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Blog Entry 4: Music Video and "Public Profile"

  “Old Town Road” was the song that made Lil Nas X become famous and well known in the music industry. The song itself has a heavy focus on traditional country elements as well as elements from rap music. The video reflects this focus by having Lil Nas X ride in on a horse into a modernized neighborhood. He is wearing a stereotypical country costume with tassels, boots, and a hat. He even breaks out into country line dance moves at times while the residents in the neighborhood partake in popular dance trends like the “woah” and the “nae nae.” The residents of the neighborhood are also in “street clothes” that are more modern and have no ties to country at all. These elements show how Lil Nas X was sticking to his authentic image of trying to be portrayed as country with a mix of modernized rap. This image is further seen when his country outfit gets a modern makeover and he incorporates his country attitudes to modern society. This can be seen when he is in a street race with a car...
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"Can One Get Out?"

       In the article, “Can One Get Out” Ryan Poll breaks down the different horror elements of the movie Get Out and how it resonates with some more than others. He also dissects how this genre works in spreading the message of the movie and targeting audiences. This is because for the white audience members they imagine the world without horror whilst the black audience members see the horror in the movie as the horror of the actual world. However, specifically Poll discusses concepts such as Afro-pessimism, Post-blackness and more. According to Poll, Post-blackness is meant for people to try and break from the past and try not to focus on the “ghosts” of racialize slavery. This can be seen within the narrative of Chris who fails to realize he is intertwined into a story of slavery. Chris lives one of the many lives that black people could live in a Post-black society where being authentically black can mean anything. For him he is relatively wealthy living in a n...
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Adorno/Benjamin

  One key difference between Benjamin's point regarding culture industries and Adorno and Horkheimer is Benjamin points out more of the positives that come from these culture industries. Throughout the essay Benjamin compares different art forms together like film and theater and paintings and photography. By doing this he was able to highlight the many benefits from these culture industries, regardless of their mass production and manipulating ways. An example of this can be seen when he is describing what a camera can do. He says, “Evidently a different nature opens itself to the camera than opens to the naked eye”(Benjamin 16). Here, Benjamin highlights how the advancements in technology and the camera work in films create this new reality that can not be seen by the normal eye. He is highlighting these more positive characteristics about the culture industry with the new camera styles and how film can lead us to travel into new places. The use of slow motion and other camera wo...
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The Camera Obscura

    A camera obscura is a way an image can be projected through a small hole onto a different source. The way the camera obscura is set up makes the image being projected upside down, rather than how it is actually structured. Marx’s metaphor goes against the traditional German philosophies that are already stated from going from heaven to earth. Like the case of the obscura being upside down, Marx describes the process of going from earth to heaven. Rather than focusing on the imaginary thoughts and ideas of men, Marx is focussing on the active men. Men have an actual life process with different ideologies that reflect from their active life process. Consciousness stems from men rather than its own individual form. This consciousness is developed from real-time experiences, existence, dialogue, and more with men. Marx argues that consciousness is shaped by active life experiences, and in his example, he refers to men's active life processes and experiences. Consciousness...
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