Art, Soccer and Life

            To relate Art to Soccer and how Soccer indirectly reflects Life, one must first define Art.

            Art can come in a multitude of forms.

            Art is can be found not only in music or literature but also in sport.

Art is a form of expression; its goal is to entertain, to inspire and to provoke certain emotions. Art is a form of escape, it is capable of capturing the audience and pulling them away from reality, thrusting them into a fits of varying emotions. Art most importantly, is subjective.

The subjectivity of Art allows it to reflect and critique the environment it is placed in, it allows the audience a chance to participate in the conversation with it. With that art becomes a powerful medium in which to critique society.

Soccer or football as it is known throughout the world is widely considered the most popular sport in the world. To me, it is also a form of art, not only because of its immense societal and cultural impact but because of its subjective nature and the way it loosely parallels society.

The way football reflects society and acts as a platform for social critique is shown in the way teams are set up tactically, and the way critics and fans alike judge such tactics. Most people argue for football to be played in a certain way, a way in which it is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, which is to place emphasis on possession of the ball and retaining the ball. A perfect example of a team that plays that way and wins on a constant basis would be FC Barcelona. Arguing that the way Barcelona play should be the end all and be all of football has been something of an obsession for the media and critics alike, who see other teams who employ tactics that shun the passing game of Barcelona’s as an insult to the sport and demand that everyone else sees it the same way they do.

Doesn’t this resemble how the media dictates the way we should be or behave and the way the media ostracises those who are different?  The way the media promotes uniformity in tactics reflects the way the media manipulates the ideals of society in order to benefit themselves or those in charge.  

As in reality, there are those who play a different way and are praised albeit not as much as Barcelona. I for one am a fan of counter-attacking football, a tactic which relies on pace and positional awareness to approach teams. Some of the reasons behind the difference in playing style might not necessarily be because of the lack of ability or financial capability but rather because of the differing philosophies of the clubs, an example of this would be teams like Real Madrid and AC Milan, however the majority of teams are limited by their players’ ability rather than their differing philosophies. I believe that like society, football too benefits from diversity.

Oh. And football induces orgasms in certain instances.

Here’s the link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSdHnELY6e8

            Skip to 0:15 to hear it, and forgive the poor video quality.

Further reading (Football blogs) :

http://runofplay.tumblr.com/

http://afootballreport.com/

http://backpagefootball.com/

Art and its many forms

Blog #2-Mark Lampert

           

Art is a very interesting part of society. Not only is it a form of expression, but also an important public forum, allowing us to convey something that simply talking about wouldn’t do justice for. Art has many uses, including entertainment, expression, pleasure, and many more. However, in my opinion, art is most useful when applied as a social critique. Art allows the unique opportunity to express how someone is feeling about the world and shape it into something that is meaningful to him or her. Later generations can then use art as a record of history, to explain the time period that the artist lived in and how they felt about it.

This is important because of the current problems facing our country today, like the economy, social inequality, racial tension, and the war in Iraq, to name a few. Artists are needed to express how things really are, to give their opinions on the state of the world, and to influence change. Popular artists in the music world have large fan bases, and can get their message out to large numbers of people through the Internet. With their popularity, they can create real change, and are often loved by the people, something the government today currently lacks.

            This leads into what I want to talk about today, a 2011 song by the artist Lupe Fiasco, called “Words I Never Said.”  A popular song reaching the top 50 in iTunes, it is an entertaining hip-hop style song with clear messages about economic inequality and government conspiracy. Specifically, the words  “Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the upper crust, you get it then they move it so you never keeping up enough” references the fact that many American families are struggling to even keep up with the middle class income, and when they make it there, the boundary is pushed up again. Another line “our child’s future was the first to go with budget cuts,” references the fact that education funding was severely cut by the government, sacrificing children’s education. These social critiques are in a song, which is a form of art, but just as important for society to hear than a politician giving a speech, and a much more entertaining forum. 

            This song represents the discontentment of American citizens with how things are being run, and influenced the occupy movement, which started last year in New York City, protesting against economic inequality. This song was not the sole reason for the movement, and I am not claiming that, but it was one of many reasons that change occurred and ensuring the status quo did not continue. That is why art as social critique is so important, so that we can realize what we as a society are unhappy with and try to fix it. If we never realize those problems, we can’t ever fix them. Art is everywhere, not only in museums like some people would believe. It can be dangerous, however, when the wrong message is sent out, like in some forms of music. That is why it is so important to make sure you realize what something is truly saying before you listen to it, and realize it may solely be a form of entertainment. Art can lead to change, but we want to ensure that it is a positive form of change first. It does beg the question: Where is the line between art as a critique and art as entertainment?

