Imagery in Cloverfield

Hello All,

I watched Cloverfield late on Wednesday night, and liked it an awful lot.  If you haven’t seen it yet, and want to, STOP reading this post, and come back to it later.  There are ***spoilers ahead***.

I really liked some of the imagery that the movie provides.  While it is a monster movie, and it’s rated PG-13, so while there is some blood and gore, the movie does a good job of showing you the horror of the situation without seeing people being disemboweled very much.  While the gore is there, it’s not nearly as bad as you would find in an R rated movie.  I liked this.  In my case, if I see too much blood and gore, I tend to not take it so seriously.  It becomes too far removed from reality to have much emotional resonance with me.  The images shown in this youtube clip, stir up all kinds of emotions, and I think it worked to great effect. It’s 3:42 long.  Well worth it you want to have the context to my post.

The image of an unknown disaster taking place grips many of us living in the post 9/11 era.  This probably rings true even more so for people living in New York or any other big city. Seeing a group of young adults at a typical kind of party shows the stark contrast between every day living and the threat of a disaster.

When everyone saw the news of what was happening, as it was described as an earthquake really got me engaged.

Watching crowds of people react in horror as who-knows what was going on while the crowd was on the roof resonated with me as well.  There was panic, chaos, and fear personified.

Then the crowning achievement: a large object was hurled in the direction of the main characters.  It bounced off of a building or two, then skidded down the street, destroying several vehicles in the process.  As it approached, the identity of the object became clear: it was the head of the Statue of Liberty.  While I would normally disagree with the virtual destruction of such a national treasure and symbol as that, I have to say that it was extremely effective in communicating a sense of fear and dread to the viewer.  Huddled at home, in the dark, wearing my high-grade headphones made me feel like I was there with the characters.  Few movies caused me to feel the sense of dread that the characters portrayed, and I think this was largely accomplished by the movie makers’ exemplary use of imagery.  Kudos to Cloverfield.  Advice: if you can watch the move in surround sound or with headphones, do it.  It adds a lot to the experience.

Imagery has become a topic of interest for me recently.  This was the first time I have written about it, so if anyone has any feedback, positive or negative, please let me know.

How digital technologies are changing business

Hello All,

We have been charged with reading a couple things this week that as far as I am concerned should not be considered “work”.  Free! Why $ 0.00 is the Future of Business, is such a compelling article that I really didn’t mind it.  I’ve actually been trying to get my friend’s dad, an MBA and MA in Taxation Law graduate to read it for over month now to hear his thoughts on it.  I just sent another text message out, so I may be in luck.

Things like this make me excited; not just because they’re interesting, but because they let me think that I wasn’t born too late, and that I will still find a way to make a fortune off of the Internet.  The other reason things like this excite me is because they reinforce my feelings that many old schoolers don’t get the Internet and the Web, and don’t fully appreciate how it can be harnessed to make a living.  I have realized that I will never be happy working for in a traditional job, no matter how lucrative it may be.  If I can jump aboard this “media train” then perhaps I can find my own niche.

Essentially, Chris Anderson, the Editor in Chief of Wired, argues in this article that the prices of goods and services related to the web are quickly approaching free.  He then explains the complex, inter-related forces that are at work that are making this happen.  Google is a good example.  Google can afford to give us a top-notch search engine for free because it can sell millions of adds to probably millions of sites for relatively cheap, and still make a ton of money in the process.  Anderson argues that a free lunch is possible, as long as someone picks up the tab.  This is brilliant.

However, there is a dirty side to all of this that I think Anderson just glazed over.

Anderson says, “Then came the next wave: paid inclusion in search results, paid listing in information services, and lead generation, where a third party pays for the names of people interested in a certain subject. Now companies are trying everything from product placement (PayPerPost) to pay-per-connection on social networks like Facebook. All of these approaches are based on the principle that free offerings build audiences with distinct interests and expressed needs that advertisers will pay to reach.” (emphasis added by me.)

