The Truth behind “The Perfect Thing”: Unraveling the Myth of the I-pod

The Ipod is heralded as the most influential invention of the 21st century. It revolutionized the world of music, allows us to create a personal bubble in notoriously crowded areas, and made ordinarily banal experiences fun. However behind the illusion of good the I-pod has created, there is an underlying sinister secret regarding the product actual production and disposal. I-pod, the company that touts images of Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Einstein that its heroes, produces its beloved products with exploited labor. It’s interesting to consider the effects, if such as secret is revealed to the public at large, on the company’s sales. Would the public become so disenchanted with the company that they angrily toss their Ipods away and vow never to purchase another Itunes song again? I seriously doubt it. Consider Wal-mart. Wal-Mart is infamous for bullying its suppliers and well as using cheap foreign labor. Its practices are well known to the public, but does that stop people from seeking out their unbeatable priced merchandise? The answer is obvious. The same is arguable true for Apple: Its brand name is so strong and its products are so desirable that even enlightening the public to its “sins” barely causes the buyers to blink, or even consider not using Apple’s products and services. The question then becomes, What incentive does Apple have to even invest in greener practices or treat its employees better when the bottom line rewards their current behavior? The answer remains unknown.

"Auteur Theory"

Recently, my group presented on the history of the film industry. I’ve decided to use this blog as a means of investigating the relationship between the film world and the reality. One of the aspects of film that we really didn’t have a lot of time to discuss was the notion of the “auteur theory”. One of my group members hinted on this idea and noted it as the shift between the director being merely a project manager to the director being the given creative and social credit for the success of a film. This notion has French origins and began in the 1940s. The theory “asks us to take the cinema seriously, to put it on the same footing with literature and painting, to stop thinking of it as a circus, a burlesque show, or a way to keep children off the streets at night. The clearest contribution of the auteur critics has been to improve the pedigree of motion-picture art.” (Scott, p. 4)1
In other words, this notion gives directors the power to include personal, regional, and national biases in “their” work. Through the people that are cast, the way the setting is depicted, the amount of time that is given to particular scenes, denoting their relative importance, the director offers his individual perspective of the world as the dominant perspective. Imagine what happens when the directors share similar backgrounds, beliefs, and schemas (mental frameworks or patterns). When this occurs, the individual portrayals of these directors and their individual perspectives merge together to create a synchronized biased reality wherein these collective views are taken as truth.

Election Sensation

The major connections I’ve found between Bourdieu’s “On Television” and the current election are television’s creation of sensationalism, its creation of the focus on race and gender, and then its denunciation of the very notions it has implanted into the minds of the public—to appear innocent and unbiased, and of course, its role in the creation of a “public figure” (p. 46).
This election has been sensationalized by reporters inundating the public with play-by-plays. They tell us—where the candidates are now, whose in the lead, what strategies are being used by the successful and less successful candidate, projections for the future, and find members of the public that are willing to offer their opinions on what’s happening. The speed, the “torrent” as Gitlin would say, of the material creates a sense of excitement. Catch-phrases, like the “most historical election in history” add to the anxiety as people bustle about trying desperately to document, record, and capture this moment in history, so as to tell their grandchildren exactly what they were doing and how they felt when the 2008 Presidential Election occurred.
Another relevant connection between the text and today’s election, is the way the media—television, in particular, “help create the event by focusing on a story…and then denounce everyone who adds fuel to the fire that they lit themselves” (p. 64). In this year’s election, there are countless examples of such occurrences. The most memorable, in my opinion, and most recent, was the emergence of all the talk about the “Bradley effect”. Suddenly, everywhere I looked, people were considering how racism may play into this year’s election and actually skew the projections for the election. I have no doubt that some obscure journalist found this information and saw it had the possibility of creating a new angle to the “Election Story” and ran with the concept. As I listened to NPR today, the same people that were worried about the Bradley effect are changing their position. They are now content that the Bradley effect shouldn’t be a factor and even challenge the fact that the Bradley effect had a role in the Bradley’s loss. They now cite incorrect internal polls as the cause of the misconception, not racism.
Finally, this election represents the ultimate creation of the “public figure” (p. 46). Obama t-shirts, buttons, paper dolls, etc. are all in existence because the media made him into a celebrity. Once they realized that Obama may actually have a chance---interestingly, enough---they ran with him and promoted his popularity. Today, on NPR—I’m a rather avid listener---they traveled to West Kenya, where apparently Obama memorabilia is being sold in the marketplace. They also reported that a life-sized cut-out of Obama is in his Kenyan grandmother’s house. They predicted that regardless of the results of the election, this cut-out will probably be displayed somewhere within the community—as a testament of Obama’s position as a hero and role model .