“Mutual respect and mutual service of the individuals who make up society” (12) If this is the idea of the modern moral order, I haven’t seen it. What I see are traces of a society that lives on hierarchy. I see traces of a society that will do anything for themselves, leaving the weaker behind, living their lives through the, “survival of the fittest,” motto that does not include everyone because it simply cannot. Our own selfishness devours the modern order and we live the lives people tell us to live because we feel safer not having to worry about the direction the general order of things goes. We elect people thinking that we’re living through, “The Law of The People.” When in reality we are living in the age of hierarchy, only thing is, we’re not really part of the hierarchy. We sit back and watch the rich get richer while the poor get poorer because we buy into the hype of the American Dream and allow the real people in power do whatever it is they want. Only thing is now, the American Dream, has become only a dream. With this new recession it seems as if that dream has been bumped down from dream to fantasy. While we continue to allow this to happen, what will really happen is this, that new moral order, the one in which, “The ideal social order is one in which our purposes mesh, and each in furthering himself helps others.” (13) Will remain in the back of people’s minds and the future will stay really bleak because until we can see a world where everyone can co-exist without worrying about someone trying to take them socially down. The Social Imaginary, will continue being imaginary.
*this blog was intended for the response to the social imaginary WEBCT post, it can also be found on WEBCT.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Work cited for Planet of the Reality Being
Stanley, Alessandra. “The Classless Utopia of Reality TV” New York Times on the web 2, Dec. 2007. Television. 14, Dec. 2009
Lyal, Sarah. “Jade Goody, British Reality Television Star, Dies at 27” New York Times on the web 22, Mar. 2009. Europe. 15, Dec. 2009
Schieffer, Bob. “A Reality Check on Reality TV Aspirants”
CBSNews.com 13, Dec. 2009. Face The Nation. 16, Dec. 2009
< http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/13/ftn/main5974494.shtml>
Bellafante, Ginia.“Wealth (and Dior) on Their Minds” New York Times on the web 29, Jul. 2009. Television. 15, Dec. 2009
Buchholz, Brad. “America’s Identity Crisis in an Age of Consumerism and Spectacle” New Paradigm Digest on the web 14, Dec. 2009. Book Reviews. 16, Dec. 2009
< http://newparadigmdigest.com/2689/americas-identity-crisis-in-an-age-of-consumerism-and-spectacle/>
Stanley, Alessandra. “For Ultrareality, ‘Housewives’ Turns to Jersey Girls” New York Times on the web 11, May 2009. Television. 16, Dec. 2009
Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. New York: Del Rey, 2001.
colarussochris321. "THEME SONGS OF THE REAL HOUSEWIVES: Atlanta, New Jersey and Orange County" Youtube.com Retrieved December 16, 2009
Lyal, Sarah. “Jade Goody, British Reality Television Star, Dies at 27” New York Times on the web 22, Mar. 2009. Europe. 15, Dec. 2009
Schieffer, Bob. “A Reality Check on Reality TV Aspirants”
CBSNews.com 13, Dec. 2009. Face The Nation. 16, Dec. 2009
< http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/13/ftn/main5974494.shtml>
Bellafante, Ginia.“Wealth (and Dior) on Their Minds” New York Times on the web 29, Jul. 2009. Television. 15, Dec. 2009
Buchholz, Brad. “America’s Identity Crisis in an Age of Consumerism and Spectacle” New Paradigm Digest on the web 14, Dec. 2009. Book Reviews. 16, Dec. 2009
< http://newparadigmdigest.com/2689/americas-identity-crisis-in-an-age-of-consumerism-and-spectacle/>
Stanley, Alessandra. “For Ultrareality, ‘Housewives’ Turns to Jersey Girls” New York Times on the web 11, May 2009. Television. 16, Dec. 2009
Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. New York: Del Rey, 2001.
colarussochris321. "THEME SONGS OF THE REAL HOUSEWIVES: Atlanta, New Jersey and Orange County" Youtube.com Retrieved December 16, 2009
Planet of the Reality Being
“In Atlanta, money and class do give you power,” –Kim Zolciak, The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Turn on your television and pick a channel, any channel, any show. It’s your choice. The end result is going to be the same because whether it’s something you like or something that you don’t necessarily favor, one thing is for sure, you will have an opinion on said show (even if the opinion is no opinion at all). “…It’s a lucky chance that nature has put at our disposal an animal on whom we can study our own bodies. Man serves us in many other fields or research, as you’ll come to realize…At this very moment we are undertaking an extremely important series of experiments.” Zira, Planet of the Apes. Now, pick a book, any book. It’s your choice. But the end result will not be the same because unless it’s a book that you either are compelled to read or are forced to read, you will not have an opinion on that said book.
Why? Simple answer, you can put down a book, but you can’t turn off the television. Why not? Another Simple answer, we’ve allowed television and all its technological counterparts to become intertwined with our daily lives. By this I mean that instead of turning to literature for the knowledge needed to become the people we seek to become, we turn to our televisions to tell us what is on our minds and to our cell phones to tell us the date and time and to our IPods to keep us engaged in our personal bubbles filled with tweets (Twitter) and text messaging. And by the comment made that we cannot turn the televisions off, well simple enough, our favorite programming can now be found on our IPods or laptops. Simply put, the information that we highly seek that we don’t need is at our fingertips. And the literature needed for our very survival is pushed to the side of our lives and instead of becoming a strong population of well educated individualized beings, we’re becoming a population of people dependant on material things to get us through our own every day. And ultimately everything learned in books like Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell’s 1984, and Planet of the Apes, are no longer just stories read for fun, they become reality, and soon enough we’ve become entrapped in our own planet of “reality beings.”
Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is reach for my cell phone (that of course is still charging) and check to see the time. There used to be a time when there would be clocks hanging on walls, but in today’s world the twenty-first century person (also known as a “reality being”) is more personalized. Instead of having the clocks on the walls or even the watch on the wrists (do they even make wrist watches anymore?), the time is found on your cell phone, along with your music, your daily dose of entertainment gossip, even the source to our daily communication can be found on your cell phone, basically a world of nonsense is at our fingertips. Literally! And where did this twenty-first century revolution arise from. Pick a channel, any channel, the answer is just a reality show away. Reality TV is the craze that gained notoriety with such shows as Survivor and Big Brother, shows that emphasized the competition for the love of money and revolutionized itself into such shows as I Love Money and Megan Wants a Millionaire. All these shows emphasizing the want of money and the willingness to do whatever it takes to get said amount of money to have a piece of the good life, (even if it means being cooped up in a house with a dozen other strangers or rolling around in mud like a pig or exploiting your own body for the highest bidder (usually the one with the bigger bank account) to win). This good life revolutionized again in the fantastical shows such as The Real Housewives series, this series of shows that follow the lives of five wealthy women in their everyday lives. This series now shows us what to do with the money once you’ve attained it through whatever means you got it from.
Now suddenly our minds become entranced in their real “real” lives and we’ve become addicted. Addicted to their lives? We could care less. No, what we’ve become addicted to is exactly what reality TV strives for us to get highly addicted to. The outlandish behavior that keeps us coming back for more, the premise that we find utterly groundbreaking (a reality spin on the Desperate Housewives?), and finally at the heart of every reality show...money! And the two most important questions, how much and what can I buy with that amount? And this all gives birth to our own dependency. Because what we fail to see every time we turn on our favorite “reality” program, is the marketing behind the show. Some networks will hide this fact with their necessary commercials, but other networks will advertise their objective of advertising to the viewers, right onto their own shows. These, creating a population of consumers, who turn away from the challenge of a novel and will instead indulge themselves in a shiny new tech-toy they feel they need. As stated by Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, found in the article America’s Identity Crisis in an Age of Consumerism and Spectacle, “We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level.” His commentary on a world gone astray really does hit home to all of us who take time out of our day to turn on shows such as The Real Housewives of Atlanta. A show that really has no point other than having women flaunt their wealth even in a time of recession, this became evident outrage on the pages of the New York Times when an article was released entitled, Wealth (and Dior) on Their Minds, highlighting the new stereotype created by those women from the South. “The goal here, as in all the “Housewives” shows, isn’t getting your children into Harvard, but having the ability to keep shopping at Dior and Vuitton without the downer parameters of a budget.” The main point of this article is that now consumerism in reality television has become colored blind. If a wealthy Caucasian from Orange County can marry rich and drive an eighty-thousand dollar car, then why can’t a wealthy woman from Atlanta, Georgia do the same? After all, they both didn’t spend their own money. Now of course, the viewer isn’t going to want to go spend thousands of dollars on luxuries they can’t seriously afford, but, the viewer will let down the walls he or she has built up during this recession time and will spend hundreds of dollars on high-tech-toys they can somewhat afford.
