We watched the film Old Boy in class today, and were told to do a media analysis on the movie. The movie was rather interesting, we didn’t watch the whole thing, but we watched enough to get the jiff of the movie. I was going to break down the movie by using the psychoanalysis part of media analysis. First, I will talk about mirror stage and how it relates to Old Boy. When I watched the movie, I didn’t really have a mirror effect with Dae-Su. He starts out as a drunk that gets thrown in the drunk tank, which I have never experienced. So, I really can’t relate to Dae-Su at all with that, but I can see myself in him when he had something bad happen to him and he wanted revenge. Everybody has had a bit of that situation in their lives. Next, I will talk about voyeurism in Old Boy. I thought that in the short time that I got to watch the film, Dae-Su definitely redeemed himself. He was a drunk in the first part of the movie, and then when he gets imprisoned and learned how to fight and other things from watching tv, he redeems himself and turns into a hero in my eyes. The final topic is fetishistic scopophilia, which is me thinking that someone deserves the punishment that they get in the movie. The final scene that we watched in Old Boy was a scene where Dae-Su pulled the teeth out of the guy who helped watch him when he was imprisoned for 15 years.
Representing gender in video games
Now we’re talking, finally we are focusing on video games and I LOVE IT. In class we have been talking about how video games represent genders now and back then when they first started making video games. I am going to talk about the differences on how KONAMI represents genders in their video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Now, I own this game, but haven’t finished it yet due to it having an extremely long story line. Nonetheless, it is a very good game and I would recommend it to anyone who likes to play third person shooters.
To start off, there is multiple main characters in the game, but for the most part, you will play Snake in the game. He is the “Boss” to everyone else in his entourage and army. Now, I haven’t beat the game remember, but I have gotten at least halfway through and he hasn’t taken off his gear or armor. What I am trying to say it, he is pretty much covered up the whole game. The spent quite a bit of time on his face though, he has shards of metal stuck in his head that can’t be removed, and they are visible. You can also sport him with a fashionable bandana as well. He has a scruffy beard which is pretty detailed and he also has long flowing hair. As you move down from his face, he has a muscular body, you can tell if you have the sneaking suit on which is very tight. So, what I am trying to say here is, Snake, a male is quite a detailed character in the game.
There are also two other well know main characters in the game that are male as well. They both have blonde, long flowing hair and their face are greatly detailed. You can tell that they put a lot of time in the male faces.
For the next topic, I am going to talk about the females in the game. The game is Japanese made so have to think that there are going to be some huge breasts popping out at some point. If you think of Mortal Combat(which wasn’t made by Japanese game makers, but has a Japanese feel) and how the women characters in that game usually have big breasts and they are OUT there. You can think of Tekken or even Resident Evil in the newer games, the girls have provacative clothing on at times. Anyways, back to MGSV, the most influential woman character so far for me was “Quiet.” She was an assassin sniper trying to take down Snake before he recruited her to his squad. She basically has special powers where she can teleport from one place to another and her main ability is being amazing with a long range rifle. She is a good example of gender representation in video games, because all the male characters faces have a lot of detail while Quiet’s face is rather blah. Her face definitely has woman like features, there is just nothing special about her shoulders up. Unless, you count when she uses her special powers, her eyes turn black in and around the eye socket. Once you start to move down her shoulders, you see what the makers were trying to do. She wears a tight, skimpy shirt? Maybe? I don’t know, but all it covers up is her breasts, which are pretty large and are always showing cleavage. She also sports some fishnets with holes in them, and basically some underwear to cover up. Which, to be honest is kind of intriguing when she does these heroic tasks in the game. She’s like a gamers pornstar basically is how I can describe her. There is a point in the trailer that shows her pretty clearly with her rifle at (3:44).
Finally, after I just geeked out there for a second, there remains the somewhat issue of gender representation in video games. Honestly, I loved Metal Gear Solid and none of those facts that I told you about the characters would change my mind about the game. I definitely think that game makers will still try to over overexaggerate the woman, and focus on the guys, but I like video games as they are. I could see it eventually start to gradually change as games and the graphics are getting more and more advanced. I could see them just making more of an emphasis on the woman characters as well, and I wouldn’t mind seeing that honestly.
PS… Sorry the trailer is a bit long, there was no other official trailer other than the E3 version.
JFK’s Campaign Commercial
We are suppose to pick a certain campaign commercial whether it be political or informational, so I picked John F. Kennedy’s political campaign commercial to analyze. First I am going to evaluate the commercial according to its informational, motivational, and behavioral objectives. The information objectives of the JFK campaign commercial were that they were to trying get what JFK was all about and why he is so desirable. The motivational objectives were that the commercial impacted the values, beliefs, and attitudes of the viewers. The behaviorist objectives would be to get the viewers to vote for John F. Kennedy, and most likely it worked because he won the election.
