Will Rock the Vote increase voter turnout in the youth of America?

The 2008 election is coming up and the candidates are campaigning like crazy. In the past couple of decades, the lowest voter turnout was in the 18-25 category. A campaign known as Rock the Vote tries to get the youth of America to go out and vote so they can be heard by their fellow candidates. Rock the Vote is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1990. Celebrities like Brittany Murphy and bands like Against Me!, All Time Low, and The Donnas get involved and try to persuade and get kids to go out and register to vote. They feel that if we really wanted to make or see a change in the future, we really need to go out and do something about it. They encourage young adults to think about the issues affecting us, for example, the War in Iraq. In the past election in 2004, the voter turnout for 18-25 year olds was at 47% which is a greater increase from the voter turnout in 2000 which was 37%. Still, the 18-25 age range had always ended up having the lowest number of votes compared to the 55-74 year olds who had the highest voter turnout at 73%.

Why do you think that is? What's the reason or explanation behind the youth of America having the lowest voter turnout? Are we just too busy or are we making excuses? Do the celebrity endorsements work and persuade the youth to vote? Will it increase the voter turnout in the 2008 election significantly? Will the youth vote ever reach as high as the older vote? If you do vote, why? If you don’t vote, why not?

Fashion Photo Gone Wrong? Stereotypes in the Media

In this day and age, many of us are trying to break and banish stereotypes but for some reason we can't seem to escape them. Stereotypes are portrayed all over the media whether they are positive or negative or even unintentional. Someone out there is bound to point a finger at an image that means no harm. Now, is this the case for the April 2008 cover of Vogue?

An article from USA Today covers the controversey behind the Vogue cover. This cover, shot by photographer Annie Leibovitz (warning: may contain nudity), stars basketball star LeBron James and Victoria's Secret model Gisele Bundchen. It shows LeBron in an aggressive gorilla-like pose which some find racially stereotypical because, Tamara Walker states, "it conjurs up the idea of a dangerous black man." Supposedly, this isn't the first time that a magazine cover has invoked ideas of racial stereotypes. Former NBA star Charles Barkley, on a cover of Sports Illustrated, was shown breaking out of shackles (the image is small but you get the idea). An assistant professor at University of Maryland, Damian Thomas said these aggressive images of black male athletes "reinforce the criminalization of black men."

The cover of Vogue was supposed to show LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen doing what they do best, with Gisele posing pretty and LeBron with his game face on. Some say that, that is all the photo is depicting but many think otherwise. Cover photos are not something that magazines breeze through. They go through a process of elimination to choose the best out of the bunch to represent the entire issue. Walker said, that if more people of color had editorial authority at Vogue then someone would have caught the racial overtone in the photo before it was chosen as the cover photo.

What do you all think about the Vogue cover controversy? Do you believe that the cover photo was intentionally set up to portray racial stereotypes or do you think that people are just over analyzing a harmless photograph? Also, what are your thoughts about the media's role in stereotyping?

Do divides in humanities fields affect how those fields are valued by society?

Around 1900, classical composers felt that the tonal system for writing music had been exhausted of its resources and they sought out new ways of composing music. This led to a divide in the field of music. Classical music continued to explore new systems of composition, while other musicians kept with the tonal system.

Composers that continued to use the tonal system began to attract listeners from the classical field. They wrote simple, easy-to-understand, and enjoyable melodies that were more appealing to “tonal ears” than the complex, tonal-less, and intellectualized classical art music. Popular music was the result. The divide continues today. The problem with this divide is it creates misconceptions on what the musical community values, and how the study of music is viewed by the general public. For instance, rock musicians tend to be viewed as rebellious, wild, and a threat to society. Since rock music is popularized, people might believe acting like a rock star is part of what means to be a musician. This is not at all the case for the classical musicians, whose goal is to preserve the established culture, protect it, and progress it. It is this division of values in the musical community that prevents music from progressing as a whole, and in turn how society values music.

Is there a split in other humanities fields that prevents them from progressing? Do these divides affect how society views that field and in turn values it? Should the classical community be held accountable for not training musical audiences into “modern” music, or should the pop fields be responsible for encouraging the use of old systems of composition? How do you view the field of music?

