Kathy is for LOVERS

Soooo.  I’m waiting to do the virtual class assignment, but theres no groups. I decided to play mahjong, but then I lost and got a little frusterated so I stopped. Then I checked my email… nothing new since 3 minutes ago. Nothing new on facebook either! So I was all, what should I do? I almost gave up and went up to the cave (aka my loft) but then I was like oh, then I won’t be able to do the assignment at all, and since this is the only class I’m doing like, super super well in, i figured i might as not wreck that. wow, i did the proper grammar for awhile there, but its just not gonna last. i feel that capitol letters are oppressive against lowercase letters. just because they’re first doesn’t make them more important! especially d’s, which is dully noted on kyle’s facebook. hm, i wonder if the nest has raspberry frozen yogurt again. that was good. slash i didn’t get it, but my friend emily did and i tasted it and it was really good. usually im more of a chocolate ice cream afficionado, but i found the raspberry quite refreshing. hmm, what else? im pretty sure the groups aren’t up yet. but they could be, because kyle gave up and started playing collapse. i have to fight that urge, because once i start i just won’t be able to stop. like today during sabrina, i got to level 23! I KNOW! it got super super fast at the end, and i just couldn’t handle it. slashhhhh i was hungry, and it was 5, so smellco was open for dinner. and i thought i had to eat so i could come and do english, but i guess i was wrong about that. i should probably be doing something productive… aka something on my to do list. its not that long though, so i think i can let that slide. slash its still early, and ill probably be up til like, 2 am again because im a complete insomniac. throw up, i know. not that i went to sleep super early ever, but i like to go to bed around 1-2ish. i hate not being able to sleep, its so frusterating. because im just laying there and im like “this is freaking AWESOME” and then ipod dies, and thats lame. ok, so i just checked and theres no word on the groups. bum mer. everyones kinda tweaking out about it. i get where theyre coming from. i just dont want to get flustered, because that is never pretty. but i guess everyone else is able to show their concern without getting flustered, which is something i admire. i kind of have the urge to just read everyone’s and comment on it. that might be interesting. i dont remember what everyone’s topic is, so it would be nice to figure that out. im pretty pumped about my paper actually, it should be sweet. i like writing papers where i like the topic, its so much easier. like in high school for the last two years when i basically wrote all of my papers on the same topic, just using different books. its not my fault that i enjoy satire, and that this happens to work well with projects! slash junior year i read some richard russo too, to go along with my satires of colleges. prarie really liked that paper. and then they went and turned empire falls into a mini series. but it was actually kind of good. like, it had paul newman in it, how could it NOT be good? mm, kyle just busted out the m&ms. yum. speaking of paul newman AND yum, have you ever had his cookies? those things are BANGIN! ohh, especially the ginger snap ones with the creme inside. oh man. the people i babysat for had them, and i would always eat them with a nice glass of organic milk. organic milk tastes SO GOOD. i want to babysit for them over christmas just so i can have a glass.  maybe not. do they put brown food coloring in brown m&m’s? because in the wedding planner, matthew mchoweveryouspellthat only eats the brown ones because they have less artificial coloring… but is that true? how would you find that out? would they tell you that? maybe i guess. doo doo da doo. i guess im running out of stuff to talk about. thats upsetting. i covered a wide variety of topics already, but random things aren’t really popping into my head anymore. whenever i have to randomly think of a word, i always think of watermelon. im not really sure why. it is a fun word. but not as fun to say as henna. hennnnnnnnnn-na. so fun. and pudding. puuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-ding. im pretty sure theres more, i just don’t remember. ok, so i think im going to go actually accomplish things. if you read this, you probs deserve a metal. slash it might not be that bad, i don’t remember what i talked about. umm, kbuh

I have decided to focus on the evolution of the music video in accordance with MTV. Music videos can be looked at like advertisements. They help to sell the artist, cd, or a certain genre of music. The original music video was just live footage of the band in concert, but they have come a long way since then (mostly with the aid of MTV.) As time elapses, the videos have gained more hidden meanings and intent with the better graphics and editing techniques. I will be trying to trace the evolution of the music video and their importance to both MTV and art in general. I will also be trying to decipher the future of the music video, since MTV has moved past playing music videos nonstop.

I have found a lot of research regarding the music video in general, mostly from the time when they first began (the early ’80’s) I have also found some things about MTV and its importance to pop culture.  One book  Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture by E. Ann Kaplan focuses on MTV and their relationship with the music video. She describes a music video as “rock promos” for the record company and artist.  She discusses how showing music videos at all hours of the day is just like pelting the audience with advertisements over and over again. She also discusses how MTV itself has changed, like how in the beginning it was ultra-conservative about the videos and artists it would endorse. She also discusses the advertising of MTV and the subliminal messages behind their ad campagin (ex the man on the moon, I want my MTV! etc.) This information fits in nicely with tracking the evolution of both the channel and the works. By showing MTV’s conservative beginnings it is interesting to try to figure out how MTV became the provocative channel we know of today.

Another source I used was a book titled Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context by Carol Vernallis. She focuses on the process of how the music video was born, and how it is created. She looks at things like editing, the song lyrics, the setting and the artist itself and it’s affect on the video. She discusses the two types of video, narrative and antinarrative and how they get their point accross. This information will help in unmasking the real message behind the music video to figure out what they are really selling.

I still have a couple of books to check out, as well as some articles. There are also some movies that I might watch, particularly one documenting Spike Jones’ work on music videos. These things will further help me to figure out the art of the music video and its importance to MTV.

1. Most of the teachers I had in high school fully embraced the subject/object theory of education. They talked at the students instead of engaging with them. Typically, this is mostly in the math-science subject area. This may be because this area is seen as something that is more cut and dry, black and white with hardly any grey area to speak of. The teachers take advantage of the lack of wiggle room with their subject matter and fully take it as their own. This makes it easier to deposit the information directly to the student’s heads, because a formula is a formula and it will not change. One of my teachers, however, taught not by depositing information but creating a concious of what the information he had could do for us. My junior year english teacher, hereafter affectionately known as Prarie, used information not as a bank deposit, but as a tool for exploration of higher thinking. In my opinion, Prarie just may be the smartest person alive, not just because of his vast knowledge within the educational spectrum (i.e. in the areas of typical learning, like english, math, science, etc) as well as his knowledge of popular culture as well as life experience in general. By taking Prarie’s class I was “conscious of my consciousness”. This means that instead of listening in order to understand the facts to be able to regurgitate them back on a test, I listened because I knew that this information was actually pertinent and could one day really help me in life.

2. As used in the essay, alienation is used to describe the educational system as hollowed. The words used in the educational process lose all of their meaning in the subject/object scenario. This is because the words of the subject are changed to become meaningless because they no longer have value, they just become an idea that is expected to be regurgitated with no effort. In education, alienation is apparent when the teacher talks down to a student. They are alienating the student by forming groups: the informed and the unknowing. Information can be looked at in two ways in general: either enlightening or alienating. Information can help those who have it to become something better, while it can alienate those who don’t have the information and are unable to obtain of what the enlightened have.

3. Freire  embraces his topic and does not speak down to the reader. He explains all of his theories on the educational system but not in a way of just feeding it to a consumer. There are spaces for the reader to either contradict his points throughout the reading as well as add more to them. In this way it is more of a dialouge between colleges than that of a forcing of knowledge from a subject to an object.