Postmodernists gone Gaga!

Blog article for February 2, 2012: Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a general wide-ranging term which can be applied to several fields of culture such as literature, art, philosophy and politics among others. It being a literal translation for "after modernity", refers to the incipient or actual dissolution or distortion of the culture and other social forms associated with Modernity. Postmodernism is largely considered as the reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective, efforts to explain reality. Postmodernism is an avant garde phenomena, it showcases passion for the new, the unique and the weird.

According to the reporters, Postmodernism challenges traditional convention and thought by its mere existence. Upon understanding this by reading the group's PowerPoint presentation, there was this one person in my mind whom for me exists as the epitome of Postmodernism theory.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta or more commonly known as Lady Gaga is a record artist who topped the billboards, sold thousands of albums and garnered millions of fans in just a span of several years.

Her career began when fellow recording artist Akon noticed her vocal skills and star potential and signed her up under the label Kon Live Distribution. She then came to prominence as an independent recording artist following the release of her debut album, The Fame (2008). This album gathered a mix of critiques and appraises and proved to be a critical and commercial success as it topped charts around the world. 

"Gaga is well-recognized for her outer sense of style as recording artist, in fashion, in performance and in her music videos. Her contributions to the music industry have garnered her numerous achievements including five Grammy awards amongst twelve nominations, two Guinness world records and the estimated scale of 15 Million albums and 51 Million singles worldwide. Billboard named her both the "2010 Artist of the Year" and the Top Selling Artist of 2010" ranking her as the 73rd Artist of the 2000s Decade. Gaga has been included in Time's annual "The 2010 Time 100" List of Most Influential People in the World as well as Forbes' list of "The World's Most Powerful Celebrities" in the world. Forbes also placed her at Number 7 on their annual list of the world's "100 Most Powerful Women."

Source: Official Lady Gaga Biography 

Personally, I like Lady Gaga as an artist. I consider her singles to be very unique and interesting, too interesting to miss. At one point, I asked myself the pressing question everyone else is talking about - Why is Lady Gaga this popular and influential? The answer for me is her Postmodern style of looking at things, her Postmodern character, the way she uses Postmodernism as a model for her music, her music videos, her clothes and her overall persona.

Lady Gaga is the epitome of Postmodernism thought for me because basically she challenges every tradition there is in every opportunity she can.

Jayme Jones, an analyst, said that "Poker Face" lyrics, written by Lady Gaga is about sex, gambling and more sex - more to the point, the faces or "poker faces" a prostitute puts in during work, or if you prefer to call it, intercourse. (Source: Analysis of Poker Face) Discussing (and seemingly propagating) sex and gambling is not an easy task but Lady Gaga still released this song to say that even prostitutes have control and strength even if it seems like they do not.

The Vigilant Citizen published in his sought after blog that "Bad Romance" actually describes the dark and ritualistic inner-workings of the entertainment industry by symbolically depicting Gaga as a sex slave. (Source: Analysis of Bad Romance) To mock the music industry as such would be a grave sin, many would say, but Lady Gaga does not agree. She found the way which the entertainment industry is run to be too old, too automatic, lacks spontaneity, freedom and liberation and thus she sang about it.

Lady Gaga mentioned in an interview with Arjanwrites that the song Paparazzi was about her personal love-hate relationship with the media. She says that media is a source of both truth and lies, a source of inspiration and paranoia. These days media can really affect society in so many ways. Lady Gaga notices the faults of media and presents it to society through this song.

Finally, in her song Judas, Lady Gaga analyzes the negative effects of structured religions, more specifically Catholicism. She believes that having a faith in such a structured religion is superficial and she questions the right of the Catholic leaders, in this case even mentioning Jesus and Judas as representations, to rule over the Catholic populace. She rejects the idea that a structured religion will guide a believer towards eternal life.

Lady Gaga, a very liberal thinker with a capacity to share to the world her thoughts, her passion for the new, the unique and the weird, and the capacity to speak out for what she truly believes in and stands out for.

♥ Reese Corpuz

Here to There; This to That

Blog article as a reaction to our January 30, 2012 class: Frankfurt School

Coming from Nazi Germany to the United States of America, the theorists of Frankfurt School were like noobs or rookies experiencing a totally different battlefield, a new environment with alien forms of culture, media and communication arts such as film, pop music, the radio, the television and other forms of mass culture. In Germany, media production and consumption is limited and controlled by Nazi leaders - media was very constrained, bounded by many restrictions and bans. To their surprise, such practices are not done in the United States. There, media production as well as consumption, was but a large form of commercial entertainment controlled by big corporations, private organizations and businesses.

