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POP CULTURE AND I







WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2013


FACEBOOK PRESENTATION AND WORKING WITH MY GROUP


     Our group presentation topic is about Facebook.
     First, I was happy to be part of this group because all the member of this
group were engaged and tried to push forward out presentation idea. As what
people know about the “Facebook” this social networking actually cover a lot
parts to influence and change people's life and the world. In this group, my
part of the whole presentation is about globalization of Facebook. This is
important part to know because in 2011, 70% of the Facebook users were from
outside of US. Facebook had been already successfully cross the line of
cultures, traditions, languages in this world to help people to communicate.
Because of my background and personal experiences, I think I am really good to
help audiences to understand how the Facebook globalization influences and works
in our daily life. I am an international student grew up in Japan. However,
since I was young, we have many foreign students lived in our house in Japan. I
actually grew up with these different cultures and learned a lot from these
foreign students. After they leave, we become Facebook friends and continue
keeping contact. Through the Facebook, I am not only keep my friends on abroad
but also knows how are they doing and what happen on them daily life. Because of
Facebook globalization, I keep and make more friends from many countries and
regions. Facebook helps people from all over the world to be friend, share
information and ideas. I believe this is the great way to know real world
without too much stereotyped image because normal people like us can share the
informations. That is how the Facebook influenced and changed my world. It made
it so much easier for us to feel closer to each other in distance, too. I
researched about globalization of Facebook and also used my personal experience
to see what Facebook's globalization bring to us. From my experiences, there are
so many good things like easy to keep in touch with people from all over the
world or getting new knowledge how people live in other nations. However after
researching little deeper, there are some people worry that Facebook reads
cultural homogenization and global capitalism. I understand how it will be.
People share so much on Facebook that people start consuming same product all
over the world. Not only because of Facebook but Facebook is heavily controlled
by advertisement company, too. It already common that transnational corporations
are taking over the market in the world. In our text also argue that it can
reads loss of cultural diversity and it originality. I thought this idea is
interesting, I never think this way about Facebook before.
      That is the research I did to contribute our “Facebook Presentation” and I
think everyone in our group did well to contribute this group work. Again, it
was great experience working with the motivated group members and thankful for
each of them to give me a hand to complete my part of the presentation.

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2013


ECONOMIC ANALYSIS


In this week, we talk about how the globalized economics influence the world. In
our scenario, we tried to looking for the solution to example who is the
beneficiary and who is the victim in this case. My personal analysis on this
case is that no one actually benefit. The American cooperation want to looking
for the cheaper labors and pay less cost in some other country. This reason
drive them leave China to move to other place such as Vietnam, Cambodia or
Africa to build new factories and hire new workers. However, after they decide
to move to these new places, they also have to face on the new challenges to
start their business. For example, they have to training new labors to work for
them. At the same time, they need to build the new factories and other related
facilities for their technicians and other people. More importantly, how to get
the support from these countries' government could be an important task for
these cooperation. From Chinese labors' perspective, they lost job because of
American cooperation' leave. However, the huge domestic market in China could
offer other opportunities for these skillful labors. I think they can find a new
job quickly. For the Chinese government, because of their high speed economics
growing, they need to encourage more and more national industries' development.
Since the American cooperation decide to leave China, it actually offer a great
opportunities for Chinese own national industries to take over the economic
black that American cooperation left. For American consumers, they may face on
the new higher price because of the increase of cost price. I think simply leave
is not a good response and solution for economic conflict but may bring more
serious damages for all the party.

