Planking adventures

An adventure in the world of youtube based pop and counter culture. This is an attempt to explain what counter culture will do to our generation if we let out continue in the direction its going.

Good ol' Disney

I love Disney. I should clarify, l love classic Disney movies. None of this Disney channel junk that has poured into TV streams now. I’m talking about the movies that defined most of our childhoods, the ones with the songs we all can still sing word for word today…well some of us can do that. For me, Disney was my babysitter. If my mom needed something done and my five-year-old self couldn’t and wouldn’t leave her alone, in would go a Disney movie of my choosing and she’d get a solid hour and a half of uninterrupted work done. And due to this, I’ll be honest when I say that my childhood was based on Disney ideals. Of course you don’t realize this until you’re faced with it in college and it’s too late. You realize you see the world through Disney’s eyes.

Now before anyone thinks I’m delusional and have no concept of reality, let me stop and say it’s not as if I have a full Disney world view, but it does affect the way I see gender roles. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Disney taught me what a father looked like. I basically grew up without a dad after my parent’s divorce, so in a way I got the notion of how a good dad can act towards life and his family. The biggest example of this is the Lion King. Mufasa is an awesome dad. First off his voice could shake a mountain and he genuinely cares for his son and does whatever he can to protect him. Even when he dies, Mufasa still cares for his son and helps him out with weird monkey prophets and spectacular cloud visions. He equipped his son with all the knowledge he could before he left him, and tried to reinforce these morals and standards all he could. In the end, the son rises to King and makes his dad proud. I loved this movie. It said I could be King. Did I take this literally? No, of course not. But I do now have a standard of fathers to love and care for their children. Even if they don’t roar and fight of hyenas, due to Disney, dads have a certain level to live up to.  And if dads can do it, I can too.

Disney also taught me what a hero was. Hercules, Robin Hood, Aladdin, they all were some of my greatest heroes. They faced the odds that they were outcasts and chose to rise above that fact. They risked everything for the ones they loved, and even though they all fell into trouble normally brought upon by themselves, they overcame that and won. Now, every time I’m faced with a problem do I stop and think, “Gee, what would Herc do in a time like this?” No. If I did I would hope someone would get me help. But as a child these subliminal messages of what a good guy looked like were ingrained into my brain. Thanks to them I don’t stop and think what would they do, but what is it that I have learned I should do. And we still get these reinforced messages today in all the superhero movies pouring into the media. Disney was just the first to get those ideals to me, in a highly entertaining way I might add.

So this “superhero” culture that surrounds us is not necessarily bad. At least not in the way I view it, and if we really look and focus in on the good of Disney, I think we’ll find some of the same ideals we’ve always had. And maybe, just maybe, some of those were given to us by dear ol’ Walt.  

"Flash Mobs! Assemble!"

Ever since our subject of flash mobs came into discussion, I’ve been thinking about all that was said and what I think about these random, quickly assembled, often cool looking, yet not always effective large groups of people doing stuff. Personally I have never seen a flash mob accomplish anything serious or further anyone’s opinion about an important matter. Not to say those kinds of flash mobs don’t exists, but I’m going strictly off of my personal experience with them. From what I’ve seen/been apart of, flash mobs can do two things: entertain and promote.

First the entertainment. Who wouldn’t get instant enjoyment out of seeing a random group of people you thought looked perfectly normal start dancing or singing or both. I know I wish my life was a musical, so seeing YouTube hits like “Food Court Musical” gives me some hope that people like me exist. Even the flash mobs such as the one in Grand Central Station where a large bunch of passengers froze for no reason at all but to see the people’s reactions held the purpose to entertain or shock viewers. Flash mobs are special, despite their growing popularity, because they break reality for a while. And from my previous posts, I firmly believe this is something we all want. Now, just because a group attempts to do a flash mob doesn’t always means it works out. Usually people don’t type in “Flash mob fail”, but believe me, they happen. A recent one was to promote the Ball State Theatre and Dance Department and their newly opening show, Evil Dead. The mob assembled and planned to do a dance from the show that morphed famous dances together such as Thriller, the Robot, the Time Warp and many others. However, news had leaked about this dance and many showed up, yet not many were actually participating, much to the actual dancers’ dismay. I watched as my friends danced with all they had in them, yet they now knew the huge mass of people who showed were not there to support, but to gawk. It’s all right though, theatre people are very resilient.

