Get into the Groove

Man, I totally hate blogs. I mean, when I first found out this is what we had to do for this class, I have to admit I was totally skeptical. When I think of blogs I think of pre-pubescent teenagers who think their lives are just so unbearable that they have to write about it. I guess blogs have a whiney connotation. Even now I just feel like I’m constantly whining. I sort of wish we could fast forward to a time when I have a microchip implanted into our brains so that we have our thoughts of that time to later record into our blogs. Get to it, neuroscientists!

I definitely enjoyed yesterday’s class. Politics is one of those discussion topics that aren’t always acceptable to talk about in public. I registered to vote the other day. I figure, if I want to be able to complain about the government or how it’s run, I have to have contributed to the decision process in order to rightfully be able to do that. So I was happy about that part of class.

Of course the fact that we used up about an hour on politics on top of the hour debating something that the whole class grasped except for one if not three people didn’t surprise me. When the girl in class yesterday didn’t understand the fact that it was a privilege to be in university, or any post-secondary education, I wasn’t really surprised. I wasn’t even angry with her, and how inconsiderate I thought she was being. The only thing I could think of is the fact that there are so many people that completely disregard circumstance and special situations that other individuals might be in. People hardly ever choose to sit back and try to understand that not everyone is in the same situation as he/she is in. There are so many factors that could stop someone from going to University or College. It's not always money issues either. Even when that was explained to her she couldn't understand that even if you work hard enough you may still not be able to get what you want. And yes, even thought that is what parents, teachers, and elders have been telling us since we were young "Do your best and you will get what you want!" This is not always the case. There were so many things that I wanted to say, and for that reason I had my hand up for quite a while, but apparently I'm not allowed to participate in class. There were times when I would be the only one with my hand up and I still wouldn't get to say what I wanted. How am I supposed to be marked on class participation when I am not able to do so..? I guess that's the downside of being in a massive class, but at the same time I can't help but wonder if there is another reason I'm not being heard...

After that long, unnecessary (but somewhat interesting) conversation, we looked at the Gap jeans commercial that Mark showed to demonstrate that nothing in advertisement is by accident. There were signs of Madonna showing that she was a dominant character in the music industry, and perhaps symbolically showing the dominance of white artists over black artists. But, little did we know, this is not the commercial showed to the actual public. The shorter, 30-second commercial contains none of the racial or dominant themes that we discussed in class, except for at the end when Madonna does some ballerina move and Missy does the splits. I find it a bit biased how we didn't know that the commercial shown to us wasn't the one that was on TV. It was obviously the one that we would use to analyze, because even I would rather analyze the seemingly racist one than the TV-used one. I just wish we had been told about the uses of this certain commercial versus the edited, shorter one.

Here, see for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-XA2lsbgjA

It's like catching shoplifters. If you're looking for ethnic (be they black, brown, yellow, etc.) shoplifters, that's all you're ever going to catch.