CPCF 1F25- Blog Response 4

For this response we were to take a look at our classmates blogs and see what they had to say in regards to satirical news shows and whether or not they can be viewed as a legitimate source of culture jamming or not. Upon reading what my classmates had to say it in regards to satirical news shows being a source of culture jamming, I could see that many of them had agreed that shows such as “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report” were legitimate sources of culture jamming. Some even agreed with my opinion on them using sarcasm as a means of conveying their message without being serious, one student even stated “I liken it to a more professional and adult way of being sarcastic in order to make a point: the message is there!”(http://veronicatmeow.blogspot.ca/) I feel this is very important because some people don’t think that these shows are trying to accomplish something but in reality they do have a message they’re trying to convey it’s just masked by the sarcasm that they use when addressing the issue.

There were also fellow classmates who believed that these news shows could also be considered as legitimate news sources as well and not just a means of entertainment. One classmate even states “Programs like these make the news interesting while not always true they get us hooked and when something happens in the world we look to these shows to cut the tension. They are useful to the public because it provides information in a comical way.” (http://weskewley.blogspot.ca/) I can agree with this statement here, while not everything that is shown on these ‘news’ shows is true when it comes to political news they definitely have the right idea by providing the important information while also making it seem a lot less serious and much easier to get handle on as opposed to traditional news pieces.

It was nice to see the many opinions my classmates had about the whether or not these shows could be considered mainstream sources of culture jamming or not, or whether or not these shows could even be considered as a legitimate sources of news.  One-student sums it up pretty well I find and he goes to say, “Despite how silly they can be sometimes, that silliness is derived from truth. I would argue that they can be quite effective in challenging our perceptions and even the current state of the world.” (http://mikereidyes.blogspot.ca/) . I feel like this thought here is very true, these news shows can get you thinking and digging for more answers pushing you to go look for more information to further your knowledge on the topic in question.

1F25- Is the fake news the real news?

In this weeks post we were asked to look at satirical news shows such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and whether or not these shows could be considered forms of culture jamming.  The concept of culture jamming was completely foreign to me until reading chapter 14 where I learned what it was, with the knowledge that I have gained in order to prep for this post I feel like I can agree with saying that satirical news shows are a legitimate form of culture jamming.

These types of shows use satire as main method of delivering a message to their viewers.  This is generally done in regards to political issues that are presently relevant ranging anywhere from same-sex marriage laws, healthcare discussion, elections etc.  They approach each situation in a professional matter while still using sarcasm to get their point and message across. O’Shaughnessy and Sadler state “It is the form of communication, as well as the content of individual messages, that makes culture jamming subversive.” (O’Shaughnessy, M., & Stadler, J.,

p.216). 

I personally feel that satirical news shows such as The Daily Show are legitimate forms of culture jamming.  They take the news provide by major media sources such as FOX or CNN and then twist it around to make their point using satire. Doing this keeps the viewing audience entertained and interested, and as stated in the text using sarcasm and satire can “be used simply to be clever or funny, without a political or critical motive.” (O’Shaughnessy, M., & Stadler, J., p.214) . These shows mainly aim to keep people entertained while also providing them news coverage that they otherwise may not get from any other source, especially with younger viewers who may not be interested in following mainstream news as they find it boring.

Overall I feel like satirical news shows hold their own in terms of culture jamming as well as providing news coverage.  They use their satire in order to get a point across to their viewers isn’t just for entertainment, they do have a motive behind what it is that they are putting out.

CPCF1F25 Blog Response #3

In this weeks blog response I will be going over what my fellow classmates wrote in their blogs in regards to advertising and being interpellated or hailed by those who create these advertisements. Now as it obvious to see I of course did not submit an entry for this topic in question which makes it somewhat awkward to do but nonetheless I will be doing it. In reading many of the blog entries that my fellow classmates had done I felt that many missed a major part of the question for the entry, this made a little more difficult to do as I really didn't have much information to pool from on how people felt in regards to the advertisements representing them or if they even felt that they did.


While reading of the entries I noticed that many of my classmates were able to easily recognize what exactly the advertisements were trying to suggest to them just by looking at them especially many of the young women that I read who had chosen advertisements which surrounded beauty and the idea of it. One classmate even acknowledged the use of a famous actress that many people our age grew up with, Emma Watson. "This ad is targeted at girls around my age group because immediately when you look at this picture you think Hermione Granger." In looking at another blog of a fellow classmate I feel like their interpretation of the advertisement they selected was a little over the top, of course this is all up to opinion but the ad that he had chose was group of people in about say their early twenties completely decked out in denim. My classmate seemed to feel like this was an attempt to portray young people are rebellious in which he says It echoes the counter culture and social revolution of the 1960’s." While he sees 60's rebellion I myself see country concert.


One classmate managed to grab my attention with his entry as he did discuss how he felt the advertisement for the playstation 4 that he has chosen really spoke to him and definitely represented him in the way that they chose, stating that their use of people being in a real world version of their games speaks to many gamers as it's a fantasy among many of them to be able to just dive into their favourite game world. He states "I believe that a realistic game is the best kind of game and the closest way to it is to experience it in real life. The advertisement grabbed my attention by putting the actors in scenes of a game and it made me think how fun it would be experience that." Overall I think everyone was able to collectively recognize targets of an advertisement  but weren't able to directly relate it to themselves.

Classmates' blogs in order of quotes:

http://shelbylafreniere.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/blog-entry-3-what-the-hail/ - Shelby Lafreniere

http://mikereidyes.blogspot.ca/ - Mike Reidyes

http://kevinshen94.wordpress.com/ - Kevin Shen

1F25 Post 2: The Media We Get

                 The media is a tool used to convey societies values,  as well as views, and  the world that we live in. While people may feel that the media that is presented to us is a reflection of what we want to see, I feel like it is really what the provider wants us to see. The saving grace with this is that we still have to option of what we pay attention to what we want in the media that is presented to us, this gives us the illusion that we get the media that we want.

