More of Henry Jenkins

Queer youth in Rural America, prt. 2

source : http://henryjenkins.org/index.html

After reading the first part of the intervieuw with Mary L. Gray (as described in my previous post) i also rode the second part about queer youth in Rural America.  In this part she specifies the 'live and let live'- principle: do your thing and don't care what other people do. But Gray even added one word more to this sentence: quietly.

So now we deal with the following principle: live and let live, quietly. With this she interfers to the queer youth in rural america, that to some point homosexuality is allowed as long that it doesnt affect the public life. The difficult thing about homosexuality in the rural parts of America is that its difficult to have the homosexual identitity without losing your other identity, the one of communitymember. It is necessary to remind local communities thar their queer kids are still valued local sons and daughters.

Mary L. Gray talks all the time about Rural America, but how big is this part actually?

William Howarth writes in his article 'The Value of Rural Life in American Culture' that 75 percent of the United States' inhabitants live in suburban and urban areas, whereas cities occupy only 2 percent of the country. Rural areas occupy the remaining 98 percen, so the study that Gray is doing on researching the homosexual youth in america is from a bigger importance than we expected.

Democracy, big brother style. 

source: http://henryjenkins.org/2006/07/democracy_big_brother_style_1.html#more

In this article Jenkins links the voting from reality television to the voting on elections. In 2006 some people claimed that there were more voters for Idols that year than for the presidential elections. Jenkins remarks that there weren't more voters for Idols, but that a lot of people used multiple votes. Later on he talks more specific about Big Brother. People gossip a lot, even if they don't know eachother very good (through the internet for example). Jenkins points out that the bonds that get formed while gossiping are even more important then the subject. If you participate in Big Brother you actually allow the whole country to gossip about you. Jenkins lines a few cases of houseguests from big brother and how they persuade the people at home not to vote them away. Later in the article he talks about the VFTW-principle: Vote For The Worst, a  syndrome that come up in Idols, and that has now his consecuences in Big brother. He names the case of Chicken George and how he tries to persuade the people to vote him back in the house ;

the link with democracy is that people cannot vote anymore now for Big Brother. The were allowed to do it in the first season, but then all the coloured charachters where voted out as first so that in the and there were only the more boring people in the house. Now the people in the big brother house vote and the people at home can only decide little things. A more specific example where politic and  reality tv are linked are in China, where in the chines version of Idols the people at home could vote for the first time on who they want with a lot of candidates. Jenkins ends his article with the following words : But then, they seem to take democracy more seriously in other parts of the world than we do in the United States.

Queer youth in Rural America, prt. 1

An interview from Henry Jenkins with Mary L. Gray.

Henry Jenkins is  Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He did a lot of research on convergention in media, new media and social consecuentes. On his blog he posts all his thinking and interviews with people who contribute in his researches.

Mary L. Gray is the writer of the book 'out in the country: youth, media and queer visibility in Rural America'. In this book she captures stories of queer youth in the little villages and urban zones from America. If you think about gay communities its most of the time centred in big cities in America, but Mary L. Gray makes a cultural analyse about the queer youth living away from the city and how the situation is there. With this work she tries to show that there still can be a 'good queer life' without all the luxury that the citypeople are used too. Also she hopes that with this book she can help queer organisations throughoug the whole country that there is more then only the city resources. 

Growing up as a queer in Rural america is not by definition awful, claims Gray. While we allways assume that the gender roles and the sexual norms are more integrated in Rural america points Gray out that there are a lot of different investments in these norms. 

With this book of her she wides out previous studies, in which people belief that individuals start out different and create a new family instead of the family they left behind.

The first wellknown gay-man that entered the politics is Harvey Milk. He relied on his connections with local unions and other civil right organisations to take a leading role against the measure that banned gay and lesbian people from working in public schools. In 2008 Gus van Sant made a movie about him, Milk, with Sean Penn as head-actor.

She also examines the impact of new digital media in this situation. Internet can make a diference for this youth because it is a media where they can invest in: they can write their stories so that other people can make a objective view of this youth in Rural America. On the otherside the internet also plays the roll of a informationproviding medium: they can connect to broader communities. 

I think that Gray is right, most people have some preassumptions that growing up in Rural areas (not only in America) implies a very closed culture. People who want to change that shouldn't just project their ideas in this areas, without knowing how it really is to live there and to grow up. There is a clear difference between the cityculture and the rural culture, and both need to be treathened in another way. 

Remembering Kittinger

Excelsior III, the high altitude balloon took Joseph Kittinger on august 16, 1960 to the highest layers of the atmosphere, 31,3 km above sealevel. He made the longest free-fall ever and on his fastest point he reached the limit of 1000 km an hour. 

