbert Holtom worked with the Direct Action Committee (DAC) against nuclear war in 1958. The BBC quotes Gerald on what the peace sign symbolizes,  "I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad.” The sign became the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. An interesting meaning of the symbol is its ties with Satanism. A bigger idea that the sign introduce is some people believe the sign began as a symbol of satanic benediction during rituals.  The V peace sign with your index and middle finger symbolizes the meaning for the Hebrew letter for V, which is ‘Nail.’ Nail is one of the secret titles of Satan within the brotherhood of Satanism.