Art and Media

      What is art?  To me, art is anything that expresses human emotion of any kind.  That can be found in things like: painting, dancing, music, film, photography, ceramics, sculpting, or architecture.  These are some of the more traditional forms of art, but I know people who create things like wine or bicycles and they consider themselves artists because they put all they have into what they are making.  A little piece of them goes into every thing that they create.  That too is art.

    Different types of art mean different things to me.  Music, for example, is usually an extension of whatever mood I’m currently in.  For example when I’m with other people, listening to “fun” music just makes being with other people more exciting.  But then there are types of art that all I do is admire the artists creativity/talent.  Some photographs don’t necessarily evoke any emotion from me, especially when it’s abstract, but I can usually sit back and appreciate what went into it.  Some types of art bring about meaning through the emotions that are brought out through them, but other types of art bring about meaning through the appreciation of the human mind/body and what it’s capable of doing. 

    Art is meaningful, also, in the sense that it’s a reflection of an individual who is part of society.  So therefore art is an extension of society.  This is meaningful because art comes about in media as well.  So if art reflects society then we can analyze art to see what is important to society’s beliefs, tastes, priorities, feelings, etc. 

    So when we look at one particular style of art, film, and look at a film that did particularly well in theaters (or let alone, made it to theaters):  Saw.  This is art because it is expressing human emotions, mainly fear.  So if this is a reflection of society because one could say that our society, for one reason or another, likes to be scared.  In this particular piece of work, this emotion is primarily evoked through the use of violence.  The story itself isn’t scary, it’s the gory actions that the characters have to commit that brings about the fear. 

    I think the context for creating this type of art is tapping into this primal need for certain emotions that need to be evoked every now and again to remind us that we’re mortal.  It’s easy to get lost in a sea of monotony when everything is electronic and there’s no sense of survival in day to day life.  We become numb to certain, powerful emotions in our modern society.  But when we go to see this movie that’s so far from ordinary life, we get these feelings that we never get to feel.  And while we might not necessarily enjoy being terrified, we do enjoy feeling an emotion that’s so extreme. 

    This participates in media because while it is art, it is also media.  And media also participates in the art.  Media talks about the art, it’s an outlet for people to come together and share the same emotions for the piece of art.  It all reflects societal views of how we perceive the art.  So society hears about the film from the media, then thinks that it’s the cool thing to go see this film (or that somehow it’s expected of them), then once they see the film, they go back to media to see what other people have to say about it or even share their own point of view.  Media and art go hand in hand.  They feed into each other. 

Chaos in the Twitter-sphere

            This is along the same lines as cyber bullying but specifically within the Twitter-sphere I’ve noticed an increasing trend in high school students directly tweeting at another person demoralizing things that I hope they wouldn’t think of saying to anyone face to face.  Before I’ve talked about how people feel free to do this when they are behind an anonymous screen name but now people are doing this even when their name and picture are clearly displayed. 

         I just read a statistic that around 10% of college applications last year were turned down because of off-putting information that was found on applicants social media cites.  I’d imagine calling someone a profane name on twitter would qualify as something that you wouldn’t want to see if your future students.  I’m not a college admittance counselor but I think I could speculate what could be some things that they would want to look for and especially things they wouldn’t want to see. 

    What we do with that information is important.  I’d say that you could take any person from any given point in history and if you gave that person the chance to write something anonymously they’d have a hard time writing something that they’d feel totally comfortable saying in person.  I think the anonymous effect is a psychologically documented phenomenon.   But take away the anonymity and how do you explain this behavior?  I think this is a cultural shift due to the ability to disassociate feelings when we type something out on a screen as opposed to saying something to someone’s face. 
   
    But if we have majority of our conversations over a screen then I think it’s possible for us to consider that the norm which allows us to carry over those disassociated feelings to lead us to become more crude and blunt in our interactions with others. 

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say...

Let’s talk about those awful, tasteless comments that we all see on mostly every YouTube video that has the slightest amount of popularity.  When I thought of YouTube and violence, there was no question that this should be the topic. 

The idea of negative comments bothers me because the person who writes them had to take time to craft a hateful message.  It literally would have been easier for the person to say nothing, and then there wouldn’t be a negative comment.  The idea that people think that their negative comment will bring some sort of satisfaction is a bit twisted in my opinion.  “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.  It’s a pretty basic concept that most learn when we’re little, yet people chose to not abide by it.  

