I narrowed my cliche!

For my third English 103 essay, I inquired how chemical pollution affects Wilmington residents. I focused primarily on the ongoing Titan Cement Plant controversy, which was pretty easy due to numerous sites and scientific studies concerning the issue. As the fourth paper approaches, I haven’t quite figured out how to construct an argument based on this specific controversy. Sure, I could pose the question: “Should the Titan Cement Plant be built?” but that argument already exists; it’s why there is even an argument in the first place. So I dig deeper. Voiced concerns include questions addressing the health of everyone exposed, especially children, pollution, and whether or not it would create a significant amount of jobs and the necessity of a cement plant. That’s a bit more in depth, but I need to uncover the next layer, so I need specifics and current events. The most recent news is anticipation over the air permit Titan needs to be approved in order to establish their facility. As of November 21, the decision is projected to be made by the beginning of December. This evokes my curiosity about what would happen if the air permit is approved. According to Star News in Wilmington, the amount of public letters in opposition to the issue far outnumber those that agree with building the plant. Most who agree are in agreement because they want jobs, yet numerous places have found that only about fifty  jobs would be created. In the grand scheme of things, fifty jobs are better off forgotten than fifty lives. Perhaps that is extreme, but not impossible. I include to use these examples in my paper as well, but what about the numerous mercury poisonings via foodchain, and on top of that, the toxicity and effects of mercury in the human body? Titan would be built near the Cape Fear River, and the smoke stack will emit mercury, which can easily react with favorable environmental conditions in the Cape Fear estuarine to create a very dangerous type of mercury – the kind that fish can ingest, then eventually humans can too. I learned this while researching scientific studies performed on the effects Titan would have on the environment. This one in particular was lead by marine chemist Steve Skrabal.

Writing this blog has helped me narrow in on specifics, and uncover a few layers. To satisfy my desire to argue a point that is not cliche, I will uncover the effects of mercury in the air, water and what happens to the human body once ingested. I will use prior mercury cases to strengthen my argument, but I can’t forget to consider those who are promoting this change (which will be hard because I totally disagree – but maybe I can try out Foucault’s strategy – cover every possible opposing view point first, then share my own.)

Anom Asil: Ways of Seeing

In class, Megan pointed out that the Mona Lisa is known today for having been painted by Leonardo da Vinci, which we associate with some unknowns about the story behind the painting, da Vinci, and also the Renaissance. But, the Mona Lisa is popular to us simply because it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, and we don’t ask for any more explanation. This topic aroused my curiousity, so I searched online and found this website, http://hepguru.com/monalisa/impact.htm. It explains that there remains mystery behind the date of the portrait and who the lady in the portrait was, but most believe it was Giocondo, which is Italian for Mona Lisa. It also very conveniently goes right along with what Berger says in “Ways of Seeing.” These two sentences seemed the most similiar: “Mona herself is rendered with extroardinary vividness – one has a sense of viewing the living woman. (The effortless realism of photography has perhaps diminished our capacity to appreciate this.)” Berger would applaud this! One of his quotes was, “The invention of the camera changed the way men saw.”  I totally agree with both of these though, because if we did not have cameras, viewing art and portraits would be much more interesting, and the appreciation most would feel, would doubtlessly surpass that which we have now.

The portrait of Mona Lisa was popular even at it’s time of creation. It makes sense that it was popular before our time, because if it wasn’t, there would be many more critics of it and much less automatic acceptance of it as something worth being famous. The reasons it was famous after da Vinci painted it were 1) Leonardo carried it around Milan, Rome and France as an advertisement of the work he could do, 2) the pose Mona Lisa is in introduced a new posture for portraits that gave the drawer the ability to add more intimate details, 3) the painting techniques itself were new because instead of having the background appear at equal distance as the subject, the lights and details faded the further away the background grew, and 4) the King of France bought the painting and kept it at a place called the Fontainbleau, where it was exposed to many prominent figures.

