Identify and briefly describe two ways the article illustrates Appadurai's argument concerning electronic and post-electronic media and migration as marking new ways in which to construct "imagined worlds and imagined selves."
Review the guidelines for blog posts listed on the course syllabus. Select the "Comments" link below the post and enter your response. It is suggested that you write your response in your word processing application, save it, then cut and paste it into the "Comments" section. Remember to write your name and course number (Art 309 or Film 301 ) in your "Comments" post.
Sara Stearns
ReplyDeleteArt and Migration 309
Greene
It was extremely interesting to see one’s point of view of technology, their purpose and use of it, as well as how it impacts their life so intensely. Lee Si-kap seemed to have a somewhat traumatic life leading to him being very shy, and having to find other outlets other than people. This led him to turn to technology, and the 85 satellite dishes that he currently has. In the article, one of the big reasons that this technology created an outlet to “imagined worlds and imagined selves”. He said at one point that music was his only friend, and that it made him happy. Having access to different countries, religions, sports, and this created joy to him in the fact of the vast worlds out there available to him. This created a sort of imagination for him, and improved himself and his life.
The second main reason that comes to mind from the article was his desire to help the many foreign brides be able to reconnect or keep in touch with their countries of origin. Often these brides would lead sheltered lives, knew very little of the South Korea’s culture or language. This created these women to feel very isolated. In getting access to satellite antennas, these women would feel like they were not alone, and they were still able to see what was going on in their country giving them a sense of happiness. In spite of their concerned husbands who felt that it would make their homesickness worse, it actually helped to overcome it.
It is a strange concept, living in one world yet focusing on others that are far away from you. It is satisfying, however, to see the lives of these people improve and become more fulfilling.
Sam Styza
ReplyDeleteMigration and Visual Art
The New York Times article described many of the points that the Appadurai article brought up about migration. Appadurai explains the idea of ethnoscapes and the possibilities for travel that are created along with new technologies. Since technology is always bringing us closer together, travel is constantly becoming easier and more feasible.
People create imaginary worlds for themselves by thinking of the places they could travel or move to. This is very similar to what the brides from the New York Times article are doing. However, instead of using technology to plan where they will go, they are using it to keep in contact with the places they are from. They are able to cure their homesickness with their satallite dishes.
Lee Si-kap's obbsession with finding distant broadcasts also ilustrates Appadurai's argument. While living in Korea, Mr. Lee has created a life for himself in which he is also constantly all over the world. His connection with different countries is his imaginary world.
Ismar Kulenovic
ReplyDeleteArt 309
The NY Times article regarding the record number of satellite dishes and Mr. Lee was a good insight to today's modernized and cyber-connected world. It really shows how our world is changing today, everyone is connected everywhere, whether this is from blogs or from facebook. Appadurai showed migration around the world, and this article shows an example of how those connections are being made. Mr. Lee is exposing himself to other cultures, languages, and medias through his dish network. He is also using this technology to help the foreign brides in his town/village. These “imagined worlds” are all the real deal and keep him in touch with today's customs from all over the world. Mr. Lee has his own life and farm which he must tend to, but then in a way he also has a second life/job. Since it is something he enjoys so much it should be considered a serious hobby and also a noble one since he is using his resource that many don't have in that area to help others. It is really amazing how there seems to be no distance between anyone in the cyber-world since we are all so well connected. This is the media migration that is sweeping all over the world and connecting everyone, even if they are not physically there.
Derek Hansen
ReplyDeleteArt 309
Ok, I read the article by the New York Times. However I've had some issues regarding the article in the course reader. These issues have nothing to do with what the article say. What the problem is that the Course Reader that was required does not have the article that by Appadurai at all.
