Sunday, June 19, 2011

1-3

In the face of the increased technology, the stereotyping of a nerd is still in existence.  The label of nerd is that of a computer savvy, white, male. This stereotyping has actually increased with the wave of new technology, possibly explaining the reason why women and minorities are not pursuing careers in information technology.
            In the article “White and Nerdy: Computers, Race and the Nerd Stereotype (Kendall, 2011), the author analyzes society icons such as the “Geek Squad”. This advertising scheme, used by Best Buy, offers the typical type casted nerd; short sleeved, white dress shirt, worn with a tie and pocket protectors equipped with pens, and thick rimmed glasses. Best Buy uses their “Geek Squad” for computer repair, service, and support. Best Buy says the uniform of the “Geek Squad” was derived from influence of special agents in federal law enforcement. The idea behind this “agent” look of the “Geek Squad” is to depict the image of “secret agent superheroes”, fighting to protect computer users everywhere. Also, Best Buy has tried to show a diverse “Geek Squad” population, showing black and white, and male and female members of the squad on their website and commercials. Although, even the minority members shown in their advertisements where the glasses, to further depict the nerd, or “agent” image. The company goes as far as to offer steps to members and website visitors to protect them from getting the nerd stereotype. No matter whom the uniformed “Geek Squad” member is, the dress still signifies a male nerd.
            The article (Kendall, 2011), also analyzes Weird Al Yankovic’s song and video, “White and Nerdy” released in 2006. This work is a parody of Chamillionaire’s song “Ridin’ Dirty”.  It has been said that this song was “nerd revenge”. By March 2007, it was YouTube.com’s 19th most watched video. This song also was Yankovic’s first Billboard top 10 hit. Yankovic claims he has been a lifelong nerd, and was born to write this song. In the video and song, Yankovic, as expected, “connects nerd identity to whiteness”. The song has lyrics such as “fluent in Javascript and Klingon”, referring to computer language and the Star Trek movies. The video references several other popular culture artifacts that are linked to nerds; comic books, science fiction, action figures, and Star Trek. There are specific scenes in the video that are so off the wall that only people in certain social clubs would pick up on the reference, for example, the alley scene where he purchases a very difficult to find “Star Wars Holiday Special” video, as if it were a drug deal.
            This article was written for a general audience. The author goes into detail where needed to explain the references in examples she has given. Although, at times, the article became a bit wordy, it was understandable, maybe due to the nature of the topic being so well known to the general population. It was written in a way that shed light on the topic in a way that was not so heavy on research. She gave examples that were easy to understand, while getting the point across. The flow of the paper was easy reading because she broke her examples down into categories, and discussed one at a time.
            The key idea of this article was that society’s stereotype of the nerd, or geek, is that of a white male, sometimes socially challenged, armed with a pocket protector and glasses, and is a computer, electronics, and Star Trek guru. Movies, advertising gimmicks, songs, and websites feed into this stereotype, not necessarily in a mean way, but in a light hearted, poke fun of, kind of way. Being in the IT field, I do not consider myself any of the things that the stereotype is. And, being a woman, the IT field does not scare me.

References

Kendall, L. (2011). "White and nerdy":Computers, race and the nerd stereotype. Journal of Popular Culture , 44 (3), 505-524.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

5-1

The Twilight Saga, who hasn’t heard of those bestsellers turned blockbusters?  That’s what I thought. That is exactly why these stories are a popular culture icon. The storyline is that of a vampire family living amongst the ordinary population….and werewolves. The Cullen Family lives in Forks, Washington, and up until the day that Bella Swan arrived, life was peaceful. When Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart, fall in love, this love affair has an effect on the entire town. Throughout the four novel series, there are trials and tribulations of the love between Bella and Edward, including werewolf versus vampire, vampire verses vampire, and vampire versus human troubles.
The books in the series are (Twilight series):
·         Twilight, released in 2005
·         New Moon, released in 2006
·         Eclipse, released in 2007
·         Breaking Dawn, released in 2008
            The movies were subsequently released yearly starting in 2008, opening with Twilight. In the opening weekend Twilight hit almost $70 million. In 2009, the numbers for Twilight hit over $340 million (Twilight, 2011). Every sequel in the Twilight Saga has done as good as the one before.
            Most recently, the Twilight hunk, Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson, along with the rest of the cast, made waves at the 2011 MTV Movie Awards. Pattinson shocked the crowd when he dropped the “F-bomb” on live national TV, then went on to lock lips with his Twilight co-star, Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob the werewolf. Aside from the making out and cussing, Twilight and cast walked away with Best Movie, Best Male Performance (Robert Pattinson), Best Female Performance ( Kristen Stewart), Best Kiss (Robert and Kristen), and Best Fight (Robert Pattinson and Bryce Dallas and Xavier Samuel) ("Twilight" scoops honours at MTV movie awards, 2011).
            So, are you Team Edward or Team Jacob?
2011 MTV Movie Awards - Show

