Prezi Final

Human society is a constantly changing entity, going through metamorphosis after metamorphosis. Yet one of the constants that has remained for well over the last 2500 years has been the reaction to the new, or the different. This kneejerk reaction to new, unusual or things undesirable to the maintenance of the status quo often takes the form not of an outright denial or open opposition, but instead with the charge that the thing in question is corrupting the youth. This presentation contains a number of, but certainly not all, the things that have at one time been considered corrupting influences upon the youth of society, arranged chronologically.

The first thing that the viewer should notice as they progress through the image is that the older items are not what we today would consider corrupting influences. These are things that are either accepted, appreciated as the foundations of our society, or even cherished. And there lies the crux of the argument presented in this presentation: as time passes, the things that are often charged as being responsible for corrupting our children gradually grow more accepted and eventually cease being controversial. These societal destroyers then become integrated cultural artifacts that in turn shape our future developments.

The Prezi begins with a painting of Socrates about to drink the hemlock in 399 B.C. after being sentenced to death for, as it so happens, corrupting the youth. The image of Socrates before his death holds a remarkable power. He is considered by many a foundation of western culture, a consummate philosopher. The death of Plato's teacher creates a significant amount of indignation and anger at the seemingly meaningless death of a great mind. Most importantly, our modern mind does not conceive of Socrates as a destructive influence, but rather a constructive one. The same could be said of the next image, that of Jesus. We do not think of Jesus as a corruptor of the youth, but by the Jews he was considered such. Now he is a central figure in major religions and a paragon of morality. The image of Jesus on the cross provokes many different reactions from people depending on their background, but generally it provokes a sadness, outrage or frustration.

Following this is an image of Mark Twain, considered one of America's most talented authors and a cornerstone of our early culture, but during his lifetime his writings, particularly Huckleberry Finn, were considered to have negative influences on youths. The painting itself gives off an air of respectability and a kind of pride in our history, giving an idea of how our society now regards this formerly destructive influence. Next comes a picture of a group of Germans, some wearing Nazi uniforms, preparing to burn books and various papers. Hitler and the Nazi party had decreed that many books were "un-German" and would corrupt their younger readers, and consequently had to be destroyed. The picture draws upon the entire gamut of reactions drawn out by Nazi imagery, and in particular the smile of the man in the middle seems deranged and fundamentally disturbing. This also further ties in with Twain, the author, and hopefully gives his inclusion more resonance.

After this the sequence changes to music, which has for much of the 20^th century been considered a strongly destructive influence in our culture by some. During the 1920s Jazz and other African American music was considered highly destructive by many due to its distinct difference from more traditional music and its promulgation during the economic upswing that also encouraged more extravagant and controversial. Skipping ahead, Elvis further threatened the traditional establishment and was hated by parents for bringing Africa American music and dance elements to youth. His performances were labeled obscene and his music often was not allowed to be played on the radio. These two different musicians, Elvis and Louis Armstrong, are now considered strong and hardly controversial cultural icons that many will draw firm affinity with and be able to appreciate their significance. Seeing such a seemingly harmless figure as Louis Armstrong among the corruptors of youth should be a shock, and while the image lacks an overall appeal of its own, he context in which it is placed should evoke surprise at his inclusion. The Elvis picture depicts the cultural icon being escorted by police, looking surprised. Seeing a figure that resonates in our society as much as Elvis under duress and in the context of a corrupter of the youth causes a frustration with the people who branded him as such in addition to feeling how silly the idea of something we now consider a classic being so controversial. The next picture originates from the South after the infamous "We're bigger than Jesus" comment by John Lennon. This was met with violence and record burning, and we see here a youth, encouraged by those around him, tossing an album on the fire. We see what is to us a classic piece of culture being tossed with a smile onto the pyre. It feels senseless and frustrating in the level of naivete and overreaction present to what we now consider very tame.

Finally we reach the two most controversial images: MTV's Beavis and Butthead and video games. Both have been heralded as damaging to youth and are still considered so by many, although MTV in its earlier iterations less so. The great irony of Beavis and Butthead being in that it was a satire of the corruption of youth. The image provokes its own kind of nostalgia, pleasure at past entertainment if applicable to the audience, and through the more cartoony nature seem less threatening.The video games picture is designed to feel ridiculous. No credible research has ever supported the claim, but here it is on national news. It is an ultimate example of the argument, a current example of the same knee jerk reactions present in the past images. The viewer should feel frustrated over how the media and society jump so quickly to latch on to these beliefs.

Overall, the presentation is designed to provoke the audience to think about our tendency to label things that are new or different as corruptors of the youth and be more hesitant to subscribe to that kind of ideology in the future. A kind of sympathy and an acceptability through association are created for the later, more controversial elements that are still producing controversy, hopefully allaying any hate or dislike of the elements that is present in order to create a more objective view. The overreactions to new things that we now consider classics and harmless are designed to cause an overall sense of the absurdity of lashing out at new things in this way, which will hopefully make viewers hesitate the next time they are invited to jump on a bandwagon to hate something that is new and "corrupting the youth." This is not the most emotional presentation, but it is my hope that in conjunction with logic the images are able to create an adequate emotional affect.

http://www.chronolect.com Accessed 3/29/2011
http://www.ushmm.org/ Accessed 3/29/2011
http://minaburrows.blogspot.com Accessed 3/29/2011
http://directv.gatemediavisual.com Accessed 4/4/2011
http://www.chronolect.com/ Accessed 4/4/2011
http://madamepickwickartblog.com/ Accessed 3/29/2011
http://www.helloagaingirls.com Accessed 3/29/2011

The Corruptors of Youth

The Reaganator

If Massumi is anything, he is not a fan of Ronald Regan. He spends the better part of 3 pages tearing into the man with some fairly harsh language, including "idiocy", "unqualified",  "incoherent" and many other similar terms. Whether these criticisms are valid or not is difficult to say, and beyond my own skills of analysis. If you presented such an opinion to a general audience it is very likely that their reaction not depend on any evidence, observations or even the way it was presented: it would depend more on the way that they viewed Reagan and reacted to his speeches (on the condition that the audience is old enough to remember Ronald Regan's speeches).

