Final Project Proposal-Renee Curva

For my Convergence project, I would like to focus on the social issue of the unrealistic beauty standards that the media creates for women. More specifically, I will research and expand upon how the media’s control over ‘what is beautiful’ germinated, how it remains at large today, and how these standards have created a beauty/body shaming culture on the internet. I am more interested in the writing aspect of this topic, so am still deciding between a Tumblr campaign or an article that could be used in a magazine. 

Victoria's Secret Campaign

I will start my project off by providing a background on the early onset of societal beauty standards created by the media in the early 20^th century. The book Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons by Lynn Peril is one source that elaborates on the history of pop culture and how it created a particular feminine ideal in America. An article that is beneficial to my project is “Female Body Image and the Mass Media:Perspectives on How Women Internalize the Ideal Beauty Standard”, which talks about the Social Comparison Theory, and how projected images from the media affect how women perceive themselves. I will also use modern women as examples that perpetuate these beauty standards such as Kim Kardashian, Dita Von Teese, Kylie Jenner, or Candice Swanepoel.

Kim Kardashian Shopping

This project will be a critical piece of media because it will serve as an exposition that assesses how the media has molded the ideal feminine beauty into something so synthetic, yet  so commonplace to viewers. From plastic surgery to Photoshop and filters, media has found ways to mechanically/digitally change what the public sees. This project comments on convergence by using magazines, movies, Instagram and other facets of media to dissect how each one contributes to, or helps to combat, the unrealistic bar set for women. 

Understanding The Soci-specta-modity

After reading Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, one might leave either thinking that they understood exactly what was being said, or that they couldn't understand it because they have yet to receive a PhD. This is for the latter group. It isn’t exactly a comforting start when one of the main subjects in a peace of work is described as “complex and full of metaphysical subtleties,(35)” but fear not! This essay will (make an attempt to) clearly define the three major subjects; the society, the spectacle, and the commodity, explain what Debord is talking about, and argue that perhaps the spectacle might not be as bad as it seems.

It is important to understand that, in The Society of the Spectacle, Debord is relating all of this to media. Not just media as in “the news” or “tabloids,” but ALL media, as in films, television shows, music, anything that we as a society consume (and not in the eating-food kind of way). The society is exactly what it sounds like. We are the society. The people in New Jersey, the U.S, North America, and the rest of the world, are all part of the society. So far so good. Then there is the spectacle. The spectacle, as defined by Debord, is “the stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life” (42). Basically, it is the vessel in which we, as a society, use to view, or gain access to, the commodity. Television, radio, computers and cell phones are all examples of this vessel that allows access to the commodity. What is this “commodity” he speaks of? Well, my computers definition of commodity is “a useful or valuable thing, such as water or time.” That sounds pretty important! Debord’s definition on the other hand, is “the domination of society by ‘imperceptible as well as perceptible things’” (36). For anyone like me, perceptible means something that is able to be seen or noticed and imperceptible means something that can’t be. So basically, the commodity is something that is happening, and that something is us as a society being dominated by things that we notice and not notice. More specifically, because he relates this to media, we are being dominated by the want to consume media. Within the chapter, Debord creates a type of circle that keeps feeding itself. We as a society are slaves to the commodity, and the spectacle is the only way in which we can satisfy our needs. Therefore, Debord feels that we are a society of the spectacle, meaning we belong to it because it determines how we get our fix.

The Vicious Circle

This sounds rather bleak, and that is because Debord is purposefully making it so. Keeping with the theme of getting ones fix, in the text he refers to this circle as a “permanent opium war,” in which our satisfaction can only be obtained by more commodity (44). He genuinely seems to look down upon it, but is the circle, or the spectacle, really so bad that it should be compared to an opium war? When Debord wrote this, television was the primary spectacle in which he was referring to, but now we have so much more than that. Television is just the tipping point. Now we have computers and tablets and cellphones that do things that a television can do and more. The technology in today’s smartphones is more advanced then what brought the astronauts to the moon. Do we act like slaves to them every once in a while? Yes. But to compare it to a drug that has ruined peoples lives seems a bit much. If it were not for our crave of newer and better spectacles to consume the commodity, technology would either seas to advance or, at the very least, slow down immensely. We wouldn’t have the smartphones we have, or the machines we use in our daily lives from health care to home care. What’s certain is that we would definitely not be where we are today, nor would the future look so prosperous in terms on what is possible. There are novels devoted to how advances in technology have changed - and will continue to change - the world for the better. Because of our demand to view the commodity through faster and better spectacles, technology, and society as a whole, has been allowed to make world changing leaps into the future. Debord should be grateful for the fact that we are a society of the spectacle. It is because of the spectacles we have today that a convergence class in a Newark university is even learning about him in the first place. 

