Thank You For Smoking

My review for the movie Thank You For Smoking

Grade: C+
   Overrall, it was decent. Had some good funny moments, some humor was more subtle though.  At times, felt like an absurdly long, not particularly well-done Mad TV sketch.

Recommend if you:
   Like justification for or criticism of moral flexibility
   Like parody of morally flexible jobs (Alcohol, Cigarettes, Firearms, Entertainment)
   Are drunk. With friends. Not focused or expecting too much..

Not for people who:
   Hate "bad" parenting/family values
   Have AD(H)D
   Are with parents / grandparents / young children
   Don't like the word "fuck"

Punk rock + Dadaism

These are some parts from my paper on punk rock and dada (anti) art movements. The paper itself got into much more specific elements, but this is what it sought to prove... more or less.

As cultural webs change across time, various fads in attitudes and art come and go. Culture is in constant motion, being influenced and shaped by individuals, and meanwhile influencing and shaping them. This dialectic between culture and individuals can clearly be seen in how past cultural movements influence and shape newer ones. Even as a subculture defines itself, so must it constantly struggle towards redefinition and resist assimilation. While some subcultures try to define themselves in opposition to any hegemony as a counterculture, they too are inevitably absorbed by the amorphous culture at large. The punk and dada movements were two such entities that sought to revolutionize the pervading mass culture, or at least exist despite it. While these two movements did make waves, ultimately the larger culture would integrate them, even against their best attempts to remain independent.

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The dada and the punk movements were countercultures, characterized by their positions against the norms. They challenged and critiqued the status quo using performances, parody, periodicals, and montages. Both movements sought to empower the disadvantaged and give a voice to the muted.

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The punk movement reintroduced the world to a dada-esque affront to the status quo in a slightly different way, burning with a slightly different fire. While the Dadaists consisted mostly of people who actually took part in actively producing art and performance for the movement, many punks limited their contributions to wearing the attire, attending shows, participating in the audience, and reading the fanzines. Also the main punk scene focused on working class youth, which differed from most of the Dadaists who were more bohemian artists.

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The dada and punk movements of the 20th century looked to define themselves against hegemony, but their struggles rested upon different foundations. Where dada looked to critique and ultimately redefine hegemony, punk pursued a life outside and despite the mainstream. While influenced by dada, punk took itself to new and different places. In spite of their rebellious and revolutionary aspirations, both movements were ultimately devoured by the given cultural norms. These countercultures grew as a critical response to the very mainstream culture that they ultimately rejoined.

Technology

These are the first and last paragraphs from my paper on Langdon Winner's The Whale and the Reactor for Communication and Culture: Concepts of freedom. Just a taste.


    As human beings we live in a world of our own making, filled and bound with tools and meanings.  Technology plays an integrally influential role in the everyday lives of people, allowing individuals to extend their skills and abilities beyond strict biological limitations.  These cultural artifacts not only aid humans, but also help to shape the very nature of social and cultural constructions, and are actually “forms of life” (as Langdon Winner argues in The Whale and the Reactor) full of obligations and structuring.  The typical conception of technology pushes tools outside the limits of critical analysis and constrains it as an expansion of freedom that is generally used for “good.”  Winner, however, looks more critically at these tools and explores the sway that technological systems hold over society in shaping what will come. He argues that careful examination of systems is vital in choosing the type of society we want to build and “the kinds of people we want to become” (Winner, 52).
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    While technological determinism would argue that the problems with technology are existent but unavoidable, Winner advocates that a critical evaluation of technology should be made, especially at the onset of a new innovation.  He sees great promise in the way people can use democratic power and voice to look at and express their opinions about technologies. Through this process people can change the outcome of technology and therefore the future of society.  In this planning ahead, critical analysis, democratic empowerment, and technologic control, Winner sees the ability society has to choose technologies complementary to its way of life.  By such choices and expansions upon itself, the people reclaim agency: They are able to choose who they want to be and the society they want to create.  They are able to steer their Platonic sea vessel.  While technology will always dialectically affect and construct the way people go about their lives if individuals are able to look into the innovations, they will be able to choose and pursue their own destiny.