Ergh, I thought I wrote 2 pretty sub-par essays. How about dem apples?

p.s. I'm happy Boston won, but I'm mad that the curse is "broken." It would be fitting that they lose in the World Series....

yeah, i'm feelin the sub-par essays. thats what i'm all about, apparently. i really enjoy having to shed layers of clothing because organizing my thoughts in a timely fashion makes me overheat...
and i hope the yankees are crying their faces off. breathe, stretch, shake, let it go.

Well, I don;t know if my essya were sub par, but I sure feel like at least the first one I wrote actually had nothing at all to do with the readings. I just started rambling about trash and society. Is that okay?

Those who have reason to think they may have written a "sub-par" exam have an opportunity here to dazzle us with their wit and erudtion. ;-)

I too feel as though I might have gone 2 for 2 on the sub-par essay quota. And being a huge Red Soxs fan... that can speak for itself.

I read (and re-read, and finally, re-read) the Introducing Postmodernism book. On the third read, the sentence "The only cure for postmodernism is the incurable illness of romanticism."

I know little to nothing about romanticism, and have been trying to figure out what they could mean by this.... ?

For the essays, I got my ideas out but my thoughts were all over the place. I started with an outline but I didnt stick to it cause I got more new ideas. Exams stress me out.

I dont watch baseball so I dont know what is going on, but I heard some people care more about the game than they do about the upcoming elections (reminds me of Underworld)??

I went through the same thing with the postmodern text. I dont think we really talked about romanticism in class but I remember that it has something to do with imagination, emotions, senses. And in discussion I remember MGK saying that postmodernism is kinda depressing the way we described it as a class. So it may be that postmodernism lacks some quality which romanticism has.

I too felt a little shaky on the midterm but I’m very excited to start Spiegelman this week.

PS- As a Yankee fan from the north (where this stuff is drilled into us from birth) and in response to the earlier comment about The Curse being broken after last night... The Sox merely won the pennant which they did back in 1986 (the same year of the infamous Bill Buckner incident) to name the most recent year. In order to break The Curse of the Bambino (which superstitious baseball fans claim has kept the Sox from winning a Series ever since they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920), they must win the World Series which they have not done since 1918... while the Yankees who had never won a Series prior to 1918 have since won 26.

Took a class on Romanticism last semester, let's see what I can remember... Essentially, it's not that far from Postmodernism in that it's a rejection of the concept that Rationalism (in this case, that of the Neo-Classical era) was the be-all and end-all of human thought. Newton's laws of physics were shaping the Universe according to the laws of mathematics, not theology. Classical Greek philosophy was very much in vogue, espousing reason as the more important aspect of human consciousness and that emotion was merely a distraction.

Romanticism was a rejection of this approach, centered around the emotional experience, even if these experiences weren't the most sensible thing to do. Think about the characters in Wuthering Heights, blazing through the book as "ciphers of emotion" (in our teacher's words), uncaring about how their actions affected other people, or even their own lives. Another important aspect was that a positive emotion wasn't necessarily better than a negative one... what mattered more was the strength of the feeling.

So, there. I had wanted to post a quote that reminded me of the FOX News / Michael Moore discussion, but I can't find it in the book right now. I'll put it up when I do.

Hey, actually I was reading a piece that reminded me of the Michael Moore discussion; coincidentally, it's in large part about Fahrenheit 9/11. Comparing it to Celcius 41.11, a film much closer in its aims, the article praises the technical mastery and real soul of Moore's documentary. I don't think Fahrenheit 9/11 is the ultimate embodiment of anyone's political beliefs, but at the same time I think it's more nuanced, artistic, soulful, and moving than anything on Fox News (biases aside) I think the side-by-side comparison shows the differences between the media of television news and film documentary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53067-2004Oct21.html

I don't think you can deny that Farenheit 9-11 is structed to resemble a news story, at least when comparing it to Moore's other work. It isn't a straight parody, but the way he presents his material - documents with voice over, footage of the president, expert interviews, etc. - is formated comparably to a news program. That being said, he did add more emotional elements to it, including the footage and interviews of the deceased soldier's mother and family, but the overall picture is one of the supposidly more objective medium.

just saw a great movie this week:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145937/

"Naqoyqatsi" - a very visually intense examination of life within the information age. comes highly recommended. all about virutal realities and the visual metaphor.

the movie opens with a digitized version of a bruegel painting "The Tower of Babel": http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/bruegel/babel1.jpg.html

by all accounts this movie should be on our syllabus!

