HW #38 Art Project Cool

The photo above is similar to the ideas talked in my paper, that basically everybody is performing, whether they are conscious of it or not. In the picture, the inner self is sitting in the back seat, observing as the outer self present the character that the self has created. Everybody is the main character in their own stage and there are audiences (on the bottom where it is gray) who looked at everybody. I think everyday life is like a stage, where we are filming for ourselves about our lives so we have to be aware of how we are positioning the events. We are aware of all the things we are doing though sometimes we may not since some things are not as important to remember. But some small things can create something big. We are trying to impress people in a lot of ways by talking, the way our actions are shown, the feelings and ideas that we are trying to make produced out to others. I don't think that the performances that we choose to do is bad; we are doing this because we want to gain approval or to secure the vulnerability. Its only looked as bad because society has placed these "rules" within everybody, making all of us aware of what can be shown to get what we want. However, is it really bad to do what we want, or can we do what we want through the influence of others, like being puppets?

I thought it would be good to draw a picture that my paper had talked about. It took quite a while to draw the picture but it was fun to draw the characters. However, it was my first time coloring a whole page using a program so it took quite a while. I had a bit of trouble with tracing the characters to make it darker and doing the shadowing/shading. I don't think my picture is to represent cool but what we do to be cool. So then I drew another picture (on the bottom) with a guy in a pose in which I think is cool because I feel proud to be able to draw that and it is similar to those posters of models, that get customers to come in to the stores to buy. I think many of the artists in the entertainment world always need a pose to attract people, and poses in modelling allows the actors to get more attention. Its not only the body poses but also the facial expressions that the artists produce that allows the spotlight to be on them. And that is what many of us do, not certainly need a model pose, but any actions that when seen, it will be connected to us.

(done by my friend Carlos ^-^)

HW #37 Cool Paper Done Draft

Everybody is always trying to perform a character that they like and in return, that people might like. Even though we don’t notice, we are always on our feet thinking about the next movement so as to not mess up and embarrass ourselves. Many of us, especially teens nowadays are trying to become cool, to follow the trends of coolness so to receive the attention and value we want. We always change or shift our characters by adding more “spices” to shine ourselves out more. And sometimes, we create a totally new character that can bring us more value but we always have a part of our real selves in character. Thus, this puts us in a process that our inner self becomes the observer, gathering information from others as our outer self presents the representation of both our real selves and the “faces” we’ve created.

Impact

All of us are aware that we are trying to make an impact on others whether or not we are acting cool. The way we choose our style of clothing and how we dress in it affect our appearances. During the interview to find about coolness, the way people are dressed are associated with what type of person they are. For example, one of the interviewee had a beard/goatee and was dressed in dark wash jeans, hoodie, with buttons on the jacket and wearing plug earrings. He told us that he is in a band, playing rock and roll music and he thinks that people think of him as “cool”. I find that being in the entertainment world, besides their talent, the entertainers need to look cool in front of others. However, just like everyone else, the way we dressed affect how people confront with us. Depending on the impact we made to others, we get different opinions from them and we become aware of what how we are coordinating our clothing. Our inner self tells us ideas that can shine ourselves better and our outer self presents what we have produced.

Besides clothing, tattoos have been and are still popular. Since there is a large significance that what we put on our skin changes how we are looked at, we are conscious of what kind of “image” we want to put. When Mr. Fanning came to our class to talk about his tattoos, he shows a huge amount of importance in how his tattoos show who he is. During his youth, there have been a lot of scary events that happened so in order for him to protect himself, he decided to cast an armor onto his arms with tattoos. For him, the tattoos are like a signifier to maps out the events of his life and tell others and himself his identity. The tattoos also symbolize his rites of passages that he himself created rather than waiting for it. He told us that when he is on the street with his tattoos, people would come up to look at it and asked about it. This shows how the tattoos on Mr. Fanning gave him a way to give wonder to others. The impact that people make to others can be as significant as how Mr. Fanning had show his with his tattoos. Tattoo is like a “face” that we can create, that it does not matter where it is; we just want to tell it to others. The effect that we give out to others affect back to how our representational self would shift.

Observer

As we grow up, the observer in ourselves change how we affect others. The information that is gathered within gives our inner selves’ ideas on what we should change on and what should not be changed. Because we don’t want to go too off on our original roles, we have to stay on the line of the “real self” as much as possible. Many of us are able to notice if a large change has happened to others who we see a lot of the times. The way their appearances are shown and how their personalities are projected changes our thinking and the memories of their past self. We either become suspicious of whether who is their real self or that we would believe that their selves that are revealed now is the real one. Therefore, it is important within many of us of how we present ourselves to the society.

Role Modeling

We take what we seek from the role model and place it in ourselves, turning ourselves to a different self than what we originally are. Heroes are seen as a huge role model for people, especially kids and heroes can be categorized as anyone including cartoons/figures. We see the heroes as someone we want to be so we try to act like them. Sometimes they are “God-like” to us because we listen to them (Andy S.). For example, older siblings are modeled as heroes for the younger siblings because the older siblings are able to do more things than the younger siblings so the younger ones would want to do what the older ones are doing. The younger siblings want to be like the older ones because they see the older ones as cool. Young kids try to act like an adult by following what the heroes are showing to them. Everybody is always observing what others are doing in order to change themselves, even if it is little to feel good for themselves. Thus, their exterior self can be played.

Celebrities and artists are role models to the popular groups. Dressing the way the celebrities are with the designer clothing changes the way the people view each other. I see on shows how the people who want to become popular change their whole appearance to suit the “in” group. To be in the group, they have to be like the group in order to get the group members’ approval. But if they have the power to control the group, then the group would follow the powerful person’s taste. When we want to be popular, we begin the phase of making masks for others to see, to make them and ourselves believe that this is who we are. Like how geeks turned popular if they are able to get rid of the geekiness in them and able to dress and style their personality well to become popular. The personality to become popular is the mask that they are wearing, rather than the old one. However, within the mask, there is always a small fragment of our own selves because we are the ones that create the mask like how it is. By making the masks, we are the masters so we have a sense of control over the masks we played.