But what does a promotional flash mob success look like? One of my favorites is an elaborate dance done in a train station in Belgium to promote a new revival of the musical The Sound of Music. It starts with one man and his daughter and bursts into at least a hundred people dancing by the end. I’m guessing after making the national news and being given the name “historic flash mob” a lot of people went to see this classic musical.

I think flash mobs are fun. Can they be used for bad? Apparently. The huge crime flash mob where people pillaged a store is not so fun and happy, but I think it still accomplishes what flash mobs are meant to do, which is break reality. People steal all the time, but people don’t gather and do it in a huge group. Reality is broken whenever a group of people comes together to do someone out of the norm. I also think flash mobs show our human nature desire to group and find some sort of identity. Good or bad, fun or dangerous, success or fail, flash mobs unite. So live on flash mob, live on.

Unless you’re going to flash mob assassinate…then don’t do it.

Instead, watch this and be happy

Give Me What's "Real"

I'll be honest, because why wouldn't I be? I'm addicted to drama. I realized this throughout high school, but I would never admit to myself. I loved watching people fight and bicker when things such as "ex's" and "who did what's" arose around the campus. Nothing pleased me more than sitting and watching the comments fly including name calling, the snarky looks that high school students perfect during their four years, and the best fighting style of them all, passive-aggressive behavior. It wasn't until something called reality TV came into my life that I realized this addiction of mine.

I'll never forget that first episode of Survivor. I was hooked. Seeing the people talk about fighting strategies and ways to manipulate and control other teammates excited me to no end. It was like watching high school happen from the comfort of my own home with no one ever telling me to butt out. After I consumed a season of that show, I quickly went on to other shows I knew about, but never thought could keep me so captivated. The only reason I knew of as to why I was so hooked on these "real" life shows was that I could sit and watch people doing things I could only dream of doing and judge them without mercy. But from this past week in class, other possible explanations came into my mind. 

Do I like the stereotypes the shows reinforce? I think I might. I think it’s nice to have a sense of consistency in a world where you’re never quite sure what you’re getting. And with these shows, I don’t want to deal with real life, I want to see “real” life being portrayed. In a sense I think I might love the drama on TV because I want to see things blown out of proportion and I want to see it without having to be directly involved. If I were ever put into a dramatic situation, I know I wouldn’t handle it well. In fact I’d crumble. But getting to comfortably watch the fur fly makes me feel invincible against all the conflict happening on the screen. In a sense I’m being lied to, yet I’m perfectly ok with it. As long as I can watch a punch get thrown or hear some vindictive language get tossed around, I’m good. Drama? Bring. It. On.

Happy Birthday?

With all this "friends" talk we've had going on throughout class about Facebook, and being connected, and really knowing someone through social media, I became interested in which of my "friends" really knew me. The most obvious way to test this, in my opinion, was to do the Birthday Test. Aka change my date of birth and see who knew I was lying. So, two days ago I changed my new birthday to September 15th. I've always wanted to have been born in the fall anyway.

This morning when I woke up and performed my daily social media check, I had forgotten that I'd made this minor switch to my profile and was quite surprised to have at least 10 new notifications with birthday messages. It gave me a good laugh that these same people, who had written on my wall just four months ago for my actual birthday, were back with their same birthday wishes. But who really keeps track of their "friend's" birthdays, right?

What really shocked me was what happened for the rest of the day when I wasn't connected  to a social network. I'd developed a theory in class that stated: People will be best friends with you online, but when the actual face-to-face situation comes up they will act like they barely know you. This theory was shattered when people were going out of their ways to say, "Happy Birthday, Joe!".  When I would tell them it wasn't my birthday and this was just a little test to see who actually knew, the common reaction I got was a very confused and slightly hurt facial expression. One girl even scowled and walked off; another boy just shook his head as if I had confessed to robbing a bank. Eventually I learned, and instead just said, "Thank you!" with a smile and we both went off on our merry ways. After all, when my actual birthday rolls around in the spring, they will have forgotten this little situation and be right back to their happy messaging. But what was it that bothered them so much about being lied to on Facebook? Could this theory of people being connected and feeling a sense of belonging on this popular network be true? I always thought it was bogus, but apparently, maybe it isn't.

