Beach and Surfing

In Rutsky’s article, “Surfing the Other: Ideology on the Beach,” Rutsky argues that the film Beach Party is centered around how teenagers do revolve around sex and love versus drugs and acting out against the law. He also talks about how teenagers want to live their lives and not focus on work. He says, “he beach is represented as a place of freedom, where the responsibilities of work, school, and marriage are temporarily suspended in favor of the playful hedonism of parties, surfing, teenage sexuality, and romantic flings” (14). He’s relating to the first part of Beach Party when the teenagers are at the beach while they are on their break just relaxing and having a good time. They are not thinking about what is going on at home or what they have to do when they get back because they are focusing on the youth ideologies. However, the two characters that focus on the adult ideologies branch out of the crowd. Dolores and Frankie think about love and marriage and how they, specifically Dolores wants to wait to have sex until after marriage. Ironically, the other teenagers are getting frisky on the beach around where she is. I believe that Rutsky has a clear argument because the teenagers are focused on youth ideologies. They are dancing to rock and roll, surfing, and being frisky while they should be dancing to square music, walking on the beach, and having proper conversations with the opposite sex (Beach Party).

Later on in the article, Rutsky says that the main reason for the intriguing sense of the movies comes from the “combination of music and dance-and the image of sexuality and freedom associated with them” (17). The music and dance captures attention because it’s the new fad and an oppositional ideology. The music and dancing goes against the social norm and what the older adults believe is proper dancing. The dancing, which involves a lot of twisting the hips and shaking the rear end, is sexual. It attract the opposite gender which is the second reason of captured attention. I agree with Rutsky because the characters are revolving around what’s going on at the beach versus thinking in an adult way by thinking of work and bills. The teenagers on the beach are more concerned with surfing, sitting by the fire and singing, and getting frisky with one another. 

Youth in College

Today in class we watched a silent film called The Freshman. It's about a young boy who is about to leave from college and he wants to be popular. He wants to have friends swarming him at all times. He wants to feel important. Harold has the desire to fit in and be popular just like Cady from Mean Girls. He desires the affections of his peers but doesn’t really know how to get there. Also, when he is at college, he thinks everyone likes him which shows false consensus. He might think that everyone really likes him and what he does but as a matter of fact, he’s really the clown that everyone laughs at. He gets his ideas of popularity from a movie that he has just seen. As Adorno says, “film [is the] central sector of the culture industry” (33). Movies influence people’s perception of how things will be. For instance, the film Harold sees makes him think that if he is on the football team and acts like the main character, he will be instantly popular. However, that’s not really how things work. On a different note, I noticed the youthful clothing is a lot different than what we see nowadays. In The Freshman the girls are more proper—long dresses, stockings, and little make-up. Our culture has clearly changed. In Mean Girls the popular girls wear short skirts, high heels, and more makeup. But where did these ideas come from? How did it change? 
In the two articles from today, both autobiographies acknowledge that movies have affected them, it’s just the way in which they are affect differs. In “My Movie Autobiography” the speaker states that she “wanted to be like Peter Pan” just because of the movie she watched. The speaker feels like she is a part of the shows she sees. For instance, when she is out on a Friday night, she sees a show about “beautiful women” and feels like them until she gets home and looks in the mirror and reality stares right back at her (“My Movie Autobiography”). In the other article, the speaker feels the same in a sense, but the shows give him more of a thrill after a gruesome scene with a machine gun (“The Effects the Movies Have Had on Me”). I find it interesting that the two speakers seem to vary in how they are affected. One lives in a false world until confronted by reality, while the other can hold onto images for a long as he needs (“The Effects the Movies Have Had on Me”). One thing that I found really interesting is when the speaker in “The Effects the Movies Have Had on Me” talks about how criminals can get their ideas from movies. Honestly it totally makes sense. That’s why some people say that young children shouldn’t play video games that take place in a war or watch movies with strippers or crime in them. Because of their youth, they can be swayed to think some things are good while others are not. If that is what they grow up on, it becomes their culture, it becomes what they revolve around. 

How We Function

Today in class we watched Mean Girls!! It really helped the three hour class go by a lot faster. We started with going over what we think ideology, culture and hegemony mean. That lasted a lot longer than I thought it could. BUUTTT back to the main point....the movie Mean Girls has examples of ideology, culture, and hegemony which are shown through high school. Ideology is a social term where you can stick to the status quo (dominant ideology) or where you can oppose it (oppositional ideology). In the movie, Cady has to find where she belongs. She starts traditional school and has to find friends and her path. As she does so, she gets help from people that keep her on the dominant ideology. For example, when Cady debates on whether or not to join the mathletes, her opinion is swayed because Janis tells her it is “social suicide.” Cady wants to fit in, she doesn’t want to be an outsider especially in her new situation. Next, culture is a particular way of life influenced by surroundings such as media, religion, politics, books, etc. Her old culture revolved around the African animals and the “fertility vase of the Ndebele Tribe.” Now she is supposed to only wear pink on Wednesdays, wear her hair up once a week, and track pants on Fridays. Her culture is controlled by hegemonists named Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, and Karen Smith. They control the school. The other junior girls look to them for fads and how to act. For instance, when Regina’s shirt gets cut, the next day, all the girls have cut holes in their shirt. They know at heart it’s stupid, but they have such a desire to fit in that they put aside their thoughts, and match Regina. 

