Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Post #1

Power is the possession of control, authority, or influence over others.  In Berger’s “Ways of Seeing,” he tackles about the power of publicity and its effect to the consumer.  He says that publicity is the culture of the consumer society.  It shows the people whose lives have been transformed by consumption and have become enviable.  Being enviable makes a person glamorous, and publicity manufactures glamour.


In Bell Hook's "Cultural Criticism & Transformation," The power of representation is that people want to deny the direct link between representation and the choices they make in their lives.  While that link is not absolute, images matter in people lives; however, other people behave as if certain images don’t mean anything and deny the power of representation to their society.

Hegemony is the leadership or dominance of a social group or by one country.  In Bell Hook’s “Cultural Criticism & Transformation,” she displays the factors behind and beyond media scenes mainly attribute one group over another.   Best example of this is the “White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy” which is an interlocking system of domination that defines our reality and these function simultaneously at all times in our lives.  Sexism is also an example of hegemony.  Though sexism is commonly refer to discrimination against women, this can also apply to men.  Sexism is rampant around the world for centuries.  Female are viewed lower than the male species; getting unequal treatment in jobs and sometimes resulting to violence.


Gaze is a psychoanalytical term to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed (Jacques Lacan).  In Berger’s “Ways of Seeing,” he says that the Renaissance images were mostly consisted of nude women that were exclusively for the male viewer.  Women are often portrayed with their bodies turned towards the viewer while their heads were turned away and looking at the mirror and were aware of being the object of the viewer’s gaze.


Also, gaze can be defined as the relationship, between offering and demanding a gaze: the indirect gaze is the spectator's offer, wherein the spectator initiates viewing the subject, who is unaware of being viewed; thedirect gaze is the subject's demand to be viewed (G. Kress & T. van Leeuwen).  In Lucy Lippard's “Doubletake,” the way she deconstructed the photograph as how it travels through time to meet the viewer, brings a lot into perspective regarding culture, race and gender.  In each “take” Lippard discusses how one’s view the picture.  One may see the picture as a tourist souvenir while the other sees it with deeper meaning like the photographer has a connection with the subject.


Popular culture is the entirety of ideas, perspective, attitudes and images that are within the mainstream of a given culture.  It is heavily influenced by mass media.  According to Hook, popular culture is the primary pedagogical medium for the masses of people globally who want to understand the politics of difference.  As much as we want to avoid being influence with pop culture, we encounter pop culture in our daily lives.  Media extensively use pop culture in any means and this influences us ideas and perspective.



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