MediaMania

My Media

2006-12-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

In a given day, the three forms of media I use most include television, radio, and internet.
Television shows I am certain to record on my OnDemand include the following:
Lost (my absolute favorite)
Medium
48 Hours Mystery
Dateline
Grey's Anatomy
Desperate Housewives
The Apprentice
Top Chef

It seems as though ABC gets me pulled in the most. I have to admit, they've been doing something right in the last couple years. Comcast is certainly entertaining me a large portion of the week and making some serious bank.

Radio is a huge part of my day. It is always on in my car and tuned to either The Current (89.3) or Radio K. I love the fact that they support local music and that they are committed to variety. You rarely hear a song more than once in a day. The djs on The Current are first-rate and know their music. I enjoy the music sets most by Mark Wheat and Mary Lucia. When I get into my classroom, I typically turn on the radio while I get my morning started and while early arrivers (students) wait for first hour to begin. I loyally support the two stations and donate to both regularly. The Current, owned by Minnesota Public Radio, and Radio K, powered by the University of Minnesota, are both respectable stations in my eyes. They aren't run by Clear Channel or Disney, who owns virttually every other radio station. I am true to smaller business, liberal media and feel these two stations are exactly that.

The internet is highly important to my day running smoothly. My students grades and attandance are online. While other teachers may bubble scantrons for attendance, I log onto a site called "Campus" to mark attendance every day and to calculate my class scores. In addition, I use the internet daily to use e-mail (I use three different e-mails: Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft Outlook). Chatting with friends in Europe is easy with Gmail, and I talk online to a friend in Turkey almost daily. Of course, there is the us eof internet for pleasure. I would say I visit most often the following sites:
Google
Wells Fargo
Internet Movie Database
City Pages
First Avenue
Triple Rock Social Club
Turf Club
Uptown Bar
Hexagon Bar
Amazon
eBay

As far as other media sources are concerned that I use during the week, I don't generally read the newspaper, though I rarely skip a week without reading the City Pages. It is my main source for finding out "what's happening." Magazines are a nice escape, too. I certainly do not purchase magazines weekly, nor do I have any subscriptions. However, I enjoy InStyle, People, W, Bazaar, Elle, and O magazines. I buy them primarily for the photography, fashion, and gossip.

I try to avoid being manipulated by large, money hungry demons, but avoiding the media is impossible. I may be successful at avoiding them when it comes to radio, but anywhere else, I am sucked into corporate hell. I have my own human weaknesses, I know. Concerts I see are usually local, so they usually sponsored by Radio K or the Current. Whew! For me, though, the most important thing is that I get to see the bands I want to see, not necessarily who sponsors the show. I have to admit, though, that when I end up at a show sponsored by Drive 105, KQRS, or 93X, I get a sour rumble in my belly. There is a definitie difference in the atmosphere are these events. The mood is different. The people are different. I guess I am more excited about hanging out with the audiophiles. Call me a music Nazi. I could become good friends with Rob and his friends in High Fidelity, huh?

The Cure: Seduction of Gloom

2006-12-19T16:33:00.000-08:00

Being a huge music nut, I had some trouble at first solidifying a song choice for this assignment. There are so many songs that I adore, or that say something significant about my character or values. Alas, I had to let a song simply come to me. Either that or close my eyes and point at a cd in my stacks and pick teh first track on it.

However, fate played its role, and on my way home from thacar shop the other evening the perfect song moaned its first hums through the car radio, and I knew it was the perfect one:
"Fascination Street" by The Cure.

A brief history:
As an adolescenet, Robert Smith's dark air wasn't the only quality that atrracted me to The Cure. Of course, his hair resembled mine, and I loved any guy who was abnormal, wore makeup, or generally represented anything for which my parents scorned. But it wasn't only about their dark, mysterious, and generally rebellious image. It was, more importantly, about the music.

The song:
The bass riff kicks off the song with a raw grit that takes your head to foggy, dark urban avenues where silhouettes, the indisctinct, meander through smokey, dimly lit alleyways. The basso continuo grooves with attitude and deceptive sexiness like a femme fatale as the guitar's voice of mystery enters the scene. The sounds speak to each other like two seductors in the midst of night fog that looms and keeps them strangers. Next is the inquisitive keyboard that segues into Smith's desperate whines . . . Mystery and the unknown creep in this fictional place that The Cure's sounds fabricate. Two strangers speak though they cannot see. Their sight cannot permeate the dimness, the fog of humid nights. It doesn't matter. Because the uknown itself is the prime seductress. It is in the yearns and wails of Smith's voice, the deep, raw moans of Gallop's bass, and the brooding, looming notes of Smith's and Thompson's guitars that blend and beg. Curiosity is the temptress. She lures then seduces.

