English 495 ESM: Multigenre Literacy in a Global Context, what a mouthful. Similar to other people in the class, I had no idea what to expect from it let alone what the name meant as a whole. Even the scope of my expectations faced limitations because I didn't have access to the course Moodle page, which contained the syllabus, for the first week or two. Once I actually got to take a look at the syllabus, the workload seemed a bit overwhelming because it was an area of work, work associated with technology beyond Moodle posts, that I hadn't done before for school. I'd never even attempted to create a blog before. One might say that for the generation I was born in to, I'm a little technologically behind or out of touch.
The blog was the first assignment. For this blog, we were suppose to post a weekly reflection that, preferably pertained to the course, could be on basically anything, at least from my understanding. Unfortunately, between the other assignments, presentations, and essays, that weekly post was frequently forgotten. However, the posting I did do wasn't for naught. It was a really refreshing change to write an essay and be able to insert pictures, video, links, and pretty much any other form of media content available to us; the normal assignments suddenly became an avenue for more than just written creativity.
While I'm on the topic of creativity, the second assignment that was required of us was analyzing a poem (a relatively simple task merely because writing essays are so familiar), and the third creating two unique poems that would also be posted on our blog. This assignment, as I expressed in an earlier post, gave me nothing short of anxiety. I hadn't written a poem of any sort since sixth grade, and even know I don't know how I managed to do that. Even worse, the poems were going to be graded, which in itself put the cherry on top of my apprehension: People, whether familiar to me or not, were going to read and judge something creative I'd done. I don't even like my parents reading my essays despite my having written a countless number of them. To my pleasant surprise though, the poem received a good grade and positive comments, effectually boosting my confidence and willingness to try taking more advantage of this new creative avenue, the blog.
Next, came the first group project, a Collaborative Myth Presentation. For this presentation, each group had to create a presentation in which we explored some aspect illustrated in the myth we chose. My group did the Vietnamese myth about the areca tree and betel nut. Essentially, we used this myth to draw conclusions and do research about the Vietnamese cultural foundations and history. The difficulty of this project was the group aspect. Most of my group members were very competent, but our schedules conflicted a lot, so it was hard corroborating with one another.
The fourth assignment was a Collaborative Media Literacy Presentation, another group project. This project required us to teach a certain grade level a lesson on any topic of our choice as long as it used some form of technology (PowerPoint and Prezi excluded). By this time in my school career, I've developed quite the disdain for group presentations because I often do most if not all the work. This wasn't the case with this group though. Ironically, there were some technological obstacles: Mine and Amber's emails pretty much refused to cooperate with each other. However, it turned out really well because all of our members had no problem doing their part, and despite the bump in communication, our presentation was really fun. Everyone seemed to be really into the type of technology, video games, we decided to use to teach our history lesson on the Civil War.
Aside from this post, our last assignment was the World Text Essay. For this essay, we read some economically and politically inclined journal articles Moodle and then related it to the topic of globalization within the movie Lost in Translation. This essay was actually enjoyable to write about because I'd never seen this movie and I loved seeing some Japanese culture, at least how it is viewed through an American lens.
This class was actually the biggest relief of my chaotic semester. The work was fairly challenging, but not a complete infringement upon the time I needed to complete other assignments in less favorable courses. In addition, there was a distinct, at least in my opinion, for every assignment we were given, I benefited from each assignment in some way. Overall, this course taught me a lot about how so many different kinds of technology can be integrated into education.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Globalization: Cultural Dominance or Recreation?
Globalization has its benefits and consequences that make this
concept, or perhaps also an effect, a controversial topic. Globalization tends
to modernize through international influence, and repress cultural tradition as
a result, pushing culture out of developing metropolises and into the rural
countryside. Lost in Translation is about two unavailable strangers,
Bill and Charlotte, becoming romantically acquainted in a foreign land, Tokyo,
Japan. Bill and Charlotte’s story is less important than the experiences that
their story reveals through the Tokyo backdrop. Lost in Translation
demonstrates globalization, perpetrated for capital, through various forms of
iconism that form barriers between an old, resulting in an acculturation, and a
rising culture.
