Group Presentation Reflection

My group’s presentation was on Marxism, and for my part I read the assigned writings by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and Andrew Ross, and tried to bring up a few points by these authors that were not covered in the original class discussion. I found the readings interesting, especially the ones by Althusser and Ross, because they both focused a lot on education, and how a capitalist system uses education both to push the ideology of the power class on to student (Althusser) and through ideology convince teachers and professors that not only should they work for less pay, to try and change the system would be a betrayal to the very knowledge which they are to impart on the unlearned masses (Ross). Granted, their ideas would be all but impossible without Gramsci’s introduction of the concept of cultural hegemony, which he said was “manufactured consent” first attained through ideology, and then followed up with law, with the main ideology being that of the ruling class (1000). It is cultural hegemony which allows the ruling class to keep ruling, and to make sure that they have what Althusser calls the “reproduction of labour-power” (1336).  Althusser believed that there were two kinds of State Apparatus: the Ideological State Apparatus or ISA, and the Repressive State Apparatus. While the latter is easy to identify, being policemen, judges, soldiers, etc, it is the former that is the most dangerous, because it is through ISA’s that all members of a society are taught the values of the ruling class. Not only that, the members are taught the value of submission and obeying the rules, hopefully instilling in them the belief that challenging the established code – whether it be moral, political, or social – is wrong. If this ideology doesn’t quite sink in completely, the repressive State Apparatus is there to make sure that the laws and rules are enforced – and to serve as a warning to those who might be thinking about challenging the status quo.

There are several types of ISAs, according to Althusser, but the main one in a capitalist society is the school. While other ISAs have power, and a lot of it, he believed that school holds the most sway, because “…no other ideological State apparatus has the obligatory (and not least, free) audience of the totality of the children in the capitalist social formation, eight hours a day for five or six days out of seven”(1347). School is also where one learns the remedial skills necessary to get one through even a base level job, so when that first set of students either leaves the classroom of their own free will or is ejected into society, they are ready to take their place in the work force and do their part for the economy.  The ones who make it to the top wind up becoming agents of one of the State Apparatuses, and they are taught how to manage their underlings (or, in the case of the police force and law, the citizens over which they govern) accordingly.

If this is the case, then what of those who are teaching the ideology? Althusser believed that there are those who understand the awful system of exploitation that they were ensnared in, and try to do their best to change things; to create in their student’s minds new ideas and awareness to the unfairness of the system. These he likens to heroes (1347-1348). For the most part, however, he believed that most are not aware of what they are doing; what they are tacitly allowing to happen through their teaching of the main ideology. That they are too caught up in the idea of liberating their minds and imparting their knowledge to realize that all they are doing is setting the children that they are teaching up to be productive members of a capitalist society that cares little about their minds and much more about what profit it can make from their labor.

Althusser was quite an interesting read, and even if what I took from the reading didn’t exactly leave me with happy feelings, it definitely made me think.

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. "From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. By Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 1334-361. Print.

Leitch, Vincent B. "Antonio Gramsci (short Bio)." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 998-1008. Print.

Reflection from Class, 29 Mar

Andrew Ross’ The Mental Labor Problem covers a number of topics about labor. One such topic was that more and more, educators are being forced into the same role as the “starving artist”; that is, they are being pushed more and more into an ideology that claims that the work they do is not accomplished for the monetary gain, but rather for love of the subject. As artists (not pop artists, who are little more than cash cows, but the true artiste) are expected to create their art for the sole reason that to do anything else would be against their very nature, so have teachers been forced into the scholarly mold wherein money is a secondary concern to imparting knowledge on the world.

It doesn’t help that for teachers – especially now, with the economy as shaky as it is – the job market is  very narrow, and there is always some new young face who will be willing to work as adjunct or part-time faculty for the “prestige of being a college teacher” (2591). These fresh new faces in essence allow schools and universities to edge out older, full-time employees who receive such luxuries as health benefits and a salaried income, and replace them with a “volunteer low-wage army” (2589) who will work for both less benefits and pay, and who will give more than their share of time to do so.

Not that Ross is suggesting that any of these part-time or adjunct employees bring such things upon themselves, or are in any way responsible for the way that they are being treated. What he is saying, rather, is that they are being trained “in the habit of embracing nonmonetary rewards-mental or creative gratification-as compensation for work” (2590). This training, Ross explains, is partially the result of the “amateur ideal of the scholar”, in which said scholar had the “privilege” of ignoring monetary concerns as “too vulgar and trivial” for them to deal with (2590).

The real problem here is that the system perpetuates this cycle of accepting less money for more work. With Education being the third largest major category for a Bachelor’s Degree, the largest in the Master’s Degree, and the second for a Doctorate in the US as of 2007, (http://degreedirectory.org), teachers are being churned out for jobs that simply aren’t available. Even without the ideology of the new/old scholar pushing them to accept less pay for more labor, these teaching hopefuls are going to be hard pressed to turn down any job they are offered in a market which doesn’t have room to accommodate them all.

Works Cited

Ross, Andrew. "The Mental Labor Problem." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 2575-597. Print.

