Where We're At Right Now

The Syllabus:

Unit 1 - Digital completed.

Unit 2 - Cool - We're finishing phase 4 (integration) - all that's left is the art project. We will finish the unit around the end of the semester.

Units 3 (School) and 4 (Other People) still planned and on schedule.

Assignments:

There will be no additional required assignments over the break. An extra credit opportunity appears below.

The paper - which will be an exhibition-style integration of what you've learned about coolness in 5-10 pages - will be due in rough draft form around January 13 - feel free to get a head start. The art project will also be similar to the assignment in the Digital Unit - so you can also start thinking about what you want to do with it (Four Tet on Being Popular on Youtube could be a model).

Grades:

Assignments 21-25 have been completely graded for all sections and (extremely late by now) new versions of that work will not be graded.

Assignments 26-29 have been completely graded for section 1, 2, 3, and 4.

All sections have been graded. If you didn't have 37 posted I used 35 (or if that was missing 34). Grades available Tuesday.

Extra credit must be completed by the first day back to school, 4th of January.

I will update this part of this post as I complete each section of grades.

Extra Credit 1 - Tolstoy Cool

For extra credit please read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy and write a 3-6 paragraph post that answers one or more of the following questions;

a. How does Ivan's quest for status, advancement, prestige, and generally the approval of others endanger his chance to live a more meaningful life?

b. Schwartz is the "cool" character in the first part of the story. Please analyze him.

c. Ivan, as almost all of us, bases his efforts in life on the map provided by his culture. The culture values "the easy, agreeable, gay and always decorous [ ...] life, approved of by society and regarded by himself as natural." What map has been provided by your family, subculture, culture? What are the main destinations and goals and plans in your life? What should the tone of your life be, according to the map you've been provided?

d. Ivan transforms in the last part. What does this process show about the worthiness of the map he was provided? Should he have lived otherwise? How?

e. Please compare The Death of Ivan Ilyich to A Christmas Carol - specifically the character of Ivan to the character of Ebenezer. If you don't want to read Dickens, you can use your knowledge from a film version. Dickens' work came out in 1843 and Tolstoy's in 1886. Tolstoy called Dickens the greatest writer of the century and had his portrait hanging on a wall, and Scrooge might have been the inspiration for Ivan Ilyich. Do the stories share the same moral? How do tone and emphasis differ in the two parallel stories?

f. Please discuss and analyze any other aspects of the book, of your choice, that relates to our sense of lostness, the source of our lostness, and our attempts to either cover up or fill that emptiness through heroic life and/or the approval of others.

Details:

The essay counts up to 10 points, same as a regular assignment, so the option to change the dividend as usual but without changing the divisor. You may choose to do two separate essays for a possible total of 20 points. Due January 1, 2010 at 9pm.

If you seek wisdom before dying, this book could be a helpful source and will also help you catch references among educated people.

http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/WorldeBookLibrary.com/deathivan.htm

HW 31 - Exploring Methods of M,M,C,A, & Aggrandizing the Self

In class Friday we shared insights from HW 30 and brainstormed and discussed various methods that we and others use to mask, manipulate, costume, adorn, and aggrandize the self.

HW 31 will eventually include several parts.

Part A - which should be posted by Monday 8:30am, is to ask (respectfully) someone who is using one of the strategies we identified to describe how they came to be doing it. If you want more interesting answers avoid putting them on the defensive, as much as possible. Many of the answers will be variations on, "Because I like it, it's for me, not for others." What do you think about the answer? Post the method, the story of your question, his/her answer, and your insights about that answer.

Part B - Repeat Part A but for 2-3 aspects of your own performance. Due Tuesday Dec. 22, 8:30am. Please simply edit the original HW 31 to include the new material, rather than making a separate post.

Shakespeare quote 1 - All the world's a stage ...
Shakespeare quote 2 - Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player ...
Facebook article - Great quote - “You’re literally watching the social landscape on the screen, and if you’re obsessed with your position in that landscape, it’s very hard to look away.”

HW 30 - Psychological and Philosophical Theorizing of Cool

The goal - to enrich your understanding of "cool" by exploring the existential layers underlying this often desperate performance.

Please research several sources (famous philosophers and psychologists and social theorists) to elaborate a 400+ word theory (or a hypothesis) on one of the three following questions in bold. Due Friday, Dec 18 at 8:30am. (As a point of reference, this assignment is 540+ words).

Cool can be viewed as a major attempt to fill the emptiness inside of us with an internal heroic mission (sense of purpose, meaning, self-knowledge) and external validation (attention, approval, admiration, love, popularity, fame).

How does this emptiness feel? Phenomenologically describe the sense of absence using your own introspection and the writings of famous others. If it is a hole - what sorts of shapes fill this hole? Is it a lock with only one key? Or is it a stomach that will accept whatever chewed up substance drops down into it?

