Blog 9: New York Performing Arts Library

Although I am not a performing arts student, I found the library very interesting. Since I am planning to study interior design in the future, I enjoyed the section where they had books that teach you about color coordination and interior design throughout history. In the second level thay had books that described the making of almost every film made in history. I found the reasons behind the film making of a movie we saw in film class, 'Sunrise.' My favorite section was in the lower level where they had thousands of movies on DVD and VHS. Why go to blockbuster? Without a doubt I will be visiting the Library of performing arts again to take advantage of the great selections they have.

Blog 8.5: A Vision of Students Today

The main purpose of this video is to show the difficulties students have in colleges and universities. When we discussed our issues in class, they appeared to be the same as most of the student from this video. I am hoping to enter a four year college next semester and the problems I am going to face make me nervous but commited. I know that classes will get bigger and the work will become harder but that is what we have to do to become successful. I really hope that the work and struggle pays off.

Simone and the American dream

Virtual reality has affected our society in great ways in the past decade. Most films adapt the ideas that were presented to us by philosopher who thought we were living in an illusion. The matrix, vanilla sky, and the Truman show are just some movies that have used these theories to make us question once more if we are truely living in a virtual world. The movie 'Simone' has a diffrent plot becaus it analyzes and explains how these implied imaginatives corrupt our society. We do not necessarily praise robots or other non existing 'humans', but we do this for pop stars and other media giants who are over credited for their performances. The movie may seem over estimated but this is how we act today in a non virtual world.

Blog 7: Research

There are many great topics to discuss in the media, whether they be about controversial issues or topics that influence the society. The main topic that I have focused on is how the media exaggerates news stories for different purposes. In the media today there are a couple of headlines that seemed overwhelmed because they have not yet caused damage, or do not have any meaning whatsoever. The main reason why this publicity has gotten over handled is because the media is trying to cover something up. The important news is getting hidden because the media wants to create a false hope for society and keep this nation under control. These past months, the US has suffered an economic break down but instead of getting the full story, we see people focusing on other things that have no significance such as what kind of puppy is living in the white house. Swine flu has also taken up most of the news coverage in the world. Some people debate on how important this issue is because it hasn’t even killed more than 5 people in this country in the past month. The value of these issues should be controlled by the media and they should only give us what we need to hear not what we want to hear. Even though the media tries to hide stuff from us, we need to find the truth ourselves by watching news that are not controlled by mass conglomerates such as fox and other news stations. Information is the key that will us become a better nation.

shadows and the uncanny

Two major phycologists who explain the reasons for our sometimes unexplainable actions are Jung and Freud. Their concepts contradict each other in someways. I think we all experience both of their theories in our based on our desicion making. The Freudian concept is that everything may seem new and weird, but also strangely familiar, the uncanny. Everything around us that is ot natural is uncanny, such as new technologies that we use everyday. If we were to have a travel machine we would be freaked out but also intrigued because in aour minds we have dreamed of this before. Jung uses his theory of 'The shadow' to explain the part of us that is socially unacceptable. C.G Jung explained that the ego controlled this shadow which resulted in our negative yet passive actions. Examples of this attitude is conveyed in the fims we have watched in class. In 'Abre los ojos', Cesar's life is controlled by his thoughts, but his shadows overpower his ego and he only see's the negative side of situations.

Abre los Ojos

In class we watched the film "open your eyes" which was a great movie because it makes you think outside the box. As I was watching 'abrelos ojos' I made connections with the themes in the Matrix. The ideas of both films were very similar, in the begining of the movies we absorb the normal lives of the main characters. Both movies show how the real world was actually a virtualized world where your mind controls what is happening around you. In 'abre los ojos' we see that Cesar paid for a company to make him live in this virtual world voluntary, where as in the matrix, machines take over and trap humans inside this computerized world. In class we al=so discussed the allegory of the cave which holds similar beliefs to the theme of this movie. In general this film makes us question whether everything around us is real.

103 project

For our research project I am thinking that I should write about how we as teenagers in the united should be more involved in our society and be more up to date in our current events. I can research how different parts of the media sometimes grab our attention but for things that have no useful information and can sometimes isolate us from the 'real world'. I think that this is a very broad topic that will help to show us new uses of the media.