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2013


FREEDOM


This week class, we mainly focus on how to identify “freedom” this term in the
society and culture. As what people know that the “freedom” is a fundamental
social value in American history and society. However, how to identify the range
of freedom that citizens has which is a hard question to answer. Many people
thought that citizens should enjoy complete “freedom” in this society. That is
not the reality shows to us. The limited freedom could guarantee the social
normal running. People have to perform their social responsibility during they
enjoy their freedom in this society. The freedom is solitary term or definition
but a social contract. This world did not really exist the absolute freedom. For
example, American government issued the famous “patriot Act” in 2001 after the
“9.11”. This new act allowed government legally check citizen's email, phone
history, and other social record to against terrorism. That could be a simple
example to explain what are the contradictions between social contract and
individual freedom. I personally think that government need to use effective
ways to prevent terrorists to hurt other individuals and society. However, this
act directly violate the basic definition of “freedom” based on American culture
and history. On the other hand, if our society do not have these terrorists to
use attack of terrorism to take other people's freedom and life, how government
need response like this? All in all, the social “freedom” is not an easy term to
explain and understand, it have to relate with social reality and culture. The
real freedom should make people bring more social togetherness to our world but
not create estrangement and hate between individuals.

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2013


GENERATION GAP


This week we only have one lecture on Wednesday, so we still stay on the topic
we discussed last week about the generation gap in the family. I think the
reason that many parents have a hard time to communicate with their children
about how to help teens grow up during their puberty is because they have
totally understanding about this world and life value. Parents already had hard
time to fit in the society when they are teenagers. They do not want their
children have same difficult process as what they experienced before. However,
the teens feels that they are ready to deal with the world alone by themselves
with their full of the curiosities. They do not want to listen and follow what
their parents' outdated social experiences and value. They have their own dream
and hope about their new life and new world they will face on. Here is really
hard to judge that who is right or wrong. The generation gap exist in every
families and households no matter in which country or culture. Today, following
with the high speed technological and economical development, people's social
and family value also changed really fast. Now, the generation gap between
different generations could be so short. No wonder that parents can not
completely understand and feel what their children's world and value. However, I
believe that the communication could be the only key point to help family member
to make up this factual “gap” between parents and their children. If they both
understand how much they love each other during teenagers grow up this
particular process, I think at least they can find a balance to make up the
distance between each others.

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2013


TEEN'S COURSE OF GROWTH


In this week class, we focused on how the society change brought different
worries to teenagers during they growing up. In the past, during the puberty,
teenagers' parents always want them to grow up faster and faster to really take
the social and family responsibility seriously. However, teenagers often need
more time to adjust their new social and family roles after they become young
adults. In this whole process, they may had many unavoidable confusions,
contradictions and conflicts with their parents. All in all, teenagers has a
long process to learn how to become an adult during the puberty in the past.
Normally, their parents always want to curtail their process and force teenagers
to grow up faster. However, in the current age, all this could be changed. Now,
the young teens could be mature really early and know about the society more
through the pop culture and advanced technologies. They may act and think like
adult when they are still early teen age. That is how they saw and learned from
TV and internet. Through these technological network, they learn how to act and
be adult. On the other hand, the young teens want to get people's acknowledgment
for their social position and role as an adult, they want to behavior like
adult. However, their physical and mental maturity are not ready for the new
social status as what they want. That is why parents want to slow down course of
growth of their children. When a person's subjective ideology start to encourage
him/her to do something but his/her objective physical and mental conditions are
not ready yet, that is dangerous. Because of the social cultural changes and
technological developments, teenagers' course of growth and parents' perspective
also changed.

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2013


TV


In the reading of this week, it mainly talk about how the TV influenced the
society and the Pop culture's spread in the world. In the human history, The
TV's invention deeply change the world and people's daily life style. As one of
the most important invention in history, TV largely expand people's angle of
vision in their life. Before the TV's invention, people use books, radio and
other ways to spread the culture and knowledge to each other. Although these
propagational modes could complete the cultural spread in a sense, it had many
serious limitation and short comes. Cultural spread need a stereoscopic media to
make people easily understand and accept the new culture from other group. TV is
not only could comprehensively use its sounds, pictures, colors to display the
cultural information to the audiences but also people could feel the different
cultures through the live broadcast of TV. In the human history, here is really
hard to find another technical invention to compare its influence and
contributions with TV. Even today, the computer and internet become more and
more important and popular, it also follow with the TV's creative concept to
make their own success to help our society to spread the culture and information
faster, safer and cheaper. For this point of view, the TV's invention actually
created a new type of media to help people manage their life and world better.
That is how TV really change and influent our life and world.

