Portfolio/Pop Culture; Noam Chomsky

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Period 1: Portfolio

ICE-BREAKER/Exercise: A little pop culture food for thought:


Choose 1 of these videos and respond to it in the COMMENT section below while you are in the lab this morning. Then continue to use your time in the lab to complete the following:

Prepare your portfolio. Portfolios are due next class. Remember you need the following:
  • Dystopia story draft
  • Evaluation essay of Brave New World or A Clockwork Orange
  • Manchurian candidate synthesis creative non-fiction essay
  • Reflection. Keep this short and to the point. Discuss your writing, not whether you like or dislike the course--or how tired and unmotivated you are. I'm already aware of all that. If there's anything writing-wise you want to learn before it's too late, let me know now.
  • Revisions (remember to include your earlier drafts--it is helpful to have the drafts that I commented on in particular...)
  • Other creative work: poems, plays, films, essays, media, short stories, etc.
Also: please continue and near an end to your decade research. We will pick up this project quickly by the end of the marking period. Then we'll race around the world with special attention to gender politics, race politics, and philosophy. 

Period 2:

Noam Chomsky: The 5 Filters of Mass Media (video)

  • Media manufactures consent (the true will of the people...)
  • Media is staged to create a propaganda machine
  • Media (particularly critical media takes 2nd place to the needs of the conglomerate or media owners (the bottom line of which is making a profit)
  • Governments, corporations, and institutions control the media; they are the Hegemony - the ones in power
  • Media operates through 5 filters: 
    • Media Ownership
    • Advertising and advertisers use media to sell products; media sells viewers to corporations: us
    • The media elite are in bed with the corporations (complicity)
    • When journalists stray from their function, they get "flack"; shut out of the process
    • The common enemy
  • 80% of the population has a job: to fall in line. To consent to the power structure, you have been born into. Media's job is to make sure you stay where you are meant to be.

Manufacturing Consent (video/interview)

  • Discuss how trash and popular culture serve to support Chomsky's theory of manufacturing consent.
  • How can you tell if you are part of the 80%?
  • What sorts of propaganda are encouraged by your Government? Churches/religions? Schools? etc.

Read a variety of sociological essays/articles/poems. These works are a synthesis of a variety of sources, crushed down to create informational articles--the same kind you'll be expected to write in the upper levels of college programs. Let's read and think and think and read. Then create...

HOMEWORK: Prepare your portfolio. Due next class! Finish reading Jennifer Government. There will be a test on the book Friday. As you read, consider the role of institutions (corporations, governments, media, education, etc.) at work in Max Barry's dystopian novel. What messages does he seem to be sending about our world? Do we believe him? Why or why not?

Comments

Unknown said…
I watched the video about advertising. Everything that was said rang true to what I understand about advertising - that the real star of the commercials and the photo ads was not the product themselves but the way the product was being shown off. This is most successfully done through displaying something people want, and don't have like a happy family, children, sex, money or fame. It is why celebrities are used and work well in ad campaigns. It is also why Calvin Klein ads are so successful, because they sell sex and passion, along with beautiful underwear.
March 27, 2017 at 7:46 AM
Unknown said…
Pop and Philosophy
I feel the video does a good job by showing how over the years pop has become more prominent than what Philosophy is. It explains how Philosophy can learn from Pop on how to "survive" in the modern day world, it would have to learn how to "win over an audience." Pop connects with its audience on a more emotion base through being repetition. The video also spoke on how Pop can learn from Philosophy because its lacking an "ultimate ambition."
March 27, 2017 at 7:48 AM
Unknown said…
"The Clever Tricks of Advertising" detailed how advertisements have shifted almost completely from selling a product to selling a lifestyle of which the product is a part. Rather than show what's better about a watch, for example, they show an unattainably perfect father-son relationship. The watch appears as a stepping stone, and if the consumer buys it they will have that perfect family. Of course, companies aren't able to actually promise this because there's no way for them to deliver on it. This tactic can be used to sell everything from perfume to alcohol to insurance to food. By selling a lifestyle that appeals to basic human nature, they are able to sell the product much more effectively.
March 27, 2017 at 7:49 AM
Unknown said…
I watched the video "The Clever Tricks of Advertising" which I found to be a very interesting video. It really pinpointed a lot of the dangers with modern advertising in that it appeals to our basic desires. It applies these longings that we have for better relationships, jobs, and lives onto products that can only provide so much. That in combination with the fact that as advertising becomes more and more sophisticated, the products that we sell improve at a much slower pace. Due to this we inevitably create a culture which is more about selling wants and desires as ideas and as products, rather than working towards the things that can actually make these things a reality.

