Celebrity Infatuation

I decided to focus on websites based on America's infatuation with celebrities. Contemporary American identity is over saturated with celebrities and so called celebrities. Sites such as www.perezhilton.com give the public access to all the latest Gossip from their favourite actor, sports person or non talented people from money eg. Paris Hilton etc

Celebrity at this moment in America is epidemic, and it's spreading fast, sometimes seeming as if nearly everyone has got it. Television provides celebrity dance contests, celebrities take part in reality shows, perfumes carry the names not merely of designers but of actors and singers. Without celebrities, whole sections of the New York Times and the Washington Post would have to close down. So pervasive has celebrity become in contemporary American life that one now begins to hear a good deal about a phenomenon known as the Culture of Celebrity.

Today, you could say that Americans are divided less by race, class, or political ideology than they are by their participation in celebrity culture. We are divided into two main groups: the famous elite and the unfamous masses who watch them. While the ranks of the famous swell, the unfamous masses bring with them varying degrees of sophistication to the spectacle, all of them making subtle and not-so-subtle emotional and intellectual investments in the illusion. 

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/index.php?lh=741717786cef60ec29ba336423fc615f&eu=zJsp-e7qCSxmw7cE7_avqg

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004.
As of January 2011, Facebook has more than 600 million active users.
Users can create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile.
Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerburg "I'm trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share."
Facebook was a key spark in the spread and organization of the recent revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya. Back home President Obama praised Facebook as an example of American innovation in his January State of the Union Address.

Forbes Lists:
*52 Forbes Billionaires
*19 in United States
*35 in Forbes 400
*40 Powerful People
As of May 2011 Zuckerburgs Networth is $13.5 Bn

Facebook has affected the social life and activity of people in various ways. It can reunite lost family members and friends.
Facebook's role in the American political process was demonstrated in January 2008, when Facebook teamed up with ABC to allow users to give live feedback about the "back to back" January 5 Republican and Democratic debates.

The Social Network is a 2010 drama film about the founding of the social networking website Facebook, and the resulting lawsuits. The film was directed by David Flincher and features a cast including Jesse Eisenburg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake.

Google

http://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=en

The website I've chosen that I feel best represents America is the Google home page. This may seem a slightly abstract choice but to me it encapsulates most things that America stands for. Google allows the world to be at your fingertips or a click of the mouse within a desired framework. You can do anything, find anything, promote anything and say anything you want with it. To me it draws parallels with the America's democratic system and the freedom that allows. The opportunities and possibilities that are and have been made available by Google mimic those that America has represented to the world as achievable within its borders. The idea of the 'American Dream' spread around the world and people flocked there in pursuit of it. Similarly in pre-Google days finding/doing things was painstakingly hard but nowadays I imagine it is one of the most frequently visited sites the world over. This draws another comparison in that it could be viewed as yet another example of America's 'soft power' , a part of a vast sphere of cultural and political export of its values over seas. Google is a multinational corporation, a spear head of what lies at the heart of American values, capitalism. The founders are pristine examples of the benefits and possibilities of the American dream, rising from modest backgrounds to being billionaires with just an idea and some hard work. All of these reasons fit to show that Google, the ideas behind it and the possibilities it represents best encapsulates America for me.

USA vs CHINA

http://youtu.be/E9NDM05kwIk

Whats behind the souring of U.S. and China relations?
When Barack Obama became U.S. President, the conventional wisdom was that relations would improve.
The high point came when Obama made his first visit to China in November of 2009 when both sides hoped cooperation would reach a new level.
But what has happened since has been anything but.
The video shows the rundown of what they know.

The video talks about a speech made by Hilary Clinton in which she denounced China's reaction to dissent as a "fool's errand," saying Beijing was trying to stop the course of history.

It then goes on to mention money matters. China selling Washington bonds over $6billion arms sale with Taiwan.

Cyper security with Google, and Human Rights issues are also mentioned.


Quotes from the video:

I think it's really Ironic how much the Chinese hate the US yet, they come to study and even take English names..  LOL


Sadly your rant was wrong in many areas. First the U.S. economy is hardly brittle it is the world largest even in the most severe recession in 70 years. The U.S. economy is largely supported by its own U.S. consumers unlike China. The U.S. has many trade imbalances in favor of other countries not the U.S.'s, our consumer base it that powerful. China did not invent the rocket it invented a tube filled with black powder shot from an arrow that rained fire, we call that fireworks.

USA spawned from a very powerful modern Empire the British Empire, it had a head start. China has been a brutal war zone for hundreds of years, before it all before the collapse of the Han Dynasty; China was at least 200 Years ahead of Europe in the arts and sciences, let alone the Americas. The US got its roots from the British Empire and a lot of its money from profiteering of WW1, and the floundered with it now brandishing a massive debt.