Kevin M. Otto - Art 309
ReplyDeleteToday's new forms of media as we know bring the world closer together. People across the globe are now finding it easier to communicate and research other communities. Lee Si-kap utilizes satellite dishes to further his knowledge of other countries and cultures. He shares his information with lonely brides who have immigrated to Korea in hopes that it will give them some relief from their home sickness. The ability to watch programs from these women's home countries gives them a link to stabilize their lives. Part of them is still home in a sense because they know what is going on in their home country and their concerns are addressed for family members safety that may still be in that country. The basic knowledge of what is going on in their home countries subdues feelings of worthlessness. Lee Si-kap does not necessarily have to understand the words that he is hearing from these broadcasts from around the world. He takes what he needs from these images and sounds on television. The fact that he has the ability to repeat words that he heard on television in languages that he doesn't originally understand gives him a technological education. Through this he develops a identity and a world of his own. Even a college degree does not hold him back from his obsession with all of the broadcasts floating through the air. His shyness strengthened his desire to be home. Lee Si-kap's drive of electronic media allowed him to aside his college degree but retain the information he picked up on in college. The shy individual has become world known due to his love of technology and desire to help individuals of his country.
The Article easily touches upon both Appadurai’s arguments about electronic and post electronic media in mediascapes and the enculturation or cultural reproduction concerning migration. Lee Si-Kap being the owner of all 85 satellites provides a good basis for mediascapes and the foreign wives receiving the dishes enforce cultural reproduction. When talking about mediascapes, Appadurai talks about how people who don’t get to directly experience metropolitan life are more likely to construct imagined worlds. In Lee’s case, he gets his metropolitan exposure from catching satellite signals from larger countries. Not only is he taking part in other countries’ television but, also their culture which would in return reflect upon his personality and even ideal. It could even be plausible that his drive to help the foreign wives stems from an American television show or cinema where the hero will help the repressed and defenseless. Now the foreign wives as Appadurai would suggest are experiencing enculturation, and in helping them do so is Mr. Lee. By being able to take part in the same news and hear their native language, they are able to reproduce that little bit of culture that is familiar to them and avoid alienation. Appadurai also mentions how the process of cultural reproduction can be complicated by the politics of representing the family as normal. The foreign wives have this same dilemma when found with husbands who prefer to shield them from any possible connection to their homelands in order to overcome their loneliness. Overall, this article provides good example to further Appadurai’s theories on global cultural economy.
ReplyDeleteArt 309
ReplyDeleteThe New York Times article about Lee Si Kap, the rural South Korean who owns 85 different satellite dishes clearly illustrates Appadurai's argument that electronic media and migration makes new ways in which to construct "imagined worlds and imagined selves." For example when the article mentioned that Mr. Lee's idol was an American heavy metal musician it clearly shows an example in which his satellite technology allowed him to experience other cultures around the world and also allowed him to fantasize meeting and listening to this musician in person. This totally matches an example given in Appadurai's article where Filipinos sing perfect renditions of American songs sung by Kenny Rogers and the Lennon sisters despite not being fluent in the language. This is also and example of music, a form of electronic technology giving comfort and creating alternate or "imagined worlds and selves" through this technology. Also the satellites allowed Mr. Lee to construct a larger, more complex and accurate world or "imagined world" by watching his many international channels he watched.
Justin Beale
ReplyDeleteArt and Migration 309
Greene
The New York Times article we read relating to the use of satellite dishes in South Korea seems to be a perfect example of the globalization theories or landscapes as described in Appadurai’s article in the course reader. Over the span of many years Lee Si-Kap has accumulated a whopping 85 satellite dishes on his rural property in South Korea. Mr. Lee uses these satellite dishes to retrieve foreign television channels from around the world, many of which he does not understand the language, in an effort to further his knowledge of the world outside of South Koreas national borders. Recently Mr. Lee has started a campaign to install free satellite dishes on the homes of foreign brides residing within this region, in hopes of lessening the alienation and homesickness they often experience. In the article The Global Cultural Economy Appadurai illustrates that this kind of global connectivity is now possible due to the ever-improving technoscape, which allows information such as television channels to move at high speeds across boundaries where information was once unobtainable. While the technoscape has allowed these brides to relive or visit the now imagined world of their distant home culture, it is this same distance that is causing a great deal of problematic cultural reproduction. Many of these brides are often left feeling torn between continuing their cultural traditions from within these imagined worlds or simply succumbing to the enculturation of their new home. This problematic struggle between cultures represents the movement towards the ‘chaos’ theory, in which cultures become a complex twist of overlying traditions and ideas.