Most of the theorists from the Frankfurt School were on the same positions except for one outlier. Walter Benjamin, had similar but slightly altered thoughts and ideas. Benjamin said that new forms of media - the mass reproduction of photography, film, media recordings and publications replaced the original "aura" of what was done in the earlier eras. For him, the new forms of media serves as "alternative oppositional cultures".

As we discussed the topic further in class, our professor mentioned that this so-called "new media" is the masses' reaction or response to the already existing culture simply because "elitism" was often always attached to the culture and the arts of the earlier eras for some reason.

I decided to relate this topic to something very close to my heart and this is none other than dancing.

Like many other forms of the arts, dance has a historical background. I first found out that about this when I was in high school. Being a dance major in the Philippine High School for the Arts, we had a "Dance Theory" subject every other day and this was precisely what we study. Because dance has a lot of more specific genres, (Traditional/Folk dance, Ballet, Street dance or Hiphop, Ballroom, and so on and so forth) I will only focus now on the genre which is most appropriate to tackle in relation with the cultural theories of the Frankfurt School - Ballet.

Ballet was first introduced to the world in the 15th and 16th Century along with the rise of the Italian Renaissance Courts. It was quickly spread to the French Courts and was then funded by French arts patrons and elites. When the Russians finally adopted the Ballet with two official ballet dance companies - The Royal Danish Ballet and the Imperial Ballet, Ballet became more widely celebrated and patronized. Dancers, choreographers, and dance enthusiasts nowadays refer to this style as Classical Ballet.

Here is a video showcasing an excerpt from a well-know Classical Ballet piece, the Swan Lake. In this video, the white swan flaunts her gracefulness in her technique and her very vulnerable character.

Notice its gracefulness, the specific dance techniques which are only seen in Ballet, the infamous tutu and ballet pointes (which are staples and essentials in ladies' Classical Ballet costume) Also, more often than not, the themes and choreography of Classical Ballet are about fairy tales and the life of the elite - courtship, love, familial feuds, tragedy, climax resolution, grand endings and nothing too political. Now, let us compare and contrast it with another style of Ballet.

Modern Ballet or sometimes also referred to as Contemporary Dance was first introduced to the world by Martha Graham in the early 20th Century. Modern or Contemporary Ballet initially served as a "break". In the 1900's, the European and American dancers started to rebel against the rigid constraints of the Classical ballet. Not only did this radical change alter the technique and some dance disciplines of the Classical, it also liberated the dancers from the most essential part of their costumes - the ballet pointes. This time, instead of having choreography based on years of research and influence from fairy tales and the stories of the elite, the theme of most, if not, all, Modern and especially Contemporary pieces are concerned with more sensitive issues such as politics, social conflicts, the self and its issues with itself, life and the like. 

This video is a sample of a Contemporary dance number in which I was a part of. This long piece was choreographed by La Salle Dance Company - Contemporary's adviser, Mr. Peter Alcedo, Jr. in collaboration with the young choreographers of La Salle Dance Company - Street. This was choreographed for an annual production organized by La Salle Dance Company for the aspiring dancers in the DLSU community - Remix; An Inter-Lasallian Dance Competition. 

This piece was the spot number for Remix '09: Youth for Nation. It features the failures of the disaster management teams/leaders of the nation, how society reacts and copes with the calamities and in turn how the government simply "does nothing". 

Watch out for the little girl in school uniform, oversized white polo and the a blue plaid top with a black scarf, hihi.

Did you see the difference between the two styles? I can very much relate this radical transition of the High to Mass culture, which was studied and shared to us by the Frankfurt School, to the evolution of Classical to the Modern or Contemporary style. Both transitions were caused by resistance, the pursue for freedom and openness and the emerging interest of the society with political of societal issues.

Will there be further developments? Will there be another genre or style as other theories emerge? I guess the only way to find out is to stay tuned! ;)

♥ Reese Corpuz

What Counts as "Culture"

Blog article for the January 26, 2012 class: Birmingham Cultural Studies

This question is one of the most crucial questions the Birmingham Cultural Studies impose among themselves as they were building the foundations of the school.

