Part I: Find at least 5 images from your everyday surroundings. For each one, discuss how they function as representations, focusing on their truth value. How do they purport to tell the truth, and what truth is it?
1. 
The above image can be found near the top of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ official website. The Devil Rays are a Major League Baseball team (my favorite, in fact), but they make the rather odd claim that the Ray experience is “More Than Just A Game.” The Devil Rays chose this as the theme of their ad campaign this season mainly because they were not expecting to be competitive this season (and, thus far, they have fulfilled these expectations splendidly). Since it is difficult to draw fans to see a losing team, the slogan takes the focus off of the scoreboard, emphasizing instead the complete experience of attending a game. The outlines of fans apparently having a great time appear next to the slogan to bring the point home: when you go to see the Devil Rays, you can have a great time, whether they win or lose.
2. Plus-44 Poster
This picture was the best representation I could find of a poster that is currently hung up in my room. It depicts the members of the band Plus-44. In addition to the picture, my poster has the band name (+44) in the upper left, their album’s name (When Your Heart Stops Beating) in the top right, a Parental Advisory label in the bottom left, and album release date and website information in the bottom right. The poster is a promotional tool to sell the band’s first album. It contains all four members of the band, but the two most famous, Mark Hoppus (left) and Travis Barker (right), formerly members of the iconic pop punk band Blink-182, are positioned in the front. This was obviously done strategically, to emphasize to any Blink-182 fans that they might enjoy Plus-44 as well due to the inclusion of two former members. Also, each member of the band sports an image that is very much in keeping with today’s musicians, specifically of the punk scene: guitarist Craig Fairbaugh (back left) has red hair and a plethora of tattoos, fellow guitarist Shane Mallory (back right) is bald with large studs in his ears and also with many tattoos, and drummer Barker sports a classy muscle shirt with the phrase “How To Murder Your Life” emblazoned across the front, as well as a large lip ring, a hairstyle that can likely be seen from space, and barely an inch of un-tattooed skin on his entire body. Even the frontman Hoppus, who appears straight-laced next to his colleagues due to his lack of body piercing and tattooes, wears a skull and cross bones on his t-shirt, and a hairstyle that is hardly indicative of the fact that he’s 35 and married with a child. Since no one in the band looks like your average joe, they gain credibility for being “hardcore”, for resisting the opportunities to “sell out.” For some reason, image is every bit as important to music sales as is the music itself.
3. Weeds Season One DVD Set
Weeds is a comedy television show on Showtime about a suburban single mother Nancy Botwin who sells marijuana to keep her family afloat. She is pictured in the center of the cover of the DVD box set. On either side of her stand Conrad and Haylia, her suppliers who live on the outskirts of town, and Doug and Celia, two residents of Agrestic, typical white, affluent suburb.
4. Chuck E. Cheese’s – Where a kid can be a kid!
Before I launch into my analysis, I think I’m going to have to explain why this is an everyday image for me, because I don’t think this is quite self evident. My dad brought home a soft little ball from Chuck E. Cheese’s one day (he runs a rec basketball league, and I guess one of the teams was having an end of season party there), and I keep it in my room to play with when I’m bored or have too much energy. Anyway, this image is fairly straightforward. The logo states proudly that Chuck E. Cheese is “Where a kid can be a kid!” Chuck is giving the thumbs up, as if giving his approval to any fun ideas that a child might have.
5. Me!
This image is very special to me, I would assume because it is me. This is the picture that I use as my profile picture on Facebook. We talk a lot about representations, and this is the picture I use to represent myself to an online community. People pick pictures that they feel represent themselves in the most favorable light, either because they feel it makes them look attractive, fun, or some other attribute. Mine is a picture of me at Denny’s with some friends, though you can only see me. This is because my roommate was sitting across the table with his camera trained on me as if I was about to do something very special. I don’t think I ever did anything quite as cool as he was expecting, but when I put my hands up to mimic the creepy way in which he left his camera on me, he decided it was as good a time as any to take the picture. I use this picture for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s a relatively decent picture of me, of which I have very few. Second, with my crooked though endearing smile, you can tell I’m having a good time. The idea is that this picture makes me look like a fun person. Whether or not this is an accurate representation, well…
Select 2 of these images and, following the discussion on pp. 25-31, with diagram p. 29, carry out a semiotic analysis of the images in order to discern what ideology they could be promoting.
1.
Signifier: The Rays logo, the slogan “More Than Just A Game”, and the outline of fans having a great time (followed by the ever-present sponsor and website plug)
Signified: Fun
Sign: A Devil Rays game is a great activity to share with the whole family, whether or not the team wins.
2. Chuck E. Cheese’s: Where a kid can be a kid!
Signifier: Chuck E. Cheese giving the thumbs up over the restaurant name and the slogan.
Signified: Approval and encouragement
Sign: Chuck E. Cheese’s is a place where kids are encouraged to have a great time.