Whoa there.  So, what we have is a group of people that all have a certain interest.  Let’s say it’s politics.  They frequent certain websites, and use Google.  Google who provides a discount for anyone who signs up for their intra-web store.  You give them the typical information that websites use to profile people.  And your credit card information.  Lets say 200 people frequent 3 of the same websites.  Let’s say they all subscribe to The Economist.  They are all lawyers.  That detailed demographic information is extremely valuable–and dangerous.  These lists have been bought for years by magazine companies.  I, for example have thought about subscribing to that magazine for years.  Then, a month ago, I received a letter from them asking me to subscribe at a discounted rate.  Hmm… How was I profiled as a likely subscriber to The Economist? I did graduate recently with a degree in History.  I am now enrolled in an MA program.  Perhaps my information was bought, and along with others like me.

It’s easy to talk about all of these abstract issues of morality and ethics that are brought up with the Information Age until you are personally involved.  Then, it gets pretty uncomfortable.

I will wrap this up by saying, as exciting as the prospect of free applications that make my educational and leisure time on the internet better, I can’t help but think that this is costing us somewhere–our privacy.  Is it worth it?

My brain hurts, the review essay is taking a while, and Gamestop is evil

Hello All,

I don’t want to stop working on the review essay, because I want to get it finished.  Still, my brain hurts, and the quality of my work is suffering as a result.  So, I decided to finish up some blogs in the meantime.

I ordered the now infamous Grand Theft Auto IV on Sunday night, the 27th, thinking I was cool, and that it would enable me to get it on Tuesday.  I also didn’t want to spend any length of time driving around the state of New Jersey trying to find a copy because I didn’t pre-order it.  If anyone doesn’t know, this videogame is one of the more engaging ever made.  I haven’t touched my Xbox in three or four weeks because I’ve been so busy with schoolwork, and I still work 30-34 hours a week.

Btw, I didn’t pre-order the game from Gamestop, the evil empire because I am tired of being an enabler and letting them rip people off.  The problem with them is that they have a huge resale business.  If you buy a game for $50 or $60, and play it for a few weeks and return it, you will get $30 of credit at best.  There may be some exceptions, but the best trade-in value you can get for the game is about half of what it retails for, new.  After that time, the amount of credit you will receive will begin to drop, and drop quickly.  I am a big believer in market value.

Clearly $60 is a fair price for a videogame if people are willing to pay for it.  After a game releases, you can go on ebay, and see what it’s going for.  While there are a number of factors than can affect the price, including whether it is a special edition or not, whether it’s unopened, or whether it’s missing the instruction manual, you can usually gage what the going rate is.  Gamestop ignores the market, and because they offer a more convenient model than ebay for many people, they can gauge the consumer.  Recently, I bought 3 year old game for the Nintendo DS that was kinda hard to find.  At Gamestop, they had one copy, without the proper case or manual.  They charged me $17.99.  They probably gave the poor kid 2 bucks for the trade-in for that, and even then, it was just credit.  The consumers they gauge the worst are their most loyal.  While I am suffering a bit because I refused to order the GTA from Gamestop, and I refuse to deal with the circus that is Best Buy, I have to wait.  I could have probably gone to Target or Wal-Mart, but I hate Wal-Mart too.  So, I decided to just order the game, and hope for the best.

But that’s okay.  I was hoping to have most of my work complete before Tuesday, and to enjoy my day off today to unwind.  No such luck.  My review essay isn’t complete, nor is my Learning Record, or my final article for Advanced Feature Writing.  That’s okay, as I’ve been working hard on that stuff.  Perhaps when I finally get my copy of GTA, I will actually have time to play it.  I did work on my essay for about 7 or 8 hours yesterday, and I sure could have used a break.  I watched Family Guy instead.  That was great.  Maybe when I’m finished my finals stuff, I can finally get back in the gym.  That will be nice.

Sorry to make you hear my rant why Gamestop is the evil empire, but it had to be done.  I’m going to have some coffee now.

Particapatory Culture is Cool

Hello All,

I finished reading Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins on Tuesday for my review essay, and I really enjoyed it. Henry Jenkins, if any of you aren’t familiar with him, is a professor at MIT in their Comparative Media Studies program. He is one of the foremost Media scholars in the world. His book is essentially about the intersections between Old Media (radio, televisions, movies) and New Media (the Web, Internet, fan culture, fan fiction, user generated content, etc.). What was interesting about Jenkins’ assessment is that it does not in any way suggest that Old Media is dead, or is dying, but rather, that we are living in a time of reciprocity. One supports the other.