References

"Twilight" scoops honours at MTV movie awards. (2011, June 6). Retrieved June 15, 2011, from NME Film and TV news: http://www.nme.com/filmandtv/news/twilight-scoops-honours-at-mtv-movie-awards/217587.
Twilight. (2011). Retrieved June 15, 2011, from IMDd: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/.
Twilight series. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2011, from StephenieMeyer.com: http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilightseries.html.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

4-1

Jersey Shore, the MTV series that has put a spotlight on eight Italian roommates, has hit it big. In the first and third seasons, the cast spent their summers in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. The second season was partied away in Miami Beach, Florida. The much anticipated fourth season is currently being filmed in Italy.
            The fist pumping, abs showing, spray tanning, gorilla juicehead, always drunken cast first appeared on MTV December 3, 2009. The series portrays the roommates as they really are, nothing is held back. They spend their days doing the “GTL” thing (for those of you who don’t know, that is Gym-Tan-Laundry), walking the boardwalk, and occasionally showing up for work at the T-shirt shop, The Shore Store. They spend their nights and early hours of the mornings at the night clubs, downing too much alcohol, and fist pumping the night away. The goal for the evening is to bring home a companion who is “DTF” (not going to go into detail here). After they’ve had their fun for the night, the group sends their guests away in cabs, or in some cases, with the family members or friends that have come looking for them. The show is drama packed with roommates fighting, run-ins with the police, and that all-knowing Italian attitude.
            The season three premier brought in almost 8.5 million viewers, over 38% more than the amount of viewers who watched the previous season’s finale, making Jersey Shore the most watched show in MTV history (Gorman, 2011). Also in this season, four of the eight cast members got pretty significant raises.  Snooki (Nicole), The Situation (Mike), Pauly D (Paul), and JWoww (Jenni), were reported to each earn $30,000 per episode. Other cast members Sammi, Ronnie, and Vinnie are said to make less than their roommates, although they were given a $10,000/episode raise from the previous season. This is a huge bump up from the $5000 per episode they were started with in season one. Angelina, the 2 year veteran did not return for season three, after leaving abruptly during season 2 (Starr, 2010). Instead, a new face appeared; Deena, Snooki’s friend from back home, a pint-sized Italian diva with an attitude.
            The success of Jersey Shore has poured over into the cast members’ personal lives as well. Pauly D is now said to earn $80,000 a week for DJing, while Snooki gets $20,000 just for making an appearance. Mike “The Situation” has started his own line of workout videos and supplements (Starr, 2010). These stars owe MTV a huge thank you for picking them out of thousands of interview tapes, and turning them into stars.
            Jersey Shore cast members are plastered all over the Internet, TV commercials, newsstands and book stores. Everywhere you turn you see them with their notoriously huge sunglasses, spray tans, and hairstyles that nearly reach the ceiling, fist pumping their way into stardom. Pop culture icons, for sure.


References

Gorman, B. (2011, January 7). 'Jersey Shore' season premiere draws record 8.45 million viewers; 4.2 Adults 18-49 Rating. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from TV By the Numbers: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/01/07/jersey-shore-season-premiere-draws-8-4-million-sets-mtv-all-time-series-high/77688/
Starr, M. (2010, July 21). Jersey score. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/jersey_core_qgsboCvwAh3Wb2Fry3Lg9L

