Random Poll #2 March 26, 2007

Question A:
What is your favourite ‘video game’? This includes online games, flash games, shareware (if you remember that!), gaming console games, etc.

Question B (for if you don’t have a game crutch to pass time with):
What do you think about the LARGE AMOUNT of media coverage of environmental issues in the media since 2007 began?

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

There, that’s officially the end of the post, since people don’t like reading really long entries. However here are my answers just incase you’re curious (or incase you’re enraged that I can expect people to write back when I won’t spend the time on it and you’re feeling rather deprived of my opinion on the matter).

Question A: Fav game
Well, I have been known to be an RPG junkie, as addressed in an earlier post about BBS games, but since post-secondary I’ve pretty much had that preoccupation diminish. This is primarily due to being too broke to upgrade my shoddy N64 with its 5 games to one of the newer consoles but also a consequence of the lack of time.
However, the other day I was sooo stressed and annoyed and bored (from school, what else) that I used Stumble Upon(TM) and found the most delightful flash game. Not only does it combine very simple controls with huge point amounts, it also has soothing classical music in the background and BUNNIES. It’s called Winterbells, check it out.

Completely unrelated to my bunny madness is my recent experience with Second Life, which I will probably devote a whole entry to. Every time I learn more about it, it blows my mind – not in the ‘what a wicked game’ way but in the ‘man this is messed up but I still want to play it’ way.

Question B: The environment and crappy sappy CBC continual coverage.
This morning I woke up to someone recounting their experience in one of Al Gore’s environmental boot camps. Apparently, he personally holds training sessions to equip people to ’spread the word’ (actual phrase used in broadcast) about global warming. He divulged strategies for subtly bringing up the subject with friends. Much of the conversation, which I groggily took in, sounded like the top ten ways to become evangelical… about the environment.

I guess I don’t exactly view that as a bad thing. I think as people are becoming more and more disenchanted with organized religion, they have passion leftover for political/activist causes and might as well use it – AND if the strategies used in religious movements work, then alright. I’m a Captain Planet kid, I cried during Fern Gully, I’ve known all along that we need to practice the 3 (or 4) Rs and learn how to reduce our ‘environmental footprint’ … I guess I’m just getting kind of depressed hearing that none of my personal awareness is paying off, it’s not making a difference, we’re still all going to fry in the global warming hell.

So the media coverage is becoming more of what I’ve heard before and I change the channel because I already know what they’re going to say. But I’m hoping (and seeing) that it does eventually have a bottom up effect, which causes the big environmental players (corporations and governments) to think again. Heck, with all these people tired of hearing about global warming, there is no way anyone will get away with polluting. The media helps us be pissed off about the issue, I guess, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.

An aside: I filled out the Globe and Mail University Survey and flunked the U of L on its environmental practices. If we want to talk about the little people making a difference, I really think the students need to rally for some changes: recycling bins for paper cups (i.e. coffee cups!), styrofoam, and cardboard in every hallway; less wrapping on the food sold (i.e. the sandwich in a wrapper that’s in a cardboard box that has a separate identifying piece of paper); more motion-sensor lights so we don’t keep everything lit up all the time (i.e. the blinding light of the Wealth and Hellness Centre can be seen as I drive home from the bar at 2am), etc. So what can be done? Hmm?

Zzzap! Zzzap! March 20, 2007

Indeed, most media images of the minority are being produced by the majority.