Find 2 more images, one of which should fall into the category of “high” art, using a work of art on campus (outdoor sculpture, museum, the library, offices, etc), and the other “lower” art. Discuss how they can be classified as “high” or “low.” (p. 31-35)
A piece of “high” art that I see on campus is the sculpture of Benjamin Franklin on the bench outside Carnegie Hall. He is seen holding the United States Constitution in his hand, with a quote at his feet that says, “Wisdom without education is like silver in the mine.” If you stop to consider these words and then what this educated man did with his life, you realize the value of education that he’s talking about. Being a part of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the result of which the sculpture holds in its hand, is just one of a long, long list of accomplishments, but it would still be the accomplishment of a lifetime. The doors of achievement open with a good education. This is a piece of high art because it was created by an artist to convey a message. Its subject is one of the most mythologized characters in American history, and his words in the ground hold a special meaning to an educational institution.
A piece of “low” art would be this movie poster for Old School
It’s low art because it doesn’t convey any sort of meaning beyond advertisement. It is meant to see a product, and that is the movie. It has no significant value, artistic or monetary.
Part II: In response to chpt 5, on mass media, discuss whether you think mass media has a democratic or an oppressive function in our society. Use examples of any kind of mass media to make your points, but be specific. We will return to this issue in Critical Reflection # 8.
Mass media has the potential to be a democratizing force in American society, but it rarely is that way in practice. There are many more options for people to explore than in decades past, but rarely does any exploration happen. People tend to stick to media that agrees with them: A liberal can drive to work while listening to NPR, play NoFX on their iPod, and watch NBC News at night. All the while, a conservative can stick to Rush Limbaugh, country music, and Fox News. Neither person has to ever encounter an opinion that differs from theirs. At the very least, they don’t have to withstand it for very long before they change the channel. This is more of a form of self-oppression than anything, but at least citizens have the option to expose themselves to other ideas, making the system inherently democratic.
3 comments:
Justin Wright
I do not agree that the mass media is inherently democratic. Although people can choose what messages they hear, they are still receiving the agenda of someone else with no say in the content. Even though media encompasses a wide range of possible views and interests, what actually gets broadcasted or printed depends on how much money can be made from doing so. When media is not supported by advertising revenues, it suffers from lower popularity, which is the case with PBS and NPR. Therefore only messages that are popular will be broadcasted, and stories that capture attention make it to the press.
This sounds like the public is controlling the media by controlling its advertising revenues, but the programming of the media actually forces people to conform to certain groups in order to expose themselves to messages they agree with. Like you said, it’s true that liberals and conservatives gravitate to different media sources, but media is causing a stricter divide between liberals and conservatives, as there are only a certain number of sources. Therefore a gradient of opinions does not exist, and there are categories such as liberal and conservative that people self-identify with. Since news sources treat liberals and conservatives as polar opposites, rather than ends on a spectrum, most people think they can only be one or the other, and not a moderate or someone with mixed ideas. In this way, the media oppresses people by making them feel a need to categorize, rather than to be an individual.
While people stick to their preferred radio and television stations, newspapers usually have a monopoly in their city. This is often overlooked, but many cities in the United States have one major newspaper. Therefore all newspaper readers must read this paper for local news, and there are no competing ideas. Due to this monopoly the only option is to not read the local paper at all if one dislikes it for some reason. This means that dissenters no longer have any involvement with the newspaper, and they just rely on other media. Newspapers are even harder for the public to shape than television or radio, because if television viewers begin to prefer another network, the networks will change their ways to get the viewers back. Newspapers however, will not even notice since circulation is always declining due to the rise of the internet.
In reference to your closing comments about mass media, I too would agree that mass media is inherently democratic, but for a different reason (from a different perspective).
I think that in its quintessential form as a concept, mass media is democratic because it entails the exchange of information. The search for information, in theory, would lead to a reduction of ignorance and an increase of awareness.
However, as residents of planet Earth, we can never justify examining anything that has an impact on us through a purely theoretical lens.
As I explained in my own blog post, mass media is not simply an exchange of information. There are many forces of reality acting upon mass media; politics and economics being the primary ones. A reduction of ignorance is difficult to promote when the information itself is not completely faithful to the truth. You summed it up succinctly when you said “it rarely is that way in practice”.
I thought your analysis of the picture of yourself was very interesting and true. It is rare to come across someone these days who doesn't have a Myspace or Facebook account. Millions of people from all over the world know us only by our profile picture. Before you pointed it out, I never realized how much thought goes into choosing this picture, and how much it can represent. We can make ourselves seem outgoing, kind, flirty, nerdy, attractive, or a number of other characteristics just by choosing the right photo. We can create our ideal self-image and have millions of people believe this image is true without giving it a second thought. The power and influence of a single picture in this instance is larger than I had realized.
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