Fahrenheit 9/11 is absolutely, 100 percent biased and it has never claimed to be anything else. Documentaries are not supposed to be unbiased, if they were then they would be called long-form news. A documentary must have a point of view. While some documentaries force their point of view down the throat of their audience and others more subtlety present it, they all have a point of view that they are trying to get across to audiences. Michael Moore doesn’t try to pretend like his documentary is unbiased. He puts himself in almost every film he makes. (In 9/11 we see him driving around in an ice cream truck, while reading aloud the Patriot Act and then trying to get politicians to sign up their children to go to Iraq---clearly Moore is not treating this like serious news.) Making yourself part of the story is one of the biggest crimes a journalist can commit. Moore is not a journalist, nor has he ever been one.. He is a film maker. We simply cannot compare his work to Fox News or say that he is working with some sort of objective medium because these things are in completely different categories from a documentary film. Moore purposefully teeters on the edge of propaganda for a reason.

Of course, to expect balanced, representative coverage from newscasts and documentaries is to assume that media, as a form, is actually representative. To paraphrase Baudrillard, our outrage over media bias is merely a simulation in service of the grand charade of media itself. To become outraged we must first assume that there exists impartial media. However, just as we pretend that Disneyland is fake in order to legitimize the real world and preserve our seeming maturity, we also give credence to scandals of partiality in media so that we might protect our unwarranted faith in its objectivity and public benefit.

To posit some negative attribute of an existing social fiction, such as the media, is also to affirm the belief in the positive. To quote Donna Haraway, "Blasphemy is not apostasy." To criticize a system from within is not to condemn that system. The media is an utter fiction. Its sole purpose is entertainment, allowing those who enjoy the fantasy of large scale journalistic integrity to balk and swoon at fake falsehood and truth, respectively.

Let's not forget that Michael Moore is selling something. I dropped nine dollars in the belief that I was getting the positive, the veracious distillation of newsmedia and the adventures of Herr Bush. However, Moore is no fool, and in providing a flawed blend of truth and bias, he leaves his integrity open to criticism, which can only serve to uphold the pipe dream that journalistic integrity, or the commitment to objective reporting, ever existed in the first place.

I totally agree with Darrell on many of his points. Yes, Moore is selling a product that was shown in a movie theater which removes him from the genre of ‘news’ in any way. And to say that it is comparable is like comparing Jon Stewart’s responsibilities when interviewing John Kerry to that of Crossfire‘s Tucker Carlson. In regard to the media, I also completely agree. The idea of unbiased coverage is completely bogus. Unless robots can one day serve as reporters, there will always be biases in the news. There are some reporters who try to ignore their human biases and pretend as though they can completely remove themselves from what is going on around them (i.e. a lot of journalists don’t vote because they feel it will affect their coverage of stories). But, most journalists know that this is not possible.

HOWEVER, to say that all media is bad and that integrity in the world of journalism is a fantasy is not fair. The media does serve an important function in our world and for those cynics who do not agree, I ask you to look at the example of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who’s work uncovered Watergate. If this example still doesn’t do it for you then I can tell you that I have experienced first hand the benefits of the media. When I was in third grade, a company that was located a hundred feet from my house was bought out by a plastics company called Polymer Resources. Polymer started pumping unfiltered emissions into the air and for a year and a half we all breathed carcinogens and other toxins. At this point people in my neighborhood started getting sick (miscarriages, various lung diseases and in the case of my brother and myself, severe asthma to the point where my brother needed to be hooked up to a breathing machine each night to receive medicine for his damaged lungs). It wasn’t until the media began covering the story that our situation changed. Because of the constant coverage and pressure from the news, Polymer finally adhered to the government regulations and filtered their emissions. (We eventually sold our house but that would not have been possible if Polymer’s illegal activity hadn’t been exposed.)

So for all of you who are so quick to think that the media is evil, I can tell you that while I am not naïve enough to believe the media is perfect, I have seen first hand the ways that it can and does work to serve the public. Does that make me someone who enjoys the fantasy of journalistic integrity? Perhaps, but I’ll let you decide.

I'll agree that the media isn't evil. That would involve there being some better construction to occupy the role of "good" that I cannot provide. Thus I do not defame journalists in general as shameful, amoral, or even biased. The media often provides a public service. However, it often withholds information, in the name of ideology or corporate interest. Ultimately, the media is merely a filter, an imposition on the gestalt of information that allows us to parse this undivided chunk of experience into digestible and perhaps even palatable parts.

