Interview- The Simpsons and Modern Family

http://giphy.com/gifs/the-simpsons-JNN6maJ156pGM

For assessment 2, my group and I are looking to see if there has been a change in the representation of families in comedic television. We are looking at The Simpsons (pre 2000) and Modern Family. We figured that comparing similar comedic family based televisions shows from different decades would allow us to find out whether our hypothesis is true. Initially, we struggled to really define what our research topic was. We found just investigating family roles and their representations was too broad of a question to look into. Still in the process of constructing our survey, I interviewed my brother as a trial run to test out our questions.

The majority of our questions are close-ended questions as we feel as though open-ended questions are best suited for our focus group.

1. Are you familiar with The Simpsons (pre 2000) and Modern Family?

Yes to both.

2. In a few words describe the role each of the family members play in each show.

Homer: Idiot

Marge: Housewife

Bart: Rebel

Lisa: Nerd

Maggie: Fill in

Phil: Supporting role, father figure (anchor role)

Claire: Ties all of the family in

Hayley: Popular

Alex: Nerd/goody two shoes

Luke: Innocence

3. Do you see any similarities between any of the characters in The Simpsons and Modern Family?

There are similarities but not the same extent. Homer and Phil are both the funny/dumb dads who provide you with laughs but because The Simpsons is a cartoon it’s easier for Homer to do more dangerous and dumb things. The children play the same roles though. Bart and Hayley are similar as they are both rebellious and don’t care too much for school, Lisa and Hayley and both good kids who are very focused on grades and Maggie and Luke both provide and extra little part to the story but play no big roles.

4. Do you think Modern Family portrays social norms in today’s society?

I think it does. It shows a wider variety of family scenarios that I believe are more accepted today that they were pre 2000 in The Simpsons. For example, Modern Family has a gay couple that has an adopted Asian baby. This is definitely more accepted in this day and age. Also there are no large stereotypes such as gays being immaculately groomed and extremely fit or that gays are overly flamboyant which is something The Simpsons does show. Also, the family structure of Jay, Gloria and Manny is something quite new and acceptable nowadays. Jay is much older than Gloria and Gloria is a beautiful Latino who is divorced with one child. Mixed-race families are something that I never saw in The Simpsons.

These questions are really just a basis of our survey. We do have other questions as well but are too long to fit into this short post. This purpose of this test was to figure out whether any of my questions should be worded differently as other people may interpret them other ways or find it difficult to answer question 2 for example in just one word.

The Fairness of Fairphone

“Fairphone is a social enterprise working to create a fairer economy and change how things are made. We open up supply chains, solve problems and use transparency to start debate about what’s truly fair”. (Fairphone, 2015)

The Fairphone started in 2010 as a project to raise awareness about conflict minerals in electronics and the wars they fuel and fund in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Fairphone, 2015). It was only in 2013, in The Netherlands, when Fairphone released their first smartphone. The phone was only the start of how Fairphone was to communicate the issues of smartphones. The aim of the phone was to produce a fair phone that was fair towards people working in the mines in the DRC and fair to the workers in production companies like Foxconn (van der Velden, 2014). After learning about the conditions that these workers faced, I thought it would be a good idea to shed some light on the great initiatives against blood minerals and the poor workers.

Fairphone is funded and run by non-profit organisations including the Waag Society, Action Aid and Schrijf-Schrijf. Although Fairphone claims that they are still far from a ‘fair’ phone at this point, Fairphone is just a starting point for their step-by-step journey (Fairphone, 2015). The phone focuses on 5 main concepts in its effort to make a social impact. It looks at:

Mining– they source materials that support local economies, not armed militia.

Design– the phone has longevity to extend to phones usable life

Manufacturing– provides safe conditions for workers and fair wages

Lifecycle– looking at the whole life span of the phone from creation to e-waste

Social entrepreneurship– creating a new economy with focus on social values

(Fairphone, 2015)

http://www.swedroid.se/fairphone-en-mer-rattvis-mobil/

Whilst the Fairphone does look similar to other smartphones, there are still many differences:

• The body of the phone is made out of post-consumer recycled polycarbonate, retrieved from old devices
• Contains non-conflict minerals
• The phone comes without a headset or charger
• It has dualSIM, so people don’t need two phones in order to separate their work communication from private communication
• It has a removable and easy to replacebattery
• It can be opened up and is repairable
• It is shipped in minimal and sustainable packaging.