Whence this emptiness? What are the sources of this sense of meaninglessness but also of the need for a sense of meaning? Empty means its not there but also that its missing! Do you agree that humans seem to overwhelmingly share a sense of emptiness, or a hole that needs to be filled (perhaps by honor, or story, or heroism, or love)? How do we come to be this way? We've talked about the Myth of the Fall, of Freud's theories of separation from the mother, of Becker's theory of the fear of annihilation in death, of Lacan's theory of the division between consciousness and physicality.

How does cool relate to our attempt to live in relation to this emptiness? In addition to external validation and a personal heroic role - are there any other routes to coolness? How should we evaluate and enact the possible routes to coolness? Where should we put our emphasis - our best efforts?

For instance, Schopenhauer argued "what distinguishes mortals is determined by three fundamental aspects. They are;

1. What one is: the person in the broadest sense. Inclusive of health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.

2. What one has: property and possessions in every sense.

3. What one makes as a presentation of oneself: under this expression should be understood, how the person is perceived by others, therefore how others present him to themselves. That means their opinions of the person, which collapse into categories of glory, status, and fame."

(quickly translated by andy from here)

Does Schopenhauer thereby offer a guide for how to deal with our mortality? What do the Stoics say? The Cynics? The Marxists? Foucauldian post-structuralists? What about Frankl's concept of the "existential vacuum" or "Sunday neurosis". What do religious prophets advocate (Buddha, Maimonides, Jesus, Mohammed, etc.)? What about religious/philosophical traditions like Zen or Vedantism?

Please explore theoretical responses to these questions. For instance you can google:

• frankl existential vacuum emptiness
• sense of emptiness -
• buddhism origin dukkha
• genesis fall humanity
• if you google - freud separation mother - you might end up at a site from Purdue which explains how the "self" is a response to the situation of the baby having to deal with mom and dad.

Gather insights from at least 3 sources of famous people's thoughts and then organize them into your own (evolving) thoughts on the topic. Feel free to concentrate primarily on one source and your own response.

HW 29 - Merchants of Cool

We watched most of the episode "Merchants of Cool" from Frontline on PBS (2001) on Wednesday and Friday.

If you missed one of those sessions, you need to watch it on your own - official site is here - but its also on google video and here.

Please address one or more of the following topics in 3-6 well-written and insightful paragraphs. Use evidence from the video, from Matt Fried's Tuesday presentation, and from other sources.

• Of course the corporations manipulate us while pretending not to, so they can make more money off of us. Of course we actively seek commodified coolness while trying to claim "self-expression" and "being ourselves", so we can feel a sense of importance and gain attention and approval. So what?

• What specific manipulation techniques work best on the specific insecurities and emotional needs of young people, according to Merchants of Cool?

• Should advertising to young people be banned? Up to what age? Or all ages?

• Is it evil to help the corporations to manipulate the minds of young people for the sake of profit?

• Should Rage Against the Machine or Mos Def have refused to play the corporate game to prevent their revolutionary music becoming a source of capitalist profit? What if that meant that they would gain far fewer listeners?

• There was a quote like, "Girls are taught (by Britney Spears type media) to flaunt their sexuality even though they don't understand it yet." Was what was done to Britney Spears wrong? Was it a crime? If so, who are the criminals? Why did she go along? Why did millions of teens eagerly consume this image leading to billions in corporate profits? Does this sort of image lead to loveless performance of alienated hyper-sexuality in the name of cool?

Due Sunday, 13th of December at 9:00am.

HW 28 - Informal Research - Internet, Magazines, and TV Shows

Please identify five or more sources of insight into "cool" in our culture. Internet sites might be the easiest - often a good idea to start with Wikipedia - but you're welcome to use TV, movies, magazines, newspapers, or other sources of popular culture.

Please make an annotated bibliography of 3 or more sources - each should include correct MLA citation, a very brief summary of most important points (2-4 sentences) and a very brief analysis of the utility of the source for particular topics or arguments (3-5 sentences).

You could do worse than using this as a model (but shorter and sharper - one mini paragraph for summary, an additional mini-paragraph). Actually, use the following as a model -

Andy's Model:
Viren, Tom et al. "How To Be Cool." http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Cool. WikiHow, n.d. Web. 2 December 2009.
This article, compiled and edited by many authors, attempts to provide advice of how to become cool. It contains a list of suggestions, additional tips, and warnings. Many of these tips will be familiar - "Be yourself" and "Be confident" - and others less so "Find a way to love learning."

This short guide deserves reading for its helpful simplification - in the introduction it reduces coolness to being confident, unique, and on friendly terms with everyone. The copious suggestions, tips, and warnings also reflect a variety of the dominant perspectives about coolness - which seems to primarily be understood as being admired and liked by the masses as an authentic and friendly and socially-adept human being.

Your goals with this annotated bibliography include figuring out some more about cool using others thoughts, finding out what others mean when they talk about being cool, and identifying resources worth coming back to (or not worth coming back to) for yourself and your triangle partners when writing your end of the unit papers.

Due Tuesday, December 8 at 8:30am.