Virgin Ankles

This was an Assignment based around and examination of Folk lore for my contemporary narrative class, I was tasked with examining and dissecting this myth as it appears in this comic.

Grant Tabler
Final Paper for AHSS*2030 (Thursday)
for Dr. Greg Kelley, Media Studies, 4th Floor
Dec. 9th, 2010

Virgin Ankles

Comics have the ability to portray many aspects of a story in a short set of pictures and narration. It is through this brevity coupled with the approachability of comics that makes them a great medium for the dissemination of folk lore and legends. Many classic legends have been exemplified via comics in The Big Book of Urban Legends. This paper will analyse one of the legends illustrated there, “The Slasher Under the Car”, examining an interpreted meaning, and looking at how various comic elements work to amplify meaning.

This comic seems to set the story in the 1950s, the women are dressed conservatively, and in a style mimicking this period, the hairstyles and fashion mimic that of 1950’s America as well. The “gang members” are not the stereotyped gangs of today comprised of minorities in baggy clothing. Instead, they are represented as 1950’s greasers. They are all white, with slicked hair styles and leather jackets. This makes some sense, since this legend is documented by folklorist Jan Brunvand to have first appeared in this time period.(Brunvand 134-138) The comic illustrates dramatic tension in a very clear way. Throughout most this comic we only see the main characters from the knees up, we are lead to assume that these women could be the next targets—as indeed one is.

Anonymity Undone

Grant Tabler
Ian Reilly
MDST 2020
15 November 2010

Anonymity Undone

The Internet has long been seen as a medium of anonymity and freedom. With the lack of governing or regulations it has become an area of free expression. However, with this freedom of anonymous speech and expression comes the darker side of anonymity. The Internet also allows for people to post slanderous or hateful things with complete freedom and safety. However, recently Blizzard Entertainment decided to take a stand against this kind of behaviour on their enormous gaming forum for the game World of Warcraft. They proposed a system which would link the first and last name from each player’s account information to all posts made on these forums. The response was an outcry from the community to cancel this change. This proposed change encapsulates many of the debates about the decentralized, anonymous model of communication on the internet as a whole, with larger implications of accountability in other aspects of life. This paper intends to highlight some of the key debates related to this change and explore the larger implications this change holds for accountability in other aspects of our lives.

A Razorblade in Our Perspective

Grant Tabler
Greg Kelley
AHSS 2020
4 November 2010

A Razorblade in Our Perspective

Halloween is a time of year that is inherently conducive to a greater amount of freedom amongst its child participants. Children are able to dress up in costume, stay out late, and eat free candy that they receive from their neighbours on a night of general goodwill. However, when one hears of Halloween in the media, this childhood freedom is curtailed by some looming threat of malicious attackers out to hurt our vulnerable loved ones. Though there are numerous examples of this perspective, this paper will choose to focus on an analysis on this media phenomenon from a documentary. In “Bowling for Columbine”, filmmaker Michael Moore’s analysis of the media exemplifies their use of negativity, consonance, and typification to control the United States through fear.

The Media Revolution of the 19th Century

Grant Tabler
Jerry Chomyn
AHSS 2190
29 October 2010

The Media Revolution of the 19^th Century

Information is a commodity that we never seem to have enough of. We are inundated with so much information that it becomes increasingly difficult to find information that is useful to us. This is a symptom of something Neil Postman called “the curse of this information age” (Postman 5). Though we have not always had this information overload, it was not so long ago that technology was developed to combat information scarcity. In one century however, humanity invented the technologies that could not only help solve information scarcity, but also help bring about this information overload. In the 19^th century, spurred by the rapid growth of the industrial revolution, humanity brought forth technologies that are more significant to media than the inventions of any century that preceded it; this paper will highlight some of these inventions, and show how they laid the ground work for the modern information age.

Technocentricity

A scrap of thought I had floating around my documents since some time last year. The idea lead up to the formulation of my Term Paper for my History of Communications class.


"In my day we didn't have any of these modern conveniences"

This is a quote that our generation often associates with the older generation. It is a stereotype which they have perpetuated in which they have had a harder life and in which we, the privelleged new comers, are living a life of laziness with all our new fangled technology. This is an opinion that we ourselves have adopted and perpetuated in our culture to the point where we have developed what I will call a technocentric viewpoint of our world.

That is to say, we believe that any sufficently advanced technology, certainly anything we use daily in our modern lives must have come from our century, or at most the last 100 years. This is an ignorance that we apply because we really don't analyze our past. We think of things like x-rays, hydrogen fuel cells, fiber optics, computers, telephones, even things like radio waves came from scientists and inventors of our century, because how could those primitive 19th century ancestors of ours without any modern convieniences possibly gain such tools of innovation?

In truth all these things were invented in the 1800s...

Ethics Essay

Grant Tabler

Natalie Evans

AHSS 1080

20 April, 2010

                                                                                                                 

The Ethical Potential of Postmodern Media

            We live in postmodern times. The society we structure our lives within is one based around values which are not particularly flattering. With descriptions such as a lack of common sense and responsibility, and a declining ability to use reason to solve problems (Leslie 303), there seems to be a definite shift from the ethical perspectives that once defined cultural thinking. Given this divergent change in viewpoint, one must question what role the postmodern technologies that now define us play in the shaping of our ethics. For, postmodern culture is one that is based around an obsession with media, so much so, “they govern and shape all other relationships.” (Leslie 10)  The media that we use to structure our lives however are crowded with ethical issues themselves. Based on the ethical theories that have shaped cultures past we can see that, for good or ill, our current media are shaped by our postmodern culture.

Inference Culture: Final Response to Course, Essay

Grant Tabler
Ian Reilly
AHSS 1090
14 April 2010

A Utility Belt for Your Mind

Let me start by saying that I’m sorry that the other paper I’m handing in with this one is about The Matrix. I promise you I really am attempting to limit myself on the amount of Matrix based writing for these media studies courses. I thought I was alright with just the one paper and a large wiki post about The Matrix but alas, this is not the case. At this rate I may end up graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Matrix studies. Despite the possible redundancy of my obsessive need to reference the Matrix when referring to any aspect of media, this has allowed me to hit upon another idea worth exploring that I have come to understand based on this course. It is the idea of using inference to define reality.