I know I'm a really early on this assignment, but the lecture today on the Glock really made me salty and bitter about something. Political Cartoons. I really hate political cartoons now. There may have been a time when I looked at one, smiled, and laughed at them. But now I just hate them outright. They are bad. Like really bad. They have a single punchline, making fun of other people. No nuance, no insight, no kindness. When you attack people like that, when you make people feel bad about being themselves, it just makes them want to defend themselves, attack and blame others, and in no way helps the situation. Am I saying that political comics are the reason why our political turmoil in the country? No, that's ridiculous. I personally don't vote, mostly cause of nihilistic feeling that it doesn't matter what I do with my vote, and picking a side is stupid in itself. The reason why politics are so crazy right now? People are stupid. We need to be smarter and see that not everything is black and white, a binary split and the side we pick has all the right answers. There are nuances to every issue, and to just pick a side, to say that your side is right and the other is wrong, has no nuance or room for debate. Hyperbole in political cartoons only exasperate this issue. It shows one side being more right and the other being more wrong than the other, and making us laugh at the other side. We have to look at things from both sides, and see that the people that when we make them feel stupid, make them feel humiliated, and feel like they are being attacked, they have to defend themselves. These cartoons ignore how people on the other side feel, and that they are even people at all. We now see republicans not as humans, but as these monsters who carry weapons and are what is wrong with everything in the world. We can not do this anymore. We have done it in the past, and we have to change. Look at black face. People who draw political cartoons show hyperbolic images of people on the other side, just like white people depicted black people with "humorous hyperbole," making it easier and easier to oppress black people. You can't and shouldn't attack people. Do you blame wars on the soldiers on the other side, or the leadership? We have a spectrum of choices to make in order to try and help people see our side. On one side we have attacking rhetoric like political cartoons which may worsen the situation, to on the extreme other side, people who suffer tremendous loss due to children and family members hurting themselves in gun accidents, that while effective, are incredibly tragic. We need to use the middle ground. We have to educate people. We have to attack companies, media, and other places where people get this info, companies that want people stupid in order not to help them but to sell their products. We are in a changing age. Our movies, our TV cartoons, our TV shows are getting more nuanced, and we need political cartoons to do the same. Don't just end it on a one panel joke. Make a pleasant conversation between the the characters, showing that they are human, but then show that the companies is trying to keep the divide between them. We need better media, we need better cartoons. We need to be better.
I agree that political cartoons make fun of a person or object to an extent, but I don't believe this to be immoral since the cartoons are a method to promote discussion on a current issue and are meant to be satirical. I think that political cartoons are a way to draw the public's attention to a certain issue and sway others' opinions on the subject. I agree that every issue has its own nuances and by portraying this issue through a political cartoon more people can become educated about the given subject.
I like this discussion. Why is discourse so polarized, and why do we never see nuanced opinions out there? The answer, unfortunately, is because we want to win. If I really want to win, then the worst thing I could do is admitting that my opponents are right about some stuff, because lending credence to the opposition is not nearly as effective as demonizing the enemy. Remember that whole ethos, pathos, logos thing? Pathos is widely considered the most effective way to convince people of things, so appealing to base emotional fears/desires is going to get the most votes, even if it involves being a complete turd. As humans have become more intelligent and more understanding of these phenomena, we have also become very good at manipulating each other, and winning elections. But we have not actually gotten any better at solving the problems we claim to know how to solve when running for office.
One of the objects discussed in lecture from weeks seven through nine that was the bra. I learned that women of the 19th century were critical of other women who weren't modest as modesty implied respectability. The corset, invented in the 16th century, served to draw attention to rather than disguise body parts, as a result producing sexual differences and contradictory meanings. Women who wore a corset could be regarded as either respectable or indecent. The bra really interests me in that it can take many forms, some of which include the bralette, sports bra, stick-on bra, and the convertible bra. Professor Kaplan explained how the bra produces gender while gender produces the desire for and necessity of the bra. An outside example that relates to this lecture is the male bra. Male bras, contrary to those designed for women, are designed to compress rather than support. This type of bra is meant to flatten and conceal the chest and is usually not meant to draw attention. I think that men wearing male bras may be viewed as what society deems normal as the result of wearing one would be having a flat chest; on the other hand, others may view them as dishonest with portraying their figure to the public. I believe that bras of all types are a commodity to a wearer since the individual decides when and why they wear it, on account of personal preferences, social pressure, or other reasons.
