Selling The News

These are the lyrics to Switchfoot's song, "Selling the News."

In our world today, medium has become more important than message. If you listen to a lot of the popular songs today,  they all sound really good. Great rhythm, good beats, wonderful vocals. However, quality of the  lyrics has degraded over time. 

Switchfoot, one of my favorite bands talks about this phenomenon in their song "Selling the News." The first part goes, "See opinions are easier to swallow than facts. The grays instead of the whites and the blacks " 

We dislike hearing the things that we sometimes have to know. More often than not, we'd rather hear about what Oprah thinks about this certain brand of clothing than what Pastor Joe has to say about right and wrong, what's moral and what's not. The second part of the verse goes, "See money speaks volumes louder than words. And virtues with wings maybe not quite at first." Media has become a money making industry. The corporations will scrounge up whatever they can, make it look pretty and attempt to sell it.  The problem is, no matter how pretty that thing is, if they got it from the dumpster, it's still trash right?

A few weeks ago, I made a blog about my love for music and the measures my parents took to help me choose good music. As of now, I don't really listen to any of the new stuff on the radio because a lot of today's songs are all about getting laid, how "cool" you have to be, money, being popular, girls, and broken hearts. For example, Akon's song, "I Just Had Sex"

"I just had sex! And it felt so good! (felt it so good)
A woman let me put my penis inside her!
I just had sex, and i’ll never go back..(never go back)
to the not-havin’-sex ways of the past

Have you ever had sex? I have - it felt great!
It felt so good when i did it with my penis
A girl let me do it, it literally just happened..
Havin’ sex can make a nice man out the meanest!

Never guess where I just came from - I had sex!
If I had to describe the feeling: it was the best!
When I had the sex man my penis felt great!
And I called my parents right after I was done"

When I first heard this, it was pretty catchy. But, come on man. What kind of world are we falling into? I heard this song playing in a children's playroom in Robinson's Pioneer. Okay. The thing is, we're all too preoccupied with aesthetics. We usually just focus on how great a song sounds, how nice the visual effects of the movie are, or how clear and vivid the pictures in that men's magazine. Back in the day, when the Beatles talked about love, all they wanted to do was hold your hand.

Basically, what I'm trying to say can be summed up in one phrase.

"The medium is the message"

According to the notes Sir Beaver sent us, 

"Meaning should focus not on what was said, but how it was said."

Burn The Heretic

"Search the building." the captain said. Around a Sentries surrounded the doorway of the abandoned apartment. Three of them took a battering ram and smashed the door down. The men stormed the four storey structure guns blazing. Floor by floor they cleared the building of the rebels, leaving none alive. One of the resistance members dropped his gun and stood up arms raised in a gesture of surrender. A Sentry leap and tackled the man to the ground. He drew his knife and ripped the man's mask off. It was a young man. Without hesitation, the Sentry slit the throat of the unfortunate soul. The Sentry stood up and left the boy to choke on his own blood.

"Scum who dared oppose the All-Father deserved no less to die like dogs." Thought the Sentry to himself as he joined his comrades to search the upper floors. The higher they went, the higher the heaps of bodies became. When they reached the top floor, they encountered an old man standing in front of an ancient holo transmitter. "Fools." the man said. "You know not the truth. You are blind and deaf to the reality of this world. Your almighty Father will fall prey to his children soon enough." The man drew his pistol.

"Shoot him!" The captain yelled. Screams and curses flew from the old man's mouth as bolts tore his body. As he lay dying, he whispered with a smile, "It is already too late for you. The footage has been sent." The captain walked up to the dying man and drew his government issue Hellblazer. "Oh shut up you." said the captain. He cocked the gun and blew the older man's head off. Wiping the grim and blood from the barrel of this weapon, he ordered his men, "Burn it all." His men rushed to incinerate the building. One of his officers asked him who the old man was. The captain replied, "He was a deceiver. Planting seeds of dissent into the hearts of the good people. His words were poison. He was a threat to the rule of the Almighty, so he had to be...bumped off. As they say in the old country."



In comm class, we discussed Counter Hegemony. Sir Beaver talked about how some media is produced to challenge the ideas and morals of "the Man" or they system. The story above is based in a dystopia, and there are members in the society who disagree greatly with how their country is being run. So they decide to smear the name of the "Almighty Father" and expose the dirty secrets of the government by transmitting viral videos through the global system (holo transmitter). The government however, does not with for such secrets to be spread though the population and orders the deaths of the members of the opposition.