Author Archives: tita phophientong

Under the “Saudi Arabia” episode under the show Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, Hasan Minhaj has discussed the news coverage about Saudi Arabia and the crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, or MBS, concerning the murder of a Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Minhaj begins the ‘story’ with MBS’s representations before and after he’s claimed to take responsibility for Khashoggi murder in which it’s significantly altered. In this case, American politicians promptly inverted their standpoints toward MBS despite their profound relationship with Saudi Arabia and the fact that American had commended him as a reformer of the Arab region.
Minhaj isn’t surprised about this. Instead, he uses it to introduces the ways American have seen Arab people as terrorists which I would refer to the ‘West spreads democracy while Islam spreads terrorism’ trope. Not only giving the terrorists passports, he said, “Saudi Arabia was basically the boy band manager of 9/11,” added with the alienation of Saudi people in American official military document. Likewise, Minhaj adds on with the ‘Islam is inherently violent’ trope by explaining Saudi political dominance that has been under control of the ‘Saud’ royal family for 87 years along with how MBS came to his power by arresting ones who potentially resist on his way. Minhaj also talked about BMS’s political convicts, the coming up exaction of more than 2,000 people due to MBS’s Vision 2030 and his influences over the Yemen War.
In the same manner, Minhaj illustrates that MBS has uplifted the ban for women driving in Saudi Arabia and arrested the woman activists standing against him. This suggests the idea of uniquely sexist in Muslim culture and the difference of basic women rights between Western and Muslim communities. Minhaj uses the music video of a woman driving to note his standing for women rights, meanwhile, he picks off the poor-quality of the MV that could infer to the illusive gender equality the country tries to promote.
Despite the critical commentary on Saudi Arabia and the crown prince, I deem that Minhaj uses comedy concept and his storytelling techniques to compromise the contents that seemingly violate the individuals and organizations mentioned in his show. Minhaj casually responds to these harmful tropes as if he’s making fun of it. His ironic, yet entertaining show challenges how American think about Islam as a whole by only looking at Saudi Arabia. At the same time, as a Muslim, his actions and critiques against the tropes have proved that not every Muslim fits in those stereotypes.

In the Elspeth McConnell Gallery of Northwest Coast Masterworks in the Museum of Anthropology, ‘Indigenizing’ artworks are exhibited in a glass case in the middle of the room surrounded with Indigenous artworks from the region. Artworks in this gallery are thematically classified by their historical backgrounds and appropriation stories. Indigenizing consists of a carved wooden angel (1886) attributed to Frederick Alexcee, a Parker Field’s craved wooden shotgun (Haida) and American eagle engraved bracelets (Haida), expressing the artists’ aggravating experiences of colonization in the 19th century. The wooden angel was craved and painted as a baptismal font taking the form of Christian-belief angel, with the European long blue-grey robe, a pair of deitylike wings and the left hand holding a black bowl while the right hand is raising in a blessing gesture. However, the angel’s physique still enfolds the traditional craven style of Tsimshian (Lax Kw’alaams) culture. The wooden craved shotgun is displayed on the right side of the angel. And the silver bracelets embellished American eagle are on its left.
The exhibition supersedes the unification and conflict of cultures, through the artwork of the American colonial period. Although they are centrally displayed among other conspicuous innovative Indigenous artifacts, the salient features of the colonizers’ influences have Indigenizing stand out of other exhibits. In one aspect, being conquered by the Christian people, the artists have presented their resilience by adapting their pieces of art for Indigenous cultural survival under the threatening situation. On the other hand, each artwork can be seen as the demonstrations of creative resistance the ‘artist-warrior’ created for bringing back their innovative Indigenous identity against the suppressing authority.
Even though I do not have prior knowledge or familiarity with the specific cultures, Tsimshian and Haida, nor the context of the artwork, the representation makes it clear about messages the art is telling. At first glance, I am also impressed by the contrast between two cultures shown in each creation. The curatorial statement interprets the artwork as the visual symbol of crash and convergence between Indigenous culture and European cultural control in terms of incompatibility and violence. Howsoever, regardless the imposed external appearances of the art pieces, the artists asserted their identity with the manifest designs indicating their spiritual believes and respect of doing the work. Their creative decisions indicate the alternative ways to embrace Indigenous identity just like its proximities in the gallery hall those their purposes are elaborately reignited to serve the changing world circumstances. As for the one who doesn’t get affiliated with the adversative history, the artworks have shown the interesting aspect of Indigenous artists on how they have dealt with the culture-assimilation problems and turned it into the opportunity to uphold their ownership to the creative masterpieces.

