turning over a new leaf.

Hi! And welcome to my new and improved blog. My name is Gracie. I started this blog about a year ago for personal use, which never happened, so it ended up being recycled into a film blog for a course called Art of Film. Please don't even bother reading those posts because to be completely honest, they're crap. I really didn't put the time and effort into them that I should have (I can say that now because I already got my grade in that course, haha!). So now this blog is going to be recycled yet again...even though the original title of "sassy and classy" doesn't exactly relate to the new subject matter :) Actually, I guess it could, if I really wanted to dig deep into how our culture defines the word "classy," and how it's generally used to describe a particular type of woman, but we'll save that for another time.

This blog will now be dedicated to material related to the media and cultural studies, i.e. race, class, gender, etc. etc. I'm really going to try to relate my posts to issues that I am personally interested in, which can range from politics to pop culture to religion to how to find the perfect pair of jeans. Oh, and p.s., my writing style is usually pretty conversational, so I am very aware that the past sentence was a very hideous run-on.

Okay, let's get to business. I just finished reading Barker's introduction to cultural studies, and it was incredibly boring. Informative, but boring. One of the general themes throughout the whole chapter, and of cultural studies in general, is the idea that social meaning is created through symbols and signs, aka language. This is a concept that I first learned in a Communication Across Cultures course, and it really changed my entire perspective of the concept of communication. Sure, communicating with other cultures is a difficult task, but it just amazes me how communication between human beings has evolved into what it is today. Whether it's words or numbers or hand gestures...every single "form" of communication we have has in one way or another been created by humankind. And then to top that off, different cultures have their different ways of communicating meaning, and, sometimes the meanings are all together different. Does that make sense? Well, here are some illustrations to sort of show one of the many aspects of how meaning is created through communication, rather than being universally static.

The picture above (from http://www.flickr.com/) is a portrait of a Venetian woman from the 16th century. She is clearly overweight and pale. Sorry for the bluntness, but it's true. That is what was considered to be beautiful during that time. Being overweight signified that one was healthy and had plenty to eat, which meant that they were rich. Being thin, however, showed that one did not have enough to eat, and hence they were most likely poor. Also, being as light-skinned as possible was considered beautiful, and (I believe) that dark skin was associated with slavery. (FYI, I didn't exactly research that last paragraph, it's all going off knowledge I've gathered over the years. So please correct me if I'm wrong!!)

Obviously we all know who is in the picture above. It's the dutchess of pop herself, Britney Spears. Yes, I am a fan, get over it. Britney is pretty much the posterchild for what we consider "beautiful" today. She is thin, tan, and promiscuous (I was actually thinking about showing a picture of Paris Hilton because she is even more thin and tan, but she's also kind of fug if you ask me). Anyway, my point is that over the last few centuries, the concept of what is beautiful has changed drastically. And changes like that take place all around us, all of the time. What do we consider to be good, or evil? What does it really mean to be smart, or successful? And my personal favorite, what does it mean to be politically correct?

It just goes to show you that communication between society is an evolving process, and many (including myself) would argue that the mass media plays a huge role in that. Hopefully through keeping this blog and taking this course I will be able to learn and uncover even more about this process! That's all for now, ta-ta.

(image of Britney Spears is from Rolling Stone Magazine, found it on a google image search)