Art as social Critique

As an example of art being used as social critique, I looked at the song Ride the Lightning by Metallica, off of their album with the same name. The song talks about a man who has an upcoming execution sentence via the electric chair for a crime that he didn't actually commit. This is social criticism of the criminal justice system, and in particular the procedures in deciding whether or not to give someone capital punishment. In an interview with the singer, James Hetfield, he said "I believe in capital punishment, but it was more about the idea of being strapped in the electric chair even though you didnt commit the crime." 

The song says in the start:

 Guilty as charged
But damn it, it ain't right
There is someone else controlling me

Death in the air
Strapped in the electric chair
This can't be happening to me

Who made you God to say
"I'll take your life from you!!"

This is saying that the judge ruled him guilty as charge, even though he is innocent of whatever crime he is being convicted of, and the horror he is experiencing being strapped in the electric chair. Then he is questioning the authority of the criminal justice system, in saying that they have no right to play god, and be the judge of who gets to live or not.

The rest of the song is basically just detailing the horror of being strapped into the chair, knowing that you are going to die for no reason, and how time is literally moving in slow motion to him. Further, it talks about the intial pain of flicking the switch and feeling the heat and describing the all around graphic and barbaric nature of execution by this method.

 Personally, I am for capital punishment (what is your opinion on it?), and with that being said, I do thing the electric chair is a little extreme. the method of lethal injection being used now is a much more humane and acceptable method for this, and I have no problem whatsoever with it.

Honestly, I dont really believe art is any real way of bringing about social change (disagree?), and I think that the artists are well aware of this when they are writing, and do it more so to voice an opinion as opposed to starting any sort of revolution or really bringing about any actual change. And I think that is the artists and the arts real view, is to get people thinking, and to voice their own opinion, and naturally in most cases, to make money.


I think that the term art is very broadly defined, and it is one of those things, where the ruling is totally in the eyes of the beholder. One person can think something is the greatest masterpiece he has ever seen, and his friend think nothing of it, and not even call it art. it is completely a subjective topic. That said, I really dont think that the question is important at all. to each their own on the subject. Further, I dont really think some art forms are "more good" for society that others, everything serves its own purpose, and again, it is totally up to the individual to interpret it as they would like. That is the beauty of art, is that it is not concrete in any sense, and you can ask 1000 different people about it and get 1000 different opinions, and none of them are wrong.









 

Post #2 - YouTube as Contemporary Art

So earlier today, I was just chillaxing at Cup O’ Joe, messing around on Facebook, watching House get his second diagnosis wrong, and pretending to do homework. There’s a group of high school kids sitting around a laptop at one of the booth’s watching some of the comical brilliance of Jenna Marbles on YouTube.  At table to the right of them sat three middle-aged women, chatting casually. They continuously glanced over at the giggling teenagers, looking at them with contempt. At one point, they even started discussing them, calling the kids stupid and YouTube and YouTubers immature and pointless. I came to the realization of three things; this would be excellent to talk about for this blog post, I’m really creepy for watching these two groups so intently, and that today’s society has cast aside one my favorite modern art forms as trash.

            The goal of art is to visualize beauty. The goal of art is to transform ideas and the sub-conscious into reality. The goal of art is to instill happiness in the hearts of those who appreciate it. By that logic, how is YouTube not an amazing, technological twin of the Louvre? YouTube is a website designed for a different form of art; a combination of music and film and comedy and education and pretty much anything. Admittedly, YouTube is typically enjoyed by a younger audience, but who are these middle-aged folk to judge what or what isn’t art? Art is an expression of one’s true self. So if Ms. Marbles true self is a cursing comedian that entertains hundreds of thousands, by what standard is that not art?

            YouTube isn't just used for comedy. Many of the popular YouTubers take advantage of the fact that they have become so famous, and advertise and advocate for social change. Some raise awareness for issues like self-harm, some raise and donate money, others try to do things like give advice. This generation isn’t as bad as older generations think; we use art to try and stimulate social change, the kind of social change that can actually help others. And how can we measure if one form of art does “more good”? If a Mozart piece can make thousands of little children smarter, but a YouTube video saves 100 kids from attempting suicide, how can we measure which one does “more good” for society?

In general, much of society critiques modern art as ridiculous and “not-art”. Art is really very opinionated and everyone perceives it differently. Frankly, I think Piet Mondrian’s piece Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red is complete and utter shit, but many consider it one of the greatest pieces of 20^th century Neo-Plasticism. Art is very dynamic, it’s always changing and it’s always evolving. By dismissing certain forms or piece from the category of “art”, we are halting progress in social change, and social critique, as a parallel, will cease to evolve along with the art. We shouldn’t be so critical of what we consider art, because art exists in many forms, but as long as one person considers it beautiful, it’s art.

Containment. From Communism to Nuclear development.

