Say What, Reader? Not Everyone is Out to Get Us? – Bewitched

Bewitched is a popular sitcom from the 60ies about a witch who falls in love with a mortal man. She leaves her magic land and tries to lead a typical nuclear family lifestyle with him as her husband. Being a witch, she retains her magic powers in the mortal world, but keeps them a secret. The Reader argues that this double image she creates for herself is a gay metaphor for a lesbian who didn’t come out of the closet. Personally, I’ve never seen the show, but from what I know about it, it makes perfect sense to me. Stories of people with a rebellious/alternative past who settled down dismissed their yesteryear, are quite common. In one of the more recent examples, doing exactly this was Beatrix Kiddo’s intent when she ran away to Pasadena in Kill Bill. Of course in her case, the rebellious youth she was escaping from involved murdering people, while Samantha from Bewitched never hurt a fly. She was just different. This can be seen as another element of the tolerant message spread by Bewitched. Looking at the society of the 60ies, one might see many “normal” and “pleasant” families leading typical lifestyles, contrasting with a fringe group of early hippies and rebels (which include gays and lesbians). Taking another look through the “Bewitched glasses”, though, we can see that the “normal people” are not necessarily what they seem, and may have more in common with the rebels than the first glance would suggest. Adventuring, partying, sexual experimentation and overall acting wild constitutes healthy behaviour for young people. Older generations try to fight it in their offspring, but they used to act exactly the same in their past. The fact that they put that part of their life aside is what’s really sad, especially for gays and lesbians who not only feel pressured to put the rebel life aside, but their sexuality too.

Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill 2, as she tries to settle down and lead a normal life

Much like Bewitched, I find that the Addams Family provides a similar positive message. I personally interpret it as a message of multiculturalism. As much as this family’s habits and hobbies may seem odd, sometimes even unsettling, they still remain good-natured and friendly. In other words, judging a people by their looks and cultural differences is misleading, since inside they are just the same as everybody else. I remember this being something that I learned by watching the show as a child. As an interesting side note, the Addams Family is a little bit like Bewitched turned inside-out: Alternative on the surface, but very socially acceptable at its core.

The Addams Family may seem weird and quirky, but everyone there is so nice!

It’s great that the makers of Bewitched and the Addams Family were able to spread their message of tolerance in such a subtle and non-invasive way. I am also very happy to see that The Reader contains some positive examples and not just negative ones. The constant criticism and antagonization were among my main gripes with the book. It does seem to find signs atrocious crimes among even the most harmless shows, which significantly hurts its credibility. When I started reading the article about Bewitched, I was half expecting to see more of the same, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Here’s the intro theme from the original Addams Family show:

MyScapegoat, or How History Loves to Repeat Itself

The online article by the title “Why Youth Heart Myspace” defends social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook and searches for the motives behind their use by the youth today. The motives that are found in the article are that young people experience many restrictions in their real lives and the online world is one of the few places where they can feel truly free.

As a user of Facebook, I would agree that this is probably true to some extent, especially for younger users. Being 22 years old, I already feel a good amount of freedom offline and the main reason why I use Facebook is just for plain convenience. It’s much easier to invite people to parties and keep in touch with them when they’re all accessible from one place, as opposed to having to contact each one of them individually. It also has additional features, such as photo albums and profiles with personal information, including favourite movies, music and birthdates. All this information helps in initiating conversations and reinforcing relationships. I can certainly imagine, however, how younger users might be attracted by the limited adult supervision of the online world.

Personally, I never took the media seriously when it comes to scary stories about video games and the internet. As the article correctly points out, the same kind of stories were produced against comic books, rock and roll, movies and books. People are afraid of change and media thrive on fear. I’ve probably already mentioned this, but the very reason why I’m so put off by our book, the Reader, is that it’s so similar to mass media in its usage of scare tactics and the way it paints an absurdly hostile and malevolent world.

It's hard to say if we should laugh or cry.

The worst thing about it is that we are so susceptible to these fantasies. If parents only investigated this supposed ‘problem’ on their own a little bit, perhaps they would realize that just about anything their kids can do online is by far safer than crossing a street right outside their house. I suppose that it might also have something to do with the fact that in today’s society it is very common for parents to delegate raising their children to teachers, television and the computer. By giving away this power over others, they also lose the influence they once had. It’s understandable that they become frustrated when this arrangement doesn’t quite work out, but ultimately, who is to blame for it? It would seem sensible for them to take some of the control back. Instead, what we observe is them complaining to their delegates, on whom they imposed this responsibility in the first place.

