Ok, for this week, I’ve decided not to give you any readings. I want everyone to relax, rest, and enjoy your break — and come back all ready to dig into these last couple of weeks.

Some of you, however, are scheduled to do oral presentations, so make sure that you are ready with those, because we will be dedicating the majority of our next class to those presentations, in addition to an introduction to the next theme: “Identity, Culture, and Power”.

cheers, Kristin

In the class blog for next Thursday, compare and contrast the two texts you are assigned to read for next week:

•  excerpt from “The Illiad” (handout)

• excerpt from “An Illiad” by Alessandro Barrico (handout)

Do the stylistic choices of each narrative change the event it narrates? If so, describe how so. Which one has a more powerful impact on you, and why do you think it does? Is the event rendered authentic? Why/ why not, and, if yes, how? Be prepared to also elaborate on your opinions when we discuss the texts in class.

Feel free to blog about anything that you believe is relevant in the reading of these two texts, but please be sure to address the above questions, as well.

March 15th: Ben, Shannon, and Mark

March 29th: John Bolles, Kristy, and Neill

April 12th: JONathan, Elena, Jon Binder

April 19th: Rikki, Javier, Zachary

May 3rd: Danielle

* You will each do an oral presentation of a review or example of art or media that you have chosen, focusing on how it reflects, informs, or contradicts what we have read and/or discussed up to that point (up to the date of your presentation). You may choose any review or example of art/media of any length, and in 8-10 minutes, you will discuss its relevance to our topic for that week. You will be a sort of mini-teacher during that time period, and you will have full use of the computer, DVD player, screen – whatever you need to make your oral presentation. The oral presentation will count as 5% of your total grade.

From Rikki:   I think this ad kind of sums up what lows advertisers will sink to. This is a humorous “culture jam” representation of the new fad of advertising on pregnant women’s protruding bellies.  I’ve always thought that fad was a little extreme, that some people were willing to go a little too far to make a buck (or get Super Bowl tickets, whatever the case may be.) I don’t know about anyone else, but I think those type of ads are a little exploitative, although I guess an unborn fetus does not particularly care whether his or her mother is showing them off in such a gaudy way.  They will probably care eventually, though, when they are old enough to see their mother’s pictures in newspapers.  Perhaps in twenty more years there will be a slough of lawsuits of children whose mothers used them for advertising.  I thought the picture of the man was a good counterpoint to this phenomona.  Plus, it made me giggle.

John (the other white meat) Bolles Says:
March 4th, 2007 at 10:55 pm e Manipulation of propaganda:

http://mushroom.nosox.org/b3ta/fisting.jpg

Plus, it is profitable:

http://www.tshirthell.com/hell.shtml

In this pop-culture existence, no icon is safe…

neill holley Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 4:27 pm e

http://www.woostercollective.com/culture_jamming/

Here’s a great site with culture jamming and all around great site for urban/street art.

Also:
It’s all about the image, ‘wear nike and you’ll be a cool dancer chick’ even though you’ll probably just wear the clothes and sit in front of the tv. putting a fork in the spokes i.e. taking the dreamy coolness away from the ad renders it useless. It’s still advertising nike, just suddenly it’s not so appealing. Plus it can be looked at as an attack on nike, in retaliation to their disregard for worker’s rights in the sweatshops they use and environmentally unfriendly materials. Can we guess what they are pre-occupied with? Probably their insatiable appetite for profit. The craziest part of this is the fact that when I saw this photo originally, I truly thought it was an original nike ad. I thought, ‘wow, they finally went with the mock-culture jam ad’. As if nike was saying, ‘we’re so good, the clothes are so great that nike is pulling you down and you can’t resist the appeal of their designs. I’m still gonna wear my nikes tomorrow, but if I could talk to the 8 year old Vietnamese girl that made them, I’d tell her, ‘you didn’t sow a piece on my right shoe tight enough b/c the thread is starting to come loose.’ I just bought these too.

Shannon Frey Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 3:44 pm e

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iomlEcaeZgQ
The Caveman Ad’s
Why would one consider these ads culture jamming? The ‘it’s so easy a caveman could do it’ tagline is loaded with cynicism and undertones. This is why I’ve not only chosen this as my example of advertising culture jamming but I would like to use this as my choice for topic in our upcoming paper.

One example of culture jamming is the ever so clever “Andre the Giant has a posse” street art campaign. It is an original design created by Frank Shepard Fairey in 1986. it is an image of the wrestler as an in-joke to Hip-Hop and the skater subculture.The appeal of the campaign is it’s parody of propoganda, both political and corporate.It is used to mock modern American culture.Fairy mocks the idea of branding by creating his own brand, using advertising techniques to rise Andre the Giant’s image to iconic status.The campaign’s self-description on products is filled with doublespeak(Andre the Giant has a posse-Wikipedia)