22 november 2007

my mind was in a whirlpool. i was tired: physically, mentally and emotionally. somehow i feel God likes to play jokes on me. i don't know why either. some people try so hard getting things that were never meant to be theirs, some dont have to try and it just appear to their doorstep.

was reading my text for theories of comm and persuasion, saw this theory by this Bourdieu guy. and i kinda thot it ties in nicely. Quote"value is placed on products according to their social status, as well as cost and scarcity....Individuals and groups identify each other and their social positioning according to their taste, including their taste in music and clothing styles... people are not born with superior or inferior tastes in cultural products; rather, the economic system of capitalism requires disctinctions in order to operate.

the other fella critical of Bourdieu is good too. He, Baudrillard, in fact begins from a rather different perspective to that of Bourdieu. For him, contemporary culture is a deluge of signs, symbols and images. Quotes"the Princess Di phenomenon, the killings at Columbine, the love affairs of Leonardo DiCaprio-all are constituted through a new televisual culture, a new reality, a hyperreality, which has no substance and no fixed form. This hyperreality creates new forms of stimulation, new forms of arousal and demand, new forms of erratic consumption. The product becomes intensely sexualized, often through the deployment of a young female body - but this arousal is a stimulation and can never be satisfied.The consumer is prompted to act and consume; however, the deluge of images and signs is unending and the urge to consume is never consummated, never quite complete.

In Baudrillard's terms, therefore, the sign overtakes the product as the primary source of arousal and action. Because it is nothing more than a sign, a powerfully sexualized sign, the consumer can never escape its abstraction. The proliferation of signs continues to stimulate.The BMW is sexually imaged and motivates some form of consumption - if not the car, then something else. But ultimately, there is nothing there. the sign is vacant, leading merely to another sign, another amorphous arousal, another vacuous avatar.... EVERYTHING IS AN IMITATION OF AN IMITATION - A SIMULACRA."

sorry if this is too much to digest for a friday, just some food for thought... thought it all makes sense. so duh can, then why the hell am i always so caught up in the rat race? ugh.life's a contradictory.