BOLLYWOOD

Bollywood movies are a massive part of the culture in India. They are characterised by their unique musical numbers. They are reflective of their culture and religion. Over time Bollywood has become more modernized due to westernisation. The people who are making the films are trying to please a larger audience and a more western one. Bollywood films are now using more modern themes and even using the English language. The traditional music from Bollywood movies has recently had more of a rock base to attract younger audiences but this does not reflect their culture. 

One of the big issues of this is not only a loss of culture but it makes these films harder to relate to for the original audience, in this case the Indians. If everything becomes more ‘westernised’ then cultures, values and stories will become diluted. It is important that the Indian traditions are still kept and this kind of music is an important part of the Indian culture and tradition. It is strange to think that this culture could be at all diluted when Hindi is the 4th most spoken language in the whole world.

A westernised movie with hints of Bollywood in it is ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. It was directed by a British person and co-directed by an Indian. It was set and filmed in India. Klein discusses the way that there is a ‘partial erosion of the boundaries that once separated Hollywood from local Asian film industries’ (Klein, 2004). This movie is a good example of this occurring in other cultures too.  It is a good example of Hollywoodisation and also two different cultures coming together to create something. I loved this movie and I think that it really shows one of the positive sides of globalisation. Two cultures working together to create an Academy Award winning movie.  

Obviously there are positives and negatives to the Hollywoodisation of films. If they work together with other cultures they can create things that otherwise would not have been thought of but there is a massive risk that there will be a loss of culture.

References:
Klein, Christina 2004, ‘Martial arts and globalisation of US and Asian film industries’, Comparative America Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 360-384. 

CELEBRITIES

I am obsessed with big brother. Although you might not like to admit it I am definitely not alone. Around 6 million people watched the launch of big brother. I watch it every single night, I follow them on twitter when they get out and I was ridiculously excited when I met Ryan (a housemate from 2012) last year. But why is it that we care about celebrity’s lives sometimes even more than we care about our own?

Celebrity gossip is now not only in magazines but it is in our newspapers, on our TVs and all through our twitter and instagram feeds. (Marshall 2013). I think that celebrities promoting themselves through Facebook, twitter and instagram is effective is because you know the information is coming from the source, or as close to the source as you can get. In magazines you don’t know how reliable the story is. We have always been taught not to believe what we read in magazines so reading snippets of their actual life is as close to them as we will probably ever get.

Along with these new sources of information there is a new kind of celebrity. It is no longer all about talent. You could become famous through creating a viral video, doing a sex tape, having famous parents, being rich, winning a talent show, being on reality TV and the opportunities keep going.
Persona studies are defined by Marshall (2013) as “the publicisation of the self”. This is the way that celebrities promote themselves. An obvious example of this is my favorite celebrity of all time, Miley Cyrus. She has recently been the target of a lot of talk and whether the talk is negative or positive her song has been number one on Billbords top 100. Her recent music video “Wrecking Ball” has reached 100 million views in less than 7 days. This is all through the way that she has promoted herself and the way that she is being viewed.

I think that Miley understands what it means to be to be a 2013 celebrity. She said recently “you’re always gonna make people talk, you might as well make them talk for two weeks rather than two seconds”. I think she’s got that all covered.

References:
Marshall, P.D. 2013 , Persona Studies: mapping the proliferation of the public self,Journalism, June 4. online edition.

GAME

Every Wednesday morning I either play Mario cart or Skylanders. The 6 year old boy who I nanny is absolutely obsessed with playing these games on his Wii. He even makes me continue to battle and race him after the TV has been turned off and we are walking up to school. Besides this I don’t play a lot of games other than iPhone ones at the tram stop like Subway Surfer and Plants vs Zombies. 

Games are a very specific type of media with many characteristics that are specific to games only. There are, of course, some similarities to radio, film and television. One of these is that the user is a prosumer and participates in the making of this media type. A critical difference between them and games is that the user has the ability or possibility to “simulate virtual worlds" (Rassens, 2005) which the gamer can contribute to and explore. The user has the opportunity to influence the events that occur and also possibly be a character in the plot of the game. 
The way that games can connect people and at the same time let people run different lives and sometimes live in different worlds is something that is pretty unique to this kind of medium. It forms a “specific type of participatory media” (Rassens, 2005). The user is able to make “strategic choices about alternative paths and, in the case of adventure games, alternative actions’’ (Rassens, 2005). When I play Mario Cart I am able to choose the character I want to be, the car I drive, the world that I drive in, what kind of race I want to participate in and then which way I want to drive. Exploring this world is called “reconfiguration” (Rassens, 2005) and is a specific characteristic of these games.

Obviously each game has its own unique way that the user interacts and maybe even contributes. In some games, including Mario Cart, you can play multiplayer allowing two people to help “shape the stories” (Rassens, 2005). 

Games are a very unique kind of media. While they do have some aspects in common with other forms of media they are characterised by the possibility of being a part of the virtual world created for you.

References:
Raessens, J. 2005, 'Computer games as participatory media culture', Handbook of Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass

BLOG BLOG

The big difference between high school and university is how the information is fed to you. In university so much of the learning is on you to do, “students are expected to take responsibility for managing their own learning” (Robertson 2011). At university we even take the things that are fed to us for granted. We skip lectures and sometimes tutes even though they are beneficial and entirely for us. I think that I learnt better and maybe worked harder at school where everything was explained and what we had to do was broken down into understandable pieces. Although school learning was easier for me, university life is more relevant. In real life you do not get fed information you have to go out there and find it for yourself.

Image source: blogger.com

There are many ways of researching and learning at university. One of these, is blogs. This is a growing practice. This is the first blog I have done for university but I have found that each week it does increasingly help me to learn. For a start, this blog makes sure that I do the readings and it makes sure that I understand the content. This blog not only helps me to learn and improve it could also potentially be helping others in their learning and self improvement. This is one of the most significant perks of blogging, its public nature allows people to interact through comments and learn while helping others learn. “Blogging can be a medium for reflective writing which in turn can promote learning” (Robertson 2011). The thought of other people in this unit reading my blog also inspires me to work harder and motivates me to work to the highest standard I can achieve.

This is the first blog I have done for an educational purpose. At the start of the semester I had a lot less understanding of how a blog could possibly aid my learning. But I have learnt a whole new style of writing along with a lot about globalisation.

Who knows maybe someone is learning from my blog in another country right now?

References:
Robertson, J. 2011 ‘The educational affordances of blog for self-directed learning’, Computers and Education, vol. 57, pp. 1628 – 1644.