The lyrics:
oh it's opening time
down on fascination street
so let's cut the conversation
and get out for a bit
because i feel it all fading and paling
and i'm begging
to drag you down with me
to kick the last nail in
yeah! i like you in that
like i like you to scream
but if you open your mouth
then i can't be responsible
for quite what goes in
or to care what comes out
so just pull on your hair
just pull on your pout
and let's move to the beat
like we know that it's over
if you slip going under
slip over my shoulder
so just pull on your face
just pull on your feet
and let's hit opening time
down on fascination street

so pull on your hair
pull on your pout
cut the conversation
just open your mouth
pull on your face
pull on your feet
and let's hit opening time
down on fascination street

My connection to music is my connection to the moods the sounds emit. The lyrics are secondary. In this case, the lyrics are quite ambiguous.

As far as additional music interests I have, I tend to lean towards sounds of the eighties and nineties, particularly new wave. My tastes are certainly not restricted to only the new wave genre, though some of my top faves are Depeche Mode, The Cure, Joy Division, and Bauhaus. However, one of my all-time favorites is Simon and Garfunkel. The classic rock genre faves of mine include The Beatles, The Doors, King Crimson, Rolling Stones. I have many interests, though I am not a fan of hip-hop. Other delights are Interpol, Radiohead, Kings of Leon, The Sundays, Iggy Pop, Journey, Scorions, Keane, Starsailor. Country faves: Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Tammy Wynette, Roy Clark, Buck Owens, and Willie Nelson.
You get the idea.

I have a pretty large record collection. I spend a lot of time and money on music. I frequent local bars to check out the hottest local bands. Local favorites of mine include Little Man, Mark Mallman, Trampled By Turtles (Duluth), Ouija Radio, Kruddler, and Melodious Owl.

I am not certain I can explain why each of these bands speaks to me. I like the way they sound. Whether it's the traditional twang of Loretta's sweet Kentucky songs or the gloom of Joy Division's deep bass riffs and Ian Curtis' deep humming voice, the sounds are what make my ears happy. Music is my passion in life.

Of additional interest, here some of the more unique concerts I have seen:
King Crimson (x3)
Bauhaus
Loretta Lynn
Christian Death (x2)
Legendary Pink Dots (x3)
Spiritualized
Tom Waits
Skinny Puppy
Sisters of Mercy
Lenny Kravitz
Paul Simon
Buzzcocks

Documentary: Teacher! Teacher!

2006-11-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

Coincidentally, for my final project in the Masters of Liberal Studies program, I will be writing and shooting a documentary about the Twin Cities local music scene. A topic of serious depth, the local music scene has many genres, bands, and sociological issues that I could never represent entirely. However, through footage of live shows and interviews with bands and musicians within the local music scene, I plan to offer a sociological take on the scene.

As a regular concert-goer in the Twin Cities scene, I felt that this project would encompass the two studies I love more than any others: film and music. I thought that the network I have in the local scene would be an excellent source for my material in the documentary but in no way do I believe the task will be easy. The story is not a simple one to tell.

However, while I intend to make my own documentary about the local Twin Cities music scene, I enjoy fantasizing about additional documentary topics I might research and pursue. Before I solidified the music scene idea, I played with, and still think a lot about, making a documentary about the teaching profession. A respected and admired profession, teaching is a rewarding yet exhausting and demanding career. The public seems to have many opinions about what teachers do well and do incompetently. A teacher of nine years, I have at times encountered parents and adults who are clearly naïve about the daily toils as well as celebrations a teacher experiences. From parent-teacher interactions to paper loads to classroom discipline to time management, teachers are “on” eight hours per day. By no means does it end there.

The public truly should know about the day-to-day lives of teachers. It would be essential to include in the footage teacher-parent phone calls: those meant for praising student behavior and progress as well those meant to inform parents of students struggling or misbehaving. Also essential would be a scene in which a parent and student struggle with conflict. E-mails are often the arena where these conflicts arise and are played out. Teacher interviews would be included, along with student interviews to get their input on teacher-student report, teachers’ techniques, and teachers who they view as commendable or terrible and why. It would be interesting to hear students discuss what assumptions they have about teachers or what they think about the teaching profession. An additional topic repeatedly addressed is teacher salaries. This would be a compelling matter on which to concentrate with teachers, students, and members of the public.