Instead of documenting how containment is used as a foreign policy by America to help contain the emergence of communism from the Eastern bloc of Europe in the past, I would like to focus on how America is presently dealing with the development of Nuclear Weapons in Iran with containment and the struggles it faces.

Containment has long been used by America as a foreign policy to stall or suppress the agenda promoted by countries whose values oppose or threaten American national security. The exercise of containment would result in trade sanctions or other types of sanctions against those countries thus isolating them from the United States.

Since Obama was elected president, America’s stance on Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon has downgraded from “Unacceptable” to one of the several highest national security priorities” Discussions on the internet have been rife with accusations of President Obama being “soft” with regards to his approach towards Iran’s nuclear developments program. Sanctions however have been passed with hopes of Iran reiterating their stance and being more negotiable. However the use of sanctions without the threat of enforcing it with military force undermines the effectiveness of such sanctions. The isolation or containment of Iran was given more focus rather the idea of preventing Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities.

With Israel calling for war, arguing that when Iran have finally developed nuclear weapons it would have the incentive to strike first rather use them for self-defense, and with Iran not backing down, Obama is faced with the decision to go to war, or attempt the isolate Iran and hopefully see out America’s plan for a diplomatic solution while at the same time attempting to balance their delicate relationship with Israel and Iran.

But the question is, can and will America live with an Iran equipped with nuclear weaponry, and will the emergence of Iran as a nuclear superpower undermine America’s superiority in global politics? Would containment be enough to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities or would it merely serve to delay their nuclear capabilities?

The Iranian nuclear threat poses a much larger problem for the United States, if President Obama chooses to sit back and do nothing with the entire issue it could be seen that the United States condone such developments and it may serve to encourage other countries to start developing nuclear weapons in the name of self-defense, which is something the world does not need at the moment. If the United States were to heed Israel’s call for war and strike Iran before that are fully capable of nuclear warfare, the plan to end Iran’s nuclear capabilities could still backfire as Iran could start clandestine nuclear developments in hopes of striking back at the United States, doing so would make it much harder for the United States to track and investigate Iran’s progress.

Although war is not the solution to the problem and it would do more harm to the diplomatic relationship between America and Iran, I believe the threat of war in enforcing sanctions might soften Iran’s resolve in further developing nuclear weaponry.

Link to blog. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-iran-policy-shifts-to-containment/2011/12/09/gIQAUD8DjO_story.html

Post #1 - Women in Education

My group peers who have already made posts on our blog have both discussed topics that relate to the fact that containment is happening. I would like to discuss a matter in which containment culture is being resisted; young women and education. In the blog Economix, Catherine Rampell shows us with a few graphs and figures that young women are pulling ahead of young men in the desire for higher education and successful careers. I think this is fantastic; Ms. Rampell even compares this statistic to men and women aged 35-64 in 1997, where 41% of those men believed high-paying successful careers were important, but only 26% of women agreed. Today however, 43% of men believe in high-paying successful careers and 42% of women believe in it.

How is this information helpful, or what does it even mean? Well, we’ve seen women being contained when reading Revolutionary Road, or learning about women’s suffrage in high school history classes. It was always instilled into the mind’s of Americans that men were superior to women, and that the job of the woman was to stay at home, make the food, clean the house, and take care of the children. In today’s society, where women are treated with much more respect and equality, it is important for the woman to assert her independence and strive for that higher education. Biological differences are the only dividers between our two sexes, and gender (being the social and cultural implications or expectations assigned to the roles of being a “man” or being a “woman”) should no longer dictate who “deserves” higher education.

In my opinion, indirectly, the US still attempts to contain the women of its nation, and constrain them to this role of “the housewife”. What do you guys think? Am I just being ridiculous? Let’s look at some specific examples. Women, on average, still have a lower salary than men. Why? Because of maternity leave. That is actually why women receive a lower salary on average; it’s the company’s way of compensation for the months lost for maternity leave. Do any of you think that’s fair? If a man and a woman want to start a family, should the woman be condemned for biologically being responsible for the birth of the child? This is why I say that the United States still, even if indirectly, attempts to contain and constrain the woman to the pre-existing role of “the housewife”.

Going back to the blog; by looking at the second graph, we can see that women have higher ambitions to becoming good parents, having a successful marriage, and being successful in a high-paying career or profession. Without attaching any meaning to it, couldn’t this arguably be proof that women are better than men? Answering my own question directly, I’d say not necessarily. Look what happened when it was assumed that men were better. Instead of placing our two sexes in conflict of hierarchical achievement, can we not just be content that both have their positives and negatives? Neither men nor women could survive without the other. Literally. If you’d like to prove that statement wrong, I would like to refer you to an 8^th grade sex education class.