Sound, thought, image flow together to create the Zen Mind and body.

“Form is emptiness , emptiness is form”
“Shiki soku ze ku, ku soku ze shiki”

(http://karagatan.wordpress.com/2007/11/04/1w8-4-the-wisdom-of-emptiness/)

Emptiness? Value? Complete?

There are always differences with all of us and many of us “want” to believe that because we want to be unique with ourselves. As a result, we go search for “something” to fill in the emptiness that we felt; searching for what we are missing in our lives that can make our lives better. One of the interviewees who had the plug earrings said it is because we want “value”, “attention” and that we want to “fulfill something”. Similar to wanting to believe that we are special, we want what we are doing to be special and exceptional. With that feeling, the observer in our mind would go and search for the information necessary to fill this blank hole of ours. We might or might not be aware that we are doing that but once we undergo a change, we will know. Therefore, once the observer finds what we want, we would comply with it and mix it with our real selves to construct a new face.

But do we become complete with what the observer finds? Or does our heart tell us to go find more?

Performing Coolly on Stage is Hard or Easy?

Many of us want to become cool and by finding a role model, we would know what needs to be done to turn ourselves into a cool person. A cool person is like a mask that we’ve made to put it over ourselves for others to notice us. Or like performers but we’re not performing a character of the script written by somebody else; we are performing a script we wrote ourselves that has others influences on it. We hope to become what we want but also we are conscious of what other people’s opinions would be so we have to take account in both. By having an observer in ourselves, we are able to take on information to create a better self but we also have to be careful what ranks we are in. If we have power and control over others, our ranks would be the top but if not, we need to abide from others so to earn power and control for ourselves. For the high ranks, they are controlling the “bodies through other bodies” (Michel Foucault). If the observer can gather what we need to become powerful, we would be able to direct others to look at the outer shell of us.

I don’t think anybody likes to be embarrassed in front of others because we have pride and reputation balancing on our shoulders. When having our mechanical self performing the character, our inner selves begins to worried if the actions and impressions is good or not. We worried whether we will be “credited” or “discredited” with the piece we put out (The Production of Self – Goffman Raeader). Looking good in front of others and able to perform the cool character well would help them gain respect and reputation. Additionally, to become cool, we need to connect with Cool because Cool never stays in one period of time but moves on once we are giving too much attention to it (Merchants of Cool). Cool gives out signals that we need to catch in order to use it for ourselves. Once we received and able to manipulate the signals, we can sent out our own, leading ourselves to get on the stage, and becoming the main character of other people’s stages. Seizing these signals is what the observer does if we want to become cool and building upon these signals guides us to our transformation of a new character.

OPV- Are our masks helpful or breaking us?

When in a relationship, both parties want to act their best, their coolest in front of each other. Sometimes they would build a mask, make themselves into what the other person want them to look like to get approval from the other person. In the article, “A Better You”, it states that “approval gained in this manner often becomes the source of rejection when the mask comes off”. In a relationship, people always say trust must happen and revealing of each others selves can help the relationship deepened. But having the “mask” on to prevent yourself from letting your partner to know about your real one and that can lead a unhealthy relationship. To maintain a healthy relationship, one should be “devoid of the pretense that comes from wearing a mask”. Does that mean one should always be honest in a relationship but what if he/she wants to give happiness to his/her partner? Trust always question how we live our lives because it is hard for all of us to trust since trust is a sincere, pure feeling. I think trust is like a vow in any relationship so be careful of whom we trust. The observer in our mind is always questioning us whether we want to create a face depending on the situations. Though I think there is always a blend of our real selves in the face we’ve put on to at least give a bit of our trust in the other partner.

Having the observer in our mind to keep generate new masks would decrease our energy in showing our true selves. A lot of the times, we keep our true selves hidden because we think the masks that we’ve created are better than our true selves. So we use the masks to live our lives. However, “masks are cumbersome” as it takes away “the natural joy of life” because we have to constantly surveillance our masks’ movements (A Better You). Sometimes masks are a bundle of burden but we still carried them in front of us. We hide behind these masks and as the others think of our masks greatly, the confidence in showing our true selves lessens. It is because we are scared to reveal, and to be discredited and thinking how badly it would be if someone found out who they really are. The hard question is, who is our real, true selves? It's an unknown answer and we say "we don't know" if we think in deeper sense. But we desire to have what is our own selves so I think when we are making choices, then we have a sense that this is part of our real selves. Therefore, is our observer helping us or breaking our real selves apart by building these masks, and hide behind it? This process of taken in information and creating a blend of a little bit of our real selves with a new characteristics into this mask, is it worth it?

friends and enemies... on the same page

Connections/Significance: Personal Connection

I find myself building masks when facing different people. For example, in front of my parents, I would try to act like an adult to show that I can do what I'm doing myself rather than having their help. Or building a wall between my parents and myself if I am trying to do my homework, telling them to go away. That's one of the faces but another is if I need something from my parents, I would act more pleasing and obedient towards them. Then in front of friends, I would act more friendly, as they are "friends" and different from parents (since they nag on you more than your friends). Since I think friendship is a fragile relationship than with your parents, I find that I need to act more understandingly, to be more kind towards my friends as I don't want to lose them. As for parents, since they are bind by blood with me, I think that even if we do have fights, the connections are never cut off and my parent and I would be have this parents-daughter relationship. The attitude that I give depends on the people I interact with. I think that to get what we want, we have to change our behavior plus our masks as what we're performing has different feelings and actions. As well as that we can have so many masks in front of one person.

However, change in attitude towards different people depend on our feelings towards those people, which shows that we do have our real selves with us. Even with our masks on, when dealing with different people, our tones or movements changes as well like the youths should show more respect to the elders and act more politely towards our superiors or we might get fired. I can also act badly towards this person but nice to the other person because I find that they are different people and so, I reveal myself differently to both. Our observer may help us on this by finding information on that person to help us conclude in our thinking about that person but besides the observer in our inner mind, there can be other being (or why we hear things in our mind) that is telling us that. The observer is another part of ourselves that help the outer selves perform.

