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Week 1: What do you want to learn in this course? Why is this course interesting to you? What topic(s) are you most excited about? 

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Week 1: What do you want to learn in this course? Why is this course interesting to you? What topic(s) are you most excited about? 

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I originally signed up for Critical Media Studies for the simple reason that it was a prerequisite; yet, after the first lecture it has already started greatly interesting me. To me, the class's focus on the topics of representation are important ideas that everyone should know - especially in this day and age where interpreting and creating meaning has never been so controversial.  I'm specifically interested in furthering my knowledge in the concepts of semiotics and structuralism, as those two stuck out in the past two years of studying communications. However, I'm most excited and eager to learn about Marxism, as I know little about it but recently found an interest in it. How this theory focusing on the social status in society became synonymous in the West with evil and communism has fascinated me into wanting to understand how its meaning can be interpreted differently - perfectly tying in with Critical Media Studies!

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Week 2: What is Engstrom’s main argument? Why is political economy an important approach for her research? What was your main “take-away” from this article?

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Week 2: What is Engstrom’s main argument? Why is political economy an important approach for her research? What was your main “take-away” from this article?

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The recurring argument throughout Engstrom’s article Unraveling the Knot is how “…bridal media serves as an example of hegemony” (Engstrom, 2008, p.61). Engstrom goes further into detail regarding this topic, examining how the Knot magazine as well as its partner television show Real Weddings from The Knot act as “…purveyors of hegemonic ideals, attitudes, and concepts” within the bridal industry (Engstrom, 2008, p.62). The Knot’s messages offered in their bridal magazines along with the portrayal of luxurious weddings across their media convey the idea of the ‘ideal’ wedding. Expensive wedding materials and customs go unquestioned because they are so heavily featured in their media – and when couples actively try to save money on their wedding by doing certain elements themselves, it is presented as “shabby” (Engstrom, 2008, p.74). All of this results in the reinforcement of what Engstrom calls the “big, white, wedding ideal”, characterized by its luxurious and lavish nature – the ‘traditional’ and unquestioned custom (Engstrom, 2008, p.74).

The political economy of the bridal industry and media they produce is intertwined with capitalism. On its most basic level, bridal media helps sell wedding products by acting as a “conduit of merchandising” (Engstrom, 2008, p.62). It serves as a channel for hegemony regarding the marketing of wedding products and etiquette, conveying the message that women must spend a certain amount of money to adhere to the current standards (Engstrom, 2008, p.65). However, capitalist values are even more deeply imbedded in these practices. If most of America is middle class, having an outlandish and spectacular wedding allows the family to ‘move’ up a class for a day, resulting in the escape of middle-class monotony (Engstrom, 2008, p.74). This concept is similar to the idea that vacation is merely a way to re-energize and brainwash the worker into accepting the life they have, resulting in an interesting comparison that I found to be the most fascinating and memorable aspect of this article.

References:
Engstrom, E. (2008). Unraveling The Knot: Political Economy and Cultural Hegemony in Wedding Media. The Journal of Communication Inquiry, 32(1), 60-82.

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Week 3: What is the main argument that Ross makes in this article? Ross writes, “Of the clouds and shadows that hung over Clinton in the press, the darkest, perhaps, was the prospect of boredom.” What does he mean by this? How does it relate to the argument made by the Frankfurt School? 

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Week 3: What is the main argument that Ross makes in this article? Ross writes, “Of the clouds and shadows that hung over Clinton in the press, the darkest, perhaps, was the prospect of boredom.” What does he mean by this? How does it relate to the argument made by the Frankfurt School? 

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Written right after Trump's election as US President, Ross discusses the recent rise in the Frankfurt School's stock and its relation to the election. One of his main arguments is how the fear that many scholars had back in the 1950s could be brought up in 2016 and seen as an accurate prediction. More specifically, they were contemplating the possibility that a leader would be able to psychologically manipulate large numbers of people (Ross, 2016). With an ever increasing effect on mass audiences, 'pop culture' has helped elect Donald Trump - who is "as much a pop-culture phenomenon as he is a political one" (Ross, 2016).

