After the midterm Flashcards
What is a spectacle?
A public performance, generally large, sometimes seen as a regrettable public display
What can spectacles potentially influence?
Our politics and social lives (live in a society of spectacle- Debord)
What is a media spectacle?
Our society is centered around media and consumerism. We consume images, commodities and staged events.
What influences do media spectacles have? (5)
They can shape everyday life and experiences by being “technologically dazzling”.
They can also distract us from real life, occupying our social life.
They can separate us as workers from the production of labor.
Can create celebrities, and cause our lives to feel like movies in which we star in.
Subject us to endless promotion and advertising.
Relating to media spectacle, what is commodity fetishism?
It is where the meaning of a commodity has been emptied. How something was produced or built becomes much less important than the worth it represents. exchange valued over usefulness
Ex. Car- the use of the car/how it was built is replaced with what the car can represent- status, expense, exchange value.
Relating to media spectacle, what is technocapitalism?
Capitalism now relies on technological changes. Culture and technology are increasingly important to capitalism and everyday life, and technological research is a new way to make money instead of products and services (commodifying creativity and knowledge).
Basic structure of society is one of _________ not __________. Baudrillard thinks that:
consumption, production.
He thinks that mass media is not just about spectacle, it is about possibility of consuming all possible spectacles that can be imagined.
Baudrillard sees spectacle as “obscene” because:
He questions when spectacles become common, hard to distinguish. It is hard to determine what an “unusual” spectacle is because they are so much a part of our lives. They create a lack of distance between the public and private.
Virilio is critical of technology and the screen because:
the screen is everywhere. It makes geography less important than communication technology. Speed becomes overlooked in our history because of immediacy today. Military projects and technology drive history.
Virilio relates the screen to “permanent mobility” which talks about:
how speed is at the heart of modern society and everyday life, and gets overlooked in our history. He looks at the transformation of us using motors to give us mobility to now audiovisual devices letting us disregard geography, travelling without physically travelling. Conceding bodily movement to technology.
The division between public and private space is altered because of the screen. This leads to the idea of Atopia, which is:
A condition defined by the exhaustion of spatial perspective and temporal distance. (Brings everything back to the screen, a place that has no place. As in, a society that has no territorial borders.
Virilio has talked of 3 windows when relating to the screen:
He sees technology (the screen) opening a new window to the world. Originally there was
- The window/actual door
- Window- light
- TV and computer is historical successor and historical departure from the the two previous windows.
What are the implications of Virilio’s screen?
They can spectacularize public events, and alters nature of domestic spaces.
Ex. watching a debate on twitter, reacting/tweeting about it in real time.
-Affects the way we think about privacy (ex. webcams, surveillance)
What does simulacra mean? What were the 3 stages of simulacrum?
It is a representation or imitation of a person or thing.
The first stage is counterfeiting. This example first occurred before the printing press, when documents were copied and sold as originals (etc).
The second stage is mechanical reproduction. This example occurred during the industrial revolution where they were able to reproduce products, transforming its status.
The third stage is simulation. We have digital reproduction. Questions of originality and reality mesh, and sometimes the original can’t be distinguished from a copy (ex. a MP4 sounds the same after being copied over and over, but different from the original record).
In terms of media, what is hyper-reality? (Baudrillard)
It is a culture where fantastical creation of media, film and computer technology have come to be more for us. As in we have replaced reality with simulation and hyperreality (ex. watching a baseball game on TV allows us to see instant replays, slow motion, and allows ads behind home-plate to be changed via. green screen)
How does Baudrillard see simulation? - 2 in-class examples
He sees simulation as replacing access to reality with culture.
Examples include The First Gulf War, which was broadcasted like a video game.
Disneyland- is there to conceal the fact that lives are full of spectacle. -It is the real America
How does Virilio see simulation?
He considers it more substitution than simulation. Disneyland is so spectacular so it distracts us from other spectacles in life like Hollywood or Sports.
The key aspect of representation is:
Language.
It is constructed via language.
Language carries connotations (down= negative)
Language changes over time, so does the representation.
What does representation mean? (3 things)
1) To look like or resemble
2) to stand in for something or someone
3) to present a second time, to re-present
When analyzing a text there are 4 aspects to look at (contexts)
1) The text itself
2) Production contexts
3) Distribution contexts
4) Audience contexts
What is Stewart Hall’s encoding/decoding model? (Representation)
There are different ways of understanding media.
Preferred meaning: passive audience (not questioning)
Negotiated meaning: kind of passive (except some of what is being presented, question)
Oppositional meaning: opposite view
Dominant reading: what most of us understand it as
What is difference?
Knowing what things are by knowing what they are not. (Binary opposites, man vs woman), used to make sense of the world.
Orientalism:
Western vs. Orient
(difference), how western society sees the middle east.
What is new orientalism?
Seeing the orient from the perspective of the people there
