Sunday, January 16, 2005
A lot of thoughts running though my head so hopefully I can start blogging them again. New semester,new classes, new people in my life just as I'm preparing for post-grad life.
Wednesday, "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl". Instead of the Fab Five coming in, it's three new gay guys and a lesbian who it turns out is a former fashion model and whose expertise is being "the lady". They picked a pretty bland straight woman for their first target, though she seemed to make pretty insightful comments like "this is all so superficial" and in jest when her eyes were covered "And now, a new car!". Even though they went through the motions of making it personal by talking about her dad, it really did have the feeling of a game show or an Oprah giveaway, where she was the recipient of all this new stuff that is more about throwing money at her rather than the "make-better" emphasis of the original series. Does every woman have to be like Carrie Bradshaw with the
closet full of $500 shoes? I was a little surprised about the lesbian, Honey, after the frequent putting down of lesbians in the original series. Even here, we saw a little of this when the straight girl decked in a leather jacket and Honey were dancing on the bed together and the gay men immediately scolded her, saying there were trying to get her away from that side. Huh?
I decided to take Amy Bruckman's Online Communities class for a grade and am very excited about the readings so far. Last week we discussed Putnam, the author of "Bowling Alone" and this week we are discussing Oldenburg, author of "The Great Good Place". It's very similar to the kind of stuff I read this summer in Barcelona with the suburbanization and malls disrupting the traditional town square. But reading throught Oldenburg, certain parts ring true and certain parts don't. I think one problem is that he seems very focused on white middle-class communities and doesn't spend much time with ethnic neighborhoods, where I think there is still very much the presence of the community store and third places. I think assimilation and changing immigration patterns have lead to the changes in this respect. For example instead of Mr Hooper's Jewish corner store we have corner store run by Koreans or Pakistanis, even in Europe which he considers an ideal(though he seems to deliberately choose the colder cultures of England and Germany to compare the U.S. rather than the warmer cultures of an Italy or Latin America). He also fails to mentions the role of churches, gyms, sports bars and even Starbucks. Does this guy get out?
Of course, I think my personal upbringing, in a rural NC Native American town and Mexican city, where extended family played a much bigger role, and then later time in Chicago have lead to a different way of thinking. In Chicago, Burnham's plan was obviously consciously leading to public space and today we see Grant Park and Millenium Park as a big source. Of course I remember back to when I was in the suburbs,Naperville and how hard it was to meet people, mainly because the population was married families.
Oldenburg really comes down on people spending time with their families--with the decline of his precious third places,"the role of family extended like a hypertrophied cell". Oldenburg expands on his thesis in a chapter on gender, talking about how much drinking alcohol has declined (from 90% of all consumption in 1940 to 30% today) and with the decline of the American tavern, men have less opportunity to go out and get drunk and curse with their drinking buddies which is causing them to a)become domesticated and spend more time with their wives which creates tension leading to an increasing divorce rate b) become gay because there is no society sanctioned male bonding allowed. So again I have to wonder, does this guy ever hang out on soccer fields? sports bars? Has he ever met a gay person? I think the percentage of alcohol is due to declining rates of alcoholism (which I think is good!) and people eating out more in general which means that percentage alcohol is going to be less as a whole. With all the beer among my age group, I think his tavern ideals have just metamorphized rather than disappeared.
Wednesday, "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl". Instead of the Fab Five coming in, it's three new gay guys and a lesbian who it turns out is a former fashion model and whose expertise is being "the lady". They picked a pretty bland straight woman for their first target, though she seemed to make pretty insightful comments like "this is all so superficial" and in jest when her eyes were covered "And now, a new car!". Even though they went through the motions of making it personal by talking about her dad, it really did have the feeling of a game show or an Oprah giveaway, where she was the recipient of all this new stuff that is more about throwing money at her rather than the "make-better" emphasis of the original series. Does every woman have to be like Carrie Bradshaw with the
closet full of $500 shoes? I was a little surprised about the lesbian, Honey, after the frequent putting down of lesbians in the original series. Even here, we saw a little of this when the straight girl decked in a leather jacket and Honey were dancing on the bed together and the gay men immediately scolded her, saying there were trying to get her away from that side. Huh?
I decided to take Amy Bruckman's Online Communities class for a grade and am very excited about the readings so far. Last week we discussed Putnam, the author of "Bowling Alone" and this week we are discussing Oldenburg, author of "The Great Good Place". It's very similar to the kind of stuff I read this summer in Barcelona with the suburbanization and malls disrupting the traditional town square. But reading throught Oldenburg, certain parts ring true and certain parts don't. I think one problem is that he seems very focused on white middle-class communities and doesn't spend much time with ethnic neighborhoods, where I think there is still very much the presence of the community store and third places. I think assimilation and changing immigration patterns have lead to the changes in this respect. For example instead of Mr Hooper's Jewish corner store we have corner store run by Koreans or Pakistanis, even in Europe which he considers an ideal(though he seems to deliberately choose the colder cultures of England and Germany to compare the U.S. rather than the warmer cultures of an Italy or Latin America). He also fails to mentions the role of churches, gyms, sports bars and even Starbucks. Does this guy get out?
Of course, I think my personal upbringing, in a rural NC Native American town and Mexican city, where extended family played a much bigger role, and then later time in Chicago have lead to a different way of thinking. In Chicago, Burnham's plan was obviously consciously leading to public space and today we see Grant Park and Millenium Park as a big source. Of course I remember back to when I was in the suburbs,Naperville and how hard it was to meet people, mainly because the population was married families.
Oldenburg really comes down on people spending time with their families--with the decline of his precious third places,"the role of family extended like a hypertrophied cell". Oldenburg expands on his thesis in a chapter on gender, talking about how much drinking alcohol has declined (from 90% of all consumption in 1940 to 30% today) and with the decline of the American tavern, men have less opportunity to go out and get drunk and curse with their drinking buddies which is causing them to a)become domesticated and spend more time with their wives which creates tension leading to an increasing divorce rate b) become gay because there is no society sanctioned male bonding allowed. So again I have to wonder, does this guy ever hang out on soccer fields? sports bars? Has he ever met a gay person? I think the percentage of alcohol is due to declining rates of alcoholism (which I think is good!) and people eating out more in general which means that percentage alcohol is going to be less as a whole. With all the beer among my age group, I think his tavern ideals have just metamorphized rather than disappeared.
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