Derek (DJ) Harris
ReplyDeleteArt 309 – Migration and Visual Art
Greene
After reading both the course packet reading and the NY Times article, I grew in respect for the Appadurai reading. It was quite a bit to digest, but the NY Times article gave me a good example of how to interoperate it. Mr. Lee of South Korea is experiencing a new type of art form through his satellite television and he also gifts that same experience to other people who want it. Mr. Lee was opened up to a new world when his Satellite television introduced him to the wider world — to Japanese baseball, life on Pacific islands, Russian folk music and religions in India and Nepal. He used this new technology to easily find out about cultures all around the globe. A lot of these places would be nearly impossible for him to find out about normally, but new technology allows him to see the rest of the world. Because of technology, he is able to experience things that his mother or his grandfather never was when they were his age. He also uses this new technology to help people in his community. The “foreign wives” are able to feel a bit more at home with his help. All these satellite dishes allow for the “imagined world” that Appadurai was talking about. People in the United States can learn about things going on in Uruguay or Croatia, and people in Croatia can learn about things going on in New Zealand or Iceland. With this new technology and the “imagined world”, the possibilities are endless. The problem of this of course, is that once someone is exposed to it, it becomes a natural feeling, and to take that away again ruins everything. Appadurai’s reading states, “it plays havoc with the hegemony of Euro-chronology.” If you take something away that someone never knew about, no one notices. But once you spoil somebody with something like this and take it away, hell can break loose. Even with the possibility of people getting spoiled and hell breaking lose, I would still say that advancing in technology like this is still the proper thing to do. After all, if we didn’t advance in technology, where would we be: In a horse and carriage?
Julie Kolaga – Art 309
ReplyDeleteThe Appadurai reading was an interesting way of looking at the effects of globalization on culture. Appadurai dissects the topic into five streams of cultural flows and argues that all of these things overlap and conflict in a highly complex way. The author concludes that because of this conflict, there is a lot of instability in the patterns of globalization. One of the ways that the article illustrates Appadurai’s argument about electronic media has a lot do with the man that the article was written about. Lee Si-kap lives in South Korea and owns a total of eighty-five satellite dishes. He was emotionally scared as a child when his father left him and his mother. The article describes his passion for music and satellite television and explains how necessary it was for him to have in his life. Last year he started, along with others, a campaign to install satellite dishes for poor foreign brides free of charge. This is in an effort to receive broadcasts from their homes. The foreign brides are far from home and the familiar television shows often help homesickness. The second way the article illustrates Appadurai’s argument in regards to “imagined worlds and imagined selves” is the fact that these women can, for a brief moment, imagine that they are back home. Lee Si kap was able to escape/find comfort in discovering new music and television shows while the foreign brides find comfort in familiarity. Both of these assigned readings were interesting and thought provoking.
Appadurai discusses many topics related to the global impact of mass communication and information transfer on cultures and peoples. Both the good and the bad, Mr. Lee is a prime example of the way these changes have reached even the more remote, distant places on the planet.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Appadurai, Mr. Lee is living a life in the “imagined reality”, a reality that brings him far away pleasures he would never come in contact with, lacking access to his satellite dishes. Mr. Lee’s sharing the access to other world’s with the many immigrant brides in the area, is very interesting to me. These women who are immigrating to a cultural that is very against the outside world, now have access to the cultural and life that they are accustom. These women who would have lost their cultural background and history are now able to maintain it in a foreign land. There is strange question that emerges from this transition these women are making, Appadurai talks about Diaspora around the world that is no longer forcing those who fall victim to lose their individual cultural identity. This is a powerful change because it means that some where there will be a loss of cultural and history, but on what side? Is it the side of the men who marry these women, who do not conform and convert to their marital cultures, and now will have children that do not fully inherit the man’s cultural identity? Or is it the women who were removed and replaced to this new land and way to begin with? There could be a great benefit to allowing people’s access to their old ways, but then one has to ask, would it really be maintaining one’s cultural identity though international mass media? Or would one simply be living in a “imagined reality” like Mr.Lee?