This prospect of boredom that Ross writes about is in direct correlation with arguments made by the Frankfurt School, which can be especially seen in their culture industry thesis. As Ross put it, "Traffic trumps ethics" (2016). Media loves Trump and all stories related to him because it was getting attention, high ratings and hits. Even if they did not align with Trump's views, whether it was consciously or subconsciously, the media wanted him to be elected. This prospect of boredom haunted reporters because there was no attraction of high traffic, of hits, of controversial topics. "Trump would be more 'interesting'" (Ross, 2016), he would get them higher ratings.

All of this relates to the School's thesis of the culture industry in the way that culture has been commodified. Every form of culture has been turned into a commodity, and is now judged by its "potential financial value to the industry." (Thrift, 2022) The media industry is no different to this concept, and whether or not the mass media agrees with his political stand, he's what brings the most potential financial value. As such, Clinton is seen as an inferior political figure to the media as she does not guarantee that same monetary value.

References:
Ross, A. (2016, December 5). The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-frankfurt-school-knew-trump-was-coming

Thrift, S. (2022, September 23). Week 3 - The Culture Industry (Pt. 2) SLIDES [PowerPoint slides]. Communications and Media Studies, University of Calgary.

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Shortly after the Presidential election, a small piece of good news came over the wire: the Thomas Mann villa in Los Angeles has been saved. The house, which was built to Mann's specifications, in the nineteen-forties, went on the market earlier this year, and it seemed likely to be demolished, because the structure was deemed less valuable than the land beneath it. After prolonged negotiations, the German government bought the property, with the idea of establishing it as a cultural center.

The house deserves to stand not only because a great writer lived there but because it brings to mind a tragic moment in American cultural history. The author of "Death in Venice" and "The Magic Mountain" settled in this country in 1938, a grateful refugee from Nazism. He became a citizen and extolled American ideals. By 1952, though, he had become convinced that McCarthyism was a prelude to fascism, and felt compelled to emigrate again. At the time of the House Un-American Activities Committee's hearings on Communism in Hollywood, Mann said, "Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged 'state of emergency.' . . . That is how it started in Germany." The tearing down of Mann's "magic villa" would have been a cold epilogue to a melancholy tale.

Mann was hardly the only Central European émigré who experienced uneasy feelings of déjà vu in the fearful years after the end of the Second World War. Members of the intellectual enclave known as the Frankfurt School-originally based at the Institute for Social Research, in Frankfurt-felt a similar alarm. In 1950, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno helped to assemble a volume titled " The Authoritarian Personality," which constructed a psychological and sociological profile of the " potentially fascistic_ _individual." The work was based on interviews with American subjects, and the steady accumulation of racist, antidemocratic, paranoid, and irrational sentiments in the case studies gave the German-speakers pause. Likewise, Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman's 1949 book, " Prophets of Deceit, " studied the Father Coughlin type of rabble-rouser, contemplating the "possibility that a situation will arise in which large numbers of people would be susceptible to his psychological manipulation."

Adorno believed that the greatest danger to American democracy lay in the mass-culture apparatus of film, radio, and television. Indeed, in his view, this apparatus operates in dictatorial fashion even when no dictatorship is in place: it enforces conformity, quiets dissent, mutes thought. Nazi Germany was merely the most extreme case of a late-capitalist condition in which people surrender real intellectual freedom in favor of a sham paradise of personal liberation and comfort. Watching wartime newsreels, Adorno concluded that the "culture industry," as he and Horkheimer called it, was replicating fascist methods of mass hypnosis. Above all, he saw a blurring of the line between reality and fiction. In his 1951 book, "Minima Moralia," he wrote:

Lies have long legs: they are ahead of their time. The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power, a process that truth itself cannot escape if it is not to be annihilated by power, not only suppresses truth as in earlier despotic orders, but has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false, which the hirelings of logic were in any case diligently working to abolish. So Hitler, of whom no one can say whether he died or escaped, survives.** **

Mann, who had consulted Adorno while writing his musical novel "Doctor Faustus," was reading "Minima Moralia" as he contemplated his departure from America. He compared the book's aphoristic style to the "enormously strong gravitational force-field" of a super-compact celestial body. Possibly, it exerted a pull on his decision to go into exile again. A few months later, on the eve of leaving, Mann wrote to Adorno, "The way things are developing is already clear. And we have rather gone beyond Brüning." Heinrich Brüning was the Chancellor of Germany from 1930 to 1932.