If you don’t want your kids to play a violent video game, make sure that they don’t buy it, don’t try to ban its entire distribution. If you don’t want your kids to get scarred by their online interactions, explain to them the possible dangers of the online world, don’t just block it off entirely. It’s called good parenting for a reason.

Here’s a parody of a Facebook ad (do they even really have ads?):

The Zeitgeist of the Information Age

The article “Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement” talks about the new possibilities and ways of having one’s voice heard that arise from internet tools such as wikis and blogs. We humans always had the need to express our views on society, morality, politics, and perspective on life. In the beginning, the best we could do was to find a crowd, stand next to other self-proclaimed prophets and start shouting away, hoping that someone will listen. Things had gotten a little better after the invention of the Gutenberg press, but ultimately, expressing oneself was never as easy as it is today, thanks to all the internet-based tools we have at our disposal. It is quite amazing that today we can have our voice heard around the globe without even getting up from our chairs, in the comfy surroundings of our bedrooms.

Brian unwittingly became a very successful prophet.

Tools such as wikis or blogs (hello!) make it possible for the average Joe to concentrate on the content of what they want to say, without having to worry too much about the technicalities related to online publishing, namely things like knowing html or maintaining a server. The removal of these barriers means that just about anyone can say what they think needs to be said and the floodgates of information are now open. The internet can become a global think-tank.

Of course this also means that any loony can make a blog and write about his or her tinfoil hats, but even the most reputable sources can be wrong sometimes, and the sheer numbers of online information mean that finding second, third or tenth opinions is easy and highly advisable. The internet is a place where the democracy of truth prevails, Wikipedia being the perfect example of this phenomenon. However, it’s also important to remember, and this may somewhat contradict what I said before, that the quality of the form that the message takes on is also of utmost importance. Consider the “Zeitgeist” video. The entire two-hour documentary is made by one man, Peter Joseph, who most likely sat at home, working on it every night after work. Its near professional quality makes it very accessible and viewer-friendly, which no doubt had impact on its immense popularity. The way it uses flashy visual effects and ambient meditation music serves as an excellent distraction from the fact that the video largely consists of conspiracy theories and misrepresented facts. Admittedly, the video is extremely convincing: I had fallen for it myself, until I researched it. Surely, if the content of “Zeitgeist” had been limited to a small website, it wouldn’t have have anywhere near the impact that it did. I can certainly that it’s unlikely that I would spend two hours of my time absorbing the information from such a website. You can watch “Zeitgeist” here.

As much as "Zeitgeist" sparked a lot of controversy, it also amassed a remarkable following.

It used to be that only major organizations had the funds to create products of “Zeitgeist” quality. Ironically, even then we trusted them more than the information found on personal websites.

When I was taking a quantum physics class in college, the teacher showed us a movie called “What the Bleep do We Know!?”. It was very flashy and it included a dramatic story with plenty of CGI effects. Teacher intended to use it as an explanation of the laws that govern the quantum world. The whole endeveaur became somewhat embarassing when we found out that the movie was founded by a religious sect that uses quantum mechanics the same way Scientology uses aliens to explain their doctrine.  Nearly all of the scientists interviewed in the movie were members of this sect and a number of ‘facts’ and ‘experiments’ described in the film were proven fallacious by the impartial scientific community.

Now that everyone can make movies like “Zeitgeist” or “What the Bleep do We Know!?”, perhaps people will throw caution into the wind more often while watching them. At the same time, the fact that making these films is so easy now will hopefully mean that we will have a chance to hear some strikingly valid points and unbiased statistics, that we otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to encounter.

By the way, here’s a trailer for “What the Bleep do We Know!?”, in case you’re interested:

The Exploring Media Project

To create my media exploration project, I used a website called voicethread.com. I picked this website because it was the technology that I was the least familiar with and I thought it would be a good challenge. I also figured that it might be interesting to see what it feels like to use storytelling and illustrations as a way to convey one’s message. I decided to write a short story instead of a documentary-style narrative since it gave me more freedom in terms of what I wanted to say. Plus I thought that it might be more engaging.

Epiphany is a short story about a factory worker who escapes from technology to live in a forest. The story deals with the dichotomy of nature and technology, as well as the dilemmas that this dichotomy creates.

Check it out here!