Harry Potter and the Media

Over the last week I watched every single Harry Potter film from start to finish with Loulou, culminating in the grande finale (!!!) last night at the cinema. 


It sounds lame, I know. 


But with the mind-set that my current Contemporary Media paper has put me into, it's been hard not to notice some of the clever and consistent digs at politics and the media which JK Rowling and the ever-changing directors have put into the stories.  
First of all is the very obvious example of Rita Skita. Aside from the fact that she'd drive anybody potty, she epitomizes the unethical journalist who twists quotes and events to portray a false sense of reality. The media, in essence, has an obligation to the public to provide a balanced and un-weighted portrayal of contemporary facts; leaving it to the public to interpret events in coordination with their ideologies and viewpoints. Yet journalists, like Rita Skita, very rarely do this. Most of them eventually even publish books (poor Dumbledore) to mind-wash, dictate, and corrupt the public into seeing their narrow-minded viewpoint (or, at least, the viewpoint of their mass media corporation *cough cough* Fox News, *cough cough* The Daily Prophet). 
There's also the political agenda. For instance "Undesirable Number One" = Harry Potter one minute, Death Eaters another, briefly followed by a mugger and robber, then back to Harry Potter. I mean seriously, just try to interpret that in a way that doesn't relate to the seriously confused propaganda bullshit that most governments (particularly the American Republicans) try to spoon-feed us. 
A similar point is the consistent portrayal of Sirius Black as a notorious mass-murderer who's on the loose. This is echoed in the phase of ridiculing Dumbledore while promoting Umbridge, followed by ridiculing Umbridge when she completely fucks up. Her hatred of "progress for the sake of progress", combined with corporal punishment, is a clear (and totally fair, of course) attack on conservative government. And their denial of the very existence of Voldemort until way too late reeks of the governmental cause of almost everything that's ever gone wrong on a large scale in our world.


So next time your English teacher tells you that Harry Potter isn't a very deep text, give them a lecture.

Careers?

I am officially a Health Sciences dropout. Yet as everyone else in my position at the beginning of this semester are feeling disastrous, I'm stoked. Their predefined career plans as they came to university was to go through medical school and become a doctor, but now that's gone. Now they have to do an undergraduate degree first and go from there back into the medical school...

Not me. 

I'm now doing what I want. 

But what's got me thinking is that I have absolutely no career plan in front of me. I've been brought up in a world to think that this should be concerning, yet somehow it's the single best aspect of where I'm at now. 

It's not the fact that I'm studying Biochemistry, Communications and Visual Culture, all of which I find fascinating. 

It's not that these have exciting prospects for the future- from biochemistry aiming to increase longevity drastically, to communications promising a vastly different media landscape in the future with the likes of Murdoch gone, replaced by a grounding in online social networking. 

Nor is it any of the other myriad prospects of our future, such as the "singularity", where the exponential growth of computational ability surpasses humanity, promising to aid both the biochemistry and communications I'm studying now. 

It's not even the fact that, yes, I am rebelling to an extent.

Rather, I recall Chris McCandless of Into The Wild. 

"Careers are a twentieth century invention, and I don't want one."

Thinking about it, I'm happy to regard this statement as totally true. And I'm more than happy to entertain the thought that we could, in fact, head back to the time known by our grandparents where you took life and work as it came. Our parents have created a world where we feel it's compulsory to, say, do a BCom and become an accountant, or an LLB and be a corporate lawyer, just because this supposedly enables us to have a 'comfortable' life. We have even been taught to 'know' that if you do a BA you'll probably become a teacher. Yet as I approach this semester, the last thing on my mind (if it's even on my mind at all) is a long-term 'career' plan. Sure, I'm taking papers that are vaguely related to where I think the world is heading, but this is only a general self-made guideline I'm using which combines my abilities, enjoyment, and some crystal ball gazing (or something of the like).

Loulou and I have been talking about it a lot, and what I'm doing instead of career planning is looking forward to the times when I'm earning money just to live. Enjoying experiences and writing about them. Living in China, America, Europe; settling down after a good twenty years or so overseas. I'll be over-qualified for the jobs I'll inevitably put up with in fast food chains and theme parks, but who cares! And if I somehow find myself in the journalism school in Florida, or a media office in China, then that'll be a lovely turn of luck. 