Conclusion:

The way the observer that resides in our inner selves gathers the information to let us generate and blend our real selves with the faces to give the outer self a representation. We want to create a character that people will like because we don’t want to be disliked. Of course, we find people that like us and in return, help us to be able to accept ourselves better. The closer that we are to people, the more the real self would reveal but the observer is always alert in our mind, because the observer gives us opinions/decisions as to whether or not to believe/trust those people or not.

MLA Citations:

Fore, Jo Ann. "A Better You." Online Dating Magazine n. pag. Web. 17 Jan 2010. http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/columns/abetteryou/23-behindthemask.html>.

Frontline: The Merchants of Cool. PBS Online, 2001. Web. 7 Feb. 2005

Fanning, John. “Personal/Political – Tattoo Talk”. Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.

Interviewees. “What is Cool?” Street Survey. 02 December 2009.

Lamert & Branaman. “The Production of Self”. Goffman Reader. 1956. 08 January 2010.

Snyder, Andy. "Personal/Political." Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.

HW #36 Triangle Partner Help

Yu Xi:
Thesis (Sorry, its a bad one): Our versions of cool will be different or similar depending on the sources that we use as well as the cues from our cultural map that develop the roles we play and who we think we are.

You talk a lot about your cultural maps and how it affect our movements in our lives. Our environmental and social cues also applied to our lives as our point of view in these two cues changes how we are. I like how you added your own experience as well as examples to support your thinking. All of us have preferences that our cultural map provides but we also provide our own by adding other cultural maps into our ideal self. However, with our cultural maps, how our environment goes, it all comes down to the choices that we make. No matter what happens, it is because we chose this or that; we try to take what is the best for us (in our environment or when socializing with people).
I like how your second to your last paragraph goes when you talk about "this is how someone sees me as; it isn't what I have to be". I think it is a strong connection to prove that you have control over yourself. We take in social and environmental cues, our cultural map and everything else, but it doesn't mean we have to follow what they say. You "tweak" your role(s) because you don't want to be "stagnation cool". Just like how we get old, we change how we live our lives as we see what happens to the world and we follow some of it. It is like how cool works because if we change, cool change. I guess Cool is not on any cultural maps, but it is what we think of cool that it can be in all the cultural maps and so we make choices in following it or not.

(Hope this is helpful):
In your section of Roles, at the second to the last paragraph, you said, "I think exploring and finding out what suits you as role is", is this a whole sentence already or do you have more to add? o-o
- On your last paragraph about nature versus nurture, I think you should expand that a bit more. I think it can split into two paragraphs and one for nature, one for nurture. I find that nurture is more to the connection to your thesis and nature is our choices in our lives. But aren't those two the same because we can't be who we really are since we don't know so both of them are influencing we live our lives and etc.
-What kind of messages are the cultural map giving us? Is it good/bad choice or is the messages giving to us depend on the environment or society that we are living in? Is our cultural maps born with the aspect of the environment and social cues or did we create in our minds?
Your paper is very strong in my view and so my suggestions and comments are kind of all over the place since you talk a lot about it. xD ~good work~ ^-^

Maggie:

I like your thesis but are you saying this hole of ours are the emptiness that we feel (but may not notice) and then go to find something to be able to fill up this hole. You are also talking about how we are seeking for attention and approval by "masking, manipulating, costuming, adorning and aggrandizing ourselves" because we want to be valued.

Thesis: We are unable to fill up this hole within ourselves so we are constantly finding ways to seek attention and approval by trying to be cool.

I think your arguments are that all of us are falling into one of the "teenage archetypes". If we can be at the top of the cool hierarchy, we are able to feel what we are desiring. To be at the top, you are saying we need to become one of the "mythical roles" that society, or us has put out there for people who can be cool. If we are unable to fill the roles that people around us wants us to be, we would be falling down on the bottom of the hierarchy. I think your argument about roles and the quest to become cool is good because I also think it is in our nature that we want to become cool and by fitting in one of the roles that society sees highly, we would feel the glory in ourselves and from others. 

The holes in ourselves  are the emptiness, and the feeling of wanting to become valued connects to those holes. We are stuck in our lives by constantly chasing after the thing that can help us feel better. Like the drug argument in your paper, how drugs can only give a person a temporary feeling of cool. I think it just affects, a waste of time for our lives to do things for other people since wanting to become cool is from the society's point of view. We forget how to do this our own way that can help us lessen this hole of ours. I think the holes in ourselves that you are talking about are for ourselves to fulfill by being what choices that society is giving to us. 

Hope this will help you:

-I think you should put the last paragraph, your first body paragraph as you are talking about what is cool. 

-Talk about emptiness (western way, not eastern or you can talk about the buddhism for significance/connections or OPV). 

- Is cool a group or an individual thing? Is it because we want to be in a group that we change ourselves, as the individual to a groupie thing? Is being the top of the group the individual, or is being in the group but not at the top, the group? The person being in the top is the leader, does that mean the people who are not, are the copy cats of the leader? So does that mean those copycats, the look alikes would not feel value no more because they all look alike, dressed alike and etc. ?

-Is cool a choice that we are making? Are we forced in this particular role that society is giving us or are we the one who is thinking that we are being looked to become at this particular role?

-I like your arguments, but I think you can give more example from your street interviews, or from the books that we read.  

HW #35 - Cool Rough Draft 2

Everybody is always trying to perform a character that they like and in return, that people might like. Even though we don’t notice, we are always on our feet thinking about the next movement so as to not mess up and embarrass ourselves. Many of us, especially teens nowadays are trying to become cool, to follow the trends of coolness so to receive the attention and value we want. We always change or shift our characters by adding more “spices” to shine ourselves out more. And sometimes, we create a totally new character that can bring us more value but we always have a part of our real selves in character. Thus, this puts us in a process that our inner self becomes the observer, gathering information from others as our outer self presents the representation of both our real selves and the “faces” we’ve created.

