I thought y'all would find this interesting. Ghostwriter are both taking (were both taking :) ) Sociology of Popular Music and our final project was probably more applicable to this particular Senior Seminar class, since we tackled the issue of authorship.

Along with a Pitzer student who's a singer, the three of us decided to perform three different versions of the same song - Jose Gonzalez's "Crosses". I don't know if you all are familiar with the song, but it's a pretty good slow acoustic number. Really folky. So Ghostwriter did a slow, keyboard-based soulful ballad. I did an uptempo, punk-ish version on my acoustic guitar, and the Pitzer student, who is Latin-American, sang it poppier and included a verse in Spanish. We were looking at how the song's meanings and style were altered in the mind of the audience when singers with different ethnic backgrounds sang it in a style more closely associated with their ethnicity. It was a great song to choose for that project also because Gonzalez is Swedish, born of Argentinian parents, playing a style that isn't really associated with either of those countries - at least in "Crosses".

I've never actually played this game, so some of what I tell you in this blog may be slightly incorrect, but part of me is simply wondering if anyone has played this. In my Race Theory in the Media course, we have to do a final paper and present what we are discussing to the class. A fellow student in my course recently presented about an interactive video game called Indigo Prophecy (XBox). It is also known as Fahrenheit. My classmate described it as a combination of narrative film and video game.

Basically, the player is the main character (Lucas) and makes decisions for the character which change the outcome of the narrative. The game starts with Lucas waking up from a trance after just killing someone. He has to figure out why he killed them before he is arrested. So the opening scene has the player (as Lucas) cleaning up the crime scene. However, the amount of clean-up the player does effects the outcome of the story after that. The person playing the game has several different choices about what to do in each scenario and each choice effects the outcome of the game. Like I said, I've never played, but it sounded pretty interesting. And pretty relevant to our discussions about narrative and video games. According to my peer it received a lot of praise for attempting to reinvent this genre of video games and it is pretty interesting. Just wondering if anyone has ever played before or knows anything about it...

So I'm up all night (on a Saturday, holy moly) writing a paper for my Transnational Feminist Theory class, and it occured to me that many of the most important ideas that leak into public consciousness have no author at all. We're reading one essay, "Le bebe en brousse" by Nancy Rose Hunt, that details European women’s early twentieth century colonial mission in the Belgian Congo. In response to a perceived need for increased black labor in the colony, the European missionaries set out to undermine the native women’s tradition of birth spacing. The colonists were successful, resulting in cheap black labor for the Europeans and the current overpopulation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It’s me again, the one that is completely infatuated with Post Secret. Well, the obsession has definitely taken a turn for the worst now as the concept of the website/books has suddenly seeped into my real life! Weird! I get home for Thanksgiving break really late and am about to go to bed when I notice two crinkly, hand-written journal pages on my desk. Obviously, I'm horrified. Did I write this and just leave it sitting out for all to see? What has been on my mind in the last few months? How bad would it be if someone has read this??? I soon see that there is a note from my mom. Of course, the fear factor soars.

While I am here on campus working on my thesis, I read an interesting article that relates to this course. My thesis is on hip-hop music and I recently read the article "Who(se) Am I? The Identity and Image of Women in Hip Hop" by Imani Perry. While the majority of the article is about feminist lyrics, the objectification of women in Hip Hop, and female stars that are the exception to the objectification, there was an interesting section about the music industry and the authorship of the music.

I wanted to write about the corporate creations of music artists. Especially with Hip Hop music there is a standard image that sells well and that the corporations want their artists to be in order to sell records. In the beginning, Hip Hop was a form of honest self-expression. Before it became an extreme commodity, it was a way for a group of marginalized people to speak out against their oppression. Perry's article describes how the 'realness' of contemporary Hip Hop artists is completely created by the corporation. Teams of people go into creating the image of an artist.

Last night I went to see the film BABEL with some friends and first of all, I would recommend it to anyone with a spare $10 and a couple of hours of free time. The film is beautiful, with magnificent scenes from various continents and it is visually magnificent. The music is wonderful and the cast is great (I've never really been a Brad Pitt fan before, but his short amount of screen time in this film is actually really good). I love Gael Garcia Bernal and was pleased with his performance, but saddened by his small amount of screen time. The cast as a whole is great, even the kids.

