I know I tell everyone that I'm over being worried about whether or not students attend but sometimes it does impact my self esteem when only half my interpersonal communication class shows up on any one evening. Is it worse than it used to be? Us old profs always think so but maybe not. And spring time, the only ring a ding time, who wants to be in a classroom without (or with) windows?
Ah, but the public speaking class -- they were well before time (it was speech sign up day). I've enjoyed that class. Some interesting and enthusiastic characters. I also had a student in that class who cheated on an outline -- turned in a sample outline from a school in Kentucky. Easy enough to track down. What tipped me off? The language use and the scrawl of name at the top of a carefully typed page. Mostly, though, the use of the name John Wayne. How many of my students know who the heck John Wayne was, pilgrim?
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Self Disclosure in Spring
In my interpersonal class this week we talked about nonverbal and verbal communication. On Thursday I began with a self diclosure (perhaps inappropriate) then went on to talk about self disclosure -- risks and benefits. I told them about how just that day I'd been puttering around in my office and sent some materials to print in the admin assistant's office next door. When I opened the door through there was one of our drawing faculty standing with a great looking guy -- wavy red hair, strong handsome face, slender form, super piratical smile. And I was completely caught offguard. So when she introduced me I said, "You have great hair!" DUMB! Then, I compounded my unfortunate unprofessional communication error by saying, "Wow. If I'd said that to one of these guys (by then our photo-prof was in the office) I could have been accused of harrasment." Time to return to my office.
So, I told that story to my class, explaining that I sometimes get very stupid around attractive people. Especially in spring. Twitterpated is what I get. (Now there's a good word.)
Inappropriate self disclosure? Perhaps. Certainly something I've been known to suffer from in the past. But at least one student said, "I think that's cute."
Oh well. Fifty four years old and still sometimes I ain't got the sense God gave a goose.
So, I told that story to my class, explaining that I sometimes get very stupid around attractive people. Especially in spring. Twitterpated is what I get. (Now there's a good word.)
Inappropriate self disclosure? Perhaps. Certainly something I've been known to suffer from in the past. But at least one student said, "I think that's cute."
Oh well. Fifty four years old and still sometimes I ain't got the sense God gave a goose.
Friday, May 9, 2008
WAKE UP FRITALIANS! Part 2 What is Love (of our jobs)?
If you haven't seen the Diet Pepsi Max commercial, see it on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJEVxfWpm7c
I am certainly not the only person who fell in love with the Diet Pepsi Max commercial first aired during the Superbowl. On youtube there are thousands of posts about the ad, most articulating, briefly, the work's LOL stimulating qualities. Both the faculty and students of the University of Southern Carolina's School of Journalism & Mass Communication scored this as the best of the superbowl ads (see http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/isite/08superbowl/index.html ). At a computer science blog site, Graphics@Illinois from the University at Urbana-Champaign, Jason Hughes wrote
"The best of the night so far. It starts off innocently enough with Troy Aikmen commenting on the action in the first quarter when Joe nods off and bangs his head on his mic. Queue music ("What is Love?") and we then get a montage of people across all industries nodding off at their jobs, at dinner, at awards shows, on game shows. I'm pretty sure that's Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J and Macy Gray nodding off while they were up for "Song of the Year." This keeps up until Diet Pepsi Max comes along on a mail cart and everyone starts doing "The Roxbury," or the head bopping made famous by Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell in the recurring SNL skits. The bit ends with Troy staring at Joe as Joe bops along. But the best part is after the blurbs about Diet Pepsi Max and the slogans, we get a quick shot of Chris Kattan shopping, yelling "Stop it!" to two girls doing the head bop." https://agora.cs.uiuc.edu/display/graphics/SuperBowl+XLII+Recap
So, now you know what I'm talking about. I don't need to explain to you why I love the video. But I will tell you my reading of the people "across all industries" that aren't REALLY across all industries. There IS a WWII military or Star Trek "diversity in the cockpit" theme here, but the jobs chosen, while different, all help to sell the product through humor but also through hinting at the dangers involved in falling asleep on the job. There are MANY jobs that aren't shown, of course. What we do see is American success (entertainment) and American boredom (the white collar workplace, the blue collar workplace) and we learn that all American workers, from foreign transplant (sushi chef) to the core of American masculinity (cowboys, mechanics) get bored at work and need some help to enjoy what they do.
