The REAL Ways of Seeing

Yahoo. Ways of Seeing. Oh yeah...I lied in the last post, this is actually about Ways of Seeing and not Understanding Comics. Scott McCloud, your time will come.

These books were by far the most surprising books I have ever read. Well maybe not EVER, but they were pretty damn surprising.

I have to admit; when I got my Understanding Comics 'textbook' I walked around with it everywhere. I wasn't ashamed of the text that my cool, hip, in-with-the-times Prof had assigned to our class. Everyone thought I was so cool, with my textbook about comics for a University course. So let it be known that Mark Lipton made me look cool!

But that Ways of Seeing book, my goodness. I'm usually not one to judge, but books are different. (I mean I know that's how the saying goes, 'Don't judge a book by its cover,' but come on, who ACTUALLY follows that?) What a lame piece of literature (I thought, with much less alliteration, I'm sure). I hid that under ALL my books, even Media Writing. (I'm just joking around, media writing isn't that bad.) The point is I was more excited to read Understanding Comics than Ways of Seeing. In the end I couldn't have been more wrong.

When I finally started reading Ways of Seeing, I could see why it was assigned to us as a required text. The whole relevance with semiotics and whatnot, made it easy to understand and relate the material to. This book was originally a BBC television show, also named Ways of Seeing. The book was written by John Berger, and published in 1972.

Berger explains about the ways that we, as humans, see different things in different ways, each being influenced by media and art. It's essentially a series of essays formulating concepts of art philosophy; exploring the nature of art and how it influences our ways of interpreting, analyzing, and seeing. (Yes, those two last sentences were redundant.) The interesting thing about the book was the fact that instead of pure text, a lot of pages were filled with paintings, photos and different visual art media (YES!) as well as very little reading. But the parts with reading were hea-vy. The concepts in that book were pretty unbelievable, and that's what I liked about the book, it made me think.

Here are some quotes that sort of jumped out at me, and while I was reading I happened to mark them with some stickies. Little did I know, I was going to use this for a book posting.

“Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display...The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.” (p.54, Berger)
I liked the point about how nakedness is a form of dress. Berger suggests and explains that since nakedness is a display of ones' body, so it is sort of another outfit. When you reveal yourself, your skin is just another costume. I thought that was interesting, and can now better, but not fully, understand nudist colonies.

“You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.” ( I SWEAR I'll find the page number)
Ahhh, the infamous PR-direct quote. Actually, I don't know if it's infamous, and I have no idea if it was intended to point at public relations, but to me it screams Public Relations just because it mentions events. I am naive, I know. Anyways, I like what Berger notes here because it is not necessarily true. An event is defined as "something that happens;"* this is the most widely used use (?). If its just something that happens, and you've planned it, then it could still be an event if everything goes according to plan. On the other hand, if one chooses to look at a different definition which is "a noteworthy happening,"* they can take from it in the most literal sense. If you plan something, and everything goes according to plan, there is no need to write down any said 'noteworthy happenings' because, since they were planned, they've already been written down! Get what I mean? The event isn't an event anymore because it is not a noteworthy happening. If I'm being way too literal here, I'm sorry. I'm usually not THIS literal. But it serves a purpose here regarding what Berger notes about events, when the definition of event is looked at.

"Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion." (p.148, Berger)
This kind of gives of envoked the thought of "Oh, so THAT'S why I feel so inadequate." Berger also mentions how an individual can end up feeling powerless because of notions of the ideal individual. It's the whole dilemma of whether you feel you measure up or not.

“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” (p.47, Berger)
Ughhh, this is so true, even more so nowadays. Most women KNOW that men are watching them, so most of them tend to put on a show. I'm just saying this from my experience with me not being one of these women. Yeah sure, it might be fun to do so at some point, play with someone's heart, but for now that's really not what I'm after. Brings us back to what Postman said about how we always need to be amused. The world has turned into one big circus arena and if you want attention, you have to be amusing. That's what a lot of women do, well, that's what they feel they have to do.