But until then, I'm searching for jobs to pay for the "college life" I'm now experiencing in Dunedin. I'm investing in shares so that when I do try to settle down in twenty years time I might actually have something to set me up. I'm pursuing Biochemistry and learning computer programming because I could even create diagnostic machines to replace doctors.

But most of all, I'm enjoying not knowing what's ahead. Life's a theme-park ride on which we have a front-row seat.

Annie Leibovitz

At the moment I'm totally inspired by photographer Annie Leibovitz. This has been started by an exhibition on in Sydney at the moment entitled 'Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life 1990-2005' which combines the photos of her private and family life with the portraiture she's so famous for. The idea that the two contrast so heavily yet can be combined seems quite interesting to me, purely because it creates such a visually obvious juxtaposition between the two, a stark contrast from glitz and glamour of celebrities to her subtle and banal personal life. The exhibition has an underlying feeling of mortality, also an interesting idea because of the capacity we believe photography to have- to immortalize a moment in time. And now what I really want is the accompanying book to the exhibition...

Over her career Leibovitz has photographed for both Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair magazines, toured with The Rolling Stones on their 'Tour of the Americas '75', and has since been frequently commissioned by celebrities. Here is some of her stunning photography:

Brad Pitt

John Lennon & Yoko Ono

Queen Elizabeth II

Keith Haring

Anyway, all this has inspired me to try some portraiture! Any volunteers for models?

xx


P.S. The next step for me is to look up Susan Sontag, a beautiful writer and essayist who was romantically involved with Leibovitz. I bet her writing was amazing...
Also, here's a good article on this...

I Love Mail

Yesterday contained a small but exciting change to my health sciences routine; in my pigeon-hole at Knox was an envelope addressed to me in beautiful, elaborate handwriting. Of course, it's not often that you receive such mail, and the sheer beauty amidst the typed university bills everyone else was receiving made it feel so very special. Part of the charm was that I honestly couldn't answer the looming question of who the heck was writing to me.

A slight disappointment was that it wasn't a long hand-written message after all. It contained no news of the weather in a little French town, the political situation in a huge American city, nor the family gossip back home in Wellington. Instead these romantic images floating through my head thanks to an excess of movie-watching and Jane Austen reading, along with thoughts of a secret admirer, dissipated as a small pre-printed card fell out.

But that card itself was wonderful- an invitation to preview the Ben Cauchi exhibition at Brett McDowell Gallery this Friday, which I'm now definitely going to of course.

Anyway, it's made me think just how great hand-writing actually is. And although it turned out not to be one, the  beauty of sending physical letters rather than emails. Sometimes I do curse the age we've grown up in and long for the times of the Bronte's.

Looking back at the envelope now I also realize that the Gallery is stamped on it. Awkward how an emotional response changes how you view things (or don't)...

xx

In America!

Sooo the flying was atrocious as always- you know, children and the like- but we're here safe which is always a good start! Spent two nights in Miami and now in Orlando; just been relaxing really but also have heaps of thoughts rocking through my mind... With a rental van-type car with automatically opening/closing doors and boot, and every second building being a fast-food joint, it's no wonder that obesity is a problem here. It's also kinda disgusting that everyone seems to have HUGE gas-guzzling SUVs as town cars... FOR ONE PERSON! Also, no-one here can drive to save their lives... The wealth of the states has created an equal poverty for some, and I was close to tears watching an old lady who reminded me of my Nana walking up and down the main street in Miami begging (we gave her money of course, my whole family was upset). But there are also some really inspirational aspects. The fact that 'tipping' is how everyone earns most of their cash here means that service is absolutely amazing and everyone's incredibly nice. Everyone also seems to enjoy drinking "light" beer and there's extensive advertising for it. With this stuff you'd pop before you were even remotely tipsy and I think little New Zealand can learn a heck of a lot from it!

