Paranormal Activity

So, those of you who know me may know that I am a movie buff. My older brother graduated from Fordham in 2008 and since then the two of us have gone to the movies about once a week as a way to keep up with each other and keep our eyes on what is going on with our favorite visual medium.

Last year we went together to see a low budget movie that had become somewhat of a cult phenomenon, Paranormal Activity. This film was made in 2006 for a reported $11,000 and was wide released in 2009 earning $194 million, making it one of the most profitable films ever made.

The movie is presented as "found footage" that is, the movie asserts itself to be actual home footage of two people who experience a great deal of paranormal activity in their house as a result of a demonic possession. Most of the movie is night-vision home-camera style footage of a couple sleeping in their bed while paranormal activities occur around them, reaching climax in a demonic possession.

Both my brother and myself left the theater last year singing the praises of this low-budget horror movie which proved itself to be more intelligent and terrifying then most of its big budget competition.

When I saw a trailer for a sequel the other week on the TV, I knew this was an event we could not miss.

This movie does not disappoint, the suspense and fear of the first movie remain and the sequel has one of the most ingenious plots I have ever seen to both include and inform the action of the first movie.

This is a movie that could not exist at any other time in history. It relies not only on the technological ability of handheld cameras which can record large amounts of footage in high definition, but also on a culture which is not only accepting but desirous of filming its every actions for future viewing.

The movie plays on the Myspace and Facebook generation's obsession with recording and presenting itself in a digital medium for a potentially limitless audience through the internet. This movie would have failed in the 1980s, a period in which home movies were easily produced but difficult to present to mass audiences. The rise in digital media as well as social networking and sites like youtube both inform and provide the context for a movie in which families record their daily lives while extraordinary (or paranormal) events occur.

If you have not seen Paranormal Activity, see it first. If you have seen it, go now to the nearest theater showing Paranormal Activity 2, you will not regret it.

Media coverage of a recent event on the Fordham campus

My attention was just called to two very different online stories about the recent appearance on campus of Michael Sulick, a Fordham alum who is now director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. I didn't attend the lecture, so I don't have my own account to provide, but I'd be interested in comments from (a) anyone who did attend, and (b) any of you interested in journalism and media who'd like to talk about the differences between these stories. Of course, feel free to post links to any other journalistic accounts of the event.

One of the stories is from Fordham's own eNewsroom: http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/eNewsroom/topstories_1820.asp

The other is from Consortiumnews.com, which advertises itself as providing "Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995." http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/032810a.html

I don't think it would be productive to make personal, ad hominem arguments about the authors of either of these pieces (or about the speaker or anyone else, for that matter). But I'd be interested in learning from anyone reading this blog who can make a good argument about the differences in the perspectives and institutional positions from which these two pieces are written, their differences in tone and content, etc.

Preserving American Journalism

On Friday, I attended an event co-sponsored by Fordham's Donald McGannon Communication Research Center and the Bernard L. Schwartz Center for Media, Public Policy and Education.

At the event, authors John Nichols and Robert McChesney spoke about their recently published book The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that will Begin the World Again.

Nichols spoke first about the current degeneration of the media, using mind-boggling statistics to emphasize that “journalism is in a dark place.” Here is a sample of those stats: over 1,000 journalists get laid off each month, newspapers now contain 73 percent fewer stories than they did in 1990, 85 percent of those stories are based off of press releases and there are now four PR people for every one journalist in the country.

McChesney then spoke about the solutions to this crisis he and Nichols have come up with that they outline in their book. Their main solution is for journalism to return to its original operating mode- as a subsidy of the federal government, the way it operated until the late 1800s. He explained that journalism must be looked at as a public good, an economic term for things that are mandatory and crucial for society that cannot be supported by the market. For over 100 years, advertising allowed journalism to function in the market as a commercially viable industry but because of the current economic landscape, they think it must return under the umbrella of the government and be publicly funded.

From their research, the authors learned that many other democratic countries presently use this model of press subsidies, in which the government channels funding to newspapers but does not control any editorial or coverage decisions.

McChesney and Nichols also support the formation of an AmeriCorps for young journalists, a program that would give interested media students a way to enter the field and learn by working in the industry hands-on in areas that have lost newspapers and are desperate for community coverage.

I have my reservations about their subsidy solution for censorship and editorial independence issues, but love the idea of an AmeriCorps for media students. I can't wait to read the book to see if they sell me on the federal subsidy idea.