Then there are the questions. The following question/topics would be predominant in interviews with teachers:
What are your most common frustrations with students?
Tell about memories you have of student success.
What is the most common parent complaint?
What roles do your students’ parents take?
How would you describe your teaching style?
Describe an average day from beginning to end.
How would you describe your profession?
Why do you teach?
What is your biggest complaint about students?
Parents?
What is your ultimate goal as a teacher?
Why did you go into teaching?
Describe the single worst disciplinary incident you had.
What roles, other than “teacher,” do teachers play?
What do you feel the public should know about teachers?
About the profession?

As a director of this documentary, I would choose to remain off camera so as to remove myself and any potential sense of bias, though like in any documentary one finds bias. The matter, of course, is the construction of a given truth: most teachers work diligently and passionately; some do not. Teachers face high demands, fast-paced environments, and complicated challenges unknown to a large portion of the public. The teacher story—the truth about teachers—must be told.

2006-11-02T16:13:00.000-08:00

project
SEGUE

FOR A FIERCE RUNWAY RIDE

Genre: Film Noir

2006-11-02T13:23:00.000-08:00

Film noir is a very stylized mode of film prevalent during the 1940s and 1950s and characterized in large part by the struggles America faced with World War II. A society paranoid and disillusioned by war is captured in film noir by its protagonists' perpetual determinism and feelings of anxiety and despair. Male characters were often detectives or war vets, generally your average kind of guys, who inevitably got caught in the femme fatale's web or wrapped into crime. Film noir directors such as Billy Wilder and John Huston captured these fatalist stories from authors of pulp novels such as James M. Cain and Dashiel Hammett.

Plots tended to be complex and have twists and generally focused on the seedy side of life and darkest depths of the human psyche.

To complemement these dark elements, the mise-en-scènes were dark, city streets, rainy avenues, or private eye offices. Shadows cast through venetian blinds accentuated the dark and light/evil and good with which protagonists inevitably struggled. Low-key lighting aided the settings and, too, paralleled the overall tone of the film. Props such as cigarettes and cars were also common in film noir.

Skewed camera angles, low and high angles also puncuated characters' disillusioned states and implied the power struggles occurring in the narrative. Deep focus was common, particularly to allow for suspense and dramatic irony.

All stylistic elements of noir come together to display a narrative for audiences filled with mystery and suspense and the seedy, dark sides of human nature.

Sociology of LOST

2006-10-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

Let's face it. The media gets a bad rap much of the time. And, yes, it's deserved most of the time. But, really. Not all media is out there to warp our minds or insidiously sell an idea or product. While television media does present to its audiences a handful of troublesome representations, one television drama I have found brings hope to television media is LOST.

The award winning LOST on ABC has stirred excitement and endless discourse. Aside from the fact that the complex narrative delivers its audiences intrigiung suspense, clever plot twists, and endless mystery, it brings something else to the tube every Thursday night: a sort of political correctness. This peculiar island is home to a group of plane crash survivors and, as a show on the evening boob tube, certainly champions other attempts at multicultural representations during prime time. Characters in LOST come from varied backgrounds, socio-economic positions, and ethnicities. This isnn't just your whitey family from suburbia. No, no. Included in the weekly doses of suspense include a married Korean couple, a white female fugitive, an Australian single mother (who delivered the baby on the island), a doctor, an African American single father and his son, an obese, Latino twenty-something "dude", a bi-racial couple in their fifties, and a former Iraqi soldier. If that doesn't cover the gamet . . .

It is refereshing to see the network brings to its viewers multicultural images on screen and insists that even in the most harrowing and challenging of situations, they can and do make it all work. As expected, characters don't always get along. But it is never a matter of racial, gender, or economic differences but a matter of the most basic human struggle: survival.

Rock Star Representation

2006-10-12T12:37:00.000-07:00

How does the media represent "rock stars" to the public?

It is difficult to ignore these representations, to say the least. They are having fun with sexy women or Playboy Bunnies like in the photo of Gene Simmons of Kiss fame above. They look as though they "get lucky" every day of the week. They are surrounded by other attractive people as Madonna is here. They not only get constant attention, they lead the cushined, good life. No worries, especially not when it comes to their looks. They are eye-catching, compelling. "Pretty." They are all esthetically appealing, even the glammed out, seemingly "freakish" Marilyn Manson. While their image may devaite from a particular norm, their vibrant face makeup and slick clothes keeo them right in line with the asthetics of other music gods. The qusetion then remains: do rock stars always look this good? Do they ever look like me?