                                         Doesn't the good outweigh the bad?    

         

Fox News

Hadron Collider

Bibliography

            

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone, 1994. Print.

"Debord, Guy - Anselm Jappe." Debord, Guy - Anselm Jappe. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.

http://imgkid.com/fox-sports-logo-vector.shtml

"The University of Sydney - The University of Sydney." News. The University of Sydney, n.d. Web. 06 Oct. 2015.

"The Vicious Cycle" image was created by myself using Microsoft Word.

Greg Clayton

Convergence Blog #1

9/23/15

            The society of the spectacle is Debord’s rhetoric of calling an open and free market exchange of goods and services detrimental to the overall good of society because we will all become slaves to our possessions and greed.  That society as a whole will cease to function, and people will be so caught up in their own vanity of wealth, that basic human necessities and the need to coexist will be swallowed up by the spectacle of commodity.  How’s his prediction so far?  Yes, some people can get caught up in the spectacle, if you let it.  But what Debord fails to recognize is that not all people who seek success or certain material possessions are inherently bad or corrupt.  Some people work hard for what they have, and do not necessarily partake in the spectacle, but rather carve out a nice life for themselves and stand in the shadows of the spectacle, but are included in Debord’s generalizations.  Why does society need to answer to Debord because they buy unnecessary material items? If he does not like the “spectacle” than why is he throwing his hat into the ring and being part of it?  He publishes books, he makes films.  To me, someone who is fed up with a society that makes a “spectacle” of itself and then gains from that opinion is a hypocrite. In quote 35 Debord says “…we recognize our old enemy the commodity, which at first glance so trivial and obvious, yet which is actually so complex and full of metaphysical subtleties.” (Debord Chapter 2, 35).  It’s almost comical to call commodity “our old enemy” because it is as natural as nature itself.  Debord’s world is delusional at best, sorry metaphysical. 

            Commodity isn’t the spectacle, it is the absence of basic human decency and the ability to better the world around people who have been given or earned said commodity.  The spectacle is the Paris Hilton’s of the world, not the Warren Buffet’s or Bill Gates’.  In an article by Anselm Jappe posted by Alias Recluse on libcom.org, Mr. Jappe contends, “The commodity and its general form, money, might have served a positive function at first, facilitating the expansion of needs. But its structure is like a time bomb, a virus inscribed in the genetic code of modern society. The more the commodity seizes control of society, the more it undermines the foundations of society itself, rendering it entirely uncontrollable and transforming it into a self-operating machine. It is thus not a question of praising or condemning the commodity; it is the commodity itself which will get rid of itself over the long term, and maybe not just itself. The commodity inexorably destroys the society of the commodity. As a form of indirect and unconscious socialization, it cannot but produce disasters” (Jappe 1993).  That was in1993. Debord’s realizations and predictions were in the 60’s.  When are these going to come to fruition? When will success be welcomed and not seen as a curse or a downfall of a society but a means to an end?

Bibliography

           

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone, 1994. Print.

"Debord, Guy - Anselm Jappe." Debord, Guy - Anselm Jappe. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2015.

Media Storage and Interactivity Presentation (Group 2)

Our presentation was about information storage, how it works, and interactive media. We started out talking about the characteristics of media storage, the importance of each, and using those characteristics to evaluate which type of media storage is better than another. I also briefly discussed the differences between electronic and non-electronic media. Greg divulged into the history of media storage and the evolution from the punch card to the cloud. Finally, Greg wrapped up by talking about the connection between these types of media and society/culture. The next part of the presentation was basically about the development of user interface which is the way a user will access information. Renee spoke about the history of digital user interface and how users create and share information as well as present stories and other things. Erin spoke about interactive media and what makes it interactive, which is basically a dialog between a computer and a person. She talked about virtual reality and how the world interactivity is changing.

Group 2:

Erin Jerome

Renee Curva

David Erdely

Greg Clayton

Publishing and Mass Amateurization and User Generated Content - Group 1 Presentation

Publishing and Mass Amateurization and User Generated Content: A Summary

        Our project was about the evolution of newspapers, from their mass appeal, and the time of the penny press to their possible extinction today. We spoke about Magazines and how their appeal has also dwindled in the wake of the internet, but how their appeal in niche markets is still very present. We discussed books, and a time in the early 1900s where books could be bought for a penny, and how the advertisements have changed with the media outlets from newspapers, to magazines, to pop culture, which has now become its own media with the onset of the smart phone. We compared Coke- Cola ads from the early 1900's, and how they were described as medicinal, to the commercials that we see today that depict Coke as the fun thing to drink, personalized for you, and made to #Share with real friends and internet friends.
     
        A few of our questions are: How has new media and smart phones changed the relationships between family and friends? Is using pop culture an effective way to educate children? What kind of adults will these children become?