Impact

All of us are aware that we are trying to make an impact on others whether or not we are acting cool. The way we choose our style of clothing and how we dress in it affect our appearances. During the interview to find about coolness, the way people are dressed are associated with what type of person they are. For example, one of the interviewee had a beard/goatee and was dressed in dark wash jeans, hoodie, with buttons on the jacket and wearing plug earrings. He told us that he is in a band, playing rock and roll music and he thinks that people think of him as “cool”. I find that being in the entertainment world, besides their talent, the entertainers need to look cool in front of others. However, just like everyone else, the way we dressed affect how people confront with us. Depending on the impact we made to others, we get different opinions from them and we become aware of what how we are coordinating our clothing. Our inner self tells us ideas that can shine ourselves better and our outer self presents what we have produced.

Besides clothing, tattoos have been and are still popular. Since there is a large significance that what we put on our skin changes how we are looked at, we are conscious of what kind of “image” we want to put. When Mr. Fanning came to our class to talk about his tattoos, he shows a huge amount of importance in how his tattoos show who he is. During his youth, there have been a lot of scary events that happened so in order for him to protect himself, he decided to cast an armor onto his arms with tattoos. For him, the tattoos are like a signifier to maps out the events of his life and tell others and himself his identity. The tattoos also symbolize his rites of passages that he himself created rather than waiting for it. He told us that when he is on the street with his tattoos, people would come up to look at it and asked about it. This shows how the tattoos on Mr. Fanning gave him a way to give wonder to others. The impact that people make to others can be as significant as how Mr. Fanning had show his with his tattoos. Tattoo is like a “face” that we can create, that it does not matter where it is; we just want to tell it to others. The effect that we give out to others affect back to how our representational self would shift.

Observer

As we grow up, the observer in ourselves change how we affect others. The information that is gathered within gives our inner selves’ ideas on what we should change on and what should not be changed. Because we don’t want to go too off on our original roles, we have to stay on the line of the “real self” as much as possible. Many of us are able to notice if a large change has happened to others who we see a lot of the times. The way their appearances are shown and how their personalities are projected changes our thinking and the memories of their past self. We either become suspicious of whether who is their real self or that we would believe that their selves that are revealed now is the real one. Therefore, it is important within many of us of how we present ourselves to the society.

Role Modeling

We take what we seek from the role model and place it in ourselves, turning ourselves to a different self than what we originally are. Heroes are seen as a huge role model for people, especially kids and heroes can be categorized as anyone including cartoons/figures. We see the heroes as someone we want to be so we try to act like them. Sometimes they are “God-like” to us because we listen to them (Andy S.). For example, older siblings are modeled as heroes for the younger siblings because the older siblings are able to do more things than the younger siblings so the younger ones would want to do what the older ones are doing. The younger siblings want to be like the older ones because they see the older ones as cool. Young kids try to act like an adult by following what the heroes are showing to them. Everybody is always observing what others are doing in order to change themselves, even if it is little to feel good for themselves. Thus, their exterior self can be played.

Celebrities and artists are role models to the popular groups. Dressing the way the celebrities are with the designer clothing changes the way the people view each other. I see on shows how the people who want to become popular change their whole appearance to suit the “in” group. To be in the group, they have to be like the group in order to get the group members’ approval. But if they have the power to control the group, then the group would follow the powerful person’s taste. When we want to be popular, we begin the phrase of making masks for others to see, to make them and ourselves believe that this is who we are. Like how geeks turned popular if they are able to get rid of the geekiness in them and able to dress and style their personality well to become popular. The personality to become popular is the mask that they are wearing, rather than the old one. However, within the mask, there is always a small fragment of our own selves because we are the ones that create the mask like how it is. By making the masks, we are the masters so we have a sense of control over the masks we played.

Sound, thought, image flow together to create the Zen Mind and body.

“Form is emptiness , emptiness is form”
“Shiki soku ze ku, ku soku ze shiki”

(http://karagatan.wordpress.com/2007/11/04/1w8-4-the-wisdom-of-emptiness/)

Emptiness? Value? Complete?

There are always differences with all of us and many of us “want” to believe that because we want to be unique with ourselves. As a result, we go search for “something” to fill in the emptiness that we felt; searching for what we are missing in our lives that can make our lives better. One of the interviewees who had the plug earrings said it is because we want “value”, “attention” and that we want to “fulfill something”. Similar to wanting to believe that we are special, we want what we are doing to be special and exceptional. With that feeling, the observer in our mind would go and search for the information necessary to fill this blank hole of ours. We might or might not be aware that we are doing that but once we undergo a change, we will know. Therefore, once the observer finds what we want, we would comply with it and mix it with our real selves to construct a new face.

But do we become complete with what the observer finds? Or does our heart tell us to go find more?

Performing Coolly on Stage is Hard or Easy?

Many of us want to become cool and by finding a role model, we would know what needs to be done to turn ourselves into a cool person. A cool person is like a mask that we’ve made to put it over ourselves for others to notice us. Or like performers but we’re not performing a character of the script written by somebody else; we are performing a script we wrote ourselves that has others influences on it. We hope to become what we want but also we are conscious of what other people’s opinions would be so we have to take account in both. By having an observer in ourselves, we are able to take on information to create a better self but we also have to be careful what ranks we are in. If we have power and control over others, our ranks would be the top but if not, we need to abide from others so to earn power and control for ourselves. For the high ranks, they are controlling the “bodies through other bodies” (Michel Foucault). If the observer can gather what we need to become powerful, we would be able to direct others to look at the outer shell of us.

I don’t think anybody likes to be embarrassed in front of others because we have pride and reputation balancing on our shoulders. When having our mechanical self performing the character, our inner selves begins to worried if the actions and impressions is good or not. We worried whether we will be “credited” or “discredited” with the piece we put out (The Production of Self – Goffman Raeader). Looking good in front of others and able to perform the cool character well would help them gain respect and reputation. Additionally, to become cool, we need to connect with Cool because Cool never stays in one period of time but moves on once we are giving too much attention to it (Merchants of Cool). Cool gives out signals that we need to catch in order to use it for ourselves. Once we received and able to manipulate the signals, we can sent out our own, leading ourselves to get on the stage, and becoming the main character of other people’s stages. Seizing these signals is what the observer does if we want to become cool and building upon these signals guides us to our transformation of a new character.

