Last Blog: Thoughts about the class

Writing about what I have learned over the course of this summer session is difficult. I could talk about the readings, the G-chat conversations with my peers, or even the experiences I have had on WOW. However, I think what is most important, and the key thing I will take away from this class, is how we as students were given the freedom to implement the learning within our own lives without harassment from our professor. What I mean by this statement is that Shawn opened up the material and presented it to our class in a way that encouraged acceptance of the material, while never forcing us to act in any specific way. With that said, I will say that one of the key things I will take away from this class is the understanding that we are all born with certain Epistemology that shape the way we see the world. As we live our daily lives we interact with those around us based on these beliefs.  However, sometimes these beliefs can cause us to view the people around us in a way that is single minded. We have been given the tools to understand the social constructions and power structures that our society has established, but it is up to us to make the decision to live by these standards, or to deviate away, establishing our own way of thinking. Though this realization may be daunting for some, I leave this class optimistic, that with these tools, I will be able to become a better person, and see the world in a new light.

Week 5/ a blog about anything I want....

This week has been crazy for me personally as I have flown back and forth to Seattle multiple times in less then a 48 hour period. Between this travel and my classes coming to an end I have had a full plate. Since this is a blog about "anything I want" I think it would be a good idea to go ahead and talk about my final project since I have been working on it a bunch.

I am making a video presentation about the topics we have discussed in class. It is a combination of 3D animation, video, special effects and other digital techniques that I enjoy working with. While I shave been working on this project I have been able to re-evaluate the readings and class discussions. I haven found that all the discussions overlapped and making a outline for my video presentation began to look like a web. However I seemed yo be able to tie everything back to Foucault and so I feel confident that it will at least have some structure and won't be me just rambling about random things. Overall I am excited to see everyone else's projects, because I feel like I learn more from understanding other people's take on these issues then from just reading the material and thinking about it alone. I know that in class recently I have been quiet, which is not like me at all. In the google chats I am very vocal and love to express my opinion on these issues but when we are in class's I have found that I am aware of how my opinions are different then others and sometimes Shawn will say something that will make me rethink how I was originally feeling. This makes me feel uncomfortable but in a good way. Since this is how I am in class, I feel like my project will be a great opportunity fOr me to share my feelings that I have developed over the course of semester.

Week 4- A week of Video Games

This week class was extremely 'hands on' as we explored the video game 'World of Warcraft' (WoW). After a painful 10Gb download, I opened the game not really knowing what to expect, and with a mindset that I would need to consider 'Race', 'Gender', and 'Sexuality' as it was portrayed in this game. 


My observations while playing this game, at first were overshadowed by the fact that I was trying to figure out how to play the game. Once I had that under control I found my natural inclination to start 'leveling up' as quickly as possible without remembering why I was actually playing the game.


During the second day, I attempted to examine 'race', 'gender', and 'sexuality' with more of a proactive approach. Interesting enough, I found 'gender' to be the most obvious trait though after a g-chat with my classmates realized I completely missed the race aspect of the game. However, reflecting on this I realized the primarily reason was due to my epistemology and the fact that I had accepted these assumptions for much of my life. Realizing now that part of the reason I missed this aspect of the game was that I have accepted these assumptions blindly. Though I am not saying that this was an epiphany or anything on a major scale like that, I am saying that my ability to recognize the roles of 'race', 'gender', and 'sexuality' with regards to power structures is improving and beginning to change the way I am seeing many aspects of society and my life. 

Week 3

The reading, discussions, and lectures that took place during class this week were very interesting, and lively. What intrigued me most about the class discussions and lecture was the delay between absorbing all the opinions, content, positions and insight, and when I really understood what the lecture was truly about. It has nothing to do with the fact that I wasn't listening or trying to understand my classmates, but more had to do with the fact that all the ideas that were being introduced were extremely radical.

Specifically, I enjoyed watching the Jon Stewart on Crossfire (via youtube) clip. So much so that I went home and watched it again. The way in which Jon Stewart was able to deflect every 'pointless' question the hosts fired at him, while never appearing upset or stressed, combined with his ability to add humor, brought to light the truth behind his message. Using 'ethos', 'pathos', and 'logos' in a form of rhetoric that could only come from a very intelligent person.

One point that was discussed in class that I am still attempting to grasp was the idea that our discourse shapes our perception of people, in regards to  race, gender and sexuality. The trouble doesn't stem from the fact that I feel the points made were wrong, and I agree with them I just feel that in some cases recognizing your own epistemology can be very hard, and viewing the world around yourself can be very difficult.

Week #2 Video Games

The topic of this week's discussion centered around video games, and the power structure, or discourse that is reflected from them. I would consider myself an average video gamer, not super obsessed, but at times, (I will admit) I defiantly get a little carried away. I found it interesting listening to the different opinions that were presented in class, especially the opinions that were anti-violent FPS games. It made me think of a story that my mom told me about when I was younger. "When I was a little kid my mom believed that having toy guns would be bad, maybe somehow make me believe that violence was okay. The interesting part about this was that even though she never allowed me to have toy guns, I managed to turn anything else that looked simular in shape into a toy gun."


