Dominated of the Dominant Class-Field Log 4

The Dominated of the Dominant Class

Journal and Field Log #4

Pierre Bourdieu alleges "that artists and writers...are a dominated fraction of the dominant class" (145).  Thus it wouldn’t be much of a semantic stretch to say that film directors and actors are likewise the dominated of the dominant class.   So, in discussing, 10 Items or Less, I want to, at first, look at it from a Marxist perspective because I think the movie brings up numerous class issues.  

The story roughly is Morgan Freeman’s character, “Him,” doing research for a small film role he’s being offered after being “out of the game” for a while.   As part of that research he visits a working class market in Carson, California.  There he becomes intrigued by a cashier, named Scarlet, played by Paz Vega.   In a way the movie is sort of city mouse/country mouse premise.  Him is in no way prepared to be unceremoniously dumped in Carson, and comes only equipped with his Diner’s Club card.   Paz takes pity on him and they set off on a series of small adventures.

From a certain perspective, it can be argued that the director, Brad Silberling, is trying to cast the regular folks of Carson as funny, quirky, and noble.   Paz Vega’s role is certainly the most dominant one, and she is cast as someone who’s merely been dealt a bad hand and has sort of given up “at 25.”   Thus, it’s up to Him to sort of coax her on, restore her confidence as she tries to move on from a bad relationship in which she failed because she didn’t produce off spring (while her exes next girlfriend—who also works at the market—does).   She’s clearly cast as aspiring and worth more than being the only who works at a very slow supermarket.  

Morgan Freeman’s role is cast as a likeable, however bourgeois, successful actor who doesn’t even know his own phone number, carries nothing more than Diner’s Club, and is in awe of the world of retail work.   His fascination with the East Indian manager who moves at an animated snail’s pace, Scarlet’s ability to know the prices of the items before they are even unloaded from the basket, the dance of the cleaning crew at the car wash, the pitch and nuance of a mop sales woman, and the office receptionist suggest that while he wants to be sympathetic to their experience he will never have to live their experience.   His experience mimics the audience’s viewpoint as the film maker stages these shots under the full glare of Hollywood lights.   They’re staged, however fascinating, and while they “uplift” the people performing them, they also point out how different “him” is from the people in Carson. 

Yet, Him’s relationship with Scarlet seems to be the real highlight of the film.   Morgan Freeman, who is usually cast in roles where he has to display a lot of gravitas, is charming and playful.   The chemistry between him and Paz Vega seems genuinely authentic, and I bet some of the exchanges were improvised.   While I think the director was wise to cast someone with the same sort of “wattage” as Morgan Freeman, their chemistry and ease with each other made it seem a little unbelievable, which brings up the obvious flaw in the movie.   Paz Vega is expected to play this undervalued worker at a store and at the same time be able to go toe to toe with a famous actor who dances through life as if nothing concerns him.  While I don’t think the director means any disrespect to working class people, he applies the usual Hollywood gloss as if displaying them as sort of the downtrodden nobility.   There may indeed be people who through bad circumstances are not living up to their potential, but to cast the whole world of the retail worker as sort of fascinating suggests that people, real people, want nothing more than to work the check-out line at a supermarket or enjoy the actual work of washing cars or the mindless drudgery of office work.   Had the director actually talked with people who work retail/office jobs he may not have been so easily enamored with the job duties but with, perhaps, the relationships people forge with their co-workers that provides some sort of payoff for working a mindless job. 

Work Cited

Bourdieu, Pierre. In Other Words, Essays Towards A Reflexive Sociology. Stanford University  Press, 1990.

Immersed in a Virtual World

Immersed in a Virtual World

Journal & Field Log #3

                 Every morning the first thing I do is check my e-mail, perhaps check in on Facebook, and generally orient myself to my virtual life before I go through the task of orienting myself to my physical life.   It’s a sort of dance between virtual and physical.   Pressing e-mail here, sip of coffee there; some piece of news from the world here; some physical detail of my life in Albuquerque here.   In both cases I am immersed in a world:  physical or virtual.

                Judging by the time I spend on the computer, the virtual world seems more real than my physical one.  My partner and I’s discussion seem to trend toward the virtual world (though it may be reflecting a physical world, it is mediated through the virtual world).   The computer, and its ever present eye, seems to dictate what the flow of the day is going to be like.   I keep a calendar online, structure my day around a schedule that is planned to the minute and managed by a set of reminders that pop up (with an accompanying sound) when I log in at work, or open up a web page.   Without this virtual calendar I may not make many of my appointments.  But am I busier than my father (who didn’t have these sophisticated tools at my disposal)?

                Perhaps.   Yet, the computer has sort of interposed itself between the language and the thing it references.  On a practical level, the word itself no longer points exactly to the thing it signifies but points to a series of binary codes, which are then translated to letters, which then light up on a screen.   The process of understanding meaning becomes sort of mediated through the experience of the computer.   Indeed the very act of typing it out on a word processor adds another layer because I can instantly correct the grammar, double check the spelling, even have common words auto-corrected.   This allows me to juggle even more task than my father was capable of, yet with this added efficiency, there is also the risk that the tool itself requires a whole series of steps to keep it running.  How much time is now dedicated to my “checking in?”  How much of my daily tasks are dictated by my keeping track of my virtual life?  

                If anything, Baudrillard uses too strong of a term, by saying that the proliferation of terms has “imploded” the distinction between real and simulated.   For one, if my own reading of Saussure’s theories are correct, our understanding of the world, since it is done through words, is already “simulated.”   We are not really seeing the “real” world, if there is even such a thing.   And while the “simulated” world may indeed have the same draw and require as much maintenance it merely adds another layer of interface between “reality” and us.   More complicated and mediated for sure, but not really sure if I agree with the term “imploded,” which suggests a sort of chaotic mess that can’t be understood.  It can be understood, to the degree that anything can be understood, but is just much harder.