Posted by Misato N at 4:39 PM No comments:
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2013


MIDTERM PAPER


Misato Nomura English 313 Professor Wexler October 23, 2013 Film and History I
believe that Film is the best, easiest, and most popular way to unscramble life
and history. People like to watch film because they can find a sympathetic
feeling with the main characters or the setting in the film. Namely, film offers
a microcosmic real world to audiences to use its own fascination to attract the
audiences' attention and arouse their boundless thinking for life, world, love,
and philosophy. However, history as the foundation of human life, film can never
put aside it away to develop a completely abstract scenario. Historical facts
could make a film become more real and more close to the audience's life. The
history that appeares in film could help audiences understand and feel the
history easier and more directly compared with traditional history books or
classes. Film gives a better chance for history to represent itself and history
could made audiences have a chance to, through film, rethink their life and
world from the past experiences. That is why I believe a historical film is
really good to educate and inspire people to what we can get from history for
the current reality. Film is a dream construction and history endue with the
feasibility to it. I want to make a film about the “Opium War” to display what
is my understanding about the relation between film and history. To most in the
field of history, The Opium War beginning in 1840 is widely regarded as the
beginning of modern Chinese history. Although The Opium War was a military
conflict between two countries, it’s overall scale was much larger than this,
and can be seen as a collision of two different civilizations and cultures. I
believe this historical topic has enough content to make audiences rethink the
history, society, international relations, global economics and national
security in the current modern world through this film. In this film, there will
be one main character and three important minor roles. My main character will be
Lin Zexu who was sent by Daoguang emperor as an imperial commissioner to Canton
to halt the illegal importation of opium by the British. For this character, I
want to choose Chen Baoguo, a Chinese senior actor to play. He has a lot of
experience playing governmental characters in his personal performing career. I
believe he can perfectly perform the multiple temperaments for this role such as
being steadfast, brave, wise and complete loyalty to the emperor. For the other
three important minor characters, I want to, through the different social
statuses and backgrounds they have, portray the trade conflicts and war between
China and Britain in different ways. Pan He was a relative of the leader of the
hong merchants. He was sent to Southeast Asia to study English and try to learn
how to do business with foreigners from the “Thirteen Factories”. Later on, he
became an interpreter between the Chinese and British governments before and
during the war. I choose Hong Kong actor Tony Leung to play this role. Tony not
only has rich performing experiences but also is able to speak perfect British
English which could help him play and interpret the character better. The second
minor character is British merchant Lancelot Dent. Dent resided for a period in
Canton who dealt primarily in opium. In the film, he is the leader of the opium
merchants and against Lin's policies. I think Nicolas Cage could be a good
choice. As a famous actor who received many different Awards in his performing
career, I have enough confidence in his acting and understanding of this
character. The third minor character, William Wilson, is a captain in the
British Army. The Opium War is the first war that William attends and he has his
own perspective of Chinese troops, Chinese people, and this war. Orlando Bloom
is the perfect actor for this role I believe. In “Kingdom of Heaven” and
“Pirates of the Caribbean”, he had enough experience to deal with all the
challenges that come from a military role in the film. I believe he could
felicitously display a young military officer's bravery, nervousness, and
contradiction. I want to, through these three minor characters' different values
and social backgrounds, reflect the huge collision of two worlds. At the
beginning of the film, I want to rewind time back from 1840, the year the Opium
War occurred, to 1793. In this year, Sir Mccartney and his huge fleet sailed
into Chinese coastal waters. This huge mission was to come to China to attend
and congratulate Qianlong emperor's 83rd birthday. Before he left Britain, the
King repeatedly emphasized the importance of his mission to China this time. He
has to convince Chinese emperor to allow free trade between China and Britain.
Additionally, if he and his birthday gift can obtain the emperor's recognition,
maybe he can get permission to have a small island to allow British merchants to