After being copied, sold and stored away from the public for long periods of time, but always by royalty, the myth of the Mona Lisa blossomed into an intriguing mystery. Then, when it was stolen from the Louvre in France, rewards were showcased in newspapers, making the Mona Lisa that much  more known.

The history behind the Mona Lisa is a bit intriguing, yet has nothing to do with the form da Vinci used or the story behind the woman. Even with this information, the Mona Lisa, to me at least, is suddenly something more than a portrait of a woman painted by a famous artist.

Panoptic Polyphemus

In Greek mythology, many sons of Uranus were cyclopses. One of them, Polyphemus, lived on an island that also ended up being the home of Odysseus and his men for a little while.

In class, while discussing Michel Foucault’s “Panopticism,” we have asked many questions like, “Why do we do what we do on a daily basis?” and “What other institutions are panopticon-like?” This last question is what spurred the idea of comparing Polyphemus, the one-eyed monster, to panopticisim.

While answering the above class questions, I realized that I, like many of my classmates, associate one big eye as an all seeing eye. One example I remember is the CBS logo. I also realized that LG phones, like my phone, has a symbol with a face and one eye. Why do companies create logos with one eye? What are they trying to imply to us? Perhaps they are trying to make their logos a mark of superiority, but who is that going to convince? Looking even further, I realize that many phones nowadays have a GPS in them, allowing the phone’s location to be tracked at any time. That means that the government has access to our location, as long as we have our “technologically advanced” phones, at all times. There are probably more people and/or companies, than just the government that have access to this information too, like for example, phone companies. As for CBS, like any other news crew, they want to cover as many important stories as possible. If that is the reason for having a single eye as part of their logo, then that is innocent enough in my opinion. If it goes further than that, and who’s to say it doesn’t, for example, like sticking their noses where they don’t belong, or being a ‘false’ all seeing eye which relays information to make public viewers believe what a more powerful institution or company wants, then they are guilty of panopticism.

While panopticon-like figures or institutions seem intimidating and unfair, by way of fairness and balance, must’nt there be a weak side to them? Yes. If there is one person in Foucault’s deliberate discussion of the Bentham Architectural Structure, then he can only see one direction at once, meaning that he/she is bound to miss at least something. Some may rebute with setting up cameras, but cameras too only cover specific angles. This weakness is very similiar to the weakness of Polyphemus. While his eye initially seemed ridiculous and scary, maiming this one weakness is what allowed Odysseus, and the few men he had left, to escape the island. Polyphemus missed something crucial! And, not that I share the mindset of Foucault, but like Foucault writes about, if we did not conform to social norms and succumb to fears of breaking rules, what could we accomplish that we are scared of someone else seeing?

 

Media Influences

It’s almost comical how much common folk idolize celebrities. It’s like they are the standards we hold ourselves to. Granted, because of common knowledge, they keep many Americans connected – in a sense, and they can exemplify tons of fashion ideas, and provide us with entertainment. Still, they are just people. With that said and out of the way, many things in Bordo’s selection from The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private, strike me as shockingly true. Not that I haven’t recognized many of these truths before (women feeling the need to meet higher beauty expectations than men, people trying to imitate looks and bodies of celebrities, women being sex objects moreso than men, until a bit recently), because I have. I normally do not single them out in order to examine the exact meaning behind them, but I do recognize their effects. For example, one of my good friends is anorexic. She isn’t deathly skinny, but it scares me, and her family and friends. Her family tried to get her help, and as far as I understand, she alternates between eating more, then reverting to usual patterns. What I don’t understand though, is that she has always been one of the thinnest girls among our friends. Why does she feel the need to lose more weight? I wonder whether it is out of the desire to try to impress her boyfriend, or to fill a void created by family dysfunctions. I also wonder if she would even be anorexic if it weren’t for the media filling our head with images that transform into more than just images, but goals to reach.

