OUAN501 - COP2: Censorship & "Truth"

OUAN501 - Censorship:

In our lecture on Censorship, we covered:

Notions of censorship and truth, the indexical qualities of photography in rendering truth, photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth, censorship in advertising, and censorship in art and photography.

To begin with, we looked at various images of very tame and non-offensive landscapes, taken by a photographer named Ansel Adams. The idea of this was to slowly ease us into the idea of the lecture, rather than showing us explicit images of war and pornography straight away. The images were titled "Aspens", showing some rather beautiful forests of trees. However, even the very natural beauty of these images were distorted and the truth of reality was soon scrapped when we discovered that Adams had in fact created duplicate images from one negative using different exposure times and techniques in order to produce a different effect on the final outcome each time. We will never really know what original, pure and unadulterated reality he captured without being told as so much has been done to alter the lighting, create the illusion of different weather and seasons and so forth.

By starting with something very simple and covertly altered, we were able to see that it's not just images of scantily-clad women that get Photoshopped; nature does too and is usually less obvious. We saw images of Stalin that had been edited to his taste of who he wanted stood next to him in the images - which proves that editing was happening way before the era of Photoshop and computer software's abilities to manipulate reality.

Censor:

A person authorised to examine films, letters, or publications, in order to ban or cut anything considered obscene or objectionable

To ban or cut portions of (a film, letter or publication)

Treffry, D. (ed.) (2001), Paperback English Dictionary, Glasgow: Harper Collins

‘Everybody everywhere wants to modify, transform, embellish, enrich, and reconstruct the world around him – to introduce into an otherwise harsh or bland existence some sort of purposeful and distorting alleviation' - Theodore Levitt, The Morality of Advertising, 1970

Again, we looked at Sophie Dahl's advert for Opium, which of course was simply turned 90 degrees as a means of making it "less sexual" which seems quite odd to me as the fact that a naked woman groping her breast, showing a nipple, and giving off a facial expression of ecstasy apparently isn't sexual enough for authorities to wave the red flag - turning the posture vertically apparently fixed this!

Child exploitation was even explored in this lecture and how even now we see images of - what was once thought to be innocent - naked children's photographs being taken by parents which over the past decade has been cracked down on more as a result of child sex offences and the simple idea that whose right is it to distribute naked photos of a child, even if you are their parents!? Of course, we all have those embarrassing images from the family album of us running around naked as children, and most see that as an innocent way of keeping memories. But if those images were to be shown publicly in a gallery as supposed "art", is that wrong? I certainly think so as it is against the child's will and despite them maybe being too young to give an opinion, you still wouldn't. It's morally scarring for a child who grows up knowing the world has seen what was supposed to be their modesty. 

Even paintings dating back to the 1500s (Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time) depicted nudity of children - a sexual moment between the child and mother is also shown! - however as it is painted and not a physical representation of reality, is it seen as more artistic and therefore not obscene in any way? A while back I watched an animation called "The Hat" of which also featured a child being exploited and her memories of that as she is grown up and dancing in a strip club. That is seen as art and although was shocking, wasn't censored or banned as it wasn't real. 

The Miller Test (1973) makes three points to evaluate against to determine whether a piece should be censored:

Whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest

Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct

Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value

This lecture indeed made me question whether what we see in the media is real. How much has reality been distorted and manipulated in a way that could be seen as propaganda, false advertisement or simply unreal for aesthetic reasons? Who needs to be protected - the artist, viewer or the subject? Or are we all just taking everything too far and getting offended over petty reasons? 

OUAN501 - COP2: Globalization & Sustainability

OUAN501 - "McDonaldization":

The term "globalization" refers to the ever-growing dominance of Western culture and society. It claws its way into our social, economic, and political lives as well as our culture. Many deem this "Americanization" to be suffocating our world, I completely agree with this and see our constant sucking-up to Western culture to be problematic for our traditional values, individuality as nations, and self-respect. I can sympathise partially with the Islamic State's hatred for the West, as with the spread of American popular culture, mindless consumerism, and tacky television shows littered with sex, violence and bad language, there is no wonder why the West is deemed as uncultured and a threat to our heritages.

Less on my rant-filled opinions however, globalization as a definition can be broken down into two main segments: Capitalist and Socialist. Taking plenty of notes from our lecture, here are quotes from the presentation:


"Socialist

The process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces."

"Capitalist

The elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result."

My hatred for so many of the points raised in the lecture are due to my thoughts of society becoming less and less authentic and true to its heritage and history, and more and more like duplicates of every average American celebrity. Thanks to the brainwashing we get from the media, which is heavily run by giant U.S corporations, we are made to think and act a certain way. We are becoming more superficial by the year and with globalization creating clones of everything Western (The McDonalds down the road will be every bit as similar as the one across the globe), our originality and traditional values as individual cultures and nationalities seems to be washed away by the flood of booming business.

‘American sociologist George Ritzer coined the term “McDonaldization” to describe the wide-ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world’ - Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A very Short Introduction, page 71

Globalization however can and will receive my praise. Technology as an example is ever-growing and has dominated the globe phenomenally. It has allowed to banish space and time as we know it, allowing us to communicate with someone thousands of miles away at the touch of a button. What may have taken weeks to send a letter now only takes a second. Globalization has done good by our planet from that aspect. 

‘As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed at bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has heightened human awareness of responsibilty to an intense degree’ (1964: p.5)

Globalization can be looked at in two ways; as a centripetal force (bringing the world together) or as a centrifugal force (tearing the world apart). I believe that there is no black and white when looking into this, and there will always be problems with some parts of the world no matter how well the global spread means by it. The problems with globalization are as follows: sovereignty (challenges ti the idea of the nation-state), identity (challenges who we are and our heritage), and accountability (challenges who runs what, our forces and organisations).

I found it amusing how globalization was mentioned throughout the presentation using the American "z" in place of an "s", which would be deemed incorrect by my standards as we're British. I think it was a very clever play on how Americanization has wormed its way even into our language, despite British English existing way before American English (which in my opinion shouldn't even exist - it's just the U.S' poor attempt to be separate from us while at the same time trying to conquer us with media, business and rubbish.

On the note of becoming superficial, sadly it doesn't stop at clothing. There are even products sold in countries where the nationalities have darker skin that allow them to "whiten" and bleach their skin to look more like TV stars. That is terrifying and makes me feel that the U.S is pressuring people to look a certain way. After all we have been through throughout the ages, there is still this notion that white people are superior. That is wrong.

Globalisation (yes, with an "s"!) doesn't just stop at Americanism and isn't all that bad. It is actually means of distributing ideas of sustainability and how to look after our planet, rather than destroy it. So, although I may be putting down one aspect of it, I praise it for at least being able to bring to the world's attention that we do not own this planet, we are merely inhabitants of it. We need to keep it going for future generations and be fair to everything that lives on it with us. This also ties into "Ecologism" - a term coined by our lecturer himself - a lovely little ideology that everything that exists on this planet is of equal importance to humans. Everything is about money, appearance and materialistic values instead of actually caring for each other and what is around us. Ecologism is nice. It is effectively a means of abolishing hierarchy and bringing the world together. A centripetal force. This lecture was fantastic and taught me a lot about how (sadly) the world works. It was nice to think that maybe it shone a light over people's ignorance that we really are being controlled and brainwashed, and to essentially be free, we need to wake up, and take control.