Pleasantville...Post-Comps Bluuuur

Excuse me if this post seems out there or hard to understand...it's been a very long week and a half...

So I just want to start out with the irony of Barney Fife being a part of a movie about the 50s...ohhh I loved it...Moving on...Marling Marling Marling...we all know the connections with that...the mention of the automobile, the Mamie Eisenhower style of dresses, Elvis music...the list goes on and on. That book fit perfectly into this movie. A book that I read for comps called Homeward Bound, was about how the Cold War affected the domestic sphere and created the 50s culture...I recommend it, loved it! And found many connections but I will spare you right now.

The scene with Jen (Reese Witherspoon) trying to come to terms with the 50s undergarments made me think of Leslie Shannon Miller's essay "The Many Figures of Eve: Styles of Womanhood Embodied in a Late 19th Century Corset" Of course because it's women's underwear but also in realizing how it's changed and the different shapes it makes on women's bodies...etc.

All of the articles on globalization also came to mind...Pleasantville was an isolated entity...the streets didn't go anywhere outside of the town, that is until the big change then it and the population is opened up to the outside world, which offers many opportunities and diversity.

The nesxt reading it relates to is bell hook's "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistence" which focuses on the attractiveness of the exotic. When people started becoming colored this whole sexual revolution takes place. They are consumed by "the other" it's new and exciting, but then of course there are those that still don't think so...

It also reminds be of "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory" by Raymond Williams...about the residual and emergent cultures...the "colored ones' start out as the minority but then like in "From Culture to Hegemony: Subculture The Unnatureal Break" this subculture then rises up to become part of the dominant. Everyone becomes colored...

The list of references could go on and on but I am going to stop there before completely not making any sense! See you Thursday!

Unfortunately the dash to comps prep and a too busy weekend to post then will force me to post now. So excuse the lack of page numerations.

Pleasantville certainly (as everyone else has mentioned) sits nicely with Marling's book. I particularly thought about this first wit the dichotomy between everything being "nice" (which is a cultural construct) in Pleasantville in contrast with Jen who was a "bad girl" from her selfish attitude, teenage smoking culture, and her sexual image. Compared to the 1950s girl who was not supposed to be sexual and that supposedly Skip for example, would not notice her breasts because people generally were less sexual in the 1950s according to the mythology of the decade.

Another area that I thought fit in nicely with Marling's book is the teenagers' uses of automobiles to buck parental authority. This is less evident when we first see Skip with the car than after Jen gets her hands on him and starts telling everyone else about the fun to be had in the back seat of a car. The town in fact begins to be obsessed with what is going on in the cars at the place (sorry can't remember name of the place right now) where the teenagers would hang out.

As others before me in this blog have pointed out the movie addressed simulation vs. reality dichotomy examined by Baudrillard. What I find particularly fascinating about simulation is that ultimately reality enters the simulated world. In Plesantville that happened immediately for Jen. She was not interested in being Bobby Sue and thought the whole town was not living in reality. David wanted Jen to conform until they found someway out of their situation. However, slowly and then abruptly, David absorbed the disgust for this imagined way of life. He became so engulfed in change he could not distinguish when it happened (he forgot the eating of the fruit...I don't know how many more Adam's will fall for forbidden fruit).

Lastly, I thought about the article regarding exotic women and white males' obsession with them. The white males began chasing the "colored" mother in the streets when the town began discriminatory practices toward those not "black and white." Lucky for her she was able to have someone come to her defense unlike many others who were not so lucky.

Pleasantville

Oh my, well where to begin.

I know that the whole movie seemed as if it should be a part of Marlings book, but I am trying to include the other readings as well. The movie was a wonderful media visualization after reading Marling though.

The first thing that jumped out at me was nostalgia of the whole beginning of the movie through Toby's characters eyes. This lead me to Jean Baudrillard's article and his discuss on simulation. The idea of Pleasantville being a simulation is similar to how he describes Disneyland as a simulation. Disneyland was the 'reality' that American's wanted. They wanted to believe a place like that existed. Toby's character, wanted to believe that a Pleasantville existed, he needed that escape from reality. When they first become a part of Pleasantville, he is so apt to conforming to their life because that is what he always thought he wanted, however, as the movie progresses he realizes that it was a simulation and reality must change the way Pleasantville looks. Poster's article on virtual realities also seemed to fit in wonderfully here at this moment when Bud, wanted this idea of Pleasantville to be a true reality.

In the movie, Betty Sue, makes reference to the amount of undergarment she is wearing, which brought me straight to Leslie Shannon Miller's article on the corset. The confinement of women through undergarments is seen in the amount of them worn by the character to preserve her wholesomeness.

Werbel's essay on the Foley Food Mill, also got me thinking about the mother's role in the movie at the beginning. The scene that stood out to me the most about the mother as the nurturer, was their first morning in Pleasantville and the amount of food that was on the breakfast table. Even though her children were almost grown and their were only four of them in the house, the mother made enough food to serve an all you can eat buffet and still have left overs. This connected nicely with the idea of Werbel's essay as women as the central nurturer for the family.

Towards the end of the movie, roads lead to places outside Pleasantville. This made me think of our last big week of readings and globalization. They are globalizing in their own way, including parts of the world that were not originally a part of the town. Appaduri's work, seemed to relate to this. With his example of the Fillipino's living our past as their present. Pleasantville seemed to be living our past as their present once they joined the road toward globalization.

Pleasantville...

Oh the joys of going home for the weekend, and having a tree fall in your yard, knocking out the power. Haha. But thinking about the material culture that is simply steeped in the movie Pleasantville will certainly be extra exciting today.