China and America's Relationship

http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/uschina/timeline.shtml

I chose this site because whilst covering issues such as Economics and Beijing's view on Obama it also has a timeline which shows events in both China and America which have shaped their relationship from 1784 with the beginning of U.S. China trade through the Chinese Exclusion Act ' which bans immigration of laborers (and their wives) from China for ten years and disallows them from becoming American citizens through naturalization. Leads to a “bachelor society” of Chinese immigrants.' showing the hostilities against Communism up until 2009 where two Chinese Americans are appointed to the Obama cabinet.

 The First American Fast Food company opens in 1987 (KFC).

Subjects looked upon on this site include right to Religious Freedom which Americans take very seriously where as this was forbidden in China during the cultural revolutiuon of 1966-1976.

'Though the number of believers are difficult to determine because many have kept their faith hidden in the face of the Communist Party’s traditional hostility towards religion, a separate survey conducted by the East China Normal Univeristy in 2007 found that nearly one quarter (about 300 million) of the population may be religious believers, three times the official figure of 100 million.'

The Beliefs and attitudes of both countries I feel are in many ways polar opposite to one another but it is mutually beneficial for both parties (especially America) that they maintain a good relationship as China starts to rapidly catch up to and may even surpass America as a world super power. America as the only super power in the present day wants to hang onto this and so needs to keep China 'on side' in many ways, trade, military etc

 

China America

http://www.uschina.org/

This is a website from the US-China Business Council devoted to the relationship between China and the USA. This is a nonprofit organization that works from 220 companies that do business with China. The site provides information, advisory, advocacy and service programs for its members. It has been working like this for 3 decades. Generally this organization wants to help build up a commercial relationship between the US and China for the benefit of the US economy.

They have a magazine called 'The China Business Review' which students, companies and business men can get a subscription on. The site is mostly in favor of the US economy and I see this site as a barrier for China to become a larger economy than the US because they will have an economic relationship.

The site contains reports from meetings between the two countries. It also states their trading agenda and the US exports to China. It also shows statistics and analysis of events and their trading relationship.

Sino American Relations

The website I found is a report by the Congress Research Service of The Library of Congress that discusses US-China relations and the implications for US foreign policy.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32804.pdf

It is from 2006 so is not the most up to date account of the situation between the two countries but does go into significant detail of China's economic/political expansion in the world and also internal affairs. It seems the most significant threat perceived by the US is not that China is aligning itself with Americas enemies or hostile countries but that they are insidiously trading more with allied nations. America is finding its grip on commodities threatened in countries where it previously was the dominating trade partner.

The two other main areas of concern are to do with China's secretive approach to its economy and military spending. Politicians and Department of Defence officials promulgate that China is massively understating its expenditure on the military and this is a cause for concern because put quite simply people want to 'know their enemy' and nobody likes surprises. In relation to their currency the US is disgruntled that China is underestimating it and therefore giving significant advantages in the world marketplace and within its own economy.

There are many other discussion areas in the report such as long standing disagreements over Taiwan and North Korea but what surprised me was what the level of significance attached to some things you would think would be higher. The main one being the fact that China is a one party communist state. Though it is not aggressively expanding or attempting to revolutionise other countries to be communist as Russia was during the cold war it is still a non democratic system. The US has championed itself as the leader of the 'free' and democratic world, even using it as a part excuse for military intervention in other countries before so the question has to be asked, why do they condone it so freely with China?

9/11 Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0eC3uns3pA&feature=related

This is a video of little bits of news reports that are very rarely shown in memory of 9/11. The guy who uploaded this video has a very stubborn view of 9/11 being a conspiracy of the American government and he uses this video as evidence to support his argument. The video footage he uses are from a two hour DVD at the website: http://www.MaeBrussell.com. This is a website of a women who collects research material for her interest in conspiracy theories in America since the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The view of the uploader of this video is that 'it [9/11] was clearly a hoax, as many people around the world now believe' He believes that Bush and Obama made people believe certain things about the attack, for example:

'Four planes can't crash and leave no wreckage'

'The fake video of Flight 175 approaching the Twin Towers has the plane traveling too fast'

He shows hereby that he believes videos were being made by the American government supposedly to provoke an image of America being an innocent nation and being attacked from outside.

This person remembers 9/11 as an event that should be looked at closely. He remembers 9/11 with respect to the people who died with critical eye for why these people died rather than purely grief. He defines this event as yet another event that has been published through media in a questionable way. I had personally never looked at any conspiracy theories about 9/11 and had, just like most of the world, seen this as a shocking, painful, sad event through what we see on television and read in the paper. It is hard to think that America would do something on such a large scale to itself and kill thousands of its own citizens to create an image of innocence. It is never to be ignored that this is, however, always a possibility. I am of the opinion that the event might be dramatized through media and that every article you read might not be entirely true, but I do not think there is more behind it.

