Author Archives: Ariel Baena-Tan

Question 2:

In the episode Saudi Arabia from The Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj discusses certain truths about Saudi Arabia. One moment in the episode that stood out to me was the time where he discusses when Muhammad bin Salman lifted the ban on women driving. This moment in the episode really speaks to the trope “Islam is uniquely sexist.” The wayMinhaj describes this new lift on the ban goes to show how controversial the whole event really is. He shows a news report where the reporter announces that a female singer in Saudi Arabia released a music video of her rapping in a car to demonstrate her freedom of now being able to legally drive. Despite this, Minhaj does make this whole scenario comedic of some sorts. While he does it very subtly, the audience does catch on to what he is trying to communicate. He brings up this major event by bringing back the discussion to Muhammad bin Salman. He starts by reminding the audience that “he was known as the reformer who was gonna change the Arab world.” At first, his statement sounds rather serious and direct. However, when he elaborates it seems as if he starts to show some sarcasm. He explains how “people in the West voted for MBS because they bought his sales pitch” which is a valid statement. But as he continues, the audience realizes that this statement begins to sound humorous when he uses a sarcastic tone when saying that “he lifted the ban on women driving.” The way in which he looks straight at the audience while shaking his hands in front of him and saying “I mean come on! He lifted the ban on women driving!” One could understand this expression as something serious, but the way I understood it when watching the episode was that he was possibly mocking the “people in the West” for using this action of MBS as a way of justifying why they voted for him.

As the episode continued, and Minhaj shows the news report of the female singer who released her music video to express her newly found freedom of being able to drive, we then can conclude that Minhaj is really mocking this whole event. As we see in the clips and after being pointed towards the strange aspects of the music video posted online by the female singer, we can understand how this situation speaks to the trope “Islam is uniquely sexist.” We see this through the way he criticises the video for showing a woman in a car but not avidly driving it. He also makes negative comments on the make and model of the car which also could downplay this whole scenario. So while Islam seems to be evolving to become less sexist, in reality, it is only creating new opportunities for people to make nasty comments and open new doors to other forms of sexism.

Bone Box by Michael Nicoll Yanhgulanaas is an art installation that is situated in the Museum of Anthropology. The installation, created in 2007,  is a combination of 12 square pieces of plywood that are assembled together to reveal a large picture. While each piece, positioned next to one another, creates a unified image, each individual piece is, in fact, able to stand alone. The unification of all the pieces of plywood works together to tell a story of the Haida culture. Bone Box, being the only interactive installation in the Great Hall of the museum is very attractive. It not only draws audiences in through curiosity, but it also attracts their eye simply because of how colourful it is in comparison to the other pieces in the area. We are accustomed to not being able to touch any artefacts or artwork displayed in museums and the idea of allowing people to interact with this piece by turning the pieces of plywood to reveal the sentence “ A stack of plywood trays built to contain fragments of everyone’s culture.” is not only unique but also enriches the whole meaning of the piece.

Considering how this piece is comprised of individual images placed next to one another to create a larger picture while also leaving gaps in between them, insinuating that they are all independent, the audience is able to analyze the symbolic meaning of this piece through the way it is displayed. Before reading the sentence on the top of the plywood pieces, many people could infer that each section represents something on its own about the culture and the concept of unifying all of them symbolizes that unity within the culture. Therefore, the words written on the plywood only enhance or clarify this concept that the artist was trying to convey. This concept, combined with the interactive nature of the piece was also an intention of the artist, seeing as how it can bring people together to discover other features of it and learn more about how different, individual people come together to create what they call a “culture.”

What I have observed through this piece is how not only the images tell the story, the entire composition of the piece is what enriches the meaning. The uniqueness of the colours and the composition of this piece in comparison to the display of the other pieces in the museum, it stands out in a way that attracts people’s attention. However, the full intention and story behind this piece will not necessarily be clear to every individual that views and interacts with the piece. I did not necessarily know that this piece represented the Haida culture. One could look at the piece and understand it represents the indigenous culture; however, this culture and historical details are not necessarily taught to everyone who would view this piece. Therefore, I think that it could be hard for certain people to understand the piece without background knowledge or having read the sign describing the piece and the artists artistic intention.

Dean’s article focuses primarily on how the presence of social media and how its excessive use is, effectively not an efficient platform for promoting sociopolitical changes in societies. Throughout my preparation for the in-class debate on the topic of whether or not social media inhibits sociopolitical change, I knowingly read Dean’s article with the idea that I would be arguing for this prompt. While I do agree with some aspects of Dean’s article, I still have some opposing ideas. As a result of the debate and being able to hear the opposing role as well as the debate about Castell’s article, my opinion has stagnated in between the two arguments simply because I see how there are different outcomes in every situation.

While on one hand, I argued in the debate that social media is a circulation of information that no individual takes seriously and only contributes to that circulation to be a part of the majority, I have also come to realize that in opposition, there are many different scenarios where social media has made a positive impact on certain sociopolitical changes. Before hearing the other side of my debate as well as the other group’s, I had read the chapter of the article with one mindset. However, in doing this, I also began to question it afterwards. One example of this would be when I questioned how important social media is for communication and furthermore how all of this was done before the presence of social media and the internet existed.