Again, "Blasphemy is not apostasy." When I criticize the media, I do not slander its practitioners on their own terms. I don't call them partisan hacks. I don't question their intentions. I don't even attack the perverse theater implied by their outfits. I can trust Jon Stewart to handle that, as he is firmly established within the media and can uncover constructions (political theater, spin abuse) within its framework that cause it and its viewers great harm. My concern is with the construction of media itself. Just as it is with all metanarratives, the media at once distills and clouds the world. It defines the flaws and the virtues of experience, and then discards the former so that we might see clearly the latter.

My concern is that the media, just as with any metanarrative, contains its own rules that do not submit to analysis from within the system. Even Jon Stewart, that incorrigible skeptic, is not attacking the fictional, arbitrary nature of the media as the construction of choice of hundreds of millions of benumbed viewers. He exists within it. He is Alette, the subjugated woman who attempts to destroy the patriarchy from the inside while operating by its rules. As these rules are antithetical to her progress, can she ever break free?

I do not attack Carlson, or Begala, for their partisan bickering. The champions of journalistic integrity can take them to task for their redefinition of political discourse as shallow and sensational. My interest is fractal in nature, in recognition of the same pattern on a greater scale. Carlson and Begala operate within a construction that values the spectacular over the engaging. They are, in a way, a more intense microcosm of the same features of the media. The valuation of the spectacular over the engaging is arbitrary, however. As Kristen describes in her tale of the toxic cloud, the media remained unconcerned until the event achieved a surface tension, and broke. It is surely engaging to report on the imminent poisoning of an entire neighborhood. However, before the poisoning becomes actual, becomes a spectacle, I would not expect the media to see value in its coverage. Were its values inverted, we might all be more informed, though less entertained (terrified?). Either way, it is dangerous to believe that such a construction as the media describes the form of the world, or the behavior of the channel by which we receive information. As with all metanarratives, it is a machine that has the world as its input and whose output we receive. Much is lost through its machinations, and much is skewed.

On the Romanticism thing:

What I took "The only cure for postmodernism is the incurable illness of romanticism" is about the differences in the way you gather information and "truth" about the world.

Romanticism (American romanticisim anyway, I think) is about going inside yourself for truth. Pulling yourself out of society and into nature. Breaking from molds of the past to create something unique and different. Emerson was the biggest proponent of this I believe. Americans couldn't look to old forms of art as models--they had to create them for themselves. It's kind of a rejection of media in all forms.

Postmodernism is the opposite. Media overload. Being so plugged into society that it feeds you models of behavior, thought and art constantly. Going back to romanticism would mean a withdrawl from society as this pattern of models and cyclical feedback and back into nature. Specifically, I'm thinking of the last section of the intro to postmodernism book, the section about Madonna and serial killers and things--All those models and modes all intersecting in some way with media.

However, I think it's interesting that both modes of thinking have totalitarian/fascist aspects to them due to their concerns with relativism...

So one could say that relativism is the main key. We must understand relativity to understand our social predicament.

Through this, we really get into some questionable practices, whether we would call them de-constructionist or nihilism, what have you, we must concede to simple truths: Media is a necessity within the scales of our intertwined activities. I think of this because of an excursion I took this weekend...I went camping with some friends, in the middle of bumblefuck west virginia. The people were clearly isolated from social institutions, media saturations...what have you. Some may call them backward or illiterate, but they are conditioned through there society. Bill, was a character I met that ran a little bar/mart called "Bill's Place." It was the only civilized market within a 30 mile radius, so we had to go for provisions and what have you. If we take Bill and throw him into a saturated environment such New York City, Bill would undoubtedly feel uncomfortable with all the "cityslickers" (what he called some of my friends...God knows what he would have called me?) but clearly he would be able to equilibrate and function in such an environment. Just the same way, I was able to function in Bill's environment.

However, if lets say, a member of the media came to Bill's place and asked to report on the ways of life in Bill's Place, the lifestyle, the culture is hampered by the reporters saturated lifestyle, just how if Bill were to go on an adventure in the city, his perspective would be skewed by his naievity.

It is an infinite regression that is unsolvable. The point of recognition is that anything ever created in terms of thought or fact is from perspectives, billions of them, each of which is different. Like a kalidescope, we need to conjure from each shard and paint our own picture. Those truly special and influential people in our lifetimes often filter the picture into exceptional images for us.

