Tag Archives: opinion

Some Lazy Words on Valentines Day.

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Love is in the air, or at least it’s been commodified and sold to us as happens annually around this time of year. By writing this, all be it disparagingly, I myself am adding to the milieu of guff which gets tossed off by a slue of Journalists and PR agencies as well as  businesses from department stores and discount retailers in the post-christmas lull. And why not? It’s a useful device to hang whatever crap you’re trying to peddle or, in my case, is a lazy way of putting 600ish words on a page for a handful of people to read. For the majority of the year the people who utilize such days for professional reasons have to actually engage their brain and think, this can be hard. Valentines day, and other such days like it, are simply holidays for these brains more than anything else. But it’s all very well for producers of all kinds to push tripe out onto the public out of laziness, but do people really want to buy into the resulting outcome?

Well, this is a very hard one to answer… unless you ask a marketeers who’ll no doubt pull some figures out their arse to justify Love Day, followed up by the super cliche of “We’re only giving the customers what they want” On the other hand, if newspapers, and in particular their columnists, are representative of society’s opinions, there is a substantial amount of material which pours scorn on the event year on year, often because its easy copy to produce. Of course neither are particularly good metrics to use, both manipulate Valentines Day to their own ends. Undoubtedly shops do shift a lot of product on the run-up to Valentines Day, and restaurants and leisure activities will see a spike in activity, but how many people do this out of a feeling of obligation? After all we are never far away from a negative voice poo-pooing it as being a commercial scam or as phony.

My stance on the whole thing is that I dislike it, for all the typical reasons you hear regurgitated this time of year, but what annoys me more are the people that make it known in no uncertain terms that they dislike Valentines Day. They do so be restating the same stale arguments endlessly, and quite frankly it’s beyond tiresome. These people that dislike the day, and I mean really dislike it with a fiery passion (we all know them), they really should think about redirecting their annoyance towards something worthwhile, Valentines Day isn’t going to stop anytime soon, and while their arguments are undoubtedly sound, they’re pointless in this instance. Who are they trying to convince with them? It’s like atheists trying to argue with devout born-again Christians, doesn’t matter how good your arguments may be, you aren’t going to convince them to stop believing in the Holy Trinity.

Personally Valentines Day passes me by without much notice, of course there are hearts in the windows of shops, and all aspects of media are producing the same old love themed content, but in this growingly individualistic society in which we live we can easily choose wether to go along with it or shut it out. I think the people who argue against it secretly like the day as it gives them the opportunity to moan verbosely; furthermore, I don’t think the day would actually be the same without them. In my mind both the lovers and haters are one of the same, like heaven and hell or yin and yang, they both indulge on the signs of love produced around Valentines Day and derive their own meaning from them, those who truly don’t care for it don’t really notice it at all.

CryWolf Blog: I’d like a Degree, with a side of knowledge and a Coke.

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(Words I hobbled together for an opinion article for CryWolf, the University of Wolverhampton’s student newspaper/blog. Click here for original post)

It is a common occurrence for everyone to be asked by ill-seen acquaintances and family, as well as strangers, a question along the lines of “What are you up to now then?” It’s an innocent enough question, yet it is from this innocuous enquiry that a gripe I have is, on a day-to-day level, most regularly experienced. I, of course, usually begin answering the question by stating that I’ve continued on at university to study for an MA in Popular Culture. This is then often, as expected, followed up with the secondary question of “What sort of job can you get with that?” On the surface this seems like a fair enough question, yet it’s not. University should not be means to employment as an absolute, but should in fact be viewed as an ends unto itself, yet politicians and much of the media have turned going to university into a human resource production factory rather than being the house of enlightenment it once was.

This change from seeing higher education as being good in its own right, to needing to have an economic value, could arguably said to have begun under the Thatcher years, whereby nothing was free from economic rationalisation. I find it troublesome. Just because something makes little or no money does not mean it doesn’t have value in other ways. Comedian and Writer Stewart Lee recalls a piece of news in the 80’s in which Margaret Thatcher toured a university and asked one of the students what they were studying, the student replied “Ancient Norse Literature”, to which Thatcher commented “What a luxury”. Again, as with my introduction, this doesn’t seem like much, but what it demonstrates is how ingrained in her thinking economic rationalism was and this has now sunk into all of us. There is clearly a limited direct financial future from studying Ancient Norse Literature, but as a society we need to keep information such as that alive because, as Stewart Lee says, “it’s a cliché to say, but you understand the modern world through it’s echoes in the past”.