George Orwell introduces us to those kinds of people, those who do what they are told to do without complaint, who live their lives to please someone who can’t be seen, and ultimately love and hate people they are told to hate with a passion. Do we not see a resemblance here to reality television? Do they not encourage us to go out and spend money we don’t have to keep up with what they say is the latest trends? Even though we don’t have the money to spend, especially in a time of recession? Yes, now people will go (even those with the bad credit), and spend, spend, spend their hard earned (or hard borrowed) money on everything they feel will make them superior to those around who don’t have exactly what they have, because on reality television, more is more. “The more you have, the better you feel,” this being the motto behind reality shows. Unlike the motto behind great literature which is, “the more you learn, the better you feel,” which brings me back to the quick fix I spoke of in another text, the quick fix that is popularized by the media, and warned about in books. In doing this do we not feel subconsciously better for buying because not only have we made ourselves feel better but also because we’ve pleased the advertisement in which we saw what was just purchased advertised in? That feeling better because you have in a sense pleased the advertiser is another trick played on the viewer by the advertiser.
Reality masterminds know that they have to keep people interested in the genre, whether it focuses on a particular show or the whole genre in general, they know that have to keep the strings tightly gripped on the puppet. So, when a reality show loses its grip on the viewers, it’s either fixed or axed. A perfect example of this was the “reality,” phenomena Laguna Beach, a show that in its first two seasons became one of the highest rated shows on cable television, and also became a consumer’s paradise. But after only three seasons was let go from the airwaves. This show became a casualty because simply enough people stopped watching. Bravo probably had the same fear with The Real Housewives of Orange County, a show that has become highly criticized for its fakeness. So, after two successful spin offs, soon came a more realistic addition to the Housewives Series, The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The Real Housewives of New Jersey, which is the fourth installment in the housewives series, takes a more realistic turn in reality genre, only in the sense that the people in this are actually related and actually know each other. As stated in another New York Times article entitled, For Ultrareality, ‘Housewives’ Turns to Jersey Girls, on this new reality craze,
“This may be the most preposterous “Housewives” edition, but it’s also the most believable. The suffocating family ties are an improvement over past incarnations, when producers often threw together women who were not really that close and whose frictions often seemed forced. These women actually do know one another well, talk every day and raise their children together (badly). The camera crew seems to be eavesdropping, rather than masterminding.”
This latest edition brings back the spark to the reality junkie. The spark that seemed to be going away with every new item purchased. It brings back the reality to reality TV. Even though it has a different edge on other programs that just put people together and sees what happens. This show still focuses on the materialism, the over-the-top attitudes, and all the extras that make the viewer feel better about themselves. This, all working to ensure that the viewers don’t leave the trusted relationship between them and their real TV that tells them that they have all the answers and that they are superb human beings. Creating a dependent relationship between the viewer and the technology that promises to keep them always in contact with people that they will never meet and the lives they will never live. Just like a child to its mother.
Finally, to end the mirroring of George Orwell’s 1984, do reality shows not encourage us to hate people that we do not even really know or will ever know? Simple Answer to this question, yes! Every day it seems as if some new controversy is sparked up by reality TV. Take The Real Housewives of Atlanta for example, a show about five over-the-top wealthy women living in Atlanta, Georgia. These women sparked controversy not too long ago when they premiered their second season on the Bravo cable network. The controversy here was of the African American race and its new portrayal of shallowness. Brining us back to the article found in The New York Times on the Atlanta Housewives, that highlights the “tight, binary visions,” given to the African American race by these women, who in the article are referred to as “power shoppers” who don’t necessary revolve their lives around serious issues such as getting their children into college, but instead are more concerned with being able to get them into college (with their money) and shopping till they drop. As stated in this article, “There is no point in marrying a cardiologist (or becoming one) when you can hook up with a professional athlete or a vaguely defined entrepreneur who can provide you with a house that has its own beauty salon and the opportunity to hire an estate manager.” This being the underlined message in all The Housewives series’ that you don’t need to worry about life as long as you marry wealthy and stay wealthy. This message, expressed not in favor of the African American person (especially, the African American woman) obviously does not sit well with people, certainly not with the writer behind this article. In this article we see the power reality television is beginning to have on our society as a whole. For the Atlanta Housewives to now become representatives for an entire race, shows just how far reality has really gone and how close to the edge we are to having our society overrun by nothingness because we are now allowing reality television to speak for our interpretations. Just like with the New Jersey Housewives, I mean yes, they do have a certain realistic charm to them. But the show was still meant to entertain not inform (it is not a book after all). Going back to that article of the New Jersey Housewives that highlighted the differences between this show and all its other counterparts still focuses on the similarities of the shows irritabilities. Take Teresa Giuduce, the most superficial one out of all the housewives, whose most famous quote could be heard on the very first episode of the series, which comments on the economy, “I hear the economy’s crashing…So that’s why I pay cash.” Quotes like these are exactly designed to irritate the viewer who worries about how to pay for their next bill. But in quotes like these we see the contradiction in our own annoyances, “The economic slump is rarely if ever mentioned on “Real Housewives.” Partly, that’s because it’s a buzzkill for viewers hooked on the free-floating vulgarity.” But, I must also note that if it is not mentioned on the show, we wonder why, and automatically we begin to feel hatred towards the fictional people that stare back at us on the television. Because we care about them, no, not at all, it’s because we want to be them, simple as that, and reality masterminds feed on this, and they feed on us, stealing our minds away from individualism because they know that the people that have their lives together and do not have dependency on the material or their version of reality cannot be tamed and then the hierarchy will happen.
Well, George Orwell may have introduced us to a world of people without identity. But it is Ray Bradbury who shows us the slow deterioration of a society as a whole and puts it all into perspective for us. In Fahrenheit 451, the books are the enemies and the “family” is the essential key to life in a sense. Here we see what has happened to literature or better yet what the people have allowed to happen to books. Instead of reading (because the books are outlawed) people turn to their telescreens and revolve around them. Just like we revolve around our technology, you could take the entire novel of Fahrenheit as a warning of a future to come or of a future that has already arrived. Like stated earlier, we buy things we see advertised, whether in a commercial or on the actual product reality has served up for us that day. We go out and comply with the peer pressure of our own consumerism and to top it off, we make sure we buy the latest gadgets to simply be able to keep up with the latest episodes of a reality show we used to just watch at home. Now without noticing, our dependency on material things has begun, because reality TV doesn’t just stop at product placement, it makes sure that it is everywhere you want to be. Just in case that pesky book should pass you by, reality television can swat it away like a pesky fly, because at the moral of anything that has to do with reality is you.
This all brings us to the “reality beings,” that new crop of people that think they know it all. Those new crops of people that believe that they have used books for all their going to get out of them and now must find a new pleasure, a new challenge, but not too challenging, since we must remember that we are of a society of quick fixes. So, just like in Fahrenheit, and the telescreen inviting their viewers into the telescreen family; so does reality TV, inviting their viewers into their family. Because after all reality television is the more honest look into the culture around, unlike actual scripted shows that have a purpose in showing you what they show you for the hour or half hour they are on. Reality offers you the opportunity to have your fifteen minutes in the spotlight because after all,
“Reality shows are more honest, but they also breed a kind of country dysmorphic disorder: half the nation is blond, beautiful and driving sports cars through Beverly Hills, while the other half is blond, sleazily oversexed and prone to hair-pulling and name-calling.”
So if that’s you, come on down. This last quote taken from an article found also in The New York Times, entitled, The Classless Utopia of Reality TV. This article focuses on the difference between the scripted show and the reality, and how the reality does not focus on class as much scripted shows. Also, it mentions the melting pot of reality that does advertise to everybody, and everybody does respond. This also brings us to the ultimate focus of The Planet of The Apes, and its view on the demise of society. A society that was once a dominant race, turned into nothing but animals. One must ask themselves if we aren’t already seeing this happening today.
Nowadays, we look around for the quick fix and the good life. We associate these together simply because we are lazy. People think that celebrity will bring tons of money and now will do anything for it, except for the obvious of earning it. Instead they go in search of the scandal because, “No matter how tawdry the tale, how ridiculous the costume required, how cheap the stunt, people will do anything now, tell anything, to get on television.” This quote taken form an article found on CBSNews.com entitled, A Reality Check on Reality TV Aspirants, that is a response to the recent scandal surrounding Professional Golfer, Tiger Woods, and the many woman that are trying to capitalize on his celebrity. These women know what they are doing when coming forward with their tales (whether true or not) of the golfer. They are looking for any sort of television deal or sponsor because as stated in this article, “…getting on television has become the dominant force in American life.”
