Visual Perspective: 2010 Oscar Nominees

Social Networking and Betty White

Can social networking affect change? This year, we saw a good example of this play out on Facebook. Someone started a fan page encouraging Betty White to host Saturday Night Live. At 88, Betty White is not the most obvious choice to host the long running sketch comedy show (is she even awake at 11:30 on a Saturday night?). Usually it’s up-and-coming actors or bankable names with a movie to plug.

That being said, Betty White has been a high profile comedic actress with successful television programs (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Golden Girls) and many film roles (including the recent box office hit The Proposal). So it’s not like Betty White hasn’t earned the right to host the show.

Maybe the group was started as a joke. Maybe it was meant as irony, or an attack on SNL (trying to paint it as out of touch, or just plain old). Whatever the motives were, people responded. Today, the page has well over 500,000 fans. That’s a lot of folks who want to see Betty White hosting Saturday Night Live.

On May 8^th, those people will get their wish. NBC has announced that Betty White will in fact be hosting the program. Executive Producer Lorne Michaels acknowledged that the fan campaign was a major factor in the decision.

So there you have it. Social networking can affect change. Should it? That’s a question for another blog post.

What is Hip-Hop?

What is hip-hop? Is it just spoken word lyrics delivered over a beat, or does it have to speak to the struggle against the dominant hegemony? Does it have to express what we’ve come to know as hip-hop culture in order to have legitimacy and authenticity?

Hip-hop artist Buck 65 is white. He started out as a DJ, later developing into an MC. He has a low, gravelly voice that many have compared to Tom Waits. His lyrics do not talk about growing up poor or struggling to be accepted in a predominantly black musical community. He tells stories. Craftsmanship is about a shoe shiner trying to make it in an increasingly business casual world. Cries a Girl is about an incest victim. Although the beats and turntables are there, the delivery and content are not what we would normally defined as hip-hop.

Hip-hop artist k-os is black. Unlike Buck 65, his vocal style and physical appearance match what we expect from a hip-hop artist. But when it comes to his lyrics, k-os rejects the so-called hip-hop culture. In many of his songs, he criticizes other rappers for being too focused on money and success and not caring about the music. When he talks about growing up, he doesn’t mention being poor or struggling against any dominant hegemony. k-os looks and sounds like a hip-hop artist, but the lyrics of his songs are not what we expect.



So, are Buck 65 and k-os real hip-hop artists? I think they are, so I guess my definition of hip-hop is based more on how the music sounds than what it is saying. You might feel differently.

Parasocial Networking

As we learned in class, a parasocial relationship is one where you know a lot about somebody who knows very little about you. The most obvious example of this is celebrities. Thanks to the Internet and magazines, it is very easy to learn enough personal details about actors or musicians that you can almost feel like you know them. You can know their birthday, their favourite food, their political views, anything they open up about in an interview. What makes the relationship parasocial is the fact that these celebrities don’t know us the way we know them.

I feel that the social networking site Twitter is taking parasocial relationships to a new level. In the past, you had to read interviews or biographies on your favourite celebrity to find out about their personal lives and histories. But now, thanks to Twitter, celebrities are sharing the mundane details of their daily lives with thousands (in some cases millions) of followers. In one hundred and forty characters, these celebrities are giving us real time updates on their every thought and action. How can you read an actor’s inner monologue and not feel like you know them?

The irony of Twitter being a parasocial relationship is that the celebrities choose to participate. Unlike before where you had to seek out information, now they are putting everything out there for people to read. The relationship is still one-sided because the celebrities in question don’t know anything about their followers, but they are definitely encouraging it in a way they did not in the past.

Big Deal on the Radio with Daniel Kemp

For anyone who missed it on Thursday (or just wants to see it again), here is the promo for Daniel's radio show. Tune in Wednesdays at 4:00 p.m. on WCRD.

30 Rock and the Feminist Perspective

This week, we discussed how media texts such as television programs can be viewed as “preferred” or “oppositional” from the feminist perspective. This means the text either reinforces taken-for-granted beliefs of our society, or it challenges those beliefs. Those texts that present an oppositional reading may be “inflected” (meaning it seems to be subversive, but really it is not) or “subverted” (meaning the text presents an outright rejection of societal norms).

One of my favourite programs is 30 Rock, which I believe is an inflected preferred text. On the surface it appears subversive. The lead character (Liz Lemon) does not fit the mold of a typical sitcom woman. She dresses plainly. She is messy. She is intelligent but is often portrayed as a nerd. Although she has a love life, her storylines are not dominated by the quest for the perfect man or the idea that she gave up a better life by having a career. And as this clip shows, the program frequently pokes fun at our society's view on what a woman should be like:

But on closer inspection, 30 Rock supports many taken-for-granted norms. Liz is the boss, but she reports to a powerful male character (Jack Donaghy) who is the ultimate authority on the program. Most of Liz’s time is spent playing the mother role to two spoiled actors. Her love life may not be of the clichéd sitcom variety where she is desperate to land a man, but storylines about her going “baby crazy” enforce the taken-for-granted belief that every woman longs to have children.

Although it would be easy to view 30 Rock as an oppositional text, I believe it is not as subversive as it appears and it is in fact an inflected preferred text.

Why Letterman's Opinion Matters

Most people who follow popular culture are aware of the drama unfolding at NBC related to its late night programming. The network’s decision to return Jay Leno to hosting duties on The Tonight Show, ousting Conan O’Brien, has dominated the conversation on social networking sites and provided plenty of ammunition for comedians.

This clip from a recent episode of The Late Show with David Letterman illustrates how important context is when analyzing a pop culture text. Because David Letterman is a late night personality on a rival network, it isn’t unusual to see him poking fun at the mess over at NBC. However, as Letterman explains in the clip, the whole situation played out once before – with Letterman as a participant.

“The same kind of thing happened when I was over there,” Letterman explains, referring to the conflict that developed when Johnny Carson retired from hosting The Tonight Show in 1992. Letterman continues: “It was announced that Johnny Carson was leaving and we just thought that they would move us right in.” Instead, NBC gave the program to Jay Leno (who Letterman refers to here as ‘Big Jaw Leno’). What should have been a smooth transition became a nasty split between NBC and Letterman, who moved to rival CBS and started a new talk show in the same timeslot as Leno.

“Here we are, almost twenty years later,” Letterman says. “Once again, it’s happened.” Indeed, NBC’s decision to put Leno back on The Tonight Show means Conan O’Brien is leaving the network, probably to start a new show on Fox.

Knowing the backstory involved gives Letterman more credibility than someone like Jimmy Kimmel or Jon Stewart making jokes about the situation. He knows how it feels to lose out to Leno, as Conan has. And he knows how unpleasant it is to have the private details of your business aired publicly.

Of course, that isn’t stopping him from making jokes about it.