Wednesday, June 20, 2007

i smell something in the air

been a while? ten weeks i guess. pretty long break from this, but that'll happen. since i last posted, i finished the second half of the semester's teaching, started working full time on wetland research, planted many trees, seen a bunch of relatives, played a lot of frisbee and a little soccer, bought a bike i love, started studying for my preliminary exams (six exams covering three areas, each over the material in 30-40 books and articles), wrote a paper on the pop cultural history of sweat (in commercials and ads for gatorade, deodorant, and sweatin' to the oldies), went to a conference in south carolina where i presented some research, and had some great fun in my two homes (brookings and minneapolis). two things i'm looking forward to doing more this summer are camping and grilling.

i guess a statement summarizing ten weeks of life doesn't really help much. i'll be on my computer a bunch more this summer than in previous summers (reading, writing, studying), which usually means i'll take more breaks by writing on here. when you do a bunch of academic stuff, it starts feeling weird if you don't interact with the world a little bit. so we'll see what i can do. but just to give you a flavor for some of the academic stuff i did this spring, i'll paste a few paragraphs from my paper below. read if you'd like. but make sure that you look at the song lyrics below (and find a way to get the song) if you do skip the academic stuff. after all, i did take the time to write them out (because i don't think they're on the internet. the song came my way through emily, steve, and before him, his roommate in france. it's good and perfect for this time of year.

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In American culture, whether you want to “Be like Mike,” or flag down a taxi, sweat matters. Much like eating, sleeping, and breathing, people spend a bit of each day sweating: sometimes more or less depending on one’s geography, job, leisure time activities, and choice of deodorant. So what? Can close attention to mass media and consumer culture tell us anything about sweating, and more specifically, can a focus on the historical dimensions of sweat tell us anything about commodity fetishism, studies of gender, and theories of the consumer? In other words, how does sweat matter not just to people’s personal lives, but also to the larger question of mass media and culture? .......

Consider socialization first as only a set of norms to which people adapt. This view would indicate that people care only about fitting in, or about deviance, depending on the particulars. In some cases (what colors are seasonably fashionable, etc.), this is enough. Yet in the cases of wearing deodorant, drinking Gatorade, or exercising with Richard Simmons, it’s not just about what other people are wearing or doing, but about what helps a person get the performance or activities or smell or body-type that she/he wants. But it’s also not just meeting a consumer’s rational desire because products aren’t always just things that people own, but solutions to problems, advice, or ideas.
In the past, this kind of social learning took place predominantly among family members or small, face-to-face communities, but the advent of mass media, combined with consumer capitalism, brought a kind of social learning that was less face-to-face, or even person-to-person, but rather face-to-camera-to screen-to-face, and person-to-idea-to-business-to-corporation-to-worker-to-product-to-media-customer. The degree of indirect interaction grew exponentially, but it also allowed for capitalists and creative entrepreneurs to benefit—through copyright, patent, and trademark—from their ideas, thereby encouraging as much useful social learning as possible. This all came at the expense of a predominantly consumer-driven market with the potential for manipulation of dupe-consumers, and the satisfaction of consumer desires for stuff, services, and experiences.
This translation toward market-mediated, indirect interaction also meant that people often miss out on the practical advice, proverbs, and wisdom of their communities and families, which brings me to the subject of self-help books. Much like advertisements related to better sweating practices (through deodorant, Gatorade, or exercise videos), self-help books fill a certain void in people’s lives, offering useful advice on relaxing, being successful in the workplace, better family members, decorating their house, or raising upstanding children. Self-help doesn’t stop at books, as it is now quite prevalent in TV series like Dr. Phil or Nanny911 (turning dystopic homes into utopic ones), or reality shows (in some cases, showing what dystopias really look like).
Self-help books, newspaper columns, and television spots satisfy people’s desires: to learn how to solve social problems on a microcosmic scale, to watch other people work through difficult situations, to hear interesting, exciting, or heart-tugging stories, to be entertained. They also construct, identify, and respond to anxieties created by “duped” consumers, people reading books or watching programs that weren’t available or necessary 50-100 years ago. But as many theorists have said before me, the desires and anxieties were likely there before the products and self-helping mass media.
In other words, telling the story of self-help is not so different from telling the story of sweat in advertising. People sweat, or in some cases don’t sweat enough, and they wish to sweat better. The reasons for this are because people are now doing activities where performance is improved with a new product (Gatorade for professional athletes), because people wish for their sweating to be done in designated ways (through exercising rather than work), and because people wish to sweat when, where, and how they want (in exercise facilities or at home rather than on the job, and certainly not on a date or while wearing an expensive dress). With self-help, people feel like they are somehow deficient or in a difficult situation (too much stress, too much work, not enough money, messy house), and they want to solve their problems.

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barbecue by wendy rene

i smell something in the air, you know it smells like barbecue
if i had some i wouldn't care because i like barbecue

well, i like barbecue
you like barbecue
we like barbecue
you know i sure like barbecue

sister's out back sittin' in the swing, she wants some barbecue
little brother's on the porch doin' handsprings, singin' i'd like some barbecue

well, i like barbecue
you like barbecue
we like barbecue
you know i sure like barbecue

my old dog has got a bone, and he wants some barbecue
i've got an old gray cat sittin' on the stone, and he's beggin' for barbecue

well, i like barbecue
you like barbecue
we like barbecue
you know i sure like barbecue

here comes pop from up the street and he's got some barbecue
all the kids are startin' to pat their feet because they want some barbecue