The thing that really drives me crazy is when you’re watching a cover video that some 12 year old kid is doing from his room and you can tell that they’re trying really hard, then someone comments “u suck, nvr play or sing again pls”.  That could be on the nicer end of harsh comments.  As a little kid, getting that kind of negative feedback could be detrimental.  If you don’t like the kids video, then so what, it’s a kid.  There’s no need for such un-constructive criticism that is solely designed to cut the other person down no matter the age of the recipient, but especially if it’s a kid.  What good could possibly come from that?  

When people become anonymous and are given the ability to voice their opinions, they lose control.  There’s nothing stopping them from sharing their super awesome, well thought out, genius thoughts that apparently everyone must read.  That’s rarely the case.  And I realize that anyone can make a YouTube account so I take into account that some of these users are probably kids themselves.  That’s when I think the parents should really take control of what the kids are doing on the internet.  But I know that assumes a lot of things. 

In a perfect world, the YouTube community would be a lot more warm and friendly if people didn’t say things online that they wouldn’t say to the uploader’s face.  But until then we’ll just have to keep down voting all the hateful comments until they go away.    

Cyber Social Faux Pas

When it comes to cyber-bullying I’ve heard two sides to this, 1) That it is a national crisis and that it is awful & 2) that it doesn’t really matter, kids are unaffected by it and it’s not any different from real bullying.  I’d have to say that cyber-bullying doesn’t really fit under either of these umbrellas.  I think that the term “cyber-bullying” is a bit too inclusive in some areas and not as inclusive as it should be in others.  For example, I don’t think that anytime someone is talked down to on Facebook they take it personally and are deeply wounded by that one sentence typed to them.  At the same time, online games such as found on XBOX live where people are continuously speaking hurtful words to each other can have negative effects.  

I’ve had people call me names in comments or in chat rooms, it may hurt at first but then I forget about it later.  But at the same time if someone I didn’t know in real life called me a name or made fun of me it wouldn’t really matter that much either.  People who I don’t know usually don’t impact me, that’s just my personality, I can evade those hurtful judgments because I know they don’t really know me.  But someone I know and knows me is in a good position to put me down and really cause some harm.  This also goes for online.  So I think this is where people can get too sensitive with what cyber-bullying does.  Sure you have people who feel comfortable saying whatever they want because they can hide behind a fake username and a keyboard, but most people (studies show) aren’t effected by that.  I think that cyber-bullying and real life bullying work in similar fashions.  (This obviously excludes physical harm being done, I don’t know of a parallel for this on the internet).

When it comes to online video games where there is a headset and players can converse directly to one another, I think this has potential for doing emotional damage.  Sure if I don’t know someone and they call me a name, like I said, it might hurt at first but I’ll get over it.  But if different people called me names throughout my day walking across campus, I would start to be effected by that as I’m sure anyone would.  This is what I feel is the difference in online video games.  People constantly feel the need to talk down to other people, it’s this perpetuation that I feel makes the real difference in the effects of cyber-bullying.  

Cyber-bullying, like the internet, is always changing.  There are new additions to it everyday just like some other corners of the internet become obsolete everyday.  I think it’s important for people to realize how personal things can be taken even if you aren’t saying them to their face.  I don’t condone of any sort of cyber-bullying whether its a one time shot at somebody or if it’s a perpetual verbal beat down of others.  I think the internet is a great tool to have and can provide loads of entertainment, it always saddens me when people take advantage of its anonymity.  

Playing the Victim

The article that I chose, “Community Violence, Children's Development, and Mass Media: In Pursuit of New Insights, New Goals, and New Strategies.” by Friedlander proves to be a scholarly source because it is indicated to be so according to the online database provided by Texas A&M University.  This means that the source was peer reviewed.  The only thing that might take away from the relativity of this article is the fact that it was published in 1993.  However, for my purposes, I think that the message still rings true today.  

