Las Vegas- A City of Consumption

When I was twelve years old, I told my mom I wanted to see the world. All of my cousins were in Europe, but I was too ill to travel outside of the country. Even at the young of an age, my requests were difficult to complete. My mom, never one to upstage, took me to Las Vegas so we could see all of the “different areas of the world”. I would like to defend my mother’s decision because this was the time in which Las Vegas had decided to market itself as family friendly. When I was twelve, I admit I didn’t quite grasp the experience that is Las Vegas. We were there only for two days and spent most of the day either in our hotel room or by the pool because of the weather.

I did not venture past state lines again until last April, when I was encountered by a different Vegas, or at the very least a different view of Vegas. In April 2010, gone was the family friendly moniker of the past. This new and adult-friendly Vegas was proud of its relationship with the term “Sin City”. I was awed with the number of chain restaurants that enveloped the strip. I was awed even more so by the fact that the best chefs in the United States (i.e. Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Bobby Flay, Charlie Palmer, and Mario Batali) all had outposts in the city. I have never seen a city reinvent itself as much as Vegas does. After contemplating the face lift the city did to its reputation in less than ten years, I was reminded of the film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The city of Las Vegas makes money off of the tourism industry. It is of no coincidence that the largest hotels and most profitable restaurants are in Las Vegas. If it loses interest in the public eye, it does not survive. Locals do not gamble of the strip, and those that do usually leave after some years because the Las Vegas experience infiltrated in their lives. I have never seen so many people wrapped in an experience than I did in Vegas. The city does provides an escapist reality, but at the expense of things far greater than simply enjoyment. We all do try to experience the different and become world travelers, yet Las Vegas is very different then America in general. Every resort is a generalization of the country or theme in which it replicates. Most of the restaurants that are successful in the city are the ones that you will find in any town in America. There is always something comforting with familiarity and something exciting about different, yet Las Vegas manages to blend the two in way that no one is neither truly comfortable or uncomfortable in its vicinity.

Something one woman at the airport I overheard talking struck me, “I don’t even like to gamble, but there is something when you hear and see all the bells and whistles that excite me. I’m not that kind of person at all”. The real sin the city of Las Vegas has is that it changes people in one way. When you are there in its grasp, you are physically consumed in a way that it’s hard not to want to play the penny slot machines, hard not to join the free players club with 25 dollar free play, or delight in the all you can eat buffet. I hope that after being in the city once and recognizing its affect that if I ever did go back to the gambling capital of the world that I would be able to have a more educated and aware out. I really hope I can be strong against the power that is the I Dream of Jeannie slot machine.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2009/industries/176/index.html-- pay attention to percentage drops and the number of corporations based in Las Vegas (Wynn, Las Vegas Sands, Harrahs, Boyd Gambling, MGM). It is surprising that it beat out some major hotel companies like Fairmont or Hilton.

Nike's Women Problem

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/nikes-women-problem/

If there is any corporation we should be calling out at the moment, it is not a breast cancer foundation, but Nike. Over the past few months they have shown they do not care about the behavior of the athletes they represent. Not surprisingly both incidents regard women. Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger continue to be supported by Nike. Perhaps with the Roethlisberger case, Nike looks even worse. After all, cheating on your wife is very different from sexual assault and rape. Interestingly, Nike dropped Michael Vick after he was convicted of dog fighting. Animal abuse is a terrible thing but may I be so bold as to say that abusing women is worse? Nike clearly does not care about its female consumers. Furthermore, there are many talented female athletes whom Nike chooses not to represent. I hope that women seriously consider these issues the next time they are thinking about buying a Nike product. I know I cannot support a brand that supports these men.

Right Now, We Are Converging

I wrote this for my personal blog several months ago, but I thought it would be pertinent here:

**************

This totally has to be an homage to the Van Halen video for "Right Now." Right? It totally does.







The song they use is even "Right Here, Right Now." Surriously showing some love to Van Halen.

This is interesting stuff, and I'd love to poke around and learn more about how they assessed these statistics. This is like pure nerdgasm fodder for people in my field, especially the parts about communications technologies. Fans of Henry Jenkins will no doubt be thinking of his discussions of participatory cultures and media convergence. However, Jenkins doesn't attribute rapid media evolution to technology alone, but, rather, to changes in protocols - how we use technologies, how we experience them, and how we think about them. Technologies only function as we utilize them, only mean as we make them mean, and these things are constantly changing.