OPV- Are our masks helpful or breaking us?

When in a relationship, both parties want to act their best, their coolest in front of each other. Sometimes they would build a mask, make themselves into what the other person want them to look like to get approval from the other person. In the article, “A Better You”, it states that “approval gained in this manner often becomes the source of rejection when the mask comes off”. In a relationship, people always say trust must happen and revealing of each others selves can help the relationship deepened. But having the “mask” on to prevent yourself from letting your partner to know about your real one can lead the relationship unhealthy. To maintain a healthy relationship, one should be “devoid of the pretense that comes from wearing a mask”. Does that mean one should always be honest in a relationship but what if he/she wants to give happiness to his/her partner? Trust always question how we live our lives because it is hard for all of us to trust since trust is a sincere feeling. I think trust is like a vow in any relationship so we become careful of whom we trust. The observer in our mind is always questioning us whether we want to create a face depending on the situations. Though I think there is always a blend of our real selves in the face we’ve put on to at least give a bit of our trust in the other partner.

Having the observer in our mind to keep generating new masks would decrease our energy in showing our true selves. A lot of the times, we keep our true selves hidden because we think the masks that we’ve created are better than our true selves. So we use the masks to live our lives. However, “masks are cumbersome” as it takes away “the natural joy of life” because we have to constantly surveillance our masks’ movements (A Better You). Sometimes masks are a bundle of burden but we still carried them in front of us. We hide behind these masks and as the others think of our masks greatly, the confidence in showing our true selves lessens. It is because we are scared to reveal, and to be discredited and thinking how badly it would be if someone found out who they really are. Is our observer helping us or breaking our real selves apart? This process of taken in information and creating a blend of a little bit of our real selves with a new characteristics into this mask, is it worth it?

friends and enemies... on the same page

Connections/Significance: Personal Connection

I find myself building masks when facing different people. For example, in front of my parents, I would try to act like an adult to show that I can do what I'm doing myself rather than having their help. Or building a wall between my parents and myself if I am trying to do my homework, to tell them to go away. That's one of the faces but another is if I need something from my parents, I would act more pleasing and obedient towards them. Then in front of friends, I would act more friendly, as they are "friends" and different from parents (since they nag on you more than your friends). Since I think friendship is a fragile relationship than with your parents, I find that I need to act more understandingly, to be more kind towards my friends as I don't want to lose them. As for parents, since they are bind by blood with me, I think that even if we do have fights, the connections are never cut off and my parent and I would be have this parents-daughter relationship. The attitude that I give depends on the people I interact with. I think that to get what we want, we have to change our behavior plus our masks as what we're performing has different feelings and actions. As well as that we can have so many masks in front of one person.

However, change in attitude towards different people depend on our feelings towards those people, which shows that we do have our real selves with us. Even with our masks on, when dealing with different people, our tones or movements changes as well like the youths should show more respect to the elders and act more politely towards our superiors or we might get fired. I can also act badly towards this person but nice to the other person because I find that they are different people and so, I reveal myself differently to both. Our observer may help us on this by finding information on that person to help us conclude in our thinking about that person but besides the observer in our inner mind, there can be other being (or why we hear things in our mind) that is telling us that. The observer is another part of ourselves that help the outer selves perform.

Conclusion:

The way the observer that resides in our inner selves gathers the information to let us generate and blend our real selves with the faces to give the outer self a representation. We want to create a character that people will like because we don’t want to be disliked. Of course, we find people that like us and in return, help us to be able to accept ourselves better. The closer that we are to people, the more the real self would reveal but the observer is always alert in our mind, because the observer gives us opinions/decisions as to whether or not to believe/trust those people or not.

MLA Citations:

Fore, Jo Ann. "A Better You." Online Dating Magazine n. pag. Web. 17 Jan 2010. http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/columns/abetteryou/23-behindthemask.html>.

Frontline: The Merchants of Cool. PBS Online, 2001. Web. 7 Feb. 2005

Fanning, John. “Personal/Political – Tattoo Talk”. Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.

Interviewees. “What is Cool?” Street Survey. 02 December 2009.

Lamert & Branaman. “The Production of Self”. Goffman Reader. 1956. 08 January 2010.

Snyder, Andy. "Personal/Political." Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.

HW #35 - Cool Rough Draft

Everybody is always trying to perform a character that they like and in return, that people might like. Even though we don’t notice, we are always on our feet thinking about the next movement so as to not mess up and embarrass ourselves. Many of us, especially teens nowadays are trying to become cool, to follow the trends of coolness so to receive the attention and value we want. We always change or shift our characters by adding more “spices” to shine ourselves out more. And sometimes, we create a totally new character that can bring us more value but we always have a part of our real selves in character. Thus, this puts us in a process that our inner self becomes the observer, gathering information from others as our outer self presents the representation of both our real selves and the “faces” we’ve created.

Impact

All of us are aware that we are trying to make an impact on others whether or not we are acting cool. The way we choose our style of clothing and how we dress in it affect our appearances. During the interview to find about coolness, the way people are dressed are associated with what type of person they are. For example, one of the interviewee had a beard/goatee and was dressed in dark wash jeans, hoodie, with buttons on the jacket and wearing plug earrings. He told us that he is in a band, playing rock and roll music and he thinks that people think of him as “cool”. I find that being in the entertainment world, besides their talent, the entertainers need to look cool in front of others. However, just like everyone else, the way we dressed affect how people confront with us. Depending on the impact we made to others, we get different opinions from them and we become aware of what how we are coordinating our clothing. Our inner self tells us ideas that can shine ourselves better and our outer self presents what we have produced.

