CMST 1111 Final Exam Study Set

What are myths in essence?

"Bad science."

Love objects

"Children and adults want both to love and be loved. Children have dolls and teddy bears, but what do adults have? They have one another, their cars, their pets and gadgets. They need something to love and if they do not have something they will buy or make one." Example: Adverts offer to take us back to childhood with childlike personalities. They sell us things to love and things for our loved ones (including our pets).

Ego gratification

"Ego gratification is related to worth in that they are both about the sense of identity, but this is perhaps a little more base, were we a need for praise and our egos to be 'stroked'." Example: When we do something at work we want to be congratulated and praised, much as we needed to be valued and praised as a child. "You should buy L'Oreal because you know why? You're worth it. Your ego is worth L'Oreal."

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

"Father" of modern fairytale literacy,

Michel Foucault Quote

"If we live in an era of one upping-ship, how to we create control? You don't. You create the illusion"

Reassurance of worth

"In a connected world we can lose sense of who we are and what we are worth. We thus seek reassurance that we are adding value and deserve our place in society" Emotions: doing the right thing, eg saving the environment or helping others. Celebrities are also used when they effectively say 'you will be admired and valued like me. Example: If you wear this watch, you will be admired like me

Roots

"Our roots are a key part of our sense of identity. Where we come from, our heritage, our family, our nation are important for that feeling of who we are. The longer we stay in one place and the longer ago it happened, the more important it is for us. And yet we live mobile lives, flitting from place to place, job to job. We seek roots but in seeking to satisfy other needs we make ourselves rootless." Emotions: We have a place to call home Example: We identify with our old school, our college, where we were brought up, our country, our employer, our religion.

Immortality

"Perhaps the biggest fear we have is of death. Or maybe not death but of ceasing, of becoming nothing. We likewise seek to create meaning in our lives so we may live beyond death. We love to believe that we will always be young, always be beautiful, and always live forever" Emotions: It takes away our fear of death. Example: We have children, write books, build companies and more. We also seek to cheat age, striving to look younger when perhaps we should grow older more gracefully.

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)

"Technology as Communication linked as social progress."

Rosalind Williams

"Technology determines history."

Charles A. Beard (1874-1948)

"Technology marches in seven league boots from one ruthless revolutionary conquest to another, tearing down old factories and industries, flinging up new processes with terrifying rapidity"

Michael L. Smith

"The belief that social progress is driven by technological innovation, which in turn follows as 'inevitable' course."

Lance Packer

"The consumer is not a fool, the consumer is your wife."

Bruce Bimber

"The idea that technological development determines social change..."

Big Bakhtin idea

"The sacred with the profane, the new and the old, the high and the low"

Creative outlets

"We all like creating and making things, and even a simple assembly process as with Lego toys can bring much pleasure. Many jobs have little creative content, leaving this need unfulfilled. We thus seek creative opportunity in other parts of our life." Example: Adverts offer creativity when they sell objects where we can be creative, from food ingredients to clothes.

Emotional Security

"We all start out as fragile emotional beings and very few of us achieve deep emotional security, so we all keep seeking it." Emotions: comfort, happiness, and banishing of bad feelings, security aspect, emphasizing home, permanence and safety Example: Temple University ads

What was the goal of torturing Damien?

"We can break their body, but the goal is to break their will."

What was the goal of the Panopticon?

"We don't break the mind, we create the docile body."

Sense of power

"When we are in control we a sense of ability to choose and perhaps power over others. When we can direct others we move up the social order and so are, theoretically at least, safer." Emotion: Buying something will put you in charge Example: Big cars, chunky tools, solid houses and old banks all make us feel safe and, when we own or use them, powerful.

Aspects of Bakhtin

- Free and familiar interaction between differing people - Eccentric behavior - Carnivalistic misalliances - Sacrilegious

C.S. Lewis myth characteristics

1. A myth is pre-eminently a pattern of events and is, as such, communicable by any medium capable of reproducing the pattern: mime, film, dance, even (perhaps) Hermann Hesse's "Glasperlenspiel. 2. The pleasure of myth is independent of the usual narrative devices of surprise or suspense 3. As a consequence, characterization is relatively unimportant and the individual persons or personal agents that appear in myths are typically underdeveloped by comparison with, say, the practice of a novelist 4. Myth is usually fantastic, dealing with preternatural events, persons, and relationships. Myth is always grave and we feel it to be ominous, even awe-inspiring.

Technology is 2 things:

1. A predictable path largely beyond cultural or political influence 2. Society organizes itself to support and develop a technology or technology overall once being introduced

When was Foucault born?

1926

The Mechanical Bride

1951 - Addresses the change in American society from agrarian to urban population centers with the development of factories and communication effects accompanying such changes.

McLuhan's biggest goal

A return to the global village, and media will return us there

Myth

A sophisticated and abstract mode of thought. Advances primary culture values and reinforces fundamental power structures

Packer's Idea of Ads

Ads force us to broadcast our identity to the world, we use them to say much about our personal identity

Myths can be used to...

Advance fundamental religious or metaphysical visions of the world at large. Sometimes they fail.

When and where did Foucault die?

Age 57 in 1984, Cimetiere du Vendeuvre in Vienne, passed away from AIDS

Who did Tolkien honor?

Andrew Lang

Sociological myth

Being mythologies help maintain social norm

Postmodernists

Believe things are always situational or temporary and there is no universal truth or stability

Discipline and Punish (1974)

Book by Foucault, "It is the act of punishment, not the punishment itself" Punishing and disciplining people are both constantly changing

Two Myths of the Harlem Shake

Carnival and strict hierarchical order/terror dogmatism

Examples of Eucatastrophe

Christian Gospel and The Birth of Christ The Resurrection in the Incarnation

Modernism

Creates a mirage to mask the creation of this "disorder"

Cosmological myth

Dealing with the origins of the universe

What book did Foucault study?