I didn't know there were make bras. It would make sense though as having a large chest might make you look too feminine. I wonder if the male bra developed parellel to the female bra, or was it a recent invention
I agree that it is quite odd that undergarments are supposed to be structured for comfort and support, yet manufacturers felt like they had to turn to sexualizing their products and making racy advertisements in order to peak consumer interest. Consequently, society looks at bras as something controversial and desirable due to the advertising campaigns and celebrity outfits from the 20th century up until now. There is certainly a complicated and rich history behind this object, as proven in the lecture and readings.
I never was one to own Barbie dolls, or any dolls for that matter when I was a child, so it was really eye opening to see the statistics and cultural impact of the Barbie brand in the readings and in Professor Kaplan’s lecture. Seeing a $10 toy on a store shelf, I never really stop to think about how complex the item is structurally, where the raw materials to make it were harvested or originating from, how many people it took to make it, or how the object got from a factory to a store shelf. It’s astounding that something like a Barbie doll could require such back breaking efforts as taking natural materials, forming plastic, injection molding body parts, having 15 different paint stations, nylon hair shipped in from another country from the factory, and ironically having the retail packaging for Barbies shipped in from the United States to just be sent back to American Stores. But Barbies have also had such a strong cultural history that is filled with controversy. A child’s doll is not expected to have such controversy as white-washing, setting impossible physical standards for young girls, and revealing clothing styles with sexual connotations. Overall, seeing all of Baribie’s history in production and society, both in good and bad lighting really opened my eyes to the nature of mass production today and the hidden complexities behind daily objects that once seemed so simple and mundane.
I agree with your statements about mass production and the underlying complexities of items we take for granted. However, what struck me most from your paragraph was the idea of Barbie's controversy. Your phrasing of how Barbie is produced, "forming plastic, injection molding," along with your discussion of Barbie's controversy of being white-washed made me realize the comparison between "white culture" and Barbie's production. We tend to think of the stereotypical white culture to be tanned, blond(e) and perfect. The idea of "injecting plastic" or any type of injections (i.e. Botox) can be considered part of "white culture," so when discussing how Barbie is produced (with plastic and injections), this really speaks to her being the epitome of "white culture" because she is literally being made just as those who epitomize the stereotype of "white culture" are being made -- with plastic and injections. Though this idea may seem a stretch from what you were talking about, your words got me thinking about this very complex topic. The complexity of both Barbie's white-washing and her production are very interesting topics that could probably be talked about in much greater detail.
I agree with you that there are many different aspects of an object that the consumer never really thinks about. Most objects have dark and light sides, which one never thinks about when they are using the object. This class has also brought all the nuances of an object to light for me and I have found it to be very intriguing to think about other objects outside of class in the same way.
Something that I encountered in several places during my research into the paper for this class looked like this: "__________ took this product, and mass produced it in a way that resembled Henry Ford's automobile assembly lines". The blank, of course, should be filled in with the name of a person or company. What I discovered during my research is that everyone wants to be the Henry Ford equivalent in their industry. To be fair, you can't blame anyone for wanting to be like one of the most famous American entrepreneurs in history, but I think people are really are beating a dead horse when they claim to be a Henry Ford equivalent. For example, in my research into the hamburger, I took a detailed look at White Castle, which was the first American fast food chain. I found that Walter Anderson, a co-founder of White Castle, and the chef at the first location, had developed a method of cooking many hamburgers at once in an assembly-line style. At least one source I used in my essay equated Anderson to Ford. Later, I was researching McDonald's, and it was written that the McDonalds brothers had developed a system that allowed them to maximize hamburger output in a minimum amount of time. They too, were equated to Ford. Ray Kroc, who bought the McDonald's company from the McDonalds brothers, was also equated to Ford in a separate article discussing his business strategies. Seriously, guys? Not everyone can be Henry Ford! But everyone wants to be just like him, which I think says a lot about what we value as a society, specifically what we define "business smarts" to look like. "Business smarts" can mean a lot of different things to different people, but in America, it means Henry Ford.