Well, the Ingham article turned me off when she wrote ’site’ instead of ‘cite’ and my attention was particularly caught by the Horsley article. However, being a liberal with an ‘everyone’s great’ paradigm, it is really difficult for me to discuss ignorance and intolerance because I would rather like to think that it doesn’t happen. But it does, and very much so in the media.
It’s interesting because the article talks back and forth as to whether or not all homosexual people should be grouped into one main category of ‘gay culture’ or whether they should be viewed without such a classification. In favour of the category argument, Foucault is cited as having discussed the historical moment when homosexuality started being seen as a “type of life”. Without taking the extra step and railroading the phrase into “way of life” as the author has done, I believe what Foucault was saying could be viewed as pertaining to individual types of life and in no sense does he allude to a larger cultural formation. After all, Dr. Malacrida who is a huge Foucault fan, told me a while ago that despite the fact that he was gay, he was intensely suspicious of the gay rights movement (since I don’t know the specific reason why, I won’t go further with that but perhaps you can ask Dr. Malacrida if you see her). Therefore, Foucault may not have exactly been in favour of the classification of gay culture, especially since he did not hold the same glorifying view of scientific methods (with their binaries) that the general population does.
But I digress. In order to humour this gay culture argument, I thought about how one would characterize heterosexual culture, which is all around us. Would it be through similar clothes that all aim to seduce the opposite sex? Highly sexual music lyrics directed at the opposite sex (i.e. “I’m Fergalicious, I put all the boys on rock rock…” ugh)? Movies about performing heterosexual acts (i.e. American Pie)? Or the constant adherence by males and females to their gender binaries in order to enact the masculine and feminine, which have built in heterosexual characteristics? But not everyone buys into all of that, not every heterosexual person embodies these characteristics all the time; they too have been created by the majority as dumbed-down heterosexual culture. Just like not everyone is gay in the feminized way homosexual men are shown in the Simpsons clip. Not every homosexual could be on the cast of Will & Grace or Queer Eye!
On the other side of the argument is the non-classification premise, which is hugely supported by queer theory. Now, since we’re all attending class at a university in a small city in an ultra-conservative province, you (like me) might need a refresher as to what this is. “Queer Theory – an approach to issues of sex and gender which has primarily arisen out of postmodernist thought. In emphasizing the ‘performative’ aspects of gender and sexuality, Queer theory emphasizes their unnaturalness. From this perspective, there are no fundamental identities underlying maleness or femaleness, homosexuality or heterosexuality.” (Courtesy of Jary & Jary’s Sociological Dictionary, NOT copied and pasted from Wiki).
Now this fine, except that it leaves me in the same place the most postmodernism does, without anything to work with. If there is no gender or sexuality, then why do we even have an article about it? Why do we have hegemonic heterosexual culture? Postmodernist thought often leaves me feeling powerless because if none of this really exists, but we still enact it, there is nothing that can be done by simply stating that it’s not real! And that, in itself, is really why I cannot draw a conclusion about this article. I don’t believe that all homosexual people are the same and I think that any boundaries our society could draw around a term like ‘gay culture’ would just be too narrow to acknowledge all the different people out there and may only add to stereotypes and prejudices. On the other hand, people’s lives, whether they include homosexual or heterosexual relationships, still embody something real and that must be recognized and not devalued. Therefore, rather than listen to experts on this topic, or even myself and my opinion, I guess I would need to do some research into how homosexual people view themselves before concluding what the media should portray in order for America to view people who are gay.

Here’s the trailer for a movie that the article views as a “wider range” of homosexual media portrayal:

Democracy – jks. February 14, 2007

Oh the news, I guess I should have saved my “News-vertisers” post for this week but you can always say more about those who inform the nations.