In “Flapper Americana Novissima” by G. Hall, I saw immediate connections to Mean Girls. He states, “her gait was swagger and superior” (Hall 772) which made me think of when Regina and the plastics are walking into the school with their hair waving in the wind because they know they are cool. Also he notes how girls are “insecure” (776) which is when the plastics are in Regina’s room looking at the mirror commenting on how their hips are too big or their pores are too big and Cady has to jump in and say she has bad breath in order to fit it. The ideas that both Hall and Frith dabble on revolve around how teenagers get dressed up in order to have fun and fit in. Another connection is that they are always wanting to be with boys. Hall says that the teenage girls are “found in classes where there are most boys” (775) and Frith comments on dating and how it could give girls the “bad girl” (185). The teenage girls dress to impress the boys because they are interested in them and want their attention. Overall, the conception of teenagers/flappers revolves around the same thing--how the girls look and how they act. 

Here we go again.....

So my first assignment for my Youth Culture and Visual Media class was to write 250 in response to a few articles and I was like HEYYY I've got this easy! And you know what? It was! I mean it wasn't easy in the sense of thinking and understanding the articles, but it was easy in the sense that I knew the time it would take me, and how to think about it. Anyways, these responses aren't very good sooo hopefully the one tonight will be. 

Anyways, our articles were about ideology, culture, and the culture industry. Ideology and Culture—two words that have evolved from the late eighteenth century to now. To start, Grossberg notices how ideology started when people “wanted to bring the new scientific method to an understanding of the mind” (Grossberg 2). To solve complicated questions, ideology was created. However, it changed when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels thought that ideology was more expressionism. In the end, Grossberg connects their ideas to the earlier ones when both groups were looking for the answer. They both wanted to attain “knowledge” (Grossberg 3). Again as we travel through time, ideology gains different connotations.  Ideology, as I understand, is how we solve problems or the path we take to solve problems. It’s when we use current knowledge to solve problems that in return, answer complicated questions. However, I believe it can be used in different ways. Ideology gives me two different vibes—one: how we solve problems and two: the nonrealistic way of doing things. Culture on the other hand, according to Williams, started as “an abstract process or the product of such a process” (4). I agree with the idea that came later stating that culture is what you are born into in a sense. It is how the world around you works—what you believe in, how you celebrate events, music, etc. Culture surrounds us and makes us who we are. 

In reading Adorno’s article, I understand that culture industry is what we consume based off of what is going on in the current time and where we are living; however, we are not controlling the market. I had actually never thought of it that way. I always have thought that the consumers are in control. But designers make it first, throw it at us, and see what we give and take. They’re baiting us to see if we like worms or grasshoppers better. But the industry seems to be on a loop. Adorno says it “fuses the old and familiar into a new quality” (1). For instance: overalls. Overalls were very popular in the 90s and even the 00s. They went out of style and now when you go to a store you see overalls! Except they are short and have holes in them because that is what young adults think is attractive or hip or what-have-you. They threw the overalls back on the line and added what we as consumers think looks good. Adorno tells us that media, specifically movies, is the “central sector of the culture industry” (3). That is how the culture industry works. They create the situation in which we decide what we want.

Flashback Grendel Style

AP Literature Open Question: 

Select a line or so of poetry, or a moment or scene in a novel, epic poem, or play that you find especially memorable. Write an essay in which you identify the line or the passage, explain its relationship to the work in which it is found, and analyze the reasons for its effectiveness.

One, if I actually saw this on the exam I might cry. Which is why it's a good idea to blog on it. Blogging on difficult things before the exam make me less nervous for the exam and prepare me for everything that could come. However, I will still cry if the prompt is similar. 

