Up Front: Does My Mortgage Look Like a Slag in This?
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Sorry for the jack, but Teddy Kennedy's just died. I might have deeply disagreed with him politically, and the man had a lot of SOB-ness in him, but you had to respect him on some level.
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Oh, I didn't say they were smart, Jackie. Just active rather than passive.
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but from there, it all gets quite dodgy, quite quickly, a la violent manga...
Up to a point -- even though I'ma huge fan of Manga and Japanese art and culture in general, I do try to be a little careful about passing another culture through my Western perceptual filter. There is a hell of a lot that gets lost in translation.
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You mean there is a filter where the subway vending machines for used knickers make sense?
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Yes I can see your point about the nails, Emma. I'm sorry if it was a bit nasty. It's just that I really do not understand the nails. I've always felt that it's social conditioning that makes women want to wear impractical things. It's fashion, isn't it?
As the friend of Emma's that has acrylic nails, I feel I have to put something in here. I'm not offended by your comments at all - there's lots of stuff other women do that I don't get.
I've had them for nigh on 15 years now (except for the times when money was short) and I can't imagine being without them anymore.
Now, there are several reasons I have them
1. they're pretty, and can be downright gorgeous
2. they make me feel good
3. they are not impractical in my daily life at all. I do housework, garden (although not often) and chop wood with them. I play the piano in my teaching for upwards of 5-6 hours a day. The only place I have any trouble with them is picking up cards off a smooth table when playing boardgames.
4. I suffer from fairly chronic eczema, and they are smooth edged and blunt enough that I do not gouge great hunks of flesh out of my arms and legs in my sleep.
5. my students love them and are always willing to offer ideas of which design I should have next.However, I also completely understand that many people consider them to be frivolous and a bit silly. That's fine. I like them and it's my money.
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Dude, you did read the stuff upthread?
yep, all of it.
Positioning young women as perpetual victims in their relationships with media seems both inaccurate and unhelpful.
can you show me where i positioned young women as perpetual victims in their relationships with media? being subjected, from a very young age, to media brainwashing (conditioning) does not constitute "victim" status. it means we are all being constantly programmed, with varying levels of success, to the advantage of advertisers and their lackies. you seriously dispute this? we are all being conditioned, all the time. how we deal with that conditioning reflects a very large combination of individual factors. adolescent women are particularly likely to conssciously or subconsciously absorb and internalise these messages, about their bodies, sexuality, being "cool", etc., etc.
Like most of us, they construct social identity more actively than you seem to believe.
of course they do. but it doesn't come out of thin air. and the media doesn't do its image conditioning on us as a charitable exercise. follow the money.
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can you show me where i positioned young women as perpetual victims in their relationships with media? being subjected, from a very young age, to media brainwashing (conditioning) does not constitute "victim" status. it means we are all being constantly programmed, with varying levels of success, to the advantage of advertisers and their lackies. you seriously dispute this?
Maybe Sacha won't, but I'm more than happy to. It think it's greatly overstated. We talk about the sexualisation of children, but as it ever dawned on anybody that perhaps we were excessively de-sexualising them previously? I'm not saying there aren't issues or that what you say is wholly untrue, but I really don't think that words like brainwashing and programming are very accurate or helpful. Socialisation and personal growth are enormously complex, to think that advertisers can somehow direct that process means giving them way too much credit.
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As the friend of Emma's that has acrylic nails, I feel I have to put something in here. I'm not offended by your comments at all - there's lots of stuff other women do that I don't get.
Thanks for this. It's really good for me to be exposed to this sort of argument - I don't want my thinking arteries to harden as I get older. And I feel that this little interchange has opened a little door in my mind.
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I'm not saying there aren't issues or that what you say is wholly untrue, but I really don't think that words like brainwashing and programming are very accurate or helpful. Socialisation and personal growth are enormously complex, to think that advertisers can somehow direct that process means giving them way too much credit.
LOL!
brainwashing and programming = bad
conditioning = ???
semantics, eh?so you seriously think that constant bombardment with images from early childhoold through adolescence does not constitute an extremely strong and pervasive form of programming?
media images strongly affect the conscious actions and subconscious attitudes of people constantly exposed to them. the media is big business, in case you didn't know. advertisers do not spend billions as a hobby. they do it because they know it has a high probability of successfully boosing profits. how? by convincing people to buy xy and fucking z, every day.
and you are trying to argue that thefashion statements that Cecelia was referring to (re her sudents) were not largely due to the factors i listed?
LOL!!!
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3 things(there's heaps more but my eyes unfortunately arnt up to much:)
* I really hate long or artificial nails - on me. My nails have always been (since childhood by me) kept very short BUT-
I truly enjoy people who flourish parts of their bodies - and nails, bright, colourful, motif-ed - great!anyone who has anything to do with kids knows most of them - like 98.5% of our species - are sexual beings. That's just part of our species. I think Giovanni has hit on it (ur, so to speak) - *desexualising* children is as bad as sexualising kids for adult perception or pleasure. *Recognising* our species inherent omni-sexuality is necessary. This asexual person now retires from further converse-
*the attraction of clothes/nails/et al is in individual minds - and we all know this is a very personal matter - but freely predated upon by advertisers et al.
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so you seriously think that constant bombardment with images from early childhoold through adolescence does not constitute an extremely strong and pervasive form of programming?
