Inactive Activism

Social media has created a huge shift in the way we communicate. From being able to instantly connect with people from all over the world, social media is so easy, even some of our grandparents are using it. But it doesn’t just stop at seeing the latest yarn creation that your grams has created. There has been a shift from traditional advertising on television, in newspaper ads or on the radio. Businesses have been using social media to get to you for years. From creating businesses pages across all platforms and holding giveaways or contests to promote themselves. Taking it a step further, social media is a great way to reach all demographics of people to get information out. It’s no wonder that non-profit organizations, various causes and programs are using social media to get their word out and raise awareness… but is it working?

From hashtags on Twitter and Instagram to challenges on Facebook. Are any of these “raise awareness” campaigns actually accomplishing anything? 

The most recent trend on Facebook these days is the “No make up” challenge. Girls are baring their makeup free faces to their friends on facebook and tagging their girlfriends to do the same. At first it just seemed like a cool campaign to talk about self-image and confidence. But that’s because every girl that was participating in the campaign was not mentioning that the challenge was to raise awareness for Breast Cancer. 

Another popular trend that is happening on Instagram is the hashtag #cockinasock. Men from all over are throwing socks on their fun bits in order to raise awareness for testicular cancer. 

I love the fact that my girlfriends are able to proudly show their makeup-free faces online and trust me, I love the fact that beautiful men are nearly naked on instagram, this girl is NOT complaining. However, I have to take a stand and say that the original message is being lost. 

Are any of these people doing anything else? Are they donating money for research? Participating in a run? Or even directing their followers to places where they can do those things? 

Most likely, the answers to any of those and related question is, in fact, no. So what’s the point? Participating in these trends is just useless as liking a page. You haven’t done anything! Your sense of accomplishment is fake! If you actually cared about any of these causes, go do something about it! 

These two examples are definitely not the first of their kind and won’t be the last. But I beg you, don’t participate in these trends and promote the click-happy individuals who feel proud of themselves for doing something, when really, they aren’t.  

The Popularity of Snapchat

If you haven’t heard of Snapchat, you’re behind the times. Apparently, it’s the hott app for kids these days. But if you want to know anything about it, don’t Google it. Give me a min, sit right there and I’ll tell you all about the amazing fun Snapchat has to offer. 

Initially released in 2011, Snapchat is a free image sharing application. Available on iPhone and Android, users can take photos, videos and add text or drawings to be sent to anyone else who has Snapchat. A time limit of 1 second to 10 seconds can be set on how long the snaps can be viewed by recipients. After this time, the image cannot be viewed again. 

Like with any other problem with the Internet, you always get those that ruin it and use it to send naughty pictures. The idea that you can send pictures to select individuals that will disappear after 10 seconds, inevitably leads to horny teens to send badly lit images of their private bits. Now I’m not saying that that’s not one way to use the app. But there is so much more to be explored! So much more fun and scheming to be had!

            

The annoying thing about Snapchat is, if you decide you want to send your snap to everyone, you have to go through and select every person on your contact list. There is no option to select all. Come on Snapchat, want to send this ugly face to EVERYONE. Some users like to snap when they’re drunk. Waking up that next morning to a list of snaps that you sent with no memory of what you sent can be terrifying. But hilarious for all your friends. Also, sometimes receiving snaps from people and not knowing if it was sent to just you or everyone. As a person who overthinks everything, I never know if I should respond or not. 

In my group of friends, the Snapchat frenzy began with a challenge to play Snapchat Fight Club. Hear me out. We take send each other snaps of random things, but you can’t talk about it with anyone. First one to crack, loses! Doesn’t sound exciting enough? Start sending pictures of the most diabolical things that your friends can’t keep their mouths shut about and see who can’t last. My friends and I didn’t make it a week. Dirty things to funny things were sent back and forth. But more than anything, I realized how artistic and creative my friends could be with the drawing feature. It’s exciting to see how people use Snapchat’s short time allotment to do or say things that they normally wouldn’t do. 

The app is also good for connecting people far away from each other. Instead of bombarding Facebook or Instagram with every day mundane happenings, you can send your loved ones “snaps” to keep them connected with your daily life. Great for your nesting mother or long distance significant other. 

Comparing Snapchat to other social media platforms… sending multiple chats at a time to bombard friends with adventures of your Finn action figure, but on Facebook or Instagram, more than 3 posts a day can get annoying. Sometimes these things just aren’t worth archiving or documenting. The randomness and short time limit is satisfying enough.

