Discourse Communities

Athlete > Basketball player >Runner >Soccer player

Skater > “hipster” > eccentric

Artsy > photographer

Black American > Hip Hop > Underground > “gangster” rap > rap

Black friends > non-secondary education > college student > HBCU student > within the top 100 colleges student

Church > Christian > Catholic > Episcopalian

Friends > out spoken > frequent user of curse words >associated with weed heads

Drink > Parties

Student > College > Hospitality & Tourism Management

American > First generation > Perspective of people not born in America

Cars > automobile maintenance > repairs > racing > watching races

Jamaican > Jamaican friends > Jamerican (American Jamaican)

Family > Very proper > Church orientated > Picky

Token Black Kid > Preppy Friends > Punk/Goth friends > Nerdy Friends

Hospitality students VS student in my English class (general class)

Rock music > Hard > Alternative > Soft

Music > classical > some country > pop > R&B > Reggae

This is not the first time I’ve thought about taboos, and how they are with different groups I’m associated with, especially with my friends. I don’t really dress differently around anyone, but you might hear a change in how I annunciate words, or notice that I’ve excluded things from my vocabulary or have expanded my vocabulary. I’m not one to say the N word every 2 seconds, but if I’m singing a song or something of that nature, I wouldn’t hesitate to say it around my Black friends. Then I have 2 groups of friends who are dominantly White but there are Asians and Hispanics, and different things are said around them too. The more “preppy” group tends to be the kids I’ve grown up with and went to school with but there wasn’t too much unintentional segregation going on so if you were to only hear a group of us talking, it would be very difficult to point out who is white and who is black. Then I have my group of friends who are more alternative in everything they do. So I won’t bring up stuff about comedian Dave Chappell all the time, or reference many rappers (if any at all), but I will talk about piercings and tattoos, and playing music, and listen to different music (rock) with them.

But the most intriguing thing to me about my different groups of friends, are the differences within the black community. When I come home, I’m around more classmates who only went to junior college or went straight to work after high school. I still speak “proper” compared to them, and my accent isn’t one of a south sider’s, and I’m dressed like a white kid or hipster to them. Truthfully I’ve caught myself saying something that I thought wasn’t too complex, but apparently it was, and I’ll be frustrated in my own mind trying to figure out how to break down what I’ve said even more. Then I have my friends who go to HBCU’s and most of them go somewhere in the south, and that’s like a completely different world lol. Then I have my friends who go to top schools, most of them going to schools within the Big Ten. These friends of mine are still very different, but they all have this mentality of “I’m black, I’m smart, and I’m better or going to be better than the kids that surrounded me in high school, and I’m going to be a major figure in the Black community”. They’re more closely related to me as in they’ll speak in slang, but not all the time, they know how to speak properly and with good diction, and they use that when they’re around parents, teachers, and other leader figures.

When I’m with certain family members I talk MUCH differently than I do when I’m around friends. Curse words will be completely omitted from my vocabulary, and I’ll speak more properly and use “good” diction. But they know that I don’t speak to them how I speak to my friends. I’m sure they would say that speaking in a good manner to them is respectful and fair being that they speak kindly, properly, and aim good intentions to me. Fair trade.

This wasn’t too recent, but it sticks out in my mind the most. When I first got to my first school I was lucky enough to live in a dorm which was a very inclusive community and truthfully if you asked anyone about my dorm the typical thought from people who didn’t live there was “isn’t that where all the artsy and weird kids live”. Well sure it was, and I loved it, but I knew I belonged to other communities that didn’t exactly have members present within the one I was living. I was fresh out of high school, in really good shape and could have easily walked on to the track team and MAYBE even the basketball team, but that wasn’t something I really wanted to do in college (at the time ->dumbass). So lucky enough for me my dorm was right next door to the main gym that was open and by the 2^nd week of class I was compelled to walk in. I say main gym because really the other gym that was undergoing this huge renovation project was the preferred gym of the basketball players, and after it reopened the next year, the preferred gym of all work out enthusiast and athletes. Anyways, so I walked into the gym next door and scoped it out. The track and all work out equipment were upstairs while the soccer/roller hockey court, racquetball courts, squash courts, and basketball/volleyball courts were downstairs. So as I was checking out the upstairs, there’s a huge gap between the work out equipment and almost half of the track. That’s so you can look down at the basketball and volleyball games going on bellow. So I went downstairs and stood on the sideline. Now I didn’t know what “up next” meant, didn’t have a “squad”, I didn’t know anyone, but hell I was dressed the part and was the only female down there ready to hoop. These two kids who were in my calculus class noticed me by myself after they had finished playing a game and picked me up on their team. So when it comes to rules, since I’ve played basketball I know the official rules, and I know what goes and doesn’t go in street ball. Only thing I had to ask was how were they scoring? Everything is one point, except field goals, those are worth two, and we’re playing to 11. Each team plays until they lose or until they’re too tired to keep playing.

