Rich D, Holly C, Emily D + Lyndon T
Grounded Aesthetics:
- “For the grounded aesthetics documented in this book are not only a rebuke to formal ‘aesthetics’, they and many like them should also be understood as the basic ‘ordinary’ micro-mechanisms which are producing daily and in concrete contexts what we regard as ‘general’ social and cultural change, ‘periodised’ shifts and reformations of human identities.”
- Grounded aesthetics evolve with the current youth culture. Brit art began in 1988. The use of “shock tactics”, throwaway materials, wild-living and oppositional and entrepreneurial viewpoints appear frequently. A noted artist of this movement is Damien Hurst.
- Willis explains why youth culture is so important:-''forge new resistant, resilient and independent ones to survive in and find alternatives to the improvement roles proffered by modern state bureaucracies and rationalized industry''
- British culture are fascinated with horror and drama. We are fascinated with our own mortality. We feel that by making it more tangible we can deal with and understand it in a more effective manner.
- By making things funny and ironic we feel that we are making things feel less threatening.
- By making threats part of our everyday lives we feel that we are better enabled to deal with problems and it makes us feel that we are not alone. We feel It’s our responsibility to get involved in police business as we feel we have a right to know what is happening in our communities.
- Meaning applying to all.
- Religion meaning a lifestyle that is a set of rules.
- Huge variety of mixed cultures.
- We are becoming tolerant to diversity.
- Abandoning prejudices.
- Acceptance of multiple religions.
- 1960s CND ‘’peace man no nuclear’’
- The internet is becoming the infinite transmission medium for any cultural material you could possibly think of. -Lyndon
- The set text we got given was written over 20 years ago.
- However our first thoughts were about things we all take for granted now.
- Mainly speaking the internet + YouTube.
- He may not have know how spot on he was with relation to inter-webbing.
- Paul Willis stated “There is now a whole social and cultural medium of inter-webbing common meaning and identity –making which blunts deflects, minces up or transforms outside or top-down communication In particular elite or ‘official’ culture has lost its dominance."
Leisure-
- “..young people feel more themselves in leisure than do at work’’
- The perception of the media has changed the minds of the younger generation today that are more interested in leisure than work.
- What a contradiction! We now work so that we can do nothing.
- Leisure has become so important to culture.
- “we have to conclude that, in general the public sector cannot do better than the commercial sector….There is no point in hopeless competitions with the market.”
- This is not necessarily true today as software is more widely available.
- Also with the occurrence of the internet there is a much wider platform to showcase and discover creativity.
- “One simple way of pursuing the ‘best side’ is to seek to give everyday culture back to its owners and let them develop it.”
- More and more we are taking items from ‘high’ culture and changing them.
- Examples are spoofs or satire and remixes or image manipulations. sss
- Parody:- Example / Definition
- Remix:- Example / Definition
We are constantly using and re-using media materials presented to us. - This creates a feedback loop. ‘Youth’ takes and then creates and in turn the media listens and produced what they think will appeal, this is then again reacted to and the loop goes on.
- A prime example of this would be anime music videos.
- Leek Spin - This has become an internet wide phenomenon. And has turned into a meme.
- Meme = a relatively newly coined term, identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another. The concept comes from an analogy: as genes transmit biological information, memes can be said to transmit idea and belief information.
- “Most importantly perhaps, cultural commodities can function not only as consumables but also as factors of production for repeated and different kinds of symbolic work, creativity and the production of grounded aesthetics in informal cultural production. This informal cultural production may be many times more significant in terms of human meanings and human involvements of time, skill, effort and satisfaction than the original commercial production.”
- Caramelldansen: An internet phenomenon that started when someone combined a 3 second anime clip with a Swedish song remix. Now most everyone knows of it. Convention go-ers even dance to it in the hundred. Its an example how mutable the internet makes things. It also is a further example of how many people share an element of culture through remix.
- “They implicitly and explicitly pose questions and propositions: ‘it might be more fun consuming than…being traditional…being married…going to trade-union meetings…being a housewife…being bored stiff of work…dealing with social security…going to labour party meetings.”
- This insinuates that traditionalism is boring. We have more fun by indulging in things that we do not need. We don’t want to give up without a fight and just become housewives, white collar/blue collar workers, politicians etc.
- Someone once said that “Without stereotypes we would go insane.” The media have taken this idea to heart. It is rare to see an average person on television, apart from in adverts. Confrontational reality television epitomises this, where examples of conflicting stereotypes are placed in situations created to inspire arguments.
- The Cave was not mentioned in the text, but Lyndon wanted to find the meaning of the term ‘epistemology’ and this led him to Plato. I remembered the Allegory of the Cave, and his train of thought led him to adapt the meaning of it to be an interpretation of the role of the media.
- We are like the prisoners chained by the fire. The media are like the people with the shapes casting their shadows. It is too easy to let them think for us and to accept their interpretation of the world as canon. We all do it. It is very difficult to try and look for one’s own understanding of reality and the world itself. Because of this difficulty, most people allow the media, in some form or other, to feed their knowledge (documentary), understanding (stereotypes, stories, fictional media, advertising), or comprehension of the world. Nobody will ever admit this themselves.
- Maybe we are all just sitting in that cave looking to the media to show us life?
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