Ninth Class Reflection Post on Class 4/21

The COLD War. That was the topic of this class. I learned many things such as even though it was called a COLD War because there was no actual battle or fighting, it actually got pretty hot at some points, like with the Bay of Pigs incident in Cuba when it was very close to becoming a nuclear holocaust.

To illustrate and learn more about the Cold War from an American perspective we watched a documentary featuring Robert Mcnamara. He explained his personal experiences from workign with the US government and how their foreign relations policies changed the world. What was most interesting to me like I pointed out in class was how he had personal contact with many different presidents from different countries and how like with Fidel Castro in Cuba, he had very harsh news thrown in his face such as that it was recommended by Castro that Russia drop a Nuke on the US. I have no idea how he dealt with that news so calmly, i would have freaked out and punched him in the face, but, thats just me.

One thing, I seriously think we should implement a policy of no typing during movies. I know people will use the excuse that ‘I’m typing notes” but honestly, both the people surrounding me, typing loudly at 500 miles an hour talking to their friends on AIM does not constitute “taking notes” and it annoyed the hell out of me to where I couldnt even understand the movie. THEREFORE, please be considerate of others when using your laptops during a movie, not to mention the light is extremely distracting. Thank You.

Eighth Class Reflection Post on Class 4/14

“I have a penis” (Jeremy Boggs, 4/14/08 9:07pm EST)

This is always good to know because if not, then a little more empathy can be directed towards the male at hand.

This class we discussed some more advertisements and then World War II which is personally my favorite historical event, I wish we could spend more time on the details. In discussing different forms of remembering this event we learned that they portray the same event in different lights and show different perspectives, but they all pretty much represent the feeling of glory and celebration the US holds for this war. I have been to the WWII memorial quite a few times now, one time I went swimming in the fountain/pond which is in the middle, and I have pictures of one of my friends standing in the middle of one of the fountain things at the end, I guess this could have been seen as desecrating the memorial but it was freshman year and we were all young and stupid then. Two of my favorite movies of all time focus on one aspect of WWII, the concentration camps. I’ve seen three or more movies on this and one based on the novel Night by Elie Wiesel showed a more horrific shocking aspect whereas the other two (one most recently) called The Countefeiters, and then Life Is Beautiful, which showed positive stories about specific people involved in concentration camps over in Germany. They are both good films, the former maybe I’ll write another post more specifically about.

During this class Professor Boggs stated that during the 1920s Depression was global. I have to disagree with this based on information from my other classes. While the US and other “developed” countries were going through a depressing, other “developing” countries such as pretty much all of latin america were thriving and prospering off of our unfortunate circumstances, for them it was a time of first Export Led Growth (ELG) and then in the 1930s, Import Substitution Initiative (ISI) and hence, economic growth. So anyways, thats my take on that topic.

I just did the Wikipedia Assignment and it really wasnt as hard as I thought it would be, but since the info that was already on the stub was inaccurate and not even referenced, I deleted it because it made my work look bad. So I’ll probably get some criticism for that, but overall its kind of cool to see something you wrote published online.

Seventh Class Reflection Post on Class 4/7

     During this class period we discussed advertisements during certain time periods of history and how they differ from today’s ads. Together we discussed the origen of popular culture and who is at fault, the individual or the corporations. I argued the corporations because by their use of psychology and propaganda they target certain demographics to buy their product, like the ipod usually targets young individuals, mercedes typically targets the older/wealthier crowd, etc. So by singling out these different classes, an unsuspecting person just wanting to watch their favorite show on TV then becomes transformed into a consumer of society pursuaded to buy something they probably did not need.

     By looking at old ads such as the Kotex or the Kodak ones, we saw how they completely differ from todays’ advertisements. Back then there was more words whereas now for ads there might not be any words, just a picture, or a naked model or something. Its amazing to see how our society has evolved commercially over the years. We have transformed from a society which only dedicated their money to needs and the essentials of life, to a society which will give money to almost anything if persuaded to correctly.

