The Thriller is gone

I guess you can’t write a blog titled Imaginary Worlds without considering the untimely death of pop legend Michael Jackson and the many many people who had an imaginary social relationship with him. Imaginary social relations are relationships with media figures we don’t actually know, but with whom we feel an emotional closeness or perhaps toward whom we feel an emotional repulsion. Moreover, these media figures play important roles in our lives: mentors, friends, lovers, father or mother figures, among others. The degree and nature of one’s imaginary social relationship with Michael Jackson probably depends on your age. Students in this class do not remember a time when there was no MTV. And for those who are younger than twenty, you cannot remember a time when Michael Jackson was not embroiled in some controversy. If you are older, let’s say in your thirties, then you might remember Michael Jackson and his brothers at the beginning of their careers. The video above represents a seminal moment when Michael Jackson introduced the "moonwalk" during a performance of Billy Jean at the Motown 25th Anniversary Show. There is no question that his career has been a long one and that he impacted people in different ways. How did he impact you?

The King of Pop Culture is dead and I don't mean Michael Jackson

It’s been quite the weekend in Pop Cultureland. First it was Farah Fawcett who died of a dreaded illness, then the shock of Michael Jackson’s untimely passing, and now the unexpected death of Billy Mays. Billy Mays you ask? Oh come now. You may not recognize the name, but you know Billy Mays. At least you know his work. Billy Mays did infomercials for OxiClean and OrangeGlo among other products. He died Sunday of unknown causes. What is going to happen to the world of infomercials now? Will the Shamwow guy, Vince Shlomi, become the pre-eminent pitchman in America? Or, is Billy Mays, like Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett simply irreplaceable?

Reality TV Teaches Nothing

Along with the story about protesters of the Iran election, the other big news this week was the announcement Monday that the Goslins have filed for divorce. I don’t watch the program, but on Monday I felt I had to be part of this “history.” And, TBS the cable station on which the program Jon and Kate Plus Eight airs milked it for all it’s worth. But this is not the first time a reality TV couple decided to divorce in the midst or as a result of their TV experience. What some people refer to as the very first reality program, The American Family, aired on PBS in 1973. The Louds, who were the featured family on this program that was based on 300 hours of filming, met the same fate. Yes, reality TV of this sub-genre has been around for quite a long time. I guess there are some lessons that we never learn: the Louds should have served as a warning to Jon and Kate – excessive exposure on TV leads to divorce. Or, would they have gotten a divorce anyway? Frankly, it doesn’t matter, because this played out before viewers—and there were 10 million of them (a huge audience by cable standards)—who once again witnessed the demise of an American family. The program has gone on hiatus until August, but you better believe the culture will be churning this story for quite a while. Which leads me to the point of this blog: I don’t think we ever learn life lessons from watching TV. I think that TV sends us a lot of signals about what is right or wrong, moral or immoral. But I don’t think those messages stick. Like a greased pick, they’re hard to hold on to. Perhaps this is because there are so many competing messages out there. Perhaps this is because we watch TV with half our attention. Regardless, the Louds had very little long-term impact on the culture, and the Goslins will do the same. It’s a shame. There’s a lot at stake, not only for this family, which God help them, have eight kids to raise (the point of appearing on the program, I think, was to help pay for their college educations), but watching this program made me feel bad, not just for the Goslins, but for all of us. You would think that more than 30 years since the first reality program destroyed a family that someone would have learned a lesson, but I guess not. We are still going around the same circle; churning the same story with, of course, variations. One point of note: the Louds’ son Lance “came out” on the program, which didn’t play well with his father. Remember, this was 1973. So, this time it’s eight children whose lives are being affected. This is serious stuff. I just hope, this time, someone learns something from the experience. Otherwise, all of this will have been for naught, just to keep the entertainment wheel spinning.

