Rituals are an evident and fundamental part of every culture. Before learning about the importance of rituals in class last week, I primarily thought of them as the traditions that my family shares, usually during the holidays. Granted, hanging stockings and decorating a Christmas tree are in fact rituals, but I never realized that the everyday actions we partake in fall under this category as well. In fact, these everyday rituals might even play a more important and influential role in shaping our culture than we originally realize. The text describes the function of rituals as, “repeated patterns of human action… that function to shape and define our identities” (111). These repeated patterns of action don’t just apply to the yearly Christmas festivities that my family shares, but even the subtler, repeated actions that we hold every day. In class, we discussed how rituals can consist of eating breakfast every morning, or even saying grace before a meal. This got me thinking about what some of the everyday rituals that my family partakes in could be. One of the best examples I could think of involves a bagel shop in my hometown of Lake Forest, California. This bagel shop, known as Bagels and Brew, is probably the most visited restaurant in all of Lake Forest. I don’t think I’ve ever stepped foot in that shop without it being packed or without seeing at least ten people I know. My family and I would go to Bagels and Brew every Saturday morning to eat breakfast with the other locals to talk about pretty much anything and everything. Not only did this become our Saturday morning ritual, but it even became a ritual for the other locals as well. This ritual of attending Bagels and Brew for a home-town, Saturday breakfast-morning type of feeling added to the culture of Lake Forest as a whole. After the Fourth of July 5k, all of the runners would head to Bagels and Brew to get a free bagel and cup of coffee. Every Sunday before soccer games, my family would stop for some scrambled eggs and orange juice. Through our ritual of going to Bagels and Brew on a weekly basis, we added to the culture of what Bagels and Brew stands for; A fairly priced and kid friendly place to get some good food before taking on the day. Not only has my family contributed to this establishment, but the people of Lake Forest as well have created a culture that surrounds and will always surround that tiny shop down the street.

            I think studying rituals is a lot more important than people might originally think. Our entire lives consist of rituals and they, in a way, govern our actions. If an individual is so used to doing things in a certain way, chances are, they will continue to act in that manner later on. I know from personal experience, and in the example I just previously wrote about, that the rituals I partake in effect the way I act. For the rest of my life, I will go to Bagels and Brew every time I visit home because that’s simply “what we do.” Henes suggests that, “The need for ritual is a basic human instinct, as real, as urgent and as raw as our need for food, shelter, and love” (2013). She writes how rituals are present in all aspects of our lives whether we are aware of it or not, and how people often use rituals as a way to connect with the bigger, universal forces at play (Henes). We need to recognize the rituals that shape our lives in order to understand how exactly our cultures are created.

            In conclusion, I feel that rituals are ever present within our lives. They shape the way we act and think, and I truly believe that they are more influential than we might originally assume. Even though the ritual of going to Bagels and Brew might not seem as obvious or as special as decorating a Christmas tree, it is still a factor that has shaped my life and will continue to effect the way I view the culture of my hometown in Lake Forest, California.  

Fassett, D. L. & Warren, J.T. (2015). Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction. London:

Sage Publications.

Henes, D. (2013). Why We Need Rituals in Our Lives. Retrieved from huffingtonpost.com.

Blog Post #3

“Mediated images and messages do not only reflect society but also create meaning and future direction for the audience” (217)

In todays society, media is very present and affects many beliefs and attitudes toward certain ideas.  Weather this be social media site, television shows or written media.  But are all mediated images and messages reliable and trustworthy? How are we supposed to know what sources we should trust and gather information from and what one we shouldn’t? As Jeff Hancock says in his Ted Talk that was titled “The Future of Lying”, “Much of Deception is everyday”.  He talks about not everyone lying everyday, but are you always aware that you are? As mediated images and messages become more present face- to- face communication is slowly dying away because human ideals and characteristics have changed. 