So I already had a common language/slang, I learned the procedures very quickly, everyone has a winning attitude, all I had to do was prove I was worthy of being on a team. Luckily for me the two guys who picked me up on their team didn’t play the same position I did. Brandon was a very dominant point guard, Norman was a power forward, and as I proved myself was a very fast shooting guard with a guaranteed 3 after I got warmed up. Needless to say, from that first game they picked me up, we played 10 more games straight. In between each game we won and during the games, I notice what people would do and what they would say to pick up on the terminology and behaviors. People would say run it back, if there was a discrepancy in the play (a do over), or if they wanted to play that group again. Teams were called squads, people would just say oop referring to alley-oops, “boomin” on someone was dunking over someone, and so on. Those 2 guys that picked me up, ended up being my best friends, and they pointed out who all the dominant figures were. We were all technically new to it because even though they had been playing for about 2 weeks before I showed up, we were freshman, and we were good so the older students wanted to try and “break” us in. Going to the gym everyday also showed that there were only about 4 other girls who frequently came to play and I was definitely able to emerge as a top figure, of the girls at the time at least. I wouldn’t consider myself a leader though. I wasn’t one to really pick up players for a team other than the people I always played with. To be a real leader in that group not only did you have to be good, but great and be able to play outside of your comfort zone. It’s pretty hard, I think, to get kicked out of the basketball community. You would have to really suck, or be rude to everyone, or start a fight to not be wanted there. Talking shit was more than welcome, because it made someone not like you, but also made them want to play you even more.

Fashion And Family

There are four parts to my ad done by Versace, all of which are done in black and white. The first panel has two girls who are opposite, as in, one is blonde one has dyed jet black hair with outfits that complement each other but are still quite different. The outfits are more chic and edgy, both are black, and both girls have their hair slightly messy and down. The blonde haired girl has on a simplified version of a motorcycle jacket with these tight leather pants that have a piece of what seems to be spandex right above the knee are which is then joined at the knee by more leather but with a bit of a layered design.
The other girl is wearing a shiny and short dress, with a halter style strapping. Both of them are staring right out of the page at you with intense eyes, amplified with black overdone eye shadow. The next three images have the same blonde haired girl, but the second girl is different from the first ad and used in the last three. At first this new girl looks to almost be the twin of the blonde girl but now that I’ve looked for a 7^th time, I don’t think she is. She looks a lot like the blonde girl but has dirty blonde or very light brown hair with blonde highlights. The second ad has the girls in almost identical dresses that are still a bit edgy but much more reserved. The dresses are short, one black and one white, and paired with almost knee high black leather boots. I could see the dresses being worn by a guest to a wedding or possibly a cocktail party. In the third image, I believe the girls are wearing the same dress except they’ve switched sides (the blonde is on the right now), and the dirty blonde has her arm wrapped around the other girls shoulders and the new addition to the image is the shiny clutch she’s holding. I’ve been mistaken. The second, third, and fourth image have the same dirty blonde girl, and now this fourth image has a second all blonde girl being used. The fourth ad has now two long dresses that seem they could have been very risqué ball attire, but the shoes that they’re paired with killed that hope. Both girls are wearing very high and shiny heels that look almost like gold Egyptian bangles. The blonde is in black and the dirty blond is in white, both dresses have thigh high slits, the white dress has some cut outs on one side with the edges lined with square silver and a long sleeve on the other side, and the black dress is sleeveless with a halter style top and a cut out near in the chest also line with silver squares.

When I look at the images it kind of reminds me of my family, which is what I briefly wrote about in class. The first and last images looks as if the two girls don’t really like each other much and wanted to create as much distance as possible, but still kind of worked together to get the shot off. A ton of my family is like that. They don’t really like each other much but they act all fake in each others’ faces. They put on a show, and then when they walk away from each other, they talk about each other. Then I look at the two middle images with the girl that could easily pass as sisters, and if not they just seem like they are good friends. That is like my family with their brothers and sisters who look just like them. They get along quite well, but they have a tendency to not like those who don’t quite look like them, even if the other people are married into their family. All of this assimilation and pushing away, instead of just letting opposites attract.

frame of mind

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion so they can be as similar or different from everyone as they'd like. However, you're view on things is shaped by everything and everyone around you. The dominant factor in difference is the culture you grow up in and the culture you are currently in. They form in your mind what is socially acceptable and unacceptable. They show you how things should be perceived. So what happens when you travel to other areas of the world, or see/hear/feel/ experience something new? Do you change it to fit into a part of your culture, or do you begin to think about how you are and break down a piece of your frame to let this new thing become a part of your frame?