I have seen this movie several times before, but never have I thought so critically about the material and media aspects of the film. When watching it, I kind of kept thinking of the "Industry, Nature, and Identity in an Iron Footbridge" article by Carlo Rotella. He talks about the bridge being a structure that bridges not only people to a physical environment, but also people to their emotions past and present. Similarly in the movie, the TV transports David and Jennifer to another place and time and reconnects them with emotions and situations from the past. "Even as a object of analysis, the bridge serves its traditional function: it allows us to distinguish each term from its opposite, like two banks of a river, but it gives us a way to understand the pair together as a single terrain" p. 191. The whole experience that the two siblings have in this movie bridge the gap (pun intended) to a new way of thinking that was learned from the almost primeval way in the town of Pleasantville.

The whole movies screams "I should be a part of the Marling book, especially since I'm about TV". The set design (or should I say design of pleasant Pleasantville) struck me as an example of Marling's chapter called "Disneyland, 1955". Not that the town of Pleasantville is like Disneyland in the fact that Disneyland "was commercial, a roadside money machine, cynically exploiting the innocent dreams of childhood" p. 90 Marling. But the design of Pleasantville is campy and almost a parody of real 1950s towns. The seemingly picture perfect homes, manicured lawns, and layout is portrayed that way to entice someone like David to feel as though this is a perfect place where life is happy and cheery. Disneyland is similarly designed, to entice a false sense of perfection and calm. The clothing design in the film (again, or should I say the real not-so-real lives of the Pleasantvillians?) does a similar thing that the set/home design does. When seeing Betty's character in the clearly "Mamie Eisenhower" looks, its so obvious to see that 1950s mentality! It also made me wonder how the history of women's wear has gone from the corset to the Mamie look. The clothes worn by Mary Sue/Jennifer and Betty were totally of the time period. But were they comfortable? Were they any more 'liberating' than the corset? Leslie Shannon Miller, in her article called "Styles of Womanhood Embodied in a Late-Nineteeth-Century Corset" says that "Granted, not many women were killed by their corsets; the majority of women merely lost the spirit and energy of youth even as they attained its physical shape" p. 138. Did the same thing happen or not in the Mamie Eisenhower look that Marling talks about in her chapter called "Mamie Eisenhower's New Look"?

I think that you could have a whole semester long class on this movie. There is just so much to look at, and each thing seems to have a deeper meaning!

Pleasantville

Debord says “The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible…The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance” (Durham/Kellner 119). First, the Pleasantville citizenry is somewhat hypnotized by its own spectacle nature. The people are engrossed in what their society has become that they fail to see that anything could be different and/or better. Also, David (Tobey Maguire’s character) is a victim of the Pleasantville spectacle. He sees his own reality as “unreal, unglamorous, and boring…while the spectacle is exciting and enthralling” (Durham/Keller 93) to the point that the spectacle regulates much of his real life (e.g. his lunchtime Pleasantville trivia game). In the creation of this spectacle, the Dorfman/Mattelart article about Disneyland comes to mind. Ideas about the way life “should” be and how people “should” behave were embedded into the Pleasantville society and broken only by the arrival of two outsiders. Just as Dorfman and Mattelart insisted that embedded messages created a cycle of ideologies, the rules of the home, school, and general life were embedded into Pleasantville society such as the daily routine of coming home, putting down the briefcase, saying “Honey, I’m home,” and having a warm dinner ready to eat (Durham/Kellner 122-129). Pleasantville as a spectacle containing embedded messages of ideal views about life also fits into Baudrillard’s conception of a “hyperreal model of the United States that is more-real-than-real, generating role models, ideals, and an image of a perfect world” (Durham/Kellner 447). While Baudrillard is discussing the role of Disneyland in the simulation of a real world, the concept applies to the presentation of Pleasantville as a model 1950s America and also ties into Marling’s decision to use 1950s icons as representatives of that cultural era.

When David and Jennifer arrive in Pleasantville, though, life begins to change for the town. Hebdige says that “violations of the authorized codes through which the social world is organized and experienced have considerable power to provoke and disturb. They are generally condemned…” (Durham/Kellner 153). When many people in Pleasantville begin to change into color, they represent the breaking of certain codes and ideals; they are a subculture. But just as Hebdige predicts, the concepts of the subculture become embedded within the dominant groups when the reluctant town leaders literally change their colors (Durham/Kellner 158). This “colored” subculture becomes for some Pleasantville citizens comparable to bell hooks’s “Others”. Hooks discusses ethnicity and race as commodity, spicing up mainstream white culture to the point that the “other” becomes an object of desire. Hooks points out that American culture creates the ideas “that racial difference marks one as Other and the assumption that sexual agency expressed within the context of racialized sexual encounter is a conversion experience that alters one’s place…” (Durham/Kellner 367). These ideas are presented in Pleasantville through the portrayal of “colored” townspeople in connection with sexual activity and eventually as different from the rest of the townspeople. The most obvious character who falls into hooks’s view of “desire and resistance” of the Other is Skip, who has no problem having sex with Mary Sue/Jennifer but also participates in the book burning activities. He is intrigued by the activities associated with the “coloreds” in private but to the rest of the town he struggles against the rise of the subculture…he both desires and resists.

