Ferrell Cool-Aid

In her book, Cultures in Orbit, Lisa Parks discusses the use of space exploration photography and how it has been utilized to reinforce a western view of, well, everything. Capitalism, western philosophy, supremacy of the white male, up and down are all notions that have been promulgated either on purpose or inadvertently by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) through stellar photographs disseminated through the popular media. Modern science has developed a tendency, with the aid of American media outlets, to discourage dissent by marginalizing those scientific opinions that differ from theirs bringing all existence to a human level. This belittling of dissenting opinion is accomplished, in many instances, through the use of comedy.

Will Ferrell as George Bush is a prime use of comedy as a political/scientific tool. (See embedded video) Global warming has been an issue of heated debate, with most of the debate presented on news channels like Fox News that are obviously right leaning. Lisa Parks when speaking about pictures coming from the Hubble space telescope suggests that, “embedded within Hubble’s capacity for distant vision is a discursive strategy of remote control.” She goes on to discuss popular media needing to position extraterrestrial images and science in a terrestrial manner to make it more digestible for the masses. This need by popular media to chop science into little bits that “regular” people can understand is what breeds bits like the one Will Ferrell starred in on Saturday Night Live.

Although there are many things throughout existence that humans have no control over there seems to still be a need by many news agencies to rationalize natural occurrences to a level that gives humans the power to control them. Lisa Park, again discussing images from Hubble, says, “they have also been used to represent extremely distant matter as if it were part of us.” This example citing Hubble photographs is further evidence that media, in addition to other opinion leaders, finds a need to cap all science at an altitude that does not exceed human inference and control.

A discussion, with specific regard to global warming, would not be complete without mentioning Al Gore’s, An Inconvenient Truth. It shouldn’t be expected that a movie supposed to be a proponent of the effects of man-made global warming would present both sides of an issue but the methods employed by Gore’s film take the audience as elementary students, as exemplified by the use of Simpsons-esque cartoons. All of these elements

Control has been exerted through the use of space media that is disseminated throughout the population of the Earth by mostly American, i.e. industrialized nations, that enforces the paradigm that only the learned enough to go out and receive knowledge to be relayed to other, more unintelligent human beings. The smartest people in the room coming from well funded government agencies are the gatekeepers to “up and down” that tell the rest of us, albeit subliminally, what our values are and how we should approach the rest of our reality.

Joel Engles

District 9: South Africa's Best Kept Secret

Alien invasion texts often reinforce or criticize immigration policies and anxieties that are a part of a society's cultural politics. Lisa Parks acknowledges in her article “Satellite Panoramas,” the idea that technology and ideology are often used to reinforce Eurocentric ideals, citing the film The Arrival as her example:

“The Arrival is a highly symptomatic text in that it recombines and concretizes discourses alluded to throughout this chapter. Moreover, it clarifies the way astronomical observation and technologies are embedded within a broader system of cultural politics.”

In The Arrival, the alien race in the film are depicted as “Hispanic-looking” and had retrofitted defunct power plants in Central and South America that pump out quantities of greenhouse gases which is being “attributed” to causing global warming. The main message The Arrival reinforces is that immigrants and South and Central America are responsible for global warming and that white Americans should fear the “alien” civilization that is coming into the United States. While The Arrival reinforces the anxieties and Eurocentric beliefs regarding immigration and global warming, District 9 criticizes the immigration policies and the cultural politics of South Africa rather than reinforce them.

District 9 alludes to the South African government's mishandling and mistreatment of the immigrants and refugees that enter the country. The film also appears to support immigration reform and rights for the immigrants and refugees. The immigrants and refugees in District 9 are represented as “prawns,” a race of insect-like creatures which are similar to the Parktown prawn, a king cricket species native to South Africa.

The prawns in the film serve as a mirror of the people that were abused under the system of Apartheid; unfortunately some of the practices that have carried over from its dissolution continue to this day. The MNU is given the task to move the prawns from District 9 into District 10 by either asking them to leave their homes or evicting them by brutal force. This can be interpreted by many as a reference to the treatment resident black South Africans and refugees were given by their government during apartheid. The scene in which Wikus (Sharlto Copley) visits the home of a prawn family, he explains to them that they need to vacate District 9 and move into District 10, though Wikus later on acknowledges that District 10 is a much worse than District 9. This has a historical significance since in 1966 during Apartheid era, an area known as District 6 was declared a “whites only” zone by the South African government, forcibly removing 60,000 black South Africans into Cape Flats.