More recently we can see this economic rationalisation of university via both the introduction, and the raising of, student fees. University courses are now products, the Prospectus, rather than being an index of knowledge that can be attained via study, is now a brochure selling us a future dream career. This has severely altered the student/teacher relationship to that of customer/provider. Because students are paying customers, the way in which university operates has been corroded, mainly on a teaching level. Rather than doing heavy amounts of research, students expect to be simply given the information, after all, it has been paid for; when you pay for milk you expect to have it in a bottle and not simply to have access to a cow. But, this is of course where thinking with an economic mindset falls down. University should be about genuine ‘self-betterment’ or self-improvement; this cannot simply be paid for like a conventional product, but requires hard work. I am not saying that students are lazy now, however, university education is much more signposted as a result of economic rationalisation than it would have been for students gone by and this is not how it should be.

It should be said that getting a job at the end of university is what many people want once they have finished studying (this can’t be entirely denied), but this should not influence too harshly ones choice in course; going to university and getting a job should be thought about separately. If any new potential students are reading this I would strongly recommend to them that they do not think in terms of future income when choosing a course for university (although with higher fees this is of course harder to do) but to select something which truly interests them. Just because a course doesn’t have a direct route to employment does not mean it is useless and unimportant.

- Robert Wright

Ink and Paper.

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(apologies for any spelling/grammar errors but It’s getting late as I finish this, will go through and edit tomorrow :P)

Most of my day today, and in fact the past couple of days previously, has been entirely dominated by reading, something which I do very much enjoy. This reading has been dominated mostly by academic texts and journal articles about science fiction and fantasy as I have an essay due to be completed in less than a week and I still haven’t decided firmly on a topic to write it on, the first time I’ve ever had this problem. I have a few vague concepts so I may just have to start writing and see what I get.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about print media recently, firstly, and something I may very well have blogged about before, e-readers. My opinion on them is already well formed, and also very slightly conflicted. It’s assumed by many at work and by acquaintances that I would own one or intend on getting one simply because I know how to use computers and electronics, well this is not the case; furthermore I’m in fact becoming slightly anti-technology (or at least I feel disturbed/pessimistic by its overbearing influence on society) I prefer and will always prefer the real thing, a real book, over any digital copy. I know the technology behind Kindles and other such e-readers is actually really good, and that it actually makes digital content easy to read, i.e. it’s easy on the eye, but I like the physicality of real books, and while the text is the same in both physical and digital books the medium it is presented on does change message, all be it subtly, as I’m sure Marshall Mcluhan would have attested. I can understand why the devices are appealing, in 21st century technological fetishism is really easy to get sucked into, I’m guilty of it quite often, but ultimately such devices are shallow, I’m by no way anti-tech but there is something enchanting about the form of a printed book which would be lost with we al used e-reader devices. Think about that feeling you get when walking along an isle of books in a library, each new book one dusts off is an adventure waiting to rediscovered and lived or a theory waiting to both excite and educate the mind, and of course while the texts themselves would not disappear due to e-readers themselves, the public shrines to the works would certainly be damaged beyond repair. I may just be a romantic fool but I think that capturing a intangible and vaporous idea and then reconstructing it into a form that is then physical is a much more fitting tribute to the magicians behind the thoughts and ideas than simply encoding it into another untouchable form which then requires a device in order to reassemble the idea once more.

I’ve also been thinking about magazines. I and a few friends are currently trying to create a zine which is currently called Bricolage, and as the name suggests it is a hodpodge of features, stories, poems, and art and so-forth. Why are we doing it, well firstly I guess because we’d quite like to see something we’ve made in physical form, it’s much more satisfying to see something properly printed and bounded than simply on a computer screen, but secondly it’s because the mainstream magazines which are readily available are really depressing. Of course we know that our little project is unlikely to get anywhere, but it is essentially a minor backlash against the state of the industry, which is of course clearly facing tough times due to the Internet, but feeling the magazines with even more adverts or paid editorial is not the way forward, quality should rule the roost. Flicking through a technology magazine here the amount of pages is impressive, but when you strip back all the advertising there is little more than a skeleton left, no wonder they are dying and it really is a shame.