Descartes' First Meditation

McLuhan's Background

English lit, wrote Mechanical Brides

"Sight" Directors

Eran May-raz, Daniel Lazo

Foucault's role of advocacy

Every attempt to create 'order' always demands the creation of an equal amount of disorder

Where is myth studied?

Fields of anthropology, archeology, and the study of religion

Life Purpose

Finding the balance between Apollo and Dionysus aspects

What was Foucault's thesis paper?

Folie et deraison: Histoire de la folie a l'âge classique. It becomes known as Madness and Unreason: History of Madness in the Classical Age (1961).

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1977)

Force in the field, godfather, 6"8, Professor of University of Toronto, Canadian There is still a statue of him in the University of Toronto Age of Television

US TV Channels

Four channels all located in the US that had lack of representation and debatable representation

How many myths exist?

Four; Mystical, Cosmological, Sociological, and Psychological

Who's ideas did Foucault parallel?

Friedrich Nietzsche who "marked the beginning of the end of Modernism"

Dionysus

Grapes + Wine Grapevine in hair Perpetual party guy Expression, debauchery, disorder

What is 125th street?

Harlem

When was the Harlem Shake really invented?

Harlem in 80's

Who inspired Foucault?

Heidegger and Nietzsche

Plato's Cave

Informs us on the realm of eternal objects from which the soul has come and to which it returns after many reincarnations. Also tells us about the spiritual and moral values of the soul when it tries to return to its origins.

What is the role of dance in the communication of cultural identity?

It is a form of nonverbal communication that often tells a story of one's culture.

What does the Harlem Shake represent?

It is a statement about class

Panopticon

Jeremy Benthem's idea of a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed.

Damiens the Regicide

Killed the king and was publicly tortured to prove a point to the public. PUBLIC ASPECT IS KEY.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Literary belief; the reader's mind enters a Secondary World. Inside it, what relates is and therefore alters what is considered to be "true." However, that truth has to be credible which commands the writer to be creative and have an elvish craft.

What is Carnival?

Madness and chaos that brings people together "That which is sacred becomes overcome by profane"

Paradox of McLuhan

McLuhan's media theory seeks to use electronic media to return original place of self-presence, identity, community - the global village.

What type of theorist was McLuhan?

Media theorist

Are Apollo and Dionysus killing each other?

No, they are wrestling

Half of Canada believes

Only 17% of Canada has a Neo-Nazi problem More than half of the US has a Neo-Nazi problem

Psychological myth

Or the creation of a shared psyche

Where was Foucault born?

Poitiers, France

Was Foucault modernist or post-modernist?

Postmodernist

What to prisoners do in the panopticon?

Prisoners internalize the guard's gaze They become paranoid

Postmodernism

Rejects the idea that there is a grand scheme to things

Apollo and Dionysus

Represent the basis of oodles of philosophy

What did Foucault study?

Sex, death, punishment, and drugs

Global Village

Simplifying of the whole world into one village through the use of electronic media // Created by Marshall McLuhan

What McLuhan learns

Stereotypes against Canadians becomes english literature He understands the power of words to create meaning He finds American stories, and there are interpersonal stories but intermediate

Fairy-stories

Stories not concerned with possibility, but with desirability. With desire, comes success in stories

Apollo

Systematic learning Truth and music Insight, light Order, focus

Augmented Reality

Takes a real time photo and puts sometime on top of it, different than VR

Mystical myth

That which enables human beings to accept the burdens of life

What myth does the Bible mimic?

The Combat Myth

C.S. Lewis

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, said myths need six basic characteristics to be successful

Docile Body (Foucault)

The idea that constant supervision and forced discipline broke the will of the criminal and made him easy to control by people in authority

Why does Foucault believe the prison system lasted so long?

The ruling class used criminality as a way of preventing confrontations that could lead to revolution. It gave them power.

What was Tolkien influenced by?

The way stories were presented to him, and the inherent tone and quality of those stories.

Technological Determinism

Theory that assumes that a society's technology determines the development of its social structure and cultural values

Benefits of criminalizing outcasts

They are easier to supervise and keep disorganized by keeping the members flowing in and out of the prison system, and they cannot affect the political system

What do myths do?

They seek to mediate to us ultimate realities, those which lie beyond the reach of our ordinary experience

What is the overall response to the "new" Harlem Shake in Harlem?

They think it is disrespectful and appropriating their culture. "That's west fourth dancing"

Why do we buy things?

Things buy you immortality because they continue when you die

Charles Bead view on tech

Thought it had a negative impact such as the decline in farming

Regicide

To kill the regit, killing of a king

Eucatastrophe

Tragedy is to drama as _________ is to fairy-tales

What McLuhan does

Turns on television to find out what it means to be Canadian

Where did Foucault teach?

University of Warsaw and the University of Hamburg (French) University of Cermont- Ferrand (Philosophy) University of Paris- VIII at Viennes (directed dept. of Philosophy in 1968) College de France (Professor of History of Systems of Thought, 1970)

There is a reference to West 4th What does that mean and does it link to the above?

West Fourth is a boujee capital that has very wealthy stores and is predominantly white.

Industrial Revolution (1760)

What Beard wrote about negatively because industry was taking over and rural places turn into cities while farmers have to become factory workers.

Are children capable of literary belief?

Yes, if the story-maker is good enough to produce it.

palimpsest

a very old document on which the original writing has been erased and replaced with new writing

Hot medium

allows for less participation

Cold medium

appeals to people on tv

Heilbroner Argument (from long reading)

technology is developed step by step and to get where we are now // ex: A society cannot have nuclear technology without passing through electricity