Sure, Snapchat might be a commentary on the fact that we can’t commit to our crazy images. Maybe we have a problem where 10 seconds of information isn’t fast enough. For all those teens, snapchat gives them a gateway to send each other dirty pictures. But at its base, snapchat as the potential to become one of those little things in life that is just fun and adds a little randomness to your every day routine to put a smile on your face.

Tinder and Online Dating

With the evolution of the digital age, we’ve had vast changes in the way we communicate. From instant messaging to video chatting and everything in between, there are more ways to contact people than ever before. So today we’re going to talk about dating and online dating. 

Meeting people can be a really daunting task whether you’re at a bar or a club or at a house party, sometimes you feel like you’ve depleted those resources and you venture into the wonderful World Wide Web to try your chances. Deciding to meet online can be really scary because with shows like America’s Most Wanted and Catfish it’s kind of hard to trust people on the Internet. Crazy stories about people pretending to be what they’re not, can keep people away.  But it seems, still thousands of people go online to try their luck at a little bit of romance.

Some of the most popular dating websites out there are Eharmony, Christian Mingle, Lava Life, Plenty of Fish and OKCupid. All of these sites have varying degrees of seriousness and each have their own reputation. Where Eharmony and Lava Life seem to be for serious relationships, Christian Mingle seems to be the punchline of all dating website jokes. Plenty of Fish is just for hooking up and OkCupid is just a smorgasbord of everything. And then we have Tinder.

Tinder is a free app that launched in 2012 and its an app that links up with your Facebook and uses your profile pictures and interests as part of your profile. With a 500 word space for a description – which nobody really looks at – that’s pretty much it for your profile. The app takes your location into consideration and presents you with users within a certain distance from you. You can set your settings to show people from 1km away to as far as 80km away. As opposed to having really excessive questionaires and essays like in the other websites. Tinder, really relies heavily on your images and that’s something it gets critiqued on a lot.

So the app is fairly simple. Based on your location your home feed with show you pictures of individuals with their name and age. So you can click on their image to see more of their pictures, their description and if they share interests or friends with you on Facebook. From there you decide whether you like them or not. Swiping left means “nope”  and swiping means you “liked” them. But the one interesting thing about Tinder is that you can’t communicate with someone, unless you’ve both mutually shown interest in each other. When two people have indicated that they “like” each other, a message is sent to both parties to tell them so and the conversation starts from there.

The simplicity of the app makes it appealing. It eliminates writing and reading long winded essays on profiles. And the barrier of not being able to talk to someone without showing mutual interest feels more safe and reduces the amount of unwanted messages. The focus on connecting with people within at most 80 km away promotes the idea of meeting in person after connecting on the app, fostering just what the app suggests.

It’s easy to get caught up in the perpetual motion of swiping either left or right. And even when you have a list of individuals that have indicated mutual interest, it seems people are still to shy to initiate conversation. So if we’re only swiping left and right and not talking, how does this app differ from sites like Hot or Not? It seems to reinforce the superficiality of dating. But just because we’re doing it online, as opposed to scoping out people at the bar, why is it suddenly have a different connotation?

Have we lost all social skills that we’re swiping left and right to meet people based on pictures and nothing else? Or has it always been this way and the new app is just the way we’re doing it now? If that is the way we’re doing it now, what does that say about us? That we only care about looks? That we’re all shallow and that anybody that ever uses Tinder is only interested in hooking up?

But just like any other dating website or app, at its base, Tinder just provides an experience for meeting people. It doesn’t seem to work any better or worse than other dating websites or apps, just another option for meeting people. Meeting other people you know can be amusing. Having your friends swipe right or left repeatedly have the potential to ignite unusual conversations. The key to any of these ways of meeting people, is the way you use them. Using these spaces to create your profile, swipe left or right and nothing else is just pointless. But asking the right questions can make or break a conversation.

If you decide to try Tinder, don’t be shy! Ask a fun question and see if you actually end up finding love.

Is Digital Media Corrupting the World of Art Criticism?

An upcoming colloquium on feminism and theatre criticism in the media, to be delivered by Professor Jill Dolan, Distinguished Professor at Princeton University, brings to light how criticism in general has changed in the digital age. Taking into consideration multiple perspectives, it is clear that there are many advantages and disadvantages to how criticisms are evolving.  

