Thinking Back

Thinking back over my personal experience with celebrities, I was never really much one to get excited over them. Yes I would jump up and down in excitement whenever we would start watching an Olsen twin movie that I hadnt seen yet but other than that I didn't care for them. I listened to boy band music back in elementary but I never knew their names or cared about their personal lives. Even as a teenager I would listen to rock music and it would only be the groups I cared most about would I know their history, names, etc. To this day Escape The Fate is the group I know most about. And it's not because I'm not a fan of the group, it's just because I'm not obsessed with them. To me there are more important things to live than to waste my life on obsessing over a strangers. Do I go nuts everytime I'm at a concert? Yes. Do I have posters up all over my room dreaming that they're watching me while I sleep like a creepy stalker? (Twilight reference joke) No.

And two of my best friends are the opposite of me. One is a huge Kpop fan and she'll tweet the celebs she likes and get overly excited and spasm and flail all over the place for days when they tweet her back or some huge exciting news happened like they changed their hair color...Oh so exciting.

And the other listens to Arabic music and actually knows the celebrities because her relatives work with them overseas. And she'll get crazy anytime her favorite singer comes to town and she gets to talk to him at a dinner or see him at a club or he mentions her. Which is understandable if someone you're a huge fan of, who is internationally famous and whose music comes on whenever you're at a party, knows who you are and then asks how you're doing, not because its good manners but because they actually care. Its like if Justin Beiber ended up being the family friend of a twelve year old female fan who had photos of him all over her school books. Yes she would be excited and talk about it for like a month and keep a picture of them together on her cell phone as the back ground wall paper but when actually there talking with them, they'll have the sanity and the curtesy to remember they're just a friend coming to visit and hang out.

My View Of Fandom

People indulge in their fandom in many ways. I have friends who are Lord of The Rings fans who will actualy start talking in Elf or Gaelic, Harry Potter fans who role play, Simpson fans who know every episode by heart, Stargate SG-1 fanatics like my family who have every episode on DVD and the original movie on VHS, inside jokes between friends about events that happened in Dr.Who, Fanfiction by writers on Fanfiction.net and Fan Art uploaded onto DeviantArt.com, Anime conventions filled with people in costume, etc. Often times these habits or acts of fandom have been typically reffered to as something for geeks, dorks, and nerds in movies and many times the characters are all alone in their interest but from my experience I find that such people with simular interests tend to seek each other out because its more exciting and fun for people in general to share their interests. This a natural instinct from my point of view, to relate to one another and belong somewhere, a desire for companionship. Why a specific interest may appeal to many people can be just because everyone else seems to be into it and the acts of fandom are more exciting for them than the original object of interest (Such as Harry Potter seems to be for some people) or it could be for the actual object and how they relate to it and its plot and they just want to be a part of it.

80s Movies

I'm a huge fan of 80s movies, especially the romances. And one aspect that is constantly brought up is the difference between the classes. The classes usually being the popular vs unpopular and rich vs the poor. You'll constantly see a couple trying to overcome the differences between their social classes. Examples of these would be Pretty In Pink, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind Of Wonderful, The Outsiders, Can't Buy Me Love, as shown in this trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiS42RHaKyg

The "popular" teens are shown as this whole different "higher"class that everyone "wishes" they were because they're so much better or "chic". But once they reach the other side they realize, they're no different and life isn't better on either side, they both have their ups and downs and they're all humans or teens. Or the way the Character Ronald put it during the cafeteria scene in the end of the movie "Cools, nerds, your side, my side, man it's all bull sh*t! Its just tough enough to be yourself."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzifA0lwnpc&feature=related

Not Your Erotic, Not Your Exotic

This weeks topic in class about how women are featured in the media as sexual and those of non-white ethnicitys as exotic beauties reminded me of this Def Jam Poem by a Palistinian American Woman called Not Your Erotic, Not Your Exotic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcwnJfJ7fTQ&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL1B346403046E6F69

Through her poetry she bashes the portral of non-white ethnic women as sexual and exotic simply for their differences to white women when in reality there are women all over the world who look the same so why is it just in America their differences are seen as "exotic"? Why is it in America something as simple as a blink (which everyone capable of doing, does) can be depicted as something mysterious and sexual? She compares this idea of their "otherness" being sexual to caging a foreign bird simply for its beauty, and in that way not really appreciating its beauty. Because part of a birds beauty is its freedom and flight. By caging other ethnicitys into this idea of otherness, they're not really appreciating their real beauty.