I like that his explanation was not so cut and dry.  New Media forms are not wiping out old ones as some observers predicted 10 or 15 years ago, but they are learning to live together.  Remember, McLuhan said, “It would seem natural that older forms are put to new uses and discover new roles.  The book, for example, in our time has discovered many new functions that it never had fifty or a hundred years ago.” He was right.

Anyway, I’m working out some of these ideas in my head, and I haven’t been reading other stuff this week so I wanted to bring up Jenkins’ book.  You can check out Jenkins’ blog here.

Datacloud: a justification for my own existence

Hello All,

While the title for my post may be a bit of an overstatement, it illustrates an important point about my perception of the symbolic-analytical work that is talked about extensively in this week’s reading.  For years I have had discussions with my best friend regarding the peculiar skills were developing while doing our undergraduate work in history.  We could understand complex ideas, put them together, and could pick out the intellectual currents that ran through a particular text.  Essentially we were engaging in symbolic-analytical work.  While these skills were useful in an academic context, I always wondered whether these skills would correspond to a work environment.  Datacloud: Toward a New Theory of Online Work by Johndan (that’s a cool name) Johnson-Eilola deals with this topic.

Johnson-Eilola explains that this shift toward symbolic-analytic work is really a development contingent on several factors.  The most important change is our economy’s move away from an industrial one towards an information one.  Instead of producing material goods, many workers, primarily in the service industry, deal with theoretical goods.  Another development is the profound impact of the computer.  With the computer doing the “heavy lifting” regarding complex calculations, this frees the worker’s mind to deal with the bigger problems.

The author made one observation that I found pretty interesting regarding workspaces.  He says the typical construction of a workspace says a lot about the designer (or benefactor’s) view of how work is to be done.  He points to the lay-out of typical computer lab, and then contrasts that with people that do complex symbolic analytical work.  Johnson-Eilola says that the layout of the computer lab, with the screen being the focal point of the work indicates the vaulted place that people hold the computer, to the detriment of the user.  If this work is as complex as Johnson-Eilola is arguing, and most of us would agree that it is, steps should be taken to straighten this out.  I can see this being a problem with my own work.  When doing research, I often flip through many texts, notebooks, and online sources.  However, almost every computer space I have ever used has been extremely cramped, and thus does not allow the user to do his or her work as efficiently as one would be able to do with a more open environment.  To this end, I am working on ways to reconstitute my workspace to make it more efficient.  The author has brought up a problem that I believe plagues me as well.  Maybe I can follow his lead, and possibly reconstitute my workspace in a way that allows the complex kinds of work I do to be done, and to be done more effectively.

Hey, if you want Methamphetamine, just tap the black market, says Wired

Hello all,

As someone that isn’t much of a drug user (except caffeine and alcohol), I thought this piece, featured on the cover of the newest edition of Wired, and now featured on their website was interesting.  It is a chart that lists a series of drugs, how they can “boost brain power” or something like that, and what their side effects are.  While I hate nausea and stomach-related illnesses, I would like to be smarter.  You can see the article here.

This is my favorite entry:

For the drug Methamphetamine

What it does: Triggers the release of dopamine. Can increase concentration and creative output. Prolonged use can also make you stupid and crazy.

Possible side effects: Parkinson’s-like symptoms, addiction, stroke, psychosis, prison, death

The best part: To get this drug, you need to “tap the black market”.  Thanks, Wired

I’ll just keep reading, drugs still sound like a bad idea.  They would make things more interesting.

Kids don’t fall out trees anymore in the UK; and this is bad?

Hello All,

I stumbled upon something interesting on kotaku.com on Wednesday.  According to the British tabloid Daily Mail, injuries related to tree-climbing are down recently compared to the past.  Kotaku cites the tabloid:

in 2006/07 – the latest year for which data is available – 1,067 children under 15 needed medical assistance for tree falls. In 1999/00 the figure was 1,823.

Meanwhile, the number of youngsters under 15 admitted to A&E after bed falls in 2006/07 was 2,531, up from 2,226 in 1999/2000.

The figures lend weight to the Government’s campaign to get more children away from computer games and into the great outdoors.

you can read the article in its entirety here.

