Although I really enjoyed the excerpt from Baudrillard’s Simularca and Simulation, I am not sure if I agree with the harsh criticism of “The Louds” found on page 28. As Baudrillard writes and quotes: “The Louds: simply a family who agreed to deliver themselves into the hands of television, and to die by it,” the director will say.…
Category: Response posts
Simulacra and Simulation
Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation describes the “hyper-real” plane that has developed and reverberates through our lives. You can find it all throughout the U.S.: Disneyland, strip malls, Cancun’s in Red Hook. They are all simulations. He describes how today, we reinjection the natural into new synthetic forms; we drive to the gym to stare out the window while running…
The Death of The Panopticon
The element of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation that I am finding the trickiest is his claim that the rise of media that induce simulation also lead to the “End of the panoptic system” (Baudrillard, 29). Placed in the context of his inquiry into the Loud family, as the first televised attempt to pierce “lived reality in order to put…
There is no medium anymore
While Jean Baudrillard’s piece was very confusing, one of the most clear depictions to me was how in today’s society there is no mediums anymore. “We are no longer in the society of spectacle, of which the situationists spoke, nor in the specific kinds of alienation and repression that is implied. The medium itself is no longer identifiable as such,…
Group B: Why Fanfiction???
Shows end, right? Books have a last page, no matter how big the series. Video games end at a certain level. People write fanfiction about stories and worlds they are invested in, even when canon content stops or slows down. Many of the fandoms where there is a lot of creativity has a big, open world ready for exploring. Harry…
group B: fan culture as a metaverse
The conflict between corporate interests and grassroots fandom makes a lot of sense to me in the way that both worlds interact within each other. The world of business is based on physical interactions, face to face, symbolized by the business-deal handshake. The world of fandom on the other hand engages with itself in a way that is far from…
Group B: Harry Potter and Participatory Media
In this chapter of Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins seeks to draw attention to a phenomenon which has managed to pervade recent media and discussions of media: participation. On all sides and at every level, the term participation has emerged as a governing concept, albeit one surrounded by conflicting expectations. Corporations imagine participation as something they can start and stop, channel…
Comics and Fan Fiction
The word canon seems pretty important in the comic world. But what happens when stories become so available among different platforms that the word canon becomes arbitrary? Lets look at Marvel for example. Marvel is a company that has been on the covers of original comics for decades, and not all authors of the same comic series have been…
Abtracted Ads and Curated Consumers
Reading the Henry Jenkins piece in conjunction with the Bibby Sowray article proved to be extremely thought-provoking. Although the readings are separated by nine years, it is notable that they both struggle with a certain tension between consumer abuse and consumer power while also surfacing the role of consumer “communities” prompted by interactivity. Those involved directly in the advertising, seem…
Group D Anomymity
I first want to bring up my sense of confusion or lack of correct understanding on the connection between the ability of anonymity on the Internet and Transgender, Non Gender, POC. As a straight white male I’m very cognizant to the fact that I have bias, or a lack of ability to understand some of these connections based on personal…