Yes Men Extra Blog

With the end of the semester approaching, it has finally come time to do our final projects: the radio project. My new group, band 3.5, has had many great ideas on different directions we could go with the show. After submitting our proposal to Kate, we know see we have much more work cut out for us than we previously realized.

After seeing the work of the Yes Men, I have mixed feelings. I think what they are doing is very clever. Instead of violently protesting or doing something else to get the attention of the media, they are actually using the media as their way of communication. Just as the media manipulates the public opinion by only releasing information they choose, the Yes Men are manipulating the media, forcing them to cover issues that they find important. This is good in that it forces the media and the public viewers to see a side of a story that they might have not seen and not had the chance to consider.

This manipulation also has a negative side. For example, by promising compensation for the Bhopal plant victims, they are giving hope to many people. Once these people hear that the promises are false, they will now have added disappointment. These people have gone through enough, and it is unnecessary to put them through any more hurt. The point of the Yes Men's fake impersinations is to cause harm to the major companies, but the major harm is being done to the innocent bystanders.

For our radio projects, I do not think it would be a good idea to implement the same strategies that the Yes Men use in their endeavours. Though the idea behind the shows are good, the effect it has on innocent people is not worth the small harm it does to major corporations.

Shayna Tucker

Thiago blog 10

This week we had to listen in to Orson Wells’ War of the World broadcast, and what I found interesting about it was how many people were tricked into thinking that an actual alien attack was taking place. I think this is ridiculous, but I guess hindsight is 20/20, and maybe if I had listened to the live broadcast, and had also missed the disclaimer in the beginning of the show, I probably would been scared shitless too. This brings up an interesting point that we as viewers of TV news shows and listeners of radio news shows take it for granted that everything said in the news is real. That’s not to say that we are all just gullible, but rather that we expect in good faith that news programs and journalists will report the truth to the best of their knowledge. So this frees up the viewer or listener to just absorb the information without having the responsibility of verifying if it’s true or not; if info is from a reputable news station, it’s probably true. This means that media and its members have a huge responsibility to report the actual truth, since the audience will take it as such and if someone fails to uphold this responsibility, the audience will no longer trust them. For example, in 2006, Dan Rather retired from, and another producer was fired from the news program 60 minutes after a story they had reported and defended about President Bush’s military record ended up being false.

The movie Sonic Outlaws also dealt with this subject when the band Negativland was shown to have leaked a fake news story which the mainstream media got a hold of and began reporting as truth. So the reporters and journalists failed to verify the truth in this case. And if the audience isn’t expected to questions the truth, and the journalist who are expected to aren’t doing their jobs, then it’s kind of scary to think of how people can be manipulated into sharing a collective false belief, which gets into the realm of propaganda and group think—all bad things. But then again, what do I know? I get my news from the likes of the Daily Show, SNL’s Weekend update, and even UF’s Alligator.

We're back...

This was quite an interesting week. Monday we had our first lab in forever. To be honest, I was dreading having to be there until 10:10 at night, but it ended up being really interesting! Barry seemed like he really knew what he was talking about and really had a passion for it. It's rare to see someone that loves what he does, and Barry definitely seems that way.

Playing around with the audio editing software was pretty cool. We all got to take turns speaking into the microfone and then playing it back. My personal favorite was when we got to change the pitch and make ourselves sound like Mickey Mouse. I've seen engineers work on my sister's songs and I always thought it was pretty cool how they can cut and paste different parts of songs together. I'm excited to start my own project and be able to show off my "skills" when I get back to Los Angeles.

Also on Monday, our film analysis projects were due. I had a much better time completing this project than I did with my last Web site project. I felt way more comfortable working on a Web site the second time around because I felt like I had a better idea of what was expected of me. I tried to be more creative and toyed around with Web design a little more. I did my project on Mean Girls, a movie that is such a guilty pleasure to me. I love it and think it is such an accurate projection of high school girls today. I liked this assignment way more than the last one.

We had our last Barthes band presentation on Monday on the Grain of Voice. I thought the whole concept of the texture of the voice was really intriguing. I found it especially interesting becauseMe and Thiago have our presentation on Sonic Outlaws on Monday so hopefully that works out well because we have been preparing long and hard for it. Wish us luck!

Shayna Tucker

The Last Supper...aka the week before our presentation

In the beginning of the week, we discussed the book Chorus of Stones by Griffin. We spent a lot of time on this piece. There were many interesting themes throughout the book. For example, Griffin spends a lot of time on the issue of gender. She is clear in giving her opinion that masculinity is the cause of war, therefore implying that femininity would end war. One example she gives is Ghandi. She accredited his peaceful practices to being taught by women. I found this concept intriguing. When you really think about the people who are involved in war, it is usually men. Does that mean it is fair to generalize that masculinity is the cause of war, or is it that society has made it that war is designated for men? I am unsure of the right answer to this question.

Also this week, we watched the short film "Roswell". This film was very strange to me. While watching it, I was not certain how this would relate to what we were learning in class. I was eager to discuss it on Friday. Once in class, it was all pieced together. We analyzed the different aspects of mise-en-scene, cinematography, and editing used in the film. I'll admit, I definitely enjoyed waching The Shining more. I am very intrigued by the concept that there could be life outside of our planet, but this film didn't really do it for me.

Coming up on Monday, my band has our presentation on Barthes' essay on The Third Meaning. To be honest, we have had a lot of trouble fully understanding this concept. This essay is very confusing in that its hard to put into words something that Barthes himself has trouble putting into words. My group has spent much time in the library researching The Third Meaning and discussing our findings with each other. We also met with Kate before class on Tuesday to try and discuss what The Third Meaning really means. Tomorrow, we will be spending the whole day in the library. We finally decided that we are going to present just as Barthes had written: we are going to make a slideshow of images and try to put into words what the third meaning is for each one. Hopefully it all works out in the end. I am including the man that has baffled us all!

Shayna Tucker