GROUP 1

Oge Gbanite

Gabrielle Mendoza

Dylan Parlow

Chris Zranchev

Spectacular Commodity

Erin Jerome

Studying Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle provides more to ruminate on in 2015 than perhaps even the Frenchman could have predicted. His comments on the “society of the spectacle,” or mass media, apply to the current media environment (and environment is a very good word for it). More than ever before, the society and the media are intertwined. Debord argues that “the spectacle” so engrosses every aspect of our social lives that “Everything that was once directly lived has moved away into a representation,” (Debord, Thesis 1). 

Chapter 2 involves the commodity as the driving force of the spectacle. Money, which has no intrinsic value, enslaves men to a meaningless chase of the qualitative and pits them against one another. The world is “at once present and absent” as commodity dominates “all living experience” (Debord, Thesis 37). This notion falls in with the driving Marxist tenet that capitalism enslaves men to the very thing they believe set them free. We no longer work directly for the goods that keep us alive. This second chapter of Society of the Spectacle rails against the controlling form the media takes in a capitalist society.

@karlthemarxist

Reading Debord in the context of a class on modern media, the effects of the heightened interconnectedness of the people and “the spectacle” should be considered. It is true that the media is a consuming force in our lives, and it is true, as Debord writes in Thesis 36, “...the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images which exist above it, and which simultaneously impose themselves as the tangible par excellence.” However, new technologies have so broadened the scope of media that the average consumer in a first-world country can publish as a part of it. And they do, effectively contributing to the spectacle. In the world of fashion and beauty, bloggers and Youtubers- regular folks- interact with the brands they love and sometimes work together. Entrepreneurs and creatives in every field can build their businesses around their social media. While everyone has the potential to be a media outlet, Debord’s words still hold- these images “impose themselves as the tangible par excellence.”

Youtuber Zoella

The interactivity of our media now works to feed our individual material desires as well. Searching online for a new video game system? The following week your Facebook and other frequently visited sites will have targeted ads. Shopping on Amazon? They’re posturing to you with whatever random items you might have been checking out at 2 a.m. three days ago. Targeted ads and the convenience of online shopping can certainly be beneficial and fun, and the spending patterns of Americans reflect that. Consumer spending continues to grow, exponentially faster than wages, and despite the widening wage gap.  

Advertisements be like

At the same time, more and more people have the tools to contribute to the spectacle. The potential for interactions among people all over the world grows every second in this media landscape. That's something that Debord perhaps couldn't forsee. Our hypercapitalist society is rife with problems, but also with real opportunity that is being taking advantage of.   

Sources

Debord, Guy-Ernest. "The Society of the Spectacle." The Situationist International Text Library. N.p., 1967. Web. 17 Sept. 2015. 

The Spectacle

By Alima Khanu

According to Guy Debord, the Spectacle is the media and all aspects we as people encounter each day. Debord outlines the spectacle to be when authentic societal living is replaced with the perception of how life should be and it’s representation in the media. Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." It is when living simply becomes about having more and more for the look of things rather than for true happiness.  With the Spectacle, human perceptions become warped which alters life as a whole, mainly diminishing the general public’s knowledge level.

Debord's main goal with the spectacle is, “to wake up the spectator who has been drugged by spectacular images." He plans to do this “through radical action in the form of the construction of situations. These situations include the, "situations that bring a revolutionary reordering of life, politics, and art". The continuous cycle of the spectacle can make objects that are normally not of value become more than just a want but a need, evenetually turning into an obsession.  The commodity makes goods feel as though they bring the ultimate sense of satisfaction which brings us terms such as “shopaholic”. Just as a person can be physically addicted to alcohol, it is now possible to be physically addicted to material things. It is now common for objects to take the place of normal social relationships.

Debord spends a great deal of time talking about the commodity as a spectacle. The Society of the Spectacle is essentially the critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism. It deals with issues such as class alienation, cultural homogenization, and the mass media. The commodity can be defined as many things in today’s society, mostly being objects and driven by those we see in the media. Body image is a huge commodity today, fueled by social perceptions and mass media’s idea of how a person should look. Body image was turned into a commodity when surgery is used to obtain it. As media expands through social website such as instagram and twitter, body image commodity increases as professions are created through these mediums such as “Instagram Models.” Despite doing nothing more than taking selfies and looking beautiful in the way that society appreciates most, Instagram famous people are held at a higher standard than regular instagram users. This pedestal eventually takes the payment of 10K likes and turns into actual payment through advertisers due to the person’s popularity. Debord’s fourth thesis is: "The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."

In a consumer society, social life is not about living, but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have. A person must have the newest shoes worn by Kylie Jenner, try the newest make up technique worn by Kim Kardashian, and rock the newest jacket worn by Kanye West.