Figured out how to blog.

I wish to apologize to the young woman for my unthinkingly rude challenge to her father’s quality of memory, it was as if I was calling him a liar.

What I should have said is that Lembeke’s argument in his “Spitting Image” is not that every alleged instance of spitting was false but that the totality of such numbers of reports, taken together, has become more of an urban legend than anything resembling historical and empirical reality (b/c of total lack of evidence from newspapers and television reports, police records, etc, total lack of any documented evidence – where and when -- of a single instance of spitting). What he concludes is that these men felt spit upon, when they came home, felt used and discarded. No parades was the least of it.

I also wish to thank the young woman for taking back the nationalist/patriotic card, tearing it to pieces, and throwing it away. I have not been witness to such a generous, gate-opening move in a long time, especially coming after what she had every right to think of as an insult to her father.

 

Plato and Aristotle's Gnarly Adventure

Reading Log 3

Matthew Tougas

I think it’s fair to say neither Plato nor Aristotle would adapt to modern technology as seamlessly as Socrates did in the pivotal eighties classic, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  If we could, however, bring them up to speed instantly by downloading the past two millennia directly into their brains Matrix­-style, I think we’d see two radically opposing views on the “ethopoetical” nature of modern technology, though not necessarily in the obvious ways.  Plato, as Miller notes, would no doubt find cause for alarm in the text-based nature of the internet: instant messaging, blogs, tweets, consumer reviews.  The opportunity anonymity provides to exaggerate, misrepresent and flat out lie would be chief concerns of his.  Skype, however, might just be the greatest invention of all time to Plato.  To be able to see and hear the person with whom you are interacting would, for Plato, ensure the ideas being exchanged are accurate, in terms of how the communicator intended his message to come across.  Of course, the moment Plato stopped concerning himself with the mode of communication, he’d start worrying again about human impulses—but that’s just Plato.

Aristotle, the “hipper” of the two, might at first embrace the notion of text-speak, assuming he thought brb and lol were words people actually spoke (to be fair, I’m hearing the latter pronounced more and more), or at least captured the truest essence of what the speaker meant.  As Miller reminds us, Aristotle thought “Authors should compose without being noticed and should seem to speak not artificially but naturally” (75).  So for him the problem might not be whether someone really laughed out loud or not, but if a known dullard (Plato, for example) in text typed out lol in response to someone’s comment, even though it’s well known Plato never laughed (lol).

All jokes aside, where these two ideas become relevant in the world of Artificial Intelligence is at the intersection of what gives someone credibility and what are the dangers of “simulating” credibility online.  The real risk both of them would likely agree on would be that risk of simulating virtue from an artificial agent (like Agent Smith, for example).  To be fair, both would probably doubt the ability for true AI to ever accurately simulate human virtue in the first place.

To bring all this back to the classroom, this discussion gives me an idea for an assignment about ethos and digital rhetorics.  I could have my students read tweets from political contestants and compare them to how those same politicians orate the same idea or message.  What differences, rhetorically, are there between the two?  Which medium seems to more accurately represent the ethos of the politician? Why?  What does this say about Plato’s argument that written word risks misrepresenting the speaker?  Can a speaker code-shift between both mediums and still accurately represent himself?

Maria Elwan

Eng 440
September 10, 2012

Journal Log 3 - Writing in a Culture of Simulation

2. To what extent are computers able to think…In light of the nature of rhetoric, what is the human expectation in the interactions in these phenomena?

My reaction to these personalized computer aids are similar to the reactions of many others, we acknowledge they are there but our interactions are sometimes efficient, sometimes frustrating and often entertaining.

Calling a business and going through the phone tree can be quicker and more to the point than having to deal with a live person. Companies now-a-days give discounts if you pay your bills over the automated line or online and don’t select to speak to a live person. These interactions are efficient and satisfactory as long as you are able to get the information you wanted and take care of your intended business.  When the telephone tree goes haywire and you don’t get the information or service you were looking for, you don’t have the pleasure of slamming the phone in someone’s ear that you enjoyed in the not so distant past as a response to bad service. It can also feel surreal when you call a business with a question and a simulated robotic voice starts asking you questions.  This voice is not  as sophisticated and human sounding as Siri or Iris.  There’s no denying this is a computer you have reached.

I would say the interactions with these simulated voices are real, because in the case of bill pay you have completed a transaction, or if the call was about a question you had, you often hang up the phone with the answer you needed (ex. account balance, last payment received.)

Talking to these computers can be entertaining as you and friends can get very creative with the questions you ask the like of Siri or Iris.  I personally get a surreal feeling, over how ‘real’ this voice sounds and how real the interactions are.  This “Eliza effect – our general tendency to treat responsive computer programs as more intelligent than they are. Very small amounts of interactivity cause us to project our own complexity onto the undeserving object” (Turkle 1997). With the example of Siri, her voice sounds very pleasant and I imagine an attractive young woman on the other line. You are also so struck with the realness, you want to keep asking it questions until you get it to show simulated anger or impatience. Then there is a sense of enjoyment in realizing how extensive the programming is to elicit the responses it gives.

            This anthropomorphism (giving human qualities to non-living or non-human things) is a human tendency that we gave initially to our pets and we are now ascribing to our interactions with computers whether on line, on the phone or at the automated check-out counter at the supermarket. It seems we are unwitting actors in businesses attempts to take assembly line, automated business practices to the next level. As consumers we can be defiant and refuse to go through these automated checkout lines and other such tactics, but it’s a simple fact that computers have permeated just about every industry or service in the world.  Now our only alternative is to do what we do best, adapt and see how we can use this new technology to our benefit.