9/11 will still always remain quite mysterious with the little evidence there is of the terrorists and their goals.

9/11 Rememberance Video

This short film was shot on 11 September 2010 in New York from 8pm to 11pm and from different angles from the city.
The Tribute in Light is 88 searchlights placed next to the site of the World Trade Center to create two vertical columns of light in remembrance of the September 11 attacks.

Throughout the film the artist puts in the number of victims and countries who lost people reminding people that although the attack took place in America, it affected the world as a whole.
As you can see in the final list, United Kingdom had the most deaths followed by South Korea and then Canada.

The music has no words which I think is to show how speechless everybody was towards the disaster that happened out of the blue.


The lights have caused confusion for thousands of migrating birds, trapping them in the beams, and requiring that the lights be switched off for 20 minute periods to allow the birds to escape.

9/11 Commemorative Vids

Here is the famous commercial Budweiser produced after 9/11. They aired it only once which was during Super Bowl XXXVI in January 2002. This one-minute spot features the beer company's trademarked team of Clydesdale horses trudging across snow-covered ground into New York City where they stop to gaze upon the Statue of Liberty and the city's skyline before lowering their heads on bended knees in a gesture of respect. This advert doesn't allude to the incident, show any footage or even give any detail at all about the message, you are supposed to recognise what they are paying tribute to because of the sheer enormity and 'one offness' of the 9/11 attacks.

The other video which I chose is very much like many of the other tribute videos which can be found on youtube and various other sites across the internet. This clip uses a song with the lyrics 'Where were you when the world stopped turning' as the backdrop. The reason for the use of this music is because of the sheer audacity American people felt that someone would have to actually do this to them on their home soil. I wonder how many times American people have used this song to highlight events in the middle east, Africa or anywhere else for that matter. Obvioulsy 9/11 was a terrible tragedy but only could the world stop turning if something happened to America.

9/11 Tributes

I've posted two tribute to 9/11 videos because i thought the comparables within them highlighted some key traits of how Americans view the event and themselves. Both videos have a strongly religious theme whether its the cross made by two metal girders from the towers or images of people praying, God is always invoked to watch over the victims and people effected. This shows the extent of the importance of religion to Americans for it to be at the forefront of such a unifying disaster. Jesus also features in a child's pencil drawing that shows him embracing the victims of the tragedy as he watches over it happening, (this seems a strange contradiction to me in that if he was watching over and protecting these people why didn't he stop it from happening??) again representing the importance of religion in the handling and acceptance of the aftermath.

As well as various images of the actual event both videos have manufactured images that represent integral images of American identity. One shows a bald eagle with a teardrop as it seems to gaze upon a picture of the two towers smoking, this is set to an American flag backdrop. In the other the stars and stripes are used again this time in conjunction with the statue of liberty and the words 'We will never forget'. Both seem to be attempting to show the strength and pride in the American spirit by using their most powerful emblems to invoke feelings of patriotism.

President Bush features in both videos as well, in one there are images of him condoling people effected and another of him almost welling up with just a hint of tears in his eyes, in the other audio of one of his speeches is played over images of the event. He talks about the unifying aspect of it and how it was a tragedy for the whole nation and also invokes God again 'May God bless America'. The use of the President displays how encompassing the event was for the nation and everyone in it, not just the ones directly effected.

Though these two people created these videos entirely separately and at differing times after the event the similarities between them are startling and speak to the shared feelings that Americans have in regards to the event. Even the musical soundtracks are very similar, both are melancholy extremely emotive songs designed to make you reflect on what you are seeing.

There were a couple of things that I found quite ironic, not within the videos themselves but in the surrounding advertising on youtube. To the right of the video were an advert for travel insurance with an emblem of a plane and the phrase 'choose the right travel insurance for you and your family'. The other was underneath where there was a link to click if you wanted to buy the music featured in the video direct from itunes. This seemed to represent to me the epitome of consumer capitalism, the very thing the terrorists were attacking that day!

Crash

It is clear that the film Crash is based around racism. It portrays the clichés and generalisations of different races and cultures in the modern day America.

The film shows how the different characters (making up for large proportion of America’s population) all have one thing in common: discrimination.

It shows you how people have double standards (e.g. they won’t listen to the Iranian man but they will sell the gun to his daughter because she speaks English properly and dresses more towards the Western culture) and how easily judgements are made based on skin colour.

What is shown strongly in the film as well is the act of racism in the police department and in politics. For example the district attorney needing a black vote so turning around a murder case by making out the white cop to look bad. The director puts out very clearly in this way that racism is being ignored and is meant to be ignored. People use racism in their power because the law doesn’t tell them that they will be fined or jailed for it. For example the racist white cop feeling up the black women, and when his partner complains about it he is told to forget about it because it will cost him his job.