Besides clothing, tattoos have been and are still popular. Since there is a large significance that what we put on our skin changes how we are looked at, we are conscious of what kind of “image” we want to put. When Mr. Fanning came to our class to talk about his tattoos, he shows a huge amount of importance in how his tattoos show who he is. During his youth, there have been a lot of scary events that happened so in order for him to protect himself, he decided to cast an armor onto his arms with tattoos. For him, the tattoos are like a signifier to maps out the events of his life and tell others and himself his identity. The tattoos also symbolize his rites of passages that he himself created rather than waiting for it. He told us that when he is on the street with his tattoos, people would come up to look at it and asked about it. This shows how the tattoos on Mr. Fanning gave him a way to give wonder to others. The impact that people make to others can be as significant as how Mr. Fanning had show his with his tattoos. Tattoo is like a “face” that we can create, that it does not matter where it is; we just want to tell it to others. The effect that we give out to others affect back to how our representational self would shift.

Observer

As we grow up, the observer in ourselves change how we affect others. The information that is gathered within gives our inner selves’ ideas on what we should change on and what should not be changed. Because we don’t want to go too off on our original roles, we have to stay on the line of the “real self” as much as possible. Many of us are able to notice if a large change has happened to others who we see a lot of the times. The way their appearances are shown and how their personalities are projected changes our thinking and the memories of their past self. We either become suspicious of whether who is their real self or that we would believe that their selves that are revealed now is the real one. Therefore, it is important within many of us of how we present ourselves to the society.

Role Modeling

We take what we seek from the role model and place it in ourselves, turning ourselves to a different self than what we originally are. Heroes are seen as a huge role model for people, especially kids and heroes can be categorized as anyone including cartoons/figures. We see the heroes as someone we want to be so we try to act like them. Sometimes they are “God-like” to us because we listen to them (Andy S.). For example, older siblings are modeled as heroes for the younger siblings because the older siblings are able to do more things than the younger siblings so the younger ones would want to do what the older ones are doing. The younger siblings want to be like the older ones because they see the older ones as cool. Young kids try to act like an adult by following what the heroes are showing to them. Everybody is always observing what others are doing in order to change themselves, even if it is little to feel good for themselves. Thus, their exterior self can be played.

Celebrities and artists are role models to the popular groups. Dressing the way the celebrities are with the designer clothing changes the way the people view each other. I see on shows how the people who want to become popular change their whole appearance to suit the “in” group. To be in the group, they have to be like the group in order to get the group members’ approval. But if they have the power to control the group, then the group would follow the powerful person’s taste. When we want to be popular, we begin the phrase of making masks for others to see, to make them and ourselves believe that this is who we are. Like how geeks turned popular if they are able to get rid of the geekiness in them and able to dress and style their personality well to become popular. The personality to become popular is the mask that they are wearing, rather than the old one. However, within the mask, there is always a small fragment of our own selves because we are the ones that create the mask like how it is. By making the masks, we are the masters so we have a sense of control over the masks we played.

Emptiness? Value? Complete?

There are always differences with all of us and many of us “want” to believe that because we want to be unique with ourselves. As a result, we go search for “something” to fill in the emptiness that we felt; searching for what we are missing in our lives that can make our lives better. One of the interviewees who had the plug earrings said it is because we want “value”, “attention” and that we want to “fulfill something”. Similar to wanting to believe that we are special, we want what we are doing to be special and exceptional. With that feeling, the observer in our mind would go and search for the information necessary to fill this blank hole of ours. We might or might not be aware that we are doing that but once we undergo a change, we will know. Therefore, once the observer finds what we want, we would comply with it and mix it with our real selves to construct a new face.
But do we become complete with what the observer finds? Or does our heart tell us to go find more?

Performing Coolly on Stage is Hard or Easy?

Many of us want to become cool and by finding a role model, we would know what needs to be done to turn ourselves into a cool person. A cool person is like a mask that we’ve made to put it over ourselves for others to notice us. Or like performers but we’re not performing a character of the script written by somebody else; we are performing a script we wrote ourselves that has others influences on it. We hope to become what we want but also we are conscious of what other people’s opinions would be so we have to take account in both. By having an observer in ourselves, we are able to take on information to create a better self but we also have to be careful what ranks we are in. If we have power and control over others, our ranks would be the top but if not, we need to abide from others so to earn power and control for ourselves. For the high ranks, they are controlling the “bodies through other bodies” (Michel Foucault). If the observer can gather what we need to become powerful, we would be able to direct others to look at the outer shell of us.

I don’t think anybody likes to be embarrassed in front of others because we have pride and reputation balancing on our shoulders. When having our mechanical self performing the character, our inner selves begins to worried if the actions and impressions is good or not. We worried whether we will be “credited” or “discredited” with the piece we put out (The Production of Self – Goffman Raeader). Looking good in front of others and able to perform the cool character well would help them gain respect and reputation. Additionally, to become cool, we need to connect with Cool because Cool never stays in one period of time but moves on once we are giving too much attention to it (Merchants of Cool). Cool gives out signals that we need to catch in order to use it for ourselves. Once we received and able to manipulate the signals, we can sent out our own, leading ourselves to get on the stage, and becoming the main character of other people’s stages. Seizing these signals is what the observer does if we want to become cool and building upon these signals guides us to our transformation of a new character.

OPV- Are our masks helpful or breaking us?

When in a relationship, both parties want to act their best, their coolest in front of each other. Sometimes they would build a mask, make themselves into what the other person want them to look like to get approval from the other person. In the article, “A Better You”, it states that “approval gained in this manner often becomes the source of rejection when the mask comes off”. In a relationship, people always say trust must happen and revealing of each others selves can help the relationship deepened. But having the “mask” on to prevent yourself from letting your partner to know about your real one can lead the relationship unhealthy. To maintain a healthy relationship, one should be “devoid of the pretense that comes from wearing a mask”. Does that mean one should always be honest in a relationship but what if he/she wants to give happiness to his/her partner? Trust always question how we live our lives because it is hard for all of us to trust since trust is a sincere feeling. I think trust is like a vow in any relationship so we become careful of whom we trust. The observer in our mind is always questioning us whether we want to create a face depending on the situations. Though I think there is always a blend of our real selves in the face we’ve put on to at least give a bit of our trust in the other partner.