Rachel Harder
ReplyDeleteArt 309
Greene
Appardurai's theories on global cultural economy are made clearer in the New York Times article about Lee Si-Kap of South Korea. Si-kap is an example of someone who constructs an imagined world. He uses 85 satellite dishes to broadcast over a thousand channels from over 100 countries. In his home in South Korea he can see what is going on all over the world. He uses technology to connect to so many places that most people could never actually travel to. He creates a fantasy world for himself where he can go to all of these places just by turning on his television. Si-kap expressed his feelings of being cut of from his own society because of traumatizing experiences from his past which have shaped him into a shy individual. Because of technology, he is able to experience many things (Japanese baseball, Russian folk music, religions in India, etc.) that he may have been too shy to go out and experience in real life.
He has also created an imagined self in the way he has absorbed so much media from so many different countries and cultures. He is effected by all of the things that he sees which in turn shapes the way he is. The New York Times article states that local farmers "at first did not know what to make of their bachelor neighbor [...]" because he listened to heavy metal and was always working on his satellites. Yet it appears that Lee doesn't care what others think of him because the imagined world that he lives in is perfect because he created it.
Brianna Jaeger
ReplyDeleteArt 309 Migration and Visual Art
The New York Times article reinforces some of Appadurai’s main ideas about migration and technology. Appadurai explains how through the various types of technology we have now different cultures can be experience all over the world. A good example is when Appadurai talks about music and how in the Philippines popular American songs are just as popular if not more over there. In the New York Times article Lee Si-kap is exposed to all different kinds of music from watching TV. Through satellite TV he was able to listen to music that wasn’t available in Korea. Mr. Lee said in the article that music and TV saved him from being lonely. He used that as an escape and to make himself happy. His hobby of collecting satellite dishes lets him experience “imagined worlds and imagined selves.” He is almost living two lives. He lives in Korea and has the customs of his country by farming, but he also has this other part that is influenced by the TV he watches. Even though he doesn’t understand every word he hears, the images are universal.
Mr. Lee uses his hobby to help out the immigrant brides who feel disconnected from their homeland. By setting up satellite dishes for these women they are able to watch news and have something familiar to them in a foreign land. Appadurai talks about that as being cultural reproduction. The wives are trying to keep their old traditions, while still trying to learn the new traditions of their new home. While is comforts them, it also puts them in the position to choose whether to accept their new culture, or keep as much as their homeland traditions as they can. With the spread of technology and new ways cultures have the ability to spread; it becomes easier to keep certain customs and cultures alive.
Appadurai's idea and globalization through technology was something I feel I've thought about before but until now have never read about it or thoroughly investigated. Through media, television in the case of Mr. Lee, blends cultures. It's scary almost to think that over time this has had an absolutely invisible effect on most people since it is gradual. When you take into account the larger picture however, its scary imagining that, at this right, in a couple decades, real culture will only be read about in books. Mr. Lee's life is depressing. He gets excited watching tv. While I believe that there are channels that take you places that you probably wont go, you cant replace the experience of going there with television. Mr. Lee is deprived to the point of believing that the best thing he can do with his time is watch how much better the world is in every place except his village. He is completely living a fantasy. If you look at it from his point of view, though, he seems happy to just watch tv. And if thats what does it for him... all the power to him I guess. These wee great readings. Well, maybe a little hard to follow the long one, but im sure after discussing it in class it'll all come togethera bit more.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHelen Poser
ReplyDeleteArt 309
In Appadurai’s reading, Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy, I found two lines interesting and fitting to the New York Times article. Both excerpts have to do what media “creates,” “new condition of neighborliness?” and “media creates communities with no sense of place.” Lee Si-kap, a farmer and satellite enthusiasts collects and creates satellites for his passion of electronics, viewing many parts of the world and his father abandoning him. What came out of collecting was the realization that he could use these steel mushrooms as a way for foreign brides to communicate with their families. For these foreign brides, the folks of the country and Lee have created a new condition of neighborliness. Foreign brides can communicate with family miles and countries away in their own home.