What people are forgetting and what I believe was the main point trying to be made in Planet of the Apes and Fahrenheit 451, was the ultimate price people pay for their fifteen minutes of ignorance. People don’t understand what to do when they finally get what they ultimately want. Whether if it is to be up on the latest high-priced luxuries, or being the center of the wrong attention. People fail to realize the debt that accrue if you fail to pay the credit card bills on time or the price of the dignity you pay when you sell yourself on television. The article that brings this paper full circle is the article that is simply entitled, Jade Goody, British Reality Television Star, Dies at 27, this article focuses on the life and career of Jade Goody, a woman who rose to fame on the British version of the hit reality show Big Brother. She was a women who came from nothing as a youth, and was determined to stay on top of her fame, which she managed to do until she lost her fight against cervical cancer. In her final months, after accepting her ultimate fate, she earned $1million by selling the media rights of her wedding and was determined to die in front of the media, the same media that in a sense saw her true birth. She was quoted as saying, “I’ve lived my whole adult life talking about my life,” she told an interviewer from her hospital bed. “I’ve lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I’ll die in front of them.”
This last quote sums up the tragedy behind the new 21st century kind of person. This person has put down literature at a moment when we need it the most, in a day and age when prosperity is limitless. He or she has decided for some reason to remain lazy and go in search of the quick fix and has created their own dependency on the high-tech gadgets that promise their own fifteen minutes even if they don’t get it in front on the cameras, they will get it in their own bubble filled with text messages and tweets.
Going back to the article on the Chris Hedge book, we have become, “a country that places prosperity above principle, celebrity above substance, spectacle above nuance and introspection.” We have put the books down and let our minds turn into mush. We have allowed our lives to be controlled by things and people we cannot see. The ones overlooking to make sure we are following the new laws of the land are the IPods, cell phones, and televisions. They make sure what we are listening to, they make sure we know where we are so we feel safe, and they make sure to tell us what we are thinking. So we don’t get away and begin to read novels like George Orwell’s 1984, Fahrenheit 451, or The Planet of the Apes. Because the reality masterminds aren’t fools. They know they need the “reality beings” much more than we need them.
So they keep us preoccupied with reality trash, they keep our minds going with unnecessary opinions on unnecessary people. They keep books away by telling us that we are superior to the images we see, they make us think we have all the answers to life already through unnecessary opinion. In short, reality TV and all its counterparts is dominating our lives, simply because it offers comfort that we feel we need in tough times. Some people call TV, comfort. We MUST ask the question, how comfortable is too comfortable?
THE REAL HOUSEWIVES THEMES
Why? Simple answer, you can put down a book, but you can’t turn off the television. Why not? Another Simple answer, we’ve allowed television and all its technological counterparts to become intertwined with our daily lives. By this I mean that instead of turning to literature for the knowledge needed to become the people we seek to become, we turn to our televisions to tell us what is on our minds and to our cell phones to tell us the date and time and to our IPods to keep us engaged in our personal bubbles filled with tweets (Twitter) and text messaging. And by the comment made that we cannot turn the televisions off, well simple enough, our favorite programming can now be found on our IPods or laptops. Simply put, the information that we highly seek that we don’t need is at our fingertips. And the literature needed for our very survival is pushed to the side of our lives and instead of becoming a strong population of well educated individualized beings, we’re becoming a population of people dependant on material things to get us through our own every day. And ultimately everything learned in books like Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell’s 1984, and Planet of the Apes, are no longer just stories read for fun, they become reality, and soon enough we’ve become entrapped in our own planet of “reality beings.”
Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is reach for my cell phone (that of course is still charging) and check to see the time. There used to be a time when there would be clocks hanging on walls, but in today’s world the twenty-first century person (also known as a “reality being”) is more personalized. Instead of having the clocks on the walls or even the watch on the wrists (do they even make wrist watches anymore?), the time is found on your cell phone, along with your music, your daily dose of entertainment gossip, even the source to our daily communication can be found on your cell phone, basically a world of nonsense is at our fingertips. Literally! And where did this twenty-first century revolution arise from. Pick a channel, any channel, the answer is just a reality show away. Reality TV is the craze that gained notoriety with such shows as Survivor and Big Brother, shows that emphasized the competition for the love of money and revolutionized itself into such shows as I Love Money and Megan Wants a Millionaire. All these shows emphasizing the want of money and the willingness to do whatever it takes to get said amount of money to have a piece of the good life, (even if it means being cooped up in a house with a dozen other strangers or rolling around in mud like a pig or exploiting your own body for the highest bidder (usually the one with the bigger bank account) to win). This good life revolutionized again in the fantastical shows such as The Real Housewives series, this series of shows that follow the lives of five wealthy women in their everyday lives. This series now shows us what to do with the money once you’ve attained it through whatever means you got it from.
Now suddenly our minds become entranced in their real “real” lives and we’ve become addicted. Addicted to their lives? We could care less. No, what we’ve become addicted to is exactly what reality TV strives for us to get highly addicted to. The outlandish behavior that keeps us coming back for more, the premise that we find utterly groundbreaking (a reality spin on the Desperate Housewives?), and finally at the heart of every reality show...money! And the two most important questions, how much and what can I buy with that amount? And this all gives birth to our own dependency. Because what we fail to see every time we turn on our favorite “reality” program, is the marketing behind the show. Some networks will hide this fact with their necessary commercials, but other networks will advertise their objective of advertising to the viewers, right onto their own shows. These, creating a population of consumers, who turn away from the challenge of a novel and will instead indulge themselves in a shiny new tech-toy they feel they need. As stated by Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, found in the article America’s Identity Crisis in an Age of Consumerism and Spectacle, “We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level.” His commentary on a world gone astray really does hit home to all of us who take time out of our day to turn on shows such as The Real Housewives of Atlanta. A show that really has no point other than having women flaunt their wealth even in a time of recession, this became evident outrage on the pages of the New York Times when an article was released entitled, Wealth (and Dior) on Their Minds, highlighting the new stereotype created by those women from the South. “The goal here, as in all the “Housewives” shows, isn’t getting your children into Harvard, but having the ability to keep shopping at Dior and Vuitton without the downer parameters of a budget.” The main point of this article is that now consumerism in reality television has become colored blind. If a wealthy Caucasian from Orange County can marry rich and drive an eighty-thousand dollar car, then why can’t a wealthy woman from Atlanta, Georgia do the same? After all, they both didn’t spend their own money. Now of course, the viewer isn’t going to want to go spend thousands of dollars on luxuries they can’t seriously afford, but, the viewer will let down the walls he or she has built up during this recession time and will spend hundreds of dollars on high-tech-toys they can somewhat afford.
George Orwell introduces us to those kinds of people, those who do what they are told to do without complaint, who live their lives to please someone who can’t be seen, and ultimately love and hate people they are told to hate with a passion. Do we not see a resemblance here to reality television? Do they not encourage us to go out and spend money we don’t have to keep up with what they say is the latest trends? Even though we don’t have the money to spend, especially in a time of recession? Yes, now people will go (even those with the bad credit), and spend, spend, spend their hard earned (or hard borrowed) money on everything they feel will make them superior to those around who don’t have exactly what they have, because on reality television, more is more. “The more you have, the better you feel,” this being the motto behind reality shows. Unlike the motto behind great literature which is, “the more you learn, the better you feel,” which brings me back to the quick fix I spoke of in another text, the quick fix that is popularized by the media, and warned about in books. In doing this do we not feel subconsciously better for buying because not only have we made ourselves feel better but also because we’ve pleased the advertisement in which we saw what was just purchased advertised in? That feeling better because you have in a sense pleased the advertiser is another trick played on the viewer by the advertiser.
Reality masterminds know that they have to keep people interested in the genre, whether it focuses on a particular show or the whole genre in general, they know that have to keep the strings tightly gripped on the puppet. So, when a reality show loses its grip on the viewers, it’s either fixed or axed. A perfect example of this was the “reality,” phenomena Laguna Beach, a show that in its first two seasons became one of the highest rated shows on cable television, and also became a consumer’s paradise. But after only three seasons was let go from the airwaves. This show became a casualty because simply enough people stopped watching. Bravo probably had the same fear with The Real Housewives of Orange County, a show that has become highly criticized for its fakeness. So, after two successful spin offs, soon came a more realistic addition to the Housewives Series, The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The Real Housewives of New Jersey, which is the fourth installment in the housewives series, takes a more realistic turn in reality genre, only in the sense that the people in this are actually related and actually know each other. As stated in another New York Times article entitled, For Ultrareality, ‘Housewives’ Turns to Jersey Girls, on this new reality craze,
“This may be the most preposterous “Housewives” edition, but it’s also the most believable. The suffocating family ties are an improvement over past incarnations, when producers often threw together women who were not really that close and whose frictions often seemed forced. These women actually do know one another well, talk every day and raise their children together (badly). The camera crew seems to be eavesdropping, rather than masterminding.”