The third chapter about women and how they are seen differently than men got me thinking. I never understood why this whole women's rights stuff is still an issue. Yes, I can understand and sometimes even agree with women who are still fighting for equality (For real this time!) but I personally don't think that women should be seen higher than men. The whole "ladies first" concept still boggles my mind. If there is equality, then it shouldn't matter who goes first. And then there's the whole "ladies' bodies as objects" ordeal. Give me a break. As Berger shows in his book, in the Renaissance period pictures of naked women- that was considered art. But if we look back to McLuhan about how he claims that the 'media is the message' (The medium used greatly influences the way we process the information) it can definitely come into play here. The different art mediums (oil, water-based, photograph) used from time to time can influence the way we see these images. I don't mean how we literally see things, but how we see and understand and analyze different images that are put in front of us.

Using this to compare the Renaissance paintings to now, in modern times, we can understand the different outlooks. Nowadays, if there's a skinny, 'attractive' girl who happens to show some skin in an advertisement it's as if it were a sin. Please. Women's rights extremists: Bore someone else with your objections. Because I don't see you complaining when there's a chubbier woman who is on a billboard in nothing but her bra and underwear. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, I mean that HUGE Dove billboard that appeared in a lot of major cities where five or six women are in their bra and underwear, just laughing away.) You think its just so great how these women are able to show off their bodies because they've finally accepted themselves for who they really are. You think it's just such a good thing to see regular people in the media-regular, a tad overweight, not-so-model-like people, even if they're practically naked, maybe even more naked than the woman with model like appearance. I just don't understand.

My last note about Berger is how he explains that one must see oneself seeing. This spoke to me right away because that's pretty much how I always feel. I will look at something, pass judgment on it, and then analyze myself for my judgment. Does that make sense? It goes without saying that I am obviously and over-analyst, but even when looking at myself. I think that is good in a way. It makes me be able to censor myself when I want to express my opinion, or anything else that may offend others. Because I usually try not to offend. This blog, of course, is another story.

Works Cited:
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1972.

* Merriam-Webster. "Definition of Event." Merriam-Webster Online. Last Modified 2007. Merriam-Webster Inc. Retrieved September 27, 2007.

Ways of Understanding Comics...well not really.

...And now for a book posting. Ah excellent. I've always dreaded this moment when I would have to write about a book. I might trail off into an unwanted discussion laced with irrelevance... Uh-oh, here we go!

I feel like I'm doing a grade two book report, but at least then I could present it with some class. I remember for my first creative book report in grade two the teacher told us to 'present the book in the best way you think you can.' Now I don't have a very good memory, but I remember thinking, "Please, I'm going to do this book report in the best way I KNOW I can." I had this great idea of doing a fast-forward version of the book (I decided I would act out all the characters and their interactions, with all the costumes and accents of course) as well as a book-report-in-a-bag where you use a bag to put items in that represent bits and pieces of the story. (Apparently, this book-report-in-a-bag wasn't as brilliant idea as I thought, because we ALL had to do this in grade five. But then again I thought of it in grade two, so maybe I invented it and then the teachers stole my idea? Bahaha now I'm not too sure.). So I asked my Dad for his input with the practicality of my idea. He helped me and, well let's just say that the fast-forward version was disastrous because, well it WAS a one woman-errr, one kid show. But the book-report-in-a-bag was super and yes, another gold star for me. That's the funny thing about parents. They really want to help you because they know there will be a time when you won't need their help at all. And they won't be able to stand it.

The same can be said for some grandparents. I know mine are exactly like the kind I am about to describe, and I know of some others that act this same way.

