Chapter IX: Hollywoodisation

Shingeki no Kyojin, or Attack on Titan in English, is a Japanese manga and corresponding anime series, about giant humanoids (Titans) with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Surviving humanity has retreated within a series of walls, until one day the Titans breach the walls and the humans are forced to act lest they be wiped out forever.

Looking at Shingeki no Kyojin, it’s easy to see where Hollywoodization has come in. One character is the last Asian human alive amongst a presumably European and American population, playing upon an oft used storyline in American cinema. Additionally, large battle sequences and set pieces often occur, reminiscent of those in the Hollywood blockbuster, resulting in dramatic effects on the storyline including major character deaths.

Mikasa Ackerman, the last Asian on Earth (Source: Deviantart)

The anime’s score also has a notable mixture of Asian and Western influences, not dissimilar from Pacific Rim’s soundtrack, a film also known for blending Asian and Western flavours.

Shingeki no Kyojin OST mini-mix (Source: YouTube)

It’s obvious that “globalization’s homogenizing and heterogenizing tendencies” (Klein 2004, p. 372), are producing spliced products that are a new genre unto themselves and we as consumers from both the Asian and Western markets will reap the rewards with amazing cinema and television to come.

Sources:

Klein, Christina 2004, ‘Martial arts and globalisation of US and Asian film industries’, Comparative America Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 360-384. 

Chapter VIII: The Specular Economy

Personally, I don’t use social media in the same way that the media suggests people from my generation does.

Sure, I’ve got Facebook. I’ve got Twitter.

But not in the same way that’s stereotypical.

I spend most of my day on Facebook. Barely an hour goes by without me being online. But I don’t regularly change my profile picture; I don’t usually update my status. Don’t ask me what’s happening on my newsfeed; I rarely see when people check in, or get tagged in photos. Because I’m always on the Messages tab. It’s free, and thanks to Telstra giving me access on my phone at no charge, it’s cheaper than texting.

I usually check Twitter on a daily basis. But I don’t tweet. I don’t follow my friends. I follow certain actors, comedians, and writers, to see what they’re doing in relation to their current projects. I like to see behind the scenes photos. I like hearing the newest announcements.

So where does this place me in Marshall’s (2010, p. 498) ‘specular economy’?

Well, clearly I’m very okay with how I’m being represented and how I’m presenting myself in the online sphere. If I was really that bothered by what my profile picture was or what somebody wrote on my wall, I would be changing it.

But I don’t consider myself to be one of these people who checks themselves in the online mirror every two seconds (Marshall 2010, p. 499).

Sure, my usage of Twitter probably is contributing to the ‘celebrity’ phenomenon. I follow individuals so see what they’re up to and, in a way, hold them in high regard.

But I don’t consider myself to be giving them celebrity status and act like a crazed fan when I find out one of them has stopped eating meat, or is putting on weight.

I feel as though my interest is very much a ‘business’ style interest.

One of my favourite writers is working on one of my favourite shows? Cool!

One of my favourite actors has just signed up for a new movie with a decent synopsis? Awesome!

One of my favourite comedians is having a child? Well that’s good for them, but I’m probably not going to be discussing that with my friends at a later date.

Everyone’s a part of the specular economy. But I consider most to be large, multi-national traders of ‘specular’, while I’m a lowly small business owner.

Sources:
Marshall, D 2010 'The specular economy', Society, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 498-502

Chapter VII: Games & Representation

In addition to watching television shows, I also enjoy playing copious amounts of video games. For this blog post, I’ll take a momentary detour from my usual topic and focus on video games.

Since it first came out, I’ve put in a shocking amount of hours into Fallout 3, and to a lesser extent, its successor Fallout: New Vegas. I’ve spent thousands of hours roaming the post-apocalyptic landscapes of Washington D.C. and the Mojave Desert. Both games allow for the player to create their own character, selecting their gender, race, physical appearance and, in New Vegas, their age. This lets the player enjoy the experience of the game as whatever kind of character they wish.

(Source: Bethblog)

However, a game does not automatically have excellent representation just because the player can create their own avatar. In fact, once the gaming community can get involved with the creation of new content thanks to ‘mods’, representation can severely deteriorate.

Some of the first mods to come out for these games were various nude mods, sex mods, and various underwear mods. Unfortunately, the majority of the images used to promote and show off such mods were through the use of female characters.

I have an oppositional reading to the one being presented by the modders (Hall 1973, p. 60, Raessens 2005, p. 375). While they see the game as a chance to express their fantasies in a virtual world, their exploitative nature of the female characters is in contrast to that of my own values.