However, we still need to rely on the face- to- face communication to help build interpersonal relationships.  Technology and is what is causing this type of communication to be slowly phased out.  Technology; followed by mediated messages and images is changing the way that interpersonal relationships are formed.  In order to form better interpersonal relationships, we rely on the face- to- face communication that its mediation.  According to Warren and Fassett in the textbook, these mediated images can also cause misrepresentation of others relationships or of a specific event.   

            Mediated messages have also caused us to be more critical consumers because of the specific message that mediation causes.  When personally thinking about this, I have never realized how much I rely on advertisements and messages that I see while online or on television.  Now realizing this, I have based many of my decisions when buying different products on either reviews or advertisements. But again this can relate back to, what can we trust and what cant we?

Link to the TED Talk mentioned:  https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_hancock_3_types_of_digital_lies/transcript

October Blog Post

Jake terHorst

Christina Ivey

Comm 160-001

2 November 2017

October Blog Post

            Whether it is communicating about different hobbies, political ideas, or culture, communication is the bridge that connects people together through their ideas. In Chapter 10 of Communication: A Critical/Cultural introduction, written by John T Warren and Deanna L Fassett, anthropologist Clifford Geertz compares culture to a spider web that “surrounds, supports, and connects us to others with threads of meaning we create through our communication” (p.193). According to Geertz, there are four ways communication is like a spider web. First, people, like spiders, make an impact or contribution wherever they go. A woman starting a new job will influence the culture of that job.  A spider will contribute to regulating insect population in their area. Secondly, people are constantly spinning, or making and remaking culture.  Thirdly, spiders can alter the intricate woven threads in their web, much like how humans can adjuster communication in a way that makes appropriate for a time or place.  Lastly similar to how a spider web cannot be made without the spider, human culture and communication cannot work without the humans. This makes every person within a culture valuable, because without each contribution, culture would not be what it is today.

This metaphor it is very important in explaining how humans interact. Culture is not something that can be forced but is rather constantly being altered, usually little by little. And whether or not somebody intentionally attempts to change culture, every person has at some point been constitutive, or constructed character, community, and culture through language. Culture is the collective pool that we find ourselves in wherever we go. People can be a part of many different cultures simultaneously. They can be based off of socio-economic standing, hobbies, backgrounds, experience, etc. It is important that communication be tailored in a way that does not harm other individuals in other cultures. This can be especially crucial when dealing with people in independent relationships.

Interpersonal communication is defined as “the interaction or exchange that occurs between people who are in an independent relationship”. This kind of communication takes place between a husband and wife, between colleagues, or between a parent and child. The key to interpersonal communication is to “have stake in each other”. For this type of communication to work, both parties rely on each other, to some extent, to fulfill something. One form of listening that can potentially kill this form of communication would be selective listening, which is when the listener only focuses on a portion or fragment of a message. When this occurs, essential information can be missed. One way to avoid this is to give them a reason to have a stake in listening. My public speaking teacher often gives us a reason to listen before she talks about content. She will warn us ahead of time that there will be a quiz on the content or, more often, relates the content to us from the beginning. Both methods give us a reason to listen more attentively.

           

Blog #3

Mitchel Collins

Professor Ivey

Comm 160

2 November 2017

Blog #3

    The most intriguing thing we read this month was the reading on media and culture. I found this reading to be extremely important because I believe that media really does have a massive impact on culture and the young minds that will be the culture in the future. This has been shown in the breakdown of disney video that we watched in class that showed subliminal messages that can be clearly seen by older people. These messages were supposedly not intentional but subconsciously imputed based on the developer's culture they lived in. I found it interesting that now as cultures are developing, they are criticizing old cultures and almost denying they happened entirely. I do not believe that we should do that but instead, use those old snapshots of past cultures to improve on our own.

    Media is not a new thing, in fact, it has been around for hundreds of years. What this means is that there is hundreds of years of experience behind getting people to think a certain way.  Also, with all that experience comes the advancements in technology such as the printing press, tv, and now facebook. All that advanced tech in the hands of these people with extensive experience persuading is dangerous because the school system has not been doing their part in teaching kids to see these strategies and conduct their own research to figure out if the media's claims are in fact true. Media isn't going anywhere so the fight to counter it must improve.