stay on However, his huge plan was easily destroyed by the Chinese emperor's and
officer's attitude. “Westerners seemed to the Chinese of no more consequence
than the other outsiders they were accustomed to. They came in ships instead of
on horseback, but they were barbarians just the same- hairy barbarians, foreign
devils, fan kuei” (Fay 31). In the Chinese Emperor’s eyes, all these Europeans
who came from nowhere had come with their hearts full of respect and admiration
for the Chinese civilization here. During the meeting, the Qianlong emperor did
not really have any interest in what Sir Mccartney said but was upset because he
did not kowtow to him. He refused all of Mccartney's requests and wrote a
contumelious to the British King. “‘I do not forget’, he wrote King George, ‘the
lonely remoteness of your island, cut off from the world by intervening wastes
of sea. Nor do I overlook your excusable ignorance of Our Celestial Empire’”
(Fay 32). In the late of this year, Sir Mccartney disappointingly left China.
Before he left China, he designedly watched the Chinese navy's warships and its
equipments. He affirms that one small British fleet could easily destroy the
entire Chinese navy. Maybe that day will come soon, that will be the time to
finally let the Chinese know who is the real center of the world. Now, the time
come moves forward to 1839 in Canton. Lin Zexu and his attendants walk on the
busy street in the evening one day during summer. Through the curtains he sees
many people laying on the bed. Each of them has an opium pipe and enjoys the
pleasant sensation that opium brings to them. In those people, Lin also saw
three of them wearing military uniforms. All the opium smokers in this shop
looked like “a pathetic and degenerate creature with lank and shrivelled limbs,
tottering gait, sallow visage, feeble voice and death-boding glance of eye”
(Newman 766). Lin shakes his head and leaves. Half a year ago, he reported to
the emperor about how huge of a danger that opium could bring to the Qing
empire. In his report, he mentioned that “during 1834-1835 the number of opium
chests smuggled into China came to 21,885....Not only did this opium trade harm
the Chinese economy by draining off Chinese silver, but it had disastrous
effects on the general state of health and morale of the Chinese people”(Guan
18). He said that if the government still did not take any actions to ban
opium-smoking and the opium trade, then twenty years later China will not only
have no healthy troops to defend for national security but also not have enough
money to support a war. From Lin's report, Emperor Daoguang finally realized how
dangerous the situation he is facing was. He appointed Lin as the imperial
commissioner to Canton to halt the illegal importation of opium. Lin brought
troops to encircle the foreign merchants' mansion and notified them that he will
cut down the water and food supply until they hand over all the opium they have.
British Dent represented all the foreign merchants who want to negotiate with
Lin. He tries to bribe Lin but Lin refuses. After a couple of days of being in a
stalemate, the foreign merchants finally decide to give up all their opium to
Lin to exchange for their freedom. However, Dent started to write a letter to
his friend in the British parliament to require the British government to
protect the merchants' interests. After Lin came to Canton and started to take
over the task of dealing with foreigners, he realized that China already got
behind in many areas compared with the West. He is anxious to find someone who
knows the outside world to assist him. One day, he hears of the “Thirteen
Factories”, the only official merchant organization that is allowed to do
business with foreigners, has a young man who knows English and lived in
Southeast Asia. He finds the young man who is Pan He and brings him to his own
office to study Western culture and society from him. From Pan's mouth, Lin
learned of what is a steamship, a machine, and a factory were as well as the
world map. During this time, he built new cannons into the Humen fort to defend
Canton. In Britain, parliament is arguing if it should or should not send troops
to China to protect British interests. Finally, Dent's political contributions
and Sir Mccartney's investigation reports from half a century ago pushed the
government to decide to declare war on China. It is Captain William's first time
to leave home to join the expedition team to China. After almost one year's
sail, the British fleet with 20,000 soldiers finally arrived in China and
started to attack Canton. The battle of Canton was not that successful. Lin had
already prepared and effectively resisted the British navy's attack. However, he
does not know that the British fleet quickly sailed to the north and appeared in
Dinghai the next day and easily conquered the coastal town. After only two
hours, 5000 Chinese soldiers fall in battle. William was the first to orders his
