Presentation Reflection

                           

I have always been a fan of South Park, so I was really excited that I would get an opportunity to do a presentation on the show. I seriously never thought I would get that chance. It turned out to be a little harder than I thought. To me, South Park is Pop culture. It is able to cover every kind of subject known to humanity and develop critiques and comments on every world event or scandal that it wants. I knew this would be a challenge because one could pretty much teach a whole semester on South Park. I was worried about narrowing down what topics we could bring up for the presentation and avoid it being too packed or long-winded. It helped significantly to simply read Chapter 10 in the Barker textbook and the Moodle handout and figure out what aspects of South Park could be in tune with what the texts highlighted. This allowed us to form a somewhat organized path to follow and stick to the goal of incorporating the themes we discuss in class into the show.

I came up with the idea to cover the postmodern aspect of South Park where the creators deal with issues in people’s everyday lives. Everyone deals with race, immigration, capitalism, media, and religion one way or another in their lives. South Park loves to comment on those issues in ways that parody them and possibly show another, more humorous side to them. We would tell the class to think of a question while watching a clip from an episode that covered any one of the topics, and then discuss what the creators were trying to say or do with their representation. This allows the class to get involved in the discussion and possibly bring up ideas that we never thought ourselves. We also tried to stick with theories of pop culture and the theorists who thought of them. When you look closely at something that you simply took for granted or mindlessly absorbed, it is easy to remain uninformed about the conscious or unconscious actions that the creators perform in their own medium. We discovered that while South Park tries to remain unbiased and on a higher level of social screw ups than others, they too fall victim to unconscious patriarchal codes, such as focusing on the male over the female and having the women exist only in relation to the men. It shows that even people who may seem morally superior and without faults can still be fooled by societal norms.

In doing this project, I learned a lot about working with other people and sacrificing your own time in order to get together and discuss. I thought I knew a lot about South Park, but I ended up discovering deeper codes that the creators unknowingly perpetuate in their show. I learned that they follow ideologies like everyone else, but are able to make fun of themselves as much as other people. I had a lot of fun doing this project and I hope we are able to teach the class what we have learned in the process.

Rebel Without a Cause and Suburbia

             

Last week in class we watched scenes from "Rebel Without a Cause" and discussed youth, urbanization, and suburbia. The concept of a suburb seems to be middle to upper class white families desire for a real-life "utopia" of sorts to live in. They want two story houses, green lawns, white picket fences, and groomed yards. They want to live next to similar families of their own, with no minorities and thus no crime or gangs. The problem with this is that most of the time it is the parents who want it more than the kids, so the children tend to rebel against what their parents want and find ways to uproot the perfect setting. As portrayed in the movie, this results in the pretty white teenagers forming gangs of their own and causing trouble around town. James Dean's character Jim Stark is the new kid in town and he quickly learns how stubborn and mean the other kids can be. He tries to get to know a neighbor girl,  Judy, but of course she is dating the leader of the main gang and a real jerk who pushes Jim into a knife fight later on. Judy is dealing with her own troubles in suburbia, with her tension between her and her father and the growing lack of affection she is receiving, causing her to find it elsewhere and in bad places. 

Due to the suburban setting apparently resulting in the parents being less than involved in their children's lives, the teenagers rebel by being generally uncooperative and risk-taking in many aspects of their chosen activities. The teenagers pass the time getting drunk, riding in cars unsafely, intimidating other people, and generally just being delinquents. They have no real reasons to behave like this except that they are bored. This shows the downside to privilege and money. These suburban settings end up breeding teens that are spoiled and rich and seem to not have to answer to anyone. Their parents are too easy on them and almost ignore them in their dream lives in utopia, which leaves the kids with no outlet for their attitudes and aggression. This leads to them spending their time illegally and thinking of new ways to cheat death. 

Buzz, Judy's boyfriend and the leader of the gang, challenges Jim to a game of "chicken," where they will both drive cars toward the edge of a cliff and whoever jumps out of their car first loses. Buzz ends up going over and killing himself when his sleeve catches on the door handle, preventing him from jumping out when he should have. "Games" like this are beyond dangerous and completely pointless and is the result of the so-called suburban environment, where privileged sons and daughters think they are invincible and will do anything to pass the time. They will risk and risk and end up dead. They do not have anything to care about, so they do not put value on anything, even themselves. It becomes about trying to prove how tough you are and how much you can push the envelope. Kids flock to others like themselves and get peer pressured into doing stupid things the fit in. 

Annie Hall

This week in class we viewed the film Annie Hall and discussed Postmodernism. Annie Hall was released in 1977 and was directed by Woody Allen, who also starred in it. The film seemed nearly autobiographical in that Allen played a Jewish comedian living in Brooklyn and went through the motions of a relationship that Allen may have experienced in his life. Diane Keaton played the title character which may have been actually based on her since her birth surname is also Hall. The film stands out by documenting an interesting relationship between interesting people and does not seem to follow any of the cliche Hollywood love story formulas. There are many awkward moments between the two, where both are kind of just bumbling over their words trying to figure out what to say to each other. There is also no happy ending where they look like they are going to stay together forever. It seems to follow the flow of a more average relationship between two adults, where no one is perfect and more often than not things just simply do not work out like you want them to.


Lukacs describes modernism as insignificant and too focused of aestheticism. He is more on the side of realism where nothing is sugar-coated and appearance is not placed above the deeper meaning. Annie Hall practices realism by going against the usual playing out of a love story. By showing that not everyone knows exactly what to say or do at the right moment or that everything can be worked out no matter what, it reflects more realistic relationships and people can relate more to the characters being portrayed. Lukacs describes realism as going "beyond the world of appearance to express the true nature of reality, its underlying trends, characteristics and structures" (Barker 187). Annie Hall does this by showing that relationships are not always romantic, pretty, happy, or without numerous problems. It shows the entirety of a relationship and all of the instances that lead to its downfall, much like how it would occur in real life. It even goes deeper into the unpleasant that is not usually shown in light-hearted movies, like trouble in the bedroom and even therapy sessions. This allows for a more believable story.


Annie Hall can also be described as a Postmodern film. The way that it breaks the fourth wall of cinema and talks to the audience through the camera allows those watching a more personal look into the actions of the characters. it is also the way the movie is fragmented, cutting from one scene to another, not necessarily in the proper order of events, and even doing flashbacks into past experiences. It demonstrates reflexivity in Woody's character Alvy bringing up instances from his childhood that may account for how he handles difficult situations and caused his actions as an adult. It is the matter of self-reference that Alvy digs into what went wrong in his relationship with Annie. He uses events in his past to try to explain what drives his reactions to things now that he is an adult. It manifests in him also trying to better fit into the social structure in which he exists.