The Five Stories About Movies and the Internet...

Its Spring Break and I thought I was free but I still have work to do. I never seem to get a break...

Anyway there are five readings this time rather than the usual one or two. The first is called "Immigrant Women and the Rise of the Movies" by the Ewens. The first reading was about immigrants coming to America for a better life. The only thing that they carried with them to America was their values, traditions, and other important things but as Ewen explained, there can be cultural differences between the Old World and the New World. One examplel is the relationship between a mother and her daughter. A mother relies on her daughter for help around the house and for money but as for the daughter, she knows more about street smarts and tends to enjoy her independence. This can make the mother feel insecure about her daughter but the one thing that keeps families together is by going to the movies. The moves that were shown at that time were mainly drama based and they talk about the hardships of American life as well as the lives of different ethnic groups like the Italians and Jews. Movies also talk about the social status and classes of people in America as well as the difference between men and women. Immigrant women were memerized by the visual life of what a real American woman should be like and this leads to conflicts with mothers and daughters alike. In the end, woman today watch movies as an escape from their hard lives and it can also provide a visual universe of magic and illusion.

The second reading is what we were talking about for some time already. "The True Story About A Bogus Blog". The story is about own school of Hunter College and its first ever controversy surrounding a bogus blog. The story is simple, a girl named Heidi Cee was upset that her bag was stolen and it happens to be a Coach bag that her ex-boyfriend gave her. She was really distressed over her bag until she decided to spread the word out about her bag and posted her urgency on Facebook and MySpace. In the end, her bag was returned to her by a girl named Melanie and Heidi gave her the reward of $500 as promised by the wanted posters. Later she realized that her bag was a counterfeit and began to make a protest about knowing the awareness of counterfeits. The real problem was that everyone was deceived by everything about Heidi Cee. Everyone found out that she and her problem was all fake. This incident lead to question about the PR's way of campaigning, corporate satisfaction, and using a school to experiment their methods. Some were upset like my professor, Stephen Ewen and some find it interesting and effective like some PR representatives.

The third reading is "Identity In The Virtual World", a article posted on CNN.com. The article talks about the differences between your alter-ego and the real you. When it comes to the internet, you can create your alter-ego on any online games and be whoever you want to be. In the real world, you can only be yourself but sometimes you can act as your alter-ego as it seems like who you really are on the internet. If you're on online games, you can easily be who you are or if you don't like it, you can just change it to any other identity you prefer like gender, location, birthdate, etc. In other words, it is so much more fun to be anyone on the internet and it can become so boring in the real world.

The fourth reading is "Coming Apart At The Seams: Sex, Text, and the Virtual Body" by Shannon McRae. This reading is about nothing but sex and even more sex. *turns red* Mainly the reading talks about average people having sex over the internet rather than having it in real life. People use text mostly to express their sexuality and discover more about themselves. One thing that no one knows when having "netsex" is that they don't know who exactly they're doing it with. To some people, they pretend to be female and finding it very satisfying while some women pretend that they're men with equal feeling. Sometimes netsex can be done with either lesbians or gays when in reality they are just straight men and women. In the end though, nexsex is considered fun but to some they may be personal if they're looking for a real life partner.

The final reading is "Robot Telerobotics" by Judith S. Donath. The reading is about using technology to talk to other people as if they are talking to another human being. When the program to communicate was created in the beginning of the 1950's some researching were amazed at how much potential this program might have and yet there were some that didn't like the idea. The reason why some researchers didn't like it is because talking to the program cannot feel the same as talking to a real human being. Yet as time goes by this program will always be the question of whether or not its a good idea or not.

In conclusion, all these stories are based on the idea of fantasy of what we imagined ourselves doing and who we wish to become. Although we imagine ourselves to be like this its never the same as talking to another human or working hard for what you want to do or having a relationship with someone or being the same as someone else. I believe that the more you see the bigger picture looking at society from whatever medium you see, you can become more aware of yourself but in truth you can become more isolated. The more knowledge you know the more of yourself becomes detacted from others like your friends and family. More like your independence from a harsh reality. We strive to become someone else we wish to be but we also know that in the end if we can't go any further we can become miserable.