The fears of Mann, Adorno, and other émigrés came to naught-or so it seemed. The McCarthyite danger passed; civil rights advanced; free speech triumphed; liberal democracy spread around the world. By the end of the century, the Frankfurt School was seen in many quarters as an artifact of intellectual kitsch. In recent years, though, its stock has risen once again. As Stuart Jeffries points out in his recent book, "Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School," the ongoing international crisis of capitalism and liberal democracy has prompted a resurgence of interest in the body of work known as critical theory. The combination of economic inequality and pop-cultural frivolity is precisely the scenario Adorno and others had in mind: mass distraction masking élite domination. Two years ago, in an essay on the persistence of the Frankfurt School, I wrote, "If Adorno were to look upon the cultural landscape of the twenty-first century, he might take grim satisfaction in seeing his fondest fears realized."

I spoke too soon. His moment of vindication is arriving now. With the election of Donald Trump, the latent threat of American authoritarianism is on the verge of being realized, its characteristics already mapped by latter-day sociologists who have updated Adorno's "F-scale" for fascist tendencies. To read "Prophets of Deceit" is to see clear anticipations of Trump's bigoted harangues. (The script in 1949: "We are coming to the crossroads where we must decide whether we are going to preserve law and order and decency or whether we are going to be sold down the river to these Red traitors who are undermining America.") As early as the forties, Adorno saw American life as a kind of reality show: "Men are reduced to walk-on parts in a monster documentary film which has no spectators, since the least of them has his bit to do on the screen." Now a businessman turned reality-show star has been elected President. Like it or not, Trump is as much a pop-culture phenomenon as he is a political one.

What Adorno identified as the erasure of the "borderline between culture and empirical reality" is endemic on social media. The failure of Facebook to halt the proliferation of fake news during the campaign season should have surprised no one; the local hirelings of logic are too enamored of their algorithms-and of the revenue they generate-to intervene. From the start, Silicon Valley monopolies have taken a hands-off, ideologically vacant attitude toward the upwelling of ugliness on the Internet. A defining moment was the turn-of-the-century wave of music piracy, which did lasting damage to the idea of intellectual property. Fake news is an extension of the same phenomenon, and, as in the Napster era, no one is taking responsibility. Traffic trumps ethics.

Traditional media outlets exhibited the same value-free mentality, pumping out Trump stories and airing his rallies because they got hits and high ratings. At some point over the summer, it struck me that the greater part of the media wanted Trump to be elected, consciously or unconsciously. He would be more "interesting" than Hillary Clinton; he would "pop." That suspicion was confirmed the other day, when a CNN executive, boasting of his network's billion-dollar profit in 2016, spoke of "a general fascination that wouldn't be the same as under a Clinton Administration." Of the clouds and shadows that hung over Clinton in the press, the darkest, perhaps, was the prospect of boredom. Among voters, a kind of nihilistic glee may have been as much a factor in Trump's election as economic dissatisfaction or racial resentment. The mechanism by which people support a political program "largely incompatible with their own rational self-interest," as Adorno wrote, requires many kinds of deception.

So here we are, living in what feels like an excessively on-the-nose novel by Don DeLillo, in which a President-elect tweets of his cabinet-selection process, "I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!" One all-too-schematic plot twist is the revelation that Richard Spencer-the white supremacist whose phrase "alt-right" was adopted by Trump's strategist, Steve Bannon-wrote a master's thesis on the topic of none other than Theodor W. Adorno, arguing that Wagner's anti-Semitism prevented Adorno from coming to terms with his love for Wagner's music. The Department of Hitler Studies, from DeLillo's "White Noise," is moving to D.C.

When the purchase of the Mann house was announced, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister and likely its next President, declared, "In stormy times like these, we need more than ever cultural anchor points with our most important partner outside of Europe." Steinmeier was implying that the villa could become an outpost of cosmopolitan thinking as nativism overtakes both America and Europe.

