Jean Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality.
To foreground Baudrillard's position, by how it develops out of a Marxist critique of Capitalism;
To examine how Baudrillard's analysis of advertising led him to argue that consumer's engagements with commodities had begun to function with language.
Friday, 27 January 2012
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Identity
Historical concepts of identity
Foucault's 'discourse' methodology
Zygmunt Bauman
Identity today in the digital domain
Theories of identity
ESSENTIALISM- our biological make-up, what makes us who we are. We all have an inner essence that makes us what we are.
POST MODERN THEORISTS DISAGREE
Physiognomy
Phrenology
Cesare Lombroso (1835- 1909)- founder of positivist criminology.
Different parts of the brain formulate the way you are- if you have a large part of the brain the other part will be lacking, giving you an unbalanced personality
Criminal tendencies are inherited.
Legitimises racism?
DOMESTIC
ASPIRING
SELF PERFECTING
MORAL
REFLECTIVE
PERCEPTIVES
ANIMAL
Physiognomy legitimising racism
Suggests English, German are superior. Nazism.
Hieronymous Bosch- Christ carrying the cross. 1515
Chris Ofili- Holy Virgin Mary. 1996
As a black woman, exaggerates African features. Caused an uproar at the thought that the virgin Mary was black.
Historical phases of identity
Pre modern identity- Personal identity is stable, defined by long standing roles- what your father did?
Modern identity- Modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possible to start choosing your identity- people start worrying abot self identity
Post-modern identity- Accepts a fragmented self.
Pre-Modern Identity
Institutions determined identity. Patriarchal, marriage, the church, monarchy, government.
'secure identities'
Farm-worker
soldier
factory worker
housewife
gentlemen
wife-husband
19th and early 20th centuries
Charles Baudelaire- The painter of modern life
Thorstein Veblen- Theory of the leisure class
Georg Simmel- The metropolis and mental life
Baudelaire introduces the concept of the flaneur-gentleman stroller- leaves no room for women, only men.
Veblen 'conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure.
Simmel- 'trickle down theory' What the fashion system today is based around. Walking around Paris looking good- showing something to aspire to, what differentiates them from the rest of society. The lower classes try to emulate what the higher classes are wearing.
Fashion cycle of new seasons- working class try to copy, higher class don't want to be related to lower classes.
Edvard Munch, Evening on Karl Johan, 1892
Simmel suggests that because how quickly things change people become less concerned about whats going on around them and more concerned with themselves.
Discourse analysis
Class
Nationality
Race/ ethnicity, gender and sexuality- otherness
Class, people move to cities and start working in factories, emergence of working class. You have to be aware of other classes to realise your own. If you are in the upper class, you want to maintain it.
Humphrey Spender/ Mass Observation, Worktown project, 1937
Idea of social inequalities at work.
Image of people at the theatre, suggests working class are uncultured- only five people of the industrial north go to the theatre.
Martin Parr, New Brighton, Merseyside, from the last resort. 1983-86
Documents lives as he sees it. Romanticises life. Looking down on other peoples lives? Condescending nature.
Martin Parr, Ascot, 2003
Trying to fit into a class you don't belong. People wearing things they think are glamorous. Roles they don't belong to.
Martin Parr, Sedlescomebe, Think of Ebgland, 2000-2003
Martin PArr, Think of Germany
Notions of nationality- alexander McQueen- Highland Rape collection. autumn/ winter 1995/-6
Rape of Scotland by the English. Is this is an odd way to make a statement about national identity.
Vivienne Westwood. Anglomania collection, autumn/ winter 1993- 4
About Englishness- using tartan- taunt at the Scottish. Insulting to use it as a symbol of Englishness.
Las Vegas- New York, Paris, Egypt- all these identities in one place. Why would you need to go anywhere if all these identities have been contained in one place?
Race/Ethnicity
Chris Ofili, No woman no cry 1998
Black teenager- Steven Lawrence killed, got off on a loop hole in the law. Victims face in the tears.