While I thought about this, and listened to people in class talking, it intriguing to consider that maybe kids, especially boys might just have a natural tendency to explore the 'warrior'/violent/ war-driven nature. Drawing this back to the discussion on video games I found it interesting that the people that spoke the 'loudest' against video games were also the people that seemed to know the least about them. For me video games are more then just a way to waste an afternoon, or get some mild excitement. In fact, one of the things I am considering after I leave/graduate from WSU is attending DigiPen and going into video game design. I guess what it equates to is that while video games do have some downsides/fallbacks/inaccuracies that might be construed as harming a portion of the population, I see video games as a result of a large about of consumers, like myself, pushing for newer/better/more intense games. 


Before I finish this blog I would like to also share something that I observed this week. Sitting with my roommate and a buddy, this commercial appeared on the TV. If you don't want to watch it the basic premise of the commercial has to do with the PS3 and the video game SOCOM4 (tangent: if you go to the website it makes you put in your age). Anyway, the video game is a FPS, BUT now you have the ability to actually hold a gun that is a remote that tracks your movements and where you are aiming. Why am I sharing this story? Because the way my friends reacted was really interesting. They both started talking about how it would be even cooler if the game sensed what was in your room at that time and would allow you to hide behind objects (aka a chair or couch) and the character in the game would do the same. This was humorous because it brought me back to class, especially when Shawn talked about how in these games you never have to deal with stuff like waiting on a tarmac for hours, or losing a girlfriend. I don't know if it was my weird sense of humor but I imagined (right then) my two buddies camped out behind the couch waiting for hours until on bad guy appeared on the screen, and while one was busy trying to shoot this pixelated character, the other was checking a text from a girlfriend and getting dumped. 

Week 1 Blog

American History X and Foucault – Week 1

Both the reading and the movie provided a plethora of content for commentary that it was hard to decide which I should focus on, remembering that this is a blog not a novel. What I have decided to do is focus on two parts of each that I find most intriguing from each source and evolve from there.

Beginning with the Foucault reading I chose the quote:

“There are two images, then, of discipline. At one extreme, the discipline-blockade, the enclosed institution, established on the edges of society, turned inwards towards negative functions: arresting evil, breaking communications, suspending time. At the other extreme, with panopticism, is the discipline-mechanism: a functional mechanism that must improve the exercise of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion for a society to come. The movement from one project to the other, from a schema of exceptional discipline to one of a generalized surveillance, rests on a historical transformation: the gradual extension of the mechanisms of discipline throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their spread throughout the whole social body, the formation of what might be called in general the disciplinary society.”

Before I explain why I like this quote, I feel it is important to reveal that I have taken multiple classes throughout my college career focusing on the history of “technology and society”. I believe that in order to be successful working in any type of technological atmosphere, I should have a background in how we (generalizing our society) arrived at the point where we are technologically dependent for many daily functions. So with a little knowledge of the history of technology and science in mind, this quote, specifically the reference to mechanism, caught my attention. Moreover, the fact that it is referencing the 17^th and 18^th century caused me to ponder how this quote could be applied to the aspects of society today. Ironically, the next day in class this was proven true as the examples of Facebook and Twitter were used to further support these points.

Moving on to American History X. Before I discuss anything about the movie, I would like to acknowledge that this is a complex movie with many different aspects, some of which are taboo in certain social circles. (Also, for anyone reading this that hasn’t seen the movie, there are some spoilers below.)

With my disclaimer out there, I would like to talk about the ending of the movie specifically. I have seen this movie multiple times throughout my college career, and have to discover that each time I watch it, depending on the people I watch it with, the experience is always unique. I believe that this again relates the social taboos I mentioned above and the factors we discussed in class. However, the once piece of advice that I have given many friends (or the friends I felt needed a little warning about the intensity of the movie) is that they should keep watching because the end is worth all the violence, sex, and racist remarks. This is primarily because I feel the ending is the most crucial part of the entire movie. First, the fact that Derek not only made an extraordinary transformation from this character filled with ignorance and hate, to a character that was enlightened and looking to better his life making up for the mistakes of his past. We see this when he gets out of the shower and he holds his hand up to cover his tattoo (a swastika), maybe hinting at the fact that this wasn’t a part of him that he wasn’t proud of and wanted to change. If you were to look at the scene from a religious perspective, the fact it shows Derek in the shower might also be perceived as a sort of baptism/initiation into a new life. Next, I think it was important that Danny mentioned the encounter that Derek had with his father before his father died. This talk showed how Derek had a predisposition to believe some of the things that Cameron would later tell him, but also because it provided the viewer a chance to understand why the death of his father might have triggered such an intense hatred. Though the key to understanding this lies in the fact that when Danny gets shot, Derek does not blame anyone, but rather repeatedly states “what I have I done?”. For me this shows great remorse and even an understanding of how his actions, much like his father’s influence on him, influenced Danny. Finally, there was some discussion in class about the race of the boy that shot Danny. While it was brought up that it should have been another white kid, or even a white girl, I believe that it wasn’t meant to be a negative or stereotypical representation of any race but rather it showed a person that was in the same position that Derek was in during the beginning of the movie. In a way this seems to bring the movie full circle as it shows another person that is ignorant and filled with hatred, to the point that they would kill another person.

Overall, the combination of the movie, the lectures and the reading, have surprised me in the sense that most teachers would not assign them during the first week of class. While some people might fear what is to come in the following weeks, I feel that I have ended this week intellectually stimulated.