This latest edition brings back the spark to the reality junkie. The spark that seemed to be going away with every new item purchased. It brings back the reality to reality TV. Even though it has a different edge on other programs that just put people together and sees what happens. This show still focuses on the materialism, the over-the-top attitudes, and all the extras that make the viewer feel better about themselves. This, all working to ensure that the viewers don’t leave the trusted relationship between them and their real TV that tells them that they have all the answers and that they are superb human beings. Creating a dependent relationship between the viewer and the technology that promises to keep them always in contact with people that they will never meet and the lives they will never live. Just like a child to its mother.
Finally, to end the mirroring of George Orwell’s 1984, do reality shows not encourage us to hate people that we do not even really know or will ever know? Simple Answer to this question, yes! Every day it seems as if some new controversy is sparked up by reality TV. Take The Real Housewives of Atlanta for example, a show about five over-the-top wealthy women living in Atlanta, Georgia. These women sparked controversy not too long ago when they premiered their second season on the Bravo cable network. The controversy here was of the African American race and its new portrayal of shallowness. Brining us back to the article found in The New York Times on the Atlanta Housewives, that highlights the “tight, binary visions,” given to the African American race by these women, who in the article are referred to as “power shoppers” who don’t necessary revolve their lives around serious issues such as getting their children into college, but instead are more concerned with being able to get them into college (with their money) and shopping till they drop. As stated in this article, “There is no point in marrying a cardiologist (or becoming one) when you can hook up with a professional athlete or a vaguely defined entrepreneur who can provide you with a house that has its own beauty salon and the opportunity to hire an estate manager.” This being the underlined message in all The Housewives series’ that you don’t need to worry about life as long as you marry wealthy and stay wealthy. This message, expressed not in favor of the African American person (especially, the African American woman) obviously does not sit well with people, certainly not with the writer behind this article. In this article we see the power reality television is beginning to have on our society as a whole. For the Atlanta Housewives to now become representatives for an entire race, shows just how far reality has really gone and how close to the edge we are to having our society overrun by nothingness because we are now allowing reality television to speak for our interpretations. Just like with the New Jersey Housewives, I mean yes, they do have a certain realistic charm to them. But the show was still meant to entertain not inform (it is not a book after all). Going back to that article of the New Jersey Housewives that highlighted the differences between this show and all its other counterparts still focuses on the similarities of the shows irritabilities. Take Teresa Giuduce, the most superficial one out of all the housewives, whose most famous quote could be heard on the very first episode of the series, which comments on the economy, “I hear the economy’s crashing…So that’s why I pay cash.” Quotes like these are exactly designed to irritate the viewer who worries about how to pay for their next bill. But in quotes like these we see the contradiction in our own annoyances, “The economic slump is rarely if ever mentioned on “Real Housewives.” Partly, that’s because it’s a buzzkill for viewers hooked on the free-floating vulgarity.” But, I must also note that if it is not mentioned on the show, we wonder why, and automatically we begin to feel hatred towards the fictional people that stare back at us on the television. Because we care about them, no, not at all, it’s because we want to be them, simple as that, and reality masterminds feed on this, and they feed on us, stealing our minds away from individualism because they know that the people that have their lives together and do not have dependency on the material or their version of reality cannot be tamed and then the hierarchy will happen.
Well, George Orwell may have introduced us to a world of people without identity. But it is Ray Bradbury who shows us the slow deterioration of a society as a whole and puts it all into perspective for us. In Fahrenheit 451, the books are the enemies and the “family” is the essential key to life in a sense. Here we see what has happened to literature or better yet what the people have allowed to happen to books. Instead of reading (because the books are outlawed) people turn to their telescreens and revolve around them. Just like we revolve around our technology, you could take the entire novel of Fahrenheit as a warning of a future to come or of a future that has already arrived. Like stated earlier, we buy things we see advertised, whether in a commercial or on the actual product reality has served up for us that day. We go out and comply with the peer pressure of our own consumerism and to top it off, we make sure we buy the latest gadgets to simply be able to keep up with the latest episodes of a reality show we used to just watch at home. Now without noticing, our dependency on material things has begun, because reality TV doesn’t just stop at product placement, it makes sure that it is everywhere you want to be. Just in case that pesky book should pass you by, reality television can swat it away like a pesky fly, because at the moral of anything that has to do with reality is you.
This all brings us to the “reality beings,” that new crop of people that think they know it all. Those new crops of people that believe that they have used books for all their going to get out of them and now must find a new pleasure, a new challenge, but not too challenging, since we must remember that we are of a society of quick fixes. So, just like in Fahrenheit, and the telescreen inviting their viewers into the telescreen family; so does reality TV, inviting their viewers into their family. Because after all reality television is the more honest look into the culture around, unlike actual scripted shows that have a purpose in showing you what they show you for the hour or half hour they are on. Reality offers you the opportunity to have your fifteen minutes in the spotlight because after all,
“Reality shows are more honest, but they also breed a kind of country dysmorphic disorder: half the nation is blond, beautiful and driving sports cars through Beverly Hills, while the other half is blond, sleazily oversexed and prone to hair-pulling and name-calling.”
So if that’s you, come on down. This last quote taken from an article found also in The New York Times, entitled, The Classless Utopia of Reality TV. This article focuses on the difference between the scripted show and the reality, and how the reality does not focus on class as much scripted shows. Also, it mentions the melting pot of reality that does advertise to everybody, and everybody does respond. This also brings us to the ultimate focus of The Planet of The Apes, and its view on the demise of society. A society that was once a dominant race, turned into nothing but animals. One must ask themselves if we aren’t already seeing this happening today.
Nowadays, we look around for the quick fix and the good life. We associate these together simply because we are lazy. People think that celebrity will bring tons of money and now will do anything for it, except for the obvious of earning it. Instead they go in search of the scandal because, “No matter how tawdry the tale, how ridiculous the costume required, how cheap the stunt, people will do anything now, tell anything, to get on television.” This quote taken form an article found on CBSNews.com entitled, A Reality Check on Reality TV Aspirants, that is a response to the recent scandal surrounding Professional Golfer, Tiger Woods, and the many woman that are trying to capitalize on his celebrity. These women know what they are doing when coming forward with their tales (whether true or not) of the golfer. They are looking for any sort of television deal or sponsor because as stated in this article, “…getting on television has become the dominant force in American life.”
What people are forgetting and what I believe was the main point trying to be made in Planet of the Apes and Fahrenheit 451, was the ultimate price people pay for their fifteen minutes of ignorance. People don’t understand what to do when they finally get what they ultimately want. Whether if it is to be up on the latest high-priced luxuries, or being the center of the wrong attention. People fail to realize the debt that accrue if you fail to pay the credit card bills on time or the price of the dignity you pay when you sell yourself on television. The article that brings this paper full circle is the article that is simply entitled, Jade Goody, British Reality Television Star, Dies at 27, this article focuses on the life and career of Jade Goody, a woman who rose to fame on the British version of the hit reality show Big Brother. She was a women who came from nothing as a youth, and was determined to stay on top of her fame, which she managed to do until she lost her fight against cervical cancer. In her final months, after accepting her ultimate fate, she earned $1million by selling the media rights of her wedding and was determined to die in front of the media, the same media that in a sense saw her true birth. She was quoted as saying, “I’ve lived my whole adult life talking about my life,” she told an interviewer from her hospital bed. “I’ve lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I’ll die in front of them.”
This last quote sums up the tragedy behind the new 21st century kind of person. This person has put down literature at a moment when we need it the most, in a day and age when prosperity is limitless. He or she has decided for some reason to remain lazy and go in search of the quick fix and has created their own dependency on the high-tech gadgets that promise their own fifteen minutes even if they don’t get it in front on the cameras, they will get it in their own bubble filled with text messages and tweets.
Going back to the article on the Chris Hedge book, we have become, “a country that places prosperity above principle, celebrity above substance, spectacle above nuance and introspection.” We have put the books down and let our minds turn into mush. We have allowed our lives to be controlled by things and people we cannot see. The ones overlooking to make sure we are following the new laws of the land are the IPods, cell phones, and televisions. They make sure what we are listening to, they make sure we know where we are so we feel safe, and they make sure to tell us what we are thinking. So we don’t get away and begin to read novels like George Orwell’s 1984, Fahrenheit 451, or The Planet of the Apes. Because the reality masterminds aren’t fools. They know they need the “reality beings” much more than we need them.
So they keep us preoccupied with reality trash, they keep our minds going with unnecessary opinions on unnecessary people. They keep books away by telling us that we are superior to the images we see, they make us think we have all the answers to life already through unnecessary opinion. In short, reality TV and all its counterparts is dominating our lives, simply because it offers comfort that we feel we need in tough times. Some people call TV, comfort. We MUST ask the question, how comfortable is too comfortable?
THE REAL HOUSEWIVES THEMES
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Cyborg and The American Feminist
What I find interesting about this article is the cyborg metaphor, referring to women as cyborg was very interesting. I mean if you think about it women were cyborgs in their pasts. They were half machine-the part of them that did everything that they were told without question, and half human –the part of them that took the time out to enjoy the little pleasures in life. This for to think about everything we’ve been learning in class this semester. And I can see how the cyborg metaphor could be interpreted into every reading we’ve done thus far. In 1984, the people were a product of their society, not the other way around. In Planet of the Apes, the humans had become the monkeys and the monkeys had become the “humans”. No one expressed the true essence of the human revolutionist.
