I just can’t help myself. For my last blog, I’ve decided to go on a bit of a rant in regards to the latest Hunger Games film that has come out.

Maybe its just me, but it seems that movies today are becoming ridiculously more lucrative (a welcoming idea, considering that once upon a time online piracy was supposed to cripple the film industry). With each successful sequel, a good franchise can tack on an extra billion dollars to its name. The most recent of all: the Hunger Games.

What (I believe) is making this franchise so successful is its overall ability to speak to different demographics. At first glance, I thought it was just another crack at teenage girl demo, until all of a sudden I noticed EVERYONE watching the films, including my educated friends who I thought would be as skeptical as I was before paying for a ticket (at this point I should note that I saw the first two films in theatres). I’ve gotten the same spiel from a lot of different people, namely about how the film criticizes our ridiculously over-the-top fascination with popular culture and reality television.

On the surface, yes, it definitely dose offer some interesting reflections of how our culture is ridiculously fascinated with the lives of the rich and famous and our particular yearning for violence on film and television. But it also capitalizes off of the very fascination that it allegedly critiques.

The machine that is the Hunger Games thrives off of the box-office draw that is Jennifer Lawrence, who has been the subject of wide public interest over the past three years and has graced the cover of virtually every entertainment magazine known to humanity. She might as well walk around every day in a flaming dress.

But aside from the publicity of the films’ lead actress, the franchise also taps into mass audiences by offering what is essentially cinematic junk food layered with a thin candy coating in the form of what is allegedly ‘social commentary’. Audiences aren’t offered anything different from the regular blockbuster: we get a simple story with simple characters and a simple conflict, coupled with mass violence, shiny special effects, and fatally attractive cast members. The only difference is this time we get loose lesson in morality that is ultimately violated by the film’s very existence.

The Hunger Games shouldn’t be viewed as a cultural text that is going to inform the masses about a higher state of consciousness and being. It is a commercial product that is catered to extract money from the pockets the many, and will continue to do so for at least the next two years.

My god what would we have done if she had turned down the role???

In the spirit of Zombie talk, I turn to one of the greatest zombie films ever created, Dawn of the Dead.

Written and directed by George A. Romero in 1978 and later reimagined by Zack Snyder in 2004, each film follows a group of survivors amidst the zombie apocalypse, seeking refuge in a mall. The mall poses an adequate safe-haven for the group: it is filled with resources, vast living quarters and provides ample shelter from their zombie cohorts. They can even flag down helicopters from the rooftop. But no one is ever too safe in the Zombie apocalypse, as thousands of Zombies linger outside, each one trying to make its way inside the mall that houses the last remnants of living flesh.

What makes Dawn of the Dead such a great film is its social commentary. The fact that the survivors flee to the mall and start to feel safe underscores the value that we put on consumer products. They make us feel safe, civilized, and shield us from a world of barbarism. In many respects, we are zombies: devoid of critical thought, relentlessly pursuing that mall in hopes that we’ll get a taste of something fresh and exciting.

My GRSJ video assignment

Orientalism refers to the relationship held between the ever-progressive West and its depictions of the undeveloped, barbaric and exotic East. The most blatant examples of Orientalism come from the mass media, where images of eastern societies are always seemingly portrayed in stark contrast to the ways of the west.

In many of these images, the eastern world lacks the civilized standards of the developed west. We are offered a window into a stagnant way of life, which is vastly exoticized and is depicted as something that is other-worldly. The west watches and studies this alien world, and through constant depictions of this sensationalized perception of the Orient, perpetuates these very perceptions.

At any rate, the cosmopolitans of today love to traverse the planet far and wide, laying claim to experiencing foreign cultures and insisting that there is a lot to take away from these other ways of life.

Sports Illustrated has long followed this line of reasoning, bringing their supermodels to other parts of the world and having them interact with the local culture. The end result, however, isn’t a progressive jump into a world where there is no more line drawn between the east and the west. Rather, what we get are photos like this:

Here, a model sits on the raft of a Chinese fisherman. The image that is portrayed is an exoticized account rural China, defined by the old way of life where bamboo rafts seem to be a prevalent form of transportation. The image poses other problems, namely that the strikingly beautiful white super model is literally sitting in a position of privilege.

Sports Illustrated swimsuit magazines are littered with pictures like this, each informing the ‘reader’ that an exotic east awaits, and if you’re young, white, and beautiful, you can afford all of the local luxuries.