So the question is, are you a shard or are you a filter?

ooh, i'm a little late checking in (as usual)-
Looks like i wasn't the only one to feel annhilated and unable to organize my modernist essays. I realized (rather too late) that I should have started with #2 and then dealt with #1.
Incidentally, has anyone else seen the movie, 'The Dreamers'?
I swear, this does relate to the essays and really, the entire postmodern concept...
Very cool stuff going on, especially along the lines of that whole postmodern 'real life as scenes from a movie' idea.
Watch it and then check out the special features as well, there's a whole bunch of history about Paris in 1968 and the student uprising. Kind of goes along with the whole 'storming the ivory tower' concept and the blurring of identity lines (see the incident re: Cohn-Bendit's deportation as catalyst for taking the revolution into the streets...)
I really recommend it, it's at blockbuster & I think this class would take the film in the right way...there is a sort of bizarre love triangle thing going on, siamese twins (seperated at birth) and many activities some might find offensive & depraved...but not this group...full of people way too clever for that. :)

So, I actually thought I did a decent job on the midterm, but after reading some of the entries here I'm beginning to be a little uncertain! I would rather talk about Spiegelman. Having read and studied his two previous works, Maus I and II, I was disappointed by the content of In the Shadow of No Towers. His newest work proved to be more extensive in terms of graphics but not so much in terms of content. The major difference I noted was that Towers seemed to be more opinion-based, with open Bush-bashing, whereas Maus was more factual (or it could be that the Holocaust is not as open for interpretation as is 9/11 given the nature of the incidents). Maus followed Spiegelman's father's journey through the Holocaust whereas Towers is more of a social commentary. While his perspective is interesting, and I feel necessary, I still found that I found Maus more effective. Maybe it is because Maus was innovative in form: taking a horrific event in history and reducing it to the comic strip form in order to reach readers and scholars. Spiegelman's original form is lessened in Towers simply because Towers follows the award-winning quality of Maus, and the strength of his message in his second work, in my opinion, just doesn't compare.

continuing anna's discussion of maus + towers...

i liked maus alot too. the holocaust and 9/11 are to remain two very different events but i likewise thought of the two texts and how history is presented and recieved. we have to take into account that 9/11 is still an event being absorbed and made sense of presently and this colors one's reading of towers.

maus is well received now that most people have put together the history and see the holocaust for the tragedy it really was. on the otherhand, i can see why Towers is controversial at least presently.

the experience of reading maus may feel more fulfilling and familiar because the comics are arranged more like a traditional novel than Towers. Towers leaves you feeling kinda empty cause its more post-modern: it puts a bunch of different comics in a kind of chaotic yet orderly way and leaves the reader to put it together herself.

I think some people misread what I posted earlier. I still hold that from a formal perspective Moore utilizes many of the conventions of a new story or a special interest news story. I was not declaring that Moore's work was unbiased but was looking at the aesthetics of it. Yes, the formal apects of a visual or muli-media work are inherently wrapped-up in its narrative or political message and I was discussing how Moore used this to his advantage. By borowing conventions from the news media I held that he was able to create the illusion that his work was less biased then it is because of the general public understanding of and expectations for the news media.

Mickey Mouse Nose...

the comic "equally terrorized" was brought up in class because of the mickey-mouse-nose on the depiction of bin laden. the nose reminds me of what speigelman says in the text (twice?) about how some people believe that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by jews. and/or it could be a representation of disneyland as being an enemy (postmodern text p.121). and/or it could represent spiegelman as being an enemy both to himself (cause he is so paranoid and wont let himself "sleep")and to other americans.

thus, these characters of bin laden or bush and yes, mickey mouse represent the faces of the enemy for different people. it brings up the post-modern issue of identity and how identity is not fixed (City of Glass) and which is also shown again in the comic right next to it "notes of a heartbroken narcissist" and throughout the text of Towers.

clearly, the concept of identity is closely linked to the idea of the "face of the enemy" (Underworld- THK, Cold War). the enemy/evil/terrorist is not someone you can point your finger at (profile) because identities are altered and are thus arguably meaningless because they can be changed to suit ones politics etc.

well it seems as though we're all a little uneasy about our exams...i just hope this doesn't mean we all did really badly on them...

i thought it was a really interesting point brought up in class when we were comparing the maus books with towers and the different historical quality of both events. of course they're different for very obvious reasons, but i think it will be interesting to compare how 9/11 is written about or perceived in 50 or 60 years. also, just something to add about speigelman's bias...i really don't agree with much of what he says. i do however really appreciate respect the work as a whole and don't think that withouth it, towers would have had the same effect or even been worth writing/reading.