5.+Textual+Theories

Basics:
The content in this section includes information about semiotics and several examples that relate clothing and fashion to semiotics. Post modernism is also discussed in this section.



= #Hoodie- ** Sarah ** =

There has been a clear public mourning for the recent death of Trayvon Martin in Flordia. Trayvon was shot and killed by a neighborhood patrol volunteer and claimed it to be in self-defense. Trayvon was wearing a dark hoodie and was reported as being suspicious.

Trayvon was walking home from a local convenience store after buying Skittles and iced tea. After much community uproar, the shooter was eventually arrested and is now on trial. This unfortunate event has sparked a flame in the public sphere bringing to light racism as a major issue in the United States.

The visual representing this stigma has taken form in a //Hoodie//. Parades of hoodie wearing activists have taken to the streets all in support of the Martin family and against racism. Now the hoodie has become a symbol for equality and a stance against racism.

It is not uncommon for social and political movements to make an appearance on Twitter, but #Hoodie has been a prominent trending topic in the past month and is hard not to notice. The following tweets show how #hoodie, which represents a physical hoodie, which is a symbol against racism. This is an extended version of semiotics which includes the advent of new media information sharing.

A FEW TOP TWEETS (all tweets were found in a public discovery of #Hoodie)

I am! RT [|@] [|TheRealSessilee] Who else is wearing a [|#] [|hoodie] tmrw in memory of [|#] [|TrayvonMartin] I am!!!!

[|@] [|DaMFunK] x [|#] [|Hoodie] 4 [|#] [|TrayvonMartin]. R.I.P. 2 ALL who've lost their lives by 'triggers of ignorance'

Haven't slept much. Praying/calling/ tweeting so they can't forget and I am gonna stay in my [|#] [|hoodie] d Help us Lord, OUR son

I will never look at a [|#] [|hoodie] the same again.

Occupy the [|#] [|Hoodie]. A Million Hoodies for [|#] [|TRAYVON] ! Wear Hoodies Everywhere! [|@] [|OTH_Atlanta] : [|http://fb.me/1HLW2pK2X] " [|@] [|OWSAtlanta] @ OccupyTheHood

Don't assume I'm a criminal or potential threat 4 wearing a [|#] [|Hoodie]. It's a simple article of clothing! [|#] [|TrayvonMartin]

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==== =Clothing as Text- Sarah=

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=Applying Intertextuality to Shrek= The primary basis of plot and humor in the Shrek movie series is attributed to the wide range of texts that come together to tell a new kind of fairy tale. The use of chart-topping music, old Disney character plots, fair tale theater stories, and aspects of popular culture give this series a new flavor to animated fairy tale films about love in a royal hierarchy. As I was analyzing this example using an intertextual perspective, I could see many areas of where critical arguments could be made by looking at separate texts side by side. As stated by Ott and Walter (2000), Fiske claims this is a stylistic device of the author to elicit a particular audience response. In the film and television industry, it is easy to replicate a type of show or film that jives with the buzz topic at the time but the great series and hits come from a writer who can bring a new perspective to a genre. These films acknowledge existing fairy tale and Disney princess stories only to make them a parody in the world of animated stories. In discussing intertextuality as an interpretive practice, this series is a perfect example of looking at the destination of the text rather than the origin. In this clip, a French-impersonated Robin Hood is attempting to win Fiona over and breaks into song and dance (much like in //Robin Hood Men in Tights//) with his assemble of Merry-Men singing a catchy tune about Robin Hood's character. Some viewers may have never heard the original story of Robin Hood and some may have never seen //Robin Hood Men in Tights//. But according to Barthes, that is not important in being present with this particular viewing of the text. The relationship between the text and the viewer does not require extensive knowledge of the original source, just how it interpolates them during the viewing. - Maddie media type="youtube" key="RJAfXaziIwM" height="315" width="420"

Surveillance in Post-Modernism - Michael
Surveillance in post-modernism thought is one that can be summed up quite easily. It is the control of information to the masses. This can be seen in the SOPA debate where the government thought it would be best to simply control the information that was given to the people and censor that rest of the internet that a council deemed to be unnecessary.