Click here to see the film of the famous kittingerjump

Other blogs

aking a look at my classmates blogs there are a few that need a big congratulations.

First of all i would like to say to Esther from the website http://maleducomunicada.wordpress.com/ that i'm sorry that my blog is in english, the writing in spanish is really hard and i think none of you would understand that. The professor allowed me to write in english, i hope you understand that. Esthers website reflects for me a calm and professional looking platform of the things she wrote. She made a good use of different media, linked to other websites and youtubemovies.

Then http://nochedeseries.wordpress.com/ made a really good pictureanalysis, i used this subdivision also in my analysis. The social video about the children in india who have to work under bad conditions really touched me.. 

About Info de moda  i cannot really say anything. There isn't written alot about mode, and less about the tasks that we had to made.

Zoonmediatikon caught my eye and has some interesting posts, like the one about facebook (short but good) and up to date by posting the winner of the world press photo. 

For me personally the best photo-analysis was the one that i rode on http://termitando.wordpress.com/, combinating the composition with the political context. 

The video from Alex audiovisualismos surprised me, because it's a dutch production. Interesting too and corresponding with the movie that we saw during the lessons. 

 The video social. of 'Genio y figura 'has a lot of resemblances with the situation now in belgium, where many abuses were rapported nowadays of priests who abused children many years ago. Also the picture acompaning her article about educomunicacion is very related. 

The page of Ruben Perez ( la escuela mediatica) isn't finished yet but i like the picture that he analysed. When i saw the picture, without reading his analysis i couldnt really know who the person was, but he explained everything very well (and good compositionanalysis)

On elantimo i like the layout a lot. Its a pity that the video couldnt load up on the page right away but the picturanalysis makes that oke. 

Even tough i don't like metalmusic, and even though there are no entries about the course i like the first article on con la musica a ya otra parte about ipods and danger. 

Social video: Poison dust

'Don't wanna be a radiator'

Surfing through the internet and searching for a social video i got on the website of the organisation named 'peoples video'. They consider themselves as 'are a group of media activists with more than 50 public access shows across the country and hundreds of videos documenting the struggle.' There was this one movie that really caught my attention : 'Poison dust'. It is a social video about the consequences of weapons with depleted uranium on the people that are affected to it.

Poisson dust is ..

The video consists of different parts.  Three nationalguard and marine veterans are talking, alternating with experts who are giving the more scientific causes and consequences of this poisson dust. In the seventies there was an idea of combinating uranium and metals and use it to produce bicycles, cars,.. .They called it ‘depleted uranium’, it is not so strong as normal uranium. The plan was rejected, but because the material was very cheap they give it away for free to the production of armys. Tanks, guns and more are made from this material.  If this material explodes in something else there is a really heat fire, up to 2000-3000 °C.  The veterans are talkin gabout landscapes filled with abandoned tanks and trucks, standing in the sand. Helicopters swirl sand and dust and it goes everywhere: in their beds, clothes, in the body. But depleted uranium is also dangerous even when its in its Shell and you are near it.

Iraq is called a ‘hotspot’ for this radiation coming from depleted uranium. The background radiation in a normal situation is 100 millirems per year, but in Iraq, more specifically in Desert storm, the radiation  exposure consists 200 millirems per day! The radiation count is more than thousand times too big in comparison to the background radiation. A veteran of this place said that one time there came Dutch marines, they took samples before setting their basecamp but when they saw the results they didn’t want to live in this area.

Dr. Rosalie Bertell claims that the exposure time is at least equally important to the strength of the source. The little parts of uranium that come free with the high temperature find their way to our bodies. They centrate themselves with a lot in little surfaces and can affect the organs for many years. The victims complain about headache, dizzyness, pain in the neck, a weak feeling and pain in the longs. One time they did some tests on a Young soldier and the result was that his longs could be the longs of a 72year old.  Even if depleted uranium is less dangerous than pure uranium it is still radioactive.

Just recent the pentagon admited that ‘there could possible be’ damage for the longs, kidney and heart. But in reality radiation changes the regulatory gene, and if this gene is damaged it can cause cancer.

.. a social video?

Like we have studied in classes we can define social video under many  conditions. Most of the time the makers of social videos reject the principle of competency and replace it by the principle of cooperation. The message is very important, and it is an alternative form of communication in opposite of the big multimediagroups that only care about moneymaking.

 Social videos are always part of the social civility and are about social interest themes. The social video cares about a social changing, they are a stimulus for action and participation.

