(11/19/2018 – absent for Thanksgiving break)
(11/21/2018 – Thanksgiving Break)
11/26/2018
Throughout the entirety of this course we have looked at the overarching idea that all music is saturated in politics and history. Watermelon Man is just another example of this idea. In 1962 Herbie Hancock originally produced the song, and since then it has been re worked and re-produced by multiple artists in different genres and forms. Some of these include Mongo Santamaria, Manfred Mann, or Poncho Sanchez. It is easy to see both how and why this song, like many others, has made its way through multiple eras and areas of culture. When a song is catchy and has a rhythm or beat that is easy to pick up and not difficult to remember, it is more likely to be carried through different groups of people and areas of life. Even little factors, such as skin color or upbringing, impacted how this song changed and altered from artist to artist. As Professor O’Malley pointed out, in reference to Manfred Mann’s version, “white people do play it faster.”
Most of us turn on the radio pretty frequently, but a lot of the time forget that this form of media is regulated by an external organization that does actually have some say in what we hear and don’t hear. The FCC, while regulating who broadcasts on each station, also has input as to what information is “appropriate” to share on the radio, and prohibit certain vulgar or obscene material. Television works in a similar way, only visually. Personally I agree with the fact that there is some censorship in what can be said and done on the radio and on television. Many people prefer to stay away from vulgar content, and if there is regulation on such material, it makes it significantly easier. Also, the purpose of radio and television is to serve the public and ultimately entertain or inform. Vulgar material does not have a necessary value is achieving this goal, and it can be easily achieved without the use of inappropriate language or images. Only in a case where it is absolutely necessary to cross those lines do I agree with the sharing of such content. Many may disagree with this, but I stand by the fact that as long as it is fairly and properly regulated, with no bias to any particular individual, FCC regulation if shared material is a good idea.
11/28/2018
Every class, I make it my goal to connect that day’s individual lecture to the rest of the course. To connect overarching ideas to the smaller details and examples given in the lessons. Some days it makes perfect sense. When we learned about the minstrel shows, almost everything lined up perfectly and it all connected like a dot game.
Then some days are like this, where we begin by talking about Nabisco, the mass market, and crowdsourcing within search engines and I almost have no idea how this would connect to anything we learned five weeks ago. So I keep listening.
Amazon, one of the most powerful entities in the nation and quite possibly more powerful than the government itself, has a database of information stored up of over billions of users. Devices such as Alexa or even simply your iPhone have the ability to track your domestic habits and listen to your conversations in order to persuade you to buy things you didn’t even know you wanted. This explains why we talk about some product or service and then twenty minutes later we are scrolling past an advertisement for it on facebook. In a way, our lives are regulated by the devices that we submit ourselves too. Much like our discussion of the regulation of radio and television on Monday, the information we are exposed too and the conversations we have largely determine what we buy and how we live our lives.