Hello class, what was great about this chapter “Visual Culture Flow” is that we all got involved and got very excited about each part of it. And especially especially Despina!
First of all she was so fascinated about the part “BORDERS AND FRANCHISES: ART AND THE GLOBAL” she started talking and talking about the series she is recently watching which is called WHITE COLLAR and which is about an art thief working for the art department of the FBI – a very smart idea- and how art thieves are also artists, how much they appreciate art to steal it and with that humor sense they have, you cannot conceive them as criminals!
I searched about this a bit and found this interesting novel that we’ll all start reading it soon 😉
Second, when we were reading about how web provides a mean to share cultural products, we went investigating about that. I headed directly to the library and got some interesting information! Can you believe that in our small campus university we have 97,077 electronic books! We have 55,649 Full-text electronic journals! And we have 136 online databases! WOW! And they ask about how culture flows!
Later, we read about Ugly Betty and how it was taken from the Columbian telenovela, Rita remembered a very famous Mexican series that was really famous when we were kids… Who of us didn’t watch MARIA MERCEDES?? And then she started talking and telling about her childhood and how she grew up watching MICKEY MOUSE AND POWERPUFF GIRLS and then when she got a bit older she moved on to DISNEY and its shows LISSIE MGUIRE AND EVEN STEVENS, then as a teenager she watched MTV shows nonstop and STAR ACADEMY! All her childhood was based on western culture and western productions. THAT’S GLOBALIZATION COSTA, she said!
Rita interfered again and made us notice how “b lebnen kil shi byekhdoo min bara” Star academy, arabs got talent, the doctors and a lot a lot more, and how our music videos and movies are influenced by the American culture, for example the new Lebanese movie, “The last valentine in Beirut” talks about prostitution but in a very cheap way, and it is using sex appeal to attract audience! And even the fact that it’s NC 18 rated, makes teenagers crave to watch it!
And while we were laughing having a good time reading the chapter, a very shocking story came to disturb us! We were all astonished and kind of afraid 😛 The story is about Sarah Baartman, the khoisan woman from south Africa, she was a slave for a Dutch family. Since she had a big buttocks and an unusually large labia, a brother from the Dutch family took her and put her body on displays and sideshows in France then took her to Paris where she was displayed by an animal trainer (can u believe that!!!!). But wait I didn’t finish the story… after the animal trainer she was examined by French naturalists, she died in 1815, HER REMAINS WERE DISPLAYED IN “MUSEE DE LHOMME” IN 2002 NELSON MANDELA, president of South Africa, demanded her remains back to her country, she reached south africa without her BRAIN since it was mysteriously lost !! And here we started laughing again about the Brain Issue! 😛
Later in the discussion about how the geographical boundaries of nations vanished with the Internet, Shady elaborated on the subjects in means of design. He said that in the old days design was not so important, you would buy commodities by seeing the product and testing the quality. After that package design was a great commercial tool, it became enough to see the visual appeal of the product and most importantly the brand! But now with online sales you just get to see the picture!! And sales became dependent on how much this picture or bunch of pictures are visually appealing.
When we were talking about GLOBAL BRANDS, I remembered the sociology class… and when the professor used to tell us that even in this classroom there is nothing made in Lebanon…. even the pens that we are writing with are made in china, we have parts from all over the world.. we’re using apple American products… notebooks and pencils made in China… LCDs are most probably made in Tokyo.
Later on, in the part about satellites, we read how in 1957 satellites were used to spy on the enemy and in year 2000, 8000 satellites became used for TV stations and GPS.. Shady got a big smile and said, oh to identify with a criminal they used to draw his picture or take a B/W photograph of him/her. Nowdays they track him on watsapp on facebook twitter, on his cell phone using satellites, There’s no privacy anymore, and this is how the world became a small global village. But more than that, they can track you from behind the walls! The wifi Radar!:A surveillance device that uses WiFi radio waves has been devised to see through walls to detect, in military and surveillance parlance, moving personnel targets.
Shady concluded with the idea that about 500 years ago, the American culture was built from all the immigrants coming to it, Europeans Asians and African, it was built by physical immigration. However, nowadays America is spreading its culture by the use of media, within minutes a lady gaga movie clip gets thousands of hits and within hours, a published book sells thousands of copies!
Thank you folks!
A La Costa 