(van der Velden, 2014)

Fairphones success is in its numbers. It has sold over 60,000 phones and at the moment is completely sold out, but is in the middle of creating a new updated Fairphone 2. I find that the number sold is quite outstanding for something that I find is reasonably unheard of. Possibly, with the release of the new Fairphone later this year, it will be publicised heavily around the globe with the DRC and Foxconn becoming more and more of a human rights issue. Some argue (Oliver, 2015) that even though this is a great initiative, the technology of the phone is quite far behind and outdated as it uses old Android operating systems and its camera capability is quite low. Although this is a fair point, I believe the main aim of the Fairphone is to raise awareness of the DRC and human rights more than anything.

References:

van der Velden, M 2014, ‘Re-politicising Participatory Design: What can we learn from Fairphone’, in Ninth International Conference on Culture and Technology and Communication (CaTaC). Oslo, Norway, 19-20 June 2014, viewed on the 17^th April 2015, http://dis.ifi.uio.no/sites/default/files/googlescholar/maja-van-der-velden-fairphone.pdf

Fairphone 2015, Fairphone, Fairphone, viewed 17^th of April 2015, http://www.fairphone.com

Oliver, D 2015, Fairphone review, wired.co.uk, viewed on the 17^th of April 2015, http://www.wired.co.uk/reviews/mobile-phones/2015-01/fairphone

The History and Parallels of the Telegraph and the Internet

http://www.history.com/videos/first-telegraph-message

The telegraph and the Internet are completely different in technology are extremely similar in impact, societal impact to be specific. Both pieces of technology were created over 100 years apart but the effect they had on society on a global scale are almost parallel.

First, a bit of background information on the Telegraph. In 1837, Samuel Morse created the first electronic telegraph and its first public use was in 1844. The development of the electronic telegraph meant that communication could cross borders and different parts of the world in minutes. At the time it was revolutionary. Prior to this invention it would take days and months to send a message. The ability to send information quicker brought the world closer together. We became a global village (McLuhan, 1964). By this McLuhan meant that due to technology, the world was shrinking as we became more connected with each other and our cultures. Like the Telegraph, there was a long production to finally create the Internet. Development of the Internet started back in the early 60’s where it was worked on until 1991 when the World Wide Web was created. The impact this had on the world was similar to the invention of the telegraph. Although we had already become a global village, it only increased our connection with other nations. Both technologies had particularly large influences in business. In both cases the stock market grew with the invention of the Telegraph and with the Internet it worked more efficiently than previously.

Telegraph- “This was a major achievement in communications, culminating in the appearance of the first financial newsletters”.

Internet- “…an improvement of an existing process is the elimination of the broker in sending orders to financial markets. Before the Internet, this was possible by using the telephone. But the Internet allows it to be done much more efficiently through a direct connection to an electronic system”. (Economides, 2001)

Another parallel between the two was fear. It was completely unknown what would come from each technology and whether it would be good or bad, particularly in relation to what it would do with war.

In an 1838 letter to Francis O.J. Smith in 1838, Morse wrote about the telegraph:

“This mode of instantaneous communication must inevitably become an instrument of immense power, to be wielded for good or for evil, as it shall be properly or improperly directed.”

Mondo 2000 editor R.U. Sirius as quoted in a 1992 article in the Bergen (N.J.) Record said this about the Internet:

“Who’s going to control all this technology? The corporations, of course. And will that mean your brain implant is going to come complete with a corporate logo, and 20 percent of the time you’re going to be hearing commercials?”

(both quotes found on Elon University School of Communications)

Whilst there are many more similarities, it would simply take too long. The main point is that each medium had very similar social, political and economic impacts on their times.

References:

Economides, N 2001, ‘The impact of the Internet on financial markets’, Journal of Financial Transformation, pp. 8-13

Imagining the Internet, Elon University School of Communications, viewed 7^th April 2015, http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/150/1830.xhtml

Maddox, B 2006, ‘When First We Clicked’, Discover, vol. 27, no.4, pp.30-31

McLuhan, M 1964, Understanding Media, McGraw Hill, New York

Phillips, J 2000, ‘Digital technology and institutional change from the gilded age to modern times: The impact of the telegraph and the Internet’, Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 34, no. 2

Critique of a Text- Does Facebook Makes Us Unhappy?

http://s1217.photobucket.com/user/hercampusbc/media/FacebookArticle2.jpg.html

After searching far and wide on the Internet for a text to critique, I came across something quite fitting to not only my generation but also the course for BCM210. The article I found details differing views on whether Facebook makes us unhappy.

Maria Konnikova from The New Yorker writes the piece How Facebook Makes us Unhappy. Originally, I was quite reluctant on the validity of this article considering it was published by a large news corporation in the US therefore questioned its integrity but was quite surprised by the use of academics throughout the piece. At the bottom of the article it notes that Konnikova has written a bestselling book and also has a Ph.D in Psychology from Columbia. This makes the reader trust what the writer has to say. Konnikova gets her information from psychologist Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan, which from the starts makes her work become instantly credible. She even states how the research process took place.