Having the observer in our mind to keep generating new masks would decrease our energy in showing our true selves. A lot of the times, we keep our true selves hidden because we think the masks that we’ve created are better than our true selves. So we use the masks to live our lives. However, “masks are cumbersome” as it takes away “the natural joy of life” because we have to constantly surveillance our masks’ movements (A Better You). Sometimes masks are a bundle of burden but we still carried them in front of us. We hide behind these masks and as the others think of our masks greatly, the confidence in showing our true selves lessens. It is because we are scared to reveal, and to be discredited and thinking how badly it would be if someone found out who they really are. Is our observer helping us or breaking our real selves apart? This process of taken in information and creating a blend of a little bit of our real selves with a new characteristics into this mask, is it worth it?

Connections/Significance: [under construction]

I find that we care a lot about our appearances and how we confront others of who we are. Society and cultural opinions affect the way we live our lives as we are surrounded by people; and those with power gives signals to the underlings to be careful with how they act towards them. Everybody wants to be valued and many of us are able to get the attention. But is it through our own effort of revealing who we think ourselves are really are or is it the "faces" and masks we created? We performed the character that we put effort in creating but does that character get the value that balances with the effort?

Conclusion: [under construction]

The way the observer that resides in our inner selves gathers the information to let us generate and blend our real selves with the faces to give the outer self a representation. We want to create a character that people will like because we don’t want to be disliked. Of course, we find people that like us and in return, help us to be able to accept ourselves better. The closer that we are to people, the more the real self would reveal but the observer is always alert in our mind, because the observer gives us opinions/decisions as to whether or not to believe/trust those people or not.

MLA Citations:

Fore, Jo Ann. "A Better You." Online Dating Magazine n. pag. Web. 17 Jan 2010. < http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/columns/abetteryou/23-behindthemask.html>.

Frontline: The Merchants of Cool. PBS Online, 2001. Web. 7 Feb. 2005

Fanning, John. “Personal/Political – Tattoo Talk”. Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.

Interviewees. “What is Cool?” Street Survey. 02 December 2009.

Lamert & Branaman. “The Production of Self”. Goffman Reader. 1956. 08 January 2010.

Snyder, Andy. "Personal/Political." Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.

HW #34 The Cool Pose and Various Approaches to Life Rooted in Class, Race, Gender, Age, etc.

I find that the cultures that we live in affect the way people think about things and which affects their actions. But, I think the way the society think about the culture adds more "fuel" (either good or bad) to that certain culture. The surroundings that we live in, the people that we interact with changes our ideas in how we want to set our paths. The more the society pushes their ideas on the people, especially to the teens and children, the more they will think its best for them to follow what the society is saying. They may rebel against what the society is saying or what their culture wants them to do or what their parents wants them to follow; but then they will be put under another's culture, is what I see from my own experiences and from reading the article, "A Poverty of the Mind".

I see that we all don't want to lose our "face", or to be embarrassed so we try to cover it up so the attention would go back on the "cool" side. Everybody wants the word "respect" to be shown to them through the actions of others. To have respect, it makes us feel much better but the respect doesn't have to be in a system of power control way. Rather, I think its when we are mostly strangers to each other that we want respect but if its between friends and close ones, the level of respect changes. Then there is also the cultural respect we want from the other cultures. From the article, it says that the young black men, after getting the "cool-pose" in them, they got themselves "a great deal of respect from white youths". To be "real cool", like from the poem "We Real Cool" of that role of coolness, one must act like what the poem is suggesting. However, it only brings death more to yourself as the poem suggests many different ways to kill yourself.

I feel that the Black culture are always getting compared a lot and I think that when we are feel respect, it helps the culture raise the reputation more. It is cool that the black culture has bought in a lot of the music like hip hop and I find that the way they speak is very cool...well, more towards the older (wiser) people than younger. I think it is because the older people have live longer so they got to experience more change and learn more things than the younger ones so their way of speaking sounds more respectful. Unlike the younger ones, whom I see on streets and when listening to them, they are quite scary and I just feel like shaking my head at them (not all of them). In the article, it said that the white youths have the sense of when they should get out their books when it is time but for the black youths, the music world and the street world is all they got. I find that the way they want to be cool limits their chances in the academic world. Once they follow a leader, or be in a gang, their decisions seems to be always centering around the gang. It feels as if they don't know that they have a future (that might be better for them) so they must act now. Their world centers around the choices that they have made in the present and the way they see the culture from their own view and from the society offers less chances for them to decide.

I find that our culture and the way society sees it puts pressure on the actions we put out. Like being in the general Asians, we "should" be the smart ones and if we are smart, we have to keep it up. Or like being in the advance class, we are the "advanced" ones so we need to be smart about it. It feel as if words and images are the mainstream way of dealing with how we express what's put forth for a certain category like our cultures. Then I think we get the feeling that if we want to be treated right, we need to be cool about what our culture's popular thing is; as well as adding with other culture to show the diversity-ness in ourselves.

However, we put pressure on each others culture; but we also take from others culture, so is that fair for the cultures? Like how the Black created the hip hop and in the past, the cool jazz stuff, and then we incorporated it into our lives. They benefit us so we treat them a bit better but then once the situations get worse, we treat them worse. In "Learning to Labour", how the lads are making themselves look cool and "showed little interest in academic work" and etc, it shows how the lads are taking, from what I observed, how the Black culture does their poses. Even though the two cultures' cultural map of "coolness" is colliding with each other, there is always some differences as what the privileges are different. As well as the way we see the culture and the people, giving them our opinions/judgments, which results in the respect of the culture to go down. Like what we talked in class, how our cultural map changes if we have another map to create a combination of both but the actions when the combinations are mixed changes too. I think this is why in the article, that how the Black culture is not successful is because of the people's comments and their way to pressure the Black culture in doing what the people are suggesting. (I hope anyone who reads this get what I'm saying...sorry...)