Professor Kaplan's lecture on Road Maps was quite interesting to me, as I had never given any thought to road maps and their history before. I have only ever been familiar with the tri-folded road maps that my family would pick up from AAA before long road trips. It was always just in the back of my head on more recent trips that these paper maps are virtually extinct nowadays. Being able to learn about the origins of the paper map and their impact on US roadway travel was quite interesting for me as I do the majority of any travel I do by car. I had never heard of strip maps before, and I even did an outside google search in order to learn a bit more about what they are. The idea of a strip map makes complete sense since most people lived along rivers or railways, all of which followed a straight line. People needed maps of populous areas, so these strip maps which followed the rivers and railroads made the most sense to them. The evolution from this form of map to what I am most familiar with, the tri-fold paper map, is interesting as well. Also, the societal impact that these maps had surprised me, as I never thought it would have been that vast. One thing that I was not very surprised about though was the fact that oil companies used road maps as a method of advertisement. Companies will do anything to get their name in front of consumers, so learning that these oil and tire companies utilized road maps and their popularity as a marketing campaign was not at all surprising. Overall, the evolution and social impacts of the road map were fascinating to learn about, as the road map is something that I grew up using, but that I have also seen fade away throughout my lifetime.
The lecture on the bra really interested me. I liked how Professor Kaplan focused on the co-constitution of the object and the user. The fact that body types can go in and out of style and that objects have to change in order to meet this demand seems wrong to me. The corset was created so that women could achieve the ideal body shape, which at the time meant an extremely small waist. While most people think that when they are using an object, they control it, in the case of the bra it is the opposite. The corset damaged the organs of the user and, therefore, has more control over the user than the user has over the object. I think that a lot of the objects that women use in their everyday lives have more control over them. A lot of our objects transform our body everyday, the bra, makeup, and hair tools are a few examples.
I also found really messed up how the bra was originally made to make women's waists look thinner, which in fact damaged their organs. It is crazy how social constructs within our society dictate what a person will go through in order to achieve a certain image. Many times, it is usually the women who face these hardships.
In Kaplan’s lecture about the bra, i made many comparisons between this object and swimsuits which i chose for my research paper. Women have altered their bodies so many times throughout time that it amazes me how much power society has over women. Before the bra, women used corsets and spanks to change their body to look “good” or to look like what a women should look like according to society. The bra began as a clothing item for women to remain modest yet companies like Maiden Form sexualized the bra to sell more. This path is the same as the swimsuit. Bathing suits were created to conceal a woman’s body but through multiple outside influences such as Sports Illustrated Swimsuits, the bathing suit changed from full coverage to minimal coverage. In addition, both objects are co-constituent to gender. Women do not have a choice of whether or not they want to buy these objects. They kind of just have to because they are women. Granted, women nowadays have a choice to wear any style of a bathing suit and choose to wear a bra or not to wear a bra. Even though there are still some judgement, I love how women have come together to encourage each other not break each other down.
I really enjoyed professor Kalpan’s lecture on the T shirt. The T-shirt has been around for so long, and what really caught my attention was how the T-shirt was worn by everyone, no matter a person’s race or social status. I also found the life cycle of the T-shirt very interesting. A T-shirt can have a second life after a person donates it, and many times these shirts end up in poor countries that want European quality clothing. I also found the white T-shirt intriguing. The white T-shirt gained popularity from many athletes or Naval officers wearing it. The white T-shirt was originally made to absorb sweat and was worn by people working very physically demanding jobs, however it later grew in popularity and was worn by anyone. The T-shirt was also a very globalized commodity. The cotton was usually farmed in America, China, or India, and is processed by machines into a fine cloth. It is then shipped over to countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, or Turkey where human labor is used to stitch together the shirts. These shirts are then transported to high income countries to be sold.
I know I'm a really early on this assignment, but the lecture today on the Glock really made me salty and bitter about something. Political Cartoons. I really hate political cartoons now. There may have been a time when I looked at one, smiled, and laughed at them. But now I just hate them outright. They are bad. Like really bad. They have a single punchline, making fun of other people. No nuance, no insight, no kindness. When you attack people like that, when you make people feel bad about being themselves, it just makes them want to defend themselves, attack and blame others, and in no way helps the situation. Am I saying that political comics are the reason why our political turmoil in the country? No, that's ridiculous. I personally don't vote, mostly cause of nihilistic feeling that it doesn't matter what I do with my vote, and picking a side is stupid in itself. The reason why politics are so crazy right now? People are stupid. We need to be smarter and see that not everything is black and white, a binary split and the side we pick has all the right answers. There are nuances to every issue, and to just pick a side, to say that your side is right and the other is wrong, has no nuance or room for debate. Hyperbole in political cartoons only exasperate this issue. It shows one side being more right and the other being more wrong than the other, and making us laugh at the other side. We have to look at things from both sides, and see that the people that when we make them feel stupid, make them feel humiliated, and feel like they are being attacked, they have to defend themselves. These cartoons ignore how people on the other side feel, and that they are even people at all. We now see republicans not as humans, but as these monsters who carry weapons and are what is wrong with everything in the world. We can not do this anymore. We have done it in the past, and we have to change. Look at black face. People who draw political cartoons show hyperbolic images of people on the other side, just like white people depicted black people with "humorous hyperbole," making it easier and easier to oppress black people. You can't and shouldn't attack people. Do you blame wars on the soldiers on the other side, or the leadership? We have a spectrum of choices to make in order to try and help people see our side. On one side we have attacking rhetoric like political cartoons which may worsen the situation, to on the extreme other side, people who suffer tremendous loss due to children and family members hurting themselves in gun accidents, that while effective, are incredibly tragic. We need to use the middle ground. We have to educate people. We have to attack companies, media, and other places where people get this info, companies that want people stupid in order not to help them but to sell their products. We are in a changing age. Our movies, our TV cartoons, our TV shows are getting more nuanced, and we need political cartoons to do the same. Don't just end it on a one panel joke. Make a pleasant conversation between the the characters, showing that they are human, but then show that the companies is trying to keep the divide between them. We need better media, we need better cartoons. We need to be better.
ReplyDeleteI agree that political cartoons make fun of a person or object to an extent, but I don't believe this to be immoral since the cartoons are a method to promote discussion on a current issue and are meant to be satirical. I think that political cartoons are a way to draw the public's attention to a certain issue and sway others' opinions on the subject. I agree that every issue has its own nuances and by portraying this issue through a political cartoon more people can become educated about the given subject.
DeleteI like this discussion. Why is discourse so polarized, and why do we never see nuanced opinions out there?
DeleteThe answer, unfortunately, is because we want to win. If I really want to win, then the worst thing I could do is admitting that my opponents are right about some stuff, because lending credence to the opposition is not nearly as effective as demonizing the enemy.
Remember that whole ethos, pathos, logos thing? Pathos is widely considered the most effective way to convince people of things, so appealing to base emotional fears/desires is going to get the most votes, even if it involves being a complete turd. As humans have become more intelligent and more understanding of these phenomena, we have also become very good at manipulating each other, and winning elections. But we have not actually gotten any better at solving the problems we claim to know how to solve when running for office.
