xoxo

Last night was the return of one of my favorite television programs Gossip Girl. Now, before all you haters have your piece I want to explain what this post will entail. I wish to explain for those of you who do not know, what is Gossip Girl. Why I enjoy it, and finally, why it can be the worse thing since 90210 for teenage girls to watch. In addition to why it’s actually a positive thing for teenagers and their parents.The show is set in the Upper East Side of New York City and focuses of the lives of the wealthiest teenagers in New York and their parents. Drinking champagne, limo escorts, penthouses, and brunches at five star hotels are no big deal to the characters. All of them openly have sex and even participate in role-playing and other tantric sex games. Drugs, affairs, political scandal, are all very typical in the lives of these characters.So why would an educated young girl like myself subject myself to such superficial programming, because that is not my life. Shows like Laguna Beach and The Hills are not relatable to my current situation, so a fantasy world is created and escaping there for an hour a week is fine by me. Much like the feeling I get from watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, its enjoyable to watch young socialites fret about what designer they will wear for the Masquerade Ball. If I wanted something to relate to I’d stare at people at the library doing what I am doing.Sadly, I cannot say the same for young girls watching Gossip Girl. Mimicking the bullying ways of Blair Waldorf and demanding elaborate birthday parties and clothes like the characters on gossip girl. When you are older, you can understand that it is an exaggeration of wealthy kids in New York’s socialite circle. However I feel younger girls can not, and think “I should get that...”.Is it really all that bad though? Issues such as drinking, and sex and drugs are brought to the table. It gives parents an opportunity to watch something with their teenagers and discuss. The Team Canada Women’s Olympic Gold medal winners recently received a lot of flack concerning their drinking, questioning their ability to role model. Yet once a week a program is aired normalizing consumption of luxury, sex, drama, bullying, hierarchies and of course drinking…
Image: Flickr carla mh lopez

testimonials.

Blogs such as Texts from Last Night and F*ck My Life have been getting a lot of attention lately in popular culture. Another blog that is extremely popular is Post Secret. Unlike the previous mentioned blogs, Post Secret offers a more emotional appeal to a wider audience. Readers of the blog submit their ‘secrets’ via post cards, combining old and new generation’s forms of communication. The interconnectivity of the mediums, allows for both generations to connect with each other’s comfort zones in media communication.
A viral video hit is the series “Fifty People: One Question”, in which one question is asked to fifty people in a random location and they answer. Questions such as “If anything could happen by the end of the day, what would you wish to happen?”, “If you could wake up anywhere tomorrow, where would it be?”. Questions that on the surface seem so simple, but when answers start to flow, the emotional appeal is overwhelming. Maybe I am just a sucker for this kind of stuff but I love the power of such simple questions being able to really divulge into the human heart.


Image Source: Post Secret

name that tune.

TV theme songs are impossible to ignore when discussing television programming. Some theme songs are even more identifiable than the cast or plot of a show. A good theme song does not promise a shows success, however it can definitely help it. Good theme songs create awareness of a TV show and draw viewers to a show, especially when channel surfing. TV show theme songs have played an important part of blending programs into culture. Real World Producer, Jonathan Murray explains our love of TV theme songs, “A lot of generation Xers grew up knowing words to songs better than words to a poem in school. We’re trying to speak to them in their language, which is often music”. A great resource of old TV themes you can’t put your finger on, might be found at this site: http://www.televisiontunes.com/index.php. Some of my favourite TV theme songs include: Weeds, Big Love (old and new), True Blood, The Sopranos. Enjoy this lovely video of 22 different TV themes in seven minutes; it’s really well done and a pleasure to listen to if you are a TV sitcom fan.
Image Source: flickr- sugaroni

becky pie hands.

This is my best mate. Her blog is un kempt, raw and utterly brilliant. Unlike my blog, that is inspired and attributed by my education. Her’s is honest and probably the funniest medium I regular. Her open letters are every girl's thoughts. her style wisdomosity is also from a true style icon. This girl thought american apparel was cool before any hipster and Rhianna copied her haircut. While we don't see eye to eye on men, outfits and she pretends not to talk shit. She is every bit worth following.