These are the reasons for a sense of Black Nationalism to still be alive in the way that the black robber with braded hair complains about white people stereotyping him for being dangerous when he turns out to fit perfectly in that stereotype.

What happens in this film is that everyone is a racist and gets discriminated through racism. In this way all their characters crash and every individual seems to realize that they have all been racist and they have all been discriminated by someone from a different race. Beautifully shown in this film is therefore the fact that the white race is NOT necessarily the dominant race. heir cliché just tells us that they are 'safe' and 'rich' people.

The dialogue is strong and straightforward which is meant to show the true clichés about racism and it shows what people generally think but don’t say because it is made out to be racist.

Crash

http://www.scene-stealers.com/print-reviews/a-second-look-at-%E2%80%9Ccrash%E2%80%9D-the-worst-best-picture-nominee-since-%E2%80%9Cghost%E2%80%9D/

I found a number of reviews for Crash online the majority of which were positive, possibly due to the fact that the movie received an Oscar for best picture. The link above gives another opinion as I also found many reviews of people who despised the film. Many people felt that the main theme of racism was over done and un realistic.

'The people in Haggis’ version of L.A. engage in openly racist behavior, and every crucial decision is informed by racism or because of racist actions against that person. This one single theme, bashed into your skull throughout, is what makes “Crash” maddening, tiring, and finally, ridiculous' 

From my own point of view I enjoyed the film up to a certain point and could empathise/sympathise with some of the scenes in the film but I didnt feel close enough to the characters to really find myself truly engrossed in the film.

At its heart, the film is about mistaken identities, miscommunications, and their consequences. A man mistakes his girlfriend for being Mexican (she isn't); A gun store owner mistakes two Persian customers for being Arab, referring to one of them as 'Osama' when he becomes agitated from not understanding their language; A woman who's having the locks changed at her home doesn't trust the man changing them because he's got what she refers to as 'prison' tattoos and looks like he may be a Mexican 'gang-banger' (he's not); Two different parents attribute life altering deeds to people they rarely see (or don't even know) instead of to the people that are closest to them.

Crash!

The film Crash left me thinking it was an intense and thought provoking film.

I enjoyed the fact that Paul Haggis (directer and Screenwriter) created a film about people so real that none of the usual Hollywood cliché rules apply. A story about how people from wildly different walks of life, collide and intersect with one another. Each life is in some way personally affected, changed, damaged, or victimized by racism. They’re also all in some way guilty of racism themselves. The dialogue is intense and heavy as characters discuss topics such as race, poverty, and the American institution, and I think this film may help some people understand a little better where the other guy is coming from.
However I felt like we didn't see enough of the characters, we only encounter brief snippets which are chopped up and linked together in daisy chain fashion.
I also cannot help but feel that Karma/Dharma plays a part in the story lines. Which is always show in a Hollywood movie.

The first time I watched the film in 2005 I wasn't really watching the film, I was trying to link the stories of the characters together. Although now watching it after learning about America I cannot help but feel guilty when laughing at some of the lines in the film.
I think it is not a film that you could choose to watch for "film night" as it is not very entertaining. However it is one of those films where you watch it and it makes you think about what your actions are and which character you may connect more with.

Crash

This film, and the critics reviews I've since read leave me feeling slightly at crossed purposes. On the one hand the issues traversed in the film are engaging and relevant (though in some instances a bit extreme) to problems associated with race in America today, on the other from a movie goers point of view I was thoroughly disinterested in the structure and realism in the film.

Crash utilises humour to convey the racial tensions and prejudices present but this in turn makes the viewer uncomfortable because they become aware that their acknowledgement of the jokes may be down to similar prejudices within them. A similar thing occurs when dealing with the problem of the white TV producer who feels that his black actor doesn't sound 'black enough', this speaks to how a (probably) majority white audience needs to perceive black characters on television. This again would make the audience aware that they are probably guilty of similar preconceptions.

The sequences that make up the movie feel very forced. The storytelling style of having lots of intermingling characters lives crossing paths is one that has become more popular in recent years but in Crash feels incredibly fabricated. It doesn't allow the film to flow and tell the stories but stunts them which draws attention to the message or lessons associated with each 'crash' and then you, as a viewer, begin to feel like your being preached to. It also 'shows' you too much of the story, telling obvious things that the audience have already worked out and therefore end up having a negative impact to the significance of the message.

True to the topic being discussed it seems the people who made Crash have been very careful to finely balance the race ratio's of perpetrators to victims so that no discrimination can be discerned. The film also deals with other urban issues in America such as poverty, drug abuse and gun crime as well though these all take a back seat to racism.

Overall I didn't enjoy the film as entertainment but felt it was a good representation of how the American public perceive race issues in their country, as well as maybe how it is in reality. But being a white English man who's never travelled to America I'm not sure I'm qualified to comment.