Happy Hallow..awkward...

This weekend was Halloween weekend. At Babson, it is one of the biggest weekends all year. Well.. It is supposed to be at least. Halloween is a time for us to dress up as something we are not. We are allowed to not only create an obvious veneer, but also we are encouraged to do so. The more original the better. This weekend I saw so many hilarious costumes, from Avatars to infants. Everyone is free to send out whatever message he or she wants to.

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However, I began to question this after seeing a couple of costumes this weekend. Are we actually free to send out whatever message we want? Of course, there is the freedom of speech, and we have debated this in class quite a lot. However, what about our ethical responsibilities? Or do we not have them? For example, I saw someone dressed up as a Chilean coal miner. While I admit it is a clever costume, it is also very insensitive. Maybe it is not sensitive at all. Maybe he is trying to turn the coal miners into heroic characters by creating them into a costume. And really when other people saw this costume, many of them didn't really know how to react. Some people chuckled nervously, other's gave a sympathetic sigh. And of course many just laughed out loud. The lady at Trim even took a picture hahaha

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Another example I saw was someone dressed up as an oil transporter who worked for BP. His nametag had the BP logo and the phrase “Bad Planning”. His costume was covered in fake oil stains. The costume was met with both laughs and awkward side comments. While this also is a very clever costume, it is also a little bit insensitive since the oil spill is still a huge crisis. Sometimes I wonder if while we have our fun, do we still have this social responsibility to censor our own messages, not for the sake of law or even morality, but more so for the sake of compassion.  

Uhhh... What?

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I was driving into Boston the other day and I couldn't help but notice all of the graffiti along the masspike. There were all of these initials and random sayings. I started thinking about how graffiti is a medium.
What I find most interesting about graffiti is that the artist is trying to portray a very specific message, but that there is only a limited audience that will be able to understand this message. The message can be anything from territorial marks to corporate advertisements.
For example, below is an advertisement for a well known company.

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But after looking at it, I don't think most people would be able to figure out what it was advertising, especially if one was driving by it briefly. The mural is an advertisement for Converse, as you can see by the logo under the B in BRUTAL. 

Graffiti is also used to show respect for a famous individual. For example the image below is a mural painted in honor of John Coltrane. 

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It's also interesting to see how graffiti styles vary between country or location. For example the three example above were all from Boston. The examples may or may not be from different locations. Looking at them, I wonder how many people would be able to tell a difference. 

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The places these murals are from are Holland (Amsterdam), Ireland, and South Africa, and Ecuador respectively. And looking at these I have no idea what the messages are from any of them. The one from Ireland could possibly be interpreted as something about the horrible living conditions in the city, but to be honest I there is no way to know for sure.Perhaps there is a targeted audience that can understand it better than I can. 

Blah.Blah.Blah.

I was at work on Friday and I had to deliver a stack of papers to a professor. As I was walking down the hall towards his office, I saw hi face through the doorway. He looked bored out of his mind, and actually maybe even a bit pained. As I got closer, I saw that there was a women talking to him; she was pitching a marketing program. This woman had the most annoying voice I had ever heard. It was wicked high pitched and everything she said sounded like a question. You know the type.

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This made me realize that our voices are one of the most important personal mediums that we have to portray our message to others. I remember, during my freshman year, I read an article saying that there was a study done showing that sorority girls had a harder time dropping their “sorority girl voice” than fraternity guys had dropping their “frat guy voice” during job interviews. Tone of voice really speaks volumes as to what we are trying to say. Our accents, vocabulary, volume all influence the message we portray to those around us. For example, if I hear somebody speak rudely to another, especially to an elder, I am going to form very specific opinions about that person. Another example, if I hear someone using big words with an English accent, I cannot help but think of that individual as being quite intelligent, even if what he is saying does not make any sense at all.

Below is an article from AdOps Online that describes a study that was showed that the male voice and the female voice make different impressions on various types of people.

The Coolest Article in the World. (But not really).

Pirates. Drugs. Gay Marriage. - Everything's Funnier with TPain.

In chapter 8 our text book spends a short bit of time explaining that many people use media for entertainment. I was surprised to read that we shouldn't make a sharp distinction between "fun media" and "serious stuff". And while I do partly agree with this, it's also quite obvious that we won’t be able to get anywhere in life if we spend all our time watching TV and surfing the web. But I then started thinking about different ways to mesh these two categories together. Even though the book is talking about taking fun more seriously, I personally think it would be more productive to approach serious subject matter with a less severe perspective.

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The example I thought of is called "Auto-Tune the News". For those of you who are familiar with the musical artist TPain, this is basically a couple of guys infusing TPain's voice generator with the news to make a melodic and comedic YouTube video.

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Basically these guys take what I consider fairly mundane and dry news reports of important happenings around the world (although it's more specific to the US) and make it more enjoyable (actually much more enjoyable) to watch. The videos are hilarious. 

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This is a perfect example of how you can infuse the entertainment aspect that we all value (especially our generation today) and merging it with the "serious stuff that really matters". I personally would love it if there was a news channel on TV that had all of their news reports in this format. 

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You Sneaky Sneaky Flobots You.

In chapter 7 we read about how media can influence our political perceptions. This immediately made me think of a concert I went to in my senior year of High School. I went to a Flobots concert in Cambridge, MA with a friend and it was absolutely amazing. This concert however was very different from any other concert I had been to. The concert had a theme, and the theme was anti-war, and the band members after every song spoke about how our troops should be taken out of the Middle East. At one point they even unrolled this massive flag/banner of the American flag and an Army helmet.

In High School I was never very involved with politics. To be honest I’m still not as active as I should be. But remember walking into that concert not really caring about what was going on with the war. I saw both sides of the issue; one side being that we had too many men and women dying over there, and the other being that if we left suddenly chaos would erupt and tear pretty much the entire Middle East. Basically it was a lose-lose, so I tried to stay out of it. After all, I couldn’t even vote then.

However, I left the concert very concerned. I wanted those troops out of the Middle East at all costs. I was suddenly blinded by the excitement from the concert. I stood in a basement of a club for 2 hours listening to a band and I came out a political activist. Of course the passion barely lasted a week, but it made me realize how strong of an impact media can have on our political views and opinions.