Friday, June 3, 2011

3-1

Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford in 1995. In 1996, during their grad school years they began a project developing a search engine called BackRub. This Search engine was ran on Stanford’s computers for a year, until it was decided that it took up too much of the University’s bandwidth.  Google came to be born in 1997 when the pair decided that BackRub needed a new name. They came up with the name Google, meaning a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. This name was given to the search engine to reflect their efforts to organize an infinite amount of information on the World Wide Web (Google, 2011).
            During the summer of 1999, the term “Googlers” referring to “people who use Google” was coined by Michael Moritz who was on the Google Board.  In 2003, American Dialect Society made “google” the “most useful” word of the year for the previous year. Over the next several years, Google has made many strides to become the number one search engine site on the internet (Google, 2011).
                        More recently, Google has been stepped over by Facebook to take the rank of #1 visited website. Because of this blow, Google has been searching for ways to become a part of the social network. On average, Americans spend 138 million hours a month searching topics through search engines, compared to 906 million hours on social networking sites (Google vs facebook in 2010-Blow by blow review, 2010). They may have found an answer…online social gaming. By the year 2012, this market is expected to climb to $2 billion (Parks Associates, 2007).
            So, what is the future of Google? They are pretty hush hush about it. This is what they have to say (Google, 2011), “We don’t talk much about what lies ahead, because we believe one of our chief competitive advantages is surprise”. According to Google Labs, some new Google features include App Inventor for Android, Google Transliteration, Image Swirl, Google Reader Play, and Public Data Explorer (Google, 2011). It seems that the every trial and tribulation that Google faces, they find ways to overcome them. As long as they are giving the consumer what they want, the company will continue to prosper.

References

Google. (2011, April). Google history - company. Retrieved June 3, 2011, from Google.com: http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html
Google vs facebook in 2010-Blow by blow review. (2010, December 16). Retrieved June 3, 2011, from Reve News: http://www.revenews.com/ctmoore/google-vs-facebook-in-2010-a-blow-by-blow-review/
Parks Associates. (2007, June 29). Game ad spend to exceed $2 billion in 2010. Retrieved June 3, 2011, from Marketing Charts: http://www.marketingcharts.com/topics/entertainment/game-ad-spend-to-exceed-2-billion-in-2012-832/

Sunday, May 29, 2011

2-1

            It’s 2011, who doesn’t know what a smartphone is? If you can find someone over the age of 12 who doesn’t, I would like to meet them, and see what cave they have been able to survive in over the last couple years. Jokes aside, the old days of the phone in a suitcase, and the plain old flip phones are over. Smartphones have taken over the mobile market. The main competitors are Apple, Samsung, Motorola and HTC. Studies are showing that in the first quarter of 2011, almost 430 million smartphones were sold to mobile phone consumers, which is a 19 percent increase from the same quarter in 2010 (Silva, 2011).
            So what does a smartphone do? I guess a better question would be what doesn’t it do? The answer is really simple…it pretty much does it all expect cook dinner for your family. And when that phone comes out, it’s mine! Depending on which Smartphone you decide to carry, there are different bells and whistles that make each one special.
            Smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone and the Motorola Droid, offer impressive operating systems with 1GHz processors, large screen sizes (4.3 inches), wireless internet access anywhere in the world, 8 to 16 MB of storage capacity, impressive cameras with flash, high resolution video cameras, and HDMI capabilities (Silva, 2011). Aside from all of these, Smartphones offer something that other phones just can’t touch: the Apps Market. Now, this is where the fun is. There are literally millions of apps available just by hitting a button on your Smartphone; games, calorie counters, turn your phone into a flashlight, diagnose your symptoms… the list could go on and on.
            To say Smartphones are a current pop culture topic would be correct. Although they have been around for several years, they really haven’t hit hard until just recently. It really shows how today’s population depends on technology to get through their daily life. Ok, so I am not going to lie. I fought the urge to get one for a long time, finding every excuse in the book. I have no idea how I ever survived without it. Sad isn’t it. I keep my life programmed in my phone. Life is faster pace than it was 20 years ago, hence the need for faster technology.

References


Hope, D. (2010, June 25). iPhone 4 vs. droid x: How do they compare? Retrieved May 29, 2011, from CS Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0625/iPhone-4-vs.-Droid-X-How-do-they-compare
Silva, V. C. (2011, May 29). Smartphones rule in the mobile market. Retrieved May 29, 2011, from PC World: http://www.pcworld.com/article/228954/smartphones_rule_in_mobile_market.html

Sunday, May 22, 2011

2-2

The three contemporary icons that I have chosen are:
·         Wonder Woman
·         Michael Jackson
·         Shrek

Wonder Woman was formed by William Moulton Marston, for DC Comics in 1940. Marston believed women were more trustworthy and reliable than men, and was an advocator for women’s causes. Wonder Woman was created during a time where men superheroes ruled the comics. Her first appearance was in 1941, in All Star Comics #8. Wonder Woman had a mixture of superhuman powers, such as being able to stop bullets with her bracelets, jump far distances, and she carried a magic lasso, which forced the truth out of her captures. A TV series was based on this character and starred Lynda Carter. It ran from 1975-1979.

