Group 2C
Sarah Myers, Ryan Powell, Carley Bartlett, Antoniya Petkova, Jordan Muckley, Bashir Yusuf and Katherine Tysoe.
We began the session with a discussion about this week’s individual task, outlining any problems that we had. One problem that the majority of the group had was that they struggled to classify media objects from their Cabinet of Curiosities into the social grade system that we had to research as part of our individual task. One example that was mentioned was Facebook. A member of the group said that it is marketable to all classes and ages, but not everyone agreed with this. Another member of the group said that Facebook is more marketable to older people as opposed to younger people – younger audiences are more likely to use Bebo, MySpace and Piczo. My thirteen year old sister has a Facebook account but very rarely uses it; she is slowly becoming more accustomed to using it, but she is more likely to use another networking site more suitable to her age. We also agreed on the fact that Facebook is accessed by quite a lot of our parents who try to get into contact with friends that they haven’t seen for a long time, giving themselves an easy way to communicate.
The issue of ‘stereotyping’ was also raised when we were discussing how we classified items from our Cabinets when we felt we couldn’t classify them into a social class. We found out that, even though we were ashamed to admit to it, we stereotype on a daily basis. Whenever we meet new people, subconsciously, we form our opinions on that person based on the way they look, act or dress. At some points, we stereotyped when categorising items from our Cabinet, for example, when one member had to categorise hip-hop music, we as a group said that we would stereotype people of black ethnicity to be targeted by this kind of music.
After the point on stereotyping was raised, we then moved on by talking about Pierre Bourdieu and his book ‘The Aristocracy of Taste’. Pierre Bourdieu was bought into the discussion when I said that I had included Lady GaGa in my Cabinet due to her being such a controversial ‘media object’. I stated that she splits audience’s opinions and this is why I included her in my cabinet. Once a few opinions were expressed, we were then asked whether Lady GaGa is down to personal ‘tastes’. We found out that some people like her music but don’t like her as person, to which was followed by the question ‘how do you know her?’ People form opinions by what the media feeds to them. Newspapers and magazines very rarely praise Lady GaGa on her positive aspects, they always comment on how she looks and not about the music she produces for a living.
We then went into more detail on Pierre Bourdieu and his ideas of ‘taste’. We were told that he defined items by high culture and low culture. Examples of high culture would be ballet, opera, theatre and classical music. Examples of low culture would be EastEnders, the X Factor and hip-hop music. As this information was followed by my point of Lady GaGa, this would be easy for me to classify her into one of the two categories. The category she would fall into would be low culture – she would be perceived as trashy, provocative and her profession would be completely overshadowed by her celebrity persona.
The term ‘cultural encoding’ was also introduced into the seminar today, and term that not many members of the group were familiar with. This terms means when society slowly conforms to what the media is forcing them to do, but the real message is hidden behind something such as an advert. An example that we were given that showed cultural encoding was an advert that slyly advertises women’s tampons. We were never shown the advert, but we were told that the advert only advertises the brand for about three seconds. After a discussion on this matter followed, we concluded whether or not the advert implies that women should keep their periods to themselves. We felt that seeing as the matter is never directly addressed in the advert, does that imply that women should be silenced and not be able to talk about the issue freely? We also speculated whether or not women don’t talk about it so freely due to the media imprinting into them that it is ’wrong’ to talk about it in public. We also flipped the role to men, too. We wondered whether or not it would be different if men had periods. Men would boast about it, and amongst men it would be seen as the epitome of masculinity
Once we had addressed the above points, we then moved onto talking about the group work we completed this week. The other ‘I hate’ statements that the other groups came up with were: I hate John and Edward; I hate Paris Hilton; I hate reality television; and I hate Katie Price. In order to research their statements, one group conducted a tally of people they asked, but the majority of groups set up Facebook groups using their statements as the name for their group. This prompted another discussion as to whether Facebook groups are useful. One member stated that even though setting up a Facebook group may seem a good idea, the people that join the group are people that WE have invited to join. Therefore, the people we invite to join are more likely to accept the invitation just because they are our friends, not because they really agree with the statement. Also, the people that do join the group don’t tend to leave comments, so we receive no feedback on their opinions.Labels: tasks |