Now, in any setting in which we have a "diverse" cluster, we can understand the meaning of each piece by comparing it to both what the audience member might know of the thing or action involved (in this case, the workplace) and also to the other pieces that make up the totality of the work.
The full length commercial begins with two Superbowl XXVII announcers, one using the word comfortable as the other starts to nod off, banging his head on the microphone. Both men are white, both wearing dark suits, one blue, one gray. Behind them is the tv studio's blue curtains and some kind of scaffolding holding the sign. So we begin with white, middle age, middle class, American sports business -- High, masculine, ruling class.
Then, when the music starts, "What is love? baby don't hurt me" we are introduced to the other players in our cinema of diversity.
First, we jump cut to a gentleman at a lunch-counter, nodding his balding head into his soup. It's midday (see the sunny street outside). He's on lunchbreak. He's wearing a brown suit (not as formal as blue or gray). He's got a gigantic Adam's apple and his wrinkled suit isn't fitting him all that well. He is a parody businessman! He is the worst of the ordinary middle-class work world. He might be us, or might be the others we work with. He is nodding into his soup because his job is not interesting to him, because he works to hard, because he may be burning his candle at both ends. Check out those Elvis sideburns! And, OMG, is he at a mall in California? Check out the oak tree sprouting tall behind the patio umbrellas outside the windows.
Then we jump to another office scene, this time a hallway where a young white woman in white blouse and black skirt, a young white man in white shirt and black slacks, are standing and nodding in a hallway. The camera is behind another person who is walking down the hallway. at the level of a person sitting down, this time suggesting that we are at work in the same space as, possibly, a bored twenty-something observing our fellow workers. Seated on a horizontal file cabinet is a woman in a suit with big hair. She may be African American (very tan legs in nylons) but hard to say at this time.
Jump to two men who park cars for a hotel or restaurant. They are in uniform. One is middle aged and Asian or Latino (hard to say with the head's nodding). Unlike the middle aged white guys, he is working at a menial job instead of an office job. The other is a younger, bearded white guy. He isn't clean-cut like the office workers. Maybe he's an artist or student who is just doing this work until he can make a go of it in another world. It's clear he exists in world different than the office world. We look at both across the top of a car (as though we are USING their services, not inhabiting their world).
Jump to real life cowboys, two middle-aged white guys on their horses within a herd of cattle. One is kind of chunky. Both wear beige jackets, plaid shirts, jeans, boots. One has a cowboy hat, the other a ball cap. This is about cowboying as a chore, not as the fantasy world of the rodeo. They AND their horses seem very tired. They are NOT looking at the view of amazing high mountain thrusting out of the plains behind them. (Sierras?) This shot tells us that even the John Wayne world of the cowpuncher is permeated by boredom.
If the cowboy, that quintessential American character, can be bored at work, then it's not so strange that the Pop star, another American icon, can also nod off. Jump to our cluster of singers, seen by the camera as though on the TV screen at the Grammies. They are all African American, because this is how American's like to see our Black Folk -- as pop stars. Not as cowboys, certainly. Success as a singer or dancer has been a way for individual African Americans to defy (and defy the existence of) American racism since Bojangles Bill Robinson held hands with Miss Shirley Temple as they danced down the stairs of a Hollywood set over sixty years ago.
Now we return to brown suit as his head flops back and we see his comb-over. Wow. Here is a parody white guy for sure. Deeply uncool.
Jump to two white ranch workers nodding in the middle of a sheering, the half-trimmed sheep, it's sheered butt bright compared to it's dirty thick wool, standing to the right of them. They are both in dirty jeans and shirts. With a background in American history, a viewer knows that cattle and sheepmen were at often at odds. So this image works with the cowboy image to cement that "unity in diversity" theme. And what is unifying these old enemies is that both are now, in the 21st Century, bored of their jobs. This image is funny in part because these men are handling sharp tools and something could go wrong.
Jump other people who handle sharp tools -- three male(?) Japanese(?) sushi chefs (if I recognize their attire, I must myself have gone to such a restaurant -- meaning that I am middle class or have seen this image on TV). The question mark means that the image goes by so quickly that only the front chef is obviously male and Asian. They are in white uniforms with hats. The cleanliness of this image contrasts with the filth of the sheep image.