Fighting Stereotypes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA-ZASFmuiY&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLBA3B9584B7ABF3D5

Recently I've gotten back into one of my favorite tv shows, Little Mosque on the Prairie which is a Canadian sitcom about a small towns population of muslims dealing with racism, stereotyping, orientalism and other similar concerns muslims and arabs face in modern society. They're constantly getting bad press, mostly from the local radio station host Fred. But when you watch them you see that they all have their own concerns that can be related to a general audience. There's a teenager named Layla who deals with trying to be a normal teenage girl who likes music and boys but also following her religion and trying to get along with her dad. There's the Imam whose young and just starting out and trying his best to be a leader. There's Rayyan who is the town docter and has several love lifes throughout the series. There's Yassir and Baber who show the ordeals fathers and husbands go through. And they make fun of stereotyping in practically every episode.

Majority of the sitcom can be watched on youtube, search LMOTP or Little Mosque on the Prairie.

Forget the Soap

I recently started wacthing The New Girl, which is a show that recently came out on Fox. It's a comedy that centers around this girl who moves in with three guys. I love it because while it is simple and comedic, it always has values and morals tied in. One guy is a "douchebag" and still cares for his friends first, another character named Nick who shows that guys also have feelings that can be hurt and that females can also use and abuse males, and like many other roommate comedies it shows you have to respect and accept one another.
I love this shows relationships. It's not that everyone is sleeping with one another or they all have the same take on how relationships should go. It varies with each person. But there's no mingling between the main characters. Granted there's only been three episodes so far, so I can't exactly say nothing will happen but from what I've seen it appears that nothing will happen since there doesn't look like there's any interest between them. It's refreshing to see a show that says women and men can be close and still just be friends and nothing more. Unlike the hit tv show Friends and even the nickleodean kids show ICarly, where everyone is with another main character at some point.

Universally Understood

Being a huge fan of anime, like many others I have watched Naruto. But having a huge dislike for English dubbing I tend to watch animes in Japanese with English subtitles. In the Japanese version of Naruto, the lead character has this catch phrase "Dattebayo" which isn't really a word. It is a vocal tic that has a universal understanding amongst it's audience. Such as mhhmm can be understood as "Yes I understand". If you still don't understand what I'm saying, an example can be given by this Arab American comedian at 5:19

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KD1CHF9Ub4

So when they dubbed the anime Naruto into English they needed to change the leads catch phrase into something that could be understood by their new English speaking audience and they choose to replace it with the words "Believe it!" So that every time he made a promise he would say "Believe it!" in place of "Dattebayo". Which highly annoys me but it was the best they could come up with which is understandable.

Lady Hegemony

In class we were learning about how different genres and cultures will be partially assimilated into what is considered to be the "norm" so that they will feel as if they were accepted by society. And what I feel is a good example of this is Lady Gaga. Once when watching a late night television show Lady Gaga appeared and was interviewed. She told the interviewer that her music was for those who felt like "freaks" like she did when she was younger, those who felt like they didn't fit in. Because as she said in another interview "Since my childhood in school and for a very long time, I used to always feel like a freak. I didn’t have many friends… I got made fun of every day… I related to men more than I related to women. I felt like a freak, and I had nowhere to go… I’ve watched this massive group of misfits join together to liberate themselves… We believe that we aren’t the freaks, that everybody else is the freaks."
And I feel that she has given many people who feel the same as she did, the courage to proudly accept and show who they are in many different forms such as the way they dress. I even remember hearing that she's coming out with a clothing brand whose clothes are unique for those who wish to stand out in their fashion tastes but are still "relatively normal" as she labeled them. So through her clothing brand and music, Lady Gaga has helped to assimilate others like herself into what is acceptable by the collective society.