If I did get this prompt I would write on Grendel by John Gardner. Can you guess which line I would use?? Yes! You're right!! "Tedium is the worst pain" is the main line that sticks in my head. Maybe because it's the easiest one to really say and I couldn't exactly talk about how he cries for his mom all the time. Alright here we go. So, tedium refers to something that takes a long time and can be enervating. For Grendel those tasks that are long and enervating are frustrating and "the worst pain". But don't the acts that are tiresome to certain people different than those that tire another person? Why yes of course! That's why this line is effective. We all have something that drives us bonkers. For instance my dad HATES standing in line waiting to check out at the grocery store and it's probably bad that I laugh at his frustration but this is where he relates to Grendel. This stupid boring task is what drives them both crazy. Gardner is trying to relate Grendel to us because there aren't a lot of things that we share in common with Grendel. We aren't furry and scary looking, we don't eat people (hopefully) we don't yell at chasms, and we aren't angsty teenagers. Ehh well ok, maybe I take back that one but still, we don't share a lot of things in common with him. By Gardner's reaching out, we are able to identify more with Grendel and understand what he's going through. But that's exactly what the point is. We aren't supposed to be similar to Grendel. We are supposed to see the differences between humans and animals just like Grendel does. He sees that humans are awful creatures that pillage through other villages and kill dogs and cows and start wars and burn things down for no good reason. But when Gardner is talking about tedium, he wants us to connect with Grendel to show one of the small similarities that humans and animals share. 

Snow Falling on Cedars Part II

In the end, I really enjoyed Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson and I plan on reading it again in a few years. My favorite part is how Guterson made it a frame narrative. We didn't get all the background information at once so we couldn't jump to conclusions, and we didn't go through the entire trial before we learned the background information. The way Guterson slowly reveals the background information changes your opinion on who did what and how it happened. For instance Guterson is talking about Kabuo's past and how when he was in training he easily took down a man with just a stick. The jury then thinks this is a good point at which they use against Kabuo and claim correlates perfectly with Carl's head injury. We also see that Kabuo's flat emotion and brisk stature are really from how he was raised and trained as a soldier to be. In the end, we learn that Kabuo  is just like the rest of the fishermen of San Piedro. The fishermen have an unspoken law--one does not board another's boat unless there is an emergency and you always help another fisherman. If you aren't doing that you let them be and carry on your fishy ways. After Ishamael finds the boat papers, he learns that Carl most likely went overboard after a big ship went by leaving behind a huge wake which could've caused him to slip or fall or what have you. After we learn this we learn that Kabuo had helped Carl earlier that night by replacing his battery. Many saw this before as a cover up of the murder.
On a different note, Kabuo and the other Japanese people believe that Kabuo is the first to blame because he is Japanese due to the still-residing tension between the two cultures. Before World War II, they got along because of the common hobby of farming strawberries. The strawberries brought them together. Strawberries are a weird fruit and symbol don't you think? The seeds are on the outside, and it's red with a little green on the top, and the inside is white. Strange, right? So how I see it is that the seeds on the outside resemble the start of the growth of a new relationship. The Japanese and American's have the seeds handed to them; in other words they have the chance to change their relationships with each other. The red symbolizes all the trouble they've gone through and the green shows how on top of all the hate comes peace. Then once you break the barrier and get inside the strawberry there is white aka innocence. Kind of a backwards journey--you don't usually end with innocence. In San Piedro's case they have to earn their innocence by building back their naivety. Both cultures have to plant the strawberries in order to try and find their old sense of innocence. They have to start going backwards to what things used to be. Which is what you do after a war or tragedy--get things back to normal. Kind of a weird way of looking at it, but hey it works.

Romantic Comedies

Have you noticed the pattern of young men falling in love with someone and then there is a dramatic twist and somehow they end up together even though all along you knew they would be together in the end? That's because it's the unspoken code (if you will) of romantic comedies. When we started learning about romantic comedies in class, my classmate who sits next to me and I said, "this is a great excuse to go home and watch Netflix tonight!" But it's actually true. While going through the romantic comedies I've seen, I noticed the pattern. I mean of course a romance movie there are going to be two people that fall in love, but what I didn't notice was how there is always a twist. For instance in The Wedding Planner with Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey, in the beginning it's a young man who is getting married. Yet there is a twist, Jennifer Lopez isn't the bride. At first she is the wedding planner. Actually I guess there are two twists, the second one and more important one is that in the end, Jennifer Lopez ends up falling in love with Matthew McConaughey. Ha ha so funny I know...unless your the bride who just got dumped...that's another story. But why do we do this? We all know in the end they will somehow by the grace of God be together. Maybe because we are teenagers that have "nothing to do after school" (which is never ever the case ;D ) or you're adults who after a long day at work want to come home and instead of watching the news or something that will actually benefit you, you watch a stupid romantic comedy in which you don't have to think. Or maybe it's because we dream about having some crazy love story of our own because we all know that usually falling in love isn't that funny or twisted. Either way, romantic comedies are a great way to watch other love stories and laugh at the same time. So tonight when you get home, instead of playing a board game or working out or being healthy because we always do that, go home, watch a romantic comedy, and vegg out and laugh. Stay romantically friendly, my friends.




oh and Happy Easter!!