Jump to nerds! Yes, these people LOOK like they are at a Star Trek convention, though slowing the commercial down makes it clear that these are parody trekkers. In front, a guy at a check in desk wears a Star officer uniform of some kind. The three facing us wear "V"s of red. One is a tall, glasses-wearing red-headed young woman -- pretty but can't get a "regular" date because she is shy. Beside her is a fat white boy who probably spends his days on his computer in his mom's house. Beside him is short haired African-American, proving that blacks are not only the traditional pop star but also geeks. This is a positive move toward more contemporary racial imagery. And, to bring our diverse images into the Future, to the far right of the frame is a model of a "Gray," one of the traditional types of extra-terrestrials. They are in a meeting room with a few other chatting people, also in costumes. On the wall behind is a sign reading something like "Galactic ...." The room looks like a small hotel conference room. Trekkies, nerds, are people whose lived are absolutely wrapped up in their love of fictional worlds. These are people so bored or fearful of real life that they live vicariously in a world of adventure and romance.
Jump to rows of bobble heads seen in close-up. SYMBOL! We, American workers, are bobble head dolls, nodding our agreement, nodding our boredom with our work lives. Cut to the guy at the bobble-head plant nodding over the passing line of dolls.
Jump to a student IQ quiz program and an African American girl in what could be a parochial school outfit is nodding as the tall white boy across from her racks up 9200 points. The announcer is another white guy in a suit. The image behind them in the TV studio is a night city skyline.
Jump back to brown suit. (He's our recurring gag of recurring gags).
Jump to mid-shot of muscular stocky thirty-something guy in an orange shirt with rolled sleeves nodding off in an outdoor area. Cut to long shot as child on swing flies back and knocks this guy on his butt. Here is Dad being bored and letting himself get hurt. The father who experiences taking care of the kid as a job. (Would a woman be as funny in this image?)
Jump back to close-up of black pop star.
Jump to heavy-set, white, nodding truck driver. (He could kill someone if he goes to sleep at the wheel.)
Cut to midshot of skinny, white, cap on backwards mechanic with a full beard and long hair, falling asleep at the switch as (cut to long shot) car rises to be crushed against a pole on the ceiling. This image expands on the hint of danger in the truck-driver shot. We see a car destroyed (as we could imagine with the truck) but with no-one actually hurt. Nevertheless, we are asked to notice, subconsciously, the serious danger of our boredom (as was hinted at with the images that contained the knowledge of knives).
Jump to bobble head factory. Jump to two sushi chefs (where there is a shoulder between us and the chefs). Jump to black pop star. Jump to parking valets. Cut to brown suit and his face goes right into the soup and we see the big bald spot under the comb-over.
Jump to office corridor where a young, short woman in a dark and light argyle vest pushes a cart of bottles between our nodding office workers. We go from the hallway shot to a shot looking up from the cart to the heads of the two women, blond and black as they bounce down. Shot of the Diet Pepsi Max bottles on the cart. Group closeup of three workers, two white and one black (the young man is now, suddenly, in a continuity error, on the right side of the cart) as they tilt back the bottles at the same time.
At this point the mixed, off-beat nodding turns, through the miracle of caffeine, into DANCE MOVES! and the Night at the Roxbury parody commences...a parody of a parody. Cut to a shot of the entire office and our three Pepsi drinkers are bouncing, not nodding, heads flipping sideways in time to the dance anthem.
Cut to black pop star, Pepsi in hand, bouncing his head and pointing at us! Hey, he wakes up and now he LIKES us! He KNOWS us! Smiling! And Mr. Brown suit with the moustach is smiling at us too, drinking Pepsi with his soup! His eyes are open. As are the eyes of the nerds, now smiling and happy as they bounce. Cut to another black pop star, his head moving sideways in an action recognizable as African American in form. Cut to the three people in the TV IQ quiz, all head bouncing in unison. Then we return to where we began, with the Superbowl announcer bouncing his head (badly) and his colleague making eye contact with the camera as though to say, "What's with this guy?"