Captain Shit and the legend of the Black Stars, 1994
No black superheroes. What would they be called, how would they be perceived by a largely white audience.
'Shithead'
Is he devaluating his own identity instead of making a statement?
Gillian Wearing, Signs that say what you want the to say and not say what someone else wants you to say 1992- 3
Alexander McQueen, its a jungle out there, autumn/ winter 1997-8
Commenting that there isn't much room for black models in fashion.
Gender/ Sexuality
The fashion industry is not the work of women, but of men.
Secret hatred of women by forcing them into exaggerated, ridiculous, hideous clothes.
Mass assumption that male fashion designers are homosexuals and have a secret hatred for women.
Masquerade and the mask of femininity.
Cindy Sherman, untitled film stills, 1977-80
Scenarios that women get put in in film. Women are in film just to look beautiful and be objectified by men.
Women have to differentiate themselves as female artists and create art that comments on gender.
If your a female artist and your photographing a woman are you objectifying women just like men? Most female artists photograph themselves.
Is it more acceptable because a woman has created it?
Wonderbra- domeaning to women or empowering to women? Societies view of what a beautiful woman is.
The postmodern condition: Liquid modernity and liquid lov.
Identity is constructed through your social experience.
Erving Goffman- saw life as 'theatre'.
Zygmunt Bauman Identity is revealed to us identity is something to be inverted not changed.
Introspection, people scan their phones to check that they still exist, that someone cares.
Postmodern identity: I think therefore I am.
Barbara Kruger, I shop therefore I am, 1987- defining yourself by what buy or own.
Online adultery and cyberspace sex: BBC 2 documentary.
Foucault's 'discourse' methodology
Zygmunt Bauman
Identity today in the digital domain
Theories of identity
ESSENTIALISM- our biological make-up, what makes us who we are. We all have an inner essence that makes us what we are.
POST MODERN THEORISTS DISAGREE
Physiognomy
Phrenology
Cesare Lombroso (1835- 1909)- founder of positivist criminology.
Different parts of the brain formulate the way you are- if you have a large part of the brain the other part will be lacking, giving you an unbalanced personality
Criminal tendencies are inherited.
Legitimises racism?
DOMESTIC
ASPIRING
SELF PERFECTING
MORAL
REFLECTIVE
PERCEPTIVES
ANIMAL
Physiognomy legitimising racism
Suggests English, German are superior. Nazism.
Hieronymous Bosch- Christ carrying the cross. 1515
Chris Ofili- Holy Virgin Mary. 1996
As a black woman, exaggerates African features. Caused an uproar at the thought that the virgin Mary was black.
Historical phases of identity
Pre modern identity- Personal identity is stable, defined by long standing roles- what your father did?
Modern identity- Modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possible to start choosing your identity- people start worrying abot self identity
Post-modern identity- Accepts a fragmented self.
Pre-Modern Identity
Institutions determined identity. Patriarchal, marriage, the church, monarchy, government.
'secure identities'
Farm-worker
soldier
factory worker
housewife
gentlemen
wife-husband
19th and early 20th centuries
Charles Baudelaire- The painter of modern life
Thorstein Veblen- Theory of the leisure class
Georg Simmel- The metropolis and mental life
Baudelaire introduces the concept of the flaneur-gentleman stroller- leaves no room for women, only men.
Veblen 'conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure.
Simmel- 'trickle down theory' What the fashion system today is based around. Walking around Paris looking good- showing something to aspire to, what differentiates them from the rest of society. The lower classes try to emulate what the higher classes are wearing.
Fashion cycle of new seasons- working class try to copy, higher class don't want to be related to lower classes.
Edvard Munch, Evening on Karl Johan, 1892
Simmel suggests that because how quickly things change people become less concerned about whats going on around them and more concerned with themselves.
Discourse analysis
Class
Nationality
Race/ ethnicity, gender and sexuality- otherness
Class, people move to cities and start working in factories, emergence of working class. You have to be aware of other classes to realise your own. If you are in the upper class, you want to maintain it.