Work cited:
Kramer, Jennifer. “Figurative Repatriation: First Nations ‘Artist-Warriors’ Recover, Reclaim, and Return Cultural Property through Self-Definition.” Journal of Material Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, July 2004, pp. 161–182, doi:10.1177/1359183504044370.

In the debate on the topic ‘Be it resolved that social media inhibit the sociopolitical change,’ my speaking position was the first speaker who provided the opening statement for the opposition team. To discuss against the proposition, we predicted what issues that another team might use to claim their standpoint, at this same time, I tried to point out issues that our team can take benefits from and state them in the opening statement to lead the discourse to our advantageous track. We drew the point that social media has been used as a tool for coordination and contributions of voices of the population without political intervention. Regardless of Dean’s perspective that highlights the individuality of voices, we argued by referring to the volume of content people have made online which we believe the high column conveys large impacts and raises social awareness.
In response to Dean’s article, my understanding of the context hasn’t changed much at the end. Dean’s provides both instances to the subject but his dominant viewpoints benefit the ‘for’ team rather than the opposing view. Therefore, I biassedly disagree with his opinion in some contexts. However, after I have listened to other team’s arguments on this topic, I tend to agree that in some situations, such as in Ice Bucket Challenge phenomenon, people did not pay attention to the actual results and that is when social media became merely a platform for message circulation. Plus, the subjectivity of the topic raised an objection to the quality of the impact as mentioned to the Egyptian revolution.

In Castells’s debate, the proposition side emphasized the function of online platforms that allow people to access and transmit political information and views. In this manner, the internet users contribute the awareness which leads to sociopolitical changes as Castells exemplifies in the Egyptian Revolution. This case, in particular, that fact that the revolution had still proceeded nonetheless, even though the government permitted the use of the internet, brought me an idea that changes take place in different forms and in dissimilar conditions. Yet, social media remains part of it.
The distinctive difference between Dean’s and Castells’s is that Dean makes his strong standpoint and gives many examples to support his views while Castells mainly disposes of the relationship from the Egyptian Revolution. Besides, their positions to the social media and sociopolitical change contrast. Therefore, these two articles contribute to different perceptions which are not comparable.

Throughout the debate, I still believe that social media plays an important role in sociopolitical changes, but the volume of impact may depend on each different setting, situation and political purpose. However, I also found that the active change in the current sociopolitical environment is challenging to create, and requires more than an online stream but political power and influence.

Works cited
Dean, Jodi. “Ch.1.Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism.” Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Duck University Press, 2009. 19-48.

If you use social media regularly, chances are you have probably seen pictures of delicious food all around your social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Or you may be the one posting those pictures online. Today, after pornography, food has been the second most search-for content on the internet. It is understandable since the sight of food automatically affects our ‘visual hunger’ or the natural desire to fulfill the sufficient nutrients for survival. Therefore, people feel comfortable viewing pictures of food. The thing is, most people are not aware of what’s following when they see lots of food photos in digital media.


According to Jason Thomas’ study on social influences on eating, our dietary behaviour is strongly influenced by social context. In this manner, food network creates the cultural expectations and environmental cues that make people more likely to follow the eating norm they saw on social media sites. In the modern days, many food networks have become more
dominant in people’s appetite. A popular media platform like BuzzFeed’s Tasty, for instance, focussing on the video series of worldwide instructional recipes play an important role in our eating choices. Tasty itself has more than ninety-five million likes on Facebook. Evidentially, its videos acquired over 2.2 billion views in March 2017. A research “Brain and Cognition” explains that more than 70 percent of food Americans eat is influenced by digital media.

https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/vl.1307011139415082/1774752866110688/?type=1

The research shows that our brain responses to images of desirable food, or in another word, food porn or gastro-porn. Food porn is a new concept of glamorized photos and videos of palatable food on the internet. Although pictures of food are nothing new. We have always seen them on commercials and magazine ads for years, but in this case, the nature and types of pictures are more sophisticated and photographed from the different vantage point. They are magnified and often the center of the media. The drawbacks came when we are exposed to the more appetizing images of food which are often high calories. Apparently, food networks like Tasty likely propose the basic American dishes that contain high calories and can be considered not a healthy food.