As a side note, I must confess that I am influenced by the hype these days: staying somewhat thin and well-groomed, but I am no extremist. When it comes down to choosing my life or someone else’s, I will choose mine. I also will choose to enjoy life, so if that means an ice cream run at 1:00 AM, I’m going to do it too. Heck, I might even be the one to initiate it. And, honestly, I love to exercise, mainly because of the way it makes my body feel. If I go without for a few days, I feel like sludge is building up in my body, slowing me down and making me tired. Eating greasy, high- fat, high-sugar foods except for an occasional treat, makes me feel the same way.

Whether media influences viewers and consumers is of no debate, as seen easily in daily activities: fashionaby dressed people, fat burning advertisements, people with eating disorders, and tanning beds. On the other hand, the effect of consumers giving this influence control is in question. To what degree should this influence reign in our lives? “Where is the line drawn? And who draws it for you?” I put this last part in quotations because I drew a picture of a girl with media and constant information flowing in and out of her head, and half of her face was one person, while the other was another person. She doesn’t know who she is because she doesn’t choose to simply be herself amidst all of the craziness going on in our world. Then at the bottom of the page, I wrote, “And who draws it for you?” on the left side of the page, and “Where is the line drawn?” on the right side of the page, with an arrow directing the eye to the second part of the quote. The choice to be oneself is simple, I believe, but to completely and totally express, control and love oneself is a high challenge because of celebrity and media influences.

 

I found this video on youtube about a girl with anorexia. If you want to check it out, here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a36gHdehgxw

I can relate to that – Freire’s ‘The “Banking” Concept of Education’

When I read Paulo Freire’s ‘The “Banking” Concept of Education,’ my thoughts immediately flashed back to my sophomore year in high school. Almost the entire first page described the teaching methods implemented in my Civics and Economics class, but the one quote that most perfectly described that specific general classroom experience was, “The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified.” Each day at the beginning of class, we would have an open note quiz on the reading from the night before, which we proceeded to self grade. This was a temptinig opportunity to easily escape hours of reading and note taking, since we could fill in the answers during the self-grading. After that, the teacher would sit on a wooden table in the front of classroom with his crossed legs acting as a book rest, each desk lined up in rows facing him, and begin his lecture, or should I say, reading. He would read almost the entire chapter to us as our lesson, and expect us to pay attention and learn something more, even though we were supposed to have read it the night before. Does any one else find a contradiction or two in that? In the infrequent occasion that he would as the class a question, no one would answer. The reasons varied, but I can assure you that 95% of them were either being bored, asleep, or too hesitant to answer a “dictator’s” question.

We were constantly talked at, given little effective instruction, yet still expected to digest and understand each bit of extremely unstimulating information placed before us. Because of this experience, I do agree with Freire’s continuous challenge that teachers act as “depositors” and “narrators,” while students play the role of “depositories” and “patients,” but not as a sure and general opinion. All this experience did for me was make some of Freire’s statements easy to relate to, and therefore realistic still today in the American education system. I disagree, however, with Freire’s description of people viewing other people as mere objects (pg. 323 in Ways of Reading), which he says, is the commencement of educators viewing students as objects as well. So many teachers that I have encountered try to learn students by name, take interest in students’ extracurricular activities, and also, most importantly, value each student’s opinion.

There is also one more issue I would like to address while writing on this topic. My father often speaks of indoctrination in schools. While I do not have significant evidence to support various claims, I would like to think my father’s opinion as one worthy of consideration. When it comes to the occurrance of indoctrination in the American school systems, I believe that it is entirely possible, and more than likely, probable. Freire’s main idea is that students are deprived of a chance to think critically and to develop intellectually and individually due to the way we are taught. This is similiar to the problems indoctrination causes, and Freire seems to have a preconception of this. Or, maybe this is exactly what he was discussing in ’The “Banking” Concept of Education.’  I am just going to leave this as something to think on. I’m going to think about it too.

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