"What Are the Most Common College Majors in the U.S.?" Premier Online Directory of Degree Programs & Career Planning Articles and Videos from Top Colleges and Universities. Web. 30 Mar. 2011. <http://degreedirectory.org/articles/What_are_the_Most_Common_College_Majors_in_the_US.html>.

That's Just the Caffeine Talking...Folgers and Commodity Fetishism (Analysis #4)

This commercial is designed to give the person or people watching it what is commonly known as "the warm fuzzies". While watching this commercial, one is supposed to be ruminating on how nice it is that the young man was home for Christmas, and how sweet it is that his sister missed him so much that she waited up all night for him to get home. What we are not supposed to be thinking is how Foldgers is using this setting to imply to the viewer that if they only buy Folgers brand coffee, they too can have a happy, warm Christmas morning with the ones they love.

What Folgers is counting on with this commercial is the unconscious assosiation in a viewer's mind of thier coffee with home, love, and waking up to a happy family who are all smiles and ready to face the day, rather than grumpy with too little sleep. The only way to acheive such a thing is through "the best part of waking up": a big cup of delicious Folger's brand coffee.

This seems, if anything, to be a fine example of commodity fetishism; a term coined by Karl Marx to describe the process by which social relationships between people are replaced by the relationships between things, such as the exchange of money for a good (665). In place of regular interaction, this good becomes the recipient of feelings and preferences that would normally be bestowed between people. In this commercial, the young man obviously doesn't feel at home until he has started making his coffee; it is the scent of said coffee that alerts his parents to his presence, and it is around the coffee that the family gathers to express their joy at seeing him...because after the greeting has been taken care of, it's the coffee that this family will be going for.

Works Cited

Marx, Karl. "From Capital, Volume I." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. By Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 663-74. Print.

"YouTube - Folgers Christmas Ad 2009 - Peter." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 30 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOQk_pWmisA>.

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It's All About the Fetishism, Bay-Bee (Analysis #3)

This scene from the movie From Dusk Til Dawn portrays a man with a foot fetish getting a little bit of what he craves. Namely, pretty Selma Hayek's feet in his face. As Quentin Tarantino is portraying the character, and he is rumored to have a bit of a foot fetish himself, it is really no surprise that he would take advantage of the chance to have something like this in his movie.

Looking at this through a Freudian lens, one would note that the foot in this case is the replacement for the penis that this man really wants, but cannot have. In order to feed this need, he fixates on something else. Something that makes it easier to see the woman, without a penis of her own, in a sexual light. Probably he developed this fetish early, as a replacement for what he believes is his mother's lost penis, and a protection against losing his own. As Freud writes in "Fetishism", the fetish is a "token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it" (843). The fetish becomes, in a way, a talisman, a sort of good-luck charm against the possibility of castration. Add in the characters weird, co-dependent relationship with his brother, who acts more like a father and might have raised him, and his propensity for violence against women, and the result is a man that I'm sure Freud would have loved to analyze in depth.

One could be forgiven for not quite understanding the whole concept of fetishism. Those who don't have a fetish - or don't have one that is obvious - might not understand the reason behind such a thing. Although Freud might have gotten the reason why one develops a fetish wrong, he was correct in his belief that if said fetish does no harm to anyone, then it is not the right no any one person to judge another for having one, whatever it might be.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. "Fetishism." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 841-45. Print.

"YouTube - Film: From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) - Fetish Scene." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n_pQkK_MP8>

Who's That Pretty Girl in That Mirror, There

This week we discussed Freud and Lacan, the Oedipus complex and the theory of the phallus. Also, we talked about how The Lion King is basically a Disney version of Hamlet, what with Mufasa being killed by Scar, and Simba being unable to take action against him due to his own desire to kill his father and take his father's place, as Scar does. Interesting, but also sad, as I will probably never be able to watch the movie again without putting a Freudian spin on what I am watching.

Doing this made me think, though, about the clip that we watched the first day of class. In the clip from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, we saw first a woman singing about being a doll on a music box, and then we saw a man come out of a box and begin dancing and singing. There is one point in the scene where he stops, caught by his own reflection. He stares for a moment, and then snaps himself out of it, returning to his song and the play that is going on for the people around him. Relating The Lion King to Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex made me think about this moment's relation to Lacan and his theory about the mirror image.