Media Text Analysis

2006-10-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

Critical Discourse of Class in Lost

Stranded on an island after a terrible plane crash, a handful of survivors whose backgrounds, interests, and classes differ widely (as expected) struggle to find out why they're there and how they'll get out alive. While characters such as Kate (who in her"previous life" had evaded the law upon multiple occasions but had been fated to return from Australia to the U.S.--marshall escort at her side--for sentencing and imprisonment) found anew life, a new beginning on the island. The burdens and limitations of the live as they once knew could be joyously discarded. How much money you made, how deviant you may have been, or how terrible your relationships with your father were, you are in a place where none of that matters. Or does it?

Strangely these characters slowly bein to learn details about one another's pasts and eventually create the same stereotypes they believed they were escaping. Though Kate, among others, was temporarily able to reinvent herself in her peers' eyes, the truth came out. She's the fugitive. She's not alone.

The doctor is always the doctor--the one who can't escape the driving need to be a leader, a caretaker, the one who fixes people. He may have not the monetary status he once had as a spinal surgeon, but his status on the island suggests his position in the society he once knew.

Film Clip Anaysis

2006-09-28T13:01:00.000-07:00

Precious Envy

At the end of each term, my film study students are required to, in groups, write, direct, shoot, and edi their own films. They are to apply the techniques they have learned about and viewed in films throughout the term as well as choose a genre of their choice.

I decided to use an iMovie project one group did for the film study class. The decided to create a a trailer for a would-be movie about a teen who wants to take revenge on a mean girl who has laughed at him and taunted him for being romantically interested in her.

The trailer begins with a cloe-up shot of two legs walking down a hall with a metal pole dargging close behind. Assisted by grave, dark music (taken from the soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream), the audience is aware that doom is ahead.

Student movie makers thoughtfully implemented a black and white effect on the clips to suggest a flashback which provides the audience with background on the boy who wants revenge.

Then the trailer transitions (with fade outs and fade ins) to the present where the "mean girl" and her friend exit a school door; meanwhile the boy who wants revenge is then focused on. He is looming in the background and secretly watches the girls, looking for a moment to sneak up. The camera zooms in to imply this maniacal plan. A clear foreshadow of impending revenge . . . or even murder!

Then the trailer transitions into a shot of boy hitting on egirl in the back with his metal pole. Then a still of this action lets the fear, suspense, and doom sink into the audience.

All the while titles assist the narrative being presented in images, all of them in red, adding a symbol of passion and murder to the mix.

Another still finishes off a creepy pop-up, surprise from boy who wants revenge who jumps out from behind a brick wall to find mean girl screaming in terror. Again . . . the still frame lets the terror and anticipation sink into the audience. All the while the same tense, creepy music--violins, basses--undercut the images and building suspense.

The final scene of the trailer is a fast-paced, quick motion through a long corridor and toward the boy who wants revenge--closer and closer--until the lens reaches the boy's eye. The close-up and shakey cam add a queer, disturbing mood to the finish.

The final titles state: Precious Envy 2204.

Media Studies Rationale and Units/Activities

2006-09-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

As the school where I teach already has implemented media studies into its curriculum , rather than presenting a detailed rationale for a fictional school board opposed to media studies, I will be providing a brief rationale for media studies' value and importance and, in turn, listing units of study and activities essential to my tenth grade curriculum. Since juniors and seniors at my school take media studies only as an elective language arts course, I prefer to focus on the tenth grade curriculum that all students will be required to study media.

For the tenth grade, I will be concentrating my lessons and activities on the following essentials I deem as most suitable for this age/grade level:

Media Matters

2006-09-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

As a teacher of language arts in a school district that makes valiant efforts to stay current and even progressive in the educational and technological arenas, I am always inventing ways to bring students closer to their subjects through various media. The school has televisions and VCRs and/or DVDs in every classroom, along with central sound. Technology is supported by a team of individuals who ensure our computers are functional and have the latest operating systems and software. That aside, my district is currently moving through a curriculum cycle for grades 10-12. Having attended several curriculum meetings last year regarding the necessary changes in our curriculum, I met others with similar eagerness and dedication to media studies and its permanent "employment" in our schools. Though some fine-tuning is still occurring, all high schools have agreed that a media unit is a must in all grade levels. While each school has its own media literacy course for juniors and seniors, students in other grades only get a short glimpse into the material that they should be studying at length. Hence, we have already ordered books and modified our 10th grade curriculum within our school. I am lucky to be employed in an environment that supports and encourages continual development in progressive education and media studies.

Along with teaching media studies to the tenth grade, I teach film study to juniors and seniors. Therefore, this blog is devoted to the specific areas within media studies that match the demands my courseload brings.