My grandparents are the kind that looooove to spoil me. Every time when I was little they used to give me rolls of one dollar, or 25-cent coins. They were always generous, even over-generous if you will. Then eventually my parents must have told them that they didn't appreciate them constantly giving my sister and I money, that we would spend on candy anyways. (My parents kept nothing that wasn't natural in our house; that included candy, artificial chocolate mix, dunkaroos...anything that would exempt me of having a deprived childhood in the junk food department) Finally my grandparents just set us up an account that they deposited money into all the time. (And I'm not kidding; this was literally all the time) It was good in a way though, because that money helps to pay for my education. Well, it and the scholarships that I've received, but still a large portion, maybe 35% is from my grandparents just being 'over-generous'. Even now, when I'm older, my grandparents still slip me money under the table at birthday parties or at Christmas, just so that my parents don't see. I do love my grandparents though. Not because they give me money or because they feed my sweet-tooth, but because they are always up for good times. There are so many memories I have with my grandparents that I can't believe have even happened. I remember once I was serving them pie, and my grandpa wanted a bigger piece. He said I was being stingy, and advised me to not be shy with the pie piece just because he had diabetes. Now, BOTH of my grandparents have diabetes. They usually follow their diets, but let's just say I get my sweet-tooth from my grandpa. So despite my mom telling me not to give grandpa a bigger piece of pie (I was 11-years-old at the time, at the peak of my age of obedience) I did. Yes, my mom had good intentions with her advice; I understood that my mom didn't want my grandpa to have some kind of attack and then end up in the hospital, or even dead. But I thought, well, I know my grandpa well, and I know that if he were to die, he'd want his last bite of food to be pie. Or something sweet. Because he would at least go to heaven with pie, and he would have a sweet taste in his mouth for all eternity. That's what I thought anyways. And that's also what I still think.

Wow I lied, that whole last part was DOUSED with irrelevance. So now, onto my book posting. For your convenience it's in a completely different post! Now fancy that!

If at first you don't succeed...

So I got a 65% on the Media Autobiography from Mr. Mark Lipton. I'm not too thrilled, but I'm not entirely surprised either. I expected about 80% on the creative part because it was pretty damn creative. And the amount of effort I put into it was evident, I think ( if you see my last post I mention putting SIXTEEN hours into the creative portion of this project. Also, in the qualitative mind set, I also gave a lot of effort in regards to getting those magazine clippings, printing off pictures, thinking and pre-planning the concept of my work, and so on. But it was not as original as say, the finger puppets that definitely deserved 5/5.

For the writing part, I didn't expect it to be that low. I mean, I know for a fact that my writing is pretty terrible; I haven't been in a real English class for about 2 years. I have written papers and whatnot, and I always thought that my writing style was a bit awkward, but teachers never said anything negative. I definitely tried for the writing, I just spent a lot more time and effort on the creative part because I knew that I would do better at it. I guess I should have worked more at the writing...Actually now that I think about it, since the ideas were all there but just not as organised as they should have been, the 2.5 was sufficient. People in the class were surprised of my mark and suggested appealing my grade, but that's not how I roll. I mean, I definitely understand the point that one can always improve no matter what he or she is doing, and I can definitely improve in the writing that I am doing...I guess I know what my goals have to be for this year!

End scene.

Today, the four weekiversary of our class ( Yes, I KNOW that sounded lame).

So our discussion, well Mark's lecture, was about a lot of things including syllogism, Postman's book, and yes, that's right a visit into childhood, Sesame Street and Magic School Bus (Said in a East Indian accent, like the little boy that says it in the opening credits that is hanging upside down as he calls the Magic School Bus Hot line thing).

Syllogism: a deductive scheme of a former arguement. If A=B and B=C, therefore A=C. That's ca-ra-zayyyy! Haha I'm kidding. My definititon would be deductive reasoning, but the dictionary's definition is much better.

I don't want to talk about Postman in this post, man. (Ahaha) But I do want to talk about the other topic we had in class, about educational media.

After hearing that the media is the message, Sesame Street and other educational shows seem so terrible. They teach a child to watch TV and teach about commercials, (this program is brought to you by the letter B) which I don't think is too good. That's why now so many kids just want to watch movies and TV. Ughh I cannot STAND the ones who actually tune out everything else around them and literally have their eyes fixed on the screen. Even at camp this summer, my friend Aaron and I decided to watch Pocahontas with the kids, and we would try to talk to them during it, and they didn't even hear us. How can parents not be aware of this? Or they are aware of this and not do anything about it? There was one kid, Ethan, who was plopped in front of the TV every day since he was about 6 months old. For some reason he watched British TV, and what happened? He started speaking with a British accent, which he still has. It's MESSED.

Anyways, we learned that what you do with media is what makes it educational. I remember when all the kids in my gifted class said that it was Magic School Bus (MSB) that made them gifted. Ughh I HATED Magic School Bus for some reason and I still ended up with them, so I really doubt that's the reason. I mean, I appreciated their opinion and everything, but I really don't think that MSB makes you gifted. What a terrible analysis.