While both debates gave me insight into the relationship between social media and sociopolitical change, there were a lot of points that unveiled different perspectives on the topic. Seeing as how Dean and Castell have very different views with respect to social media and its impact, I was able to notably identify and consider all sides before I could finalize my opinion. I was able to consider how on one hand, according to Castell, social media connected all individuals, bringing societies closer together versus how according to Dean, those connections made through online platforms were merely strategies for people to share their possibly ungenuine ideas and boost their egos while ultimately creating a pool of information that was not taken seriously.

Overall, I think that the debate gave me a great amount of insight on the topic and while neither debate prompted me to choose one specific side, I have come to a conclusion that it simply depends on the timing, situation and people to establish whether or not social media is an effective way of creating sociopolitical change.

Instagram is probably one of the most controversial social media platforms after Twitter. Unlike Twitter which allows people to express their opinions openly, which could cause issues as we have just seen with the Cardi B and Nicki Minaj fight, Instagram brings up a lot of discussions with respect to self-portrayal. If you are one of the few people that have never experienced the whole works of Instagram, it is basically a platform where one is able to share pictures with their followers. This social media platform has grown immensely and also causes a lot of issues in the younger generations. Instagram initially came out with intentions of being a place where people could share their favourite pictures and essentially share their lives with others but in a more visual manner. Over time, it evolved into a place where people cared about their “follow ratio,” the aesthetic of their feed, and the amount of “likes” that they got on one picture. The motives driving young individuals to take part in this culture on Instagram has become a controversial topic simply because the ethics and intentions were strange in a way.

On Instagram, individuals pick their best pictures, edit them (or even photoshop them) and then wait for the optimal time to post so that they can have the highest probability of having the maximum amount of likes and comments. This process might not apply to all people of course; however, it is something that is not uncommon. In fact, for a while, it was also not uncommon for people to tag their friends (who were not even in the picture) in their pictures so that they could let them know that they were important to them. Having spoken to my younger sister, I learned that she and her friends used to strategically place the tags on the picture to essentially indicate and “rate” their friends based on importance.

This whole process and social dynamic are questioning. Before social media existed, people interacted with each other physically and the image they created for themselves was only through the way they carried themselves and not what they chose to show to the public. The only way people let their friends know that they were important to them was either verbally or by body language. With Instagram, people can choose to show a specific side of themselves that might not necessarily be authentic and essentially, they compete against other people to see who can fabricate their life the best while also fulfilling the criteria in the Instagram culture.

However, one could argue that even without Instagram, this social dynamic was still present and without a doubt it was. But, with a social media like this, people now have the ability to create an almost fake and exaggerated version of what they wanted to show to the public and in a sense, the magnification of this social norm takes away from the unique identity of each persona. Instagram has evolved from being a platform to stay connected with friends to being a place where people compete to have a prominent presence on the internet, which has caused many problems in youth. A large majority of people no longer interact with each other in the same manner anymore simply because they always have the idea of social media presence in mind. If you really think about it, it is almost abnormal for someone not to ask you for your social media username when they meet you for the first time; whether it be Instagram or any other social media platform.

Numerous people today have either listened to or used the song “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” by Green Day as a metaphor representing the closure of a certain event. This popular punk song is a perfect example of Stuart Hall’s “Encoding, Decoding” theory. The most common use of this song would be during the time of a graduation or as a soundtrack to a slideshow of pictures demonstrating a timeline of the past. Many people interpret this song as something that represents the offering of best wishes for the future. However, the intention of Billie Joe Armstrong, the lead singer for Green Day, was slightly different. After breaking up with his girlfriend who moved to Ecuador, he wrote this song out of anger towards her.

Based on the active audience theory developed by Stuart Hall, it has become more clear how “Good Riddance” is a good example demonstrating the disparity between the process by which the song is constructed by the producer and that by which the audience understands and interprets it. In a song that is commonly misinterpreted like this one, we are able to understand what Hall means when he establishes that this type of circumstance arises “from the lack of equivalence between the two sides in the communicative exchange.”

Despite Armstrong creating this piece with rather negative and personal intentions, it was not expected that the song would become popular due to its contrast with respect to all the other songs released by Green Day. When the song became well liked, it was surprising at first but not shocking that the audience “decoded” its meaning in a completely different manner. Without knowing the background information that was used when writing this song, one could interpret the lyrics “It’s something unpredictable, but in the end is right I hope you had the time of your life” as a literal implication for the appreciation of a past event.

Out of the three positions from which to decode something, the oppositional position is the most applicable to this example.  Hall stated that they would “detotalize the message in the preferred code in order to retotalize the message within some alternative framework of reference.” In other words, the audience interprets the piece in a way that they prefer to understand it and ultimately continue to understand it based on a different viewpoint. Since the majority of the audience was not aware of the background information leading up to the lyrics of the song, the audience would naturally choose to decode its meaning using their own knowledge and apply it to themselves. In fact, this process of decoding would apply to almost any other song where the writer did not explicitly state their intentions in a public manner.