The original games themselves, without the modded content, are not excusable either. There are many female characters that act as prostitutes and sex slaves, whilst there are far less male characters in the same circumstance, suggesting that perhaps women are less capable of surviving on their own in a lawless wasteland.

(Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

What’s intriguing though is that the modders instantly went to bring more adult content into the game once it was released. Does this reflect society more aptly perhaps? That given some form of anonymity, those in the gaming community seek to marginalise females?

Ultimately it’s a complex issue that is constantly discussed, too much for a single blog post, but it’s definitely a conversation we should be having.

Sources: Hall, S 1973, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse, Birmingham, pp. 507-17

Raessens, J 2005, ‘Computer games as participatory media culture’, Handbook of Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 373-388

Chapter VI: Community Blogosphere

It’s often tricky to find people with similar interests at the best of times.

As many of you, dear readers, would have guessed, I enjoy television shows, mainly from overseas. While I use technology in a way to receive this content as fast as I can, my friends generally don’t, and are usually left watching whatever’s on our own television screens.

So it comes as little surprise when I ask them what they thought of Arrested Development’s fourth season on Netflix and they reply with; “What?”

Michael Bluth expressing how I feel. (Source: Tumblr)

To connect with others and discuss the various shows I love, I have to turn to the internet. As Lim (2012, p. 128) expresses, blogging is a tool which can be utilised by people to express and share their interests, forming a new communication sphere.

Through the blogging site, Tumblr, I connect with others who enjoy the same shows as I do, and we discuss all sorts of things relating to these programs, ranging from our favourite scenes and characters to various casting and new season news.

The blogosphere also allows for a sharing of creative works based upon the shows. For example, many bloggers create artwork known as ‘fan art’ and then share it with their various followers; able to receive both praise and criticism from anyone across the sphere. Fan art allows a user to show off both their artistic talents and their love for a character or program.

Supernatural fan art. (Source: Tumblr)

The community created by the blogosphere is not barred by geographical location; those I communicate with are, more often than not, not Australian. I believe this is a good thing. It allows for a more diverse discussion as people with all sorts of different backgrounds can come together to bond over a common interest and bring their own personal context to share, presenting a different look at the storyline and characters.

When so much of the Australian television ratings are dominated by reality programs, sports, and news coverage, it’s refreshing to be able to log on to the internet and connect with people about things that my own friends have little interest or understanding of.

Sources
Lim, M 2012, ‘Life is local in the imagined global community: Islam and politics in the Indonesian blogosphere’, Journal of Media and Religion, vol. 11, pp. 127-140

Chapter V: Überveillance

Person of Interest opening sequence. (Source: YouTube)

“You are being watched.

The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day,”

The above is the opening sequence of the television series Person of Interest, attempting to explain the high-tech, paranoid, and scary world that the show is set in. The show revolves around a small team of individuals preventing crimes before they occur through the use of all manners of digital surveillance and tracking. Obviously this is a work of fiction, but just how far off reality is a show like Person of Interest?

Überveillance is a modern term involving the collection of data on individuals observed through the multiple types of surveillance, bringing together all these observations to create a network of information in order to track and predict a person’s movements based upon their habits and behavioural patterns (Michael & Michael 2010, pp. 9-10).

By thinking about how often I send and receive data, it’s not hard to see how my own movements could be predicted. Thanks to a dependency on routines, someone who had access to my phone, banking and Myki data would easily be able to know where I was.

Some of the data that 'The Machine' observes in Person of Interest (Source: Pedia of Interest)

It’s certainly possible, maybe even likely, that certain government institutions have access to this type of data and we can be observed with ease. However it’s another, larger, step to say that the current level of überveillance and technology is at a point where our actions can be predicted such that crimes can be successfully noticed and prevented from the tiniest shred of information, as is the case in Person of Interest.

Unless specifically stated in a text message or the like, it’s hard for surveillance to determine the actual context or reasoning for a person to be in a certain location at a certain time. For example, my phone’s location, Myki and bank card may suggest that I’m at the university campus; however without additional data it may be difficult to know what it is I’m doing there. Am I there for class? Am I just studying? Am I having coffee with a friend?

I have no doubt that technology will continue to evolve, and that überveillance will continue to incorporate more and more degrees of information, and that one day someone may hold more information on me than I know about myself.

I just hope that such a person has good intentions, and not ill.

Sources

Michael, M & Michael K, 2010 'Towards a state of uberveillance', IEEE Technology and Society Magazine vol. 29, no. 2 pp. 9-16