Of course in Western culture we do have it rather easy when it comes to what media is given to us as we have a wide variety of content that isn't heavily censored and anything deemed inappropriate for people has a viewer discretion or some sort of "adult content" warning on it. Of course in certain countries this is not always the case, for example in China where there are strict censorship laws which limits the content that it's people can see, this became problematic for search engine powerhouse Google who was not able to display anything that the government deemed to be sensitive.  Google ended up refusing to comply with China's laws in 2010 and ended up exiting China altogether, information that I learned from O'Shaughnessy and Stadler's textbook (Page 7).

This also applies in regards to the media that is distributed as entertainment, while I know this may be considered inappropriate I'm going to be focusing specifically on pornography, and not typical but gay pornography. In the gay porn industry the major producers are all very similar in regards to what they deliver and that is for the majority is hairless muscle men with ridiculously large penises, most of these "actors" being white or latino. Now while there is a cry for more diversity in gay porn there hasn't been any, and this is probably due to the fact that the models they use make them lots of money already and like what O'Shaughnessy and Stadler stated "distributors of pornography are not really interested in making their audience happy and sexually fulfilled; they want to make money." (Page 8). This could probably also apply just regular TV shows as well, I mean generally a new TV series isn't based off of user demands but off a concept that they believe will make them money, once it stops so does the series which also pays into the idea that we get the media we want, as opposed to the reality of what we get.

CPCF 1F25 Blog Response: Media Impact on Others

Upon reading posts from some of my colleagues and it goes without saying that we definitely agree that the mass media has impacted on views of the world, and how this affects us in our everyday lives. When comparing to my own post I noticed that I had a very two sided view, upon reading some other I feel like many of my colleagues had pretty negative views on the media without looking at some of the lighter elements of it.




In Veronica Field's (http://veronicatmeow.blogspot.ca/) post I noticed that she too felt that the mass media had affected her from a very young age, especially in regards to body image where she says " I'm too tall to be a runway model, too thick to wear the cute dress that Zooey Deschannel wore on the cover of Cosmo a few weeks back, and that my skin is too pallid to even bother trying to put cover-up on every day". She also has the struggle that many of us deal with based on the media's perception of what beauty is. I also felt her post to be something that I could relate with as well since we both seemed to have a knack for Sailor Moon




In Ryan Mallat's post (http://ryanmallat.wordpress.com/) he talks about how he views the media as a vessel of persuasion which I find he uses the best example of when President Obama was running for election where he goes to say " all the news stations could talk about was how great Obama was, how he was a great leader, and charismatic. " I feel like media definitely did help out with Obama's campaign as he used media extensively and in the end result he did en up winning.




While reading Kevin Shen's post (http://kevinshen94.wordpress.com/) he talks about how the media kind of instills this notion that only new things are "cool" and that anything other than that isn't and somehow irrelevant. My favourite example is when he talks about Apple products and how people feel that the new product is a must have, he goes to say "the new iPhone 5c, it is exactly the same as the iPhone 5, but it comes in many different color instead of the standard black and white. A phone having color is nice, but is it really worth it to spend a few hundred dollars for a paint job?". I feel that Kevin is spot on with this one, there really isn't a need to keep upgrading every time something new comes out. I myself still have the iPhone 4S.




All in all I feel like my colleagues and I few the media in similar ways but we do not all view it the same way, as I learned many of my colleagues had a lot of negative things to say about the media. I myself still feel that the media affects us negatively, but I still think that the media provides a lot of positive things for us as well.

1F25 Post 1: Media Impact

How do you think the impact of the mass media is on your worldview?

I feel like the mass media has affected my worldview in both a positive and negative light, from a young age I was always watching  shows that were usually abnormal for a young boy to be watching, I was irrevocably without a doubt in love with Sailor Moon. The show itself was targeted towards young girls but that didn't stop me, there was nothing more exciting for me than watching Serena throw her moon tiara at the bad guys in the name of love and whatever else she was fighting for. To me I think it was more or less the idea that even a young teenage girl could be considered a hero which was against the usual superhero norm of say batman or superman who were these big super jacked guys who fought crime. Now of course my love for sailor moon also didn't really help with people judging me since I should have been watching more "normal" boy shows, since it isn't very manly to watch a bunch of girls run around and fight bad guys, but for the most part they just didn't get it.

The media also affected me rather negatively back in my younger days as well in regards to my appearance. At the time of when I was around at least nine or eleven years of age I remember that only blonde guys were considered attractive, and of course I wasn't blonde so I thought I wasn't attractive, now let's keep in mind that I'm still rather young and I'm worrying about this which is completely ridiculous. I used to as my mom all the time if we could dye hair blonde cause I wanted to be viewed as attractive or desirable, looking back I'm so happy she never let me cause I would have looked like such a goon with blonde hair. This was just one way that the media had affected me in such away, around the same time the 9/11 incident had happened, now of course I was still young so I didn't quite grasp what was going on when I had first heard what happened but then someone had explained it to me, this of course skewed my view of the world as the event showed me that real evil still exists in the world. My view of people became somewhat distorted after that because I felt like you couldn't really trust people for whatever reason and it took me awhile to actually get over this.

All in all I know that the mass media doesn't intend on inciting hatred nor does it intend to instil great morals, it's there for more of an educator how we perceive the knowledge they are providing is up to us we can either view at as a positive medium or we can view it as evil incarnate if you're really super against it for whatever reason.