As I’m currently studying science fiction and fantasy, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve of course looked at some of the pulp fiction being produced in the 20s and 30s, much of this was not quality it has to be said but it is still a shame in my mind that one can’t go to a newsagents and buy a magazine of short stories (well I guess you can by “real life” stories, but as stated in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four that’s just fodder to keep people distracted) Of course in the period when the pulps were at there height there wasn’t as many easily accessible media forms vying for peoples attention, but I still think that should surely still be a market for such content. Well as a result of this thought I’ve gone out my way to find some indie magazines which feature short stories, mainly fantastic literature, the first one of which is entitled Postscripts. As the year progresses I’m planning on buying some more such magazines as and when I find them and I’ll undoubtedly post some comments about them on this here blog, so be sure to stay tuned for that.

And with that ramble I depart.

Should Chivalry be Dead?

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Cross-posted at: www.snackfoam.co.uk

I’ve come across an article by Alexandra Petri from the Washington Post discussing Chivalry in the “I” newspaper today, something I find interesting. I’m all for feminism, but when the term, and variations on it, gets flung about by people who only vaguely know what it’s about I love trying to argue with them that in a world where the sexes are equal surely chivalry (not to be confused with common decency) should be dead. I think Alexandra Petri’s article on the subject is well worth a look, here I present a couple of choice extracts:

If a man holds a door for me, I become irritable. “Next you’re going to ask for my handkerchief and go ride at someone with a lance,” I say, snippily, slamming the door in his face. “Why don’t you demand coffee and a side of 1950s-era stereotypes while you’re at it?”

“I was just trying to do something nice,” he says, weakly.

A likely story!

…

But the problem with chivalry is that most of its rules date from a time when the relationship between the sexes was rather one-sided. Chivalrous men are encouraged. But can ladies be chivalrous? The definition of chivalry would seem to preclude this. Whenever I try to hold doors for men, they look askance at me, as though I’m implying that they are infirm.

Facebook Groups

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I’ve never been too much of a fan of social network sites but neither do I have any particular objection to them; that said I am rather fond of twitter. Facebook is the arguably the largest social network site online at the current time, and I myself am a member. The main reason for this membership is that Facebook does seem to be the easiest way to contact real-world friends online; e-mail for personal communication appears to be all but dead. People use Facebook for all sorts of reasons, mine is basically a communication tool for people I actually know, and its also in someways a bit of a blog.

Anyway, the one thing that has always annoyed me with Facebook is the prevalence of the Facebook group. These groups allow people that are not “friends” with each other on the site the ability to communicate with each other in a mini-forum based on a shared topic of interest. These groups generally to fall in two categories: Banal Statements or Extreme Views. The Banal, for example: “Can this sausage roll get more fans than Cheryl Cole”, can get tiresome but are bearable, and then their are extreme groups such as “Bring back the hangman for acts of terrorism, treason, murder, paedophilia” and “Lock Jon Venables up for Life and Throw Away the Key”. The posts on the pages are just are no more charming than the titles themselves, for example one person wrote on the latter group:

“kill the bastard very slowly so he can feel the pain that little boy felt when he didnt give a fuck what he and his mate was doing to poor james, torchure the bastards and then kill them slowly causing them every bit of pain possible like they caused james let the public know the new names, see how long they last on the streets rip james they will get what they derserve evenually”

The most shocking thing about Facebook is not that these groups exist, but its finding out how many of your friends hold these sort of views and are actively trying to recruit others to join. I’m of course not saying that people shouldn’t be able to have a debate on such topics as capital punishment but the prevalence of extreme views on Facebook is startling; and this isn’t something that is a new phenomenon to Facebook, I remember discussing it a few years ago with my sixth-form sociology teacher.

Last week I read a opinion piece in the Guardian making this sort of point and it was this prompted me to write this little rambling piece, but its certainly worth mentioning. I recommend you have a little look at the article; because from what I can see, on the whole, itsn’t too face from the truth “Facebook groups are the new lynch mobs: These reactionary campaigners confuse the concept of ‘justice’ with ‘vigilante vengeance’”