The Arrival and District 9 are discourses that deal with the cultural politics of immigration and its policies. The Arrival reinforces white America's anxiety about immigrants and immigration policies, which encourages white America to fear the “arrival” of Mexicans and other immigrants. District 9 criticizes South Africa's cultural politics by saying that its culture should show more compassion to the refugees and immigrants by welcoming and by supporting immigration reform. Though these films contain one aspect of interpretation, which is using an alien race as an allegory to immigration there are many others that people discover in both films.

-Maricruz

Author determined, Not meaning

In the writing “What is an author?” Michal Foucault illlustrates the concept of the author to reinforce the belief of social constructed ideologies and connotated meanings. He strongly urges that the role of an author goes to set connotation that are not objective, rather from his own empirical thinking. Foucalt also suggests that our definition of authorship did not always exist. Society created it as a set of ideas that what someone wrote, is owned and attached to them for social economical order and organization.

The ideology of an author is engraved in the concept of “authorship” to reinforce identity in a cultural sense. It brings forth the individual conciseness to an idea that supports individualism ideology. Foucault states, “the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, exludes, and chooses; by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition,decomposition, and recomposition of fiction.” The author’s connotative meaning becomes ideological to the readers because their understanding of the text is agreed and they do not question it.

The author’s discourse restricts meaning to the readers due to the fact that most readers won’t read a text and create their own concept of what the reading was about. Rather, they would accept the author’s meaning as the reliable truth. As foucault states “in writing, the point is not to manifest or exalt the act of writing, nor it is to pin a subject within a language; it is, rather, a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly dissapears.” It is the the fundemental set of assumtion that are socially constructed to determine the author as the one who predetermined the discourse.

This strengthens the idea that though the credibility society gives to the author of written works; the author’s meaning of the works is not necessarily what should and could mean to all of its readers. Nothing that the author has written is original in the sense that they have taken and written text that through their discourse, their own social experience in the world. In which sense the fact that the author wrote the text does not imply that their own connotative meaning is strict to their definition. As foucault states “it is a matter of depriving the subject (or its substitute) of its role as originator, and of analyzing the subject as a variable and complex function of discourse.

Though the ideology of an author was socially and ideologically constructed, it also serves a socio-economic use to society. The term author serves an important role in the existance of our society in which it assigns an author the identity of who wrote the works for legal and economic purposes. The ideology of the author’s function, who has written the works owns the text, is enforced especially when liability, copy, distribution and licensing rights need to be stated. These are important to the author in order to receive credibility, to be held liable for their works, as well as to receive monetary compensation. As foucault mentions “the modes of circulation, valorization, attribution, and appropriation of discourses vary with each culture and are modified within each.”

In our capitalistic society and for the sake of social and legal order the author’s function serves a purpose. However, as an example one can look at ancient times where cultures did not yet have complex economical and judicial systems. People used to tell stories to each other and in that manner stories were told from one generation to the next. There was no importance as to who invented the story nor was it claimed as truly theirs. The story constantly evolved from one person to the next with their own experience of the world, giving the people the oppurtunity to be creative and inventive to create their own meaning.

The definition of an author was given by society as an ideological set of assumtions. Although the term authorship serves various purposes in our society it subsequently deprives readers from creating their own individual connotative meaning.

Dethroning Madonna

“Like a virgin, oh, touched for the very first time.
Like a virgin, when your hearts beats next to mine.”


Needless to say Madonna’s 1984 ‘Like a Virgin’ music video turned many heads world wide.

Although Madonna says she doesn’t want to be remembered by the song Like a Virgin, her music video left a long lasting impression, a comical one at that.

In Susan Sontags Notes on “Camp,” she says “the whole point of camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious.”

Well, Madonna did just that. As she dances stripper like on the small boat in Italy; her legs spread as she rolls around on the bow of the boat doesn’t seem so serious and actually pretty ironic to me.

Her song was a hit. That catchy tune that was played on every radio station, it just sticks in your head. But let’s be honest here, as Madonna seems so serious it was very comical. Her lyrics say “I made it through the wilderness,” okay… but a lion randomly roaming around with her? I can maybe see the resemblance, wilderness and lions… but then her “lover” wears a lion mask. I’m not really sure I understand what relation is between the two. I quote Sontag, “many examples of camp are things which, from a ‘serious’ point of view, are either bad art or kitsch.” Well Madonna, hate to break it to ya, but this music video gives off a love hate relationship. You just love to hate it.

For Madonna’s Like a Virgin music video to be taken seriously is less unlikely. As Sontag says “the essence of camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Unnatural and exaggerated pretty much describes Madonna’s style perfectly. The best part about her music, performances, and videos is that she always herself. She has to go over and beyond anyone else.

Even though most people found Madonna’s music videos humorous, there were those few people who looked beyond the video and understood the lyrics more than anyone else. Those people or as Sontag explains it are the homosexuals. They have “Camp taste.” Sontag believes that homosexuals invented camp. And… in every sense I can believe this. Homosexuals have nothing to judge because they are being judged themselves. “Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, or appreciation – not judgment.”

What can you say, gays love Madonna. Gays love human nature, they live for the moment. Camp loves human nature. “It relishes, rather than judges.” Madonna’s music is youthful, it’s playful. You can’t take her music video serious. Homosexuals live off of her music for the desire to remain youthful.

Like a Virgin will live on in our world and only Madonna will know the meaning behind her music, and how she wanted to portray her music. Almost anything can be “campy,” or have “campy taste.” It’s all within the eye of the beholder.

Crappy Firetruck

Susan Sontag in 1964 wrote “Notes On Camp” to which basically defined and explored the ideas of camp art and camp taste. Her examples of camp included the Nouveau art movement, the movies For Whom the Bell Tolls and Samson and Delilah, and even the theatrical technique of method acting. Though in contrast, whether these examples could be considered as “Camp” is entirely left open to the viewer and to his or her's own personal taste. Which left me with one question: Is there one good example of camp using Sontag's definition of “Camp” and “Camp taste?” She expresses the importance of camp being “naive” to the fact that it is camp, and must be “good because it's awful.”(Sontag 292) Her examples in the essay could just as easily be on the other side of the “camp” line if a person, for instance, loved the movie Samson and Delilah because of its believable acting. If this person believes his or her own statement then Samson and Delilah can not be considered as camp in his or her eyes.

So who can be capable of drawing a work of art that evokes the same emotional response no matter the viewer, the answer is children. No other demographic can consistently make there own art without judging eyes except for the toddler nation. They are free to explore color, size, line as much as they want and grandeur is only met with more enthusiasm. This is the way we view child art and why each and everyone of us has “camp taste.” Camp taste is a “tender feeling,” Sontag says. This enthusiasm for the young comes from our “love for human nature,” as Sontag puts it. Camp taste “relishes rather than judges, the little triumphs.”(Sontag 286) This is why even the harshest of art critics will have camp taste no matter how much they would deny it being so. Worldwide the young are put on an artistic pedestal. No matter the end result, their art is not considered to be “bad” art, and this is due to the fact that as emotional creatures we are in love with our own youthful human nature. Also childrens' art is not subjected to the demands of time. Everyday art, after time, becomes the art of an era, its meaning is lost when the era passes and no longer carries the same impact again. This is not the case for kids' art. Kid's have made the same art for centuries, maybe with different mediums but with the same passion, so even antique childrens's art is looked at with “camp taste” eyes, as long as we know it was made by a child. They are alone in this fact, their crappy firetruck will always beat your crappy firetruck because you are an adult and your firetruck sucks.

by: James Battle

Getting Biblical With The "Author Function"

In Michel Foucault's essay “What Is An Author?”, he discusses the socially constructed notion of an author, and more specifically its role in society (what Foucault refers to as the “author function”). The idea of authorship not just as name association, but even up to the control of discourse, is seen too often throughout history. This is no more plainly observed than that of the most popular book in human history: The Holy Bible.