In the context of American Studies, both authors often diverted from describing the crisis and solutions to it to discuss the important role journalism plays in an effective democracy. They described how even though the founding fathers all hated the journalists of the era (debunking Jefferson's famous quote about him choosing newspapers over government) they truly believed it was crucial that a diverse, challenging, skeptical and dissenting body exist to keep American society in order. I obviously agree and hope that other media scholars build on the research of these authors to find a viable solution to the financial and content issues newspapers are facing.

Digital Democracy

Dr. Michael Wesch is a professor of anthropology at Kansas State University who specializes in digital ethnography. The YouTube videos he makes about his work have gained a lot of attention nationally and really make you think about how much new media is changing the way colleges, corporations, America and the world operates. Below I have embedded two of the videos I found the most interesting. The first focuses on how we must rethink the ways we communicate and exchange information, how the digital world (through blogging and sites like Wikipedia) are intrinsically more democratic than the physical world we live in. The second challenges all the typical assumptions people have about information- mainly that it is constrained by its material, physical embodiment. I found both to be very eye-opening and think they speak to the changes American culture is currently going through.

Accent on America

Growing up, I was blissfully unaware of my heavy Long Island accent. After all, everyone spoke the way I did, which made it near impossible to ever pick up on the difference. This came to an end the minute I came to college freshman year, when I was randomly placed to live with a girl from Boston. Our initial interactions were actually about the way we both spoke and those first few weeks living together were filled with laughter about our varied pronunciations of utterly common nouns (she said "cah" instead of "car," I said "cawfee" instead of "coffee). Even more than pronunciation variances, we learned that we had different mannerisms, called common items and stores different names and that we often used different phrases (Bostonians seem to think "wicked" is a universally appropriate adjective, mind boggling, I know). I think we focused on these differences because there was actually little else that divided us- we both came from middle class suburbs, attended good public high schools where we were involved in very similar activities, had close-knit families and were planning to pursue similar majors. We even had other more visible similarities, most strikingly almost identical wardrobes and a love of the color pink. It truly was our regional accents which set us apart and, for whatever reason, we fixated on them.

As college continued, I became very self-conscious of my accent, trying my hardest (especially on job interviews) to remain accent neutral and I definitely have noticed that my roommate now uses "wicked" less. I thought that this was just a natural progression, a possible sign of maturity and a way to practice professionalism. Turns out, our behavior is actually reflective of a much larger phenomenon that originally occurred in the 1960s, according to a New York Times Magazine article printed this week called "Speech Therapy: Is TV like 'Jersey Shore' Helping to Preserve Regional Accents" by Virginia Heffernan.

First off, I promise I will not talk about the horribly addictive yet disgusting television show on which the article focuses, just the basic premise of the article. Heffernan explains that William Labov "the father of sociolinguistics" conducted a study in 1966 which found that many people, especially New Yorkers, possessed a "lingustic self-hatred," thinking that their speech portrayed them as "distorted" and "sloppy." Heffernan goes on to explain that an era of "Newscaster English" followed this, a time when Americans focused on assimilation and refinement, and in line with this, displayed a strong desire to hide their regional badges. Heffernan then credits a wave of mass media for reasserting linguistic pride in America, like Saturday Night Live and Taxi.

Today, according to the article, shows like Jersey Shore tend to exaggerate regional accents and mannerisms in an effort to convene regional subcultures instead of ignoring them. Heffernan believes that "instead of erasing longstanding regional and social distinctions, television will help preserve them." I see her point, but think it is important to recognize that these accents are inauthentic- they are exaggerated. In producing these largely inauthentic accents, characters on these shows are not really uniting a subculture but forming their own new subculture- in the case of the Jersey Shore an especially disturbing one that repulses some of the original culture from which it it originates.

As American Studies majors, we are constantly reflecting on ways to study American culture and the many subcultures that exist within it, especially on the formulation and roles of community and identity. I never thought of American accents as strong identity markers or badges and this article made me think about that. The article also ended on an interesting note, stating that "cultivating and stylizing accents in order to stand out as part of a subculture- to represent in other words- may be as American as the melting pot."

The ability of accents to both unite and divide is perplexing. My roommate and I were divided because of accents yet our fixation on the source of division was something that actually brought us together, uniting us. Divided yet united- seems like an appropriate description of America to me.