“But basically machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve man's dream, only mock it.” The emphasis here is on the machinery of one person, not giving a true essence of “a dream,” take the marriage between a man and a woman. The man walks around as the head of the household and the woman his puppet, he believes that he really is the man of the house but only because the woman won’t reach for the suppressed feelings. But once she, once the cyborg diminishes and the woman break loose the man’s “dream” will all have been in his head.
I think that’s what I found more interesting about the cyborg metaphor, the mixing the mixing of human and machine, the emptiness that brings to social beings. This got me to think of the factory in that youtube clip we were watching a couple of weeks ago. The way the men were hurdled into whatever factory position they had and just stayed there, doing whatever it was they were doing for however long they did it for. Just like the woman of the past. The woman who were the mantelpieces for their husbands, the ones you looked at but never spoke to directly, those sentimental cyborgs.
“But basically machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve man's dream, only mock it.” The emphasis here is on the machinery of one person, not giving a true essence of “a dream,” take the marriage between a man and a woman. The man walks around as the head of the household and the woman his puppet, he believes that he really is the man of the house but only because the woman won’t reach for the suppressed feelings. But once she, once the cyborg diminishes and the woman break loose the man’s “dream” will all have been in his head.
I think that’s what I found more interesting about the cyborg metaphor, the mixing the mixing of human and machine, the emptiness that brings to social beings. This got me to think of the factory in that youtube clip we were watching a couple of weeks ago. The way the men were hurdled into whatever factory position they had and just stayed there, doing whatever it was they were doing for however long they did it for. Just like the woman of the past. The woman who were the mantelpieces for their husbands, the ones you looked at but never spoke to directly, those sentimental cyborgs.
Looking for the quick fix in the Spotless Fahrenheit
“Let you alone! That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be alone? We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” Something important, something real, the point that was the backbone to the novel Fahrenheit 451, a novel that struggles with the loss of great literature and with it the loss of humanity in the sense of individualism, and in a sense a loss of a relationship with the self. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind also deals with loss, the loss of memory, the loss of past relationships gone wrong, the loss of the realness in life, and in a sense a loss of self. Common ground is found here, both Fahrenheit and Eternal Sunshine both deal with the loss of something, something important, something real. In a way this can be used in society today, it can be seen in the way people live their lives always finding the easy way out and how this quick fix is never the best answer in life because every time it is used we lose a little bit or ourselves in the process. Which now brings us to the ultimate failure in this process of the quick fix, the ultimate failure comes in the part of the individual, the fickle person whose happiness is only temporary and soon needs to see what he is missing because that’s just what the individual does making everything that he has goes through with the quick fix ultimately pointless.
Both Fahrenheit 451 and Eternal Sunshine can be used to examine humanity. On one hand, Fahrenheit offers us a view of what can happen when a society is mislead and turns their back on something that was taken for granted from the start of time. This is why Fahrenheit does not lose its significance in time, with the changing of time and the changing of styles, people tend to gravitate to what is new and what is hip, and books tend to stay on the sideline like a used handbag. With technology advancing (beginning to serve the same duty the firemen do), they burn books in our mind by turning off our need for books and leaning toward the side where we spend less time in the library and more time on the internet, to make our lives a little easier. And in doing so we turn off our minds to great literature, we dumb ourselves down to the so-called-MTV-generation status and in a sense start losing value in society. The result being people begin to talk down to us (can anyone say Mildred?), and we make it harder on ourselves to be taken seriously, but also we make it harder for us to actually listen. Since we can do everything on our cell phones nowadays, we start looking for the easy ways out, the quick fixes. So now the challenge is brought up with the search for a book in the library for a research paper, the self sufficient person is now gone with the quick fix.
If Match.com can find us a mate, then why can’t someone get rid of a bad relationship for us? In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind people were actually given that option with Lacuna, Inc. If people did not like the course their relationship was taking, then, all they needed to do was simply have their memory erased of that one particular person. Which is exactly what Joel does (following Clementine), here we see the new millennium at its finest. In Fahrenheit the firemen are used to burn the books that stop (or are supposed to stop) individualism. Well here we see the binary opposite in a way while still seeing that same dumb down we see in Fahrenheit. In Spotless, individualism is promoted with Lacuna, Inc. seen here catering to the individual, that 21st century kind of person who does not have time to be bothered with the complexities of remembering about old relationship gone bad. But by catering to people and trying to keep them happy, (which is ultimately what Lacuna is trying to strive for) are they not robbing them of the experiences needed to deal with another relationship if the same problems arise. In the same sense that searching for that book in the library needed for that research paper, so is that bad relationship needed in order to become more self sufficient for that next relationship, after all we can’t date the internet. Would the individual not lose a sense of their self if one day they should wake up and suddenly that guy that cheated on that girl with her mother was not even a distant memory?
When dealing with the pain of something or challenge of something else, the individual gets a sense of their own being. So in turn that needed self discovery is now taken away when a quick fix comes along thinking it can keep society happy. But it does not work in Fahrenheit 451 and it does not work in Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind. The simple reason for this is, happiness does not exist and cannot exist without the suffering one must go through to find the happiness first. In Fahrenheit the books offered the threat of people beginning to think differently from one another and when that happens a person becomes an individual and then the hierarchies form, and soon people are unhappy. The quick fix, turn on the family and have families focus on them versus Shakespeare. This does not work, first off because they fail to get rid of all the books in the world, and second because the firemen forget to realize that people are fickle, in order for them to lose interest in the next best thing, they need a complete lobotomy first (as even Beatty had books in his home). In Eternal Sunshine, the problem was the heartache of a bad relationship; the solution was deletion of that particular which should now make the person as happy as they were. And in a sense they were offering new leases on life. Except, those new leases did not last. Why? Because the people ultimately found themselves back in the same situation, which is exactly what happens with Joel and Clementine, who eventually find themselves in the same situation, same relationship. Which is exactly what happens in Fahrenheit the exact same thing the firemen were trying to shield society from was thrown in their faces at the end.
Fahrenheit 451 and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless offer society a view at themselves in a sense. The people in Fahrenheit were sufficed with the quick fix of the outlawed books and the family in order to prevent hierarchy and promote peace. Just like we’re happy today with the internet searches instead of searching libraries for the same information needed for that research paper. Just like the people in Eternal Sunshine were sufficed with memory erasing in place of the heartbreak needed to move on and grow stronger within their own selves, like people who use Match.com today instead of going the old fashioned route of looking for a mate in a social setting. These quick fixes are all soon pointless as people will eventually (if by choice or by force) go in search of what they have either avoided or tried to avoid because that’s what the person does. Whether he or she are of the modern persuasion or are of a time that has passed the end result is the same. Everything that the firefighters went through failed and everything Lacuna tried to do for their patients failed. Because unless we can cure fickleness everything else is just pointless, it is all just pointlessness in the spotless mind.
Both Fahrenheit 451 and Eternal Sunshine can be used to examine humanity. On one hand, Fahrenheit offers us a view of what can happen when a society is mislead and turns their back on something that was taken for granted from the start of time. This is why Fahrenheit does not lose its significance in time, with the changing of time and the changing of styles, people tend to gravitate to what is new and what is hip, and books tend to stay on the sideline like a used handbag. With technology advancing (beginning to serve the same duty the firemen do), they burn books in our mind by turning off our need for books and leaning toward the side where we spend less time in the library and more time on the internet, to make our lives a little easier. And in doing so we turn off our minds to great literature, we dumb ourselves down to the so-called-MTV-generation status and in a sense start losing value in society. The result being people begin to talk down to us (can anyone say Mildred?), and we make it harder on ourselves to be taken seriously, but also we make it harder for us to actually listen. Since we can do everything on our cell phones nowadays, we start looking for the easy ways out, the quick fixes. So now the challenge is brought up with the search for a book in the library for a research paper, the self sufficient person is now gone with the quick fix.
If Match.com can find us a mate, then why can’t someone get rid of a bad relationship for us? In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind people were actually given that option with Lacuna, Inc. If people did not like the course their relationship was taking, then, all they needed to do was simply have their memory erased of that one particular person. Which is exactly what Joel does (following Clementine), here we see the new millennium at its finest. In Fahrenheit the firemen are used to burn the books that stop (or are supposed to stop) individualism. Well here we see the binary opposite in a way while still seeing that same dumb down we see in Fahrenheit. In Spotless, individualism is promoted with Lacuna, Inc. seen here catering to the individual, that 21st century kind of person who does not have time to be bothered with the complexities of remembering about old relationship gone bad. But by catering to people and trying to keep them happy, (which is ultimately what Lacuna is trying to strive for) are they not robbing them of the experiences needed to deal with another relationship if the same problems arise. In the same sense that searching for that book in the library needed for that research paper, so is that bad relationship needed in order to become more self sufficient for that next relationship, after all we can’t date the internet. Would the individual not lose a sense of their self if one day they should wake up and suddenly that guy that cheated on that girl with her mother was not even a distant memory?