-Cameron Bennett
March 27, 2017 at 7:56 AM
Unknown said…
I watched the video "The Dangers of the Internet" which was a very interesting video. It talks about how long people are on the internet. It was a certain percent of men that spent there time on the internet. Also the women that feel the need that they have to be between the men and the cell phone. Also it talks about the many things that happened with the privacy and how there isn't a lot of privacy with certain accounts. The information that you're sharing with others also. They call it "Online Crime"
March 27, 2017 at 8:06 AM
Unknown said…
I watched the video "The Clever Tricks of Advertising" detailed how advertisement techniques have evolved over time. In the early 20th century, the advertisements were more straightforward, and was about a product and how much it cost and you knew that was what you were getting. Eventually, advertsiements have changed from straightforward, to advertisements that show you what you want in life and make you believe that this product can give you that. Companies cannot, in reality, promise this because there's no way for them to deliver it. This tactic is used to sell everything.
March 27, 2017 at 8:16 AM
Unknown said…
The video "The Dangers of the Internet" was quite interesting in that it highlighted how detrimental the internet can potentially be. Although the internet does have so many positive things about it, people are definitely starting to misuse it. We spend too much time online at the expense of real interaction and communication. The video mentioned how privacy is at risk due to the use of cookies being sold to marketing agencies in order to track us better and see what we're buying. This is super creepy to think of. Overall, the video was very eye opening and informative.
March 27, 2017 at 8:17 AM
Unknown said…
The video "The Dangers if the internet" clearly states so many things about how humans and the internet are interacting. It says how humans are addicted to the internet. It also says how the internet is public so everything so that nothing is private on the internet. Also how online crime is horrible now and that nothing can do anything about it. The video brought to light many things that humans wouldn't care abut due to us on the internet and the internet in general.
March 28, 2017 at 7:37 AM
Unknown said…
In "The Clever Tricks of Advertising" video was very detailed and interesting. Show me as the viewer how advertising techniques have evolved throughout the years. Nowadays companies are advertising in a way to get to us such as showing objects that we need/want in life. Many believe that as soon they bought the object they would have the happiness shown in the video with the object. But it is not possible for the companies to deliver the happiness to the costumer.
March 28, 2017 at 8:02 AM
Unknown said…
The video "The Clever Tricks of Advertising" described a lot of important things that the media does through advertising everyday. We are exposed to ads every single day, and learning how they work is important. Throughout time, advertising techniques have changed and adapted to be more effective in attracting viewers/consumers. Early ads used to be very pointed and straightforward: they illustrated the product, and showed the price, and this was the extent of the commercial. Ads today focus more on promising the product and MORE to the consumer. This leads to general resentment towards companies as they provide false promise of a happier life with the buying of their product.
-Grace Conheady
March 28, 2017 at 8:19 AM
Unknown said…
I watched the video on advertisement because that is something we went over in journalism. It explained how people draw in a crowed by saying harmless lies and using satire. People dont want to view the ordinary life.They rather view something that is not normal to see or privet and exposed. Like Calvin Klein's ads all promote sex and attract people because it's something everyone is interested in being a human being.
March 29, 2017 at 9:01 AM
Unknown said…
I agree with a lot of points the video made. I believe the people who make advertisements play a lot on what they think people want to see and not actual reality. the way the actors potray a product can be so corny sometimes but it will make a person want to buy because of they way the person in the commercial acts like it makes them feel. I also agree with how they always dabble around the purpose of the commercial, its more for entertainment and not informative about what people actually need to know.
March 29, 2017 at 9:04 AM
Those Who Followed said…
I watched the video, "The Dangers of the Internet," because I felt that out of the three video topics available to us, the dangers of the Internet is the most relevant to my generation and me. As the modern world grows out of tangibility and into digital and online resources and interactions, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how to use the Internet effectively without over-using it. The video very clearly listen the Internet's powers of both enhancing human life and diminishing the effects of human life. By having so many statistics supporting the claim that the Internet was becoming a source of crime and unethical actions, the video was able to portray the dangers of the Internet quite legitimately. However, I found it quite ironic that the only way to watch the video would be to go on the Internet.
March 30, 2017 at 2:10 PM
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