[|SOPA]

Postmodern Powerpoint
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Parodic Allusion - the M.O. of // Family Guy //
Check out this quick clip from //Family Guy.// For those of you that aren't familiar with the show - don't worry you don't have to be. Go ahead and check out the video on the left first. Then watch the one on the right. media type="youtube" key="c69DzQ2Yu8w" height="315" width="420"media type="youtube" key="otCpCn0l4Wo" height="315" width="420" Barthes argues that the author is - in a sense - dead, and that ultimately the creation of a text revolves around an audience. Ott and Walter (2000), however, present the "conflation" - they use that word a lot - of the two perspectives of intertextuality. They claim that the notion of intertextuality as both an interpretive practice of audiences and as a stylistic device employed by creators of media weakens the theoretical usefulness of both perspectives. The sample from //Family Guy// above is an example of one of the three stylistic devices Ott and Walter identify - the parodic allusion. According to them, the "parodic allusion describes a stylistic device in which one text incorporates a caricature of another, most often, popular cultural text" (p. 435). It exaggerates features of the original text and then reproduces and/or incorporates those as part of its own textuality. "It seeks to amuse through juxtaposition" (p. 436).

So when we compare the //Family Guy// scene to the original "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer, one can see how the creators of the show are incorporating this stylistic device of intertextuality. ====

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Postmodernism as a set of contradictions: Lauren
media type="youtube" key="jodb9lkwnd8" width="425" height="350"

 Postmod ernism presents, like the Starburst commercial above, many contradictions. : contradicts itself in that it opposes linear and pre-decided constructions, but in itself postmodernism seeks to be a new construction. Additionally, the idea of productive difference emphasizes differences, but the idea of deconstruction does not tolerate hegemony and therefore seeks to replace hegemony with alternative understandings. Finally, postmodernism asserts that nothing is real or original (hypertextuality), however without an original text to be examined comparisons cannot be drawn. Such contradictions are simply the nature of the beast in that postmodernism is was it is not, and defines what is indefinable.

=**The Modern vs. The Postmodern **= =**- Dongni **=

[]

I came across this wonderful table while I was researching for the pomo teaching demo. Although the pomo people would probably dislike to be categorized and associated within these binary categories. It is easier to understand the different tendencies of modernism and postmodernism in a clear formatting way. However, keep in mind these are just features of modernism and postmodernism which people debate about most of the time, they are not absolute truth about them. When teaching these two concepts, it may be a good idea to develop discussion questions based on the tendencies. For example explaining Hyper-reality with references to media effect (as seen on TV), or discuss the user motivated Web 2.0 trend on internet with the many to many format of information distributing.


 * = Modernism/Modernity ||= **Postmodern/Postmodernity ** ||
 * **Master Narratives and metanarratives of history, culture and national identity as accepted before WWII (American-European myths of progress). Myths of cultural and ethnic origin accepted as received. **

** Progress accepted as driving force behind history. ** || **Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for history and culture; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: counter-myths of origin. **


