Postmodernism

Postmodernism is the period following modernism marked by enormous amount of transformation and clash of different cultures as the world becomes more and more connected due to progression in technology. Some of the factors that classify postmodernism is a blending of reality and fiction, such as cartoons about a fictional land that people still relate to, simply though what the characters of such a cartoon would be doing. This "blend" is also present throughout different art styles, techniques and cultural methods as artists experiment more and more, combining and mixing different methods from the modern era into new redefined meanings. Meanings, stories and symbols can almost be communicated "any way" in this new era, because the methods for communication are no longer limited by any regional methods. Rather a message can be communicated obviously to the viewer, even if the viewer had never been exposed to messages communicated in such ways before. Nikki S. Lee's work is a good example of this, because her messages of ethnic-mixing, and sub-culture "infiltration" are obvious, while we've never seen the message communicated so clearly, and as obviously as her method of literally joining different groups, becoming accepted and having her picture taken with them.

Postmodernism is much different from modernity in that now, the rules seem to have all been broken. Modernity was the process in which communication was rapidly growing in a mechanical, exponential rate, allowing for more and more experimentation. Post-modernism seems to be beyond that point, where we've come along far enough that the rate of expansion doesn't even seem to matter anymore. Its off the charts, we can just seem to do whatever we want now, free of even the limits within modernity. Like modernity however, there is an emphasis on experimentation and so the "notation of expansion" as far as experimentation is still there. Its just no longer "new" its the way of things.

Simulacra is something that mimics, or attempts to represent a different object, simulating it. I think a great example of simulacra I've experienced is the "future earth" sphere in epcot, Disney. The ride takes viewers through a simulation of the whole human history, and eventually going past the present into the future, exposing all the wonderful places and technology "we'll have" in the future. The ride tries to be a simulation, and convince you you are actually traveling in time. The reflexivity (something that makes a viewer aware that they are physically viewing material) of this ride happens at the very end, where the viewer is taken off the ride and lands in the middle of a gift shop (as always); Reminding the viewer that they were just on an entertainment ride, and that they should buy some merchandise to remember the occasion.

Commodity

Commodity fetishism is an interesting tactic that can be used in advertising that has become increasingly popular within recent decades. The term is used to define the association between product and consumer that does not actually have to do with the process or performance of the product. An example of this might be the captain crunch TV ads I've constantly seen since I was a young kid, where a bunch of children are transformed into cartoons and taken into the zany world of captain crunch every time they eat a spoonful of the sugar-cereal. Clearly there is no real connection between this animated fantasy-land where crunchy pirate ships sail chocolate oceans, and the existing corn-meal cereal. The connection rather, is the emphasis on the "crunchy, colorful, kid-appealing" aspects of the cereal, and an exaggeration of such aspects.

No doubt this relationship of consumers and brands has been shown in a variety of ways and has changed immensely over the years. As the chapter discussed, since the 60's and the invention of "hip/cool" subcultures advertising has grown to be much more specific as to what sub-group the product is aimed for. In other words, I think over the years the relationship between the consumer and product has become more personnel as the advertisement tries more and more to aim products specifically for you.

Before the 60's it wasn't as cool to be "unique" because the idea of the "hip" person (someone strongly individual, and careless about other's opinions) wasn't around yet. It was thought to be better off to be the average good American citizen. I think this is evident in how ads were pitched back then. In this old coca-cola ad the pitch is simple: "Want something good?". Well who doesn't... literally. "Of course you do." So the pitch is: Buy coke, because everyone wants it, including you.

These days, while ads aimed at a general populous certainly still exist (especially for products like coca-cola, that are generally for everyone) it seems much more common to find ads aimed towards specific groups and sub-cultures (obviously especially in the case of products that are more specifically for subgroups of people). In this cell phone ad, we especially see the target being the youth-rock culture. The advertisement is featuring Samsung's new music capabilities on their cell-phones. Music, which is for everyone is not the specific subject of this ad but rather 'rock-music'. This is probably because the target market for their phones is a younger age-group and so the company uses "rock" as its hook. As advertising has expanded (and we see ads more and more regularly in more and more places) this kind of "specific" advertising has become more and more plausible and effective. Especially with the rapid expansion of internet shopping, specific advertisements relevent to the current items browsing, or website being browsed are becoming more and more easy to create and communicate.

This expansion of advertising also just leads to alot of creativity and experimentation overall. New ways of connecting the viewer to the ad are being tested out every day, especially to the openly-communicative world wide web. Metacommunication is a transaction in which the transaction is the topic of itself. Its difficult to word but easy to understand. This strategy communicates an extremely "obvious" or powerful meaning that can be expressed in more then one way. This is also very effective in getting a viewer "caught" in the act of viewing an ad, which connects the viewer even further. It also can be very eye-catching like how it is used in the example below.

