Halloween

is so fun. So many costumes are influenced by the media.  Many kids are exercising the activity of translation of media as they take something that they know, a character from a film or book, and change its form by adapting it to fit them, and they don't even know it!  How cool is that? I was told that somebody even went as me.

Weather

Tonight I am going to see Girl Talk, an electronic musician who is well known for his mash-ups, which is a song composed of elements from different existing songs in order to create a new one.  He has been called a "lawsuit waiting to happen" because of his use of snippets of copyrighted songs without permission.  I think that he understands where his accusers are coming from, his record label that he is signed to is called Illegal Art.  

But the question is is this kind of creation music?  I think so.  What separates Girl Talk from a regular DJ is that he mixes the elements of songs on the fly, giving each performance its own personality, kind of like an electronic form of jazz, as opposed to just making a playlist and fading in and out of songs like so many college kids do and call it DJing.  Girl Talk is very media literate when it comes to music.  He does what a twelve year old does when they recut a film trailer only in a different medium and to a higher degree.  

Students could learn a little more about what Girl Talk does and how he does it by listening to two songs that are of different genres pointing out similarities and thinking about how they could blend together.  Then if they are feeling ambitious, they could try their hand at mashing them up with garage band.  

10101001011001

I filled out an ORCA grant to get funding for a 419 project that we are pitching this next week.  The research that we stated we wanted to do was on high-definition Blu-ray discs because we want to export the final film to this new technology.  I got to thinking about how rapidly technology is advancing.  VHS tapes were popular for a good 15 years.  DVD has enjoyed mass popularity during the 2000's.  Now we have high definition Blu-ray.  The question is, when will Blu-ray become superseded by the next big thing?  Will video formats become like computers, changing every 6 months?

I think that media genealogy would be a very interesting thing to study and discuss.  I've seen people wearing Nintendo shirts that say "Know your roots" on them.  Soon, children will not know about VHS tapes.  I think that this it is important to know what came before in order to more fully appreciate what we have now.  We could discuss the alternatives that were available to the formats, such as HDDVD or Blu-ray and VHS or Beta.  We could also discuss different forms of media falling into obsolescence, such as polaroid film and Super8 film.  Technology even affects film stocks as some stocks are no longer produced in order to make way for better stocks, which is why a film from the 70's looks different from one made today with the same exact camera and lenses.  Media genealogy would be a very fun and informative activity to do.  

Can't you just see the fun filled pedigree chart of a Blu-ray disc?

Here's a video for the band VHS or Beta, a group who knows their lineage.

Just a little thing

Tonight I went to the ballet of Romeo and Juliet at the Covey Center.  I had never been to a ballet before, but since I was familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet I was able to follow along.  This could be a fun exercise to do with students, to compare and contrast the same story being told through different media.  

There's the ballet 

The stage play

The 1968 film

And the 1996 film

All of these different productions tell the same story, but they tell it in a different way.  The films have more visual elements to them, and there are differences between the both of them.  The ballet has a more poetic beauty to it and the stage play was how Shakespeare originally wrote the story.  This activity could help students think of other familiar stories to them that are told and retold through different types of media.  

Little Thoughts.

With the election coming up I feel like I'm being bombarded with opposing views from both sides everywhere I go.  The media is playing a huge role in the campaigning process and it is working to Barack Obama's advantage, just as television aided in the election of John F. Kennedy.  My fear is that too many people, my age especially, are choosing to vote for Obama simply because it is a "hip" thing to do.  I see many college kids who are urban outfitted donning Obama pins and wearing fine t-shirts like this

which can be found, at (surprise) Urban Outfitters.  Many concerts I went to during the summer featured musicians speaking out about the election and being pro-Obama.  However, I agree with Noel Gallagher from the band Oasis in the sense that I don't go to a concert to hear someone "sing the news." 

I feel that I must make this statement: I am not a supporter of Barack Obama.  Just because I have a different haircut, a mustache, and skinny jeans does not mean that I am easily swayed to follow one side or the other.  The image I project in the eyes of society would lead many to believe that I subscribe to the same ideals of others who dress like me, but I'm so nonconformist to the nonconformists that I've become a conformist.  I'm not going to vote for a candidate just because they are cool.  To be perfectly honest, I am not well informed on many of the issues and I acknowledge that, but the presidency of the United States should not be determined like the Sophomore Class President of Omaha Senior High School.  There are real issues involved in it, issues that effect millions of people.  

It is hard to find an unbiased source of information in the media.  It seems that it's only possible to see the extremes of both sides.  I think that this is an issue where people need to be media literate and the children of today will need to be even more so in the future.  Propaganda runs rampant in the media and those people who are not anchored in beliefs or properly educated can get swept away in the media whirlwind.  This doesn't just apply to the election.  Take the Katy Perry song "I Kissed a Girl."  The catchiness of the song gets in your head and the message its sending is, simply put, she kissed a girl and she liked it.  Now, if an eleven year old girl who wasn't taught either way about homosexuality hears this song and happens to enjoy it, she is introduced to this new idea that she never thought of before, and ideas can be dangerous things.  The popularity of the song can lead her to think that it is normal and the cool thing to do.  So it is with an election.  If people are uninformed on what the candidates are standing for then they are left with what is popular and what sounds good.  We all need to come to the point where we can think for ourselves and understand the media that is thrown at us.

Changes

The other night my girlfriend watched Ghostbusters with her parents.

This has always been one of my favorite films.  Her mother was talking about it when I arrived for Sunday dinner.  She made the statement that it was rated PG but

had it been made today.  

Setting her rating statement aside, I remembered how, as a child, I loved Ghostbusters so much and that I thought that it was an action adventure film.  It wasn't until I was fifteen that I realized it was funny.  The film hadn't changed, but my perspective had.  As a child I watched it with innocence, missing many of the jokes because they were over my head and of a subject matter that children should not know about.  But when I had become a teenager, corrupted by the halls of public school, I began to understand the worldly humor of it.  

This could be used as a teaching activity where students could identify something from their youth that has not changed but their perspective on it has.  Green Eggs and Ham would be a good example.
 Most people can recall as a child reading it or having it read to them.  When we are children we are fascinated by the illustrations, the clever words and the absurdity of green eggs and ham and the persistence of Sam I Am.  As adults living in our current situation in the world today, I think that we could draw a conclusion that Green Eggs and Ham has a strong message of being open minded, something that is happening more and more everyday, whether for the good or the bad.  But the point is, media doesn't change.  It is our perspective, formed by life experiences, that we use to draw a message out of the media.  

City of Ember

Saturday night my friends and I all went to see "City of Ember."  Bill Murray plays a corrupt politician in a post-apocalyptic underground city where two children realize that he's up to no good and that there's been a secret hidden from the people.  As the children start to stumble on clues and learn more and more the leaders of the city try to quell their rebellion.

The film teaches us to do what is right no matter what.  Parallels can be drawn between the crisis in the film's world and our world.  Ember is in the midst of an energy crisis in which the generator that lights their city is on the fritz and their vegetation and food supply is quickly running out.  In our world today, young people face the challenge of growing up in a world where there are valid concerns for a shortage of energy and, with the threat of global warming, problems with vegetation and our food supply.  Possible application of lessons from the film could be done in a classroom setting where students would identify a problem in the world similar to the problems the children in the film faced and brainstorm to find a solution to the problem.  This would help students to respond to a media stimulus by thinking about the message it sends and how to apply it in their lives.