Material, Media, and Pleasantville

One element of the film that I found striking was its use of the material aspects of food and cooking to discuss the ideal of domesticity in 1950s culture. As in Werbel's Foley Food Mill analysis, the film is working with the idea that women are the center of the household-- processing the raw materials of everyday life to make them palatable and pleasant for the family unit (Prown/Haltman 240). It seems no accident that the first really major destabilization of Pleasantville society comes with the mother's transformation to color and her changed relationship to food. The breakfast scene, when the teenagers are newly introduced to Pleasantville, makes the link between the mother and food production as an accepted social norm. She reveals stacks of perfect pancakes and waffles, a veritable feast presented as just another morning's nourishing breakfast. Yet the film also makes this production disturbing, as the piles of caloric foods pressed upon the modern teenagers seems excessively heavy and caloric, producing a sense of disgust with the bounty. Thus the film both reveals and troubles the ideal of domestic plenty as evidenced through food. As Marling suggested, food production in the 1950s was tied to a display of feminine competence. Thus, the fictive Betty Crocker had to be attached to a logo that suggested her abilities and her endorsement of culinary products for women. Cake, along with other foods, came to evidence a woman's ability to manage and control her sphere of influence (Marling 239). In the film, when the mother leaves the home, the question of color becomes one of central importance to the community. When the husband comes home to find the kitchen empty of both his wife and his expected meal, the question of change in Pleasantville is taken up and challenged by a large group within the town. The middle aged white men in the town come to understand the absence of dinner as a major threat to their way of life, because it indicates the possibility of changing gender and labor relations. The film points to the media devaluation of women's labor by suggesting that food production isn't valued until it stops-- unitl the appliance ridden kitchen is empty of the person who knows how to use those tools to create a stable domestic space. Meehan's argument that television has traditionally privleged male veiwership as more valuable than female veiwership can help illuminte this assumption (Durham/Kellner, 310). It follows that in shows geared more toward pleasing a male audience, women's labor can be taken as a given. The film challenges the complacency of this attitude by showing just how much food, and all of the objects and actions involved in its production, actually did constitute a notion of stability in the domestic space in the popular narratives of the time period.

This concern over women's labor is also tied to larger questions about the necesity of labor in the world of Pleasantville. The introduction of color disrupts routine, and this discontinutiy makes people in the town start questioning thier jobs. The film shows how disruptions in the base of a production/consumption driven society are a real threat to the dominant social order, speaking to Williams' point that the lived relations of the base are primary in the maintenance or disruption of an economic order (Durham/Kellner 130). When his boss questions why he should keep on working despite the fact that he no longer sees the importance of the job, David exclaims that it is so "the people can have their cheesburgers!" When labor stops, consumption is stopped, and throughout the film charecters express anxiety about this fact because they sense that a change in those labor and consumer relations would be far more socially profound than simply the lost ability to readily obtain cheesburgers (which are yet another instance of the importance of stable everday culinary relations to larger social interactions and power relations).

The film also makes use of a discussion of racial dynamics, both overt and subtle. On the one hand, the eventual imposed divisions in the community based on color become a way in which the film can discuss the racial politics of the 1950s which remain somewhat veiled in most television of the time. The segregation based on color draws attention to the monolithic whiteness of the cast, even as it tries to trouble the unity of the racial culture. The town council button, for instance, becomes an ironic illusion to these racial politics, as the two clasped hands it depicts are both obviously the same shade of white. Yet at the same time the material and media props that the film uses to cue the transformation from uniformity to diversity and color also reference as less visible set of racial relations. Music is one of the first indicators that change is happening in Pleasantville; as more teens become colorized the soundtrack is either rock 'n roll or jazz. Among the first objects that show up in color are the soda shop jukebox and a car radio. Thus American music born out of black culture comes to denote the revitalization of white culture. With respect to literature too, the first of the books that catalyzed transformation is Huckleberry Finn-- another allusion to the US's racial history made into a medium for white intellectual diversity. In this way the film seems to fall back on the sentiment bell hooks discusses, that media portrayals often treat encounters with blackness as ways of improving one dimensional (or gray scale) white culture (Durham/Kellner 366). So even though the film does try to deal with racial politics, the technicolor analogy can only carry it so far in its reflections on cultural diversity.

Television according to Pierre Bourdieu “suits everybody because it confirms that they already knew and above all leaves their mental structures intact” (On Television, Durham & Keller, 329). This could perhaps explain David’s attachment to Pleasantville. The film is careful to shown that David and Jennifer live in a ‘broken’ environment compared to the relative safety of Pleasantville. takes comfort from the familiarly of Pleasantville, he does not have to change any notions, it also helps that Pleasantville is on repeats further emphasizing the comforting nature of the format. Pleasantville and by extensions the TV represents comfort. Pleasantville is seen as comforting because it represents the 1950’s an era traditionally seen as innocent. The film makers were careful to paint Pleasantville as the extreme. Much like Main Street USA, as in Disneyland, the television show takes place in a town where only pleasant things happen, “A t.v. sitcom better than reality had been” (Marling 115). The creators are careful to show the dichotomy between 1950’s of Pleasantville and the ‘real’ world. The 50’s are extreme, the most risqué behavior that appears in Lover’s Lane is hand holding, sex is non-existent, and clothing is demure. Everything is perfect and pleasant. The 1950’s that was displayed in the film was a myth which arose attempting to create a falsified version of history. The 1950’s displayed in Pleasantville was a myth that arose to fit the stereotype. According to Barthes, Pleasantville could be seen as a myth because the viewer refuses to dig deeper and uncover the mystery, this could possibly ruin the preconceived innocence of the 1950’s and force society to scrutinize its history. The film forces the viewer to take what they think they know of history and reanalyze and possibly that the 1950s was not as wholesome as previously thought (Durham Keller, 106).
“The medium is the message” (Durham Keller, 107) .In the film, the television is the anchor between the real world and the world of Pleasantville. The TV is the medium in which not only the show is broadcasted and symbolizing the world of the 1950’s, but through David and Jennifer the television also broadcasts the message of the modern world. In Pleasantville the TV does not offer a connection to the outside world, but keeps the town community isolated. The TV is not a tool to access the outside world, but rather reinforce the world of Pleasantville. The symbol of the TV becomes lost in translation. According to McLuhan the message of any medium or technology is change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs (Durham, Keller 108). The TV becomes this message with the introduction of David and Jennifer. The introduction of David and Jennifer cause a spectacle in Pleasantville. Pleasantville takes place in 1958, yet no direct mention is made of the chaos that is surrounding the country at the time. Yet, is obviously seen, McCarthyism is evident with the restriction of actions and speech. One of the first colors to appear in Pleasantville is red, not only associated with passion and desire, but with communism as well. Racism is apparent everywhere, with signs declaring “no colors allowed” as well as the absence of African Americans. According to Debord, a “spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people mediated by images.“ (Durham Keller, 118). Pleasantville is quickly hammered by the chaos of the 1950’s and as a result, their society quickly turned on it’s head trying to rapidly adjust to changing environment.