Humphrey Spender/ Mass Observation, Worktown project, 1937
Idea of social inequalities at work.
Image of people at the theatre, suggests working class are uncultured- only five people of the industrial north go to the theatre.
Martin Parr, New Brighton, Merseyside, from the last resort. 1983-86
Documents lives as he sees it. Romanticises life. Looking down on other peoples lives? Condescending nature.
Martin Parr, Ascot, 2003
Trying to fit into a class you don't belong. People wearing things they think are glamorous. Roles they don't belong to.
Martin Parr, Sedlescomebe, Think of Ebgland, 2000-2003
Martin PArr, Think of Germany
Notions of nationality- alexander McQueen- Highland Rape collection. autumn/ winter 1995/-6
Rape of Scotland by the English. Is this is an odd way to make a statement about national identity.
Vivienne Westwood. Anglomania collection, autumn/ winter 1993- 4
About Englishness- using tartan- taunt at the Scottish. Insulting to use it as a symbol of Englishness.
Las Vegas- New York, Paris, Egypt- all these identities in one place. Why would you need to go anywhere if all these identities have been contained in one place?
Race/Ethnicity
Chris Ofili, No woman no cry 1998
Black teenager- Steven Lawrence killed, got off on a loop hole in the law. Victims face in the tears.
Captain Shit and the legend of the Black Stars, 1994
No black superheroes. What would they be called, how would they be perceived by a largely white audience.
'Shithead'
Is he devaluating his own identity instead of making a statement?
Gillian Wearing, Signs that say what you want the to say and not say what someone else wants you to say 1992- 3
Alexander McQueen, its a jungle out there, autumn/ winter 1997-8
Commenting that there isn't much room for black models in fashion.
Gender/ Sexuality
The fashion industry is not the work of women, but of men.
Secret hatred of women by forcing them into exaggerated, ridiculous, hideous clothes.
Mass assumption that male fashion designers are homosexuals and have a secret hatred for women.
Masquerade and the mask of femininity.
Cindy Sherman, untitled film stills, 1977-80
Scenarios that women get put in in film. Women are in film just to look beautiful and be objectified by men.
Women have to differentiate themselves as female artists and create art that comments on gender.
If your a female artist and your photographing a woman are you objectifying women just like men? Most female artists photograph themselves.
Is it more acceptable because a woman has created it?
Wonderbra- domeaning to women or empowering to women? Societies view of what a beautiful woman is.
The postmodern condition: Liquid modernity and liquid lov.
Identity is constructed through your social experience.
Erving Goffman- saw life as 'theatre'.
Zygmunt Bauman Identity is revealed to us identity is something to be inverted not changed.
Introspection, people scan their phones to check that they still exist, that someone cares.
Postmodern identity: I think therefore I am.
Barbara Kruger, I shop therefore I am, 1987- defining yourself by what buy or own.
Online adultery and cyberspace sex: BBC 2 documentary.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Task 2... Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction
Read the Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. Write a 300 word analysis of one work of Graphic Design, that you think relates to the themes of the text, and employing quotes, concepts and terminology from the text.
Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' discusses the change that is impacted by the progression of technology and how it enables us to reproduce art. New technologies allow for mass production and widespread distribution of artworks, changing the traditional values that art once held. As technology progresses the copy gets more and more power over the original, causing it to lose value. The copy doesn't physically touch the original, but it makes it less special and depreciates it.
The elite society once drove the interpretation of artworks produced, but as technology progressed and allowed these artworks to be cheaply reproduced, they became readily available to people of other classes, allowing members of the public to draw their own interpretations.
The fact that we can all have the technology to reproduce works of art means that we can all have our own, redefining the meaning of it. Mass production allows us to redefine culture against how taste makers say it should be, allowing normal members of the public, of all classes to define their own meaning of the piece. What you do with art also changes the meaning, which challenges authority and the idea of one work having one meaning. 'In permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced'.
