The Corporation

After watching The Corporation one of the first things I found interesting was how corporations began to be recognized as individuals by the courts and giving them rights. Throughout the film they were establishing parallels by the symptoms from the DSM-IV's and the corporations misbehavior's. So after looking at the symptoms of a corporation, it would be clinically diagnosed as a psychopath; so if it considered a human shouldn't it be locked up like a human would be for a while until it's able to be "normal" in society?

Another interesting part of the movie was how the American engineering and construction firm Bechtel took over Bolivia's privatized water infrastructure. Bolivians couldn't even collect rainwater because they were forbidden to by this multi-billon dollar corporation, they were only allowed to buy water at very high prices. How evil can someone be to take away a poor countries water? But finally after 40 years in 2006 Bolivians got their water back.

Another part of the movie that I found interesting was when the two journalists Jane Akre and Steve Wilson were fired by the Fox News television station they work for after refusing to change their investigative report on Posilac, a Bovine Growth Hormone made by Monsanto. Their research finds potential health and safety problems of drinking milk treated with the synthetic hormone and how it affected the cows (their utters became so swollen they could hardly stand up), but they were threatened with legal action from Monsanto, so Fox wants the reporters to play down the negative sides of the story. So Akre took them to court with a whistleblower case but the court eventually throws out Akre's whistle blower lawsuit after deciding that the media is allowed to lie.

No Logo

After reading No Logo the first passage I found interesting was "I had been doing some research on university campuses and had begun to notice that many of the students I was meeting were preoccupied with the inroads private corporations were making into their public schools. They were angry that ads were creeping into cafeterias, common rooms, even washrooms." The students should be preoccupied with there studies not advertisements in their school. This will in the long run wrong hurt someone's education because instead of paying attention to what they're studying they will be distracted by a poster that intrigues them and makes them lose there concentration.

Another passage I found interesting was about the "brand vision" and how companies aren't selling their product, they are selling us a lifestyle on what to wear, how to live, and how we should look. "Brand vision process taught us something: Polaroid is not a camera--it's a social lubricant. IBM isn't selling computers, it's selling business "solutions." Swatch is not about watches, it is about the idea of time." Society and the media have given into these "brands" and unless you're wearing this brand that brand then you're not someone who will fit in and hopefully someday that can change because it really doesn't matter what name someone has on their shirt.

Culture Industry and Selling Culture

After reading both The Culture Industry by Adorno and Horkeimer and Selling Culture by Ohman you can definitely see that there are similarities and differences. I think Ohman's article is more well put together since he does have evidence/facts from the past whereas Adorno and Horkeimer's article jumps around a lot and repeats itself many times.

One similarity that they both have is the triumph of advertising. Ohman states "Through the first 5 years, there were very few ads for food, and the only only products regularly advertised were starch and flavoring. By the middle yeas of the survey, there was a sharp increase in food advertising generally, and a shift away from ingredients." When Ohman states that there's a shift away from ingredients to me he's saying that instead of people baking things ingredient by ingredient they are instead buying the already made things in boxes and cans and especially in the 1900's women would bake things by scratch. Adorno and Horkeimer believe that "consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them."

The differences I found in the two articles is that Ohman's uses great examples how things have changed through advertising from all the magazines that were created. They show how pages of magazines grew. For example Atlantic Monthly went from 13 pages in November 1880 to 121 pages in December 1904. In Adorno and Horkeimer's text they don't have examples like that showing how much things changed, they just keep repeating themselves that were all "brainwashed" from television, radio, etc... but they have the facts like Ohman.

Intro

My name is Demetra Kokos. I am 21 years old and this is my 4th year at Wayne. I am majoring in psychology and plan on working with children. I also work full time as a waitress at Fishbones.