Readings/Viewings:
- Marx, Karl. “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret
Thereof” - “Brought to you B(U)Y: The Signs of Advertising,” p. 141-150, SOL
- “Media Culture,” p. 70-81, TT
- View: bell hooks, Pt8 Cultural Criticism (rap music)
Ok folks, I’m tossing a little Marx your way this week. I realize that the reading is difficult, but try your best. We’ll go over it in class, but take notes about what parts you do and do not understand. Karl Marx’s influence on our contemporary understanding of commodity culture is quite significant, so I wanted to expose you to some of his original writing.
For this week’s blog response, I want you each to focus on either one of the two following points of discussion:
1. Describe what you understand from reading Marx’s writing (his main argument/s and ideas) and how you think his main concept/s apply to (or exemplify) what you read about advertising and/or media culture.
OR
2. Explain how bell hooks video examining rap culture either exemplifies or helps you to further understand your readings on advertising and/or media culture.
October 25, 2007 at 2:22 am
This time I definitely had to do a lot of rereading and rewinding on the video to do, to understand the true meaning of what was being delivered to me. What I see here is the American dream with a lot of transgression. The big house, the cars but then BAM! You add the pimp with women all around you, jewelry, mansions, cars any luxury material you can think of. In some videos the women are portrayed as classy which gives the idea to viewers especially women, that you’re not being slutty…in fact, it’s a new form of elegance. All of this is achieved through violence. Many rap videos can be degrading to women. To have all these sexy women swooning over you, you have to degrade them (in other words rape them” to achieve authority. As I read in SOL around page 143-144 these are all signifiers. Let violence solve it! If you want a big mansion and fancy cars drug-deal, smoke and have sex with endless women all day! In the TT as well, how do we know who is cool and unique? Well compare them to the music videos on TV. It also talks about how we might be losing childhood innocence or the death of adult illusions that children are oblivious to all this. I believe media is tracking down children. The big problem that I see now is that kids are trying to act like adults. Cartoons have died out because now American Idol is a family show. I’ve seen little kids trying to rap and act like Daddy Yankee and I think, why would any parent want that? But since all those images from the videos are in our head we think of it as acceptable.
I do agree that in some cases the lighter-skinned blacks are accepted a lot more when it comes to pop culture. Just look at Beyonce Knowles and Tyra Banks. They have both reached out to a wider audience, not just African-Americans. This is following what Bell Hooks is saying that America is falling into that gap of “It’s ok to be racist and look down on other people” This reminds of when I go to Guatemala. The indigenous people are all looked down upon by the mestizos and the Ladinos. I hate it. It has become so common amongst ourselves to say “You’re acting like an Indian” which is sometimes said as a joke or an insult, but in the end who are we really talking about? We are making the natives inferior.
October 25, 2007 at 10:07 am
I definatly agree. The industry has completly changed. It’s amost to say business vs the art. It not so much about the art and entertainment of good music. Its more about the business’ ability to push and sale a certain act or indivisual. It’s sad to say but someone like Stevie Wonder or Ray Charels would not be signed today, purely based on the fact that they’re are blind, there for not marketable. Unless you are a sex symbol, or can be a media magnet do to your unique attitude or views you won’t be signed. And if you don’t like it quit! Maybe oneday it will change, but the way video and music is coming together, I doubt it.
October 25, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I found the video very useful in how advertising works. It shows how the rap music industry has been constantly seen as sexist, racist, etc..Gone are the days where the industry had guys like Public Enemy, who were somewhat socially concious of the world around them. Now, all you have to do is rap about scoring coke and women, maybe add in a cop-killing reference, and you have a hit single. While it is probably morally offensive, what I find it even more offensive and degrading is that this type of attitude is recycled over and over again. It’s almost like people don’t want something innovative or groundbreaking or even artistic. And thats probably the reason why I think every rap song sounds exactly alike It is this way because we all know sex, violence, and drugs sell in the media, which is what the majority of hip hop music is about, sadly. I agree that it is business vs. art. I believe that true art will always be ignored at first glance. I think that true art is challenging, which is why most people turn to the cliched, endlessly annoying, marketable style of music. Because its easy to listen to and it offers cheap thrill, but no real substance. I think that the business aspect of music is almost talking over the music itself. Although, with some artists leaving the record labels and releasing independently, I think it might be starting to change. I applaud people who won’t put commerce in front of their art. Hopefully others will catch on
October 25, 2007 at 2:36 pm
First off I just wanted to comment on the speaker Art Spiegleman. He was an amazing speaker. Just the certain things that he said about the culture of comic strips. The speech that he gave on serious comics not having to have a serious theme or topic. I thought that was really insightful. My favorite thing about comics is that they are for everyone to comprehend, they can be informative to many people because everyone can eventually understand pictures unlike everyone being able to understand big words.