Poisson dust questions some actions that the government, or in this case the pentagon makes. In the video, filmed as a documentary we can see and hear a lot of experts talking, it’s a form of free education that is important in social video: we can hear the truth, and not the lies that powerfull people can tell us.

analyse of a presspicture

27/08/10 - underground images of Chilean coalers

The chilian autorothies released at the end of august some videos and pictures of the 33 chilian mineworkers who are stuck 700 meters deep. This picture was linked on the website of the belgian newspaper 'de morgen' and caught my attention right away.

First i will talk about the denotative composition of this picture, and later on about the conotative meaning.

Denotative composition

In this picture we can distinguish two horizontal zones. if we draw an imaginary line right behind the television we can see the two big compositional parts of the picture. First, and in front, we have a empty area with a paper and a television. On the screen we see the nose, eyes and hair of a man, looking in front of him. Behind the imaginary line, in the second zone of the picture we see some shelters, lights, a car, stones... The colours are all a bit sober: grey, black, a bit red. The sky is white, we don't see any sun but its a picture that has been taking during the day. On the right side we see a little hill made of stone.

Conotative meaning.

The colours of the picture seem very depressed: like a rainyday right before it will start to rain. And then we're not talking about some short rainshowers but really about a day where its raining quisi all the time. All the materials in the picture are cold, we don't see no soft textiles or peoples bodies but grey rocks, hard plastic and the bodywork of a van. The whole picture bathes in a pressant atmosphere. In the centre we see the television with the man on it. If we don't know the context of the picture we wouldn't have an idea what happened. This is a picture in a picture: the picture of the man is focussed on the eyes, he seems to tell something with them. You can only see the upper part of his head (no body). In the total picture it looks that he is coming out of the ground, and that his head just appeared. He seems a bit desperate (like the total picture). The zone with the shelters is empty, as if there is nobody who can help him. He is alone and waiting for help. The little hill on the right side also finishes this image: the television, and so the man, are centred lower (and so are the mineworkers in comparision to the civile world). 

Conclusion

We can conclude that this picture has a double meaning, in fact it are two pictures. But both project the same atmosphere: a cold, grey, hopeless situation. 


source: http://www.demorgen.be/dm/nl/990/Buitenland/photoalbum/detail/1/1150071/870047/0/Ondergrondse-beelden-van-Chileense-mijnwerkers.dhtml

Hitler causes censure in modern times

http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=RR2V912L

Is Hitler alive? Not fisically, but he's still able to produce a lot of commotion around his person. This picture was posted on the online version from the belgian  newspaper 'the standaard'.  A famous belgium actor, Warre Borgmans, dressed up as Hitler was guest in a talkshow on the public channel. The belgian chefcook Jeroen Meus was there too and they talked about the prohibited episode of the cookprogramma of Jeroen Meus one year ago. In his program 'plat preféré' he cooks the favourite dish of famous people, and in one of these episodes he prepared the favourite dish of Hitler, trout in butter sauce (some people say that this isn't his favourite dish). This episode wasn't  transmitted on television. In the talkshow now, one year later, the cook still regrets that the episode was prohibited, because he claims that his intentions weren't wrong. 

The image of Adolf Hitler is ambigious, it is  the real picture that counts, what he looks like  (image) but even more important is the reactions that his name/picture causes (imago). We can say that the man with the moustache and black hair is denotative, and conotative is the dominant, autarch, fascist, scary, hard charactre of this man, his controversial ideas and personality.
In the media the case 'Hitler' causes a lot of questions. Is it allowed to represent him nowadays, not surrounded with the terrible things he did? As the makers of the talkshow said: 'this is a parody, like there are a lot. it is pure entertainment'. But is Hitler entertainment?

A first time for everything

Septembre. A memorable month. Septembre 18 years ago: my first schoolday. Septembre 8 years ago: my grandmother made her first bread (and forgot to add the ferment. We didn't even try to bite in that stone). Septembre 3 years ago: my brother started with skateboarding. Septembre one year ago: i left belgium to study a year in Madrid. Septembre this year: the opening of a blog.This blog i started to acomplish the tasks from a course i had in Madrid (informacion audiovisual multimedia y educacion). I don't know in what it will result, but i hope it wil entertain you as much as you will learn new things by reading my blog.

Internet- XTRM? As the internet is the fastest evoluating medium it also is a platform for all kinds of people. Everybody who has a computer and a modem (or goes to mcdonalds with their laptops and use the free WI-FI) can read the internet but since the beginning of WEB 2.0 people can also create things on the world-wide-web. You can put videos on youtube, open blogs, write on fora, create fora... In this conditions it is not remarkable that a lot of people with EXTREME (XTRM) hobbies, interests, political views,..use the internet to feed their toughts and produce new one. In this blog i will comment and share with you all the things on the internet that made my eyebrows rise. It is free to comment and discuss all that is written.

Your beloved, Sarah S.