 *  "Progress" seen as a failed Master Narrative. ** ||
 * **Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explanations in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything. ** || **Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent theories. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases for unity. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases for social/national/ ethnic unity. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Master narrative of progress through science and technology. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Skepticism of idea of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family. Heterosexual norms. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising. Polysexuality, exposure of repressed homosexual and homosocial realities in cultures. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hierarchy, order, centralized control. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party). ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Root/Depth tropes. **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the superficial, the signifier). ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Rhizome/surface tropes. **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers without concern for "Depth". Relational and horizontal differences, differentiations. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Crisis in representation and status of the image after photography and mass media. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Culture adapting to simulation, visual media becoming undifferentiated equivalent forms, simulation and real-time media substituting for the real. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Faith in the "real" beyond media, language, symbols, and representations; authenticity of "originals." ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs. popular culture). **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Imposed consensus that high or official culture is normative and authoritative, the ground of value and discrimination. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture. **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mass culture, mass consumption, mass marketing. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller group identities. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Art as unique object and finished work authenticated by artist and validated by agreed upon standards. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality. **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Art as recycling of culture authenticated by audience and validated in subcultures sharing identity with the artist. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a totality. Quest for interdisciplinary harmony. **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Paradigms: The Library and The Encyclopedia. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Navigation through information overload, information management; fragmented, partial knowledge; just-in-time knowledge. **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Paradigms: The Web. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Broadcast media, centralized one-to-many communications. Paradigms: broadcast networks and TV. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Digital, interactive, client-server, distributed, user-motivated, individualized, many-to-many media. Paradigms: Internet file sharing, the Web and Web 2.0. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Centering/centeredness, centralized knowledge and authority. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Dispersal, dissemination, networked, distributed knowledge. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Determinacy, dependence, hierarchy. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Indeterminacy, contingency, polycentric power sources. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness (art, music, and literature). ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture, intertextuality, pastiche. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Design and architecture of New York and Berlin. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, human and machine. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human and machine and electronic. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of pornography. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of pornography, porn style mixing with mainstream images. ** ||
 * **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The book as sufficient bearer of the word. **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> The library as complete and total system for printed knowledge. ** || **<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hypermedia as transcendence of the physical limits of print media. **


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> The Web as infinitely expandable, centerless, inter-connected information system. ** ||

= = =**Semiotics: Beth and Colleen**= __[|Semiotics Prezi]__

Semiotics surround us on a daily basis through advertising. The images, texts, sounds and the processes that company's or organization go through to advertise messages to consumers surrounds the idea of semiotics, where individuals make meaning through the use of signs or symbols. The follow are examples of images, texts, sounds and processes that I have encountered.
 * We are Surrounded by Meanings Advertising and Semiotics: Colleen**

Images: One of the most frequent symbols used in advertising is the visual image of the product being sold. For instance, when McDonald's starting reselling their Shamrock Shakes they advertised through the use of billboards, and in some cases they strategically place them close to the restaurants location. Placing something as simple as a picture of a their Shamrock Shake is a simple sign that piques the appetite of the passerby. Example: When Beth and I were driving to Anderson she noticed a billboard for the Shamrock Shake...The first McDonald's we saw she bought one. Advertising: 1 Beth: 0

Texts: Text is also used in advertising. Ad slogans are often used to convey messages with the same effectiveness as an entire picture. Texts are used to serve as a symbol that can represent the company other than through an image. Ad slogans are often used to convey a message with the same effectiveness as an entire picture. For example, //Eat Fresh//: Subway, //Kool: Cigarettes, Think Different:// Apple, //Here We Go:// Budlight.

Sounds: Jingles are meant to stick in the memory of a target audience and is something easy to recall when needed. For example, a catchy jingle may be used to advertise a particular place of business. Although this video is not the exact jingle hopefully you will be able to determine the origin of the tune and if so the company did a great job at making their jingle catchy and easy to recall! So name that jingle! media type="youtube" key="Vr2-eUhaw54" height="155" width="280"

Process: The use of semiotics in advertising makes it a process. When a company chooses an apple to represent its business as a logo the company employs the use of the apple as a repeated symbols that eventually comes to signify the product. In this case, when Apple employed the logo of the apple logo below the message's effectiveness is almost instantaneous. The symbol takes months to establish this logo as a representation of the company, and together with the combination of symbols, words and images consumers are able to make meaning. <span class="wiki_link_ext"> This picture is a semiotics game in an art museum in Albany, NY. To play: Users choose a playing card which features universal concepts (Evil, Happiness, Power, Success, Vulnerability...). The user then physically sorts through the magnetic images and chooses as many or as few images necessary to transmit the message to another party.

Love this idea this would have been fun to create in our teaching demo!

http://ahuff.prosite.com/20781/183651/home/the-semiotics-game -Elizabeth