Tonality

Example of new system developed for composition: Twelve-Tone system of composition - Anti-Tonality

Sound Samples:

Classical Music before 1900 written in the tonal system. These selections should sound “normal” to tonally trained ears:
Chopin’s Ballade in G minor (1830s)
Brahm’s b minor Capriccio (1870s)

Classical Music written after the tonal system was being abandoned. These should sound “abnormal/ugly/awkard” to tonally trained ears:
Schoenberg op. 19 (1911)
Copland Variations (1930)
Stravinsky – Rite of Spring (1913)

Early popular music. Sounds normal to tonally trained ears:
John Phillip Sousa (1912)
Early Jazz

Modern classical music. Should sound abnormal to tonally trained ears:
John Cage - Imaginary Landscape

Modern pop music. Should sound normal to tonally trained ears:
Yael Naim – New Soul

The Arts in Elementary Schools: What’s the point?

Remember back to the good old days of elementary school when you got to draw, paint, sculpt, sing, play instruments, dance, and/or participate in plays. It was fun, wasn’t it? Many elementary school students enjoy the arts as part of their daily activities in the school. For many elementary students, it is their chance to do something they actual like to do.

Yeah its fun for the students, but are they actually getting anything from the arts. In the New York Times article The Arts Come Alive In School Programs , by Merri Rosenberg, Barbara Levine, a Hillside Elementary art teacher, said: ''The idea with art is that they have to make decisions. It's creative problem solving and using critical thinking skills.''

The arts allow children to express themselves. They give the students an opportunity to show their creativity in a way other subjects cannot. In most cases, the arts give the students opportunities to develop their intrapersonal relationships as well as developing interpersonal relationships. Results from national research on arts education emphasize the benefits of the arts in schools.

Do you think it is important to have the arts as part of the elementary school curriculum? If so, how much time should be devoted to the arts? If not, why? Can the students really gain anything from participating in the arts? What are your suggestions for the elementary schools?

Studying Humanities, Law and Science.

If the humanities are fading so fast, why did a humanities professor at one of the best colleges in the United States get a $1.5 million grant? An article called Brooks to Study Law, Humanities with Grant in the Yale Daily News, which can be found at http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/23003, lets us know just what Peter Brooks plans on doing with that grant. Peter Brooks is a professor of Comparative Literature at Yale (www.yale.edu) and every year for the past three years a grant is given to someone in the humanities department there. Why is Yale, one of the best schools in the country so focused on improving the humanities, especially after the constant criticism that the humanities has received? It is simple, Peter Brooks is also a professor at that Yale Law School and said “he was drawn to the idea of applying humanities methods of reading and interpretation to professional scholarship after the 2004 release of Justice Department memorandums approving the use of torture.” I believe that we need more people like Peter Brooks teaching us. He is not saying that the humanities are what will turn our world around, nor is he saying that it is pointless. I believe that he has every intention of combining humanities with law and science in order to make the world a better place.
To me, this is a very interesting idea. Applying humanities to law and science doesn’t seem like it could work. However, Peter Brooks is determined to make it work and in all reality, I believe that maybe it could. If we look at what the humanities have to offer and what other areas of study lack, maybe there will be some connection between the two and Peter Brooks will be able to use his grant money to start combining them (To learn more about Peter Brooks, Click here: http://www.yale.edu/opa/yb&c/story3.html) . He isn’t claiming that the humanities are more ethical that law and science, but what I believe is that the humanities offer something that the other two cannot and vice versa. So, can Peter Brooks do the research in order to prove that the humanities have something to offer? Hopefully. What do you think? Do you think it is possible for the humanities to go hand in hand with law and science?

The Uses of the Humanities

Stanley Fish, an academic humanist, makes a bold claim about the utility of the humanities. He argues that their main purpose is to provide individual pleasure. They don’t reform, they don’t humanize, and they don’t help us understand the meaning of life, Fish asserts, because if they did, your English, philosophy, music, and history professors would be among the best people on earth (and you already know that they aren’t!).

Is Fish right? Scholars of history make war, writers of novels commit crimes, and gifted creative artists lose their lives to drugs and alcohol. And yet, it was a pamphlet that helped launch the American Revolution, it was music that helped empower a generation to oppose the Vietnam War, and a painting like Picasso’s Guernica is considered a national treasure in Spain.

What do you think? Can training in the humanistic disciplines do anything more than give us individual pleasure?

J.