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Thursday, April 3, 2008

Whats up with me? (Status Update)

"Transmissions From Camp Trans"
The claim is that just because they are transsexual women, they should not be excluded from joining MWMF. the style that it was written in seems to be Rogerian.

"Dark Webs Goth Subcultures in Cyberspace"
The claim here is that Goths use cyberspace to communicate with each other, shares beliefs and ideas and to also weed out posers. This style is Toulmin.

"The Truck Stop as Community and Culture"
The claim here is that truckers can be compared to cowboys. This seems like the classical style.

"House for the Homeless"
The claim is that eventhough some people are homeless it does not mean that they are worthless and lazy. This is Rogerian.

Where im at in the paper?
I have done most of the reasearch, but i still would like to visit another fieldsite because i need more observation. I still need to get my ideas together, organize my research and come up with a claim.

My question for peer review is: Does the rest of my paper stick to the theme?

Sunday, March 30, 2008

My fieldsite

What is going on in the field site?
When you first walk into the afterlife club, immediately you are engulfed in the smoke. Inside people are smoking while listening to the music which was very loud. I was not used to the sound of the heavy beats so it took me a while to get used to it and not make weird faces because I did not understand the music. Some people were sitting by the bar ordering beers and other alcoholic beverages. Then you had the people who were dancing intensely to the bands.
How do the members of the subculture interact with each other?
The people of this subculture interact like others at a club. They greeted the people who they knew with open arms and they were just free spirits. When the different bands came on stage and started playing a song, everyone immediately started yelling and getting extra excited because they all knew what song the band was about to play.
What details, behaviors, and surroundings did you have questions about?
I had questions about why they people there danced they way they did. How they understood the words to the music they were hearing.
At first, I was a little hesitant to ask the people about a question I had because they were all so wrapped up in their own worlds but I had a friend with me and she helped me out. I asked how they were able to listen to the music and understand the words and also why they danced the way they did. Basically, she told me that they got used to it. They have been hearing the music for so long that it just comes to them naturally and they cam tune out the music and hear the words. The reason they danced the way they did is because they just flow with the music. They are not conscious of who’s watching because they are all doing the same things. After going to this one little club, I still feel I need to find another field site because I felt it was a little one-sided because it was a musical environment.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Prison Performing Acts

The author chose to go dierectly to the place where this criminals are being redirected towards a postive way of life. What makes this a good fieldsite is that he was able to go directly to the place where these criminals carry out their somewhat normal lives. He was able observe them in natural environment. The observations that the author made were that most of the criminals do not like to go back and explore their past life. They all say that they are better people now rather than to do back and acknowledge the things that they did to get them to this place. He also said that they felt like cowards for doing those harmful things. The interview techniques that the author used was that he just sat down and talked to them one on one. He just casually talked to them which made them more comfortable to give up information even when they were reluctant to do so.The norms and values of this culture were pretty evident. Almost all of the residents did not graduate high school and some have as low as a third grade eduation. This is also another reason they are here to get some help in these ares. They have the same routines everyday that they must abide to like for example, every time they go for their acting sessions they must be stripped of all their clothing to ensure safety. Their values have changed from their time before entering this place to now. The believe in being eduacted and peaceful and changing for the bset to come.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Subcultures

Topic: Punk Alternative Culture
Sources:
O’Connor, Alan. “Local Scenes and Dangerous Crossroads: Punk and Theories of Cultural Hybridity,
Popular Music, May 2002.” JSTOR. January 4, 2008. Sun Microsystems. 13 Mar. 2008 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=02611430%28200205%2921%3A2%3C225%3ALSADCP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8


Tsitsos, William. “Rules of Rebellion: Slamdancing, Moshing and the American Alternative Scene,
Popular Music, Oct. 1999.” JSTOR. January 4, 2008. Sun Microsystems. 13 Mar. 2008 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=02611430%28199910%2918%3A3%3C397%3ARORSMA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R

Pinkus, Karen. “Self-Repretation in Futurism and Punk, South Central Review, Summer 1996.” JSTOR.