Pleasantville

Pleasantville and As Seen on TV relate to each other in several ways and provide critique on the same decade, the 1950s. However, the technology that Marling focuses on – the TV, the car, kitchen appliances – take a backseat to the greater issue in Pleasantville: change. Although the presence of the TV in the living room, teenagers in cars, and even the stove and refrigerator play importance roles in the film, they are not the catalysts, as they seem to be in Marling’s book. Mary Sue’s unwillingness to conform to the television version of life in the 50s ultimately results in the people of Pleasantville realizing their emotions and exploding into color. Color plays and interesting role in this movie because it symbolizes the change happening in the town, but it also relates to the change happening in the 1950s. Marling discusses color frequently; cars, stoves, and refrigerators came in new, exciting colors, and offered consumers a way of personalizing their suburban homes and commutes to work. However, as noted in the class discussion, the civil rights movement is absent from Marling’s discussion, and the color in Pleasantville applied to more than just cars and appliances and symbolized more than a change in technology. The segregation of black-and-whites and coloreds corresponds to the oppression African Americans experienced, and the scene in the courtroom was very reminiscent of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, which addresses racial inequality during the Depression era. The pop culture that Marling discusses takes a supporting role in Pleasantville in order to provide critique on racial issues as well as globalization and change as a result of technology.

In addition to Marling’s book, Pleasantville relates to several other sources on material and media culture. While still in the 90s, David’s life revolves around the TV, and his escape from reality is watching the quaint, perfect lifestyle of a “typical” American family in the 1950s. However, this “real” depiction of life in the 50s is merely a simulation of reality, and as Baudrillard suggests, simulation has no relation to reality. Because a simulation is not pretending, David’s original plan to pretend to fit in goes awry as Jennifer decides to make her life in this simulation her reality. She embraces her power as an outsider in this virtual world, and by deciding to stay in Pleasantville, she makes her virtual identity her real identity (Poster). Her acting out against the pure and perfect lifestyles of Pleasantville residents starts a subculture of residents who rebel against conformity and seek to feel their emotions. This color subculture becomes embraced by the dominant black-and-white culture in the courtroom when Bud/David reveals his father’s love for his mother and Big Bob’s anger and rage towards Bud (Hebdige). David and Jennifer bring their experience from the 90s to their simulated life in the 50s, bridging the cultures of these two decades and their real selves with their simulated selves, creating a hybrid culture. Globalization is evident in their lives in the 90s in the scene from classrooms in which topics such as HIV and global warming are the objects of discussion. Pleasantville, while benefiting from technologies that imply globalization (the TV and radio), has yet to experience the social effects of globalization because the presence of technology is merely a simulation of it – the books have no words, the radio only plays certain music, and no one seems to ever actually watch the television in the living room. It is Jennifer’s actions that start the process of globalization and a hybridization of Pleasantville in which the culture of Pleasantville is not turned upside down but, rather, influenced by outside sources – David, Jennifer, music, art, books, and even emotions (Naderveen Piterse). Although Pleasantville focuses on the influence of media – TV, books, music – those technologies would not exist without their material selves, and similarly, Pleasantville provides a critique on technology’s influence on both the 90s and the 50s that comes to us through the technology of film – the medium is the message (McLuhan).

Pleasantville

          Pleasantville presented an interesting perspective of simulated life in the 1950s which related to several of the previously assigned readings. The world presented in the movie was one that was not reality, but pure spectacle, as the TV show was created to be an exaggerated stereotype of 50s life. Just as Dorfman and Matterlart state that media created for children by adults is built with what the creators see as idealized childhood, thus inventing childhood for the child,¹ Pleasantville (the TV show within the film) is created with the producers ideas, which have a tremendous impact on the two protagonists. In the plot of the film, the two protagonists end up inside the TV show. This is similar to the commodity becoming the spectacle through the actions of the consuming class. ² Another theme that arose from the film was the media can be a part of the message. The fact that the film presents a “real” life and a TV show that becomes a “reality” allows the plot to be carried out through different mediations. The segments of the film in the current time present a different message than the segments in the TV show. This relates to McLuhan‘s “The Medium is the Message.” ³

          Marling’s book also related greatly to the film. Marling claims that the visual culture of everyday life in the 1950’s was a byproduct of the color, style and motion presented by television. ⁴ The TV was a major character in the Pleasantville. At the beginning of the film, the two main characters had conflicting plans for the evening, both of which revolved around TV. It was made clear in scenes that took place in the school that the TV had a huge effect on the lives of both characters, rendering one a social outcast and one a member of the “in crowd” a la MTV circa 1998. Obviously, the television went on to have a huge effect as the characters get sucked in to Pleasantville-world, but the most interesting aspect of television comes in the form of the television repair guy. This character is the reason the two kids get sucked into TV and is in total control of the situation. The interesting aspect of this character is that he communicates to the children thought TV. The protagonists paradoxically look into the television as their only link to the “real world,” with the existence of reality depending on TV. This mimics the circle of spectacle and commodity seen by Guy Debord. ⁵




