The Real Valentine's Day

Gone are the days when Valentine's Day commemorated pure and unadulterated love for ones partner. In recent years, February 14th has become less about a day of love and more about an advertisers Christmas. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans are estimated to have spent over $14.7 billion dollars last year on Valentine's Day purchases. As absurdly high of a number that is, it is in fact a 13.5 percent decrease from the $17 billion spent in 2008.
According to "Will You Be My Frugal Valentine?" an article in the New York Times written by journalist Stuart Elliott, Americans are supposedly "cutting back" on Valentine's Day purchases due to the economical recession. The article describes how corporations like: Walgreens, Target, White Castle, and even the notorious Martha Stewart, are offering discounts to help consumers save a penny on their Valentine's sweethearts. In addition, Google's search engine registered 653,000 search's for "Valentine's Day deals," 13,000 for "Valentine's Day discounts" and 3,140 for "Valentine's Day bargains." People around the Country are apparently cutting back on their holiday spending.
But is this enough? Have we lost sight of what Valentine's Day is really supposed to be about? Have advertisers convinced us that Valentine's Day is more about spending money then anything else? According to media scholars, David Croteau and William Hoynes, "media are ideological, selling certain messages and worldviews. Furthermore, "Media sell both mass media products and ideas, both personalities and worldviews." So that leads me to ask, has the media sold us on the ideas that Valentine's Day goes hand in hand with commercialism and materialism? Have we as Americans been "normalized," to think that to be a good Valentine, we must buy flowers, cards, chocolates, and necklaces?
You may say," of course a good Valentine should buy flowers and chocolates and take their dates out to fancy restaurants." I too have been guilty of thinking this very thing. But where exactly did these traditions come from? I contend that the advertisement companies have ingrained these traditions into our head to the point where they have become natural. As stated above, "the media has sold us on products and ideas, personalities and worldviews." So I challenge you this Valentine's Day, to look past these media ploys. To pay less attention to Valentines deals and more to your Valentine. You can't put a price on love so my advice is: DON"T TRY TO! I'm all for cutting back and being frugal, but what if Americans took it one step further? Instead of buying a card, write a poem. Instead of make reservations at a nice restaurant, cook your Valentine a dinner. Show your sweetheart that Valentine's Day can go beyond flowers and chocolates.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/business/media/28adco.html?ref=media

Avatar, it's a turning point

Recently I am sure many of you have been hearing a lot of discussion about the movie Avatar. I personally went to see it last weekend and absolutely loved it! Soon after seeing the movie I came across the article “Inside the Scene-stealing 3-D Technology Behind James Cameron’s Avatar,” on popularscience.com. James Cameron ahead of the movie industry and ten years ago decided to film his “humans-versus-aliens sci-fi adventure Avatar in 3-D, but he refused to start production until technology could convince the viewer that he or she could step through the screen and pick up a boy alongside the Na’vi, the film’s 10-foot-tall, but cat faced alien protagonists.” In a recent interview on the Today Show, he said when he had the idea, “he knew he would have to wait for technology to catch up and if at that point you still don’t have what you need, you build your own.” Cameron was able to make this film come to life through five steps. The first was to build his stage, using video to create a “virtual world.” Next, he had to actually capture the motion. They captured the movement through dots that were placed on the floor and computers recorded the motion. After that, he had to shoot in 3-D. They shot the real actors in 3-D so that they will look comfortable and belong in the world Na’vi. The fourth step was for Cameron to use a type of “video game controller,” to capture they different angles of the movie that the viewers would see. Lastly they had to watch it to make sure they were seeing the parts that they wanted the viewers to see.

Cameron pushed technology to the limit to create the world Na’vi. But is this not what people want? In my course reading recently, I came across the argument by Gina Marchetti, who argued, “the key to the ideology of [action-adventure] genre is the typical construction of the main character, the hero and the villain, which leads to specific stories about the nature of good and evil, strength and weakness, and courage and cowardice.” In Avatar, the military wants to rid the world Na’vi, of the “blue people”, but however, Jake Sully, the hero in the movie fights back along side the blue people to defeat the military. Ultimately, In Avatar the idea of ideology is faced. For example, Trudy in the movie (the pilot) has to decide whether she is going to fight along the military to destroy their home, or if she is going to fight along Jake Sully to save the “blue people.”

But you may asking so what? What should I care? Avatar is a movie that is a turning point in our society. It uses high-end technology to give viewers an adventure of their lives while watching good face evil. It is a new type of technology that everyone should feel the affects of; you are able to feel as though you are in the Na’vi world. This movie is making history in the media and is about media and what it can do. I highly recommend checking it out or simply reading up on the doors it is now opening in the film industry.

By the way just a cool thing that I read, Avatar has passed the one billion dollar mark in the box office just after three weeks only four movies have done this. Also, it is second in the nation in history with box office sales, currently standing right behind Titanic.

If you would like the read the article on Avatar and making the film here is the site. http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/feature-3-d-revolution

For the love of the media, Rachel J

From Headlines to DEADlines

I believe that the newspaper will eventually no longer exist due to advances in technology. Many newspaper consumers are "going green" in order to save the environment. "In 1989 the newspaper recycling rate as 35 percent. Today, over 73 percent of all old newspapers in the United States are recovered and recycled (Newspaper Association of America)." We have to ask ourselves if the newspaper is worth hurting our environment. The nice thing about having the newspaper available online is that it is free and more convenient to the reader.
The article I read, called Thinking Space, compared the newspaper to the web. The Thinking Space blog stresses that the rise of the web media causes the newspaper crisis. The public uses computers all the time so checking the news is not a hassle for someone who is constantly at their computer. The online news is free, which is a huge plus because of the economy we are in, and also faster with updates. The web is a cheaper and easier way for those who want to advertise themselves and/or get their company noticed.
Overall the newspaper crisis is not all that bad. Right now the economy is doing so poorly which means we, the people, are doing poorly and if there is a way to save money then the consumer will do whatever costs them less. "This newspaper crisis is not about the greediness of human nature, it is not about the poor execution of the business, and it is not about a normal economic cycle. The newspaper crisis is about the unchangeable fact of the value decrease of the asset that the newspapers can produce (Thinking Space)." What this part of the article was trying to get across to the reader is that the newspaper crisis is not a result of money issues, and it is not a result of bad business, but it is because saving the environment is more important than having a hard copy of the newspaper every morning.

Samantha<3

Link to the article: http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/2009/05/newspaper-crisis.html

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