When dealing with the pain of something or challenge of something else, the individual gets a sense of their own being. So in turn that needed self discovery is now taken away when a quick fix comes along thinking it can keep society happy. But it does not work in Fahrenheit 451 and it does not work in Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind. The simple reason for this is, happiness does not exist and cannot exist without the suffering one must go through to find the happiness first. In Fahrenheit the books offered the threat of people beginning to think differently from one another and when that happens a person becomes an individual and then the hierarchies form, and soon people are unhappy. The quick fix, turn on the family and have families focus on them versus Shakespeare. This does not work, first off because they fail to get rid of all the books in the world, and second because the firemen forget to realize that people are fickle, in order for them to lose interest in the next best thing, they need a complete lobotomy first (as even Beatty had books in his home). In Eternal Sunshine, the problem was the heartache of a bad relationship; the solution was deletion of that particular which should now make the person as happy as they were. And in a sense they were offering new leases on life. Except, those new leases did not last. Why? Because the people ultimately found themselves back in the same situation, which is exactly what happens with Joel and Clementine, who eventually find themselves in the same situation, same relationship. Which is exactly what happens in Fahrenheit the exact same thing the firemen were trying to shield society from was thrown in their faces at the end.
Fahrenheit 451 and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless offer society a view at themselves in a sense. The people in Fahrenheit were sufficed with the quick fix of the outlawed books and the family in order to prevent hierarchy and promote peace. Just like we’re happy today with the internet searches instead of searching libraries for the same information needed for that research paper. Just like the people in Eternal Sunshine were sufficed with memory erasing in place of the heartbreak needed to move on and grow stronger within their own selves, like people who use Match.com today instead of going the old fashioned route of looking for a mate in a social setting. These quick fixes are all soon pointless as people will eventually (if by choice or by force) go in search of what they have either avoided or tried to avoid because that’s what the person does. Whether he or she are of the modern persuasion or are of a time that has passed the end result is the same. Everything that the firefighters went through failed and everything Lacuna tried to do for their patients failed. Because unless we can cure fickleness everything else is just pointless, it is all just pointlessness in the spotless mind.
The Haves and The Have Not’s
"Sunday: Class is a relation of owning. Monday: However it is not any owning but owning what produces more owning—it is owning labor (living and past) because labor is "a commodity that has the peculiar property that its use is the source of new value."
This is what was stated in Ebert's article on what class is related to, those who own and those who work for the owners to circle back and give their money back to the owners. If you think about it, the article made sense. There are only two classes, those who have and those who don’t; I mean that's basically what we strive for in our societies. The American Dream is based on it, having family, a good job, a big house, and money to play with. TV shows advertise it all the time. From Desperate Housewives to Gossip girl, it’s all one big advertisement for these seven days of the week. Even college has the underline of money-making. Go to school, become well educated and you’ll get the good job and make the money you didn’t have growing up. This isn’t always true. Especially not in today’s world, so there it is…our reality. Our reality advertising the obvious in our own faces, you don’t have money, get it and get it soon. Because you either or you don’t, and money is fun, there is no middle class anymore; middle class is in the state of mind. Your actual worth class is based on your ability and net worth.
This is basically the same main point in the article proceeding by Marx, in which its focus is on the bourgeois, more importantly the worker of the bourgeois. Those who are the crowded in the factories and worked like soldiers all for the profit of capital, or for the worker or Proletariat, a wage that can keep him or her in subsistence and doesn’t take them very far. And that forces him to return to his or her line of work in order to increase the capital of the bourgeois and keep their minimum wage. Which brings me back to the American Dream, which brings people back to work, and the irony in the haves and have not’s. The have not’s go back to work thinking the longer they stay or the more they work the more they’ll earn, when in reality the world is set up to keep the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. And in this we see the irony, the irony being that the have not’s never realize that their work is for nothing. Their jobs only make them enough to live week by week, so no matter how much they save, they’ll be on the other side of the American Dream. They’ll just stay in their 9 to 5’s and live in their daydreams of the house in the suburbs and the happy wife and happy life, never realizing that for them that dream lives and dies for them on Wisteria Lane.
This is what was stated in Ebert's article on what class is related to, those who own and those who work for the owners to circle back and give their money back to the owners. If you think about it, the article made sense. There are only two classes, those who have and those who don’t; I mean that's basically what we strive for in our societies. The American Dream is based on it, having family, a good job, a big house, and money to play with. TV shows advertise it all the time. From Desperate Housewives to Gossip girl, it’s all one big advertisement for these seven days of the week. Even college has the underline of money-making. Go to school, become well educated and you’ll get the good job and make the money you didn’t have growing up. This isn’t always true. Especially not in today’s world, so there it is…our reality. Our reality advertising the obvious in our own faces, you don’t have money, get it and get it soon. Because you either or you don’t, and money is fun, there is no middle class anymore; middle class is in the state of mind. Your actual worth class is based on your ability and net worth.
This is basically the same main point in the article proceeding by Marx, in which its focus is on the bourgeois, more importantly the worker of the bourgeois. Those who are the crowded in the factories and worked like soldiers all for the profit of capital, or for the worker or Proletariat, a wage that can keep him or her in subsistence and doesn’t take them very far. And that forces him to return to his or her line of work in order to increase the capital of the bourgeois and keep their minimum wage. Which brings me back to the American Dream, which brings people back to work, and the irony in the haves and have not’s. The have not’s go back to work thinking the longer they stay or the more they work the more they’ll earn, when in reality the world is set up to keep the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. And in this we see the irony, the irony being that the have not’s never realize that their work is for nothing. Their jobs only make them enough to live week by week, so no matter how much they save, they’ll be on the other side of the American Dream. They’ll just stay in their 9 to 5’s and live in their daydreams of the house in the suburbs and the happy wife and happy life, never realizing that for them that dream lives and dies for them on Wisteria Lane.
Nothingness Mirrors 451
Let me start off by saying that Fahrenheit 451 was one of the most complex books I have ever read. Just to think that the people in this book lived in a world where books were outlawed and the firefighters were the ones that enforced this law, and that everyone was fine with this and just treated it as a “whatever” sort of thing was beyond words to me. And to think how the minds of the women in this book were being robbed and meshed into nothingness got me thinking of how people act today. I remember reading an online article once on IPods, the article didn’t just focus on IPods it was a sort of article on all media, but the IPod was its main focus. Either way, the article was about how we disconnect ourselves from reality by the electronics we carry around. For example, when we walk around campus, or down the street, or even drive with the headphones in our ears we disconnect ourselves from what is going on in the world and become less social to people around us and aware of situations around us. In a way that’s what was happening here. In the beginning Guy comes home to find his wife in bed with the seashells in her ears. Their relationship is so disconnected from each other that Guy doesn’t even realize that his wife has tried to commit suicide until after he knocks over the empty bottle of pills. Even afterwards the next morning instead of discussing the issue or trying to get help for his wife the issue is dropped and Mildred does back to her “family.” In this world books are outlawed and the “family” is what gains the attention? She devotes her days to the television and her nights to her seashells. Like we devote our days to the computer and our nights to texting and IPods to unwind, and maybe that’s exactly what the motivation was behind outlawing literature. I mean if books are out of the way in a sense our brains get shut off, I mean they would still work for common sense sort of things, but without something challenge it’s all mush, our common sense turns into what “they” tell us is common sense. And without the connection of others, there is no one going against this madness of the loss of literature. No breaking out of the norm and no nothing. Basically this book shows us and is a social commentary on how if we allow the literature out of our lives, if allow the realness, real thoughts, real emotions, real everything, we have nothing.
Utopia Reversed
Human history first begins with Socialism? This, one of the last things stated in the article 1984-Utopia Reversed, a commentary to 1984. But how can history begin under a controlled society? This last statement made meant in part that with Socialism men and women were free to choose their own destiny; the only catch was that they had to choose a destiny (ergo controlled society). In 1984 everything about the society in Winston’s world was controlled and the argument made was that this controlled way of living was no way of living at all. In fact George Orwell died pleading to the human race to not end up as “ultra-modern slaves,” which, in fact are what people in his 1984 novel, ended up being, consisting of people waking up and going to sleep under the eye of a telescreen.