The Russ Kick article was very interesting but not unique. A lot of the time when I watch the news I feel like I’m being duped. I guess that’s why it doesn’t bother me to not have CNN or any exclusive news channel because flipping between The National, CTV National News and CityTV news (the absolute worst), I have come to learn that coverage barely differs. Everyone gets the same facts and they are all diluted and censored in the same way. Think about it, even if Bush isn’t tell the Americans everything about Iraq and the CBC News is critical of him for it, do Canadians really believe they are in on everything happening in Afghanistan? I don’t think so, I have a feeling that there is probably a lot of footage out there that would cause us to riot in the streets about bringing our troops home.
BUT that is just my very uninformed opinion. And while I cannot blame the news disseminators for my ignorant state, I would need a lot more time to sift through the surface-y news reports, find unbiased or two-sided information and form my opinion from that. Instead, since I only have enough time to watch the evening news and listen to the radio in my car, I have maybe less than one side of every situation and I am completely confused! However, I believe that I am not the only one. I think there are many people like me who feel they do not have suitable means to make sense of current events in our world. For example, who is the good guy/bad guy in the whole Palestine vs. Israel thing? The US influence has been so strong in that story that the limited information I have seems like a fog of random reports. Is Harper really doing something about the environment? Is North Korea going to start the next world war? Why are they building more nuclear reactors in Toronto? What IS happening in Afghanistan and Iraq? Does anyone know how the Americans will keep the next election fair? Was the last one really unfair? Is Michael Moore nothing but a celebrity? Is bird flu going away just like SARS did or should we still buy Tamiflu and prepare for a pandemic? And what about AIDS, I haven’t heard anything about that since the late 90s, does it mean the threat has been minimized or we’re just not thinking about it anymore?

One thing that drives me the most insane is that celebrities like George Clooney, Bradgelina, Madonna, etc keep trying to beef up their fame by picking an underreported news story (ex. Africa, Darfur, kids, bile harvesting, etc) and pointing it out as a major cause to be aware of and do something about. I completely agree that we should do something about these causes and that there is A LOT of stuff in the world we need to change, but I am really angry it took a celebrity to inform me and even angrier that they get more publicity than the cause. If it’s news, I should know about it, both sides of it, but that’s too much to ask because the celebrities would have to go back to acting and singing songs. … And Bush would be kicked out of the Whitehouse but we won’t go there today.

In our textbook, the mention of the “news hole” as the space left over for news after advertising has been purchased seems very relevant to our own local news. Since Lethbridge is not a large city with as much crime and traffic as Calgary, the local news often must resort to filler to top off the news hole. I have a love/hate relationship with this as a lot of the filler is feel-good stories like “today school kids watched for the groundhog and cheered when their principle came out dressed like one of the furry fiends” – these make me feel good, although I do get the sense they are wasting my time a bit. Other filler, such as “one day we may tear down the Alex Arms hotel and revitalize the downtown” or “I am reporting live from the Canadian Tire Christmas tree lot and speaking to Nancy, Nancy can you tell me why the trees everywhere are drier than usual this year?” or anything to do with Mark Campbell I could do without.

So that’s my ranting for today, I’m glad that people like Russ Kirk are pointing out what the rest of us are missing as a result of biased news coverage. I will leave you with an example of the kind of filler I wish CISA would include if it had to use any:

oh.. and yeah, Festivus for the rest of us. whoot.

Quick Thoughts… January 13, 2007

… Do you think that the popularity of self-produced wide-rearching media (ie. Youtube vids, podcasts, blogs, independent film sometimes, etc) has increased because the public just does not believe the “experts” anymore? Perhaps cultural knowledge, individual know-how, and even generational myths will be renewed as valid ways of knowing. Afterall, as the text says (are we supposed to cite it if we mention it?), the news is more often going the route of infotainment these days. In fact, when CBC asked people to call in and tell what they heard too much or too little about in the media during 2006, much of the ranting was about too much focus on the stars, particularly TomKat – ugh.
As for the experts today, the USA has now declared that Al Quaida is rebuilding in Pakistan and that they are still the largest threat to “American interest” (CBC news, 9:00am). Note that no one said they were the largest threat to world peace, but rather solely to what American’s wish to do. Now, I’m pretty bad with my knowledge of history or economics, but does anyone know if there would ever be a reason that the US would feel inclined to control Pakistan? I mean, Iraq has/had oil so…

The other thought of the day: “Ahh!”. I could spend hours blogging and still not be able to read and write and comment as much as I want to. Everyone’s blogs are so fascinating!