When I got back to my dorm after dinner, as expected, I saw at least 70+ new posts on my wall. I briefly considered posting a status that it was a joke, but I feel that having 70+ people bitter at you over Facebook may be worse than facing the judgmental stares from the actual people. So I instead just pretended for a while and scrolled through the birthday posts. Could I do this little self esteem booster every month? Would people notice?

Not so sure they would...

As to finding out who really knew my date of birth, the results were somewhat sad. Among the ranks of college friends who had no clue were my cousins, co workers, my close high school friends, and even friends I had celebrated my real birthday with in person last spring. What I found extremely funny were the people who thought they would go the extra mile and text me instead of going with the herd and posting on my wall. Either way...they were wrong.

I never had high hopes for people actually knowing that I was lying. I mean most of the "friends" I have are simply people I can message to get coffee with sometime and talk about classes or go to a party with. Knowing someone's birthday in this day and age seems trivial. Who cares when you were born? As long as they like spending time with me and vice versa, I'm all good.

However, I can't forget to mention the special people who know my special day. My close friends, my mentors, my immediate family (thank goodness), and surprisingly an elementary school stalker I've managed to stay friends with. Congrats! You passed the Birthday Test! I'll take away the air quotes from "friends" when referring to you now.

Addiction to Escape

I think I can safely say that by now everyone in this class has realized they're addicted to some form of pop culture, if they hadn't already. Like we all discussed, our addictions can drive us to do some crazy things such as memorize entire scenes of movies, rename weekdays in honor of our favorite shows, and dub the inanimate objects in our lives after our favorite TV characters. Although we love the things we're addicted to, we rarely are asked why we love them. What is it about Jersey Shore and other reality shows that has people tuning in every week? Why do shows with laugh tracks like Friends or Seinfeld still have so many viewers? Why do we love the way hospitals are over dramatized on shows like House or Grey's Anatomy? Why do we now see high school as a musical and glee filled place? Besides TV shows, why do we enjoy certain movies like chick flicks or superhero stories? Why do we love following celebrities in magazines or on Twitter and learning useless information about their lives?

By this time in the class, maybe you're saying, "Ok. I know I'm addicted...but can't I just leave it at that? Do I always have to be analyzing the things I watch and figuring out why I want to watch them? Can't I just enjoy?" Well, yeah, but where's the fun in that? Even in the few things we've learned thus far in the class, you can start to see why the shows and movies we love are so successful. Some take us away from reality and let us live along side people we love and admire as they fight crime, solve mysteries, and save the world one episode at a time. Others let us compare our lives to that of the unfortunate characters and think, thank God I'm not them. Some fill that void in our lives with humor, drama, singing on tables, or anything else we wish our lives could be. As for following celebs, why wouldn't we be fascinated with an individual who has money and fame as well as no clue you're sitting at home reading through pages of their tweets?

I think we all would say we love the stories shows and movies present to us because we all long to get away from our own boring, almost "too real" lives. In TV shows we can treat horrible situations such as a grandma dying as a funny plot line. Or the realization that your family is bankrupt as a perfect situation for some sarcastic and witty comment. Rather than waking up, going to school, coming home, and repeating the next day, in action movies we can wake up, have our school attacked, fight off a bad guy, win the heart of our crush, and return home safe as the credits roll. You rarely see shows or movies about normal, everyday life, and if you do, it's a safe bet they won't be around for too long. People want to escape and see a new version of reality. We envy the Jersey shore gang living the perfect life of leisure, albeit somewhat trashy, that we don't have. We see the cast of Friends thriving in NYC without fear of debt, even if they have been unemployed for a whole season. We watch heroes get thrown down only to rise against the dominating force of evil and save their city when all we do is go with the flow. Thanks to the media, we can stand the mediocrity of our lives. Just as long as we can watch someone do and be the things we wish for. 

So. Media is our escape. We all desperately need an escape. What do we call it when we desperately need something? Yes, thats right. Addiction.