Post #3: American Culture at the Turn of the Last Century

   For this assignement I chose to focus on the Mexican stereotypes throughout the ages. Mexican immigrants are extermely controversial in today’s popular culture- on tv, in newspapers and in recent legislature. Even though Mexicans are more politically correct of the Spanish ethnicity, they do not have the same stereotypes associated with them as the Spanish (from Europe) have. Mexcans have more of a negative association than the Spanish do. Throughout history, Mexicans have moved from being idolized as a macho, western and a deep-rooted civilization to being critisized as lazy, dirty and cheap.

   I did a quick survey in my workplace, and out of the four people I asked “What do you think of when you think of Mexicans?”, three said both dirty and lazy and two said poor and construction workers. To illustrate this new stereotype of Mexicans I have included this image: This image features about four or five construction workers, all of which seem to be of Mexican ethnicity. One of the controversial topics of discussion today in America is Mexican Immigration and if Mexicans are taking our jobs or not. Since they come over to America from Mexico and for the most part might not know english and arent easily issued citizenship, it is very hard for them to get high-level jobs. Therefore, many Mexicans have to settle for manual labor jobs such as construction, which explains one of these stereotypes. Contrary to the stereotype of “lazy” construction workers experience a great amount of physical stress due to the arduous tasks they have to complete each day. Another example, which I experience almost daily is the resentment of some Americans to drink Mexican beer such as Corona, since I love Corona I get a lot of negative comments like “ew you’re drinking a MEXICAN beer” as if people refuse to drink the beer because they dont want the same label on them as Mexicans do. Also, the Mexican lifestyle that is observed here in America is not the quintessential example of how they would live in their native land. These stereotypes have therefore soley emerged in the modern era out of the oppression Mexicans face when trying to start a new life here in America. Stereotypes of Mexicans were vastly different  and less negative centuries ago.

     In western 20th century films, the most common stereotype of the Mexican culture was of the cowboy lifestyle, strong and macho rebels. An image to depict this type of stereotype is: This image shows Mexican as unified on horseback in their “element” of the west. The historical movies which feature Mexicans show them as independent, which modern stereotypes would highly disagree with. The Mexican culture up until the time of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century would portray the civilization as anything but lazy with their long work days unregulated by the government and every aspect of their life being supressed by the extremely conservative government.

    These stereotypes do not in any way correctly judge the Mexican ethnicity but instead shows how the popular perception of them changes from one century to the next. The previous stereotypes of western and cultured has changed to a more negative blue-collar connotation. Some perceptions have stayed the same over the years such as the strong family values Mexicans tend to hold in high regard. Overall these images and the meanings behind them are important to research and find out the true underlying explanation for them.

Sixth Class Reflection Post on class 3/31

This last class featured a great amount of class discussion which is good for learning since we all can engage in each other’s ideas. The main topic was the history of technology. Prof. Bogg’s main point he tried to get across was that Changes in technology reflect changes in culture and society. Technology also affects society and culture. As production increased dramatically in this time period, so didtn immigration. Unfortunately one of the consequences of this was that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. This started some uproar amongst classes but fueled government activity such as anti-trust laws, welfare and child labor laws all within this period of Progressivism.

I think there was a huge misconception in the class about the assigment of reading the wikipedia tutorials. Since we had our bibliography’s postponed one week I think some of us saw the Your_ Article_Hear tag after the wikipedia assigment for class and thought “oh that must be for next week”. Atleast this was my misconception maybe not anybody elses.

Posting the actual wikipedia article seems like its going to be complicated, especially since Suzie and I are doing the same one. It seems like everything has to be so much more technical, but I guess it opens up our minds to different types of literature. I’m just not looking forward to posting it and doing all that computer programming html type of stuff, I just liek to write, I dont really like to scrutinize sections. Oh well, stay tuned till next week.