Tokyo, Japan itself is an icon as a globalized metropolis because
it is a center for generating capital. One way Tokyo generates capital is
through tourism. Examples of key elements that attract tourists are gambling,
buildings, and monuments. During Lost in Translation, the audience sees
examples and exhibitions for each of these three aforementioned components. For
example, gambling is seen in mass quantity for such close quarters when Bob and
Charlotte are running from a guy they and their friends are playing with. In
fact, the room they run through is so packed with slot machines that neither
the runners nor pursuers are able to move with their body completely facing
forward; they all had to turn their body left or right in order to squeeze past
the slot machine chairs. Gambling isn’t anything new to Japanese culture, but
the multitude of in- public participation with which gambling in Japan is
portrayed is unusual for the country’s more modest and frugal traditional
history. Italy, Germany, and the United States, throughout different points in
history, made public gambling wildly popular far before Japan undertook this
marketable finance, and in effect created a new profitable market of revenue,
tourism. Japan has taken a popular tourist attraction and placed it in a cross-
cultural city; the open presence of gambling in Tokyo is evidence of
globalization and demonstrates a specific purpose for making money.
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Globalization, as demonstrated in Lost in Translation, does
remove a cultures’ ancestral roots from the main city for the purpose of
producing income, consequently hindering the endurance of those cultural
traditions, but it also creates a new culture by doing so. According to Fredric
Jameson, author of “The Politics of Utopia”:
Perhaps the most
momentous specification of this opposition between the country and the city – a
shift into another register, which does not guarantee that the proponents of
each term remain ideologically committed to the same position when they change
floors, so to speak – is that between planning and organic growth. (48)
For example, language
barrier aside, many Lost in Translation viewers would probably agree
that the talk-show portrayed in the movie was spontaneous, complicated, and/or
confusing; the combination of various colorful literal and figurative elements
involved in the talk-show have made it distinctly Japanese. In addition, even
though it’s plausible that Japan adopted certain aspects of other cultures or
countries, the fact that all of these elements have been brought to a single
city, even if it is for money, makes the city of Tokyo its own, brand new,
unique culture; the combination of so many ideas and objects being brought to
Japan and integrated into the culture has resulted in substantial culture
modification rather than elimination. The cross- culture influence present in
Tokyo has created an amalgamated culture rather than the isolation or
corruption of other numerous cultures.
Similar to most things, globalization has its pros and cons, and
the arguments for one side or the other are many. A person’s view of this
concept and effect are individually dependent and, realistically, sort of a
moral “grey area.” Globalization can destroy cultures, but it can also inspire
new ones. Japanese culture, for example, was largely influenced by Chinese
culture due to centuries of war and trade. Unfortunately, some cultural
denigration, integration, and recreation must take place in order for any
country to substantially progress economically in today’s world market. In an
ideal and probably boring world, everyone would get along while maintaining all
of their cultural differences, have a comfortable life in which they truly want
for nothing, and politicians would be honest and as charitable as they
propagate everyone else should be, but the present world is reality, and in
reality everyone doesn’t “get their cake and eat it too,” the world is too big
for large-scope applicable ideals. Like globalization, capitalism and socialism
both have their individually dependent successes and failures. Historically
speaking, neither capitalism nor socialism has proven to work with even a
loosely relative minimal number of flaws, and yet people still rally behind one
or the other, just as globalization and all of its positive and negative
effects will continue to exist. All of these things are driven by humans
looking to make money, and as long as currency and human imperfection are
intermingled, all of these systems will be flawed.
Works Cited
Harvey, David. “Cultural
Space and Urban Place: The New World Disorder.”
Jameson, Fredric.
"The Politics of Utopia." New Left Review (2004): 35-54. Moodle.
Web. 14 Dec. 2013.
<https://moodle.csun.edu/pluginfile.php/1690811/mod_resource/content/1/http___www.newleftreview.pdf>.
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