The ironic reversal of roles hardly needs to be noted. However the Trump Presidency turns out-whether it veers toward autocracy, devolves into kleptocracy, or takes some unheard-of new form-America has, for the time being, abdicated the role of the world's moral leader, to the extent that it ever played that part convincingly. "Make America Great Again" is one of Trump's many linguistic contortions: in fact, one of his core messages is that America should no longer bother with being great, that it should retreat from international commitments, that it should make itself small and mean.

Germany, on the other hand, increasingly appears to be the strongest remaining bastion of liberal democracy. With the United Kingdom mired in the aftermath of Brexit, France facing a possible hard-right swerve, and Italy in disarray, the country that long stood as a synonym for nationalist insanity has so far resisted political and cultural regression. Tellingly, it has rejected the libertarian code of the big Silicon Valley companies, with their disdain for privacy, copyright, and limitations on hate speech. On the day after the American election, which happened to be the seventy-eighth anniversary of Kristallnacht, a neo-Nazi group posted a map of Jewish businesses in Berlin, titled "Jews Among Us." Facebook initially refused to take down the post, but an outcry in the media and among lawmakers prompted its deletion. Such episodes suggest that Germans are less likely to acquiesce to the forces that have ravaged the American public sphere.

The defeat of the Freedom Party candidate in the Austrian Presidential election is a hopeful sign: perhaps the German-speaking countries can remind the rest of the world of the darkness of their former path. Still, the far right is creeping forward in Germany, as it is all over Europe. No coming political race will be as tensely watched as Angela Merkel's run next year for reëlection as Chancellor. The ultimate fear isn't of the second coming of Hitler: history never repeats itself so obviously, and a sense of shame over the Nazi past remains pervasive in all corners of German life. No, the fear is that the present antidemocratic wave may prove too strong even for Germany-the only country in the history of the world that ever learned from its mistakes.

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The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming

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Shortly after the Presidential election, a small piece of good news came over the wire: the Thomas Mann villa in Los Angeles has been saved. The house, which was built to Mann's specifications, in the nineteen-forties, went on the market earlier this year, and it seemed likely to be demolished, because the structure was deemed less valuable than the land beneath it.

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Week 4: How does the political activism of fans, as you read about in the about in the article by Kelly, demonstrate one key component of cultural studies? Can you think of another example of fan political activism?

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Week 4: How does the political activism of fans, as you read about in the about in the article by Kelly, demonstrate one key component of cultural studies? Can you think of another example of fan political activism?

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There's a clear mirroring effect happening between some of cultural studies' key components and fan political activism. More specifically, between K-pop fangirls' political power and the fact that audiences are not passive recipients of meaning; that these audiences are active and meaning is not black and white - it can have multiple interpretations depending on the viewer (Thrift, 2022). The same can be said in multiple aspects of Kelly's article "More Than Stans" (2020) where she describes how the iWatch Dallas App was interpreted differently by certain audiences - and how the K-pop fandoms 'shocked' the world by presenting a seemingly different aspect of themselves in response to the Black Lives Matter protests. By using their common interests and large influence on social media apps like Twitter, these fangirls posted fancams, which were seen as annoying prior, to now bombard accounts that they did not agree with (Kelly, 2020). They also shared petitions and raised money for funds (Kelly, 2020). These K-pop fangirls, a predominantly young female fan base who were generally criticized as wild fanatics and only cared about their idols, were now seen as a political force organized for the greater good (Kelly, 2020).

Anything but a passive audience, these fangirls are meaning makers - interpreting messages based on their cultural identity and group identity. And perception of fangirls is changing: certain messages lead to reactions that change they way they are seen by the world. Another example of fan political activism is Fandom Forward, a non-profit organization run initially by Harry Potter fans that focuses its attention on human rights issues, education and literacy across the world.

References
Kelly, E. (2020, June 11). More Than Stans: Stop Dismissing the K-pop Fandom's Political Power. Bitch Media. https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/k-pop-fandom-political-force

Thrift, S. (2022, September 27). Week 4 - British Cultural Studies (Pt. 1) [PowerPoint slides]. Communications and Media Studies, University of Calgary.