While for those who rely on body language Reagan might have appeared "functionally illiterate" and "hilariously inept"(40),  he "operationalized the virtual in modern politics"(41). This view of politics, and indeed this approach to politics in the first place, has had major impact on our modern world. The Presidential Actor has been a strong theme in the last decades. A character from a respectable, but usually not political, background, properly theatrical, with the correct opinions to cater to the crowd. Reagan, Clinton, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Obama. It might be controversial to say, but the tradition possibly extends even farther back than Regan to JFK. These men may have their own individual pedigrees and qualifications, but their trait most marketed is not necessarily their political ability or ideas, but their ability to empathize with the public. Their message is secondary, what is important is their ability to be projected upon. Like TV screens or computer monitors, they display what the viewer wants to see, even if that has little to do with what they actually promise. A recent example of this would be the soaring expectations many had with Obama during his presidential run and the subsequent crash when people discovered that Obama was, in fact, not a wizard capable of making everything better overnight.

The ability for these politicians to receive these expectations and reflect them back to their audience is an art, and one practiced with varying skill by each of them with different degrees of consciousness. For Reagan, according to Massumi, it was the voice that drove home the package deal. Perhaps the same could be said for Obama's voice and, for some, his skin color. These features broadcast their affects just as strongly as any "empathy" or "emotive identification", leaving it to the audience to create their message. This is a style born of the image beamed into our homes, and while for Massumi Reagan might be the ultimate expression of this idea, I would possibly go back even farther to a more competent actor in a pivotal moment: JFK debating Nixon in the first televised Presidential debate. Nixon might have been the consummate politician, masterful at his job, but his ability to make that projection simply lacked compared to JFK. This victory is often attributed to appearance, but could it be possible that appearance has simply become a rationalizing justification to compensate for the fact that JFK was such a better actor than Reagan?

Incoherent Wanderings on Brennan

I'm not going to lie, I thought that the Brennan reading was painful and time consuming. Perhaps it's her fairly dry writing (sadly, Brennan herself died before finishing the editing, so I can forgive this), or her long reaching theories that seem do not always flow together, but I found my eyes straying every time they tried to stay on the page, darting around, looking for something else to do: which was not terribly difficult for them considering that I was reading the text in eBook format on my shiny new computer, custom built with my own hands.

Or maybe this mental wandering was the source of what Brennan calls an issue with "attentive energy(45)." Brennan connects our changing social structures with the "new maladies of the soul(45)" that have, while previously unknown, begun to manifest in significant quantities among our population. She speaks particularly of ADHD, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, and characterizes them as either an absence of energy or an excess of it (45). These new developments are interesting to us as Brennan argues they are not the product of genes or biology, but of our culture and social constructions. This then creates an intriguing divide with Damassio's view of behavior, which brought forth no shortage of intimidating concepts of how our behaviors adhere to a more neurological view. Damasio's approach to intellect and emotions, particularly his view on their division and the ways that they function together, seems somewhat at odds with Brennan's view of a cultural cause in this disorder, and I had to pause and think for a second - is that really the cause?

After all, there is always the possibility that ADHD, FMS and the like were not recorded en masse earlier due to simply being confused for other maladies or ignored altogether. The way in which we treat and raise our children, for example, is vastly different from how they were treated in the past for most of our population. The very concept of children as a blessing and them being a reward of themselves is a relatively new creation that recent (very controversial) studies have proclaimed a coping method for the exorbitant cost of raising a child, where in the past having a child meant a larger labor pool. Similar arguments could be made for CFS and FMS as well, so is it possible for Brennan to have the right effect, but the wrong cause?

On a broader view of the issue, are Brennan's views of energy shaping disorders compatible with the position of Damasio?

Written Pathetic Appeal

LINK
My claim in this argument is in favor of the use of principles present in video games in order to encourage new and revised methods of learning in the classroom. This was perhaps not the most emotionally charged subject, but I feel that I was able to use pathos and logos together to create a strong argument. My intention was to appeal to the desire of readers for an efficient, effective educational system, their own experiences in classrooms, the dislike of mass produced, one size fits all approaches to shaping people. For those who have played video games to any extent I have tried to include principles that are thought provoking but at the same time recognizable. I attempted to create a respectable, knowledgeable and impartial ethos in order to give credibility to myself even to those who may think the entire concept preposterous.

I wanted to evoke feelings of frustration at the ineffective methods of teaching, the excitement of problem solving during a game, and a hope for a better way of learning. My end goal is to have the audience become at least amiable towards the concept of game principles in the classroom by making them seem credible and worthwhile as a supplement to more traditional methods that contain some flaws. By drawing the connection between a flawed system and a promising, rational, and hopefully exciting new approach, I want readers to begin to think of ways in which these principles could be applied and look favorably towards the creation of new, alternative approaches to teaching using these gaming principles.