Nope. They just go in the large cauldron of the messages that a young person gets. And don't get me wrong, I try to expose myself and my children to as little advertising as possible, but I really don't think ithey're as deterministically successful as you seem to think.
the media is big business, in case you didn't know. advertisers do not spend billions as a hobby.
You know what advertisers are really good at? Convincing companies that they need them, and everybody else that they control the message and our lives. To an extent companies do need them - in a saturated market, you've got to get your share, be more visible than other brands. And sometimes they might even be able to create need where none existed. But do they brainwash us? How? If nothing else, do you think we identify so closely with the things that we buy, that they are the essence of who we are?
LOL!!!
Might want to work of being less of a douche if you want to continue this conversation.
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I in turn could use working *on* my syntax.
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Maybe Sacha won't
I'm sure not going to go into any depth.
A hallmark of victimhood is having stuff
done to you. Words like "subjected", "conditioned" and "brainwashed" sure seem to be heading in that direction to me.You're right that we are all exposed to commercial media messages that are not in our own best interests. But we actively negotiate those in our daily lives, and we form ourselves by interacting with other people not just media. If advertising was more successful, they wouldn't need to repeat it so much.
I'm not denying that socialisation through non-media channels plays a huge role too, but teens especially pay a lot more attention to what their peers think is cool than to any authority figures.
Gendered stereotypes in all those interactions are typified by that ALAC TV commercial - messages telling us that women are the people who have things done to them. At least the two guys in the other TVCs were the authors of their own misfortune. And not because they had removed their jackets during the evening.
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"Deterministically successful" - see, I knew Giovanni would have better words than my tired brain.
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but I really don't think ithey're as deterministically successful as you seem to think.
that's right, all those fashion choices are just a huge fucking coincidence. no conspiracy theories need apply. it's all just a cock-up.
Might want to work of being less of a douche if you want to continue this conversation.
ah, fuck it?!? LOL!!!
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If we want to bemoan constrained fashion choices, please consider men rather than women. For instance, Henry Ford still seems to be rather influencing sock colours.
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that's right, all those fashion choices are just a huge fucking coincidence. no conspiracy theories need apply. it's all just a cock-up.
Who advertises for grunge? For petticoats worn over regular clothes? For black leggings and three layers of old knitted jumpers? Do you think it's all a conspiracy from Big Op Shop?
See if you can find an answer to that, in between bouts of asinine LOLling.
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Stephen when it comes down to it I suspect I see a two-way process where you see one way. Reality does not need any help defending itself, so I'm off to do something else.
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Although looking back at the thread title I'll leave you with this random thought:
What would a mortgage wear?
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a conspiracy from Big Op Shop
I would totally sell my soul to Big Op Shop.
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For what it's worth, historians of the 'cultural studies' bent currently tend to explain the interactions between advertisers and demographics as a dialogue rather than one-way brainwashing. There's that magical word we can't stop using: 'agency'.
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There's that magical word we can't stop using: 'agency'.
That's why they call them advertising agencies.
Zing!
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Is the jury not still out on media effects? The effect of violence in the media etc?
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Is the jury not still out on media effects? The effect of violence in the media etc?
Very much so, and it will remain out for a while longer I would think. How do you disambiguate the evidence? How do you separate actual effects from perceived or self-reported effects? How do you prevent Oliver Stone for making dross like Natural Born Killers?
There are brutal societies with little or no access to television sets, just as there was fashion long before we came up with advertising. Which proves nothing in and of itself, but suggests that things are more complicated than we might be sometimes tempted to think.
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Hmm. As I recall, if anything, Big Op Shop/mod/punk/goth etc came to me even more subversively and insidiously than via traditional advertising channels. Yes, I actively embraced these looks -- and looked damn fine in them! -- with all possible agency as the only plausible escape from Fashion TM... and yet, I didn't come up with them all by my little self, and likely would never have invented them from scratch.
True, the Old Papatoetoe op shop didn't make a huge profit off my fashion addiction, but small alternative magazines were kept going for weeks longer than they might have otherwise, and certain hair dye manufacturers still speak my name with respect.
I dunno. It's lovely and empowering to toss around words like agency, negotiate, dialogue, interpellation, performativity, etc etc. I do it all the time, sometimes in academic papers, often while shopping. And then, in the deep dark quiet of my dressing room or my office, I admit to myself that I have no idea precisely why this year's clothes and make-up look and ideas and buzzwords feel so excellent today and are guaranteed to look a bit tragic 5 years from now, and then, like clockwork, appear charmingly dated again 10 years from now. We're all in the grip of something that I can only conclude has some obscure evolutionary purpose as well as infallible capitalist logic.
Emma, I hear you on the matter of your daughter's clothing choices. By the time I figured out that under all my layers of clothing was a body at the absolute pinnacle of youthful peachiness, it wasn't any more. I strategically bare more of it now than ever, "perfection" be damned. But oh how I wish I could go back and strut my stuff a trifle more; of course, I didn't at the time because i was scared of the male gaze and the actions that so often follow that gaze, so, uh... yes, pretty much full-circle on the original post, then.
(With an added wistful sign for the nudist holidays of my childhood... Bodies are comical and lovely and perhaps we should all see more of them more often, so we could relax and stop demonizing the brave silly beautiful ones who bare the flesh at the disco so the rest of us don't have to.)
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