Quest for Love

Interviewee 1 - Sahana - 13 yrs
Interviewee 2 - Craig - 13 yrs
Interviewer - Niranjana Shankar

Q - Do you have phones and how necessary is that to your lives and your guardian's life?
A - S - My mother really wants to us to have a phone so that she could call us when we're at a birthday party or late from school.  Our care taker has one too.
A- C- A phone makes me feel older and mature and also I like to be cutting edge  - especially because I know that some kids dont have the money to pay for telephone bills and video games.
Q - How often do you get to play video games?
S - I dont like them that much - I like to spend time with my friends on the stoop or at home watching a movie or listening to music or making a fun dinner...but I have played, I used to like "world of zoo" - that was fun, because I like animals - but I dont like animals in captivity in real life.
(I realized that the children had recognized the topic as that which was possibly looked at microscopically for its pros and cons but more cons and than pro -  and that there was also a need to emphasize the aspect of philanthropy and humanity in all of this - thus reinstating an existence with a dose of ethics and morality -  seen as part of the whole. Although whether this was as a result of my own personality, that they tapped into while in response, is truly the fascinating advantage we all have while meeting face to face).
C - On the weekends - but my parents trust us and its ok to play sometimes when I have finished my homework, when I dont have plans with friends.
Q - How do you usually spend time with friends? Do you think our lives are getting more and more technologically influenced?
(There was a long pause at this point and I realized it was as a result of the question being from the perspective of someone who has the option of seeing the scenario from both sides where as these children havent experienced a world without the movement of technology)
Q - Let me rephrase the question - because you see 20 years ago if you can imagine and have seen pictures or read about that time  -  computers werent really as popular as they are today - do you have any opinions or observations to share or communicate about that time and compare it to the time you live in ?
C - My father is a yoga instructor and we practice at his studio and I know all his students and sometimes I play my guitar in his class. I love music and like to spend my time playing and singing.
(Craig answered the question with such geniality  - seemingly skirting the question at the same time pursuing it knowing that his father and  I are musically and yogically inclined - as if to clarify the difference in ages and the ancient beneficial qualities attached to Yoga and Music in conjunction with the topic at hand)
S - I think we are very lucky that we have technology and we can communicate so easily - in the old days that was not possible easily and it is important to know that and we should not take it for granted.
Q - What new things have come out in music, Craig that you were taught or got to know about recently?
C - I think I am getting better at garage band - I like putting my music there and producing it.
Q - Sahana, do you think we're taking technology for granted - if so, how?
S - I think we 're robotic sometimes and dont think about emotions and thats not good for humans because we are emotional beings and need real love!
Q - Well - one might say that "I love my phone or computer or Ipad or games" - how do you differentiate?
(The kids may not have the vocabulary to express themselves finitely but the grounds that they chose to cover while trying to answer my questions was quite eye opening - and accurate to the fact that compartmentalizing information is a learned attribute and domain of the adult mind)
C  - Its about connecting with people now and with their lives - like grand ma and visit her often so she can teach us about history.
S - Yea - you can love many things - but I feel like love is real when you're real.

Identity and Violence as described by Marshall McLuhan

An Interpretation of -
Identity and Violence as described by Marshall McLuhan;

Ode to the evolution of our nervous system.

Marshall McLuhan spoke of the media and its vast effects in the 1930s and even made all of his postulates intriguingly relevant to his more recent audience inviting them to participate in his uber intellectual and futuristic pronouncements in the 1970s. I find that even though time has learnedly evolved and with it, also has many technologically ordained gadgets, the essence of his dialogue and the presence of mind with which he had foreseen and given time to the inevitable structural changes in societal tendencies, in the aftermath of total endowment of our faculties to artificial intelligence, is germane to any ongoing dialogue about the subject today.

His postulates were conducive to a curious media savvy audience but his teachings and fore sight had also made an impression in the world of science and Psychology. This amalgamation of concepts and paradigms is pertinent to the way I would like to analyze a given subject. For there cannot be a separation of the two if a study ought to be accurate.

 He effortlessly served those who questioned the nature of media as being transient and ethereal and hence less relevant to the more consequentially conferred evidences in real life. He was one of the first to speak freely of the importance of a dialogue about the blatant use of inconspicuous sexuality in the success of media and coined it to be forever the “wedding of sex and media”. While he marveled over the obvious power of the media now and the media he had foreseen as a formulaically accurate arena in which to gauge our evolution as a species as well as the evolution of technology – he also and very rightfully, brought in elements of neuroscience to the fore front and went on to illuminate the receptive public of the connections between the loss of identity and violence as a result of  blindly giving in to  television anarchy.

McLuhanisms, as his maxims were endearingly pegged, were engrained with evidence and thought about how television and technology on the one hand was liberating to a society’s standing and its endeavor to “continue on a higher plane” but on the other was also cumulatively a tactic on the part of capitalists and those that harbored an abrasive mentality towards mankind and all else. To him a “global village” was an open territory for acts of selfishness and humanistic debauchery – explaining the obvious and gradual decline of ethics and the birth of the ferocious and less understood state-of-the-art modern. He qualifies these statements with a direct allusion to the Advertising Industry where he said “ Ad is only a substitute for the product” – meaning what remains to be said about the undefined product will only be inferred through double entendre and mesmerizing latent sexual connotations and subversive imagery. He connected the effects of television to addiction and soporific opiates and the changes that manifest as a result of the instruments people employ and influence others by, during the course of their lives.

Deconstruction of Alcohol Ads - "The Reader"

I am a teetotaler by choice and have wanted to honor those in my life who have struggled with substance and alcoholic addiction. The general air about the ad (Bell's The Reader) which I chose to deconstruct, defies all other ads in its genre and has an innocuous posturing about it. To me the message of literacy is definitely grand in its premeditation but alcohol in any guise is a superiorly dangerous entity. 

The ad although successfully disseminates a feeling of family and togetherness and goals that establish us as citizens first and consumers second. But the consequences of neural loss of control is a topic regardless of its weight, that needs dissemination. Perhaps to have stated the inevitability of over consumption and loss of cognizant control would have taken away from the demure and powerful message of this ad but is utterly indispensable to  the longevity in this new way of conscientious advertisement. 

On another, contradictory plane, the utilization of sexual connotation and sexism in alcohol advertisement is regarded as the most hard-hitting aspect of conditioning and selling a product. The most exploited of our innate and palpable reasoning or association with things that we consider attractive are those that are used against us in such ads. 

The caption “Guys never change, neither do we” –  for Jim Beam – whether it is a play on our emotional vulnerability to want to manipulate to sexually advance and get the attention of the object of our affection or to perpetuate a sexist mentality, the stereo types in accordance with men and boys and girls and women and sex and pornography are ubiquitous, sensationalized and often irrelevant to common causes. But the most formative and impressionable, as a result of our ad culture, are driven by the admiration the ad industry has for their marketing tactics, judging by their healthy sales, to continue to abide by these standards. The ad industry persists on these mental make ups without guilt or culpability.