I don’t usually read British tabloids, but now I wish I did.  While we don’t specifically talk about videogames much in our class, this story does have some bearing on our discussions: online spaces can influence offline spaces.  Also, as we talked before, the commentary that can follow can often put the events in question in proper perspective.  A less informed (scratch that, a REALLY UNINFORMED) individual can look at this story and think that perhaps, it has some merit.  Hmm… or maybe not.  As a writer, I have been trained to discuss the opposition’s point of view, and explain why it is faulty.  Here, I don’t have to.  The article is suggesting that kids aren’t falling out of trees as much as they used, and that one, this is bad thing, and two, that videogames are to blame.  While videogames are likely partially to blame for this, it is not the only possible reason. Maybe these kids just stopped reading the Daily Mail, and are just smarter because of it, keeping them from falling out of trees in the first place.

At the end of this article, there were two comments.  Here is the more clever of the two.  You can thank me for the laughs you will enjoy later.

They are absolutely right… A wrist an be healed quite shortly, and you learned something along the way about actions, risk and pain.

The RSS from playing games doesn’t bring you any of that, and can land you with a lifelong disability.

As a youngster, I guess I fell off pretty much anything that could be climbed, but did I end up a crippled wreck? No. I actually did learn quite a few things along the way, teachings and experiences that the growing generation of today are being denied.

- Chris, Dublin

I like songs that make me think

Hello All,

Thrice released a new album this week, and I bought it. They used to be a punk metal band, and now they are an experimental progressive rock bands which means… they can make whatever kind of music they want, and call it their own. Their songs touch on all sorts of themes, from morality, to perseverance, intellectual development, to standing up for what you believe in. They released the first two volumes of their four volume Alchemy Index, based on the four elements in October. Volumes one and two were based on water and fire, respectively. This week, they released volumes 3 and 4, based on air and earth, respectively. It’s pretty crazy stuff. You can imagine how water or fire would sound. But, what do air and earth sound like? That was the challenge these talented musicians faced, and I think they were highly successful. You can hearmany of their new songs on their myspace page here.

From the Air disk, The Sky is Falling

It’s coming down
These clouds could never hope to save us
From such a juggernaut of weight
We all dance a jingo cabaret
It’s coming down
The shadow’s forming on the pavement
We face a watershed of hate
Just miles apart the world’s away

The sky is falling
And no one will lift their eyes to see
The sky is falling
And no one will care as long as it lands over seas

It’s coming down
This ship could never save me
and my family from certain death
If we could leave, we would have left
It’s coming down
My little girl is just a baby
And I’m scared that she wont make her teens
My fear just fuels the hate machine

The sky is falling
And no one will lift their eyes to see
The sky is falling
And no one will care as long as it lands over seas

I’m going to be strong enough
And not let my fear decide my fate
Surrounded by jingoists
I don’t want any part of this

I want to be strong enough
To not let my terror turn to hate

Racist Imagery in Videogames

Hello All,

Last July, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), videogame developer and publisher Capcom showed off the trailer to the newest edition of their Resident Evil series, Resident Evil 5. It caused a stir among many observers that felt that the trailer contained imagery that can be construed as racist.  Essentially the trailer opens up with the white protagonist entering what appears to be an African village.  Some people are walking in plain sight, and others are in the shadows.  Many of the villagers are infected with a virus that turns them into blood-thirsty zombies, and they begin attacking the hero.  The hero then kills a bunch of them.  You can view the trailer here.

When taken out of context, you essentially have a white hero killing a bunch of (now that they’ve been infected) sub-human black villains.  This looks really bad, as N’Gai Croal has argued.  You can read some of his comments from his interview on race with MTV here.  Here is the link to Croal’s comments about the Resident Evil 5 trailer that has generated all of this controversy.

If I may provide a little context here, I will.  Many people have criticized Croal, saying that this game is not racist at all, and it just happens to take place in Africa.  The first game took place in a mansion, with white zombies.  The second game took place in a city, and had zombies of mixed ethnicity.  The third game, Resident Evil 3, also had mixed zombies.  I don’t remember whether Resident Evil Code Veronica had mixed zombies or not.  The fifth major Resident Evil game, Resident Evil 4, took place in a Spanish village and had mostly (if not all white zombies).  With this context in mind, it is easy to see why people feel that Croal may be blowing this out of proportion.