With the introduction and popularity of the Internet, our public sphere has opened up immensely. The Internet has allowed people from all over the world to engage in any discussion. This open platform has provided the opportunity for dialogue to happen almost instantaneously and archived Instead of a piece of criticism to be released and perhaps a review to follow, we get a flow of back and forth discussion on one topic and the opportunity for criticism to evolve quickly. 

Criticism has also seen a shift from remaining in print to moving to different media. Many more individuals are now able to present their thoughts not only in print but also through audio, video, or art such as music or animation. The Internet makes resources more accessible and new and offers more creative ways to express one's thoughts and opinions. 

Print criticism was usually published by those who had cultural credibility and was highly regarded, whereas now any individual with an opinion can post their thoughts publically. Whether that opinion is credible, valid or even valued becomes muddled amongst the discussion as a whole. Against the plethora of information online, print critics are increasingly  less valued as experts in their field.

What ends up happening is that Internet accessibility allows nonprofessional to post their criticisms online along with professionals. With the right terminology and regular posts, it’s not difficult to gain a following. However, most times that following are not professionals either. Yet this following then validates the writer’s criticisms and opinions as credible information, giving the writer a sense of entitlement that perhaps is not so deserved.

Even though there is an abundance of nonprofessionals and entitled online critics who have more of a following than they should, there are just as many individuals who are skeptical of what they read, hear or see online. Between all those that support one another, there still needs to be people who are critical of what they consume. And because there are just as many people questioning one another as supporting one another, there is hope yet. 

As an example, any person can create an online platform on which they critique various films or television programs. This person can have zero education in film or television studies, but with Internet access and a smart phone they can upload videos to YouTube voicing their opinions for anyone to see. The hope is that other people watching will be quick to realize the lack of education and credibility of such individuals. 

YouTube can be the perfect catalyst for people to learn in a fun and easy way. Channels such as Idea Channel and Crash Course with brothers John and Hank Green present knowledge through fun videos with fast-talking and cute animation. Shows such as these feature people who do have formal education and are using the Internet to reach a larger audience but also have fun at the same time. It can double as both an entertainment and educational experience. YouTube allows for those with an account to respond to videos with videos or reply in comments. Anyone with Internet access and a Youtube account, anywhere in the world, has the opportunity to join in the conversation. 

Further there are platforms such as Rotten Tomatoes that consider the opinions and critiques of various published critics and present the public with a numerical value on the quality of a film. This is only effective if readers look past the numerical rating and read the actual reviews from critics. Such websites make it easy for consumers to devalue critics. 

The hope is that both online criticism and print criticism can exist together instead of competing, for both expert criticism and amateur criticism are valuable in different ways. The Internet and print criticism alike have advantages and disadvantages; it is just the evolution of communication in our world. It is worth analyzing how these changes are affecting the way we communicate but naïve to dismiss one form or the other. 

The ability to learn from millions of people from various perspectives is a privilege in this digital era that was never before possible. However, it’s pertinent to remember to constantly question what we know and what we think we know; that is the only way to evolve as humanity. 

Speaking more on the topic, Professor Dolan will be visiting Brock on February 21st at 10am – 12pm. In addition to her lecture entitled “Moving the Body Politic: How Feminism and Theatre Inspire Social Re-Imaginings”, Dolan will also be teaching a master class in theatre criticism to dramatic arts students. Professor Dolan’s visit will be part of the colloquium at Brock University, The Changing Face of Theatre Criticism in the Digital Age. More specifically, the discussion will consider how the digital age is affecting the critical industry in the Niagara region and how it will continue to evolve into the future.

The Evolution of the Disney Princess Movie

Disney has released their best movie yet by straying away from the traditional princess movie conventions that the Studio helped develop in the first place. Heating things up at the box office is Frozen, a story about sisterhood. Despite the limited amount of promotion for this film, it has been a clear commercial success, already passing the $800 million mark worldwide.

With the entire main cast having been on Broadway, the musical numbers in this film could not be better. Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel lend their voices to sisters Anna and Elsa, respectively.  When Elsa freezes the land into an eternal winter, Anna takes it upon herself to bring back summer. Along the way she meets her first love, Hans (Santino Fontana), Kristoff and his trusty reindeer Sven (both voiced by Jonathon Groff), and a lovable snowman named Olaf with a burning desire to experience summer (Josh Gad).

There are two engaging duets in this film, one between Bell and Menzel, “For The First Time In Forever,” and the other with Bell and Fontana, “Love Is An Open Door”. With some very clever and ironic lyrics, it is hard to forget Olaf’s daydream tune about the experience of being “In Summer”. Along with these and other musical numbers are a great selection of sing-along songs.