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In the midst of a global pandemic, a revolution is happening in the streets and online. Following the May 25 murder of George Floyd-a 46-year-old Black man who died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes-people have been participating in a nationwide uprising, emailing their representatives, donating to organizations, and signing petitions to demand an end to police brutality, defund police departments, and tell the world that Black lives matter. Activists, in particular, have been getting creative in their approach to fighting police brutality and digital surveillance. On June 1, as demonstrations continued throughout the United States, the Dallas Police Department asked people to upload "video of illegal activity" from protests through the iWatch Dallas app, which encourages Dallas residents to submit photo and video tips about possible crimes.

The Dallas Police Department got more than it bargained for: K-pop fans flooded the app with fancams-videos of their favorite idols performing onstage-and pictures of artists like BTS, Monsta X, EXO and BLACKPINK. Their direct action shut down the iWatch Dallas app, though the Dallas PD said the app was temporarily down "due to technical difficulties." (Their tweet about these technical difficulties also received hundreds of fancam replies.) After taking down the police app, K-pop fans used the same tactics to drown out the #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag on Twitter. Their stunt made headlines the world over, with media outlets ranging from CNN to writing, almost surprisingly, about these K-pop vigilantes thwarting the police. These stories seemed to ask: Who knew K-pop stars were such rebels? Who knew they were so political? When did teenage girls become de facto leaders of the radical left?

Of course, anyone who's paying attention to how K-pop stans use social media aren't surprised that they've mobilized on behalf of a larger social movement. K-pop stans, many of whom are teenage girls or those in their early 20s, know how much power they wield on the internet. Dedicated K-pop stans from the BTS ARMY, the Monbebe, the BLINKs, and other factions organize digitally to ensure that their idols trend online and secure them streams on Spotify and YouTube. Though they've primarily used their power in pursuit of that goal, they enter larger movements with the numbers and organizational skills to have an immediate impact. "The rather strange habit of commenting fancams underneath tweets for attention, that the rest of Twitter sees as annoying, became a tool for good. We were able to engage in a little civil disobedience." Katherine Perrotta, a 29-year-old teacher and K-pop stan, told Bitch. "While we spammed our videos, we've also been sharing petitions, circulating videos of police abusing peaceful protesters, and raising money for bail funds."

These latest actions are a continuation of the fandom's commitment to social change: In February 2020, BTS, one of the biggest boy bands in the world, appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden. Fans were so pleased with the respectful way Corden interviewed the boys that they decided to donate en masse to Magic Breakfast, one of Corden's favorite charities. In a matter of days, the ARMY raised more than $17,000, largely via small donations, and were able to provide breakfasts for at-need children in the United Kingdom. As Korea Herald reporter Hyunsu Yim noted on Twitter, BTS fan accounts raised awareness for road safety in Bangladesh following the 2018 deaths of two students who were struck by an unlicensed bus driver. And after BTS donated $1 million to various Black Lives Matter groups, their fans matched that donation in just one day, sending money to Black Lives Matter, the NAACP, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

K-pop stans's clout is so strong, in fact, that actual governments are taking notice: A 2019 report from Chile's Ministry of the Interior questioned if K-pop fans are behind the ongoing protests over wage and class disparity. The report accused stans of making comments toward the Chilean police that "mainly focus on questioning deaths during protests, frequently mentioning human rights violations and criticizing the silence of the media or blocking social networks." While K-pop may have given these young people a group to mobilize with, the fandom didn't make many of these stans political; they were already activists before they discovered K-pop. "Activism has always been a part of my life," Perrotta said. "My activism journey started when I was 14-years-old and I became interested in the Free Tibet movement."