Other people, including 1up.com editor Shawn Elliot, agree with Croal’s assessment that “This imagery has a history.”  Elliot wrote a blog dealing with historical context, and why this Africa setting could be so problematic.  Kotaku.com, another notable gaming website, has sided with Croal, and feels that more mature discussions of race need to be considered in videogames.

I thought all of this was interesting for a lot of reasons, not the least of which because I like N’Gai Croal very much, but also because of our reading this week.  While it is not directly related to our story, I thought the timing was good for me to mention it.  If there are any more links people would like, let me know, and I’ll try to provide them.

Color Monitors: Do films and books maintain racist hierarchies?

Hello All,

Martin Kevorkian, in his book, Color Monitors: The Black Face of Technology in America has raised the aforementioned question, and I have to admit, it really made me think.  Kevorkian opens his argument with many examples from films where black characters represented the “computer guy”.  From here, Kevorkian explains that certain kinds of things always happened in these instances.  For example, no matter how “skilled”, “intelligent”, or “talented” the character was supposed to be, the white characters always barked orders at the computer guy.  Also, Kevorkian argues, that these African-American characters are also framed by two or more white characters.  Most significantly, perhaps, the author mentions how in many instances, the computer work that the black characters do is for naught.

Kevorkian also talks about images of Africa are often juxtaposed with images of technology.  He claims there is an inherently racist argument presented here, and it is essentially this: if technology can help the “Dark Continent”, it must be a powerful force. Also, The author explains how African Americans are often depicted as the face of Information Technology.  One Dell advertisement shows a black guy next to a stack of servers I presume, and says something to the effect of, “This is Carl.  There are a lot more where that came from.”

Later in the book Kevorkian talks about how many white people in the tech industry try to relate their situation to that of the American slaves.  Their work is considered to be drudgery in many instances, and like their black counterparts, have little hope of actually running the business.  While this is an isolated group, it is worth mentioning.

One of Kevorkian’s big arguments is that by putting the African American at the computer screen, he is “contained” and he is marginalized.  White people fear technology, and they fear black people, Kevorkian argues, so to pit these two enemies against each other is kill two birds with one stone so to speak.  While Kevorkian showed many such examples, from Die Hard (which I actually saw in theaters when I was 4 years old, strangely enough), Mission Impossible, Minority Report, Terminator 2 (which I also saw, when I was 7), and in a bunch of Michael Crichton adaptations, including Jurassic Park the Lost World, Outbreak, and others.

While Kevorkian supports his claims well, I’m not sure if I can accept all of these points.  I think he ignored one major factor in talking about this trend in Hollywood to make the black guy the tech guy: audiences are uncomfortable with a movie full of white people.  Also, I would argue that audiences are even more uncomfortable with movies full of black people.  While Kevorkian just brushes over the idea, I think the pressure to put “positive” secondary black characters into movies and films is probably pretty strong.  While race relations have gotten better in previous years, and more black people go to college now than before, I think many people want to see “positive” secondary black characters.

The other point Kevorkian didn’t adequately mention is whether the tough guy, anti-computer white hero contrasts with tough guy black heroes.  In my experience watching action movies, I would argue that they operate pretty similarly.  From Carl Weathers and Mr. T to Wesley Snipes to Will Smith, I see them sharing pretty similar characteristics with their white counterparts.  Smith, though is a little different because he’s a good actor, and he’s able to convey a wider range of roles in addition to being a convincing tough guy.

Even when Kevorkian talks about a positive black character such as Morpheus from the Matrix, played by Laurence Fishburne, a very well-respected actor, the author tries to spin this in a negative light, because the character sacrifices himself in the end.  Anyone familiar with the Matrix mythos can tell you there are all sorts of philosophical and religious ideas presented in the movie, and that the Morpheus character can be viewed as a type of Christ, where he teaches, and then dies for those he taught.

In the end, I have to say that Kevorkian makes some interesting points, and he had too many examples for me to dismiss his arguments.  While he provided a framework for understanding this strange casting type of the black man as the tech expert, I don’t think he dealt adequately with the opposition.  Had Kevorkian bring up the points I mentioned, I feel he would have had an airtight defense.  Great read, nonetheless, and I’d recommend it highly.