Let us avoid the pitfalls of the "digital revolution" paradigm, which was oh-so-popular in the 90s. Jenkins explains, “In the 1990s, rhetoric about a coming digital revolution contained an implicit and often explicit assumption that new media was going to push aside old media, that the Internet was going to replace broadcasting, and that all of this would enable consumers to more easily access media content that was personally meaningful to them.”[i] According to this view, the televisual medium would completely disappear and be replaced by personalized Internet media consumption. “Yet,” Jenkins writes, “history teaches us that old media never die – and they don’t even necessarily fade away. What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content – the 8-track, the Beta tape. These are what media scholars call delivery technologies.…Delivery technologies become obsolete and get replaced; media, on the other hand, evolve.”[ii] So, while the current iteration of the television set may disappear, Television will not suddenly cease to exist. The desktop computer may go the way of the dodo, but the Internet will not disappear with it. Telephones and mobile telephones may be replaced by chips embedded in our ears for all I know, but we will still be making some version of the phone call for many years to come, even if it’s not still called a “phone” call. These media have changed and will change, but they will not simply be destroyed in one fell swoop.

This is the nature of convergence. As Jenkins explains, “If the digital revolution paradigm presumed that new media would displace old media, the emerging convergence paradigm assumes that old and new media will interact in ever more complex ways.”[iii] However, convergence does not mean that every medium will merge into one supermedium, or that every delivery technology will merge into one superdevice. This misconception is what Jenkins calls the “Black Box Fallacy”: “Sooner or later, the argument goes, all media content is going to flow through a single black box into our living rooms (or, in the mobile scenario, through black boxes we carry around with us everywhere we go). If…folks…could just figure out which black box will reign supreme, then everyone can make reasonable investments for the future.”[iv] However, convergence is a not a static point on the horizon, but, rather, a constantly evolving process. There is no endpoint in which media consumption is pumped through a single channel. Jenkins observes,

I don’t know about you, but in my living room, I am seeing more and more black boxes. There are my VCR, my digital cable box, my DVD player, my digital recorder, my sound system, and my two game systems, not to mention a huge mound of videotapes, DVDs and CDS, game cartridges and controllers, sitting atop, laying alongside, toppling over the edge of my television system…The perpetual tangle of cords that stands between me and my “home entertainment” center reflects the degree of incompatibility and dysfunction that exist between the various media technologies.[v]

Even using a television set has not become more streamlined, but, rather, more accessorized. The various technologies associated with Television exist in constant reassociation, not inevitable consolidation into a single machine (even if sometimes functionalities merge). Of course, a television set is not Television any more than a CD player is music. Jenkins maintains, “Part of what makes the black box concept a fallacy is that it reduces media change to technological change and strips aside the cultural levels we are considering here.”[vi] Convergence is not about shifting usage from an old device to a new replacement device as much as it is about the flow of content among different platforms. It does not follow a singularly linear trajectory, but, rather, a rhizomatic series of associations. This is why Television did not banish radio from the earth, and why the Internet has not, in turn, shut down the Television industry. Are these media changed? Most definitely. Convergence is a process of adaptation and evolution, not extinction.

Moreover, shifts in media are greatly related to shifts in the cultures surrounding them. Let’s take Television as a case study here. Television is a largely communal activity – “research on television suggests that while homes may have multiple televisions, only one set is on during prime time in most households because we still prefer to watch television content socially rather than individually and the shows that do best are those that give us content we can talk about with others.”[vii] Even if one is physically alone when viewing a particular program, as one often is, one can still participate in a viewing culture, whether at the office or online. Whereas some theorists emphasize the individual nature of Television viewing today, Jenkins argues that “the greatest changes are occurring within consumption communities.”[viii] He cites Marshall Sella of the New York Times:

With the aid of the Internet, the loftiest dream for television is being realized: an odd brand of interactivity. Television began as a one-way street winding from producers to consumers, but that street is now becoming two-way. A man with one machine (a TV) is doomed in isolation, but a man with two machines (TV and a computer) can belong to a community.[ix]