Seeing the photos, our physiological responses get to prepare our body to receive that food. As a result, the virtual food exposure psychologically stimulates hunger and induces the viewers to eat more frequently, disrupting the usual dietary routines. Moreover, in 2015, a survey of nutritional gatekeepers proved the correlation between viewing cooking shows, food in social and printed media, and having a higher BMI (Body Mass Index). People tend to eat regardless of the satiety but the desire to consume whatever they found appetizing on social media. After all, our eating intakes are changed. The growing obesity crisis proves that we failed our eating behaviour. But not all to blame food porn, many factors have led us to worse dietary habits. Still, we could deny that the excessive sight of desirable food on social media is triggering our hunger to consume over the appropriate amount.

Reference:
Suzanne Higgs and Jason Thomas (2016), Social influences on eating, Diet, behaviour and brain function, Current Opinion in Behavioral Science, 9:1-6, Elsevier Ltd. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.10.005
Susan Albers, Psy.D. (2012), “Food Porn?” The Hidden Risks, Eat, Drink, and Be Mindful: How to End Your Struggle with Mindless Eating and Start Savoring Food with Intention and Joy, Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/comfort-cravings/201208/food-porn-the-hidden-risks
Charles Spence, Katsunori Okajima, Adrain David Cheok, Olivia Petit and Charles Michel (2016), Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation, Brain and Cognition, 110:53-63 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2015.08.006
Lizzy Pope, Lara Latimer and Brian Wansink (2015), Viewers vs. doers. The relationship between watching food television and BMI., Appetite, Elsevier Ltd. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.02.035

Nowadays, Korean popular music or Kpop has thoroughly reached across the globe, gaining fan clubs from all over the world. Even though Korean itself is not a popularly spoken language, Korean Pop culture, known as Korean wave or Hallyu, has somehow become a notable global influence in the last eight years. However, compared to other pop cultures, Kpop is still considered new to the global music scene. A big changing point occurred in 2012 when PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video was launching on YouTube. It became the most viral music video at the time as it held ranked the most viewed YouTube video for five years onwards with 2.894 billion views in 2017. The reason behind this considerable intersperse is how social media space is used to convey its distinctive attribute.

Gangnam Style is well known for its catchy rhythm and unique dancing style – riding on an invisible horse. Thanks to the easily accessible and easy-to-share digital Platforms like YouTube, the MV itself has overwhelmingly gained audiences’ participation as it has over 14 million likes and about 2 million dislikes. His popularity was mainly driven through many social media sites, started on Youtube to others including Facebook and Twitter. From Ming Yan’s study of  YouTube Video Promotion by Cross-Network Association, millions of related Tweets on Gangnam Style issue are from 38,540 YouTube users. Besides, more than ten celebrities such as Katy Perry and Madonna has mentioned PSY and his prominent riding dance in their social media spaces. The famous and influential people have helped the song goes more viral and broader spread among social media users.

On the other hand, The song became globally popular since it portrays a very new perspective of music to worldwide fans. The MV content represents life in a flashy area of Seoul, humorously. Funny and “nonsense” videos impressed the audience and encouraged them to spread it. (Yan) The distinct dance style, yet easy to imitate, motivate the fans to generated massive remakes and parodies. Another factor, such as the vivid imaged and the desultory editing attracted audience to stick on what they were presenting. In this case, the fact that most viewers do not understand the lyrics does not matter in this issue; actually, it gets more audience to discuss the connotation of the MV relating those mentioned elements.

We could assume that fans actively play a significant role in promoting its spreadability. All those processes of spreading this media object can be considered participatory culture, in which the individual interplay with the subject as explained by Henry Jenkins et al. They do not only receive and consume the media but also take a prominent place in contributing role.

Citations:
Ming Yan, Jitao Sang, Changsheng Xu, M. Shamim Hossain(2015) YouTube Video Promotion by Cross-Network Association: @Britney to Advertise Gangnam Style. Retrieved from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7127030
Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, Joshua Green et al(2013) “Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture” New York University Press, ProQuest Ebook Central. Retrieved from ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ubc/detail.action?docID=1114591
Frederic Landinois(2012), Psy’s “Gangnam Style” Passes Justin Bieber’s “Baby” To Become The Most Popular YouTube Video Ever With Over 805 Million Views. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/24/psys-gangnam-style-most-viewed-youtube-video/