Click HERE to view the blog post

Jordan Karla blog 1

The blog that I read is the Defcon Hill defense blog, in which the author, Jeremy Herb, analyzes and critiques Obama’s “containment” policy toward the nation of North Korea. The North Koreans have posed a problem to the rest of the world for decades, and the United States has been trying to contain their communist regime and ideology from spreading to any other country generally, and the United States in particular. The article particularly addresses one of Obama’s agreements with the North Koreans that entailed the following: The United States would send food aid to North Korea if Pyongyan (capital of North Korea) would suspend its nuclear testing. The North Koreans have over and over again in the past proven that they are not trustworthy, and are dangerous people yet Obama is applying a light handed appeasement type of agreement to try and contain any sort of outbreak or act of violence from them. Surely enough, two months after the fact, the North Koreans launched a missile. Mitt Romney, as cited in the blog, said “At the same time, he has cut critical U.S. missile defense programs and continues to underfund them” This to me, brings about the question: why in the world would we be cutting funding towards defense for things that it would appear, that we may need the most? With the election right around the corner, and Obama’s foreign policy sector being a strong point as viewed by many, the setbacks that keep occurring with North Korea could really end up hurting him, especially if the republicans milk the passivity that he is showing, because honestly, it’s really easy to defend the claim that he is not doing enough to deal with the North Koreans (do you think he is doing enough in this department?). In the instance with the North Koreans, while containment may be the easiest way to deal with them, any sort of appeasement policy that we direct toward them will more than likely be short lived as by nature, the North Korean government is extremely aggressive (particularly so when talking about the subject of military or similar arms topics) and will not very easily be deferred from whatever sort of testing or launching that they want to do. Dependent of this, the people of North Korea are experiencing one of the finest examples of containment within their own country. They are extremely cut off from the rest of the world, and basically receive absolutely no outside intelligence about the world around them. Everything is so highly regulated in that country that the people there don’t even know enough about the rest of the world (making generalizations) to think that their country may or may not be doing something wrong. That is why their leaders are praised as gods, and when their most recent leader died, literally just about everyone there was hysterical and terribly upset over his death, even though he was one of the worst dictatorial figures of the modern world, and created living conditions for his citizens that were minimalist at best. This blog really does a nice job of highlighting of the attempted and failed containment employed against North Korea and serves to enlighten that more needs to be done before things get really out of hand.

Blog analyzed:  http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/221363-north-korea-missile-launch-could-weaken-obamas-foreign-policy-strength

Blog #1-Mark Lampert

The push to control nuclear weapons programs has led to the containment of many nations in history, such as Iran and North Korea today and the Soviet Union in the past. The blog focuses on Iran, and how the United States and European Union are having “frustrating” talks with them, trying to get them to eliminate their nuclear weapon program. The United States and EU are growing impatient, not only because of the fact that Iran is researching nuclear weaponry, but because of Iran’s long standing feud with Israel. The US and Israel have long been allies, and Israel sees Iran’s nuclear weapon program as a threat to their national security. This, in turn, has led them to seek help from the US in order to stop Iran’s research and development of nuclear weaponry, with economic sanctions currently in place.

 The concept of nuclear weapons to many is frightening, and understandably so. Anything that has the power to destroy cities in a single blow is certainly scary. However, atomic weaponry has only been actually used in one war, by the USA, on Japan during World War II. This is important to realize, because although the USA claims good intentions and says it just wants the world to be a safer place, it is only trying to contain Iran’s program to secure its own power and satisfy Israel. This is good if you are an American, but not so good if you are a citizen of Iran who is caught in the crossfire.

Iran is also important because it is a major supplier of the world’s oil, which the USA is heavily dependent on. If people think gas prices are bad now, if the situation with Iran escalates, gas could easily jump to around 5$ a gallon. This is important not only because of foreign policy of containment on Iran, but because of the domestic implications as well. As most people are aware, 2012 is an election year, and how people feel about gas prices can directly effect who may be president at the end of November. It is certainly not the deciding factor, but it will weigh on people’s decisions, and many will blame Obama for rising gas prices, along with the already bad economy.  It begs the question: How important are gas prices to your vote?

Another important thing to consider on the USA relations with Iran is the possibility of getting involved in another war. As the war in Iraq comes to a close, I don’t believe the American public is ready for another war, but that is what this situation could come to. We are containing Iran’s nuclear program because we see it as a threat to us, for oil (as described above) and for war. If something threatens the United States power, we are going to respond to it, which can be a double-edged sword. I believe it is important for our leaders to demonstrate restraint and diplomatic talks when necessary to avoid another war, one that neither our economy nor our people could handle at the moment. Containing Iran is simply easier than fighting them, which is why containment happens so much more often. Right now, the American public’s faith in government is down, and the situation in Iran, if handled the right way, could go a big way towards restoring some of that faith.

Link to blog that was analyzed: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/222523-modest-progress-and-an-open-door-with-iran