Cut to our sales line, "Wake Up People!" in read and blue sans serif print, WAKE UP in red and PEOPLE in blue, the letters outlined in white. Red, white, and Blue. In voice-over the announcer tells us that the drink has ginseng and caffeine and zero calories.
The "cute" conclusion has two young women in modified dress-up outfits (denim but with jewelry, one wearing a low-cut tank top) at a clothes cleaners, with glistening plastic in the background, bouncing their big hair (an eighties theme) as Chris Kattan, original star of Night at the Roxbury, walks between them and yells, "Stop It" His character is supposed to be thinking that they are making fun of him (what self absorption) when actually we know that everyone is dancing because Diet Pepsi Max carries its dance anthem with it.
As an aside: I bought two versions of Haddaway's What Is Love from ITunes in March and let me tell you, it's not a good idea to sing along with your IPod and bounce your head while walking across campus, not if you want people to respect you as a senior professor.
Gotta get to work now...so I'm gonna plug in my tunes.
I am certainly not the only person who fell in love with the Diet Pepsi Max commercial first aired during the Superbowl. On youtube there are thousands of posts about the ad, most articulating, briefly, the work's LOL stimulating qualities. Both the faculty and students of the University of Southern Carolina's School of Journalism & Mass Communication scored this as the best of the superbowl ads (see http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/isite/08superbowl/index.html ). At a computer science blog site, Graphics@Illinois from the University at Urbana-Champaign, Jason Hughes wrote
"The best of the night so far. It starts off innocently enough with Troy Aikmen commenting on the action in the first quarter when Joe nods off and bangs his head on his mic. Queue music ("What is Love?") and we then get a montage of people across all industries nodding off at their jobs, at dinner, at awards shows, on game shows. I'm pretty sure that's Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J and Macy Gray nodding off while they were up for "Song of the Year." This keeps up until Diet Pepsi Max comes along on a mail cart and everyone starts doing "The Roxbury," or the head bopping made famous by Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell in the recurring SNL skits. The bit ends with Troy staring at Joe as Joe bops along. But the best part is after the blurbs about Diet Pepsi Max and the slogans, we get a quick shot of Chris Kattan shopping, yelling "Stop it!" to two girls doing the head bop." https://agora.cs.uiuc.edu/display/graphics/SuperBowl+XLII+Recap
So, now you know what I'm talking about. I don't need to explain to you why I love the video. But I will tell you my reading of the people "across all industries" that aren't REALLY across all industries. There IS a WWII military or Star Trek "diversity in the cockpit" theme here, but the jobs chosen, while different, all help to sell the product through humor but also through hinting at the dangers involved in falling asleep on the job. There are MANY jobs that aren't shown, of course. What we do see is American success (entertainment) and American boredom (the white collar workplace, the blue collar workplace) and we learn that all American workers, from foreign transplant (sushi chef) to the core of American masculinity (cowboys, mechanics) get bored at work and need some help to enjoy what they do.
Now, in any setting in which we have a "diverse" cluster, we can understand the meaning of each piece by comparing it to both what the audience member might know of the thing or action involved (in this case, the workplace) and also to the other pieces that make up the totality of the work.
The full length commercial begins with two Superbowl XXVII announcers, one using the word comfortable as the other starts to nod off, banging his head on the microphone. Both men are white, both wearing dark suits, one blue, one gray. Behind them is the tv studio's blue curtains and some kind of scaffolding holding the sign. So we begin with white, middle age, middle class, American sports business -- High, masculine, ruling class.
Then, when the music starts, "What is love? baby don't hurt me" we are introduced to the other players in our cinema of diversity.
First, we jump cut to a gentleman at a lunch-counter, nodding his balding head into his soup. It's midday (see the sunny street outside). He's on lunchbreak. He's wearing a brown suit (not as formal as blue or gray). He's got a gigantic Adam's apple and his wrinkled suit isn't fitting him all that well. He is a parody businessman! He is the worst of the ordinary middle-class work world. He might be us, or might be the others we work with. He is nodding into his soup because his job is not interesting to him, because he works to hard, because he may be burning his candle at both ends. Check out those Elvis sideburns! And, OMG, is he at a mall in California? Check out the oak tree sprouting tall behind the patio umbrellas outside the windows.
