Where I Stand

This semester has been a very interesting one indeed. CS has solidified a lot of my notions and ideas about our world as well as opening my realm of perception to many new ones. Learning a lot of the terminology about popular and high culture, the different schools of thought, and aspects of the panopticon has undoubtedly helped me, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. Post-modernism was of special interest to me. I chose to do my presentation on it with only a glimmer of pre-held understanding; with no inkling whatsoever about how important it is to me. I've been using post-modernist techniques in my work for a long time now without even knowing it. Learning about it as a whole has given me a better perspective on my work and the tools I need to re-evaluate my plan of attack. This, coupled with further elucidation of the deteriorating state of our culture, has given me an extremely amplified drive to produce cultural artifacts of meaning.

For those curious..

www.myspace.com/inocula
www.myspace.com/ixindustrial

...just a glimpse.

Last Blog

After taking a semester in cultural studies I have been introduced to many things that I never really looked at before. It seems to me that there is a lot more of everything to basically everything. I Can't really look at everything around me the same without having to question it a million times, especially TV. I love TV and I would never question it, but now I just look at it differently with a little more questions. I thought TV was so good for me, but now it seems like I've been part of a system that has been influencing me for such a long time and i had no idea. It is crazy that I think like this now. But the world is a different place since the semester started. It will be hard to look at the world the same. 

fist pump for CS!

Since switching my major to Cultural Studies, I've become increasingly more and more excited about the rest of my education here at Columbia. This class has opened up my mind a lot and taught me about things that I thought I already knew. I now find myself relating various aspects in my life to what we've discussed this semester. Probably the most prevalent idea that we discussed in class that has really made me question things is the idea of context, with a dash of subjectivity.
Another class that I'm in this semester is a seminar on Toni Morrison novels. In all of the books we have read for that class, Morrison plays with the barrier between good and evil. For example, in "Sula" a mother kills her son. In any normal situation, I would think this is a terrible thing. But because of the extremely heavy emphasis on how everything is so context-based in our class, I was able to examine that scene in the novel without a closed mind. I was able to recognize that she killed her son out of love, not because she hated him or anything. She loved him too much to let him live anymore, because he wasn't doing anything in his life besides trying to maintain being a child (at age 34). With that, I am still able to recognize that in another context a mother killing her son really would be an awful thing.
I really appreciate all that I've taken in from this semester and will truly miss this class and all the different minds that made it so involving.

Final Blog

It was very interesting to learn that, there were names and meanings to things we see everyday. For instance i didn't know that the word "capital" had so many meanings. All semester long, what ever was taught to me, I reshaped in terms to make sense to me. Like economic capital (people that flat out got money),Linguistic capital(people that have the gift of gab) ect. (I hope that's right) I loved the fact that I could read a chapter in Theory Toolbox and think I fully understood what the chapter was about, then come to class and emily shows me my understanding of the chapter was B.S. HAHAHA!. Because the author can not control how people understand the text. (At least I learned somethingHAHAHA)But all and all I'm glad I took this cultural studies class. Because now I can see things in a new light and see things for what they truly are.

cultural review

I think the way I watch television now has changed dramatically. Before I never looked for high culture or pop culture themes, but now I find myself looking for such themes. Now I look at certain shows and and try to analysis what is the intent of the show. Before I just used to watch a show to see if it was interesting or not. The whole chapter about high and pop culture really made me look at shows differently. I now have a clear understanding of what producers are trying to convey to the audience. Before I never thought about a show being high or pop culture. In class when "The Cosby Show" was pointed out as being high culture, that expanded my thinking. I could fully understand why "The Cosby Show" would be considered high culture, and a show like "Flavor of Love" would be pop culture. These fundametnal differences are what changed my perception. I understand now the intent of the producers. Before I never looked, and I really didn't care. Now I understand and perceive things differently.

Re-thinking Education

FINAL BLOG:
After reading this blog question about a week ago, I was a pretty unsure of what I wanted to write about. I was having a hard time pinpointing one thing that I have reconsidered as a result of cultural studies throughout this semester. I so realized that the reason why I was having such trouble trying to figure out what I wanted to write about was because I have found myself reevaluating my entire education during this semester. I feel like a common and predominant theme throughout the class and in The Theory Toolbox has been to constantly reconsider your preconceived notions. Now, this is something that has been discussed a little bit in class but I think I have found myself questioning the value of education and especially high education.
I think the main part of this that I am concerned with is the ways in which the school system chooses the information that will be covered in class. The power is given to someone in each system, and this person ultimately has control over what information is shared with the children, but more importantly what information will not be shared. This seems very flawed to me. I’m not sure if I can envision a specific model of a system that I think would work better, but I’m sure that the fact that children are fed information as absolute truth is wrong in many ways. These children need to be aware that everything is indeed subjective and contextual and that they should constantly be questioning the information that is being fed to them instead of simply eating it all up without any notion of personal opinion or identity.
I think I have come to question this idea through our lessons about authorship and also through our discussion of what it means to be privileged enough to go to college. We must constantly re-think our ideas about things, as they have probable been fed to us through a feeding tube without our knowledge.

Review of the semester

I guess I could sum up my C.C. experience with the classic phrase, "the more things change, the more things stay the same." The majority of things we discussed in class were completely new to me, although I did have several preconcieved notions on things like class, race, and subjective history. The thing though is that the Theory Toolbox and all our discussions didn't really sway my opinion on anything. All it really did was make me a slightly more informed asshole. So when I make fun of my Italian friend Phil, I can now say I'm pointing out his "Italianicity," and then proceed to point out every detail that makes him Italian like we did to that advertisement (albeit in a more comical and slightly bigotted fashion).
But all joking aside, it was a great class and was worth paying for (the prom/wedding thing was cool). I enjoy it when I'm given an opportunity to look at things in a different light, and that's basically all this class was about.
Which reminds me. I still think that one picture was a volcano, and NOT a nuke going off God damnit!