The Birmingham theories had five main features which tries to define and point out what Culture is and generally explain what Birmingham is all about as a school of thought:

1. Interdisciplinary: This school looks at culture in different point of views from Post Modernism, Post Structuralism, Critical Theory and Feminist theory, which makes it interdisciplinary. 

2. Culture has a wide definition: Culture cannot be defined as easy as one-two-three! It consists of complicated sub-subjects such as identity, values, behavior, and the like. If cannot have a single simple definition because it is a complicated ensemble of learned experiences, further developing and increasing both in quantity and in quality.

3. Rejects High VS Low Culture Distinctions: The theorists of the Birmingham school did not believe that there is actually a distinction between the High and Low Culture. They treat all the cultural expressions as the same height or depth. 

4. Culture is not stagnant wisdom, it is experienced and practiced: Culture cannot just be seen in artifacts and records from the past. Culture is experienced and practiced. It changes almost everyday, as people move, live and survive.

5. Gramsci and Althusser Inspired: Although these two theorists have opposing theories, they still serve as the most looked up to for the Burmingham school. Gramsci talked about cultural hegemony in a sense that it may be defined as an "organizing principle" internalized by the population While Althusser discussed relative autonomy and suggests that culture is detemined by economic forces.

Birmingham Cultural Studies affected the Humanities in ways more than one. First of all, it challenges the Western thought of values and philosophies. Because of this challenge, they then started to incorporate new philosophies and fields such as women's rights, minority rights and popular culture.

Birmingham culture definitely widened the world's take on culture.

♥ Reese Corpuz

More About Sense and Sensibility

This post is to introduce and describe my blog for our subject CULPOLI (Culture and Politics)
and how I got the title Sense and Sensibility.

Nothing can be more interesting than the discussion of the thoughts, personalities, actions and lifestyles of politicians and more broadly, politics.

Yeah, yeah. Politics can be monotonous - discussing familiar theories every now and then, analyzing the same forms of government since Elementary Social Studies, talking about the same people who interact with the same people doing the same things over and over again. Sure! Politics can be boring - with all those thick heavy books discussing and further emphasizing how boring law is and how it is nowhere near fun, reading about commentaries which basically say the same thing, hearing depressing news on the television everyday and every night. Indeed! Politics can be a matter for the old - after all, the aged and mature citizens are the ones directly concerned and directly subjected to the law, the elections, the tax deduction.

As silly as contradicting myself and my first statement in this blog (that nothing can be more interesting than discussing politics), I believe that even though the most common negative sentiments about politics, - it being monotonous, boring and for the old, are true, I also believe that there is another side to it that I saw and experienced which made me become interested to politics and everything in between.

Upon establishing my interest in politics, I now channel everyone's attention to my personal attachment to Filipino culture (and arts). My friends would often refer to me as taga-bundok because they realize how obsessed I am with all things Filipino - Philippine folk dances (above all), Indigenous tribes from both North and South, Filipino food, customs and traditions and Filipino festivals. I am not a hypocrite therefore I admit that I also admire and patronize foreign culture however it is still a fact that I do have a deep inclination to Filipino culture.

In both fields, politics and culture (arts), sense and sensibility is definitely one of the "requirements" in order to understand, appreciate and even practice it. However, in our case, most actors tend to put them aside and focus on competition, self glorification and deception instead.

Sense and Sensibility targets to discuss latest and most popular happenings and events, people and even places if needed be and at the same time remind everyone to put some sense and sensibility in everything that is going on.

This blog will definitely contain my personal thoughts on the political events and issues, most often in the Philippine setting. (Naturally because I am a Filipina.) However, it may also include foreign political issues every now and then because closing oneself to the world is one of the biggest crimes one can commit. That being said, I therefore now emphasize my freedom to say what we have to say, stand firmly and remain loyal to the sides we take and the decisions we make. If in any case I bump into a critical issue and offend certain readers, I apologize in advance but assure you that I will not take back what I said (write) no matter what. Comments (negative and positive ones) will be greatly appreciated (or debunked) as well because I also believe that communication is learning. This blog will also contain sources which would help me further understand and evaluate certain issues. Among all online sources, my top three picks are: bulatlat.com / philippineupdate.com / philippinestoday.net so you will definitely be seeing more from them here. Finally, this blog will contain images, videos or music clips and even dances, (some of which I own and some I will grab from other sources) which would further express my ideas and further input some sense and sensibility in your politically interested minds.

Here's to sense! Here's to sensibility! Here's to me and my thoughts about culture and politics and everything in between!

♥ Reese Corpuz