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1 Ariel dorfman and Armand Matterlart. "Introduction: Instruction on How to Become a General in the Disney Club." Media and cultural Studies: Keyworks (2006): 122
2 Guy Debord. "The commodity as spectacle." Media and cultural Studies: Keyworks (2006): 117.
3 McLuhan, Marshall. "The Medium is the Message." Media and cultural Studies: Key works (2006): 107.
4 Marling, Karal Ann. As seen on TV. Cambridge MA: Harvard University press, 1994. p6
5 Guy Debord. "The commodity as spectacle." Media and cultural Studies: Keyworks (2006): 119.

Pleasantville

While Pleasantville is seeping in links to our semester’s readings, these five points of the movie were first to make pen to paper. As the wholesomeness of the our ideal selves meets the universally accessible manipulation of society we all discover our “TechniColor” reality.

Poster’s article of virtual realities is brought to mind as the main characters of Pleasantville are expierencing a virtual reality of their 1990’s life. As Jennifer decies to stay in her new reality and embrace her new identity, I am reminded of class discussion on choosing the profile we out, virtually, per Poster’s article.

Early in the kids’ experience in Pleasantville, the mother won’t let her children leave with out a disgustingly large breakfast. This immedialty brought me to the Folly Food Mill article. As marketing played off of the fears of mothers and their ability to provide wholesome nutrition for their families, Pleasantville mothers felt pressured to stuff their families before a day of school/work.

“Mary Sue and Bud” prepare for a night out as Mary Sue makes note of her unnatural undergarmet. Moments of the Corset article flooded my mind. The unnatural shape of women and Bud’s assurance that “they don’t notice things like that”. Just as the corset was meant to make women subtly more attractive, Mary Sue’s 1950’s garment was meant to make her subtly more feminine.

As the citizens of Pleasantville acted out, they discovered new mediums to express their new values. Appadurai points out a similar practice as globalization has found a new medium. While Appadurai is wondering if westernization is losing is potency because of the widening availability of mediums, the citizens of Pleasantville could experience a loss of continuity with the widening of the message of new values.

Similarly, the citizens’ demonstrations link to Marling’s research of the 1950’s. 1958 is a poienette year in Marling’s work as this is when the Elvis shift occurred, as the shift in Pleasantville took place this same year. Marling pints on the changing of society from “perfection” as the wholesomeness of youth began to diminish, just as the youth of Pleasantville discovered their attraction toward one another.

Pleasantville

It was pretty obvious how the movie Pleasantville related to our previous readings, especially Marling. One distinct connection I made was how media has such a powerful influence over people. In the movie, David was so infatuated with the TV show Pleasantville. He enjoyed the lifestyle of the 1950’s so much that when he was placed into the TV show directly, his first instinct (which he thoroughly enjoyed) was to be like everyone else in the town. This makes me think of, in general, how people desire to be like what the media shows them. Bourdieu addressed the power of television in his essay On Television. He was speaking of the influence of television shows on the general public saying “[these] programs serve the establishment and ever-more obsequiously promote social conformity”. David was a direct representative of this social conformity and “sameness” that media has the potential to increase. When George Parker (the father in the movie) was given the Chamber of Commerce button, he felt like he fit in and was part of an important group. This relates to Marling writing about Mamia Eisenhower’s “New Look”. She stated, “The newest “New Look” dramatized the American woman as an eternal American girl, as Maime’s younger sister in spirit…” Her new look was seen in catalogues, on TV, and in person. Women desired to have that same essence of Maime, and they would achieve it by dressing and carrying themselves like her. These women were “sisters” to Maime, which was just the same type of relationship George Parker gained when receiving the pin.

The material world in this movie was one of the most important in portraying the culture of the 1950’s. When things began changing in the movie, color started appearing and people began breaking their routine, I was reminded of how the first interpretation of something can be wrong, and further investigation is needed to show the “true colors” of the object. When some people began changing colors, the ones that didn’t looked negatively at those that were, and assumed it meant one thing. But when everyone ended up turning colors, and experiencing that deep emotion, the change of color was associated with something else. I was reminded of the Haitian moneybox written about by McLane in American Artifacts. McLane initially thought the box was only made for a tourist’s enjoyment, but came to later discover the true meaning of the moneybox used by Haitian women at the markets. This idea that there is always something more to an object or a media broadcast can also be seen in Pleasantville when Bill Johnson (the ice cream parlor worker) discovered the color paints and painted the entire window of his store. It was a symbol of change; he created a media within the media of the movie. This type of profound media, that designates a big change in lifestyle goes along with the change appliances, TVs, and TV dinners made within families. Marling addressed how all these things changed the dynamics of the family. The housewife would move away from using the appliances for cooking casseroles to bring the family together, but would now pant all the family members in front the of the TV with their TV dinners. This was a big change in family routine, and was a kick off for the idea of constant mobility in the 1950’s

I thought it was clever how the movie addressed the idea of racism by using colored vs. non-colored. The courtroom in the last seen was a clear definitive of this idea, the colored people were seated in the balcony, while the non-colored people were on the main floor. Marling seemed to dance around racism (and other happenings in the 1950’s) as well. Pleasantville and Marling both focused on the typical white American family; desiring the cars, the outfits, and the appliances, but at the same time were able to portray what was going on the in the 1950’s but not actually referencing them at all.