Capitalism

Capitalism tends to be one of the most beloved aspects of our country, without question because of the enormous effect its had on our entire culture, and way of life. What it has created is what is known as a consumer society: A society where the interaction of buyers and products is forefront ground, a society intended to meet one end up with the other. Our nation has also been called a commodity culture, which means thanks to capitalism material objects are always looked upon in terms of market.

A flaneur, is someone who takes pleasure in the simple browsing and viewing of products, even without an intention to purchase anything. The concept began with the origins of of our commodity culture, and products began being "advertised" in windows and on shop signs. Since its beginning, the flaneur has been given more and more options, and encouraged to continue "pleasurable viewing". With mobility, its never been easier, and one could view products for weeks on end, just sitting infront of a computer browsing products at online shops.

Often times advertising (which can be found virtually anywhere these days) presumes a relevence to the viewer. That is, whatever a advertisement is selling is assumed to be wanted or required by people viewing the ad. This relevence is often completley over-estimated, but even still the most successful advertisements will make their product assumebly relevent. The actual point of the advertisement is not to encourage usage of the product either exactly, but rather make the product appear wanted. This is what the reading means by consuming a semiotic sign. The point of the ad is actually to turn a person's mind onto an idea of using a product (with a sign) the actual encouraging of a person's will to buy a product is therefore not needed.

Reality

I thought this chapter was itself very interesting because it really forces the reader to think deeply and contemplate how even to determine what is real, let alone represent it realistically. I agree with Descartes on alot of his philosophy on perspective, and certainly that rationality is what creates our experience. Experience, and the senses do not form our perspective, rather we make sense of our experience from our perspective; Through what we already know, with our thinking mind. I think the chapter made this very clear by taking us through the history of representing perspective realistically and letting us see how much change (whether in space or form) has occurred from age to age and culture to culture.

The political side to this, could possibly be the debate on the way to depict what is real. This is simply political because of how different cultures have their own epistemes. An episteme me being each age or culture's "the way" to finding truth, knowledge, what is "real". Here in the US, the epestemology is centered around Math, Science and especially the idea of physical proof. The problem with this approach is that much of the time "physical proof" isn't "physically possible". Personally, I see no destinction between what is "real" and what is "unreal". I think its almost silly that someone can say something is or is not real. You may say a unicorn is unreal, but its concept is certainly real, and its concept is that of a horse with a horn, both concepts that have actual existing representations. So is one realer than the other? I think only depending on where you stand, and what episteme you have.

I know this may be a bit off topic, but personally I certainly don't think you can accept anything as real unless you accept everything as real. The truth is that we all, as living beings in this existance have several root epistemes. The reason we all must have have some kind of epistemy is because of what we consider "actual knowledge". Plato defined the word as being "that which does not change, which remains unmoved", and fortunately one of the "laws" that seemingly governs the entirety of the universe is that everything must change! (Except of course for the only thing that doesn't of course, yourself). So what isn't epistemy if nothing is actual knowledge? One of the more important epeisteme's being that we all project the concept of space and time onto everything. Even though it may seem these limits are real, any scientist / mathematician (even with their physical proof) knows that time is illusory and is different depending where you are in the universe.

This is the importance of avant-garde, and why abstract art can be appreciated just as much (if not more) then conservative realism. Why should we limit ourselves to what we consider real, if we can't even determine 'what is real' in the first place? Avant-garde is the same as what I was talking about in my last entry with "the weird" and "the strange" as in: what is new and different, therefore alien and unknown. The importance of it is that because it is alien, it is beyond our current limit. We havn't accepted it yet. However, when we introduce weird, new, avant-garde things is that eventually through time they are no longer weird and new and therefore become accepted! Basically, it is through stretching beyond our "limits" and grasping the unknown we expand our total knowledge and ourselves. What we will find, is that everything we reach out and grasp has to be in some way connected to what we already have, are. Cubeism is actually an interesting example of this. The avant-garde of cubeism is how "weird" it is to see people, plants and (smooth) landscape depicted in regid geometry. How its connected, and how its real, is it's true on a level, because everything really is a part of and constructed from similar rigid geometry and really just math as a whole.

The Strange & Exotic

When I was younger, I believe I was much more oppositional to positive orientalism then negative orientalism. I find it interesting, but especially at a young age the surrounding culture of the West had much more significance because it was all I knew. Because of this, Eastern culture was always just this "other" that didn't actually matter or mean anything in my life because I live over here in the West, not that East. I began to grow much more open and positive about Eastern culture as I grew older, and began to actually learn through History and such, about other cultures and how actually interesting and unique each and every culture is.