Since the society that we live in, America has diverse cultures, so the multi-culture society adding all together creates a combination of comments. But the "cool pose" that we created needs to be in there in order for us to get the attention/respect that we wanted. I think it connects to the value that the culture is lacking to give us so then we go and try to create something that can be called "cool". We want to be "credited" so we try to build, act for a choice/path that leads us to somewhere. I don't think cool is misleading us but it is us who has build cool to be influencing us to deal with what we have in our lives. Certainly, I don't mean what it is already placed in front of us, like who we are born into but the surroundings/development of our childhood/and whatever that influences us forces us to change our thinking.

HW #33 - Cool Paper Outline

Thesis: Our inner self becomes the observer, gathering information from others as our outer self presents the representation of both our real selves and the “faces” we’ve created.

Paragraph 1: Whether or not we are acting cool, we are aware that we are trying to make an impact on others.

- The way we choose our style of clothing, and accessories. [interviews, tattoos, Mr. Fanning’s rite of passages]

- People comment on our image, whether it suits us or not and then we think about whether to wear it or not the next time. [talking about having talents, being looked up to, celebrities]

- The roles we play in the society affects how the observer, us, gathers the information and forms a self that does not go too off of our original roles. Or else, we create a totally different impact on this new self, causing others to become aware of the change. [when people can tell that that person has change a lot, and the personality is different than what it was]

Paragraph 2: We take what we seek from the role model and place it in ourselves, turning ourselves to a different self than what we originally are.

- Having a role model, a hero changes a person’s point of view and actions. Like the younger siblings look up to the older siblings and the young ones tries to act like the old ones. [tattoos, and t.v. show heroes]

- Popular people: once we are in the “in” group, we tend to change who we are to suit the rest of the group. We begin our phase of making masks for others to see, to make them and ourselves believe that this is who we are. However, even though we are acting like somebody else, we still have something that is ours alone. [From the unpopular group to the popular group]

- There is always something different about each of us and that is what many of us believe in but we still go search for something new. [Emptiness? Want more Value in ourselves by going out and search for it? Does it fill us?] That’s why we must always have information, which the observer in our mind goes and search for. Then once the observer finds something, a “new face” has been created.

Paragraph 3: Why do we make masks of ourselves? Why do we perform on stage? [Transition and connect to cool]

- We are seeking for attention. We want to become cool so we go find a person who is cool; look up to them and bring ourselves to be like them. But do we feel distant if we look up to them too much? That they are seen as “God-like” (Andy S.) and having power control over our bodies? [Michel Foucault]

- We want to be “credited”, to be known so as to not lose our “face”, to lose a part of ourselves. [The Production of Self, Goffman]

- To stay “credited”, we must follow the trend that “cool” puts in the society. “Cool” never stays in one period of time but moves on once people use it too much. We must stay on the signals and to be able to manipulate them. [Merchants of Cool and Goffman]

We want to create a character that people will like because we don’t want to be disliked. Of course, we find people that like us and in return, help us to be able to accept ourselves better. The closer that we are to people, the more the real self would reveal but the observer is always alert in our mind, because the observer gives us opinions/decisions as to whether or not to believe/trust those people or not.

HW #32 Tattoos

I think tattoos are a symbol of recognition. If a person is recognized through a crowd with something that is on his/her body, s/he would look different than others. We all want to be different than others so we tried not to wear the same clothing or put something more to get more attention than others. However, people want to get something such as a tattoo, like Sarah's friend because of her mother, to show how much she love her mother, which meaningful and significance in her life. We might interpret it as getting spotlight if the person wants to reveal what was imprinted on his/her skin. We want to be recognized, to be a different person by adding art on our bodies but sometimes a tattoo also brings forth a history that others don't know.

Tattoos are to show the roles that we are playing in the society. One may think it is cool to get a tattoo and show it to people, but it places them in a certain category. Like the Atayal tribe in Taiwan, who uses facial tattoos to demonstrate how "an adult man can protect his homeland, and that an adult woman is qualified to weave cloth and perform housekeeping" (Wiki Tattoo). I think in the past, tattoos are a symbolic form of the knowledge a person has and/or the (rite of) passages that people went through. Tattoos are there to show the confidence, strength, knowledge a person has and I think that is cool. We want to show off what we have went through and if we want to use tattoos to show it, then it is to let the world know what kind of power we have gained. Similar to how Mr. John Fanning's tattoos, where it shows the "rites of passages" and important experiences he had went through. He got the tattoos that will be on his two arms forever because it reveals meaning inside of him.

Like the Holocaust, where the Jewish have to be tattoo with identification, people see this history as sad and horrible but to those who have survived, that tattoo carries on a history and the strength the survivors had lived through. Then to a lot of us, we want to know what the history is specifically so we asked them to show it off to us, feeding us information. But when we look at it, it is a different kind of show off because that identification is a tattoo category that gives off significance. I think that when things such as tattoos are being forced onto our bodies, people would feel sympathy towards us and not think how badly we want to be cool. If it is not forced, then people would think differently of us because tattoos are imprinted in our bodies forever, like a scar (unless we do plastic surgery).

There are a lot of categories of tattooing because the images that are needled into the bodies have different meaning. Unlike the Holocaust case of tattooing, the tattoos that I see today are merely for the coolness we find in them but also to show ourselves who we are. People might think that having tattoos are seeking for attention but I think tattoos reassure people because they know that they have their bodies in control the way they wanted them to. Mr. Fanning said how having these tattoos on his arms show that this is his body and he can put what he wants to put. The tattoos, he said, gave him an "armor" to protect himself and to tell others that he can protect himself well that you do not need to tell him what to do (is how I saw it). It gives a sense of self respect and peer respect when the peers can acknowledge the fact that ourselves can be "adult". It shows the power that having this tattoo is also what makes who we are. Similar to the inner and outer representation, the art of the tattoo reveals who we are and the pain that we went through to get that tattoo.

For me, I imagined that it is painful to get even a small tattoo. I think the larger the tattoo is, the more power people want to have. But to other people, it makes them think how much power those people with the tattoo already have so it makes sense how others find those people scary. But the scarier they look; it builds up the power that others had given to them, creating a “cool” image for themselves. I think cool is the same as tattoo. There are so many variations and so many choices but both of them ask us whether we want it or not.