Marling Relfection/Questions/Connections

First of all, I want to say that this book was a ‘real eye-opener.’ I did not realize what an influential decade the 1950s was, and every chapter taught me something new about the historical context of my life as it is now. With that said my first question might be: Was the 1950s the most influential decade of the century? In my opinion, it may well be because it set our society up for the technology followed refrigerators, washer-dryers, and black-and-white televisions. Society and the American home were prepared to receive the bundles of new technology that followed the ‘50s – color TV, laser disk (I grew up watching movies from the laser disk at my grandparents house, and it still works and sits beneath the VCR and DVD player) VCR/VHS, DVDs, microwaves, video games, computers, and many, many more. Obviously, technology progresses in such a way that it would have been impossible to introduce the computer before the TV, but I don’t think it would have been as readily accepted into American homes had the black-and-white TV not paved the way and influenced culture so deeply in the 1950s.

Continuing in the same light, the Betty Crocker chapter revealed a lot about the eating habits of my family. Basically, we eat A LOT of casseroles and every family get together and holiday, and my dad made every birthday cake I have ever had from a box. Although my dad was born in 1959, his mother already had six children (five more followed my dad) she was feeding daily. She made a lot of casseroles, and we continue that method of feeding today – green bean, broccoli, chicken, potato, and squash are the Keane family specialties that are all brought to life from a can of soup. I guess the point about my dad making cake seems strange and unrelated, but throughout this chapter, Marling stressed the idea that the cake mix was targeted at females because baking wonderful dessert embodied femininity. For my grandmother, this may have been true, but she taught my dad to bake, breaking down the gender-specific barrier around baking. I know that my grandmother was not attempting to fight a baking battle by teaching my dad because she taught all of her children that wanted to learn how to bake, but my dad is known for his cakes in my family because he was the only one of the 12 to master the home-made frosting element. I apologize for this lengthy (boring) family history about cooking, but I appreciated this book for the personal parallels I was able to draw and was wondering if anyone else had similar connections to the culture of the 50s.

My last point is not a question but a connection that this book helped me make and understand. Throughout the book, reality is discussed as present – in TV, the art of Grandma Moses, pictures of families in supermarkets, displaying American culture in Moscow, but Marling claims that in Disneyland, “reality rarely intruded” (105). Baudrillard also recognized this lack of reality in Disneyland and suggested that it “is a perfect model of all the entangled order of simulacra” and “is first of all a play of illusions and phantasms” (460). Reading about Disneyland in the context of the 1950s helps me make sense of this simulation, this lack of reality. Reality now visually intruded the home daily through the television – television introduced everyone to Disney but it also set the stage for a wish for escape. The oddity to me is that the escape was to a world that was influenced by TV. I hate to admit it, but I am having fleeting light bulbs go off and think I am beginning to understand Baudrillard. In an attempt to escape reality, people walked into a simulation of it.

Object for project

My analysis will focus on the ca. 1790 silverplate hot water urn (above in profile and frontal view) that I purchased last fall. Unfortunately, the provenance of whom originally or subsequently owned the item in the historic period was lost even before the antique dealer I bought it from acquired it.

Nevertheless, as I mentioned in class I am planning to connect the ownership of the object through globalization in terms of trade networks in early Republic (ca. 1780-1820) between the advanced Western Civilization (though primarily of British origin if not British itself) with the East where tea was grown and shipped across the globe to thirsty folks. The water urn was just one of a host of items needed for the notion of a proper consumption of tea among elites.

globalization image

Melanie's Globalization Pic

Facebook-The Ultimate Connector?

Annie's Globalization Photo

March 4th

From Durham and Kellner...

Sreberny writes in 1991 about the contradictions in examining globalism through "cultural pluralism," offering a new outlook--"the global in the local, the local in the global." How might her interpretation differ if written from today's point of view? Has the relationship between local and global factors changed?

From Prown and Haltman...

The Haitian metal box is made from scraps from an American factory. How does this seemingly simple fact mirror the relationship between the post-industrial world and the third-world?

-------Globalization-----------

I have a 3d/2d representation of globalization to bring to class, but I was watching this video from the Stax Record Vault earlier and thought it might be relevant. Original soul men Sam Moore and Dave Prater, backed by Booker T and The MGs (the best band ever) play to an audience in Holland. The audience's reaction is great and revealing when considering that Holland was even less used to seeing a racially integrated band dominate a stage than was the band's hometown of Memphis, TN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mir8UzCkoeY

Appadurai / Soutter

Using the Fillipinos as an example, Appaduri discusses globalization in the sense of Americanization and westernization. As our trends and practices become other countries present practices, the Filipino people are living our past as their present lifestyle. As the media has become a new medium for information the United States has lost its place as an overwhelming influence.
How does the media/ markiering use its tools to influence Americans? Is it the same way women and target froups are manipulated?

Soutter shares the discovery of a family heirloom's past and its link to her ancestry. Linking the jewelery to it's roots, "mourning jewlery" and to it's trend pattens, Soutter gives us an example of how our objects can be seen through many lenses, giving us the total picture of historical value.
Does looking at an item in every possible context give it false contexts? Are these congrous with how the owner would have liked this item to be remembered?

Is globalization a new concept? Could it be said that the Hellenistic Age and the spread of the Roman Empire and its ideas was globalization?

Holstien stated that the Amish quilt was a representation of the Amish way of life and that no deviated existed. However would the curves found in the quilt, in the forms of garland, and the colors of red and purple suggest different?

Using the examples of the popularity of the radio in Argentina and the United States, as well as the popularity of the cinema in both Mexico and the US, did these examples of technology have the same impact? Did the radio and cinema each affect the country differently?

Several Examples of the Marxist Influence in the Mexico: Murals painted by Diego River

March 4 Questions: Martin-Barbero and Holstein

From Nationalisms to Transnationalisms
Martin-Barbero’s articles discusses the various ways in which technologies of communication have drawn audience members in nationalizing countries, specifically in Latin America, to take up certain kinds of cultural participation through their experience of popular media. I think it might be helpful to discuss the various ways that he sees “the mass” becoming involved in “mass culture” as a question of agency. To what degree is he seeing media as repressive, and in what ways? Similarly, in the various historical waves of technology he addresses, what possibilities does he see media offering for active engagement and choice within culture? Are agency and coercion mutually exclusive here, or working more in tandem?

Sewing and Sowing
Holstein’s reading of an Amish quilt suggests that one of the concerns of Amish society reflected by the object is the understanding that each member of the community must either actively choose to abide by Amish ways, or must leave the community and join the outside world instead. She suggests that the quilt offers a positive representation of Amish culture, its design offering a kind of argument for the virtues and advantages of membership in the community. Given that it is globalization week: Are there parallels between the cultural tensions that Holstein sees expressed in the quilt (the internal community as definitively sectioned off from a larger national community) and some of the transnational struggles we read about this week? How might we see the quilt with reference to some of the questions of technological-cultural hybridization that other readings raised?

March 4th Questions

Annabelle Sreberny: The Global and the Local:

After reading this article, I began to compare two proposed thoughts. The first is about “exporting meaning” from first world countries into third world countries, this can be looked at as a “hypodermic needle”. The argument of this side is “meaning is not exported in Western television programming but created by different cultural sectors for the audience in relation to their already-formed cultural attitudes and political perceptions.” However earlier stated in this article was the idea that the “local” (being exported) is really the “national”, while the truly “local” is being ignored. I think there are two ways to look at this. The worldwide TV media seems to “export” the national, most important news and ideas, thus giving power to the individual to become the “norm” or react to “the norm”. But other, newer, forms of worldwide media, like twitter, facebook, youtube, seem to harvest their growth on the personal identity of people/groups/businesses/etc giving power to the individual to be an individual. Do you think that the worldwide TV media will still be more powerful then the other forms of media in the future?

Diasann McLane: Unwrapping the bwat sekre: The Secrets of a Haitian Monry Box.

This article was about a bwat sekre (Haitian money box). The examination of color on the box is what I found most questionable. The author, Daisann McLane related the importance and choice of color to a vodou warrier. In Haitian Vodou the colors red and blue belong to Ogun, the warrior lwa. Ogun is the fighter, protector, and swordsman, iron and metal are his elements, the battlefield is his ground. However, the material, scrap metal, of this object originates from a company in New York. This scrap metal was intended to be used for can tops of “Nevr-Dull” wadding polish, but was not up to company standards and shipped off to Haiti in global recycling efforts. It is hard for me to believe the importance of the color (chosen for this object) belongs more to the Vodou traditions of Haiti than the color/product choice of the US company producing this metal. Agree or disagree?

[These articles are related by both examining how first world ideas/products come into the third world and are manipulated to suit specific needs or desires. The message from the First World media translated by the Third World and the metal from the First World (can tops) was discovered in Haiti and used to make these money boxes: nothing like the intended use in the US, but a suitable one for Haiti.]

Reading Shiz for March 4th

Folk Objects:

This article looks at the behavioral approaches and the importance of doing so in relation to folklore studies. Is it possible to use the lens of folklore studies to analyze modern chairs? What would that say about when and why styles were made?

TV and National Identity:

Duh, TV=globalization. In a way, it since it so connects people around the world through media, does it ever disconnect us from what physically surrounds us?

03/04 Reading Thoughts/Questions

Why Take a Behavioral Approach to Folk Objects?
Michael Owen Jones

I think a better question would be: Why NOT take a behavioral approach to Folk Objects, or any object for that matter.

After reading this, it seems to me silly why people would not think a behavioral approach to analyzing/understanding objects as beneficial or mandatory. The example of the chairs and their evolution would not seem quite as interesting or fully developed if Jones had not studied the maker. It just seems like common sense.

Unfortunately, this approach would not be available for use on every object. A lot of provenance would have to be known, and then a lot of research on the specific maker/user. It does create a greater narrative and fuller understanding of an object, though. Man, I wish I had a time machine...

(Re) Asserting National Television and National Identity Against the Global, Regional, and Local Levels of World Television
Joseph Straubhaar

By using television as an example, Straubhaar argues that globalization does NOT create a homogenized, one-society world, but that if you look from the "bottom-up" (local ->regional->national-> global) it is apparent that national identity reasserts itself against globalization: "Glocalization"

Example: What is available/seen on televisions is controlled by national/local forces still, and is also limited to language.

Straubhaar stresses that the discussion of globalization are becoming more complex, historical, transformative, and opposing. The homogenous world belief is diminishing...

Simulations from last week

Our group worked on the Haltman, Poster, and Baudrillard articles, and here are some highlights of our conversation:

Haltman- We discussed how Haltman reads the design of the upright telephone as invoking the human body in order to offer a sense of comfort and intimacy during the use of a complex impersonal technology. He reads this technology of telephonic communication as threatening, an intrusion into the domestic space that could not be removed, but could be made more palatable by a human-seeming mechanism of delivery. We felt that the implications for the larger social power relations connected to the phone mechanism were multiple -- the gendered labor relations connected to switchboard operation, the increasingly commonplace nature of phones and phone service as products of a major profit-oriented industry, the rise of long distance communication and the ways in which it contributed to the re-imagination of national borders and community, and the ultimate dependence on the technology that people would develop are all connected to the phone system, and somewhat masked by the phone's disarming design.