Woah, Nelly...

My Media Autobiography 'creative' part:















So I really didn't think that the projects from last week were bad at all. Actually I was impressed by a lot of the really original ones: comparing media to alcohol, the finger puppets, and the Middle Media map. But in a class yesterday we ended up looking at someone's blog, and this person was ranting about how thoroughly unimpressed he/she was about everyone's projects. She said something like 'Oh my goodness, I've never seen so many collages.' I'm sorry, but there were some pretty cool projects presented and not all of them were collages. This person also said something about all the effort that he/she put into his/her project, which I have to say was one of my favourites. He/she was talking about how much work she had put into it and how many countless hours he/she spent on her belly doing hers. Well I counted how many hours it took to my billboard, and it totaled to around 16.5 hours. And that was only for the billboard part, not including the writing I had to do for it. Mine was somewhat of a collage I guess. I just didn't want to call it that because I thought everyone who had a collage would call it a collage. And yes, there were a lot of collages but there were some really creative other projects as well. You also can't blame people for not being creative; some people were born creative, some people were pushed to be creative, some pushed themselves to be creative, and some just aren't. You can't be inconsiderate about it and hold it against them. I guess the person was just ranting like I am now, so I've actually decided that I'm not actually offended. I just think that it just goes to show how people think and how they jump to conclusions when they don't actually know situations. As a Western Socitey we have forgotten about circumstance. There is so much judging going on that is completely unnecessary. For example, since I live on residence I have become friends with a lot of people on my floor. I was speaking to one of the girls (let's just call her A) about how we had decided that our floor was a non-judgment floor. Then suddenly she started speaking about how "I don't like B because she doesn't shut up and has nothing important to say." Now, right after speaking about not judging people (we've only been here for about 4 weeks!) she goes and says that. So I replied "well, I haven't talked to B that much so I don't really have that viewpoint on her, I think she is nice." But of course A just kept rambling off about other people she didn't like on the floor (like some girls tend to do) and I was just fed up. Why would I want to be friends with such a....bitch? Seriously. Now of course that is completely hypocritical since I am judging her given the situation, but that's just how we are trained to think! I know it shouldn't be, and I shouldn't be blaming it on anyone but myself, but it created a domino effect: B got judged but A and A got judged by me. I try my best not to judge anyone before I get to really know them, but I always slip up when I see someone else being judged. Sometimes I can't believe that life is this complicated.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Today is my G-ma's birthday, as well as my friend Aaron's birthday. I haven't seen both of them in a while, but I'm going to see my gran tonight since she lives in Toronto and we're partying it UP. She is so cool!

Aaron on the other hand is a strange kid. I don't even want to get into the history I have with him. I'm just glad that now we are pretty good friends, and I can talked to him about virtually anything.

So about class:

'A is either a or not A.' The first thing I think of when I hear that is my discussion I had with my friend who's gay. He said that he doesn't believe in bisexuals because you either like boys or you like girls. I'm pretty sure I agree with him, having ill-quotedly saying 'Gay is either all gay or not gay.' After all, it's basic logic, isn't it?

Anyways, we discussed the idea of structuralism and how we are told there things are in black and white, good or bad. Personally, I was taught about context. I remember my dad telling me "Well yes, it is bad for you to hit someone. But if they hit you first then you have to defend your honour." I don't think I agree with the honour part, maybe if you had to defend yourself, but the defending your honour is a bit epic. So anyways, I just know that I was taught to think in terms of context and circumstance, not just black and white. But I did understand what we were talking about.

I liked the point today about gratification.. how there are people that are satisfied with delayed gratification, the ones who need instant gratification, and the ones who need instant instant instant gratification. This made me think/assume that the people who need instant instant instant gratification are more likely to be the people of my generation. We can't wait for something to come to us, so we go to it. It's like...we have no patience.

I did it my way

Oh Frank Sinatra, you're music is just too good.

After reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death, I felt that I wanted to start delving more into the literatures about media and its history and future. This further inspired me to start reading two books that were mentioned in Neil Postman’s text, but also mentioned to me by others that I have known. George Orwell’s 1984 looks particularly interesting. I always find it amusing looking back at what people thought our world would be today. It is pretty extreme. Another book I would like to read in the future is Brave New World. I remember proofreading someone’s paper in high school about this book, and my first thought was that it was a 'trekkie' type book. At the time I was reading one of my all-time favorite books, A Clockwork Orange. That is one book that I continue to quote (indirectly, since the book is written in an entirely different English dialect) as well as Catcher in the Rye. Those I would say have to be my two favourite recently read books.

I find it funny how there is a new show on CTV coming out called Gossip Girls. I was totally reading the Gossip Girl series of books about three years ago. I always knew I was psychic...

Wow...

I actually took a lot of notes for this class, then realized that I technically don't have to. And there are probably at least 50-60% of the class that never plans to take notes. But I am deciding that I want to. I learn by motion: if I write something down, I am likely to remember it AND understand it. I think remembering is for school and textbook smarts, and understanding is so that you can succeed in what you do. It won't help a doctor if they remember what they were reading about when studying how to cut someone open, but they're pretty much screwed if they operate based on what they read in a textbook. Well, personally I wouldn't want that doctor to be operating on me. Anyways in class today we talked about media studies being like a mathematical equation. It was written down, I didn't really understand it, but the only thing I found interesting about it was the fact that I find that I am a fairly ambidextrous thinker. The theory that one thinks more with the left or right side of the brain..I don't think it really applies for myself. I find I think with the left side of my brain as well as the right side, which usually ends up in a successful collaboration of the two. I thought it was cool because media is seen as an artsy field, and math is seen as a logic-based field. I thought it was cool that Mark showed us the two combined, relating to each other immensely.

We also talked about mass communication, interpersonal and intrapersonal communication. I essentially understood it because I ran a leadership camp session about it. We also explored the theories about media's relationship with culture: the ideas that
(1) The two have no relation
(2) Culture determines media
(3) Media defines culture
(4) The two mirror each other

These were interesting to think about because I figure I'll know my stance by the time my program is over..I hope!

Number One.

Alright, so this is my first post for a blog EVER. I most definitely was trying to stay away from trends such as facebook, myspace, blogs, etc. but here I am, you've reeled me in. To be completely honest, I was excited to start making posts for this class. I am pretty excited about what will be going on in the class, as well as the time I will be spending outside of class. I feel that I will be looking forward to these assignments so I will actually succeed in them.

I was going to start posting the day after class started, but I did not have my own computer yet and I just feel more comfortable doing it that way. My computer story is one all in its own class. But anyways all is well now and I can start on all of my work!

I have to give reasoning for the name of my Web Log. Although the word 'notorious' has a negative connotation, it is also the name of a very successful rap artist who was also a successful drug dealer. Now I am not your typical rap fan. For about four years (from 2001-2004) I refused to listen to rap music. I thought that it was extremely offensive and there was tons of unnecessary swearing, etc. But eventually I realised that I would just have to accept things like this. And I might as well listen to rap music since there are some with extremely sick beats. (sick meaning good) And rap is an entity closely linked to the four elements of hip-hop culture (The four elements are hip-hop music, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti). I've accepted graffiti as art, I enjoy breakdancing, and I have tried MCing and I have even spun (DJing) before, so hip-hop and rap music were the only element(s) I had yet to accept. But since I'm not phased by the whole swearing and unappropriateness ordeal anymore, I am completely down for listening to rap music. That's why right now, while creating this blog and writing my first post, I am listening to various songs by Biggie (Another name of Notorious B.I.G.). He was mysteriously shot in a drive-by when he was only 24 years old. It is still debatable who shot him. I find it ironic how the method in which he died is the source of many rap culture jokes and stereotypes, but at the same time it's pretty sad how the criminology experts seemed to have just given up trying to find out who shot Biggie in 1997. If you were to look into hip-hop culture and the history of graffiti, breakdance, etc. it is actually very interesting. I did a project last year about graffiti as an art form.

Anyways, that's enough of my blabbing about how interesting hip-hop culture history is. Sometime soon I'll link to a Biggie song. I still have to get into the groove of webLOGGING.

Holla!

- Cara