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.