I am a Grenade

Here is a link to our midterm presentation!  Enjoy~

And in case you wanted to see my thought process, here are my notes! :)

I am enjoying Jensen's book so far, especially the parts about language.  When we were asked the first week of class to write about what we thought our class position was, I recall thinking of myself as more working class with some middle class values thrown in.  I cited my parent's jobs, the 'culture' and 'art' that came from my paternal grandmother, and schooling.  I never really thought about language as being a sort of class indicator, at least not in the way that Jensen has articulated.

From page 54 to about page 59

Maybe I was just really tired when I read this and the copy was wicked bad, but I did not like parts of this article.

Generally, I just felt like there was a severe lack of intersectionality in this discussion.

But I'll back up...

Disclaimer(s): It is not my intention to imply that one does not love their pet if they do not feed them a certain kind of food.  I am self-educated, and I am therefore not a "professional pet nutritionist."  While I have spent months researching and cross-checking sources and reading pet food ingredients and so on, this does not make me qualified to give any kind of professional advise.  #you can't fight city hall

I think I'm going to ramble for a little while today.

MARILYN MANSON: DISPOSABLE TEENS

And I'm a black rainbow and I'm an ape of God
I got a face that's made for violence upon
And I'm a teen distortion, survived abortion
A rebel from the waist down

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

I wanna thank you, mom, I wanna thank you, dad
For bringin' this fuckin' world to a bitter end
I never really hated a one true God
But the God of the people I hated

You say you want an evolution
The ape was a great big hit
You say you want a revolution, man
And I say that you're full of shit

We're disposable teens
We're disposable teens
We're disposable teens
We're disposable

We're disposable teens
We're disposable teens
We're disposable teens
We're disposable

You say you want an evolution
The ape was a great big hit
You say you want a revolution, man
And I say that you're full of shit (Yeah, yeah, yeah)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

The more that you fear us, the bigger we get
The more that you fear us, the bigger we get
And don't be surprised, don't be surprised
Don't be surprised when we discover it

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

You say you want an evolution
The ape was a great big hit
You say you want a revolution, man
And I say that you're full of shit (Yeah, yeah, yeah)

You say you want an evolution
The ape was a great big hit
You say you want a revolution, man
And I say that you're full of shit (Yeah, yeah, yeah)

We're disposable teens
We're disposable teens
We're disposable teens
We're disposable

We're disposable teens
We're disposable teens
We're disposable teens
We're disposable

Gregory Mantsios' piece "Media Magic" reminded me very much of Kozol (Amazing Grace) and Chang (Model Minority). Mantsios' main argument in this piece is that the media controls and shapes how we think about ourselves in relation to the class structure in the United States.  He states that "the mass media is arguable the most influential in molding public consciousness" (Mantsios 99).  Then he goes on to describe the media's "stories" about the poor: "The Poor Do Not Exist", "The Poor Are Faceless", "The Poor Are Undeserving", "The Poor Are an Eyesore", "The Poor Have Only Themselves to Blame", and "The Poor Are Down on Their Luck" that make up the way we feel about the poor today (Mantsios 100-102).

1. "Happiness means getting a man, and transformation from wretched conditions can be achieved through consumption--in their case, through new clothes and a new hairstyle" (133).

This quote particularly struck me as neatly summing up the role of advertisements and how they interact with (and are masked by) the media itself.  For this example of Cinderella, on a subtle level we are taught at a very young age that happiness comes from something outside of ourselves that must be purchased.  That somehow we will derive an abstract (non tangible) "feeling" from physical goods.  The fact that we must buy something in order to be happy appears to give us control over our lives, while in actuality these messages are transcribed into our personal ideologies without our consent through childhood movies.

We are taught, as children, that our ultimate goal is to be a consumer and that will make us happy.

1.  "Roulette, which holds out the opportunity of winning a lot of money in a short space of time, and therefore of changing one's social status quasi-instantaneously, and in which the winning of the previous spin of the wheel can be staked and lost at every new spin, gives a fairly accurate image of this imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one, every soldier has a marshal's baton in his knapsack and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can become anything" (first page of "excerpted from Pierre Bourdieu The Forms of Capital, 1983)

This rather lengthy sentence is simply pointing out the great myth of class mobility.  We like to think that today in America everyone is given an equal opportunity to succeed.  All we need is luck and elbow grease.  The great myth is that at any given moment, everyone has equal capacity to become anything they wanted to be in an instant.  In regards to Bourdieu's theory, this is his "anti-thesis," the thing that he sets out to dismantle while explaining why this "imaginary universe" does not exist.  It is important to understand that this idea of equal opportunity is a myth if we are to proceed to asking what gives structure to the actual social world--Capital.

Jonathan Kozol's piece "Amazing Grace" was extremely depressing.  He goes through describing the every-day struggles of the poor in New York--more specifically the effects on the poor children.  Right from the beginning of the piece Kozol highlights an important class distinction in parts of New York as illustrated by the subway.

"When you enter the train, you are in the seventh richest congressional district in the nation.  When you leave, you are in the poorest" (Kozol 3).

I figured I'd let everyone know that I'm not going to be in class this week.  I found out over the weekend that my grandmother passed away.  Her husband just passed in October, and she wasn't doing well to begin with, so this was sort of expected.  But not expected quite this soon.  Not for me anyway.

In Croteau's piece on "Media and Ideology" the author addresses the role of the Media in ideological representation.  Croteau states that the media helps to "define our world and provide models for appropriate behavior and attitudes" (159).  Essentially, the author argues that the Media plays a large role in showing (not necessarily telling) us how to appropriately behave in this society--as well as the consequences that can occur if one deviates from what is appropriate.

This isn't related to GEND 354.  I'm going to talk about my cats for a little while.  Feel free to skip over this.

My cat, Zelda

Yes, I am one of those people who made a Facebook for my pet.  No, I don't really care if you think I am dorky.  I've had her since she was a kitten (2011) and she is seriously spoiled.

Hey, so if any of you want help making your blog look and function the way you want it to, feel free to contact me.  I almost have the hang of the blogger script.

A few websites with awesome layouts:

Createblog.com
Blogger Templates (this is where I got mine)

Hello everyone!