This video is somewhat like what I think we are doing for our multimodial project, this video is a series of pictures of a girl growing up. To my mind this would be what we are doing except for the fact that it’s not a stereotypical jock, frat or nerd growing up. The group’s project is supposed to be a montage of images of these stereotypes growing up to show how diverse Clemson is. To be honest I have serious doubts about the project as is, in my mind our multimodial project would be something along the lines of a series of pictures of a jock or a nerd growing up. First of all how are we supposed to know that the child growing up is the stereotypical jock or nerd. Although I will participate and do my best to go with this idea of the groups I do not like the direction the project is going in.
The video Why Twilight is Popular is a male oriented explanation on why women prefer the Twilight series. The creator of this video Epipheo uses a movie reel background with each change in the reel corresponding to a change in the image used. The images used in this video are entirely from The Oatmeal, the video in of itself is a video representation of the blog written on The Oatmeal about Twilight. The video syncs it’s images with the narrator’s comments. After the narrator states that the protagonist might as well be described as a giant Lego brick, small clips of a Lego brick are occasionally shot instead of The Oatmeal drawn representation of the protagonist. Furthermore the images used also reflect two general audiences: women and men. For the women the video uses images of two obese girls as well as a soccer mom with annoying children to emphasize the point that these individuals enjoy Twilight because it allows them to place themselves in the hollow shell of the main character and believe that the perfect idea of a man would love them. For the men the video gives representations of men in disbelief or in a suicidal trance at the thought of Twilight’s popularity. Furthermore at the end of the video the video uses direct comparison of the two protagonists to provide the main argument for the video. This main argument is that the reason for Twilight’s popularity is that it portrays the male protagonist (Edward) as the perfect man while portraying the female protagonist (Bella) as a empty shell to be replaced by the female reader of the book. In the video it uses an image of Edward who is extremely muscled, has a healthy pink coloring, is handsome, as well as half dressed while using a simplistic, black and white, small, frail, and somewhat stupid looking image of Bella to contrast to that of Edward. This further emphasizes the ultimate point the video is trying to make, to give the audience(men) a reason why women tend to find the Twilight series tasteful. Even though it is not.
America has always been called the melting pot due to the mixing of different cultures throughout our history. Originally the British were the largest contributor to American culture due to being the most prominent colonizer . Over time different influxes of various ethnicity has also changed American culture, some examples of this trend are the influx of the Irish, Italian, Asian, and recently Latin American people. This has caused America to become a nation whose culture is constantly changing and evolving. Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s day, Chinese restaurants and takeout are a popularized American food item, Italian mob movies are a cornerstone of American cinema, and even the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France. The point is, American culture has always been impacted by foreign cultures, but while our culture has always evolved we still hold onto our core values: freedom and liberty for all.
On the issue of American impact on foreign cultures, a question must be posed: what is American Culture? One might be able to state that football, McDonald’s, clothing (jeans),Disney, and our style of government are all American. Is it true that many popular items in America have become popular world wide? Yes this is true. However that does not mean that foreign cultures are being eroded by American culture. Culture is an integral part of any community, however culture is not stagnant, it changes, sometimes slowly sometimes drastically. An appropriate example of this would be the popularity of blue jeans, a popular clothing item originally developed in America. However the popularity of blue jeans around the world does not indicate an American culture invasion but rather the popularity of that particular clothing item. Many nations have tried, such as the Soviet Union, to impede the popularity of blue jeans, however most have met with failure. This is because the product itself is popular regardless of it’s origin. For example the article KFC and McDonald’s: A Model of Blended Culture it states that McDonald’s has adapted it’s menu to fit the various food preferences of the nation that it is in. This example shows how McDonald s has culturally synchronized itself with various foreign nations. To those that state that the idea of McDonald’s as a system of fast unhealthy food has begun corrupting foreign culture, let me state that individuals in foreign cultures are not children or brainless. These individuals are capable of exercising their own free will and deciding for themselves for better or worse what they do, this included whether or not making McDonald’s popular by eating their on a regular basis. America should not be responsible for the success of products or businesses in foreign nations, rather foreign nations should be able to decide for themselves what they want to keep, and what they want to preserve.