Since then Perrotta has been attending demonstrations, organizing sit-ins and hunger strikes, and vocally supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and ongoing fight for LGBTQ rights. "I have adjusted my lesson plans to include teaching about racism and the history of police brutality." Similarly, Curt, a 24-year-old K-pop fan who declined to use her last name, says that she's always been political because she was born Black in the United States and moved to Korea as an adult. "I was as active as I could be in the #SayHerName movement [a movement geared toward spreading awareness around Black women victims of anti-Black violence and brutality] and have always fought for the rights of Black girls," Curt said. Whether they're learning activism, as 15-year-old Jae, who declined to use her last name, told Bitch ("I only ever started getting political when I decided to become more involved in the K-pop fandom and joined Twitter"), or leaning into their lifelong activist impulse, these different stan factions are using their collective power to raise money and awareness and tackle police violence head-on.

While the K-pop fandom has been praised for their recent actions, there's been an underlying sense of surprise, primarily because teen girls comprise the majority of the K-pop fan base. Since K-pop exploded in the Western world, thanks to the success of BTS, who have earned four number one albums on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, much of the coverage of K-pop in the mainstream media focuses on its dark side-the grueling trainee camps, the manufactured nature of these groups and their image, and an ongoing mental-health crisis within the industry, marked by the suicides of artists like SHINee's Jonghyun and f(x) star Sulli. K-pop fans are painted as wild fanatics who only care about their favorite idols, and will ruin critics' lives on Twitter. It's no coincidence that this critique is leveled at a predominantly young female fan base.

In a 2015 article for , Brodie Lancaster wrote that "teen girls are the ultimate authorities" in fandoms, but artists aren't seen as legitimate as long as teen girls are the bulk of their audience. "Pop music is fundamentally about the fans, and when we say things like 'fame begets fawning praise' we're missing a big addendum: it does, except when young female fan bases are the ones stoking the ascent," Lancaster wrote. "When fame is girded by a swelling teenage, female fanbase immediately, that celebrity becomes false, temporary, and unearned." Given that, Lancester concludes that teenage girls become a barometer, of sorts: "If they like something you can be rest assured it's not worth a serious listener's ear." What this criticism overlooks, however, is that fandoms are, as sociology professor told the Washington Post in 2014, using their voice to "show that you're part of a larger group with a common identity."

That's powerful-and as we see through the BTS ARMY and larger K-pop fandom, can be used for good. "Society in general is incredibly flippant and dismissive of female power-'fangirl' culture has always been so looked down upon," Perrotta said. "Why is it that male fans of a book series or a band can be as fanatical as they please, but when a girl memorizes facts and figures about her chosen interest and collects memorabilia, she's 'a crazy fangirl'? We need to examine the inherent misogyny in that unfair comparison." Curt agreed, noting that misogyny is the primary reason K-pop's female fans are so routinely dismissed. "Women and girls have always led the fight for revolutionary acts of change, from the right to vote to the movement for reproductive justice to the eradication of online harassment and bullying," Curt said.

For Sarah, a 26-year-old K-pop fan from Austria who declined to use her last name, the double standard applied to female fans feels like an unnecessary slight. "Society, in general, doesn't take young females seriously. They're even more judgmental toward fangirls, since they have a wrong picture of what we are like in their heads. So of course it comes as a surprise that we're politically involved." What's clear, now, is that the teenage girls and young women fueling the K-pop fandom are doing more than overwhelming social media for the sake of streaming numbers and Billboard position. They're a political force now that can organize for the greater good, which combats the assumption outlined in the aforementioned Pitchfork article that the "crux of teen-girl illegitimacy is the assumption that they are incapable of the critical thinking their older, male counterparts display when it comes to their favourite bands." We've known for a long time how untrue that sentiment is, and it has become crystal clear since Floyd's death. "K-pop Twitter has also found its place in this movement," Katherine said. "We're all people and we're all affected by police brutality. Enough is enough, and we want to use our platforms to help."

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K-pop Fans Broke #Whitelivesmatter to Promote Racial Justice

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In the midst of a global pandemic, a revolution is happening in the streets and online. Following the May 25 murder of George Floyd-a 46-year-old Black man who died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes-people have been participating in a nationwide uprising, emailing their representatives, donating to organizations, and signing petitions to demand an end to police brutality, defund police departments, and tell the world that Black lives matter.

