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"Manufacturing Consent" Response - Homework 3

Noam Chomsky's points introduced in "Manufacturing Consent" hold quite a bit of truth. Generally, as a whole, people consider what they read in newspapers (or watch on the news, etc) as fact, as if history literally wrote it. We forget that the news is written by people, and that each person holds their own opinions and biases. And that people are subject to bribery and persuasion. We hear most of what is going on in the world from the largest news media outlets, which, as Chomsky points out, are owned by massive corporations and strangled into submission by a small group of elites. This creates one or two opposing views, and weeds out minority viewpoints from being heard, the remembrance of history is biased, and people are often uninterested in things they should be concerned with. Chomsky refers to a concept called "Necessary Illusions", which, at its core, makes certain that the mass of people will not become curious or involved in politics. This makes it easier for the elite ruling class to keep its power and control, because no one is bothering to fight them. Because this documentary is a tad outdated (1993), it does not mention the progress made in recent years. It seems that people are becoming more and more aware of the inequalities suffered by the United States people. In the early 2010s, the Occupy Wall Street Movement (which is still happening, contrary to popular belief) repeatedly brought up the inequality between the 1% and the 99%. Even though the United States claims to be a "democracy", the power lies solely with the richest 1% of people. The OWS spent a great deal of time attempting to convince people that despite how the 1% seems to have the most power, it would only take the 99% uniting and fighting for it to take all of that power back. This example alludes to Chomsky's idea that if people were to work at forming their independent minds with the community of people, rather in isolation, the people would be able to take the power back from the elite ruling class that is currently in control of mass media. He says that ordinary people do, contrary to their common beliefs, have the intelligence to understand situations, and have the power to take action. In order to learn the most that they can, they must look to alternative media, and become involved in political and action groups (such as OWS) that they can learn from. People must socially and politically work to make a difference.  We do and we must have the power to act intellectually and collectively to improve our lives. As Chomsky says, at this point, there are only two possibilities: the people will unite and take control of their destiny, or there will be no destiny to control.

Illustrator Tutorial Face

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Layer Experiment Proj "Turn the Udder Cheek and Moo-ve On"

"The Ethics of Digital Manipulation" Response - Homework 2

To be perfectly honest, I don't completely understand why the ethics of digital manipulation are being questioned. It seems to me that this same thing has been discussed not only multiple times, but with the invention or development of every new art form. The only way to stay morally accepted in art, is to not claim to be what you are not. Do not lie with the intent of deceiving people into firmly believing that subjective art is fact. The concept of a "genre" in storytelling was to blatantly tell people that what they are reading is simply true or imaginative. That is why we have categories such as "Fiction" and "Non-fiction". Even painting can be separated into movements and categories (not exactly in the same way, but the fundamentals are there): "Abstraction" "Photo-realism" "Surrealism", etc. Art deserves to be expressed in every way by everyone. If ethics are going to be so brutally discussed, why make art at all? If you are a news broadcaster, tell the truth. If you are a storyteller, tell an imaginative tale. I understand that they are constantly confused (Hello, Fox News), but they have no excuse for being confused. I fully agree with the author's sense of ethics and morality, but I think at this point, they should not be up for debate. As long as the artist says something such as "Hey, this is just my interpretation of the thing, not the thing itself", it has a right to not be questioned. But if the artist says "Hey, this is actually the thing and can be used as an accurate portrayal of the thing", then it is no longer just art and has the right to be questioned. If people constantly intentionally lie to each other all of the time (whether through stories or photos or documentaries, etc), no one will be able to make sense of the world and we will all merely be living in each other's imaginations. If it happens unintentionally, then hopefully there are other truthful sources to back it up. Everything we know is subjective. Every absolute truth that we think we know is most likely made up or manipulated in one form or another. But as long as we know that, and as long as every one is on the same page of not intentionally lying to each other, photograph manipulation should not be a bigger issue than any other source of truth/not-truth that has been around for hundreds of years.

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Indie Singer/Songwriter Album Cover