Perez Hilton (MARK THIS ONE)

Harold Innis said "changes in the mode of communication lie at the heart of social, cultural and economic evolution".

This could not be more true. If you were to ask any university or high school student who Perez Hilton is or what he does or what his website is about, there is no doubt in my mind that they would be able to tell you the correct answer. This website which is basically an online tabloid magazine with his own personal opinions about celebrity gossip. This mode of communicating the latest news about celebrities is indicative of exactly how much our society has evolved. We are now so fixated on what celebrities do, how they dress, who they're dating, that this fixation borders on unhealthy. Our society places an unnecessary amount of value on celebrities and their lives, but nobody really takes a minute to think about how they feel about this. This puts huge amounts of pressure on them to always look the part. We idolize them and so they feel like they need to live up to these standards to the point where it can be harmful for them (look at the number of celebrities in rehab for a multitude of different reasons). Even this video of Britney Spears getting mobbed by paparazzi after she just got out of rehab shows just how unhealthy and frustrating this must be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9lcJHXoPIc. There are also those instances where the paparazzi get injured as a result of this too. This got me thinking.
There is no doubt that we have evolved socially, economically, and culturally through our different uses of media but is this a good thing? The social evolution is the one that really relates to Perez Hilton and is probably the one with the biggest change, however this change might not be good. It really isn't healthy that we fixate of fame and fortune. I think we place value on things that really shouldn't mean that much.
So is this evolution a good thing? Some people don't like change, they think it is bad. Progression and moving forward is usually a good thing, as long as the things we are moving into have meaning. I think that overall our evolution with communications is amazing, but I don't think our cultural and social and even economic evolution are necessarily great.

REMIX - Girl Talk (MARK THIS ONE)

Music has become such a huge part of western culture. It can be considered a language even if there are no words. There are notes and keys and phrases that make up a message for the listeners. Also the voice that is heard can tell the listeners things by sending nonverbal messages. This paralanguage isn't just for songs, it can also be demonstrated through regular sentences but for this post I'm only going to discuss it with regards to songs.

I watched the video on the muscal artist Girl Talk (Features in the picture to the left) where the narrator talks about how this artist takes songs from other pop artists and remixes them to call them his own. The narrator then goes on to talk about how this is grounds for legal action for copyright infringement but he disagrees with this, in the sense that he views this remix of songs as a new piece of work independent of the original. I, on the other hand, completely and utterly 100% disagree with the narrator. This is stealing someone's work, altering it a bit and calling it your own.

I think this is disresepctful to the original author/artist of the song. One of the songs in the video was the Jackson Five's "ABC", since Michael Jackson was such a powerful pop icon and is now deceased I don't think any of his songs should be remixed unless they have the rights to do so (by paying royalties to whoever owns the copyright). The narrator attempts to illustrate how a remix of a song makes it new by playing a part of the remixed "ABC" and asking the listeners who the author of this song is, and then he says "If you said the Jackson 5, you'd be wrong". I disagree with this, Girl Talk did not come up with the notes, words, keys, tempos or any musical aspect of that song. All he did was take a song and rearrange the order of different parts of it and to me, this does not denote any hint of musical talent. Building on this example of Michael Jackson; he conveyed a message in each and every one of his songs through his voice. The key and tempo also helped him to tell stories through his songs. he chose these elements to communicate in the way he wanted to, and they are his creations. Just because these are audible art forms doesn't mean other people should be able to take them and change them to call them their own. Would you take the Mona Lisa and give her a dimple and say that you created that? I doubt it. This is my point, music is a piece of art, it communicates ideas, thoughts, and feelings in the same way a painting or sculpture does. The music should not be changed because that is, in a way changing the ideas, thoughts and feelings that the artist was trying to portray and nobody has the right to do this unless they have been given permission. One thing I thought was over the edge was when Girl Talk described the remixing of pop songs as a way to put that artist in a headlock and pour beer on them. once again, would you do this to any of the famous dead painters? Leonardo Da Vinci? Vincent Van Gogh? Claude Monet? I wouldn't think so, so then how is this any different?