Live like the stars at the low interest rate of 20%

Once again December has descended upon us with the echos of competing songs flooding in from every direction and every shop we pass by assault us in a barrage of sound. Our other senses bombarded with greens and reds, the swirl of mint, and the promise of joy if we just engage in the ritual of spending. I don't hate Christmas, I enjoy the days off work, and I enjoy the time I get to spend with my family, but I do not enjoy the feverish pace of consumption in the guise companionship, the struggle to find the perfect trinket to express a feeling caring or thoughtfulness. A few kind words, a hug and sometime spend in conversation have no equal in the material realm.

Avengers are buff, but are no Buffy

The Avengers movie was in theatres back in May, that being so long ago this post is hardly relevant to the times, was received with much fanfare and it was a huge success, I enjoyed it a lot. I did however want to point out two every obvious things... pointed out by many before me, and I'm sure many after me. One, cast of mostly white men, two, cast of mostly white men. Hey, isn't that the same thing twice, yes but from two different angles. First I would like to talk about the lack of racialized people in the movie, we see Nick Fury played by Samuel L Jackson, as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. he's not really a member of the team, so that leaves.... The Hulk.. he's green right... hmmm. All of the characters are "classic"

To beard or not to beard

In an effort to tackle the concept of being “masculine” I decided to take a look at the documentary film, Mansome directed by Morgan Spurlock, the director of other “gems” such as supersize me, and wherein the world is Osama bin laden,  What I was looking for was information on what we as a society see and believe to be typical gender norms for “men,” I tried to identify a hegemonic masculinity. Antonio Gramsci talks about hegemony in his Prison Notebooks, and I think looking at spontaneous consent will help identify a shift in Hegemonic masculinity. Manliness being identified as the rough and rugged working man, who loves sports, cars and beer, but shifting to include more less typically "manly" options. I would argue in part due the ability to sell products to men that have not typically been purchased, like a variety of skin care products as an example.

Boys toys, and violence or lego my lego

A few days ago, while procrastinating, I decided to watch a few youtube videos under the guise of "doing research," I decided it was time I watch the Tropes vs Women a six part vblog by Anita Sarkeesian who runs Feminist Frequency website (link in important links side bar). Lucky for me watching these videos, and many others on the channel, actually was research. The videos that struck me at the time was the two part Lego video, about the gendering of lego, which I believe she was using as an example of how toys (and other media) are gendered.

 

So what if you suck a dodgeball, board games in the class room

How do we know what is important to learn? We have been told by teachers and parents for all of our primary and secondary education that the way to learn, and what is important to learn, will be facilitated by the education system. So we go to school sit in our neat rows and the teachers pour knowledge into our brains and we regurgitate that information back to them so we can get good marks and move on to the next level until we finally reach the end of the government sponsored educational track, Paulo Freire refers to this method of education as the “banking” concept of education. Then what? We have our heads filled with “facts” but have we really learned anything? Are we any better critical thinkers? Have we developed better social skills? Not really, we are better at taking orders, following guild lines and being submissive to authority figures. Even in post-secondary learning the model is not vastly different, some professor will try alternative learn models but ultimately the system is set up for traditional testing and grading which evaluates students on their ability to take the information that has been given to them and repackage it.

The Irish and whiteness

In North America there is a discourse regarding whether or not white people have an advantage over racialized populations, Peggy McIntosh is one voice in this discussion. In her article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, she outlines the concept of white privilege, and how she sees white privilege in her daily experiences. In order to understand white privilege, I think we should first examine McIntosh’s concept of “whiteness”.

So what are the main components of Peggy McIntosh’s notion of whiteness? I will examine some of her ideas of whiteness in relation to the racialization of the Irish in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. First I will look at how McIntosh’s views of whiteness confer dominance and privilege and it’s relation to the Irish. Then, I will examine how McIntosh sees whiteness as being taught to be seen as morally neutral, average, ideal and what relationship this has with Irish immigration and immigrants.

Stuart Hall and ideology: A brief look at Animal rights

I will be looking at Stuart Halls’ definition of ideology, Hall describes an ideology as “The mental frameworks – the language, concepts, categories, imagery of thought and system of representation – which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works” (Hall, 1996 pg. 26). What does Hall mean by this definition of ideology? From this definition it is easy to see that Halls definition is rooted in the material, instead of the metaphysical, the physical world and how we interpret it is the most important part of understanding our lives and how we fit into things. I intend to look at the Animal rights movement and use it as a lens with which to look at Halls’ concept of ideology showing that the Ideology of the Animal rights movement is grounded in the real world and stands against real oppression.

I will do this by looking at some of the components that make up the ideology of the Animal rights movement; first I will look at language and examine some of terms used by proponents of Animals rights to communicate their message; I will also talk about the imagery, how it is used and the meanings behind the imagery.

Panopticon, society and power

Michel Foucault sees Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as a metaphor for how disciplinary power is exercised in modern society; the panopticon is a shift from the earlier model of disciplinary power that housed prisoners in a dungeon and exacted out physical punishment via torture or execution on the physical body of the prisoner; Power was viewed as being solely in the hands of the monarch. (Foucault, 1975/1977)The Panoptic model was that prisoners would be housed in individual cells cut off from contact with the outside and other prisoners and under constant surveillance, or perceived surveillance, by a central tower within which would be stationed a guard. The prisoner could see the tower but not the guard, the uncertainty of the exercising of power made the power constant (pg. 200, 201). The power then shifts from the observer to the observed who thinks they are being constantly watched (Foucault, 1975/1977). In this way the observed will exercise power upon themselves to keep their actions in line with what is perceived as normal behaviour for fear of being of punished. This is a decentralisation of power; the power to discipline is now in the hands of the disciplined. This economy of discipline allows for less authority to govern more people (Foucault, 1975/1977).