Blogs were the first wave of news from VT

Journalists look to bloggers for Virginia Tech story

After the horrible and tragic shooting at Virginia Tech University, a LiveJournal account, icantread01 posted his story at 11:47AM of waking up on Monday morning from a phone call from the local hospital where his girlfriend was slightly wounded from a gunshot wound. Apparently, his blog was one the only forms of communication that reporters had to contact VT students. Within hours of his entry, CBS Newsworld and NPR requested a personal interview about his experience and updated information from the shut-down campus.

Similarly, VT friends turned to Facebook and AIM, instead of the phone, to contact fellow Hokies about their health, news, information and updates. With 24 hours of Monday’s incident, 3500 Facebook groups have been created to show support for the fallen students and teachers. The above black ribbon with VT logo was created to symbolize the tragic event on Facebook, Myspace, LiveJournal and other participatory websites. From Canadians, Muslims, to whole Universities set up blogs and discussions bulletins to help people mourn, discuss and psychologically cope with the horrific events.

Commodity Fetishism: "A Day Without an Immigrants"

I suddenly have a fetish for the idea of commodity fetishism. In Sturken & Cartwright, commodity fetishism is defined as, “…An mass produced goods are emptied of the meaning of their production and fill with new meanings to mystify the product and turn it into a fetish object.”

The idea that companies purposely hide a production of mass produced goods has been the main interest of news in the past few months. For a major headline, the idea of commodity fetishism can be applied to illegally Mexicans having as field workers to put fruits and vegetables on shelves of major supermarkets and tables of Americans everyday. In S & C, they mention one important description in commodity fetishism, that the product is no longer connected with the context of its production. Similarly, most Americans did not realize the full extent of immigrant’s influence on American production until groups marched on “A Day without an Immigrant” Movement last May.

This political rally walk, grabbed the media’s attention by publicly stating America’s commodity fetish with illegally workers. The marchers rallied for the legalization of over 12 million illegal workers across the nation. Hopefully, America’s eyes were opened to the invisible work force on its own homeland.

The Evolution of Beauty

"The Evolution of Beauty" commerical link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knEIM16NuPg

"The Evolution of Beauty" commerical starts with an average woman in front of camera. In the next 60 seconds, the viewer will see quick snapshots of the evolution of her beauty. First, there are several layers of makeup and hair manipulation. At first, these actions are standard and considered normal in enhancing the model’s features. At this point, the model has slightly changed her features and appearance. After several snapshots are taken, one shot is chosen and digitally re-mastered. Suddenly, the model’s lips, neck, hair, eyes and cheeks are changed and altered in some form. She has been unnaturally transformed into a new person. She is almost considered a virtual person, because of the huge transformation of her appearance.

This begs the question: how is beauty regarded in society? Is it considered this unreachable level? This commercial visually narrates the exposure of the socially constructed definition of beauty.
In addition, this quiet transformation summaries the postmodernist idea of always questioning the authenticity of media. It calls in question the authenticity of pop culture icons to be definitions and standards for society. The quiet truth of air brushing and computer enhancement for famous celebrities is exposed. Instead of being role models, these celebrities are corrupting young minds to always strive towards an unreachable goal of beauty.

Stimulation Addiction

I want to discuss the quote that mass media, “operates whether or not we are watching of not” (S&C). With such constant stimulation with information, after a while, are we just going to ignore it? Psychology says a constant stream of stimulation will be slowly ignored and not considered as a constant presence. Similarity, the human development theory states that a constant stimulus does not need to be continuously reinforced by actual feeling. For example, if there a foul odor in the room, do you need to be continuously reinforced that there is a foul odor? No, of course not. Eventually, your mind becomes distracted with other things as your brain nerves slowly taper off their messages of the foul odor.

Similarly, the constant stream of information that continuously surrounds us will eventually numb our perception of the information. I feel the ominous presence of media and communication will continuously be our generation’s pitfall. With so many messages and visual stimulation occurring around us, we need more and more incentive to stay interested. Over years of watching television, Internet and other visual medias, our generation has build up a lower tolerance towards becoming distracted and a higher tolerance of staying disinterested. As a result, we will have a harder time focusing our attention towards one type of medium, for example, reading a book or novel. While checking our Facebook accounts or funny home videos on YouTube, seems much more satisfying for our stimulation addiction.

Common Diamonds?

I really connected about how images are losing their value because of their constant reproduction. On one hand, any industry has the ability to mass-produce an image to make it available to the public, but at what cost? For example, the in the movie, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the main character talks about making the diamond available to the mass population. He states it will become more popular and therefore more profitable. So why does not the Diamond industry allow diamonds to given to anybody? Because a diamond is only profitable based of its rarity and uniqueness. If you make it available to the common man, then it is no longer associated with the higher class or higher level of taste. So technically, the rarity and uniqueness of a diamond is socially constructed. Society has defined diamonds to be interchangeable with beauty, money, wealth and fame. Diamonds are simply tools that society uses to create a social hierarchy.

Spectatorship, Power and Knowledge

The Sturken and Cartwright text continues to discuss the viewer's relationship with the image, especially in terms of the psychoanalytical theory. Since learning about the psychoanalytical theory, I have seen it being referred to on multiple bases in marketing and advertising. The notion “Sex sells” is the main position of this theory in advertising. The text refers to many examples of gazing upon a sexualized male/female model with interest and curiosity. This inquire is directly associated with the brand name and their product. Personally, I feel that I will look, feel and make others feel sexualized by using their product.

IML Blog #2

I enjoyed this chapter because it explored the many system of interpreting an image. It helped clarify how society reads images: from the image itself, the context and personal experience. I agree with the text that these three factors play the major role to express a certain meaning to society. Personally, I am majoring in Business, with an emphasis in Marketing and Image Promotion, so I had a certain interest to learn and hopefully master the system of communication between image and viewer. Also, I was interested to see how cultural differences played a major role in determining definitions of beauty and taste. Although both ideologies shared basic characteristics, such as coordinating colors in fashion or elegance in beauty, there were major differences and patterns between cultures. I have personally experienced these differences because of my bi-cultural childhood. I have exposure and knowledge of not only the American definitions and standards of taste, but also the Indian Asian perspective. I highly value both cultural teachings because it allows me to identify and contrast standards and expectations.