What makes the Bible unique is that, while it was written by human beings, is seen in the Christian faith as the word of God. It was not authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, etcetera. They were just channeled by God and put words to the page to spread his message. Foucault says that “an author's name is not simply an element in a discourse... it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function” (p. 107). Also, it “permits one to group together a certain number of texts... it establishes a relationship among the texts” (p. 107). The combining of the books of the Bible into one word of God establishes a single standard of discourse that originated from an intelligent designer who made the human race in its own image. Foucault suggests that an author's name elevates sources of discourse to the point where “it is not ordinary everyday speech... it is a speech that must be received in a certain mode and... must receive a certain status” (p. 107). So powerful can an author's name be, Foucault says, that the name not only personifies the source of discourse that is contributed, but also can indicate the status of such discourse amongst a society and a culture.

Foucault describes the author function as “characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society” (p.108) and that discourses are “objects of appropriation” (p. 108). As has been seen throughout history, the Bible (although through widely varied interpretations) has, at times, been the epicenter of society, and in even some cases, turned countries into theocracies. The establishment of the Bible as the primary (and often times only) source of discourse and the devout followers of its teachings as the ones who controlled such discourse. Foucault even describes whom he calls the “Church Fathers” (p. 113) as “transdiscursive” (p. 113), which is to author something “in which other books and authors will in their turn find a place”. The effects of the Bible and Chstian teachings are historically evident in everything from paintings to architecture to music. The authorship of such material not only represented the strong impact of the Bible on the culture of various societies throughout Western Europe, but also its attempted control of public discourse. Another use of the author function, Foucault explains, is the attachment of proper names to writings in order to identify the individual source of attempted contributions to discourse (a personifying of the material, if you will) “to the extent that authors became subject to punishment” (p. 108), and often in such times during which Christian ideology reigned, to punish blasphemers and heretics. The author function served much more than attaching a name as a matter of legal ownership of material(s) contirubting to the public discourse. It was this transition from public discourse being “an act placed in the field of... the religious and blasphemous” (p. 108) to an “object of appropriation” (p. 108).

Foucault's explanation of of the notion of authorship and of the “author function” is seen no more clearly than that of the Holy Bible (the word, or work, of God). Its Christian teachings (or even just those who call themselves Christians), even today, still have a strong place in the public discourse. So much so that “Evangelical” is considered a major player in today's American political arena. The Bible place in society as the work of God, creator of the Universe, stands as a prime example of Foucault's idea that the author is “the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning”.

Twilight "Pure Camp"

The vampire book series turned film series, Twilight has become a phenomenon. Twilight fans and non-fans probably enjoy the film for its "campy" style. Camp according to Susan Sontag emphasizes texture, sensuous surface and style at the expense of content. Sontag also states that it’s a certain kind of style-the love of the exaggerated the “off”, of things being what they are not. Twilight is just that, it’s a story of vampires in love with humans who love werewolves. This story is extremely exaggerated with teen vampires so rich they can go to Rome to kill themselves in the name of love. Or teenage girls who can sit in their room for months depressed that their vampire boyfriend dumped them. The movies intent was to be serious, even though many scenes in the movie are to over the top that they appear comical. The fact that the director’s intention was not that of humor emphasizes the naivety that is camp. Sontag explains only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve is pure camp.
Some of the key scenes in Twilight to illustrate pure camp are the “glitter” scene and the “big fight” scene. The glitter scene I’m referring to is when Edward (Robert Pattison) shows Bella (Kristen Stewart) why vampires cannot be seen in the sun light. In this scene the over dramatic sparkle produces a laugh that was unintended by the director. The style or embellished style of the scene is “pure camp.” The scene is passionate, fantastic with its extravagant effects and naïve in the fact that the director’s intent was not the same as the outcome the scene received.
The big fight scene I’m referring to is when Edward gets thrown to the ground by another vampire and his cheek cracks as if his face was stone. Once again this is an exaggerated aesthetic that produces an unintended response from viewers. The fabulous face cracking effect and the naivety from the director reveals pure camp.
Whether you completely love Twilight or not you can recognize its pure camp quality especially in those two scenes. Sontag reveals how we are better able to enjoy a fantasy when it’s not our own. It’s the fantastic nature of which we don’t perceive. This is why a lot of women love and relate to this movie. Susan Sontag explains this love further by stating that, camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of character. Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they are labeling as camp they’re enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling. This is the feeling that enables people to love something that is so “bad.”