October 25, 2007 at 2:44 pm
The readings this week were definity a different perspective of consumerism. Bells explaination on how the media giants “calculate” what they produce,who their consumers will be, for the purpose of gaining a profit totally exemplify what was said in TT. I felt that Bells was trying to put the focus on the cultural significance of the people who are consuming the vulgar and derogatory rap music, shifting the focus from the rappers who make it. TT was more about making us, the readers, more aware of what we are taking in from the media. This helps me understand that the producers and consumers are both responsible for what is popular in our culture
October 25, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Karl Marx was a very complex man who created simplistic ideas concerning politics and community. His Marxism was among the many things that acclaim him to be one of the most structured philosophers of his time.
With all of that the reading to me was a confusing outlook on commodity. His example of wood and its correlation to a table was perfect because it shows a simplistic version of the economy of the world today.
Marx wanted every thing to be equal. His ideology against consumerism was clear when reading the passage. Marx brings up the idea of almost a sub conscience factor when it comes to consumerism. When purchasing the product we try not to label the purchase as man made. We try not to acknowledge the fact that someone spent time making that object and further more sometimes that is what drives us to buy it.
As humans, maybe even as specifically as Americans we go through life analyzing stuff that becomes so routine we don’t even know that we are doing it. It is kind of the “go with the flow” complex. In Marx passage it seems as if the cure to the consumerism fetish is acknowledgment. For commodities to be looked at and analyzed more thoroughly. The theory toolbox spoke on it as well. Comparing an Opera to a re run of “Charlie’s Angels” although a lot of people think that it takes more intellectual thought to absorb the talent of the opera, one must do the same when watching a re run of “Charlie’s Angels”.
I found this reading to be very interesting, deeply thought provoking. I have always been a big fan of Marx and took pleasure in the fact that he viewed consumerism the way i do. Consumerism is a social life, a lifestyle that people crave and deeply desire. It is another way to produce and keep the fire of classism burning.
October 25, 2007 at 4:17 pm
OK, After reading the article I can agree with some thing that it was saying but for the most part I dont I disagree. The article talked about the two commercials and in the beer comerical I can see the valid points but in the other i got confussed in what they were trying to tell me. The dog came and ripped the girls jeans off and then the girl went to follow the dog, to her surprise the owner of the dog was putting on the jeans while looking at the girl. I believe that what the comerical was saying was that the jeans are so nice are so cool that every one has to have them. If anything I believe that is was speaking toward gay males because as a gay male it was saying that ” I can do and wear whatever you can bitch”. I think that commericals sometimes do have hidden agendas that we cant always see through, but I also think that we digg to much into the situation and try to find something thats not there.
I saw the rap commerial and it was funny because me and my cosin was just talking about how much we dislike cops the other day. I can relate to what the rapper was saying because I have been profiled just because I was black several times. People say that it dose happen, they say that we are just looking for something to blame the white man for but it’s true. There was this one time I got pulled over beause of the kind of car I was driving. The cop told me that it looked like a drug car or a stolen car and that I should not be driving it. He also said that was not able to afford such a car and when I tried to defend myself he handcuffed me and threw to the ground and put his knee in my back. There all types of racial profileing out there and it’s to bad no one else sees it.
October 25, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I looked through all the entries that I have submitted for the longest, and what I thought as to me, my most deep and to the point comments that I am most proud of and put them into the gender guesser. I didnt know what to expect at first after reading the comments you had written about how I guess your a European Male. After hitting submit I was surprised to see that my informality caused me to appear like a man to the guesser, but at the same time they were fairly close, I am about 55% male. On the other hand with my formality on ethnicity I was almost clearly, 75% to be exact am a European. The results on one hand were not as shoking and off as the teachers was, but then again European was wrong but the ethnicity was closley matched so it could have gone either way. This is just one ideological fact that we have to prove that in society today even computers see good grammer and formality to be either female and European. This does not help our sterotypical views that we as a society maintain today to put people in their “catagories” by saying, oh your a female your good at writing and oh your writing is very formal, your European. On one side it hurts to be called a male on that standpoint but i cannot argue due to my obvious spelling and grammer mistakes present in all my writings to be called a male. And European, well I find it common that people have the misconception that Europeans are all formal and well spoken. they might be to an extent but it is still non the less a ideological perception we have of other cultures. I am not sure how accurate this guesser is because in the two cases i know of people usuing it, it has been off but i can tell that the program is using human ideological thinking to make its guesses, and that is a kind of thinkign and bais that computers should not have.
October 25, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I fully intended on writing about Marx until I saw the bell hooks video and thought about it next to the reading from SOL. “Brought to You B(U)Y” explains that every advertisement, every commercial, is laden with a cultural message that is up to us to analyze.
An example of a message (almost a code) that is being sent in commercials and ads that I saw very clearly was the presence of resentment that SOL mentioned. The Budweiser ad about the scruffy guy training his scruffy dog to go for the rich man’s crotch showed class resentment; the one with the pit bull taking the jeans off of the girl and leaving her in her underwear was gender resentment. Recently I saw a Burger King commercial with P. Diddy rolling up to the fast food joint—fly cars, hoes, and all—which had just closed. P. Diddy pressures the dorky white guy outside into re-opening the restaurant just for him (and his entourage). Dorky white guy agrees, P. Diddy and his posse get into Burger King. Dorky white guy puts his hand up for an enthusiastic high five, P. Diddy looks the other way, i.e. “leavin’ him hangin’.” Dorky white guy is now not only dorky, but humiliated. In my mind, this is a cultural message of race resentment. Just as the guy in the Levis commercial humiliated the young woman by exposing her (physically), P. Diddy “exposes” the Burger King employee by not returning the high five.
SOL describes a new kind of “gender gap,” a gap which I see present in rap lyrics. In the new “gender gap,” “women, once placed on a kind of pedestal in sexual relations, have been cast into the dirt” (p144). While the bell hooks video goes on to explain how music-industry masterminds know exactly what it takes to make a million dollars and will have their artists say what it takes to get it—even if their beliefs don’t match their words—I think that there is a double agenda beneath the surface. Yes, these artists want to make money (and they do, there’s no doubt about that) but they also want to “cast [women] into the dirt.” Here is the gender resentment, next comes the race resentment, which bell hooks faces head-on when she starts talking about the color caste system. Self-hatred seems undeniably present when the women that are considered beautiful in these songs are closer to white than black, but then there is race resentment toward whites as well because these “white-ish” women who are so beautiful are nonetheless being humiliated. (Did that make any sense at all??)
A teacher in junior high once told me that everything that humans think is funny is funny because someone is getting hurt. Slapstick comedy, sarcastic humor…all cause someone some kind of pain. It’s kind of frightening that the “best commercials” are the ones where someone is being humiliated, and the most popular music in America is based on the degradation of women and blacks. Ok, I’ve rambled long enough….
October 25, 2007 at 5:15 pm
When I read Marx’s writings I was very interested in his ideas. His basic idea is to stop having producers treat their products as commodities, or put a specific value on them. He wishes to have a free and open society where products are valued based on the amount of labor put into them, and they are open for everyone. Marx sees the problem with commodities as people just see a product they want that will be useful to them. Not a product that someone put in a lot of labor developing. Marx describes this with his term the “fetishism of commodities.” This basically means the commodities to the consumer “appear” on the shelf out of no where for your consumption. That these commodities have a “life of their own” so to say. The problem he sees with this is that people don’t take the time to think or consider how much work was put into this object for them, they just want it to add to their long list of commodities. I think this relates to the readings because all advertisements are today are just ways to get consumers to buy specific commodities (that they really don’t need) They don’t show the work that was put into developing the technology of the product, they just see the product and how it will make them “cooler.” This is best described on page 46 of SOL- “Modern advertising seeks to transform desire into needs.” We don’t need to go out and buy the newest Verizon phone that costs hundreds of dollars, but the advertisement where the hot chick is hanging all over a guy who has this phone turns this desire into a “need.” Thats at least how I interpreted it.
