Halloween Costumes

Halloween at Babson and all over the United States is a exciting time of year when we can live vicariously through our favorite pop culture icons, monsters, and villains. The costumes in themselves are an important medium, especially around one of our favorite holidays. It allows us to become someone or something else, and mask our true identities. Personally, I love costumes that play on inside jokes or obscure pop culture references, just because when your audience figures out who you are dressed as, it makes it so much funnier. I did some research and I found out that the tradition of wearing Halloween costumes arises from the Pagan holiday called Samhain, in which individuals dressed as evil spirits to get rid of them. Today, we have given it a much more secular meaning, and dressing up is something that we can all enjoy. My point is that costumes are a medium that influence the audience that we project them to. For example, a girl who is scantily clad at a costume party is obviously doing so for a reason. For others, taking a more conservative approach shows their personality as well. There is something for everyone, and personally, I love costumes that I can craft out clothes that I have and a few scarce resources. Being the broke college student that I am, this Halloween I decided to dress up as Token from South Park. All I needed was a purple t shirt, black pants, and a yellow letter T on my t shirt. It worked out well because the audience decoded the character, and appreciated the resourcefulness with which I made my costume. Not to mention that I bear some resemblance to him. Here is what token looks like haha:

Political Cartoons - Not Suitable for Children

This week's reading, which is about the organization structure of the media, caused me to reflect on one of my favorite types of media. Everyone loves seeing cartoons, and when paired with satire, it makes for a humorous and entertaining play on a serious topic. I am talking about political cartoons, whose subject matter can range from politics to the economy. I have chosen a few political cartoons about the media in particular. In this case, one form of mass media is used to depict an even bigger form of mass media. Chapter 4 mentions the concept of conventions, which are standardized formats of conduct and form in the media industry. In this first cartoon, the artists suggests that media bias is a convention that has been around since the inception of television and radio broadcasting. The artist shows us that there is a bias from CBS, but that it is not talked about.


The chapter also describes the process that many journalists go through in order to obtain a compelling news story and have it printed in the newspaper or broadcast on the evening news. The author mentions that they must sift through several news stories and determine which ones are relevant. The next cartoon is a show of what media professionals have to go through in order to get these compelling stories, often having to jump through hoops to get the story.



I think that political cartoons are a way of poking fun of the things that are left unsaid about society. However, they are a source of news themselves for people who are looking for a twist on the traditional news format. In a sense, these drawings have become a convention through which artists can express their satisfaction or disdain for an issue.

College Dorms: A Media Sanctuary

Whenever I look around my room, I realize that every poster, every picture, and every object that I own is a reflection of myself. What we choose to put in our rooms and how  we decorate them can say a lot about us. I live in the ONE Tower (Keith B) and I have a single. Living with 14 other people who also have singles, I have made several observations about their rooms. The people who tend to be more sociable and creative tend to have a room that reflects that personality; and the people who tend to be a little more reserved have barely anything at all. This brings me to my point, that our dorm rooms serve a medium through which visitors can get a glimpse of our lifestyles. One can analyze so much just by taking a look at how a room is set up. When thinking about all of this, I realized that it ties into the concept that the medium is the message, and that a dorm room is a hot medium. It creates a sense of interaction with whoever enters the room for the first time. I know that whenever I go into someone's room for the first time, I can immediately draw several conclusions about their lifestyle and habits. Even living in a triple my freshman year, although we didn't have a lot of space, I knew the idiosyncrasies of both of my roommates just by the way they kept their things. Reflecting on the topic, I also realized that it ties into a concept that I learned in my introduction to consumer society class. We learned about the concept of conspicuous consumption, which is the purchasing of goods and services to show a certain level of social or economic status. After some thought, I realized that college students are purveyors of conspicuous consumption. You see this with huge TVs, expensive furniture, loud sound systems, and other items that students use to distinguish themselves. Although many of these items are not essential to a content lifestyle, they serve to show that we are not life everyone else. In essence, our rooms not only reflect our personalities, but also our spending habits and how we choose to distinguish ourselves from a socio-economic perspective.
Here are a few pictures of my room:

Rize

  Dancing has always been thought of as a medium, but for this blog entry, I wanted to highlight the movie Rize. The film, which chronicles the krumping dance movement in South Central Los Angeles, highlights key insights into the evolution of the style. Krumping, which is a fast paced, aggressive dance created in Los Angeles looks more like a ritualistic fighting ceremony than a dance routine. In the film, the director juxtaposes the expressive dance moves done by the characters with a tribal African dance. To most people who haven't been exposed to krumping and its style, it looks like nothing more than a series violent body movements. To put it quite simply, it is comparable to an entertaining seizure, in which the dancers' bodies convulse to express their anger and passion. This movie is a perfect example of how class experiences shape the way that we decode the message of the dance. The film concludes with an epic battle between two crews that prepared for months to get a shot at the crown. For people who think that krumping is an obnoxious and unimpressive dance style, this battle seems superfluous. But to the competitors in the final battle, it is their life. Their entire livelihood depends on the outcome of this single battle. This is a perfect example of polysemy, in which this event means so much to one group but nothing to another. In the end, the underdog team was victorious and the main team (called the Clowns) was extremely distraught. As an outsider, it looked as if they had lost a member of their family or as if a traumatic event had just occurred. However, the style that the created and had held so dearly, failed them.

     Due to the success of the movie, krumping has become a mainstream part of hip hop culture. From its humble origins as a crazy street dance, it was able to evolve into a message that can appeal to the masses. Now, people appreciate the style that was once deemed too erratic and obnoxious. Here is a clip from the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSq09Z7TBt0

Billboards Everywhere

We've all seen them as we pass by in our cars. Sometimes we read them, but most of the time, we pass them by without even paying attention. Billboards are a medium that have been the subject of controversy over the years. One such controversial billboard is this one:

This provocative billboard has the power to affect the way that we think, live, and interact. The one billboard that gets me every time is the one that is outside of Fenway Park, as you drive along the Mass Pike. This is what it looks like:

Someone who has never seen this billboard before would find it hard to digest at first sight. After further review, one would realize that it is actually an anti-gun advertisement, and that the billboard is meant to be sarcastic and witty. This reminded me of our discussion in class about advertising and its negative and progressive effects on society. I think that the first image above is an example of how advertising is often forced upon us, and subjects us to propaganda. The second image shows a progressive example of how advertising can be used to do good. In this case, both billboards are not corporate, and are not advertising products or services. But I think that billboards that do not advertise a good or service are the most effective because they force us to observe something out of the ordinary. Billboards are a quick, cool medium that force us to make split second decisions about how we are going to interpret its message. When I think of billboards, I think of a concept called "thin slicing" that was coined by the author Malcolm Gladwell. Thin slicing refers to a series of processes that occur in your subconscious that allow you to make mental connections. The thin slices of memories and experiences that we have been through allow us to connect with the media that we see. In this case, we use this concept every time we look at a billboard because we are forced to make a split second decision. That's what's so great about these giant postcards; they are subject to individual interpretation. I think my favorite billboard has to be this one:

Until next time...