Obviously, JFK was a well liked candidate and person. He captured the hearts of a lot of people. This commercial just shows how many values that people liked about him and why he was so popular. It informed people of his values and why he would be a great president, not bashing any other candidate. A lot of the things that they sing about JFK are definitely what people looked for in their president. The commercial didn’t really change anybodies values or beliefs, it just reassured people that JFK had the values beliefs that they like.
Advertising
We talked a lot about different strategies that advertisements can use and how they can benefit us, the viewer, in some kind of way. We talked the use value of an advertisement and the exchange value as well. Usually the use value is never really realistic and you couldn’t actually use that information, but the exchange value is usually helpful in advertisements.
We watched a few different video game trailers in class today and one didn’t really appeal to me and the others did. The first one, can’t really remember the name right now, but it was made by a Japanese gamer and he makes his games off of what he likes. He doesn’t care how other people feel about the game, so he doesn’t care how many copies sell of the game. That game didn’t appeal to me, because I wasn’t the right audience. The second game trailer was Fallout 4, and might have a bias, but I like the game a lot. The trailer was much more appealing to me then the first one because of how I could relate with the war and how there could be another war if the world keeps operating like this. The third was Final Fantasy 15 or 16 I believe, I just know that there are a lot of them. I actually have never played a Final Fantasy game, but when I watched the clip, it actually looked intriguing to me. In the clip that Robert showed us, there was direct advertising going on in the game, they made a mission about it.
Attached to the link up above is the trailer to Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, which is a game that I currently own. I decided to stay on the trend of video game trailers, so I picked one of my favorite games. In the trailer, it has a voice saying what the so called “ghosts” have to do or what kind of traits they have to have to do what they do (which is take down a drug cartel in Bolivia.) There really isn’t any use value to it, unless you are going to be in the DEA and you need to take down a large cocaine smuggling and producing corporation in a foreign country. Then yes, knowing these traits of a “ghost” would be useful to you. Otherwise, like most of us, it wouldn’t be so useful and it would have some exchange value. When a gamer watches that advertisement for the game, they see the great features of the game, and it definitely entices them to go out and buy that game. The trailer for Wildlands had its graphics displayed, maybe the weapons, the storyline just a little bit, how you can change your appearance to the address the changing climate. All of this have exchange value with the user that is watching the ad.
Ps: This game is amazing and if you were ever thinking about getting it, you should totally do it. The graphics are great, a lot of weapons and customization, and its not just the same mission every time. I know first watching the trailer to this game got me hyped to play it, will it do the same for you.
WW1 Propaganda
There was a lot of propaganda being put into World War 1 advertisements back in those days. They would say something like, how can a soldier be able to send letters back home? He can use this certain companies pen, and that’s how they would get people interested in an item. Especially if the person was invested in the war, it would sell even more. Anyways, we have learned about semiotics and how it can be used with advertisements. The definition of persuasion is the act of making people do or believe something or to adopt a certain thought or action. The definition of propaganda is the ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated in order to help a cause or a person.
Now that we have both of those figured out, we can talk about how the WW1 advertisements are either propaganda or persuasion. The first one that is shown is an advertisement for the “Swan” Fountpen. It talks about how if a soldier ever needs to write to his family he could just pick up this pen and write a letter to his family. I believe that this is just persuasion because its just trying to sell the item without really lying or over exaggerating any of the information. Some of the semiotics that go with this advertisement would be signifier, signified, iconic signs, and paradigmatic relations.
signifier- there are the words on the advertisement paper
Signified- the words and pictures on the page refer to the Swan Fountpen
Iconic Signs- are the pictures on the page are iconic signs
Paradigmatic relations- if you put together the pictures and the subtle hints that this pen is the only pen to use if you’re gone for the war and sending letters back to your family
Social Penetration Theory/Post Secret
This next blog will be about an activity we did in class. It was based off the website www.postsecret.com. It’s a website that where people send in edited postcards from all over the word. Some are funny and some are quite serious. I actually like scrolling through and finding the postcards that show some humor. The serious ones are too deep for me, and I guess talking about depression just kind of freaks me out. Anyways, we are suppose to talk about why I think they shared what they shared on this website, which secret postcards stood out to me the most, and why they stood out to me against all the others.
I think the people that decided to send this website a postcard want to obviously let people know things about how they feel about a certain subject. Some actually post about someone that they met and want that person that they love them or something like that. Others who are possibly depressed post about their depression I think to get it off their chest. Because if you’re depressed, you don’t want to just tell someone in person, so they get it off their chest by using a postcard.
I already somewhat mentioned that I liked looking at the funny postcards, so those are the ones that stood out to me the most. That’s something that I would post about. Looking at some of those deep, dark ones, I would love to bring some comedic relief in there. I missed the class where we showed the postcards that we all wrote in class. I was curious to see if people actually told deep secrets, I myself put a funny joke on my postcard.