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Week 5: Pay attention to the media you consume this week and choose one media image that operates semiotically. Include this image in your journal and do a mini semiotic analysis – what is the signifier? Signified? Sign?

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Week 5: Pay attention to the media you consume this week and choose one media image that operates semiotically. Include this image in your journal and do a mini semiotic analysis – what is the signifier? Signified? Sign?

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A 'tifo' is a large banner that is made and displayed by fans of a particular soccer team before and during the game. This tifo was made by fans of the German soccer team Borussia Dortmund during a match for the Champions League (the most prestigious tournament in European soccer). Meant to intimidate the opposing team, the tifo's first and literal interpretation is that of a man holding binoculars, wearing a Borussia Dortmund hat, smiling in a particularly disturbing way, with an outline of the trophy behind him as well as text in German reading "Auf Den Spuren des verlorenen Henkelpotts" which translates roughly to "On the path of the lost Champion League trophy."

Yet, this gigantic smiling man holds more meaning than is at first thought. The binoculars could signify the fact that he's actively looking for the trophy, and his smile could signify that he's potentially found it, symbolizing that they will win - this is helped by the outline of the trophy in the back as well as the text below. However, the binoculars attached to the smile of his makes it seem almost nefarious. It's instantly interpreted as a 'creepy' smile, and this helps with the intimidation factor. His smile and binoculars could be a way of communicating to the opposing team that he's watching every player individually, he knows their tactics, he knows what they will do, and he knows their weakness - smiling as he's ready to act on their fear and weakness. He's also watching over his own team, but this time as an ally. All of this helps the home team play with confidence and inspire fear and uncertainty into their opponents.

Signifier (smiling man holding binoculars) + signified (looking for the trophy, watching over the other team) = sign (creepy man inspiring fear into opposing team)

References:
Yahoo Sports. (2013, April 9). Borussia Dortmund fans with an impressive yet creepy Champions League tifo display [image]. Yahoo Sports. https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/soccer-dirty-tackle/borussia-dortmund-fans-impressively-creepy-champions-league-tifo-190004640--sow.html

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Week 6: Reality TV and governmentality? How might social media be an example of governmentality? 

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Week 6: Reality TV and governmentality? How might social media be an example of governmentality? 

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Ouellette and Hay (2008) describe the way that governmentality's subjects and reality TV's contestants are self-governed, and that it is through freedom, and not control. This surveillance and governance is done indirectly, as people are self-governing and in turn, governing each other. This phenomenon is due to the fact that everyone knows they're potentially being watched, and as such don't ever want to stand out and be noticed. As a result, everyone governs themselves due to the risk of losing their freedom of movement, decision-making and privacy.

The popular Netflix reality TV show "Too Hot To Handle" exemplifies this concept through its use of security monitoring. Contestants are fined if they're caught partaking in sexual activities with others, and each morning, the security system updates them on the total fines. The contestants know they're being constantly monitored, yet they consistently partake in the 'forbidden' activities when they believe to be clear of the show's cameras and surveillance. However, the show is always able to track and surveil the contestants, leading to the message that no matter where and how secretive you may be, "we" are always watching you. The viewers are more exposed to this idea than the contestants.

Finally, users on social media mirror the behaviour of the contestants in Netflix's hit reality show; but it also shows what comes as a result of believing that we have anonymity and are not being watched. More often than not, digital users find themselves much "braver" online, able to speak their mind, sending insults or controversial takes to other users. This is through the idea that they believe to be more anonymous online, that no consequences may come to their actions. Yet, just like in the TV show, everyone is always being monitored. Even more so than "Too Hot To Handle", social media allows total surveillance, able to track every like, comment, follow, time spent etc. Through this benefit of anonymity, people lose this self-governance. However, social media does not allow anyone to ever fall out of its sight.

References:
Ouellette, L., Hay, J. (2008). Makeover television, governmentality and the good citizen. Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 22(4), 471-484.

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Week 8: Which two concepts did you find most important in this week's reading? Why? How do they help us understand the representation of gender in media culture? 

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Week 8: Which two concepts did you find most important in this week's reading? Why? How do they help us understand the representation of gender in media culture? 