The game I ultimately chose to play was the Dean for America game, a game in which the player attempts to influence as many people as possible to attend the Caucus for Howard Dean in Iowa. In the game you have Dean Supporters which you place in various locations of Iowa based on their districts and each time you place a supporter you play one of three flash games. The more successful you are the more people you convince. The game was moderately fun for a flash game, I would personally give it a 2 out of 10. I felt that the game was intended in its inception to be fun due to the nature of 3 mini games, an attempt to mix things up and allow the player to be entertained. However the mini-games do no increase in difficulty meaning that halfway through I became extremely bored with the repetitive and long nature of each mini-game, after three minutes the game became extremely repetitive.
I would state that anyone playing this game on a third party site would know it is a form of rhetoric, in the menu screen it states that you get more “supporters” if you invite a friend to play but by the end of the game I had 34 extra supporters when the clock hit 0. The two fundamental arguments presented were that you should vote for Howard Dean and that even one person on a campaign can help their political cause. Although I do not think this form of rhetoric was successful for the former I do believe it was partially successful for the latter. However I think that political messages can be pushed through much better mediums than flash games. People do not want to be influenced politically through flash games because political ideals reflect our identity and morals, and in our own minds we don’t view flash games as significant therefore the message in them can’t be either. Political messages should be experienced by listening to the individual about their ideology and morals so that we are convinced as to why we should be supporting the individual which makes radio and television great political tools of persuasion, especially when they have the candidate speaking.
When first looking up on Wikipedia the term Pirate Party, the first link would be to Pirate Party International. After this Wikipedia has separate articles dealing with many national Pirate Parties most notably the German, Swedish, U.S., and Canadian Pirate Parties. The International Pirate Party Wikipedia page did not have much information; it had a brief history, a few sentences on the Aims of the organization, and one sentence on the structure with a list of nations who have an official Pirate Party. However what is most disturbing about the International Pirate Party page is that it had two Wikipedia warning labels: one that specified that many of the references were by those affiliated with a Pirate Party and that even these references are subpar normal references for a Wikipedia Page. However when looking at the individual national Pirate Party Wikipedia sites the information is more extensive and referenced more. Furthermore for each individual Pirate Party Wikipedia page, especially Germany and Sweden, the pages listed an extensive history and even yearly election results/statistics for the Party which gave significant quantitative information about the party. However from site to site there are Pirate Party Wikipedia pages that have either outdated information or minimal information, indicating that in many nations: such as the United States or Australia, that the Pirate Party is simply not that popular. From this information I would state that Wikipedia is a good site as a springboard, one in which I could go to the referenced material for information about the Pirate Party, however finding opposing views through this would not be preferable due to limited 3rd party references.
When looking at TUMBLR for Pirate Party a problem occurred that is common when attempting to look up information on the Pirate Party on the internet: interpretation. On TUMBLR if one were to type in the tag “Pirate Party” you would get a mix of pictures/posts about masquerade pirate parties or even anything to do with parties and pirates. This also indicates that there are approximately as many TUMBLR posts about masquerade pirate parties as there are posts on the political pirate party. However like Wikipedia TUMBLR contains mostly pro Pirate Party posts, individuals talking about either the success of the Pirate Party, or its aims or positions on copyright/file sharing laws. I would state that disregarding the pirate themed parties posts that TUMBLR posts on the subject are an accurate depiction of pirate party members.
For my Research paper I am going to be looking at the Pirate Party and analyzing its history, growth, and principal interests. Furthermore I will be analyzing the Pirate Party international and how it breaks many of the common party trends through its goals, members, and position on the political spectrum. The Pirate Party is unique in that it is an International party that has attained significant success in gathering young members to its political cause, crossing international borders, and remaining neutral of all tertiary topics in an effort to maintain cohesion to their primary goal.
My sources for this paper will mostly be derived from the internet, principally the pirate party (Sweden/Germany/International) sites which detail their goals and intent. Another form of research would be to email or communicate with various senior members of the pirate party for interview.
Several dilemmas that would be presented in this topic would be communication with various pirate party members from other countries who do not speak English. Furthermore because the pirate party is not entirely mainstream and a fairly recent party it may be difficult to obtain information about its history or demographics on its members.
