As a child I had been a huge Wizard of Oz fan, but reading Rushdie's book changed the way I viewed the film. I now am able to look past the glamor of everything. It also gives insight to the reactions people have to The Wizard of Oz (the film). Before I read Rushdie's book, I would have watched that video of the Indian children and laughed at how cute it was. Now, I watch it and wonder what message they are taking away from all of this. The song the children are singing fantasizes the world of Oz and makes it seem like the best place there ever could be. It is interesteing that they shose to sing this song becasue the idea of it goes against one of Rushdies jkey points. When disgussing the idea that "there is no place like home" Rushdie mentions that this movie leads you to believe that "everything is okay. Whay you have is just fine." Instead of focusing on this notion, the children instead are singing of a place which would seem better than where they are living.

The Wizard of Oz has become such a part of out culture that it is often difficult to remember wher it came from. The film is a collaborative work by many.

"If The Wizard of Oz is a work of art - and, I suppose, its presence in this series indicates that I'm not alone in thinking that it is - it's extremely difficult to say who the artist was ... Who, then, is the author of The Wizard of Oz? No single writer can claim that honour, not even the author of the original book. Mervyn LeRoy and Arthur Freed, the producers, both have their champions. At least four directors worked on the picture, most notably Victor Fleming, who left before shooting ended"
While these children are not working on the film itself, they continue to keep the creative proess alive. New renditions of various aspects of the film are always being made which is part of the magic of it.

The other aspect of this video that goes greatly agaisnt the belief of Rushdie is that the youth are really in control just like Dorothy has to "take controll of her own desotiny." This video is of a group of kids singing a song which it looks like they were forced to lean. Although they may have fun at points, the enthusiasm is not equal with someone who decided to go up there and do this on their own.

Postmodernization of the Simpsons

The Simpsons never fail to take something that has already been done and do it in their own way. They have taken some of the worlds greatest works and reproduced them. Here, it is a little different. They are parodying an art movement which changes around classic works. In his essay on postmodernism, Jameson say "An aesthetic of cognitive mapping-a pedagogical political culture whuch seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of it's place in the global system- will necessarily have to respect this now enormously complex representation dialecti and invent radiallt new forms in order to do it justice." The creators of the Simpsons new they were not doing anything new by making there own version of the Mona Lisa, but they were simply using their work to keep the idea alive which is what
Jameson had been talking about.

is it public?

Looking at the blog, Daily Kos, I have a difficult time believing that it truly part of the public sphere. Habermas has said "Because, on the one hand, the society now confronting the state clearly separated a private domain fromt he public authority and because, on the other hand, it turned the reproduction of life into something transcending the confines of private domestic authority and becoming a subject of public interest, that zone of continuous administrative contact became `critical' also in the sense that it provoked the critical judgment of a public making use of its reason. The public could take on this challenge all the better as it required merely a change in the function of the instrument with whose help the state administration had already turned society into a public affair in a specific sense--the press" To me, this quotation meant that the press was the governments compromise towards a publi sphere. If the press is not truely part of the public sphere that brings up new questions such as, what exactly is the press? While I do not quite have an answer to that I feel that Daily Kos may be falling close to the realm of the press. They have paid staff and a set of writers. There is too much of a structure for this to be ompleatly the public sphere. To actually be able to post a diary you must fisrt register and then several differnt steps. There is no where that says this, but this means that only people who are really serious about following this blog would have the time to go through this process.

Rhetoric of the Sopranos

When creating an advertisement it is important to consider the images being used. In his essay, Barthes discusses the power an image whether it be a drawing or a photograph. This knowledge can be used to examine any type of advertisement. One example an image used to advertise the series finale of the the television show The Sopranos.

One quote that stands in my mind in relation to the advertisement is "The type of conciousness the photograph involves is indeed truly unprecedented, since it establishes not a conciousness of the being there of the thing (which any copy could provoke) but an awareness of haing been-there." This statement is especially relevent when it omes to this image. Looking at it, you understand that you are not experiencing the event, but rather the viewing of the image is the event. Since it is an advertisement for a television show it is all about seeing what is not actually happening, but feeling a connection to it nevertheless.

Also the statement "Does the information duplicate certain of the informations given in the text by a phenomenon of redundancy or does the text add fresh information to the image?" is very intereseting in relation to this image. One of the most prominent images whithing the image is that of the Statue of Liberty. Just above Lady Liberty are the words "Made in Amerca." One may believe that this is a show of patriotism. The only issue is that despite being an American icon, the Statue of Liberty was built in France. I have never seen an episode of The Sopranos so I cannot fully understand why the caption was there, but it gave it's own meaning to me. I felt that it was trying to say that like the Statue of Liberty, it is not as all American as it would appear.

A third quote which interested me was "the photograph is not the last (improved) term of the great family of images; it corresponds to a decicive mutation of informational economies." This particualarly struck me becasue It discussed how there is so much more story to a film that a photograph. A photograph simply tells the story of something that happened in one moment in time. A film spans both time and place. The interesting thing about the image we are examining is that it is an photograph which is advertising a television show which has the same properties of a film. By showing this one moment it is compelling people to watch the show and see all the other moments.

applied to Blair Witch

I do not believe that either quotation is truer than the other. As soon as I read both, I could see how they directly applied to The Blair Witch Project. Although they may differ, I believe the movie was attempting to capture many things. In making it appear that the actors were not really actors but real people, the filmmakers led the audience to believe that the aura of who they saw on the screen truly was the aura of the actors. In reality, we do not know who these people are. Their true aura is most likely not what they lead us to believe through the portrayal of the characters from the movie. In the end, the viewer really feels that they know the true person they saw in the film.

The second quote captures the true essence of the movie. The entire concept was that this small film crew was going out to film a very real documentary. Not only that, but the so calle dfootage you were watching was said to be what was found. However, what I noticed myself about the difference be=tween the cameraman and the painter is that the painter may be able to manipulate and reproduce and image, you know it is only an image. The filmaker holds much more power. People are more apt to believe something is real if a filmaker shows it to them rather than a painter. The Blair Witch project was not real, but their goal was to make people think it was.

The style used in Tokyo Story and that of classic continuity based films differ greatly. Both create a certain feel which creates different effects. Continuity editing makes sense. The cuts are strategically lines up so that they flow with one another. It is very easy for a viewer to watch this style of editing. Also, since this is the form of editing most frequently used, it creates a sense of normality when people see it. It feels real becasue it is what people know. The style used in Tokyo Story is different than what we as viewers are accustomed to seeing. It does not use a structure that necessarily makes sense aesthetically. It does not create the same sense of realism that continuity editing does, but it still has its own form of realism.
The cuts did not always make sense to me, but I understand that there was a reason behind every shot and every placement of the shots. I believe that the style of editing reflected the content in a way. The content of the film greatly revolved around how things were changing in Japan at the time. There was a lot going on that many members of the older generations could not relate to. These people did not feel that this new culture was something they could recognize. At the same time this style of editing was something that viewers could not recognize. This created a form of realism in that new and slightly confusing had almost become reality.