January 4, 2008. Sun Microsystems. 13 Mar. 2008 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=07436831%28199622%2F23%2913%3A2%2F3%3C180%3ASIFAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O



Nyong’o, Tavia. “Do You Want Queer Theory (or Do You Want the Truth)? Intersections of Punk and
Queer in the 1970s, Radical History Review, Winter 2008.” EBSCOhost. 13 Mar. 2008 http://ezproxy.gsu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=27788277&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site


Linden, Amy. “PUNK 365, Bust, Jan 2008.” EBSCOhost. 13 Mar. 2008
http://ezproxy.gsu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=27619263&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site



Reflection: I really liked the Rules of Rebellion: Slamdancing, Moshing and the American Alternative Scene because the title was very catching. This article gave me more insight on what different things I could talk about within this subculture. I liked how they presented not just one aspect of this culture. But then this in itself presents a problem because I need to figure out the focus of my paper. It does seem like it has a lot of information for me to look through which is always a good thing. They talk about punk music and how it influences kids to act this certain way. So overall, I feel like this is a great place to start.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Frances Farmer

Before going to the library on Wednesday, I had no clue how many resources were available to us. Of course I knew about the books, Galileo and other commons things you find in the library, but there are so many different databases and articles just waiting to found. The word I was assigned to look up was Frances Farmer. At first, this was difficult because when I started looking for information on her, nothing came up but France and farmers. Most of the articles, I had found were not available for viewing. This really affected my task because I was not able to get five sources for this assignment. So I still have too look for more but at this time I could not. So I just went with what I had at the time. I found a good bit from this first author and I tried to provide background information and on the others I just gave a brief preview of the things she has been in.
Frances Farmer was a major actress in Hollywood during the 1930-1940s, but she wasn’t just known for her movies. Frances had a scary past, rebelling against many people wishes for her. She often did not get along with her mother, who was very controlling which lead to this child-like rebellion. She was placed in a mental asylum, where she claims of being abused while subjected to insulin shots everyday. She could never really keep friends and then died at a fairly early age of 57, in 1970 of cancer (Waites, Kathleen J.). Frances Farmer not only was an actress, but she wrote her own autobiography and eventually ventured out into Broadway. She was in “The Golden Boy” with Luther Adler (Osbourne, Robert). She was most noted for the film, "Frances", which was based on her turbulent life which then turned into several television and broadway shows (Storhoff, Gary).

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Who Produced Hip Hop vs. America

The topic of my paper is based on the series aired on BET, “Hip Hop vs. America”. Since this was not an ongoing television series it was very difficult for me to figure out what person actually produced or directed the show. My first instinct was to go to the library since it is full of sources and not just the internet, although the internet is one of the largest databases for information and it is very convenient. So when I got to the library, I remembered that I did not know the producer of my topic. With this setback, I had to first start my journey by finding out who thought of putting this show on air. Well, what I concluded was that BET sponsored this mini series and they were the forerunners for this program. My first search started with of the course the very popular website, google.com. This time, google.com was not so helpful because it really only gave the website, which I already knew and it pulled up Wikipedia, which just gave me information about when it first started. I wanted to find some information that would help me with my rhetorical appeals for my paper, but with this limited information I was not able to do so. Of course this did not make me happy because I knew that that information would help me out a lot for this paper. After all, that is what this paper is based on. When I went to the official website for BET, I was able to learn a little bit more about what they were all about. It took me a minute to find where that particular information was located on the site. After my searching on the internet, I decided that there was nothing else I could really do next considering my situation. Why must everything be so difficult for me!!!

Monday, February 11, 2008

Dizzee Rascal-the London King

Dizzee Rascal is from East Bow England where he grew up in a rough neighborhood. As a child he often got himself into trouble, stealing and robbing. He was also expelled from school. It wasn’t until a teacher introduced him into the music scene, did he start to rap. He style is very different than the ones we have come to know in North America. His music is a mixture if garage and hip hop, with a lot of samples from heavy metal, rock and guitar sound. The garage style is the most popular type of rap in the inner streets of UK. Dizzee raps about the things that go on around him every day. He was raised by a single mother and by having this experience he was able to produce one of his singles which was predominately underground. In one of his songs he talks about a young London girl who spent her life partying, doing drugs, and having sex with many men. Throughout the years she earned the title Jezebel, which means slut, whore and many other shameless names. I think this helps define how Dizzee is able to intertwine his culture with the hip hop culture because he is talking about real life things. Growing up in London, he observed what was going on and he took it to heart to tell a story about how life is there. Although he may be all the way in London, Dizzee does not escape the violence that sometime does come about with being a rapper or should I say just being successful overall. I believe that because of this violence many people may say he has street credibility because he endured the incident. This ties him into the hip hop subculture of violence, which again ties his culture with the big community of Hip Hop.