Then we jump to another office scene, this time a hallway where a young white woman in white blouse and black skirt, a young white man in white shirt and black slacks, are standing and nodding in a hallway. The camera is behind another person who is walking down the hallway. at the level of a person sitting down, this time suggesting that we are at work in the same space as, possibly, a bored twenty-something observing our fellow workers. Seated on a horizontal file cabinet is a woman in a suit with big hair. She may be African American (very tan legs in nylons) but hard to say at this time.
Jump to two men who park cars for a hotel or restaurant. They are in uniform. One is middle aged and Asian or Latino (hard to say with the head's nodding). Unlike the middle aged white guys, he is working at a menial job instead of an office job. The other is a younger, bearded white guy. He isn't clean-cut like the office workers. Maybe he's an artist or student who is just doing this work until he can make a go of it in another world. It's clear he exists in world different than the office world. We look at both across the top of a car (as though we are USING their services, not inhabiting their world).
Jump to real life cowboys, two middle-aged white guys on their horses within a herd of cattle. One is kind of chunky. Both wear beige jackets, plaid shirts, jeans, boots. One has a cowboy hat, the other a ball cap. This is about cowboying as a chore, not as the fantasy world of the rodeo. They AND their horses seem very tired. They are NOT looking at the view of amazing high mountain thrusting out of the plains behind them. (Sierras?) This shot tells us that even the John Wayne world of the cowpuncher is permeated by boredom.
If the cowboy, that quintessential American character, can be bored at work, then it's not so strange that the Pop star, another American icon, can also nod off. Jump to our cluster of singers, seen by the camera as though on the TV screen at the Grammies. They are all African American, because this is how American's like to see our Black Folk -- as pop stars. Not as cowboys, certainly. Success as a singer or dancer has been a way for individual African Americans to defy (and defy the existence of) American racism since Bojangles Bill Robinson held hands with Miss Shirley Temple as they danced down the stairs of a Hollywood set over sixty years ago.
Now we return to brown suit as his head flops back and we see his comb-over. Wow. Here is a parody white guy for sure. Deeply uncool.
Jump to two white ranch workers nodding in the middle of a sheering, the half-trimmed sheep, it's sheered butt bright compared to it's dirty thick wool, standing to the right of them. They are both in dirty jeans and shirts. With a background in American history, a viewer knows that cattle and sheepmen were at often at odds. So this image works with the cowboy image to cement that "unity in diversity" theme. And what is unifying these old enemies is that both are now, in the 21st Century, bored of their jobs. This image is funny in part because these men are handling sharp tools and something could go wrong.
Jump other people who handle sharp tools -- three male(?) Japanese(?) sushi chefs (if I recognize their attire, I must myself have gone to such a restaurant -- meaning that I am middle class or have seen this image on TV). The question mark means that the image goes by so quickly that only the front chef is obviously male and Asian. They are in white uniforms with hats. The cleanliness of this image contrasts with the filth of the sheep image.
Jump to nerds! Yes, these people LOOK like they are at a Star Trek convention, though slowing the commercial down makes it clear that these are parody trekkers. In front, a guy at a check in desk wears a Star officer uniform of some kind. The three facing us wear "V"s of red. One is a tall, glasses-wearing red-headed young woman -- pretty but can't get a "regular" date because she is shy. Beside her is a fat white boy who probably spends his days on his computer in his mom's house. Beside him is short haired African-American, proving that blacks are not only the traditional pop star but also geeks. This is a positive move toward more contemporary racial imagery. And, to bring our diverse images into the Future, to the far right of the frame is a model of a "Gray," one of the traditional types of extra-terrestrials. They are in a meeting room with a few other chatting people, also in costumes. On the wall behind is a sign reading something like "Galactic ...." The room looks like a small hotel conference room. Trekkies, nerds, are people whose lived are absolutely wrapped up in their love of fictional worlds. These are people so bored or fearful of real life that they live vicariously in a world of adventure and romance.
Jump to rows of bobble heads seen in close-up. SYMBOL! We, American workers, are bobble head dolls, nodding our agreement, nodding our boredom with our work lives. Cut to the guy at the bobble-head plant nodding over the passing line of dolls.
Jump to a student IQ quiz program and an African American girl in what could be a parochial school outfit is nodding as the tall white boy across from her racks up 9200 points. The announcer is another white guy in a suit. The image behind them in the TV studio is a night city skyline.