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On p.59 of Representing Gender (Harvey, 2020), Harvey summed up what I believed to be the most important aspect of this week's readings: "representation is therefore not simply about presence and visibility, but also concerns the range (and lack thereof) of stories ... that marginalized and oppressed groups are assigned in the media." To add on to this, Harvey (2020) continues by stating that despite claims regarding how progress has been made in terms of greater inclusion in media culture, there are still constraints on how women's stories continue being told (p.60). These concepts go hand-in-hand in explaining what I believe to be a big issue in the fight for equality in representation. It's not simply about stating that marginalized groups have been shown screen time, and 'voilà' equality, it's about the way they're represented and how they are able to communicate.

It helps garner a stronger realization that although there is an increase in the representation of oppressed groups in media culture, that does not automatically lead to equality. There is still the very large issue of how the representation is being dealt, worked with, and what it produces. This is a very important issue to face as with greater representation in media culture, certain stereotypes' abundance regarding these oppressed groups may increase or actually form due to the certain increased instance of being represented. In an increasing amount of screen time, which is not promoting any certain positive or unique characteristics, representation brings nothing good.

References:
Harvey, A. (2020). Representing Gender. In Feminist Media Studies (pp.58-83). Polity Press.

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Week 11: What is hooks' main argument in this chapter? What does it mean to 'eat the Other?' Choose one quote from the chapter that you think is the most powerful - why did it stand out to you?

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Week 11: What is hooks' main argument in this chapter? What does it mean to 'eat the Other?' Choose one quote from the chapter that you think is the most powerful - why did it stand out to you?

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Hooks' argues that the West, more specifically white men with the example she first used, has a desire and fantasies about the racialized Other (Hooks, 1992, p.22). She examines the notion that the West is extremely self-centred, and as such believes that everything that isn't "normal" (part of the West) is seen as the Other and is more exotic, has experienced different aspects of life that make them more worldly, and are more sensual and sexual due to their "primitive" nature. The West desires this, but does not seek to become attached or fight the difference; the West instead shows its power in the way it "uses" the Other to explore and feel more, but all to serve itself and not the Other (Hooks, 1992, p.24).

Hooks' (1992) examination of why the West is attracted to these experiences is what stood out the most when reading her chapter: "The contemporary crises of identity in the West ... are eased when the "primitive" is recouped via a focus on diversity and pluralism which suggests the Other can provide life-sustaining alternatives" (p.25). It is powerful in the way it examines that there is a crisis in the West, where there seems to its people to have no real identity - to combat that, the West sees and uses the Other as a commodity in order to make itself feel special and have different experiences. Hooks touches on the "primitive" to be able to provide life-sustaining alternatives -- which to me describes how the West is attracted to this primitiveness due to the fact that it almost helps appeal to our own primitive instincts. All of this, in order to "feel" something different, through, the example of the book, sexual gratification.

References:
Hooks, B. (1992). Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance. In Black Looks: Race and Representation (pp.21-40). Routledge.

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Week 12: What is a "queer reading" and why might this concept be useful for thinking about popular media cultures? Can you think of a contemporary media example where a queer reading would be useful?

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Week 12: What is a "queer reading" and why might this concept be useful for thinking about popular media cultures? Can you think of a contemporary media example where a queer reading would be useful?

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What spoke to me most regarding a queer reading was that it is a way to read or look at any sort of media and challenge its heteronormativity. It's looking for moments within representation where perhaps the gender and sexuality that is present in any text can be questioned, challenged, and examined. Importantly, I also think it goes a bit deeper and may ask as to why certain representations are seen the way they are and perhaps why other representations, that do not conform to heteronormativity, are so underrepresented.

I believe this to be important, especially in terms of popular media cultures, as it looks to challenge the hegemonic beliefs, which are meant to be thought of as almost 'natural', but are very much created and put in place. With pop culture examples, it is important to question why they are shown the way they are, and importantly why the majority of the audience may read it in a certain heteronormative way. I do think it would be very interesting to do queer readings on particularly old famous myths or stories, and examine perhaps how there was less or more flexibility in terms of challenging heteronormativity, and how it compares to today.