Volkswagen is Brilliant

So my roommate just got the latest issue of People magazine, and inside was an ad by Volkswagen. This ad was unlike any I had ever seen before. On one side of the page was a sheet of stickers, on the other side was a small picture of a yellow, Volkswagen beetle with a "vs." and a blank square (where it is assumed that the stickers can be placed). IT IS AN INTERACTIVE AD!!! Not only are people going to stop and look at the ad, but they will possibly spend a little bit of time playing with the ad. Now the images on the stickers are probably the most entertaining part. The images include: socks with sandals, a port-o-potty, an empty roll of toilet paper, only one bar on a cell phone signal and an old man in a way too tight speedo. Okay, so the point of the add is that the VW beetle is a "force of good" in a world full "bad stuff," and the ad effectively communicates this message.
A semiotician would have a field day with these 35 images on the stickers. I'll just choose one to ponder on a little. There was a picture of a woman with 80's style big hair. This image should bring a flood of other images to the mind of any American 20 years of age or older. When we see the big hair we think of other fashion faux pas like spandex, fanny packs and horribly bright, neon colors on way-too-big workout pants. Now, this image would not make any sense to you if you live outside of the United States, but for us, this image of big hair is understood as an evil force that still exists today in some remote areas of the country where television or other forms of media aren't prevalent. It is almost like we have a collective memory--we endured this pain together and now we can reminisce about it together.

The Politics of Production

I think I will like this part of the class...you know...seeing how people use power to decide what gets put into viewers hands and what does not. (Poli Sci majors tend to have this fascination with power and how different people use it.) So I was thinking about the politics of textbook production. I will be honest, I do not know a lot about this subject, but I have been pondering it so we'll see where my mind takes us. How did you get your high school text books? The way I understand the whole process, at least in my old district, is the teachers make recommendations to the school board as to which textbooks they would like to teach out of and the school board reviews it and makes the final decision to either accept or reject the teachers recommendations. In this scenario lets see who has the power-- 1. teachers and 2. to a greater extent the school board. Text book writers, in order to be successful, must sell to this audience. What does that mean? Well, text book writers must put information in that they think the school board members think is important. Lets do a hypothetical demographic break down of the school board... there are 2 white males (one Irish decent, one German); 1 African American female; 1 Hispanic male; 2 white females (one German, one Italian). Lets say they are reviewing an American history book. They all want to read about a group that they can identify with because each one believes their group's own history is most important. If the text book writers are writing to this audience who gets left out of American history??? Those who are native to the land maybe, maybe those of Asian decent...who knows who we aren't reading about because of the politics of production.

More on Affinity Groups and Symbolic Grammar

I would like to revisit the topics of affinity groups and design grammar because I think I understand it better now. Plus, we have a test coming up, so review certainly wouldn't hurt anyone.
I went to a charismatic church service on Sunday night. I am not at all from a charismatic background. This was an amazingly eye-opening experience and I completely appreciated the opportunity to go and learn how other people worship-- I would recommend that everyone get out of their own tradition a couple times. It is valuable in so many ways I can't even begin to list everything I learned in that one experience, but enough of my little explore different Christian traditions plug...Okay, so for those of you who are unfamiliar with a charismatic tradition, I will attempt to explain what I saw (for those of you who are from a charismatic tradition, feel free to make fun of my ignorance). I saw people dancing in the aisles, many people speaking in many different languages I am not familiar with, hands being laid on people, people falling down and being covered with blanket looking things, colored banners being waved in the air, people laying in the aisles, and people shouting out while one person was speaking up front. Okay, so I am not as lost as that description made me sound, but I would certainly not consider myself a part of the affinity group that uses these symbols and design grammar. I did not know why people were being covered with prayer shaws after they were literally knocked to the ground by the holy spirit. I did not understand how all of these fit together. What was even more amazing was that the person who took me to the service, who would consider himself a part of this affinity group, was unable to fully articulate to me what had went on at the service. So much of this person's knowledge was experiential. I would venture to say that is common among people in different affinity groups. Because they have grown up in or been a part of a certain affinity group for so long, they lack the vocabulary to effectively communicate what is going on inside of their affinity group. Understanding our limitations in explaining our own symbols and design grammars in a particular affinity groups is crucial for Christians. Both this other person and I come from strong Christian backgrounds, but even with that common bond it was difficult to communicate our own traditions to each other.

Hybrid

In my attempts to create a sort of TV show that has never been done before, I have failed miserably. Everything I come up with has already been done (successfully or not). Sports and news was the first one I thought of because those are about the only two things I watch, ever...welcome to all of ESPN...good job on originality Julianna! My second thought was cartoons and the history channel. For this combination I thought back to a show I used to watch when I was in elementary school. I'm not sure what the name of that show was, so that doesn't help a whole lot, but I can remember really enjoying it (yes, I was a big nerd, I am a big nerd and I don't see any hope for changing in the future, but you'll have that I guess). Then I thought documentary and comedy...has anyone seen Best in Show??? I guess that is its own genre called mockumentaries, correct me if I'm wrong. Celebrity talk shows and home improvement shows....have you seen Martha Stewart lately? Jennifer Garner was on the other day teaching the audience how to make yogurt. As you can see, I did not get very far so I might miss points on originality, but...wait...I have an idea. Nature channel and soap operas. Go with me on this, so we tape animals in the wild for an extended period of time, watch what they do and make up a soap opera story about it. We can give the animals voices and come up with a crazy plot line in which one of the animals gets amnesia or comes back after everyone thought that he or she was dead. It will sort of be like Mystery Science Theater or maybe exactly like that...oh well, I tried.

Submission

So, I was reading up on Dogme 95 thinking about how absolutely boring a film like that must be to watch, and I was going to blog about it until I read Jillian's blog. Jillian wrote about Dogme 95, so I will refer all of you out in blog world to Jillian's blog if you would like to know more--I'm sure she did a much better job of articulating the ins and outs of this film making style than I could have ever done. Good job Jillian! Next step--try to find another movement of film to blog about, so this didn't work all too well because wikipedia writers didn't have the description of these movements in a language I could understand, so... here I am...(sitting at computer, waiting for idea, got one!)

Okay, so over the summer I was watching this news program thing like Dateline or 20/20 and I saw this woman being interviewed about a film she made called Submission. Maybe you have heard about it. It was a highly controversial film that was thought up by a Dutch woman who was a representative in the Lower House of the Netherlands parliament. Another important fact about this woman is that she, at one time, was Muslim. The film essentially artistically portrayed how the Qur'an oppresses Muslim women in her opinion. It shows a woman who has been beaten and raped on the back drop of passages out of the Qur'an. The director of the film, a man named Theo van Gogh was eventually stabbed by an extremist who was upset about the film.

All of this to say that it is amazing the impact films can have on people. I would be curios to actually watch the film to see if the message was the troubling part about the film or if it was the way in which the story was told. Rudd said in class that sometimes or a lot of times what has the greatest effect on the audience is not the message but the method of communicating the message...so there it is.