Before the man sees himself in the mirror, he seems to have no idea what he looks like. He is utterly without shame, dancing like a fool for the amusement of the people around him. Then he catches sight of the woman on the music box, and his world narrows to her, much as the child's is narrowed on his or her mother during the first stage of its life. Soon enough, however, the man catches sight of his own reflection in the mirror. He now sees himself, or at least a version ot it, just as the infant will see their reflection and realize themselves as separate from the mother. From that point forward, even though the man gets back into his song and the play to distract the king from his real purpose in his palace, he is changed by seeing his reflection, just as the child is changed by seeing their own. From that moment on, the man is fully aware of himself and what he is doing, the same way that a child, after registering their own reflection, realizes themselves as a seperate entity from their mother, the concept of I occuring to them for the first time.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign

This week in class we started Structuralism. We covered Saussure and some of Frye, and it is Saussure that I found the most interesting.  He had the idea that regarding words, there was the sign, which was broken up into a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the auditory or visual image, and the signified is the mental process that follows the signifier. For example, if someone either says the word “cat”, or shows me a picture of one, I know what it is. Yet this seems fairly subjective to me. Misheard song lyrics are a great example of this. Creedence Clearwater Revival has a song “Bad Moon Rising”, and the lyric “There’s a bad moon on the rise” is surprisingly often heard as “There’s a bathroom on the right”. The two different lyrics present very different images, which can change the entire meaning of the song.

Another thing that we talked about was how one image or symbol can come to represent another, such as a celebrity figure being used to sell a product. Once a public figure becomes synonymous with the product being sold, the theory is that every time you see that figure you will think of the product, and therefore want to buy it, due to the other things the symbol promoting the product represents. So if I see Drew Barrymore  on the television, and she is telling me that all she uses is Cover Girl makeup, I will think that if I want to be more like her, I should use Cover Girl, too. Then I might be more successful, skinnier, with a great on again off again boyfriend and maybe one day, quite a bit of money which I will of course spend on Cover Girl cosmetics. I think that everyone is aware of this, and it only matters how suggestible you are, and what you are already likely to buy. For example, I don’t really wear makeup, so seeing Drew Barrymore telling me to buy Cover Girl on my television screen is hardly going to result in my running to the nearest Rite Aid to make a purchase. However, I do love to eat, so when I watched Brad Pitt shoveling all kinds of snack foods into his mouth over the duration of Ocean’s 11 -13, I made quite a few trips to the snack bar.

Works Cited

Fogerty, John, and Larry Morris. "Bad Moon Rising." Creedence Clearwater Revival. Impact, 1969. MP3.

The Bahktin in Picasso (Analysis #2)

In all truth it was tempting to post a photo of his younger self. Even though he was sure that this online dating thing wasn't for him, he didn't want the people who were going to be viewing his profile to think him old, or ugly. It was a matter of vanity, really. He knew that when he'd been younger he'd been quite attractive, but those days were now behind him.

He hadn't even wanted to do this in the first place. It was only to pacify his daughters that he'd signed up for the advertised three month trial, because they felt that he'd been single too long. They knew how he missed their mother but they felt that eight years of waiting to date again was just ridiculous. Even more than that, they wanted him to be happy, and understood that he was one of those people who needed the comfort of having someone go through life with him. They wanted him to find that.

What they didn't understand was that he had found it in their mother, and her death didn't make it any less true. He'd found his soul mate long ago, and now that she was gone had no interest in acquiring a place-holder. It just wouldn't be fair. Still, it would make his daughters happy to see him try, so with a small sigh he created a brief profile and posted a current photo; maybe not one that would ensure a plethora of interest, but one that was honest.

~**~ 

A self portrait of Pablo Picasso done in 1906. If I recall correctly, there was much debate about why, when his main form of art was in the cubist style, he chose to paint himself in such stark lines, a man gazing unflinchingly into a mirror and recording exactly what he saw. I rather like it. I like the idea that though Picasso enjoyed painting the world around him in distorted images, he also was well aware that the true self should not be distorted. Granted, I do believe that he did paint himself in cubist style as well, so my romantic idea about what he was trying to say is probably just that: a silly idea.

Bahtkin would say that whatever Picasso intended us as an audience to see in his painting, we are not getting it...and even if we stumble upon it by accident, or are told what it is we are to understand by gazing upon this picture, we still cannot experience it as Picasso intended. Bahtkin believed that there were three interpretations in all dialogue, and as dialogue is just one form of art, they can also be applied to this painting. The three interpretations were what was originally intended – whatever Picasso’s message in the painting was supposed to be,  whether it was to himself or to the ones viewing the painting, what the audience themselves sees based on their own experiences and notions, and a third interpretation, the one both outside the image and in between what is on the canvas and what registers in our mind as we gaze upon it (1088). In all of this, it is the third interpretation that interests me most, because it seems to be the one that is free of subjectivity, whether it be the observer’s or the artist’s. The second, however, coincides most with my belief that in everything we do as people; everything we say, write, draw, even think, comes down to what we have experienced ourselves. We as humans can understand concepts that we have not actually experienced, but we have to filter it through ones that we have. For example; if one of my friends has a child and I do not, I cannot fully understand what she is going though; however, I can recall instances of playing with and teaching children that I babysat, or my niece, and use these experiences to relate to my friend. It is the same with this painting. I look at it and see the idea that a person should not flinch from who they are, but rather meet it head on. However, the person standing next to me and gazing upon the same painting will more than likely take an entirely different meaning from it…and neither of these meanings will perfectly coincide with the feelings that the original artist hoped to invoke.

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. "Discourse in the Novel." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 1072-106. Print.

http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/f05/fkherani/(8)selfportrait.jpg - Date accessed 1 March 2011