I think this attraction / repulsion to the "exoticness" of other cultues can be simply explained through basic philosophy. Simply being that to us, seperate cultures are always subconsciously (or consciously) noted as being an "other" or an unknown. This is what I like to call the weird, or the strange. Basically it is how we categorize what is unknown or new to us. It is alien, foreign and therefore considered strange. I think that every person has their own personal repulsion / attraction to what is weird, or different. For me when I was very young it used to frighten me, and from that I think it inspired me. I learned to cherish and love what is weird, to me it became a powerful symbol of my individuality at what it means. I think because of this love, and strong attraction I have become very found of the "positive" exotic outlook onto different cultures. I love learning about different cultures, and when I run into foreigners or people of distinct seperate culture I often feel a deep humbleness torwards them, and a strengthened desire to get to know them and reach out and touch more of what I do not know.

Modernity Modernism & Madness

The difference between modernity and modernism is that modernism is the set of styles defined by a time period in which is considered "modern". Usually the styles carry similar themes of structuralism, systems and progress. Modernity is the time period in which "modernism" is present, beginning with the Enlightenment in the late 18th century really until today (said to peak in the late 1900s). The modernism within this modernity has consistently changed over time, a phenomenon Michel Focault theorizes is due to a term he refers to as Discourse. Discourse is the name of the "change" or fluctuations that occur over time within Modernism, which result from social beliefs, mutual knowledge and pre-existing discourse.

I think madness is a particularly good example of how discourse is present throughout time, simply because madness is something we've always understood and still understand very little about. Focault would state that our changes in how we perceive and handle "madness" is due to the social and scientific changes that have resulted out of Modernism, and I would have to completley agree. The reason madness was thought to have been "demon magic" and work of the devil ect, centuaries ago is because we literally had no rational way of explaining it. It did not seem to have any explanation that a person could mentally be changed from some unseen outside force, that is a persons being could be mysteriously changed. In this time however, much less was understood on the phenomenon on a person's being and therefore explanations having to do with the brain and psychology weren't possible conclusions.

It is due to modernism and the progression of industry that have led us to technological advances that have led us to discovering more about the brain. Today in the field of psychology, we know that "madness" is not the result of satan, but often mental diseases that have to due with brain chemistry and the physical reaction of chemicals within the human body. However, I know that even today madness is hardly understood, and just beginning to be looked at properly. We may have finally realized that madness is not the devil or witchery or evil, but we still think its "a problem". So while I think the example of discourse is evident here, before we used to take those who were mad and torture and kill them, today we try to help and assist them as a result of the natural flux of discourse. However I still think that some of that "predjudice" exists in the fact that we think there is a "problem" with madness. I think insanity is an extremely interesting aspect of humanity, but I think its just that, an aspect of humanity. Though we get better at "covering" certain mental diseases over time, to the real definition of madness, I see that there can be no cure. Due to our current social structures and beleifs, we think that there is a idea called "normality" that uis to say that there is a certain root of consciousness in which everyone should be experiencing things the same way. I think it is things like insanity that expose a truth that there is no such thing as "normality" and that there is an infinite amount of ways to experience an infinite amount of things, and that there is truly no "problem" with that. An insane person may struggle in todays society only because he or she is expected to act within the structures and systems we've created through modernism. However these structures and systems are self made, not permanent and always changing through discourse. Our ideas of "normality" are therefore for the most part highly personnel to the era, culture and beleif system, and largely overestimated.

Interpellation

Interpellation really could be considered the single goal of advertising. This is because in order to effectively advertise anything, an advertisement has to "put you into a position" (or where you "need" something). This is normally done by putting as much relationship between you and the product as possible. The goal is to convince you you're buying into your own ideology, when in fact the ideology may just be a companies. In the image at the right we see eggs and bacon made of cardboard resting on a plate. It makes a relationship to us because most of us are aware of the phrase that "food can taste like cardboard" and most of us have had experience with the phrase. Then the advertisement takes this relationship and connects it with the product: Heinz ketchup. Aha! Problem solved! We are trying to be convinced that every time we've had food that tastes like cardboard, we've been without Heinz kethcup. Hm.

Taste and Kitsch. Taste is considered what is the traditional and conventional approach to judging art. It implies that we can use what has been considered "great art" in the past to judge what great art is today. This is very common in fine arts. Kitsch is art which is considered to "have no taste" and yet, in such a way as to have no taste, has taste in representing "what is tasteless". The term seems broad, and even from the reading I'm not sure I have a definite idea of exactly what you can define exactly as Kitsch.