Jim Jarmusch: authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent!
"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
(Jim Jarmusch)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Miss Representation: mainstream media is contributing to the under-representation of women in positions of power
"Like drawing back a curtain to let bright light stream in, Miss Representation (90 min; TV-14 DL) uncovers a glaring reality we live with every day but fail to see. Written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the film exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media's limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself.
In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message that our young women and men overwhelmingly receive is that a woman's value and power lie in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity as a leader. While women have made great strides in leadership over the past few decades, the United States is still 90th in the world for women in national legislatures, women hold only 3% of clout positions in mainstream media, and 65% of women and girls have disordered eating behaviors.
Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, entertainers, activists and academics, like Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem build momentum as Miss Representation accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave the audience shaken and armed with a new perspective."
(Jennifer Siebel Newsom)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Aristotle's Rhetoric: modes of persuasion
"Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker [ethos]; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind [pathos]; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself [logos]. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible."
(Aristotle 1356a 2,3, translation by W. Rhys Roberts)
Aristotle, Book I - Chapter 2 : Aristotle's Rhetoric (hypertextual resource compiled by Lee Honeycutt)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Product placement: personal video recorders degrading impact of conventional advertising
"Advertising has undergone many changes over the last century, moving from printed messages extolling the virtues of a product, to radio broadcasts that took the consumer's point of view into account, and on toward mass media appeals based on the television's ability to deliver a multidimensional message in a mere 30 seconds. The advent of the 'TiVo-style' personal video recorder (PVR) has degraded the impact of conventional advertising, as these PVR's allow viewers to 'zap' commercials. This has made advertisers look for other methods of putting their message before the eyes of the consumers of video media."
(Michael Bovard & Jeffrey Murray, 2005)
RIT Digital Media Library: Item 1850/5333
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Citation as a form of persuasion
"Weinstock (1971) lists 15 discrete 'reasons for using citations', including 'paying homage to pioneers; giving credit for related work; identifying methodology, equipment, etc; ... criticising previous work, substantiating claims; ... disclaiming work or ideas of others; disputing priority claims of others'. More parsimoniously, Chubin and Moitra (1975) categorise references as, broadly, affirmative and negational. They subdivide the affirmative group into basic and subsidiary, additional and perfunctory, and the negational group into partial and total. Within physics, which they take as the basis for their analysis, they find very few partially negational references and no totally negational ones - a point to be taken up in the subsequent discussion of academic controversy. Gilbert (1977b) argues that the main function of referencing is to act as a covert form of persuasion; and, in staunch ethnomethodological tradition, Small (1978) contends that cited documents serve as 'concept symbols' - 'in citing a document the author is creating its meaning': besides 'its functional, social and political implications', citation may be used 'to curry favour, to publicise, to favour one approach over another', and so on."
(Tony Becher, p.87)
Becher, Tony. 1989 "Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines", Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press.
Chubin, D. E. and Moitra, S. (1975) Content analysis of references. Social Studies of Science, 5, pp. 423-41
Gilbert, G. (1977b) Referencing as persuasion. Social Studies of Science, 7, pp. 113-22
Small, H. (1978) Cited documents as concept symbols. Social Studies of Science, 8, pp. 327-40.
Fig.1 CDRyan, 2008. COMMANDS. Series of 3 Digital Prints, 5 x 7 inches Atmostheory
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