Now Orwell also mentions, “that it need not be if there is a sufficiently high level of human consciousness, that the experiment rests finally on that high level of human consciousness,” in response to ultra-modern slavery. In Orwell’s mind the “ultra-modern slave,” is basically one who has no mind of his own, a sexless drone, who speaks in new language. Now, while it is true that language changes over time, sex and sexism will never go out of style. By this I mean, that sex is everywhere and is always a controversial subject. And sexism walking hand in hand with controversy always (as well sex) seems to spark a debate between the sexes ending in the speaking up of the mind. In a controlled society human nature and human instinct are numbed to the point of non-existence. No. That can never be the case in human society, the people in his book may have been non-sexual drones but in the real world sex is yet another way to identify one’s self.
In our class the question was brought up, “who do you know who you are?” In today’s world (for some) it is about what we have that identify who we are, from the third generation Ipod, to the Mac laptop versus the PC laptop. So some could say that we are already ultra-modern slaves to our own need, but even then we see our instinct shine through. That personal need to outshine everyone, that need to be above everyone else even if it is by sporting the latest accessory. That need to overpower socially, is yet another why the modern slave can never exist. Because unless (unlike in 1984) a powerful government can find a way to control people from the inside and out, slavery modern (if ever existence) will only be able to go so far. But in my opinion will most likely never happen.
Now Orwell also mentions, “that it need not be if there is a sufficiently high level of human consciousness, that the experiment rests finally on that high level of human consciousness,” in response to ultra-modern slavery. In Orwell’s mind the “ultra-modern slave,” is basically one who has no mind of his own, a sexless drone, who speaks in new language. Now, while it is true that language changes over time, sex and sexism will never go out of style. By this I mean, that sex is everywhere and is always a controversial subject. And sexism walking hand in hand with controversy always (as well sex) seems to spark a debate between the sexes ending in the speaking up of the mind. In a controlled society human nature and human instinct are numbed to the point of non-existence. No. That can never be the case in human society, the people in his book may have been non-sexual drones but in the real world sex is yet another way to identify one’s self.
In our class the question was brought up, “who do you know who you are?” In today’s world (for some) it is about what we have that identify who we are, from the third generation Ipod, to the Mac laptop versus the PC laptop. So some could say that we are already ultra-modern slaves to our own need, but even then we see our instinct shine through. That personal need to outshine everyone, that need to be above everyone else even if it is by sporting the latest accessory. That need to overpower socially, is yet another why the modern slave can never exist. Because unless (unlike in 1984) a powerful government can find a way to control people from the inside and out, slavery modern (if ever existence) will only be able to go so far. But in my opinion will most likely never happen.
Individual Choice of a Pop Society
Okay, so genetics is highly based on the individual choice. That’s all great and fair when considering the eugenics and their need to create a perfect society. I like the idea of the individual choice, but, something that was touched on that needs to be looked into a little more. How is it individual choice when you’ve got society to think of? Seriously think about that for a minute, a doctor is able to tell a set of parents their child will be born with a debilitating disease, the parents usually tend to overlook this and decide to love their child no matter what. But what happens to the parents that may already have children and maybe can’t afford this child (as it was stated in the article that in London it averages out to 40,000 pounds a year to support a disabled child, which comes to almost $180,000 a year in U.S. currency)? Not to overlook the thoughts that naturally go through their minds of how society will accept their child, depending on what the child will be born with. When considering all these factors the parents might not want to have this child. And then it really wasn’t their choice, they’ve bowed down to economical and society’s pressures. Then, we must consider how free the choice is of the individual(s) when it comes to the knowledge of “new genetics”.
The one good thing about genetics versus eugenics is the final outcome. While it is true that people may not always make the final decision based on themselves, at least the final decision is left up to them. With eugenics, it’s all about creating the perfect gene for the “prefect children,” like the pairing the pairing of a dumb woman with a smart guy to create a smart child, or China’s emphasis on male children versus female (as stated in the article). Genetics does ultimately focus on the patient and not on politics. Ultimately, genetics sets out to find cures for the diseases that aren’t curable yet, like the cancer that kills with or without chemo (at times). And ultimately what genetics does and is doing for us is giving us better understanding of our bodies and of the things around us that can help us or potentially hurt us. And still whether we understand it or not, gives us the ultimate in our lives (in the medical sense).
The one good thing about genetics versus eugenics is the final outcome. While it is true that people may not always make the final decision based on themselves, at least the final decision is left up to them. With eugenics, it’s all about creating the perfect gene for the “prefect children,” like the pairing the pairing of a dumb woman with a smart guy to create a smart child, or China’s emphasis on male children versus female (as stated in the article). Genetics does ultimately focus on the patient and not on politics. Ultimately, genetics sets out to find cures for the diseases that aren’t curable yet, like the cancer that kills with or without chemo (at times). And ultimately what genetics does and is doing for us is giving us better understanding of our bodies and of the things around us that can help us or potentially hurt us. And still whether we understand it or not, gives us the ultimate in our lives (in the medical sense).
The Discipline Article
The article Discipline & Punish was not only very interesting, but also made me think. I mean breaking up a town into sections with each its own “commander” if you will, all because of the fear of something they don’t know, such as the Plague, and allowing themselves to succumb to their own fright and allow constant monitoring. And then to have a big area in which you are confined to isolation with the fear of being watched consistently but never really knowing it. This article focuses on two very different ways of controlling a population that have the same result. One focuses more on mass hysteria singling out the “lepers” of the society and individualizing for a negative effect, while at the same time instilling fear of not only the unknown but also fear of individualization or of being “abnormal.” The other focuses on the isolated person who is instilled with a fear of Big Brother, to the point of actual observation becoming unnecessary, all for the same result of complete control of the human person, both tactics are used in the novel 1984.The constant observation and investigation into a person’s psyche, in 1984, the unknown being Big Brother, and the control coming from a piece of machinery called the telecast, never actually knowing when its watching you but knowing that it is. Individual thought is gone, and now, “War is peace, Freedom is slavery, and Ignorance is strength” (Orwell, p. 4). People follow that saying without questioning it for the fear of being vaporized.
In reading both the article and the novel, I found it very fascinating how simple and complex the ways of controlling people were. Making prisons resemble schools, hospitals, and factories, and even turning the homes into prisons so it becomes like a suffocation of the soul with nowhere to go. It made me think of today’s world and how easily we can be watched and how easily we conform to technological devices and never once considering the reality that maybe “Big brother is watching is,” maybe for a fear of its actuality or a fear of being singled out of the masses.
In reading both the article and the novel, I found it very fascinating how simple and complex the ways of controlling people were. Making prisons resemble schools, hospitals, and factories, and even turning the homes into prisons so it becomes like a suffocation of the soul with nowhere to go. It made me think of today’s world and how easily we can be watched and how easily we conform to technological devices and never once considering the reality that maybe “Big brother is watching is,” maybe for a fear of its actuality or a fear of being singled out of the masses.
The Capitalist Society
Reading the articles, “The Work of Art in the Age Mechanical Reproduction” and “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” by both Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adjorno got me thinking the way people are today and at the pedestal we put pop culture today, and the term “cultural chaos.” Not realizing (some realizing and not caring) that the entertainment industry is just as its name states, an industry. An industry that caters to the individual, while at the same time catering to everyone, we are living in world where everything we buy, we watch, we listen to, is in some way being recorded, jotted down, noted somewhere. So it can later be reproduced in a different vision but in the same essence. We live in a world of consumers and producers, we consume, they produce, they are the capitalist who seems to be getting richer and richer, while we struggle to maintain ourselves every day. This was best highlighted in Adjorno’s article in which he talks about slums and city dwellings, designed to make the individuals who can’t afford any better feel like an individual. Here, the capitalists come in with their suggestive marketing as the new found individuals “are drawn into the center in search of work and pleasure.” With poorer getting poorer and the richer getting richer, reproduction has become an ever-increasing way of the industry. And has completely overshadowed the value, as stated in Benjamin’s article about reproduction, “They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery…” Meaning that as we go to the movies for example, and we praise the blockbuster, the outcome of the feature itself isn’t what people go out of it, but, what did the companies get out of it? Meaning box office, product placement, they later take that back, and reproduce the next Spider Man installment.
In this sense, it is proven that we are not living in cultural chaos because we live in highly monitored lifestyle, everything that we want to see is shown to us and we are able to take it home with us and everything that has been determined not so pleasurable is thrown away and forgotten. So to say we live in a cultural chaos isn’t true because we are only given what we love. The only victim here is unfortunately the art itself, with mass reproduction letting us take home everything we see and here, and with the reproduction only producing what we want, it leaves little space for the value of the product, versus the value of the product. Meaning the meaning, the art, the essence of anything is now drowned out by how much it can sell for or how much revenue it can bring in. In this sense, art now depreciates itself in the era of mass production because simply put when something is overly duplicated, it loses itself. We put pop culture on a high pedestal of highly anticipated releases, but the art in pop culture remains dormant, and we don’t even see it because we’ve conformed.