team to enter Dinghai and he receives a war medal from the fleet commander.
However, he found that the reason the Chinese troops lost was not because they
were not brave enough, but the weapons that they had. In the war, he did not
find the Chinese troops equipped with enough firearms. Their cannons could only
shoot solid shells and its range was too short to reach the British battleships.
After conquering Dinghai, the fleet commander decided to sail to Dagu which is
the port of Beijing. He want to teach the Chinese a lesson. In Beijing, Emperor
Daoguang knew that the British fleet was ready to attack Dagu port and even
threatened Beijing's safety. He quickly sent a new imperial commissioner to
negotiate with British troops and promise that he will heavily punish Lin. A
couple of weeks later, Lin received the emperor's order which repealed his
position and punished him to serve in the army at the Northwestern border. After
he left, the new commissioner quickly arrested Pan and put him into prison with
accusations of being a traitor. Later, his family bribed the governors and saved
him. After a lot of bother, he comes to the British fleet to become an
interpreter to serve British troops. William tries to avoid killing Chinese
civilians but he saw many British soldiers destroying the Chinese city and
robbing Chinese people during the war. He is tired of all the crimes but he can
not run away from it. On August 1842, the Chinese government Representative and
British commander signed the “Treat of Nanking” on the British battleship HMS
Cornwallis. In this treaty, Britain successfully opened Chinese doors and also
received Hong Kong as a permanent foothold as what Sir Mccartney wished. At the
same time, Dent and other opium merchants got six of the twenty-one million
silver indemnity as compensation for the famous confiscated chests. At the end
of the film, Lin appears at the border and never has a chance to finish his
dream, which was to learn from the West to strengthen China. Pan follows the
British fleet back to Britain. He wants to know why this small island country
could become a world factory and defeated China. Dent comes back to China and he
restarts his opium business to sell more opium from India to China and makes a
lot of money. William decides to quit the military then go home and marry his
girlfriend. However, twenty years later, his son as a new soldier participates
in the second opium war in China just like he had in 1840. As a historical and
war film, this film's main theme maybe a little bit heavy for audiences.
However, I think that it also because it includes too many conflicts and
syncretism. Although this conflict finally arose to war between China and
Britain and chanced history in this age, it did not block the cultural, social,
economic, ideological and scientific exchange and syncretization. If both
cultures could respect and understand each other and made a compromise, then
maybe Sir Mccartney could achieve the goals that British troops had after the
war. If the Chinese government and society could shrewdly perceive the changes
of the world, then they may not have had that much of a technological and
ideological distance when the war started. Indeed, the history did not offer too
many assumptions for us. However, the history really left a huge experience to
people who may have the same task that the older generation had. Today, when we
are faced upon globalization and many domestic or international problems such as
national debts, national security, pollution, global economic crisis and so on.
We should have enough confidence to believe that we can deal with these
challenges better than the older generation depending on the experiences they
leave for us. I believe when nations and countries really start to respect,
understand, and trust each other to start complete international cooperation to
deal with all these challenges, then we really have a larger chance to create a
better future and more glorious history than our older generations left us. That
is what we should learn and think from history and film. Works Citeds Fay, Peter
Ward. “The Opium War, 1840-1842:barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the early
part of the nineteenth century and the war by which they forced her gates
ajar.”Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press. Print. Guan,
Shijie.“Chartism and the First Opium War.”History Workshop. No. 24 (Autumn,
1987):17-31. Published by: Oxford University Press. Print. Newman, R. K. “Opium
Smoking in Late Imperial China: A Reconsideration.” Modern Asian Studies. Vol.
29, No. 4 (Oct.,1995):765-794. Published by: Cambridge University Press. Print.

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 * ▼  2013 (15)
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     * Facebook Presentation and Working with My Group
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Misato N I am Misato. Study at CSUN. View my complete profile




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