The article makes the claim that “[c]omprehensive meta-analysis indicates that prosocial messages on television can have greater effects on behavior than antisocial messages.” more specifically, “Community violence that victimizes children is an unmitigated evil that is exacerbated by vast economic and social forces”(Friedlander).  By this, Friedlander tries to convey the power of the media’s message but only when it comes across in a certain way.  But he also tries to show that in the media can play a role in stopping this cycle of violence by saying “that mass media can play a strong and positive role in alleviating some of the distress of victims of community violence, and in redirecting the behavior of some of its perpetrators so as to protect the children.” (Friedlander)

The main point that Friedlander is trying to make, I think, is that when media takes the blame off of the perpetrator and puts it on the community, then the weight of the consequences feels light enough for kids to act violently because they feel then the guilt would be shared and no longer their own.  In other words, kids see other kids who commit violent crimes not getting blamed for what they’ve done, instead media tries to put the blame on their situation.  This creates a victimization phenomena that makes people think they can do something bad because they feel it’s all they’re good for, or that its’ all they can do because of their situation, even though that’s not true.  People should be held accountable for their actions, and they should be judged not because of their circumstances but because of their character.  That is what Friedlander thinks the media is taking away and that’s what’s leading to these crimes. 

I think that he brings up a good point and the fact that I still hear this same argument today leads me to believe that he is right in making these claims.  I think this addresses a very specific discipline because I don’t think that just anybody looks at why there are violent crimes being committed and trying to link them to media.  

Works Cited

Friedlander. ““Community Violence, Children's Development, and Mass Media: In Pursuit of New Insights, New Goals, and New Strategies.” Psychiatry 56.1 (1993): 66-81. TAMU Library Database. Web. 21 Oct 2012. 

Violent by Nature

           Violence in corporate America, does it exist?  This might come off as a vague connection but stick around for a bit.  Let’s think about what the American mind-set is, “I’m going to work hard and make as much money as possible no matter what.”  There’s not a lot of room in there for things like looking after the wellbeing of others.  Most stories you hear about  business are about ethical issues around people trying to obtain more money then they actually earned.  Some American businessmen are willing to do a lot of desperate things in order to obtain large amounts of money (Large relative to the individuals situation).  People even disregard their morals in order to further their gains.   That’s the point I want to focus on.

The act of suppressing moral judgement for personal gain is a slippery slope.  If someone is willing to cheat others out of their hard earned money that goes towards feeding their family in order to add to their bank account, what’s to stop them from later suppressing foreigners in order to acquire cheaper labor leading to greater financial gains?  If a businessman doesn’t even care about his employees why should he care about people who aren’t even his own countrymen?  Chinese labor anyone?  It may not be violent in the sense of murder, but forcing people to work 12+ hours a day for minimal pay could be seen as physically endangering others in regards to their health and wellbeing.  Which, isn’t that what violence is?  So now instead of violent acts being committed out of passion they are now being committed for capital gain.

Sure this isn’t the run of the mill story when it comes to violence in our culture but I think it’s definitely worth taking a look at corporate America from another perspective.  It may not be violent in the traditional sense but it is violent in nature.  

Batman Status

           So in the late, great “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises” there’s a fair amount of violence.  One thing that I like about Batman and how he handles justice,  it doesn’t matter if it’s one person getting mugged in an alley or if the whole city is about to get nuked, he’s going to handle it the same way.  He has a bottom line rule or creed that he is able to fall back on,  and no matter the situation it will guide him to the correct response.  

Without ignoring the fact that he’s a super hero and the movie is not a retelling of real events, he goes about dealing with evil I feel in a very just way that I feel can be modeled in real life.  He’s never killing his opponents like they’re trying to do to him, and he never uses the same weapons that they do.  Both of these symbolize how he’s above the petty level that these criminals are on, which as peacemakers I feel is very important moralistically.  If we can’t deal justice without reciprocating the same amount of terror that the “bad guys” are inflicting, then are we any better than they are?  Or are we just inflicting our will because we have the money to flex our guns against anyone who doesn’t play by our rules?

Also Batman is not a power thirsty figure enlisting to fight crime so he can fulfill some sick fantasy of inflicting pain and justifying it because they are criminals.  You wouldn’t see Batman on some YouTube video harassing prisoners of war, that's not what he's about. The thing that I love about Batman is that he sees himself as a public servant; if there was no crime, he wouldn’t exist, he wouldn’t be out looking for trouble.  He waits until he’s called upon (The Bat signal).  Which I feel we could learn a bit from this in the form of foreign policy.  

No doubt Batman is not afraid to inflict pain on a few to save the innocent many, but there’s no question that’s not the right thing to do in that situation.  As messy as things can get and as harsh of a reality that war and violence is, I feel we can look at some of the fundamental qualities that make Batman great, and apply them to real life to ensure justice is being carried out in a humane way.  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/