In this sense, it is proven that we are not living in cultural chaos because we live in highly monitored lifestyle, everything that we want to see is shown to us and we are able to take it home with us and everything that has been determined not so pleasurable is thrown away and forgotten. So to say we live in a cultural chaos isn’t true because we are only given what we love. The only victim here is unfortunately the art itself, with mass reproduction letting us take home everything we see and here, and with the reproduction only producing what we want, it leaves little space for the value of the product, versus the value of the product. Meaning the meaning, the art, the essence of anything is now drowned out by how much it can sell for or how much revenue it can bring in. In this sense, art now depreciates itself in the era of mass production because simply put when something is overly duplicated, it loses itself. We put pop culture on a high pedestal of highly anticipated releases, but the art in pop culture remains dormant, and we don’t even see it because we’ve conformed.
The Future of Ideology
The articles read this week both focus on a world run by money. And both prove that a world that isn’t run and overpowered by the almighty dollar isn’t a world at all, but a society that wouldn’t last a year. While one focuses on state apparatuses the other focuses purely on capitalism, the latter seeing the new imbalance of life and those who are able to pay for it are the master’s of their own lives and those who can’t are clamoring to get it without knowing the real cost to get a hold of their own economic destiny while brining into question the future of our own society as it is unable to reproduce the prosperity it once had.
In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Lois Althusser, the articles begins by stating that every child knows that a society or “social formation” would not last a year if not able to preserve the reproduction of production from the year before. This first statement speaks volumes of our society as it is now and the way products and fads are changing. It only proves how our society lives off of the mass production it is force fed on a daily basis and defines its identity by the things it can afford to buy. This is where the “state apparatuses” are able to take advantage of the world they rule, they take those who live for materialism and either forces them to be the ones who rule over the mass production or are the ones who make it possible for the production to set out (i.e. sweatshop workers), this is the repressive the state apparatus. While the ideological state apparatus speaks of the brainwashing tactics and less forceful methods of making sure that the strong are able to lure over the weak and the weak are able to do what he is “destined” to do as stated, “children at school also learn the ‘rules’ of good behaviour, i.e. the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour, according to the job he is ‘destined’ for: rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination.”
The second article, Where Did the Future Go? By Randy Martin, this article speaks of capitalism and of those who master it and those who want to master but never grasp the true price of it. The “it” being the height of capitalism and the height of “society” so to speak, and the imbalance provided by capitalism was to set forth the new age and a new utopia. And the steps taken to make capitalism seem like the best choice for American’s today, like programs to help the future of America not slack off to be undermined in the future markets, which was the purpose of such programs as “No child left behind.” This can also be compared to the ideological apparatus that was mentioned by the first article, as the underlined tactic is to teach the youth their exact destiny, but unfortunately children were still left behind. So to keep momentum going in the capitalist point of view, the war is also used as a way to make spending money seem best and widen the imbalance between the rich and the poor. As stated in the article, “the advice on how Americans can help after 911: “go shopping.”” Even in time of recession when Americans have no money to spend, stores are lowering prices to entice us to come in, and even our own president advises us to spend the money we don’t have. This now brings into question the future that once looked bright for Americans now looking dim as other countries pass us by in the world markets.
In conclusion, in a world where mass production is the dominant and supply and demand is linked to our survival. Both articles question what world would we have? What society would we have if these things didn’t exist? As to say where would we be if we weren’t able to keep up the mass productions of our materials. Both articles seem to suggest that a world without our materials, without money being the driving force behind even our own patriotism, our world would crumble and suffice not going beyond one year it would bring down completely everything and everyone around as there would now be no purpose for education (because there would be nothing to learn for) and our identities would be lost.
In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses by Lois Althusser, the articles begins by stating that every child knows that a society or “social formation” would not last a year if not able to preserve the reproduction of production from the year before. This first statement speaks volumes of our society as it is now and the way products and fads are changing. It only proves how our society lives off of the mass production it is force fed on a daily basis and defines its identity by the things it can afford to buy. This is where the “state apparatuses” are able to take advantage of the world they rule, they take those who live for materialism and either forces them to be the ones who rule over the mass production or are the ones who make it possible for the production to set out (i.e. sweatshop workers), this is the repressive the state apparatus. While the ideological state apparatus speaks of the brainwashing tactics and less forceful methods of making sure that the strong are able to lure over the weak and the weak are able to do what he is “destined” to do as stated, “children at school also learn the ‘rules’ of good behaviour, i.e. the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour, according to the job he is ‘destined’ for: rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination.”
The second article, Where Did the Future Go? By Randy Martin, this article speaks of capitalism and of those who master it and those who want to master but never grasp the true price of it. The “it” being the height of capitalism and the height of “society” so to speak, and the imbalance provided by capitalism was to set forth the new age and a new utopia. And the steps taken to make capitalism seem like the best choice for American’s today, like programs to help the future of America not slack off to be undermined in the future markets, which was the purpose of such programs as “No child left behind.” This can also be compared to the ideological apparatus that was mentioned by the first article, as the underlined tactic is to teach the youth their exact destiny, but unfortunately children were still left behind. So to keep momentum going in the capitalist point of view, the war is also used as a way to make spending money seem best and widen the imbalance between the rich and the poor. As stated in the article, “the advice on how Americans can help after 911: “go shopping.”” Even in time of recession when Americans have no money to spend, stores are lowering prices to entice us to come in, and even our own president advises us to spend the money we don’t have. This now brings into question the future that once looked bright for Americans now looking dim as other countries pass us by in the world markets.
In conclusion, in a world where mass production is the dominant and supply and demand is linked to our survival. Both articles question what world would we have? What society would we have if these things didn’t exist? As to say where would we be if we weren’t able to keep up the mass productions of our materials. Both articles seem to suggest that a world without our materials, without money being the driving force behind even our own patriotism, our world would crumble and suffice not going beyond one year it would bring down completely everything and everyone around as there would now be no purpose for education (because there would be nothing to learn for) and our identities would be lost.
Language as our Sole Identity
My group was the Planet of the Apes group. The group consisted of eight of us focusing and analyzing Planet of the Apes. At first there were no specific roles in the project involved we just each took what took out of the movie and incorporated our views and commentary as suggestions. When then formed those suggestions into an awesome power point presentation, my part in the group was not only to help with the suggestions that went towards the power point presentation, but to also focus (as I diligently did) on the evolution of man and language and discourse of it all. And what I discovered in doing this project and reading the book and through watching the film is that through all the advances in technology and through the advances of mankind in general, we leave ourselves open to our own destruction by putting all our identity not to our accomplishments but to our language and vocal chords. In our language lies the highest form of intelligence, as I realized when this topic was brought to the class. In the group I mediated I found that this was not only found in the book and film, but also in the view of the people today. We see the way we speak as one the many human aspects that makes us superior others, even other human beings, as language barriers is just one the barriers that we put on each other to create an unending power struggle amongst ourselves. Leaving technological advances as well as any other advances towards evolution somewhat pointless as our language is the surviving factor that leads to the revolutions and scientific experiments and with the loss of language we go back in time to animalistic past and we become the enslaved.
Utopia
First of all, I will start by saying that I agree with Jameson’s Politics of Utopia in saying that Utopia does exist, even though it still doesn’t actually exist, it can be attainable, and is still kept alive by ways of considering it as an “alternative society.” Meaning that with every new day and every new political move, we envision the finding of a Utopia. Looking at recent historical events, none was clearer than the election of President Obama, which clearly shows that the idea of one day reaching Utopia is still possible. The only thing stopping us from achieving this goal is ourselves. One of the main issues in our society today is money and greed, something that Utopia would seek to eliminate, i.e. the need for money and social status, by getting rid of social stature the money would no longer be an issue, and thus this would rid us of a major sin.
In contrast, one could believe that the world is just too self-centered to be turned around, and that therefore, Utopia can never be achieved. For we as humans rely on the satisfaction of our own needs, before anything else, according to Jameson. And this in turn holds us back to flourishing under the perfect Utopia. Jameson portrays Utopia as this world not fully understood by people, simply because we are too attached to the things we own, such as property, that we are left to wonder, “What life would be like without these things?”
Whether or not we ever reach Utopia, one thing is for sure. That it is never hopeless to want a Utopia, but that it will take effort and definitely the loss of the individual as well as the everything that goes along with it.
In contrast, one could believe that the world is just too self-centered to be turned around, and that therefore, Utopia can never be achieved. For we as humans rely on the satisfaction of our own needs, before anything else, according to Jameson. And this in turn holds us back to flourishing under the perfect Utopia. Jameson portrays Utopia as this world not fully understood by people, simply because we are too attached to the things we own, such as property, that we are left to wonder, “What life would be like without these things?”
Whether or not we ever reach Utopia, one thing is for sure. That it is never hopeless to want a Utopia, but that it will take effort and definitely the loss of the individual as well as the everything that goes along with it.
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