Politics, Twitter and Pop Culture

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For a while now I’ve been trying to understand the purpose of Twitter, the social networking tool that limits communication to 140 characters. In an earlier blog post I confessed to following Lance Armstrong the cancer survivor and elite bicycle racer on Twitter. And, I’ve recently learned that the Dell computer corporation has been able to “monetize” their presence on Twitter by offering coupons for their products. But I never imagined that Twitter, along with Facebook and blog sites would become a major factor in international politics. Case in point: the recent elections in Iran whose outcome, as I write this, is being protested, not just in the streets, but—you guessed it—on Twitter and Facebook. As the government of Iran began to crack down on conventional journalists wielding their video cameras, those journalists took to their cell phones to send video messages to TV networks. As communication is tightened, ordinary citizens are taking to social networking software to communicate with each other—to plan protest tactics—and to communicate with the rest of the world. This may not be the second Iranian revolution, but it certainly represents a revolution in the use of social networking technology via the Web. This is significant, I think, because this particular use of Twitter and Facebook lend much credibility to these social networking sites that they did not previously have. We kind of took Twitter and Facebook for granted. And, in the case of Twitter, I really couldn’t figure out its purpose. I want to say that this is a totally cool development. But to use the term “cool” diminishes the importance of this moment. Now matter what the outcome—and I think we know what it’s going to be—things will never be the same. Social networking tools will become elevated in stature and will gain an important footing on the world stage in politics, entertainment and beyond.

How your Facebook is Linked In to your Twitter

At the urging of one of my colleagues, I set up an account on LinkedIn, which if you don’t know is a social networking site for professionals. Unlike Facebook, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, it’s not about friends, but rather it’s about business relationships or friends or both, maybe. It's confusing. By the way, I don’t have a Facebook account out of respect for students. I’m old school in that I still think, despite the recent trends among older individuals establishing Facebook accounts, that Facebook is the domain of college students, and I don’t want to inhabit that world or inhibit anyone's behavior. In other words, I don’t want to be your "friend," to put it bluntly. Hey, I’m operating out of respect for our social differences. And, that’s really the point of this blog post. It seems to me that the hierarchical lines that separated us—despite my desire to hang on to them--no longer seem to exist, at least not on the Internet. You know what they say: so goes the Internet, goes the rest of the world. When a couple of students recently tried to “link” with me on LinkedIn, I didn’t quite know what to do. After all, they are neither my friends, nor are they my professional colleagues. At the same time, I didn’t want to offend them, so I simply didn’t respond the requests. To this day, their invitations sit waiting for me to respond. I feel guilty; well, a little guilty. But I’m confused. Where do we draw the lines? Who is a friend? Who is a colleague? Who is superior? Who is inferior? Who is laterally related, socially speaking? These questions are compounded by my guilty pleasure of following the bicycle racer and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong on Twitter. I can’t believe I do that, but I have to admit to having an “imaginary social relationship” with LA. So, I check out what he’s saying regularly; not everyday or every hour. Although when the Tour de France begins in a few weeks, I’ll certainly be doing just that, getting his take on the Tour. I’m not a “follower” which is a formal category on Twitter. I’m merely a lurker. What does that make me? I’m curious to learn what you think about this phenomenon. Do you follow Ashton Kutcher on Twitter? Have you attempted to “friend” a celeb on Facebook? And, what about those other hierarchical relationships between family, and teachers, among others? Are we all equal in the world of the Internet?

Life Lessons From Jon and Kate Plus Eight

Popular culture is one of the means by which we negotiate our way through everyday life. By negotiate, I mean we come to understand the world and our place in it by processing the content of pop culture. Take for example Jon and Kate Plus 8, the reality TV program. It’s not just a simple short-lived television program as it has taken on a life of its own through the extended coverage the family has received in newspapers, magazines, Blogsites, websites, and other media that has become part of the public discourse regarding marriage, child-rearing, economics of the family, among other topics. We can also see this show as the site of a cultural and now a legal struggle; the latter refers to the question as to whether or not the appearance of the eight kids on the program is against Pennsylvania’s child employment laws. Beyond this legal issue are the cultural issues regarding what is right and wrong, what is moral or immoral in the context of contemporary family relationships. First, there are the “signals” that the family sends us. In the case of Jon, he was spotted leaving a bar at 2 a.m. with a woman other than his wife. That’s a clear signal of infidelity. But what are we, the consumers of this pop culture pablum, to do with that? In other words, how do we process this information both internally, through the thoughts we have, and through the social interaction we have with others in which we talk about the program and share our thoughts in order to reach or not reach consensus. It is in this way that Jon and Kate Plus Eight helps us make sense of the world in which we live. Yes, popular culture is a sense making mechanism that has replaced other means by which we would have in the past made sense of our lives. But because we live disparate lives that have fewer institutional connections, and because we consumer an awful lot of media, pop culture has become a replacement for traditional venues of public discourse. I’m not suggesting this is either a good or bad phenomenon; I merely want to point out a role that pop culture plays in our lives about which you may not have been fully aware – pop culture is a way that we make sense of the world.