SUB-POST... Nature Needs Heroes
On a lighter note, today we hit the shops for a bit! Bought a really nice pullover from Izod and two pairs of Timberland boat shoes. What I didn't realise is that they were from Timberland's "474" line to celebrate the opening of their new shop at 474 Broadway in New York. (Timberland is an inspirational brand btw. They're a shoe brand but very proud of how small their own environmental 'footprint' is- with a sticker on the bottom of their shoes stating figures for renewable energy used, chemicals used, eco-conscious materials used, 100% recycled content of shoebox, and the number of trees they planted from 2006 to reduce their climate impact)
The "474" Boat Shoe line consists of 4 different styles and only 45 of each was made. I bought 2 styles hehe collector much?  In all fairness I could have bought the whole line too and probably would've if I realised what they were!

Here are the two styles I bought...

I like! Keep rockin' people and I'll keep you posted :)

The Future Is In China

This time lapse shows the construction of a 15 storey hotel in under 4 days. Quite frankly, china is absolutely amazing and inspirational.

Oranges!!

I'm crazy.

I was over at my girlfriends the other day and she gave me an orange. It was absolutely lovely. So I went home and literally ate every orange in the house (there were probably only six but it sounds cool). Anyway, it just got me thinking how great fruit is! I'm now committing myself to eat more in-season fruits around the year as it can only be good for you. That's not exactly speculation either, science has already shown that eating in season does have health benefits. And in a world where global warming dominates the contemporary consciousness, buying local and seasonal fruits means less transportation and less energy wasted on artificial growing. So, here's to oranges!

By the way,
It should be compulsory to watch Clockwork Orange at least once in your life...

I could now go on about other things Orange but ABSOFROCKINLUTELY did a fantastic job of it.

Rock on
x

Social Networking

Sooooo I had to do some writing on why Social Networking is a good thing for Tearaway. It's not actually that easy to argue! I was on a word restriction and it was a debate-like piece with another really cool Tearaway writer called Tommy, who lives in the Hawkes Bay. We had some fascinating phone calls though most of the stuff we discussed never quite made it into the debate. Here's my rather horrid, typical-teenager side of the writing. I swear I really do usually write better...

"Social Networking, plain and simple, is a truly advantageous tool of the modern age. The bottom line is that despite how much I like to fault it- as most people do- I’ve still got my Facebook. So what is it that keeps us stuck on it? In all honesty, just using some specific examples can underline its usefulness, and although I admit that they may come across as cliché, there’s very valid reasoning behind them becoming so.

Firstly are international friends. My parents were awesome this year and let my brother and I have our pre-ball get-together at our house. Inevitably, lots of photos got taken of everyone dressed up. The next day Mum got an email from a very close family friend who moved to France to live a good number of years ago, saying how lovely we all looked. What the?! Oh, Facebook! For a friend on the other side of the world to get a smile from still being able to watch us grow up, that’s quite magic.

I’ve got another draw card on its way now. My seventh form year has been filled with absolutely wonderful friends (aided by none other than, you guessed it, Facebook), but as we all leave school everyone’s going in literally all directions. Whether it’s elsewhere in New Zealand or even around the world, there are a lot of people to be missed and I’m positive this goes for everyone. Social Networking is going to make it so much easier to keep up with all these people- it’s something our parents never had and in the future it will lead to a very strongly connected world indeed. Already it’s proven its worth by keeping us in touch with friends at other schools, and this can only continue as we begin life in the larger world.

What’s more, there has never been such an efficient and easy way to market ourselves as we go into the workforce. Whether we set our profiles up to accentuate our strengths or use it to keep contacts who may be useful in the future, there isn’t a doubt that the ‘tool’ of online social networking, in this day and age, is quite indispensible. It almost seems that if you do without you’ll fall behind, but if you use it you can very much propel yourself through the world. 

Now, it’s coming up to exam time and I had conformed to the current trend by deactivating my Facebook account in order to concentrate. By the way, that’s another positive- if it all gets too much you can remove the distraction without deleting it. Anyway, preparing for this piece I needed to talk people into doing the Vox Pop. Reactivating my account, all of ten minutes later I had the three responses and snapshots seen here with almost no effort on my part."


In other news, here's a great vid my friend found: