Bridget Post: Its Almost Over... =)

As the semester winds down to an end and students rush to make their last grades their best ones, I sit here typing my last blog and feel kind of sad. Not because I haven't done the best I could possibly do this semester or because I am in fear of a bad grade. No, my sadness comes from the fact that there will be no more ENG1131. No more readings that I do not understand, yet once I get to class everything is all of a sudden clear to me. No I am not sucking up... I am actually really going to miss this class. I am going to miss the discussions that we have had about nearly everything under the sun, I am going to miss my classmates, I am going to miss Kate, but most importantly I am going to miss the constant influx of new knowledge that stemmed from outside the "normal" realms of education and caused me to think twice about nearly everything I have learned up until this point and everything I will learn later in life. I don't believe that any class that I have taken has affected more than this one. From being exposed to provocative literature like A Chorus of Stones and Family Secrets to watching powerful films like Night and Fog, this class has really been an opportunity to think on a level I probably never would have, if I didn't decide to take Writing Thru Media with Kate.

As for our final project, the only thing I can really say about it is that is another challenge that I am excited to be taking on and will be even more excited when my group and I overcome it.

To Chase: Thanks for being such a fabulous band mate!! You have a weird humor that I admire and a sort of undercover genius that have definitely helped to make our band one of the best!
To Jordan: Where do I start? You are simply awesome for reasons that have really helped get us through our band assignments. You too have a undercover genius and I am grateful to have been able to work with you.
To Thiago: Your are a new addition, but I welcome you just the same and appreciate your contributions to our radio project! You too, are awesome!

In a nutshell: Mindsight ROCKS!! Plain and Simple. =)

Chase Final Blog

"The philosophers have already perceived the world in various ways; the point is to change it." -Karl Marx

If there is anything this class has imprinted upon me, it is the necessity to analyze and decipher for one's self.  Coming into ENG1131 was different than leaving it now.  I think the quote above explains the need to be original, truly original, or as original as one can get in order to change something about the world.  Barthes was an individual in his his analysis of image music and text and that is why we study him.  He analyzes these three things and more to a degree that had not been uncovered yet. 

Finding time for the project has been my biggest struggle lately, it's been a crazy couple weeks and it is not slowing down unfortunately, but hey that's what it's all about I guess. I am really interested to see, or hear our final project because right now it is all about to come together.  I am glad that we did the radio project, even though it has been a struggle, I am enjoying learning how to use Audacity.

I say this all the time but, it is safe to say that our group is easily the best group, although some may argue, we know the truth.  I find it funny that the three, now four, of us were put together because we get along so well.  I have enjoyed working together and have had a lot of fun throughout the semester.  It is sad to see such a good class be over, but the world's gotta move on.  I hope we keep in touch and are successful.  Keep it real Jdog and Bribaby.

Bridget's Post: Yes Men -- EXTRA Blog

After reading/watching up on The Yes Men project, the first thing I thought about was just how vast the reach of the media really is and how the internet makes it so much more accessible. I actually watched the Dow interview before in a class, but I have no recollection of being told that it was completely fabricated. I’m not sure if that is because I wasn’t paying attention or something else. Whatever the case may be, I actually think that what the Yes Men do is really interesting and kind of necessary. Journalism and the media are supposed to be about bringing the truth to the masses, yet they often neglect to truly do that. Instead they feed us lies and half-truths about things that could potentially change the way we view our government, its relationship with us, and with those outside the confines of our American borders.

When thinking about the Yes Men project in terms of our own radio project, I think it does help in giving us ideas on the range of things we can say on air. It proves that we can virtually have a show in which no tongues are held (except for those trying to say the 7 words that are to be left unsaid) and no topic is off limits even if what we say isn’t the absolute truth. I think this freedom provides for an interesting element to be added to our show, yet I do still question the ethics of it all. I mean, lying is wrong in every sense right? So the Yes Men creating false news releases and interviews or my group broadcasting a radio show with false information trying to pass as being real should be just as wrong. The outcomes of such broadcasts are interesting, yes, but are it worth it to know you lied to millions of people (tens in our case) and gave them a false hope?

I don’t know what the answer to that question is, but the fact that the Yes Men have the balls to do it causes me to give them their props. More power to them, I’m just not sure if I am ready to follow in their footsteps. I’d rather make a path of my own…. Create my own footprints to stomp all over the media with.

Yes Men Blog

Although there may be fallacies, I think it is interesting that they are able to choose the angles they want and are able to tell people what they want them to know.  They can find things that they think the masses should know and are not being told and give them an angle that some may not have wanted to be covered.

I think that some a negative side to the Yes Men would be people who would think it was real and buy into it whole heartedly, and then they may be disappointed later on.

The media can be a very big problem today, especially with television and the internet.  Television news channels can be biased in the news they dish out just like the Yes Men, and although it may be easy to find a news channel that fits your slant it is important to just get the facts and determine their meaning as you choose without someone doing it for you.  The internet is a bigger problem than television now.  It is extremely easy to find false articles about any topic and mistake them for truth.  