One of the objects discussed in lecture from weeks seven through nine that was the bra. I learned that women of the 19th century were critical of other women who weren't modest as modesty implied respectability. The corset, invented in the 16th century, served to draw attention to rather than disguise body parts, as a result producing sexual differences and contradictory meanings. Women who wore a corset could be regarded as either respectable or indecent. The bra really interests me in that it can take many forms, some of which include the bralette, sports bra, stick-on bra, and the convertible bra. Professor Kaplan explained how the bra produces gender while gender produces the desire for and necessity of the bra. An outside example that relates to this lecture is the male bra. Male bras, contrary to those designed for women, are designed to compress rather than support. This type of bra is meant to flatten and conceal the chest and is usually not meant to draw attention. I think that men wearing male bras may be viewed as what society deems normal as the result of wearing one would be having a flat chest; on the other hand, others may view them as dishonest with portraying their figure to the public. I believe that bras of all types are a commodity to a wearer since the individual decides when and why they wear it, on account of personal preferences, social pressure, or other reasons.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know there were make bras. It would make sense though as having a large chest might make you look too feminine. I wonder if the male bra developed parellel to the female bra, or was it a recent invention
DeleteI agree that it is quite odd that undergarments are supposed to be structured for comfort and support, yet manufacturers felt like they had to turn to sexualizing their products and making racy advertisements in order to peak consumer interest. Consequently, society looks at bras as something controversial and desirable due to the advertising campaigns and celebrity outfits from the 20th century up until now. There is certainly a complicated and rich history behind this object, as proven in the lecture and readings.
DeleteI never was one to own Barbie dolls, or any dolls for that matter when I was a child, so it was really eye opening to see the statistics and cultural impact of the Barbie brand in the readings and in Professor Kaplan’s lecture. Seeing a $10 toy on a store shelf, I never really stop to think about how complex the item is structurally, where the raw materials to make it were harvested or originating from, how many people it took to make it, or how the object got from a factory to a store shelf. It’s astounding that something like a Barbie doll could require such back breaking efforts as taking natural materials, forming plastic, injection molding body parts, having 15 different paint stations, nylon hair shipped in from another country from the factory, and ironically having the retail packaging for Barbies shipped in from the United States to just be sent back to American Stores. But Barbies have also had such a strong cultural history that is filled with controversy. A child’s doll is not expected to have such controversy as white-washing, setting impossible physical standards for young girls, and revealing clothing styles with sexual connotations. Overall, seeing all of Baribie’s history in production and society, both in good and bad lighting really opened my eyes to the nature of mass production today and the hidden complexities behind daily objects that once seemed so simple and mundane.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statements about mass production and the underlying complexities of items we take for granted. However, what struck me most from your paragraph was the idea of Barbie's controversy. Your phrasing of how Barbie is produced, "forming plastic, injection molding," along with your discussion of Barbie's controversy of being white-washed made me realize the comparison between "white culture" and Barbie's production. We tend to think of the stereotypical white culture to be tanned, blond(e) and perfect. The idea of "injecting plastic" or any type of injections (i.e. Botox) can be considered part of "white culture," so when discussing how Barbie is produced (with plastic and injections), this really speaks to her being the epitome of "white culture" because she is literally being made just as those who epitomize the stereotype of "white culture" are being made -- with plastic and injections. Though this idea may seem a stretch from what you were talking about, your words got me thinking about this very complex topic. The complexity of both Barbie's white-washing and her production are very interesting topics that could probably be talked about in much greater detail.
DeleteI agree with you that there are many different aspects of an object that the consumer never really thinks about. Most objects have dark and light sides, which one never thinks about when they are using the object. This class has also brought all the nuances of an object to light for me and I have found it to be very intriguing to think about other objects outside of class in the same way.