Jenkins might argue that the phenomenon is not inherently linked to having these “two machines” specifically, but, rather, to having access to a network of fans. In turn, these fan networks can have a measurable effect on Television. Certainly in terms of ratings, communities can create buzz or ill-will toward a show, affecting viewership and causing the show to be either more profitable or less profitable for its broadcasters (and thus, either worth or not worth keeping on the air). This is not a terribly new concept, but it is enhanced by greater accessibility to networked communities. Fans have even been known to save a particular show from being canned (“Chuck”),[x] or even bring one back from the grave (“Family Guy”).[xi]

Further than this, however, fan communities can even come to influence content, scheduling, and ancillary media products like websites, text message systems, and official fanfiction forums. Because a great deal of Television is episodic in nature, it has the potential to adapt to feedback with much more ease and swiftness than media like books or movies. Moreover, the feedback itself is more immediate and copious (which, no doubt, can also cause some headaches). Fans are afforded a greater sense of participation in the works of media they consume, and, sometimes, an actual influence on those works of media. Jenkins notes, “Across the past decade, the Web has brought these consumers to the margins of the media industry into the spotlight; research into fandom has been embraced by important thinkers in the legal and business communities….Participation is understood as part of the normal ways the media operate, while the current debates center around the terms of our participation.”[xii]

Fans are not given carte blanche, and surely the acceptance of viewer participation on the part of the producers and networks is motivated by economic opportunity, rather than an egalitarian commitment to “democratizing” Television. (Although Al Gore did in fact launch a cable channel, called Current, whose broadcasts are composed partially of content produced by viewers.)[xiii] And, certainly, sometimes what is really provided is the illusion of participation, rather than actual participation. Do we really know for sure that NBC wasn’t going to bring back “Chuck” anyway? Do we know they didn’t orchestrate the whole Internet-fueled “Save Chuck” campaign, with its largescale “buycot” strategy? Do we know that it was the fans, and not the network, who initiated the campaign to buy sandwiches from Subway (a “Chuck” sponsor) en masse and drop comment cards asking them to help save the show? Doesn’t this have a certain odor about it? (And I’m not talking about that distinctive Subway smell…the one that allows one to detect the presence of a Subway from up to a mile away with only a moderately brisk wind in one’s direction.)

Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m just a Naysayer Nellie. It’s quite possible that the fans did save the show, and, as Jenkins has repeatedly shown, there have been plenty of instances in which fan cultures have enacted demonstrable media change. Does this mean that the fans are in charge? Certainly not. However, Jenkins argues that media participation may afford consumers a greater measure of power in the marketplace. In Convergence Culture’s conclusion, an article entitled “Democratizing Television? The Politics of Participation,” he maintains,

We are just learning how to exercise that power – individually and collectively – and we are still fighting to define the terms under which we will be allowed to participate. Many fear this power; others embrace it. There are no guarantees that we will use our new power any more responsibly than nation-states or corporations have exercised theirs. We are trying to hammer out the ethical codes and social contracts that will determine how we will relate to one another just as we are trying to determine how this power will insert itself into the entertainment system or into the political process.[xiv]

If viewers can jump on the train of rapid media changeability, they can maybe, just maybe, have a seat at the table. He asks, “Have I gone too far? Am I granting too much power here to these consumption communities? Perhaps. But keep in mind that I am not really trying to predict the future.”[xv] He avoids the mistake of making grand pronouncements that will come to haunt him later. “Rather,” he says, “I am trying to point toward the democratic potentials found in some contemporary cultural trends. There is nothing inevitable about the outcome. Everything is up for grabs.”[xvi]





[i] Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Updated ad with a New Afterward (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 5.

[ii] Ibid, 13.

[iii] Ibid, 6.

[iv] Ibid, 14-15.

[v] Ibid, 15.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Henry Jenkins, “Catching Up: The Future of Television,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Complete Weblog of Henry Jenkins. July 24, 2006. Available Last accessed Jan. 7, 2010.

[viii] Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 255.

[ix] Marshall Sella, “The Remote Controllers,” New York Times, October 20, 2002, qtd. in Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 256.

[x] See www.chuckmeout.com.

[xi] See “‘Family Guy Returns to FOX,” FOX News Online, Apr. 30, 2005. Available Last accessed Jan. 7, 2010.