hung

HBO’s show Hung needed a little bit of attention to promote the show. The series features a forty something father, with no money and decides to turn to prostitution to get the funds to win his kids back. An Auckland based marketing company, Colenso BBDO, was sought out by HBO to promote the show and to generate publicity. BBDO is currently one of New Zealand’s highest ranked ad agencies and was ranked top ad agency of the decade by Campaign Brief What they erected, for lack of a better word, is definitely creating publicity. Located on Victoria Street in central Auckland, an enormous crotch with the show’s title plastered on it rests. Despite one’s personal opinion of the show, it is impossible to deny the eye catching success of the billboard. Sex sells, and when the series’ title is ‘Hung’ might as well get right to the point. Is this overtly sexual add too much to be on a billboard? Or is it no different then any beer campaign with scandalous women in revealing clothes, or perfume advertisements alluding to sex and rape. Sex selling advertisements however are usually due to a an attractive person having little or nothing to do with the product being advertised. However, in this case, the subject matter is exactly what is being displayed, clear and concise. So is it fair to say that the advertising company is using sex to sell, because it really is just selling the product it self.Image: coolhunter.com

mobile uploads.

There has been a recent surge in social photography in the amount of ‘Mobile Uploads’ on social networking sites. Individuals use their personal mobile handhelds to capture ‘of the moment snapshots’ to immediately upload to their social network of choice. This instantaneous documentation leaves fantastic, raw, unedited footage for your network to view and comment. No touch ups, no glamorized vignette embosses, just the facts. This makes companies skeptical because of how instantaneous (bad) news can travel. I personally especially like this on Facebook, the real deal, no photo shopped images. Individuals tend to take this personal documentation and live through as a sort of “day in the life”, adding pictures of everything from the weather to what they ate to who they saw that day. All captioned with a personalized comment.
The recent popularity has been linked to the technological developments in handheld mobile devices such as the iPhone 3G. News stations encourage viewers to submit their own 'newsworthy' uploads. In Toronto all the latest buzz has been about a mobile upload of a TTC driver asleep on the job. There is constantly battling between Toronto Transit employees regarding fare and wages, and this mobile upload fueled the debate.

right here. right now.

This video is the most powerful combination of facts and delivery I have seen to date. The author of Socialnomics, Erik Qualman produces the video about the growing use of social networking. The video is mostly shared on social networking sites such as YouTube, which makes it very ironic. My favorite part of information is that we live in a generation of consumers that do not tend to listen to advertisements. Trust is within the testimonials of real people who have experienced the advertised services and products. It makes complete sense; consumers in this social media savvy world are very smart. We watch commercials and then ask “Yah, but does that really work?”… followed by a bit of online research before we make a purchase.

photo credit: galessa's plastics, flickr.

my marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.

finals. crunch time. copious amounts of double doubles, full throttles and adderal. nothing gets me off more than how brilliantly smart I am (and modest!) and how I do not regret my education path for a second. women's studies. film. marketing. all the makings for a samantha jones meets coco chanel. enjoy your education ducklings, because no one can ever take it away.

image credit:mbanas7, flickr

why blog?

Why blog, and what does it have to do with pop culture besides being trendy? On the surface, blog sites and twittering may seem very self absorbed and arrogant. There is a soapbox for every Geek, goth, frat boy and drama queen. Everyone has his or her chance to be heard. It appears to be quite egotistical to participate in any of these blogging forums, so why encourage it?
‘Blogs’ and ‘Blogging’ IS popular culture. The popularity of blogging is a result of it being so tangible. Anyone can be a participant and anyone can be a critic. The experts are no longer white collars behind desks, printing articles to make a buck. People blog about things they feel strongly about, for the simple reason of sharing their point. Things that are mentioned in more popular blogs therefore, become popular. If Perez Hilton deems something ‘hot’ it’s hot. If fashionation.com says something is trendy, designers are running to get their version of this trend on the racks. Instead of products and services telling you what is popular- you tell them.

This is an excellent article explaining the success of blogging and it’s effects on trendsetting and popular culture:

Dictionary:
(Source http://blog.urbandictionary.com/ a BLOG where everyone can be the author! Also note I had to carefully comb the definitions to find the one I found most appropriate…why? Because this is MY blog!)

Blog (blogging)- Once considered an 'online diary', has now become a new trendy word created for use on the internet to try and make something old and established look new and interesting and to make those who use the word seem relevant. What used to be called a forum where topics of the same subject or area of interest were discussed via posts are now called blogs. Those participating in these online discussions are referred to as bloggers and the act of doing so is called blogging. Check out these popular sites for examples: Twitter (twittering)- A form of chatline for social media "experts" to add thousands of random strangers and wank off to impress other social media "experts" by posting links to articles about the phenomenon of social media.
Perez Hilton & Fashionation.

Image Credit: http://www.chiangmainews.com/images/ecmn/data/050_soap_box3.jpg

simple: everything is as it should be

brilliant. brilliant. brilliant.