Poster- We considered how Poster sees technologies of virtuality as instruments that can create a space that, because of its decentralized and participatory function, allows for the exploration and evolution of community and subjectivity. We considered his distinction that virtual experience is neither isolated from nor identical to lived experience, but rather allows for individuals to explore contested, fragmented, reconstituted and altered versions of themselves. He sees this process of the change of the subject as applicable to social interaction in the non-virtual world, suggesting that through the re-conception of the subject reality itself will be changed--specifically with respect to dominant power relations, which do not fully hold in the virtual world, and therefor become easier for people to question and destabilize in the real world. We discussed the limits of the scope of Poster's vision, in that we could indeed see how virtual space has prompted us to re-imagine our non-virtual experiences, but weren't sure that such virtual spaces always fully and necessarily challenge dominant power relations (particularly with respect to economic structures and practices). We drew the conclusion that virtual technologies may contest certain power relations, but they haven't as yet proved to be politically revolutionary.

Baudrillard- We worked through how Baudrillard sees power and the dominant social order operating through simulation -- for him institutions and authority are only as good as the credibility people imbue them with. Power is exerted through simulation, which people in turn must accept, internalize, and then also begin to simulate the same patterns of social order. Thus people assert power, accept the influences of power, and bolster the effects of power through a constant process of simulation. For Baudrillard, technology is no longer a one way mechanism: media seeks to simulate some version of reality, which in turn people encounter and internalize and begin to simulate themselves, and this cycle of mutual constitution continues. The mechanisms of technology, the content thereof, the impressions of the viewers and the intentions of the makers are no longer all conscious, linear and neatly predictable, but rather interwoven, overlapping, simultaneous and fragmented. This situation leaves people on the individual level as highly dependent upon their perceptions of the simulations around them, some of which they then internalize and preform, which perpetuates the constant social process of simulation. For those interested in this piece, we found in our group work that the concrete examples he discusses are a bit easier to deal with-- we found his discussions of Disney World and Watergate particularly helpful in getting a handle on some of the more unwieldy concepts in the article.

Questions/commentary for the readings

In Kellner and Durham's commentary both of the historicization and of the historiographical writing on social life and cultural studies I found several things that intrigued me. First, have the authors defined globalization in an ultra-limited manner? Much of their discussion focuses on the late 20th and early 21st century's interplay with globalization. They propose that "the consumer society emerged throughout the Western world" following World War 2. However, many historians (I'll lump myself into that category since I'm writing a paper on consumer activity, though I am a couple months from the M.A. yet) would argue that consumerism has a longer history than just in the years following the downfall of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito. In their definition of a "society of spectacle" consumption of images, commodities, and spectacles combine. So immediately, I thought of the use of creamware (a type of ceramic produced circa 1750-1820). In it's early days a sample was sent to Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III and after her receipt and use, it was marketed by Josiah Wedgwood as "Queen's ware." Wedgwood shipped creamware throughout England and her North American colonies where it has been recovered archaeologically from the households of elites to the quarters of enslaved laborers. Adding the Queen's "stamp of approval" created a grander spectacle than anything Wedgwood could say otherwise. The main tension I see here in regards to this post-WW2 consumer activity is in what ways did new media forms and print culture align to alter perceptions of needs? (see last week's Food Mill reading as an example)

Kahn/Kellner (brevity shall guide me here): The authors state that before the Iraq War "average citizens were unlikely to" protest against a presidential decision for war but that the Internet allowed average folks to "protest publicly." In light of the societal movements in the early to mid-20th century (i.e., women's liberation, Civil Rights, gay rights, anti-Vietnam [hello authors?!]), is it that the Internet allows for public protest or that it re-presented various movements on a global stage accessible wherever there is an ISP, Internet connectivity, and no fear of reprisal for investigating these movements?

Questions for 3/4

Kingery discusses the process of change in technology and suggests that technology is neither right nor wrong just appropriate for a certain culture. In his analysis of ceramics of the Italian Renaissance, he contends that the change in Renaissance ceramics was evolutionary and that “unquestionably there was a paradigm shift in ceramic technology” (225). I ask does this same technological process of evolution and paradigm shifts hold true today because new technology has such a rapid turn around. Perhaps the process has been sped up, and if that is the case, how does this affect the process of development and acceptance of new technology?

Jan Nederveen Pieterse discusses globalization’s effects on the formation of identity and suggests that personal identities have become hybrids themselves because individuals are able to construct themselves from several organizational options – religious, political, national, etc. He explains, “globalization is the framework for the diversification and amplification of ‘sources of the self’” (664). The question that arises from this concept is not one that challenges his theory, but, rather, one that causes me to think about my personal identity and what I have pulled from to create it. My question, then, is a rhetorical one: Is your own identity a hybrid? What bits and pieces of culture, politics, religion, etc have you pulled together to create your personal identity?

In Globalization as Hybridization, Naderveen Pieterse talks about the global mélange and mentions Asian rap in London, Irish bagels, Chinese tacos, and a few others as examples. These examples reminded me of an experience I had in New Zealand. The picture below (is goofy and embarrassing) shows three White American girls (including myself) and three Maori girls teaching us the Soulja Boy dance. We were on a traditional Maori marae and had just experienced a traditional Maori welcome and meal, and three teenage girls started teaching us a dance from the rap culture of American. It was an interesting mix of cultures and circumstances, and looking at it now, I think this photo represents globalization in some complex ways.