But what makes Frozen truly remarkable is the way it changes the classic Disney princess movie [you should name 1 or 2 titles you have in mind]. Here Disney becomes self-aware, changes up the humour, and unexpected villain is revealed and contemporary themes are consciously incorporated. 

Disney makes fun of itself several times throughout this story. One of the most noteworthy moments remains Kristoff’s confusion with Anna’s decisions, “Hang on, you mean to tell me you got engaged to someone you just met that day?” Since most previous Disney princess movies end with the princess falling in love in  a mere matter of days, it is refreshing to hear how self-aware this one line is. 

Another new concept Disney tackled in this film was the surprise villain. Usually children’s movies have a very clear distinction between good and evil characters. Talking aloud of schemes reveals them. Such was not the case with Frozen, however. The character we expected to be the antagonist is not, and when the true evil character is finally revealed, it comes as a true surprise. 

We have seen a recent push for strong female characters in animated films such as in Brave, Tangled and now Frozen. We see a similar character in second wave classic Disney Princess movies in Mulan. In Frozen, despite Kristoff accompanying Anna, Anna does not need his help.  She even saves him a few times. 

This could very well have stood as a strong story about sisterhood; the romantic subplot did not need to exist at all. Along with Brave and now Frozen, hopefully we will continue to see more princess stories that do not centre around attaining a romantic partner. “For The First Time In Forever” Disney revolutionizes the classic princess movie and audiences are loving it. 

McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys Causing Unhappiness

Surely nobody has noticed my absence on this blog as nobody actually follows it. That's cool. I'm more disappointed in myself more than anything. 
But! I'm back in action folks! (sound of crickets)
I'm taking a class in my final semester of university where I'm writing cultural criticism pieces throughout most of the class. I'm going to make a point of posting them on here in an attempt to keep some sort of routine for myself! This is my second entry, I don't want to introduce it cause I think it stands on it's own. Thanks for stopping by!!
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McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys Causing Unhappiness 

The newest line of McDonald’s Happy Meal toys has caused widespread unhappiness. Gendered toys are nothing new for McDonald’s, so why is this new line causing such buzz online? Adventure Time toys are being offered just for boys.

On January 17th, McDonald's Happy Meals started to serve toys themed after the popular kids’ television show on Cartoon Network, Adventure Time. However, this option is only available for the boys. The girls are offered items themed to the Paul Frank brand. Adventure Time is known for being a show that both boys and girls can enjoy. Additionally, the Adventure Time toys only feature the male characters from the beloved kids’ show. Major female characters from the show are missing including, Princess Bubblegum, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess and Tree Trunks. Only Jake the dog, Finn the human, the Ice King and BMO are offered up as toys. Taking it further, McDonald’s offers two versions of the toys featuring Jake and Finn. There was no reason to leave out the female characters or exclude girls from being able to receive them. From blogs on Tumblr to articles on Huffington Post, people are talking and they’re not happy. We want L-S-P (Lump Space Princess)!

One particular episode from Adventure Time swaps the gender of all the characters seamlessly. Jake the dog becomes Cake the cat, Finn the human becomes Fionna the human and all the other characters swap genders as well.  The adventures that the gender swapped characters went on were just as exciting as those of Finn and Jake. One of the recurring characters, BMO, is frequently referred to using both gender pronouns leaving his/her gender ambiguous. And in the gender swap episode, BMO shows no difference in appearance, implying that there was no opposite gender to switch to.

In an age where the issue of gay rights is discussed on a daily basis world wide, questioning how it affects young children around us becomes more and more important. Gendering toys reinforces gender binaries that are naturalized while growing up. McDonald’s has reinforced these gender norms for as long as Happy Meals have been giving out toys. Because of how popular Happy Meals are, the effects have more impact. Partnering up with Adventure Time could have been the perfect opportunity to shed light on how gender-centric toys are problematic. It only takes one walk past the children’s toy department at your local department store to see all the colour-coded and gender-fixed toys.

We can’t control what McDonald’s does, but what we can do is use it as a teaching opportunity. When ordering a Happy Meal at McDonald’s, kids can choose the “boy” toy or the “girl” toy if they want. However, the issue doesn’t stop at letting the kid choose, because in the end, the toys are still reinforcing a binary in gender. Providing a gender-neutral toy would present the idea that any child of any gender can play with any toy. Turning this idea into a movement would be ideal, but let’s just start by bringing attention to the error in McDonald’s marketing strategies.