Blog post 3
Hannah Wardhaugh


The one thing that I thought was very important from the readings we did in October, was an aspect of how relationships affect culture. In the reading, the author explains, “...it is important to challenge and reconsider the canonical, non voluntary understanding and social importance of these relationships, especially in extant research and everyday conversation”. This idea really stood out to me, because usually, when somebody is making my life hard or frustrating me, I don’t think about the positive impacts of that. Being challenged can make me stronger, and learning to forgive and forget will always make me stronger, and also happier with my life. We all pay too much attention to what someone is doing, and their intent, instead of looking at the bigger picture. If we each learned how to deal with these situations in a healthier way, things may be more peaceful for us individually and society as a whole. In a article I recently read, “How Culture Affects Our Relationships”, the author explains that there is always inbuilt conflict. There is conflict based on how we are socially and culturally wired, therefore we will always have differences with people that we are closest with. This can cause anger and frustration, but also can be a good thing when it comes to open mindedness. All in all, learning how to deal with differences whether it be family, friends, or acquaintances, is ultimately the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves and for each other.

Blog #3

Blog #3: Media Influences

In class, we discussed how media heavily influences culture and the mindset we are trained to have. Warren and Fassett explore the works of Laura Mulvey, who claims that cinema frames women as an object of a man’s gaze, and typically passive to a man’s actions. Mulvey takes the cinematic theme and relates it to historical sex scandals. Whether it be Bill Clinton or Tiger Woods, she find there is a theme where women often apologize for the indiscretion of their husband and become an object. Also, women involved in the sex scandals are eroticized in the media as passive sexual objects.

A contributor to media influence in culture is Disney and the subliminal messages that underlay their movies. Since the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (about the 1930s), Disney movies carry subliminal messages pertaining to sexism and cultural appropriation. Although Disney is not the only perpetrator, it receives fire for underlying these messages to children.

Early Disney movies like: Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast show signs of sexism. Women or female characters are sexualized and objectified. Little girls watching these movies see Ariel giving up her voice for legs and Jasmine seducing Jafar with her curves and beauty think about how their looks get them what they want. We can argue that this mindset does not settle in children, but what about the idea that cute girls get free drinks? Also, Fifi the feather duster is humanized through her seductive lure and curvy figure, so does that mean women are naturally supposed to be curvy and seductive?

Racism and cultural appropriation identify themselves through Pocahontas and Peter Pan. Both identify Native Americans as red skinned, uncontrollable and irrational savages. Pocahontas sparks the most conflict because Disney rewrites history by portraying Pocahontas as a love-struck, irrational woman who causes tensions between Native Americans and Europeans.

In my experience, I knew there was something I didn’t like about most Disney princesses but did not pinpoint it until later in life. When I was young, I idolized Mulan because she was brave enough to risk treason and saved China. Most Disney princesses were lame and always needed to be rescued and didn’t rescue themselves. Nowadays, Disney has shied away from sexism and cultural appropriation by exploring new ethnic princesses and themes of familial love and romance.

Do children actually see these messages, most likely no. Nick Kolenda claims that for people to interact with subliminal messages, people must have a need to act on the behavior connected with it. “Subliminal messages cannot influence behavior but guide your decisions,” (Kolenda). I think this is relevant because I did not think about these concepts until it was brought up to me, but there is a need for change that Disney has already undergone.

References

Nick Kolenda Psychology and Marketing. (n.d.). Subliminal message: Do they really work? Retrieved from https://www.nickkolenda.com/subliminal-messages/

Warren, J. T., & Fassett, D. L. (2015). Compassionate and Critical Listening. In Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction [Red Shelf version] (2nd ed., pp. 63-76). Retrieved from https://platform.virdocs.com/app/v5/doc/80520/pg/1/toc