Using the social penetration theory to evaluate this website and these postcards. I would say that you could use these postcards to see what kind of person these people are. A person that is like me and would put something fun on their postcard could just be a funny person, or they could actually have a deep secret, but they are just too scared to put that secret out there for people to see. There are a lot of different ways that you could look at these postcards and it’s very interesting.
Synchrony
We had a guest speaker in class yesterday, and I thought she was wonderful. She had a lot of great points and she seemed to know what she was talking about. We talked about synchronous and asynchronous communication and how it affects us today. I like the topic of synchronous a lot, because I am a big people person and I love to talk to people face to face. I also understand the other side, asynchronous communication, and how that can play a big role with communication.
I’m going to talk about synchronous communication and some problems with texting. Lets say you’re texting your someone that you have been seeing for some time, and you are talking about where your relationship should go next. You send a big message sharing your feelings for that person. That person has their read receipts on and you see that they have receiving your message and have read your message. Now to most people, that moment when you realize that the other person has read your important message will give them anxiety. Which I think is very common with today’s society. People care too much about what others think of you, but you probably should care when it comes to this situation. Now we move on to the next step in the process, they start to type back, and you can see the three little dots pop up on your screen. Now you know they are typing a response back to you; once again I am sure that most people would get anxiety in this situation. Then those ellipses go away and now you wait for the message to come to your phone.
My point that I am trying to make is that such a small thing like read receipts and the ellipses while texting can cause people to have a short burst of anxiety at that moment. I mean, I don’t deny that I as well get that anxiety when I am texting someone important, but I just think it’s weird that it happens.
Artificial Intelligence
This next blog will be about what artificial intelligence is and how it affects our society today. The definition for artificial intelligence is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behavior. Now that we know what artificial intelligence is, we can start talking about how AI affects our society today.
All of our advances in the sheer power of computing is going to make advances in AI and make it more and more powerful than it already is. One specific instance of AI affecting our society in a good way is the JACO robotic arm. This advanced AI helps people with advanced muscular or severe upper extremity disabilities. It attaches to someones power wheelchair or bedside and brings anything to your grasp. You can use it to take a drink, pick something up for you, open the fridge for you, and many more. There is a video on the link that shows a man placing a ring on his fiancé’s finger. This is just one of the examples of how AI can help out our society today.
Airman Challenge
For this weeks blog, I will be talking about a serious game that I played on the PC and how I analyzed it according to both the cognitive and affective learning models.
I played the serious game of Airman Challenge. The game consisted of me picking a squadron in the air force to do some real life attacks or supports. I realize that they probably made this game to let people know what soldiers and pilots in the air force have to go through. The game was very realistic for when you had to pick your squad to go into battle. If you didn’t pick the right squad members with their specific skills, then you wouldn’t be able to complete the mission.
I definitely enjoyed the game, and I already love playing games as it is so it was a win win for me. I liked how it was a real life air force module, it was a nice switch from playing COD Remastered all day. For the Affective side of learning, I think the game led me all the down to the receiving. I definitely valued the game, because I thought it was a good game to play, and it was a real life depiction of what all goes into what the air force has to do before they send people out on a mission. I played three of so missions before I started to write this so I think the responding part was taken care of. Finally, I received the game was very intriguing, and it made me want to keep playing. There wasn’t really any missions that repeated so it always kept me on my toes.
Now moving on the cognitive learning side of things with Airman Challenge. I think this game got me up to the applying stage. It made me remember what some of the characteristics of the members that I had to select for my crew. I understood fully what I was doing, they had worded instructions and the game also had a narrator talking to me. The narrator kept me engaged with the game the whole time. I then applied what I learned and completed the various mission that they gave me.
Overall I think this game was serious in the aspect of the air force actually being a thing and some of the things they have to do on a day to day basis. I thought this game was engaging and maybe I’ll go back and finish the rest of the missions.
Journalism
My topic for today’s blog is journalism. We talked about many different types of journalism techniques. We talked about cultivation, exemplification, agenda setting, and framing. I will be talking about framing, and how it is used in the Dakota Access Pipeline stories.
There is a lot of different sides for the Dakota access pipeline stories. There is the side of the Native Americans who think that the pipeline is going to destroy their sacred lands, and damage their water supply. Then there is the side that the construction workers and possibly the government has, and they believe that the pipeline will benefit the North Dakota economy instead of damaging the land.
Now, you will see articles in the paper that go completely with the Native Americans and articles that go for the side of the Pipeline supporters. You can go online and easily see reporters out in the field that interview the Native Americans and obviously you know what they would say about the pipeline. Another big topic going on with the pipeline are the protests or some would say the riots. The Native Americans say that they are peacefully protesting, while there are multiple reports out there that say the Natives are rioting around the area. There was reports of the Natives destroying farmers farmland and killing their livestock. Who knows who is telling the truth, that is the beauty of framing in journalism.
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