Sigmund Freud coined the term the Oedipus complex, referring to a psychoanalytical theory in which a child has an unconscious desire to have sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex.

At the crux of the theory, Freud believed young boys develop a repressed sexual desires for their mother in the early ages of childhood, once they are able to make the distinctions between boy and girl and the inherent sexual relationship between the two genders. In understanding this binary, the boy’s relationship with his father becomes one of competition, as both vie for the attention of mother, in order to satisfy their desires.

The Oedipus complex plays a pivotal role in The Doors’ iconic song, the End.

Legend has it that when the Doors were an up-and-coming band, playing regular shows in L.A.’s whiskey A Go Go, there was one night in particular where Morrison ad-libbed the controversial lyrics for the End.

Morrison was said to have been found in an acid-induced stupor just moments before the band were to play their set. His bandmates had to drag him to the stage, where he somehow managed to perform. Nearing the end of the set, Morrison insisted that they perform a song that he had written about an ex-girlfriend, titled the End. The band had never performed it live, but unwilling to contest Morrison in his state, started playing the track.

The song slows down about half-way through, and, during the live performance, Morrison began ad-libbing spoken word over the quieted melody. As his bandmates had no idea what he was going to say, they just continued to play. Morrison managed to string together the following lyrics:

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
And he came to a door, and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother, I want to, f*** you all night long

The lyrics ended up losing the band their regular slot at the Whiskey A Go Go and, despite being kept for the studio version of the song, were censored by the producers.

Morrison’s ode to the Oedipus complex has changed the way the song has been interpreted, having once been about saying goodbye to an old girlfriend to eventually becoming a song about getting in touch with ones inner self. The father represents the external world that shapes the self, or something that is alien or foreign to one’s identity but exerts power over it and ultimately forms it. The mother represents the essence of the individual, that which is within, the natural self.

The song’s lyrics symbolize ridding oneself of external pressures, removing the oppressive forces that shape ones identity and getting in touch with one’s real self.

In his Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx introduces the term commodity fetishism to his theory. Marx believed that once a good is produced and enters the market, the monetary value that is ascribed to the product works to sever its ties from the production process. Potential buyers no longer equate the product with the work that was put into it. Instead, its value comes from its price tag. The consumer, in turn, sees only one glowing perspective of the product, while a veil is cast over the hard, sometimes dreary, labour that is put into it.

The common food advertisement is one of the most glaring examples of commodity fetishism today and momentously illustrates the thickness of the veil that is cast in front of consumers.

Whether it be McDonald’s commercials or Pizza Hut ads, we tend to get up close and personal with the grease infused delicacies of the fast food era every day. Often mouth-watering, the products showcased become items in and of themselves, generating no connection to their production process. We see each Big Mac in its unique form, an eclectic mass of bun, burger and lettuce, but only recognize it as a single entity: it is THE Big Mac, and can be obtained for the reasonable price of 7.99 (that comes with a delicious coke and piping hot fries).

It’s easy to get lost in a world that is dictated by price tags since money probably the most significant lens through which we see the world. But in the process, we lose touch with whats behind the veil. For every Big Mac, we don’t get first-hand tours of the industrial agricultural machine that makes it possible. And if we did, we might not buy those burgers.

Thompson argues that the working ‘class’ formed in part by the shared experiences of those within it; that shared interests work to unite a people as a class, and pit them against other groups or classes with shared interests.

In the case of popular culture, we can see how throughout time class distinctions are catered to, and reinforced by, mass entertainment. Professional wrestling is perhaps one of the grandest example of this.

Professional wrestling is guided by the trope of good vs. evil. The good guys (or baby faces) are perpetually pitted against the bad guys (heels). The greatest heel to ever come out of professional wrestling is Mr. McMahon, played by Vince McMahon, owner and president of WWE. Mr. McMahon literally owns the corporation, and plays the role of the evil white collar boss who flaunts his wealth and exploits his workers. His foil, Stone Cold Steve Austin, is a working class citizen who crushes beers and resists authority. He is best known for flaunting his middle finger and sticking it to the man, the only employee who can get away with beating up his boss on a regular basis.

What made WWE the massive entity that it is was by playing to these tropes in the mid-1990’s, by providing the masses with characters that embodied good and evil in the context of blue and white collar workers. The WWE’s success came from playing to class distinctions that the audience could identify with.

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