Anyway, I wanted to discuss this type of movie. I'll try to not spoil it for those of you who want to see it. The film is constructed like Crash. The film has storylines that connect at the end, despite all the major characters being on different continents and living very different lives. I find this very interesting in terms of the narrative. Jumping between all the plots leaves the audience in suspense about one plot, then creates suspense for them in the next one. I love this style of filmmaking. Films that have a straight-forward, linear narrative often have scenes that are slow, or not as enticing and I often lose interest. This choppy, non-linear style keeps drawing the audience back into the film and with this film, the variety of characters and scenes is amazing. Offering this wide range is beneficial, as it gives a wide variety of scenes, a wonderful ensemble cast (much like Crash), and different aspects for audience members to relate to. I find it very interesting that this type of film has gained such popularity and prestige.

Today in my Sociology of Popular Music class we began our unit on reggae and dancehall music by watching several video clips, including the documentary “Roots Rock Reggae” (1977). The video features performances, interviews of artists, and artists in the studio. However, unlike many documentaries, the name of the person speaking or performing is not captioned at all. Afterwards, one of the first questions asked was who were the musicians in the video. Though the professor knew a lot of the names, there were still a few left unknown. This, of course, led us to a discussion of authorship, particularly how notions of authorship may vary outside of a Western or U.S. context. In the U.S., because we’re a very capitalist society, notions of authorship tend to be linked to ownership and copyrights (which I’m sure we’ll get more into with “Free Culture”). These ideas are particularly relevant to music today, with the way that new technologies are changing the way we consume it.

Sometimes I hate computers... I just wrote this really long blog about this and accidentally hit the back button and lost it all. Anyway, I'll try again and it probably won't be nearly as well written since I have class in 10 minutes, but oh, well.

I recently heard that O.J. Simpson has turned author. However, his writing is not a straight up autobiography or anything like that. He wrote a hypothetical book about how he would have killed Nicole and Ron Goldman, had he done it. Not really a confession, yet not really a good way of clearing his name. In addition, he has taped an interview that will air at the end of the month that goes over the material in the book, describing how he would have executed the murders. Anyway, my initial reaction was mortification. How can he write the gruesome details about how he would have killed his ex-wife and the mother of his children even if he had?? Doesn't he have a soul? While this feeling still remains strong, I started thinking... he just wants to be back in the spotlight and this is a pretty unique and crazy way to get back in the spotlight. He can't be charged for the crimes again, so why not hypothetically confess?? Other people wrote a million books about the trial and speculated what happened, why shouldn't O.J. author his own book and clear up exactly what happened?

So I have recently become the owner of Beck's recently released album, The Information. As a devoted fan and future girlfriend of Beck, I felt required to post on its awesomeness. Aside from being his best album since Odelay, Beck has outdone himself yet again on originality.

This part actually has to do with our class so pay attention. The Information was released as a CD/DVD combo and the DVD features a music video to accompany each song. I read a review prior to the release of the CD which annoys me now because I can't remember where I read it and also can't remember all that Beck said about the album. However, I do remember that he said he had been wanting to do a CD/DVD combo for a long time now because he thinks that it comes closer to how we should experience music, as this totally sensationally stimulating medium. Kinda interesting in terms of our recent discussion about the level of immersion allowed by new media forms.

So, since the blog is so significant to our class, I thought this might be of interest to some of you in the class. I was listening to NPR yesterday and the topic of military blogs was discussed. Basically, a lot of members of the military post blogs as a way to keep in touch with family and friends, as well as using the blog as a way of speaking out about their experiences, kind of like keeping a journal. Many people see this as a positive way for the general public to stay connected with our military and the war in general. Well, the government is of course, worried about security. The potential risk of bloggers leaking information about the military strategies has made the military begin to restrict the blogging rights of the troops to prevent potential leaking on blogs. So, basically we trust our troops with guns and defending democracy, but not with a computer and a mouse. I thought this was interesting. The military is censoring the blogs because they feel the troops could let out information that could harm them or the goals of the U.S. in general. Is the military simply trying to protect the troops? Should the military officers be allowed to control what is on the internet for the safety of our military strategies and troops? Should blogs in general be censored??