Jump back to brown suit. (He's our recurring gag of recurring gags).
Jump to mid-shot of muscular stocky thirty-something guy in an orange shirt with rolled sleeves nodding off in an outdoor area. Cut to long shot as child on swing flies back and knocks this guy on his butt. Here is Dad being bored and letting himself get hurt. The father who experiences taking care of the kid as a job. (Would a woman be as funny in this image?)
Jump back to close-up of black pop star.
Jump to heavy-set, white, nodding truck driver. (He could kill someone if he goes to sleep at the wheel.)
Cut to midshot of skinny, white, cap on backwards mechanic with a full beard and long hair, falling asleep at the switch as (cut to long shot) car rises to be crushed against a pole on the ceiling. This image expands on the hint of danger in the truck-driver shot. We see a car destroyed (as we could imagine with the truck) but with no-one actually hurt. Nevertheless, we are asked to notice, subconsciously, the serious danger of our boredom (as was hinted at with the images that contained the knowledge of knives).
Jump to bobble head factory. Jump to two sushi chefs (where there is a shoulder between us and the chefs). Jump to black pop star. Jump to parking valets. Cut to brown suit and his face goes right into the soup and we see the big bald spot under the comb-over.
Jump to office corridor where a young, short woman in a dark and light argyle vest pushes a cart of bottles between our nodding office workers. We go from the hallway shot to a shot looking up from the cart to the heads of the two women, blond and black as they bounce down. Shot of the Diet Pepsi Max bottles on the cart. Group closeup of three workers, two white and one black (the young man is now, suddenly, in a continuity error, on the right side of the cart) as they tilt back the bottles at the same time.
At this point the mixed, off-beat nodding turns, through the miracle of caffeine, into DANCE MOVES! and the Night at the Roxbury parody commences...a parody of a parody. Cut to a shot of the entire office and our three Pepsi drinkers are bouncing, not nodding, heads flipping sideways in time to the dance anthem.
Cut to black pop star, Pepsi in hand, bouncing his head and pointing at us! Hey, he wakes up and now he LIKES us! He KNOWS us! Smiling! And Mr. Brown suit with the moustach is smiling at us too, drinking Pepsi with his soup! His eyes are open. As are the eyes of the nerds, now smiling and happy as they bounce. Cut to another black pop star, his head moving sideways in an action recognizable as African American in form. Cut to the three people in the TV IQ quiz, all head bouncing in unison. Then we return to where we began, with the Superbowl announcer bouncing his head (badly) and his colleague making eye contact with the camera as though to say, "What's with this guy?"
Cut to our sales line, "Wake Up People!" in read and blue sans serif print, WAKE UP in red and PEOPLE in blue, the letters outlined in white. Red, white, and Blue. In voice-over the announcer tells us that the drink has ginseng and caffeine and zero calories.
The "cute" conclusion has two young women in modified dress-up outfits (denim but with jewelry, one wearing a low-cut tank top) at a clothes cleaners, with glistening plastic in the background, bouncing their big hair (an eighties theme) as Chris Kattan, original star of Night at the Roxbury, walks between them and yells, "Stop It" His character is supposed to be thinking that they are making fun of him (what self absorption) when actually we know that everyone is dancing because Diet Pepsi Max carries its dance anthem with it.
As an aside: I bought two versions of Haddaway's What Is Love from ITunes in March and let me tell you, it's not a good idea to sing along with your IPod and bounce your head while walking across campus, not if you want people to respect you as a senior professor.
Gotta get to work now...so I'm gonna plug in my tunes.
Back
Wow. I got pretty far behind in my grading and everything else. This administrative adjunct job I do has things popping up all the time. Like a faculty member whose time in class was being wasted because she kept having to track down a special chair necessary for a student with a disability. Others kept moving the chair. So I felt it was my job to send out an email to everyone who works in the five classroom building where she has a class and let them know of the problem. I did that by checking between our online list of courses and our Webviewer overview of which classes are offered in the building. Used to be I could just go to the secretaries office and she could give me the bird's eye lowdown. But now it's all online and I can track down the info myself. That's progress -- always moving from people to the machines. And then the machines think of new work for us to do. And don't get me started on Banner.
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