When watching the Bell Hooks video it just further shows how easily influenced people are to buy products or support something based on some false “bull shit” they watch. As if you listen to rap music suddenly all these half naked women are gonna suddenly be all over you and your gonna be the man. Its also sad to see the recycled material they use in todays rap songs and videos. I agree 100% with Andrew that what people want to here is the same old stuff about killing, and money, and drugs, and this crazy party life. They dont want to hear music that is actually artistic and challenges this popular genre. The video is a real eye opener to people of all cultures about how sad todays popular rap music has become. Its redundant, uneducated, lies that are being shown to kids today. So in return they are growing up with this false mentality and its just wrong. Thanks for reading
October 25, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Yea, so that karl marx reading was definately rough and sucks so say… i could barely get through it let alone understand it so i do look foreward to going through it in class. I really enjoyed the video and through it had a lot to do with the reading. the rappers dont necessarily believe in what they are rapping about but they know what sells. they know what to do to intrigue people. it’s like, for example, i remember when 50 cent first started getting popular and he was the rapper that had been shot a bunch of times. you dont think that didnt help him sell records or get a movie deal about the struggle he had been through… oh man… i know every white gang banger in my neighborhood was in line to pay 10.50 to see that movie… how thug of them, right? It’s all an image and it’s all marketing and advertising. rapping about how you feel doesnt sell records… coochie, asses and killin cops sells records. in a way… kind of putting the reading and the clip together… the record companies make the rappers themselves the advertisement. they are like puppets to make more money.
October 25, 2007 at 5:46 pm
One thing to ponder as I read this week’s readings is how much the media “tells us what we want.” as Hitler once said, “if you tell them the same lie over and over again for enough time they will start to believe it.” That is just what the media is doing all the time in our everyday lives. For example in my life I have my free phone that I got when I renewed my service plan 2 summers ago it has been dropped on the ground thrown at the wall rained on and has been talked on for hours on end, why do I need a much more fragile I phone to do the same but break the first time it slips out if my hand when I’m late for class. I think that the question we think about we should be thinking is not “what does the media makes think/ do… but what DOESN’T the media do. When Marx speaks about commodities he seems to want to put more value on the use of the product than on the product itself, whey do we need all in one computer-cell phones that can do everything short of fly, when we can life just the same with a simple make and receive calls phone and a lap top computer. Not to say that my habits in consumerism are anything to strive for. But why in modern western culture is the thing so important, I could care less about the brand of jeans I wear as long as they keep me clothed and warm.
October 25, 2007 at 5:50 pm
i understood the reading i got where they were coming from when mentioning all the different types of advertising and so forth. rape artist are known for explcit words and doing wild things. all being true in what the video was saying. most people think of rape music as degrading i do to, to some extinct. their are other types of rap music that don’t have any women dancing in them but they show the black male in jail, stealing drugs or something else. i disagree 100% with geof when he said that rap is uneducated, kanye west,tupac biggie smalls all of these rappers all have one thing in common they all have something to say whether it be about the world or something else whatever is on their minds their going to say it. kanye west may be very arrogant and obnoxious but he has reason for being that way and that’s what make shim good the fact that he knows he’s good and he lets it get to his head. rap music in the 80’s and 90’s sex mostly. all they were doing is saling their female that was in that video, sex sales and these videos were made to appeal to the male audience and they did just that, girls in the video’s waering the skimpest things, shaking their god givin talents and such. being and artist has its perks and its down falls, desire is what keeps the audience wanting that lifestyle and all the things that go with it money, girls “desire itself becomes the product that the advertiser is selling”. the clothes the rappers wear, jewlrey,shoes and so on the way these rappers live is what is being advertised and that’s what it is.
October 25, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I chose to talk about the Bell Hooks video, seeing as how a lot of you chose the Marx reading. The video didn’t necessarily help as much as restate what I already knew about marketing and advertisement. I make rap music, so I know all about the tricks of getting people’s attention and knowing what sells. Just like the video stated, so many choose the path of the “sell out” and go for the easy way to make riches. So with that in mind, all of the negative rap music is pushed to the front and stands as the poster child or representation of what rap is, and this is the furthest thing from the truth. Rap is one element of four that make up the culture Hip Hop. Rap stands for Rythum and Poetry, and is meant to be used as a form of expression. The problem with Rap is now its become more of a business than creative expression. So people who aren’t even Hip Hop, are rapping and using R.A.P. as an outlet to get money. Since rap music is so saturated with rappers who choose this path, it seems impossible to market against sex, guns, and drugs, but it is very possible. Things go in cycles and people get tired of routine, so Hip Hop will soon return to the essences of which it came from. There are ways to express yourself and talk about hard or good times without the negative approach. And that would be the marketing tool. The ability to be able to speak to the masses without going over people’s heads at the same time, not blending in with the “norm”, and many rappers have been successful doing so.