I think in regards to our radio project, it would not be a good idea to do what the Yes Men did, especially with the type of non-fact-checking student run newspapers that may or may not be affiliated with the university that are present in our broadcasting radius.  However, it may be interesting and cruel to see if and how much we could get people to believe.  As it becomes more and more necessary to nail down our projects and get them done, I think it will be interesting to see what my band thinks about this idea and what others bands will do.

Bridget's Post: Warring Worlds

The War of the Worlds Broadcast was a really weird one. At least, I thought it was. When I first heard it, the first I thought about was why would any one want to play such a cruel joke on the public? Mass media outlets aren't for playing around; they are for bringing news and non-frightening entertainment to the masses (I suppose some people like to be frightened though). As I listened to it, I couldn't help trying to put myself in the place and that time to see if I would have believed such a thing if I was just an ordinary citizen driving in my car to some destination I would have called home. The answer that I come up with every time is a big fat no. I suppose that could be simply because I prior to listening to it, I knew that it was fake and I knew that some people believed it when it was first broadcast. This knowledge kind of ruined the thing for me because I was no longer able to separate the broadcast itself from my historical knowledge of it.

However, that lack of separation coupled with the things that I have learned in this class also worked to my advantage because it caused me to listen to the broadcast with my ears completely open. What I mean by that is I was able to focus on the elemental aspects of it as I paid close attention to detail. Like my band discussed in class on Wednesday and as Chase said in his blog, what I found most interesting was the how Welles' voice was such a good example of the grain of voice. For all I know, Welles could have deliberately made his voice sound that way for the sake of good and believable broadcast, but I feel as if they used anyone, the results would not have been the same. There was just something about his voice that pierced me in a way that I cannot explain and will not even try to. After all, that is the essence of the grain of voice and the third meaning, that it is lost once you attempt to explain is inexplicability.

Chase's Blog

War of the worlds was very interesting because of the context that we now know after the fact that it happened.  To me, I don't really see it as being believable because that could never happen today.  There are too many different sources of information that would have to all be saying the same thing in order for the general public to believe it.  The saying 'hindsight is 20/20" really fits when thinking about this broadcast.  Listening to it now, it sounds so ridiculous, but if one were to listen to it back then and were to come in during the middle or after the disclaimer, it does sound very real.  To me, Welles' voice played a major role in the scam being so believable.  The tone of his voice sounded legitimate and you could not tell that he was reading something.  When thinking about Welles' voice, I automatically think of Barthes' Grain of Voice.  I don't know if there is a plausible connection but from what I got, the believability of  Welles' voice can go along with some aspect of what Barthes' is saying.  It is hard to put my finger on it but something about Welles' tone makes him sound genuine and like he really is a radio DJ reporting the news.

I think it will be interesting to see how our groups broadcast goes and how everyone sounds on recording, but I look forward to seeing what the musicians that we choose think about Grain of Voice.  

Bridget Post: Memory

This week has definitely been one of the longest of my life. I'm really starting to realize how very fast time has been moving. It's like every time I blink another 24 hours passed and I am left wondering where all this time has gone. While I am on the subject of time, I think I want to talk about a topic that came up in Roswell in my blog this week. I actually watched it again this morning for no reason at all and became intrigued with how it deals with time as being some kind of enemy that will eventually take away our memories, turning us all in to amnesiacs.

This caused me to take a deeper look into memory and the actual act of remembering in relation to time. It's true what he said in Roswell because as time passes and we get older, we do tend to forget our earliest memories. Its like with each day that goes by, a little bit of me vanishes. When I say "me" I am referring to my memories of course because they are a large part of who I am. Having said that, one can understand how fearful it is to think that there might actually come a time when you forget many of the memories you have worked so hard to create and keep. I can't imagine what I would do if I woke up one day and I no longer remembered the last day I spent with my older brother before he died or my first kiss or even the day Barack Obama was elected president. I can barely take it when I can't remember where I put something much less to lose and know that I have lost an entire memory. But then again, if the memory is lost to me how will I ever know that it was once there?

I guess that is what makes memory so unique, the fact that we have sooo many yet we are not even aware of how much that we don't remember. For instance, yes I remember my first day of college but I do not remember the name of the first professor I saw that day, nor do I remember any of the people who were in that first class with me. Yet, I do remember what I wore to school that day. I remember walking from Turlington Plaza to Little Hall and seeing this tree that had the weirdest looking branch on it. It was soo weirdly shaped that I had to pause to take a closer look and I haven't forgotten it since. Now thinking back I wonder what exactly was so intriguing about a meaningless branch. Besides its shape, I really don't know what drew me to it or why I still remember what it looks like. It's strange how we cultivate these memories choosing to remember some while forcing others out of our minds either consciously or sub-consciously.

Sometimes I wish I could remember the little details that our minds choose to forget. I wonder if a tiny detail such as the color of someone's shirt or the shape of a cloud in the sky, could change the memory all together for me. I will never know the answer of that, of course, because the bottom line is I can't remember.