Towards the end of the article Lee describes how he now sees the world now that he has satellites in his life. “When most farmers here look to the sky, they read cloud for weather. When Mr. Lee looks skyward, he says, he says he imagines satellites in earth orbit. To him, the air is filled with broadcast signals, “like seeds from thistles.”” An interesting way to think of the invisible world that is constantly surrounding us.
Stefanie McLaren
ReplyDeleteArt 309
The New York Times article is a good reflection of what Appadurai was talking about in his essay, Disjuncture and Diference in the Global Cultural Economy. Appadurai stated that, “with the advent of the steamship, the automobile and the aeroplane, the camera, the computer and the telephone, we have entered into an altogether new condition of neighborliness, even with those most distant from ourselves.” He speaks of the ‘technological explosion’ that we have experienced globally in the past century which has made cultures collide in various ways. Sometimes in ways where media creates communities with ‘no sense of place’. While reading this I began to think of culture homogenization and what happens to our ideas of our own culture, as well as other cultures upon experiencing them through mediascapes and the other ‘scapes’ in which Appadurai speaks of. When looking at Lee Si-kap, it is interesting to see his use of the technology through the satellites as a means of ‘experiencing’ other cultures. I find it very fascinating that he does not even understand many of the languages from the programming he receives, yet he is still very much interested and even ‘addicted’ to viewing these channels. It kind of relates to the idea that he views cultures with ‘no sense of place’ or understanding. It also relates to when Appadurai spoke of the Filipinos singing perfect renditions of American songs, yet the rest of their lives were not in synchrony with the culture. It’s really nice that Lee is using technology to help the wives of the South Korean farmers have a link back to their own cultures to remind them of where they are from and make them feel less nostalgic. Overall, I found that the article helped me to further understand some of the points that Appadurai was making in his essay.
This article was rather fascinating to me, and I thought that it went along well with what Appadurais' essay said. Appadurai writes about the disjuncture and difference in the GLobal Cultural Economy.The global impact of mass communication and information transfer on cultures and people is an issue that he talks about. I feel that the New York Times article reenforces the issues he discusses. Mr. Lee Si-Kap has collected over 85 satellites, and is able to pick up 1500 T.V. channels from more than 100 different countries. His fascination started back in 1992 when he got his first dish. He has been collecting them ever since. With all the various shows and news coverage that he is able to recieve, he has created his own reality. With a flick of a switch he can instantly know what is currently going on in parts of the world that he may never see. This sort of exposure can be beneficial, but at the same time it seems like too much to me. Most of the channels that he gets are in foreign languages that he does not understand. He is expirencing ideas from different cultures around the world all the time.The spread of news around the world shows how we have advanced, and it seems as though technology is limitless these days. I think this goes along with Appadurai's ideas on how cultures mesh and their ideas spread throughout the world. Like how songs from America are popular around the world.This relates back to Mr. Si-Kap, who happens to live in a very rural part of South Korea. Places where news would take days or even possibly months to recieve is now available at anytime.Si-kap uses the satellite dishes to further his knowledge of other countries and cultures. Lee shares his information with women who have immigrated to South Korea in hopes that it'll give them some happiness, and help to get rid of there homesickness. By seeing T.V. broadcasts from their home countries they are opened up to a sort of created reality where they can reconnect with their homelands. Without this sort of technology, I don't believe that these women would stick around very long. Overall I felt that this article was helpful in understanding the Appadurai reading.
ReplyDelete