October 25, 2007 at 6:02 pm
One of my favorite subjects in the world is hip hop music so it was interesting to hear this lady’s spin on it. Basically, she is saying that hip hop has been commodified so that rappers are no longer selling a genre, they’re selling a lifestyle and a new mentality on women, money, crime, ect. This is all true to a degree when looking at radio rap or BET. As it says in the TT, “media culture offers particular identities and meanings, the norms underlying these are resisted all the time”(73). This is why when the Wu Tang Clan comes along talking about killing and gangsta culture, folks like myself absolutely love. And I do love it. Because it’s bad ass and cool, it has the power to “reject outright conventional modes of thought”(TT,73). Who cares what color you are, sometimes all of us (men mostley) just want to “bring da mothafuckin ruckus” so the Wu Tang Clan delivers by advertising that mentality in their music. Sometimes it’s only human. That being said, I realize and fully agree that much of the hip hop on tv is pure crap and worthless but, at the same time, most hip hop isn’t on mtv and is just as brilliant and musical as any rock song. The difference come in how we (the culture that embraces the media) reacts to such things. “The key issue then is to become more savvy readers of media”(TT,78). If we have an informed basis for comparison then we, the culture, can throw out the bad and not worry about it being commodified into the mainstream.
October 25, 2007 at 6:23 pm
I recognized parallels between the video and the SOL readings with the subject of resentment, especially gender resentment, or the misogyny referred to on page 143 of SOL and during the video. In the rap videos, the women are depicted in “sexy” clothing, doing erotic dances and gestures. The lyrics are also obscene, depicting women as things to admire for their bodies in sexual ways, and nothing beyond that. The woman in the video refers to the black female body in sexual terms such as “the hot pussy, the prostitute, the slut, the vulgar girl, the girl that’s willing to do what the nice girls wouldn’t.” She then goes on to talk about color casting, presenting light skinned, long haired, straightened haired young women as being the most desirable.
The video also has some parallels to the Theory Toolbox, such as “the medium is the message.” Rap itself is a medium to get out certain views and feelings, and we often have stereotypical views of rap because of what we hear and see about the most in the rap culture. The woman in the video talks about which rap gets on the national news, and that this rap is the rap with the misogyny and obscene language. The news is a media that sensationalizes particular things and events, and therefore only shows the vulgar rap that is most popular. The woman also talks about rap artists’ knowledge that sexual and violent rap will get them more money. Despite being artists, they are making a product, and because their way of getting the product out is through major labels, they have to change their product to fit what the label wants to release to the public.
The video lastly focuses on the commodification of blackness. The woman refers to an American obsession with blackness. She also presents the contradiction of a young white male enjoying black rappers, but being afraid of the reality of a black person on the street. Her last point is that white Americans are still like wonderbread, still conservative because they can look to black people as exotic commodities.
October 30, 2007 at 7:25 pm
After watching the video and listeing in class because i wrote on the wrong assignment its really quite interesting on the way rap has progressed throughout the years. Everything changes with time and the people that say they hate change is in for a negative life because everything changes, whether we like it or not the world is changing and its your choice to chose whether you accept the change and even if all the effects arnt positive to stive and work on making the current world and society a better place, or to just sit back and moan because you liked things the way they were. But in reality you cant always get what you want. Rap is deffinetly not an exception. Rap music has progressed with time and opinions may differ if that change has been negative or positive but it has changed none the less. Reading some of the past comments about in the earlier stages of rap where artists such as Public Enemy had some distinction about society and how unequal some aspects were compared to rapers now a day focusing on sex for the most part has gone off track of what rap was started for. I know im white and have no distinct background in the rap culture but i definetly can notice a change in morals that artists in the rap culture have. The video was talking about how the rap culture has progressed and is focusing on materialistic aspects such as money and sex and drugs and I am definetly agreeing with her. Every time you turn on the tv and see a rap music video its right away the artist raping and 20 girls wearing next to nothing dancing. They are taking the theory “sex sells” and taking it to an extreme. I think artists should sing about more of their feelings and hardships with their lives or society personally then sex for 10 tracks on every cd. It gets old and of course i have bias because im not a large fan of rap but i like to listen to old school rap every once in a while because its more artistic to me and more interesting because it deals with every day issues where now a days it dosnt.