[xii] Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 257.

[xiii] Ibid, 251.

[xiv] Ibid, 256.

[xv] Ibid, 257.

[xvi] Ibid, 258.

Haul Videos

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/tube-tops-and-teddy-bears/?ref=fashion

http://www.youtube.com/user/allthatglitters21?blend=1&ob=4

I'm having a hard time understanding what this is. Basically, a new phenomenon has begun where girls post videos of them showing everything they just bought from a shopping trip. Or they show random objects in their room or they show you how to put on makeup. This particular one, by Elle Fowler, has over 11 million views. Over 11 million people have watched her put on makeup, show her princess piggy bank, and give her opinions about the value of sororities. I can't think of something that more represents our obsession with consumption. We are consuming this girl consuming. By watching her video we are consuming through her. I for one cannot watch more than 10 seconds of one of these videos. I'm struggling to understand why people are so fascinated by this. I'm guessing her viewers are either young girls who wish to emulate her, young boys who think she is attractive, or older viewers wishing to reclaim their youth. Whoever they are she has turned into a way for many companies to advertise their products for free and she mentions that she now receives many free samples. When it comes down to it, this is just another form of advertising, yet here young girls are being taken advantage of by companies because of their love of consumption. These videos are still weird though...

KFC as Ethical Consumption?

At first I thought this was a joke. Buckets of fried chicken as the symbol for a cure for breast cancer? In what world is this a sensible PR move for the Komen Foundation? I mean, they're certainly a hypermerchandised nonprofit. That's sort of their schtick - charitable proceeds funneled from retail consumer dollars. You buy this crappy pink mosaic Pier 1 candle, most likely assembled by exploited laborers in developing nations, and a portion of the profit goes to the Komen Foundation. I suppose it's not all that offensive in the grand scheme of things, because it's not like cancer research can't use all the funds it can get. Plus, let's face it, most of us buy crappy products assembled by exploited laborers in developing nations anyway. We may not necessarily have bought THESE products if they weren't branded pink, but I try to avoid getting self-righteous about sweatshop products when I very clearly shop at Target.

But, what is this odd cross promotion between fried flesh and medical research? EXTREMELY TERRIBLE-FOR-YOU fried flesh, the likes of which have been linked to various cancer risk factors! As the Facebook group entitled "SUSAN G KOMEN 'BUCKETS FOR A CURE?????" EPIC FAIL! SHAME!" reads,


PEOPLE SHOULD BE OUTRAGED! THIS IS NOT ONLY COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE, IT IS SUCH SHAMELESS CORPORATE PANDERING! DO NOT DONATE TO SUSAN G KOMEN UNTIL THEY RETRACT THIS PROGRAM.

BUCKETS of FRIED chicken. BUCKETS. For a CURE. A cure for CANCER. A cure VIA sales of hormone-injected, tortured, processed and deep-fried flesh & fat. Fried BREASTS, even. "Food" that may likely be a CAUSE of breast cancer. SUSAN G KOMEN: FAIL. FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL. SHAME. FAIL. FAIL.


Okay, well, the corporate pandering part...this is not new. All of these charitable cross promotions do this to some extent. Does that mean that they don't believe in the cause? Not necessarily. But you can bet most of them wouldn't be participating if it didn't first and foremost boost their bottom line. Plus, tax credits.

But, the very disconcerting embrace between an organization supposedly committed to both preventative- and treatment-oriented medical advocacy and a corporation that serves as a metonymic index of the grossly misguided health choices frequently made in the United States...these are very strange bedfellows indeed. Or, at least they seem to be on an emotional level. Perhaps they're not so far apart at all. Logistically speaking, the only difference between KFC and the Komen Foundation is a 501(c)3 letter. Certainly we can make distinctions on a mission-based level, but I wonder how much this really ends up mattering with regards to how these brands are run and marketed.

Is it telling that this ostensibly charitable and health-conscious move by KFC comes the same week as the much-mediatized release of the Double Down, that most notorious of artery-clogging sandwiches with a near cult following - cheese, bacon, and mayo-based sauce sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. I have no doubt that there are items on chain menus that have far higher caloric and fat values. The Double Down is just so CONSPICUOUS. Teaming up with KFC during Double Downgate doesn't seem like a good PR move for the Komen Foundation, but could it be true that they are banking on the increased foot traffic promoted by the Double Down? Come for the Double Down, stay for the guilt-relieving ethical and health-conscious purchase? Are they hoping the irony won't register? Or that, if it does, it will simply be amusing?