DeleteSomething that I encountered in several places during my research into the paper for this class looked like this: "__________ took this product, and mass produced it in a way that resembled Henry Ford's automobile assembly lines". The blank, of course, should be filled in with the name of a person or company. What I discovered during my research is that everyone wants to be the Henry Ford equivalent in their industry. To be fair, you can't blame anyone for wanting to be like one of the most famous American entrepreneurs in history, but I think people are really are beating a dead horse when they claim to be a Henry Ford equivalent. For example, in my research into the hamburger, I took a detailed look at White Castle, which was the first American fast food chain. I found that Walter Anderson, a co-founder of White Castle, and the chef at the first location, had developed a method of cooking many hamburgers at once in an assembly-line style. At least one source I used in my essay equated Anderson to Ford. Later, I was researching McDonald's, and it was written that the McDonalds brothers had developed a system that allowed them to maximize hamburger output in a minimum amount of time. They too, were equated to Ford. Ray Kroc, who bought the McDonald's company from the McDonalds brothers, was also equated to Ford in a separate article discussing his business strategies. Seriously, guys? Not everyone can be Henry Ford! But everyone wants to be just like him, which I think says a lot about what we value as a society, specifically what we define "business smarts" to look like. "Business smarts" can mean a lot of different things to different people, but in America, it means Henry Ford.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kaplan's lecture on Road Maps was quite interesting to me, as I had never given any thought to road maps and their history before. I have only ever been familiar with the tri-folded road maps that my family would pick up from AAA before long road trips. It was always just in the back of my head on more recent trips that these paper maps are virtually extinct nowadays. Being able to learn about the origins of the paper map and their impact on US roadway travel was quite interesting for me as I do the majority of any travel I do by car. I had never heard of strip maps before, and I even did an outside google search in order to learn a bit more about what they are. The idea of a strip map makes complete sense since most people lived along rivers or railways, all of which followed a straight line. People needed maps of populous areas, so these strip maps which followed the rivers and railroads made the most sense to them. The evolution from this form of map to what I am most familiar with, the tri-fold paper map, is interesting as well. Also, the societal impact that these maps had surprised me, as I never thought it would have been that vast. One thing that I was not very surprised about though was the fact that oil companies used road maps as a method of advertisement. Companies will do anything to get their name in front of consumers, so learning that these oil and tire companies utilized road maps and their popularity as a marketing campaign was not at all surprising. Overall, the evolution and social impacts of the road map were fascinating to learn about, as the road map is something that I grew up using, but that I have also seen fade away throughout my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteThe lecture on the bra really interested me. I liked how Professor Kaplan focused on the co-constitution of the object and the user. The fact that body types can go in and out of style and that objects have to change in order to meet this demand seems wrong to me. The corset was created so that women could achieve the ideal body shape, which at the time meant an extremely small waist. While most people think that when they are using an object, they control it, in the case of the bra it is the opposite. The corset damaged the organs of the user and, therefore, has more control over the user than the user has over the object. I think that a lot of the objects that women use in their everyday lives have more control over them. A lot of our objects transform our body everyday, the bra, makeup, and hair tools are a few examples.
ReplyDeleteI also found really messed up how the bra was originally made to make women's waists look thinner, which in fact damaged their organs. It is crazy how social constructs within our society dictate what a person will go through in order to achieve a certain image. Many times, it is usually the women who face these hardships.
DeleteIn Kaplan’s lecture about the bra, i made many comparisons between this object and swimsuits which i chose for my research paper. Women have altered their bodies so many times throughout time that it amazes me how much power society has over women. Before the bra, women used corsets and spanks to change their body to look “good” or to look like what a women should look like according to society. The bra began as a clothing item for women to remain modest yet companies like Maiden Form sexualized the bra to sell more. This path is the same as the swimsuit. Bathing suits were created to conceal a woman’s body but through multiple outside influences such as Sports Illustrated Swimsuits, the bathing suit changed from full coverage to minimal coverage. In addition, both objects are co-constituent to gender. Women do not have a choice of whether or not they want to buy these objects. They kind of just have to because they are women. Granted, women nowadays have a choice to wear any style of a bathing suit and choose to wear a bra or not to wear a bra. Even though there are still some judgement, I love how women have come together to encourage each other not break each other down.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed professor Kalpan’s lecture on the T shirt. The T-shirt has been around for so long, and what really caught my attention was how the T-shirt was worn by everyone, no matter a person’s race or social status. I also found the life cycle of the T-shirt very interesting. A T-shirt can have a second life after a person donates it, and many times these shirts end up in poor countries that want European quality clothing. I also found the white T-shirt intriguing. The white T-shirt gained popularity from many athletes or Naval officers wearing it. The white T-shirt was originally made to absorb sweat and was worn by people working very physically demanding jobs, however it later grew in popularity and was worn by anyone. The T-shirt was also a very globalized commodity. The cotton was usually farmed in America, China, or India, and is processed by machines into a fine cloth. It is then shipped over to countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, or Turkey where human labor is used to stitch together the shirts. These shirts are then transported to high income countries to be sold.
ReplyDelete