Everyone has their opinions of good and bad, happy and sad, acceptable and just plain weird. Well most of the times the cool and happy things to me, and really weird to most others. Oh well!!!

This is [[link->]] Mark Ryden’s ‘Goodbye Bear’ and I absolutely adore this image. It means sooo much to me. First off I fell in love with Ryden’s work 2 summers ago when I saw his painting ‘The Butcher Bunny’ in my art book. He has a different look on subject matter and likes to exaggerate heads. This is so deep to me though, because I have been absolutely in love with teddy bears since birth. When I look at this painting I just want to run up and hug the life out of that teddy. Then I see the sorrow in his eyes as he has to part with who seems to be his best friend. Then the little girl looks like she knows it’s time for her to move on with what could be the day, but is probably her life. Truthfully I don’t care for the girl much, I see this picture and want to grab the bear’s hand and let him know I can be his best friend. He reminds me a lot of one of my favorite teddy bears which is probably why I like this bear so much. I like this picture so much it’s the background on my Ipod, so I see it every day. I have many friends who have called me odd for having it there. They simply do not see what I see. I’ve had friends say oh this is childish, or weird that I like this giant of a teddy bear. However, deep down on this inside, I know what they don’t know. Most of Ryden’s work gets either oddly eerie, or you will be straight up confused and grossed out. He likes blood, and it’s sprayed all over his work. So with my knowledge of his creepiness, I’m convinced that either the little girl or the bear will be severely cut, beheaded, or just spewing out blood. Okay, that creeps me out a bit too, but I’m still trying to understand everything Ryden is saying, so I keep studying the painting.

Many people will see something and truly only glimpse what they’ve seen. They won’t take the time to give at least a thought about what they’ve just seen. Like I’ve said before, many people see or hear, but do not experience what is presented to them. Information goes in one ear and out the other with maybe a fragment making a connection in their mind. It happens in every society but from living it and from hearing from others who are not a part of it, American society is very fast paced, and sometimes we don’t take the time to just breathe and absorb what beauty we have around us. Therefore we do not really see what many others are trying to say. When someone takes the time to really listen, see, experience what is going on, then they’ll have the opportunity to break down a piece of their mental structure so they are then able to break down someone else’s structure and connect them. It may not be a whole wall broken down, maybe just a tiny piece of a corner, but even with that we have shared information and each party has learned something new. Something that may have broke down a piece of their culture, but something that they can make their own and become their culture.

Paintings... after paintings [[ReViSiTeD]]

So there was a bit of a misinterpretation of Berger and his ideas about images being reprinted due to new technology. Berger was saying mostly that we take an image/painting out of context when we do things like, taking a painting and then zoom in on a particular person. If we wanted to study that particular person more closely like that, zooming in, then sure we could probably get more detail of expression and feeling, but then that part of the image is taken out of context. Like the image of Mars and Venus we have in our book, when Venus is zoomed in on, we can see she looks like she’s lost in thought. Not too sure what about, but we know she’s thinking about something. It’s something that is definitely pressing on her conscience. Then, when you put her back in the whole picture, it’s a completely different story! You’ve got these little demon babies all over the place and Mars is looking like a lost mostly naked fool. Venus is most definitely thinking, but it doesn’t seem to be about some random issue that just so happened to come up. Not at all, because she really looks like what hell (no pun intended) am I doing here?!

Now I don’t think my previous interpretation was completely off. I think that even when an entire painting/image is taken out of its original place it is then slightly misrepresented. I understand that Berger is not saying that if we see pictures of things in books, or only see partial images of something, that it’s completely wrong, because not everyone in the world is going to have a chance to go somewhere to look at that one thing. So with the invention of the camera, we are able to capture what is SEEN and at home we’re able to relate to what is going on.

HOWEVER, you are seeing what is presented to you, but you cannot capture the true feelings of when you see such a thing full blown, and in its rightful place. The experience of art is much more than just seeing it and trying to figure out what exactly the artist wants you to know about that person, people, place, event at that point in time. So earlier when I had posted the picture of the Sistine Chapel, yes you can see all of what Michelangelo painted so high up, but when you are actually there, it’s a completely different vibe directly from the art. The ceilings are quite high, yet you can still see almost all of the detail shown in books. So with how well he painted it, you forget about the hundreds of people around you also observing the place, and you get absorbed into what Michelangelo was trying to show you.

So I think what’s really being said by Berger is that yes, reproducing image is fine, because it is giving a chance for an idea to be passed on more readily, and easily to the masses. We just need to remember the context of what is seen in the image, the time period, and the location of where that image would have been seen.

Maybe if we capture something, there should be multiple shots of it. There should be the up-close so we can fully see the image, and possibly a picture of the image in its element (the painting/image with the things around it).