Revised Abstract: Consuming (Real)ity Stardom

While reading everyone's abstracts for the peer-review session during our last class, it occurred to me that my own abstract ("Consuming Celebrity") is probably too broad of a topic to be approached in the final paper. I've narrowed my topic down to reality stardom, and have re-written a new abstract:

Consuming (Real)ity Stardom

The huge success of the reality TV format in the last two decades has revolutionized the parameters of “stardom” to include everyday people plucked from obscurity who have skyrocketed to the celebrity stratosphere. In my paper, I will argue that reality television shows indicate a democratization of previously conceived notions of “stardom,” and that the structural format of these products place heavy emphasis on the consumer as judge of more realistic character archetypes. Ultimately, this phenomenon indicates a devaluation of the scripted narrative in favor of a more (real)istic television format that encourages consumer identification through heavily mediated “authentic” melodrama.

First, I will begin by contextualizing the boom in the reality TV format as a popular form of mass entertainment, in which “real” people are reduced to character archetypes, as first exemplified by “The Real World.” I will compare this to Jib Fowles’ understanding of the “Star Village,” in which celebrities fulfill a societal need for archetypes. The reality format has led to an increase in the number of acceptable “celebrities,” therefore devaluating the term “star.” However, reality stars are also perceived as being more disposable than legitimate actors.

Next, I will consider the structural format of reality TV shows from the perspective of consuming bodies within a specific and fetishized locale. In both “lifestyle” and “competition-based” shows, the overemphasis on people in relation to their location reveals how consumers understand lifestyle as inseparable from environment. From “The Hills” romanticized notion of Hollywood to the myriad of “Survivor” destinations, the body’s relationship to location is of utmost importance. The competitive nature of these shows, in which contestants compete in gladiator-style tests of strength and sexuality, provides rich fodder for the consumer to analyze.

Particularly in competition-based reality programming, the consumer is positioned as both judge and fan. In shows like “American Idol,” the judging of a contestant’s “star quality” is a precursor to active participation by the fan in voting for a favorite. Fans are asked to identify with the judges, and weigh in on a number of factors- from personality, to quality of their work, to their eligibility as a potential mate. This complicates Julie Wilson’s article “Star Testing,” and brings her argument into a context that is not necessarily specific to women, and does not posit such an “idealized” picture of stardom. Instead, the reality star is a more accessible point for testing and self-evaluation.

From this analysis, I will conclude that the reality TV boom may be an indication of growing disinterest in scripted narrative, in favor of a more “real” depiction of melodrama, as lived by everyday people. However, reality TV purposely erases its own construction. By re-interpreting Lynne Joyrich’s article about TV and melodrama, I will argue that the reality television form draws the consumer into a world of stardom that is perceived as being more “real,” and therefore, more authentic.

Kick-Ass

Has anybody else seen Kick-Ass yet? Can we not agree that it is the live-action vulgar version of Kung Fu Panda? The feminized fanboy has made yet another appearance in a big Hollywood film. While Kick-Ass goes to great lengths to challenge gender roles (the filthy mouthed, ass-kicking little girl. I am unsure how beneficial this representation even is) the film perpetuates the image of the new male. Within the Kick-Ass diegesis this feminized (I do not mean gendered, but instead disempowered and infantilized) male is a product of a society fully engrossed in youtube, social media, and alternate realities. This movie made me wonder why Hollywood has abandoned the Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger type male figure. Who is the modern day action star? Is the decline of this image not concurrent to the rise of gaming culture and social media? For those of you who have not seen Kick-Ass SPOILER ALERT: The two most aggressive and historically masculine characters are killed by then end of the movie. I am by no means saying one representation is better or more productive than the other, but simply wondering where Rambo went.

And speaking of themes and topics from class being repackaged into new films has anybody seen the trailer for Human Caterpillar? If not, it is the story of tourists being abducted in Germany and instead of being harvested for organs they are turned into a human caterpillar by a mad German scientist.