Michael Jackson hit the music scene at age 11, along with his brothers, as a member of the Jackson 5. In the 80’s, he went solo with hits like “Billie Jean” and “Beat It.  He ultimately inspired pop music all over the world, and because of this is known as the “King of Pop”. Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller” is the highest selling album in the recording history, with  over 70 million sold, along with singles that were released that sold over 100 million copies. In his career, he sold over 750 million albums, had 13 number one hits, won 13 grammys, is in the Guiness Book of World Records for being the most successful entertainer of all time, received the AMA Artist of the Centurty award, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (Michael jackson bio).

The animated character, Shrek, came to life in 2001, by Dreamworks Animation. His voice is portrayed by actor Mike Myers. He is a big, green ogre who wants to live quietly by himself in his swamp. His friend, Donkey, helps him save Princess Fiona, so that Shrek’s swamp can be saved.  In doing this, he fell in love with the Princess.  In Shrek 2, 2004, he marries the Princess, and goes to visit her family. Prince Charming and the Fairy Godmother attempt trouble at every turn. Shrek the Third came out in 2007. Princess Fiona’s father passes away, and Shrek is set to take over the kingdom, unless he can find Arthur Pendragon, the King’s nephew (Shrek, 2011).

I chose each of these icons because they represent different parts of my life. When I was little, as far back as I can remember, Wonder Woman was my favorite superhero. I wore WW Underroos, and ran around the house, trying to lasso my big brother with my jump rope pretending to be her.  I grew up listening to Michael Jackson’s music, and even dressed like him when I was in fourth grade, with the black leather zipper jacket and the “parachute” pants. Now that I am older with children of my own, Shrek is one of my favorite movies to watch with them. Even though we have seen the movies dozens of time, it just never gets old.  All of these icons hold a special place with me, and in my life, and that is why I chose them.These iconic figures remind me of my childhood, and will continue into my children's lives as I share with them stories of my past.

References

 

Michael jackson bio. (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2011, from Michael Jackson: http://www.michaeljackson.com/us/bio.
Shrek. (2011). Retrieved May 22, 2011, from Reel Movie News: http://www.reelmovienews.com/characters/shrek/.
Wonder woman history. (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2011, from Vex: http://www.vex.net/~dq711/wonder_woman.htm.


1-4

            Social networking has grown increasingly popular over the last several years.  Facebook now has almost 600 million registered users, making it the top social site on the web. This site brings together friends and family around the globe with status updates, instant messaging, and pictures, all for free. 58 percent of Facebook users are in countries other than the United States. Users can connect via computers, cell phones, IPods, and other electronic devices with an Internet connection (Petro, 2011).

            Facebook was founded in 2004 by Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, and originally named “thefacebook.com”. It was initially only available for Harvard students to meet and get to know each other on an online format. Soon, it became so popular, that it was offered to other colleges. Then came high schools, and now it is available to anyone with an internet connection, with the exception that the user is over the age of thirteen (Roeder, 2011).

            Facebook offers thousands of applications, including games and quizzes. Games, such as Farmville, have been a huge hit for Facebook. They are so popular that gift cards for Zynga games can be purchased at retail stores.  The user’s wall is basically a blog, using status updates to keep friends updated on their life. Friends and family can make comments on the wall. Pictures and videos can be added to profiles. Companies can get free advertising by making a profile page and getting people to “like” it.  All of this on one website, who could ask for more? Facebook is not only entertaining, but is an affordable (free) way to stay in contact with friends and family all over the world (Petro, 2011).

            Since Facebook is free, it relies on investors, like advertisers, to keep the business going. That doesn’t seem to be a problem for the most popular social networking site on the Web. It is said that Facebook is worth over $50 billion, which has tripled since just last year. So, to say that Facebook is a pop culture icon would be very accurate.

 

                                                                http://www.facebook.com/


References


Petro, B. (2011, February 3). History of facebook: The social network at seven. Retrieved may 22, 2011, from Bill Petro: http://billpetro.com/history-of-facebook.
Roeder, L. (2011). Where did facebook come from? Retrieved May 22, 2011, from About.com: http://personalweb.about.com/od/makefriendsonfacebook/a/whatisfacebook_5.htm.