“Over two weeks, Kross and his colleagues sent text messages to eighty-two Ann Arbor residents five times per day. The researchers wanted to know a few things: how their subjects felt overall, how worried and lonely they were, how much they had used Facebook, and how often they had had direct interaction with others since the previous text message.

By adding such information to the article, Konnikova is creating a research project of her own. She first has come up with a research question and has gathered data. Using the studies she has looked at, she has taken out the hard work of conducting her own primary methodologies. In Kross’ studies, he has asked many qualitative questions to his participants, rather than qualitative. Not only has Konnikova used Kross’ studies to backup her article but has also used many other academics to back up Kross’ conclusion, that Facebook makes people feel unhappy. Again, this enhances the validity of the article.

The view of the article then changes to the opposite viewpoint, which is that Facebook makes us happier. Like the opposing view, Konnikova uses multiple academic works to support this side of the argument, which again creates a stronger argument. In this argument, she doesn’t specifically show the questions the academics were looking at but instead details one of the experiments and its findings.

“As study participants interacted with the site, four electrodes attached to the areas just above their eyebrows and just below their eyes recorded their facial expressions in a procedure known as facial electromyography. When the subjects were actively engaged with Facebook, their physiological response measured a significant uptick in happiness. When they were passively browsing, however, the positive effect disappeared”.

 Personally, I think that this article shows great knowledge in media research. It has many valid academics to make the article a credible piece.

Oriental Stereotypes in Aladdin

When I was a child watching Disney’s Aladdin (1992), it never crossed my mind that there was such harsh use of Oriental stereotypes. It was really only until this subject that it ever crossed my mind. Not only are these Oriental stereotypes displayed in one Disney movie but quite a few including Mulan (1998) and The Jungle Book (1967). So why is it that Disney keeps displaying these themes?

Literary theorist, Edward Said (1978), describes Orientalism as “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on”. The idea of Orientalism dates back to the colonization of the Arab world. The term provided a justification for European colonialism and their construction of “the East” which was different and inferior, therefore needing rescuing by “the West” (Arab American National Museum, 2011).

The beginning of Aladdin starts off with and opening song called “Arabian Nights”.

‘Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place

Where the caravan camels roam

Where it’s flat and immense

And the heat is intense

It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home’.

Original first verse (1992-1993):

‘Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place

Where the caravan camels roam

Where they cut off your ear

If they don’t like your face

It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home’.

Cruel and poor judgments were made in writing the original lyrics and were therefore changed. The verse still conveys ideas of Western Orient stereotypes. It still conveys the fact that they are “barbaric”, there are camels everywhere and that the Middle East is some sort of faraway and unknown place, which are all complete stereotypes. Many of the stereotypes that the West had made up about the East include that it is a place of tradition, it’s undeveloped, rural, spiritual and completely opposite from anything Western (Evans, 2015). Because these stereotypes have transcended through time, it has been quite hard for the Orient to shake these thoughts by Westerners and it is particularly harder to do so when movies keep portraying these ideas.

Throughout the film we are shown other stereotypes. Aladdin is portrayed as a thief, he is poor, his best friend is a monkey and he lives in poverty. Being a thief is a common stereotype of Arabs but for Disney to portray Aladdin as a hero they show him as a sort of ‘Robin Hood’ stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (Nelson, Nunez, 2009). The women in the film are also overly sexualised. This is a common misconception of the Orient. Westerners see Orient women as submissive, sexy and exotic. Lastly, the use of animals in the film as transportation creates a sense of the Middle East being primitive. It conveys that they are too far behind in technology therefore they are poor and live in poverty (Nelson, Nunez, 2009).

All of these stereotypes create and image for young children at a young age. They keep negative stereotypes alive, stereotypes that are untrue.

References:

2011, What is orientalism?/Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes, Arab American National Museum, viewed 4^th April 2015, http://www.arabstereotypes.org/why-stereotypes/what-orientalism

Aladdin 1992, movie, Walt Disney, USA, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

Evans, N 2015, East vs. West: Orientalism, BCM232, University of Wollongong, accessed 4^th April 2015

Nelson, Nunez, A & V 2009, Aladdin/Disney Movies and Racism, PB Works, viewed 4^th April 2015, http://disneyandmovies.pbworks.com/w/page/17905678/4%20Aladdin

Said, E 1978, Orientalism, 5^th edn, Penguin Books, England