An example of graphic design thats meaning is changed by mechanical reproduction is the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster. The poster design was originally produced by the minority to control the majority, however they are now reproduced by the minority. People of all classes reproduce this poster and the original meaning gets lost. The mocking nature of these reproductions devalue the original and takes away the authority it once held. Most people that own or have seen the copies of the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters will not even know the true meaning of the original, having it only for aesthetic or commodity value, thus completely changing its meaning from the original. The reproduction and modification of this piece of graphic design makes it readily available to the masses in present day, thus taking away its 'it's presence in time and space' and in turn makes it lose all meaning.
Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' discusses the change that is impacted by the progression of technology and how it enables us to reproduce art. New technologies allow for mass production and widespread distribution of artworks, changing the traditional values that art once held. As technology progresses the copy gets more and more power over the original, causing it to lose value. The copy doesn't physically touch the original, but it makes it less special and depreciates it.
The elite society once drove the interpretation of artworks produced, but as technology progressed and allowed these artworks to be cheaply reproduced, they became readily available to people of other classes, allowing members of the public to draw their own interpretations.
The fact that we can all have the technology to reproduce works of art means that we can all have our own, redefining the meaning of it. Mass production allows us to redefine culture against how taste makers say it should be, allowing normal members of the public, of all classes to define their own meaning of the piece. What you do with art also changes the meaning, which challenges authority and the idea of one work having one meaning. 'In permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced'.
Friday, 13 January 2012
Task 1... Panopticism
Choose an example of one aspect of contemporary culture that is, in your opinion, panoptic. Write an explanation of this, in approximately 200-300 words, employing key Foucauldian language, such as 'Docile Bodies' or 'self-regulation, and using not less than 5 quotes from the text 'Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan.
An example of panopticism in contemporary culture could be reality television; a good example of this is Big Brother. Cameras constantly monitor the subjects inside the Big Brother house, and they have the knowledge that they have the entire nation watching their every move. This is of course going to effect the way they act. The cameras are placed, and visible all over the Big Brother house, an ‘omnipresent and omniscient power’, and serving as a reminder that the contestants are always being watched. The fact that they are being surveyed is not hidden, and even the Big Brother voice serves as a reminder that there is an upper power and governing body, controlling what they do and watching their every move. Both this voice and the cameras are 'representatives of power'.
The power that is imposed by the Big Brother body makes the housemates change how they behave and make them become 'docile bodies' who are 'self monitoring' and 'self correcting' their very actions and behaviour. The housemates are not necessarily aware that they altar their behaviour for the audience viewing, but do it on a subconscious level, acting in a way that they want to be perceived by other people. The knowledge that they are being monitored by cameras, and that there is an audience act as an ‘automatic functioning of power’. They feel that they are always on show and exposed to the outside world, creating a 'state of constant and permanent visibility', which will inevitably change their behaviour patterns and feel the effects of the Panopticon.
An example of panopticism in contemporary culture could be reality television; a good example of this is Big Brother. Cameras constantly monitor the subjects inside the Big Brother house, and they have the knowledge that they have the entire nation watching their every move. This is of course going to effect the way they act. The cameras are placed, and visible all over the Big Brother house, an ‘omnipresent and omniscient power’, and serving as a reminder that the contestants are always being watched. The fact that they are being surveyed is not hidden, and even the Big Brother voice serves as a reminder that there is an upper power and governing body, controlling what they do and watching their every move. Both this voice and the cameras are 'representatives of power'.
The power that is imposed by the Big Brother body makes the housemates change how they behave and make them become 'docile bodies' who are 'self monitoring' and 'self correcting' their very actions and behaviour. The housemates are not necessarily aware that they altar their behaviour for the audience viewing, but do it on a subconscious level, acting in a way that they want to be perceived by other people. The knowledge that they are being monitored by cameras, and that there is an audience act as an ‘automatic functioning of power’. They feel that they are always on show and exposed to the outside world, creating a 'state of constant and permanent visibility', which will inevitably change their behaviour patterns and feel the effects of the Panopticon.
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