Parodies Explained

A parody is when someone takes a famous/infamous idea or occurrence and creates a humerus note by mocking it.  An example of a parody would be the "Justin Bieber vs. Beethoven: Epic Rap Battle."  This video not only makes fun of Justin Bieber, by saying things such as calling him a little girl, but it also makes fun of the entire rap genre by poking fun at the abrasive lyrical style of the genre.  For example, in this faux rap battle Justin Bieber assaults Beethoven's music by saying it caused him to go deaf.  This provides a comical undertone because a 16 year old celebrity is unlikely to openly insult someone in such a way.  This also provides criticism against the rap genre because it overexaggerates the stereotype that all rap music is hateful and violent.

Laughter and comedy are a part of human nature.  It is a way to relax, relieve stress, and have a good time.  Therefore, it can be logically concluded that humans have a desire to laugh.  This is the very reason that parody videos such as this one work.  Audiences are attracted to these types of videos because it helps them laugh.  At the same time, however, the videos also provide the creator's feelings about social issues, as demonstrated by the sarcasm directed at the rap genre and Justin Bieber.

Parodies allow people to put their own opinion or take on the most popular issues in society. Allowing an author of a parody to either make fun of a situation or major event or criticize it. With parodies people can take their opinion and make it public as well as make a stance and rally support for something.  Parodies are not only for pleasure many of them are made for the specific purpose of delivering a message to its viewers. On the other hand, parodies like “Gang Fight” and “Epic Rap Battles of History” are made specifically for entertainment and for comedic value.

The Importance of Creative Problem Solving

Austin's story:


About 5 years ago, my father and I decided that we wanted to build a permanent duck blind to install on a private pond that we owned. The pond is approximately ten acres in area, and during the hunting season, ducks tend to group in the south center part of the pond, which is too far from the shore to take a shot. Building a duck blind that we could place roughly fifty yards off the shoreline would allow us to hide from the ducks, but still be within firing range. Building the blind was surprisingly the easy part, and after about a week we had it finished and ready for transport. Our plan for installing the blind, was to hammer four twelve foot by four inch beams through cut out holes on each corner of the blind, into the lake bottom. These four beams would allow the blind, which sits on a large block of styrofoam, to rise and fall with the water level of the pond. A good idea it seemed at first, but as we were to learn, we hadn't taken all the factors of the situation into account. The bottom of our pond was made up of about 2-3 feet of just mud, and when we came out to hunt for the first time, we were sadly presented with a blind that had come unanchored to the bottom of the pond and floated away and rolled over. We repositioned the blind and thought that maybe cementing the posts into the mud would work. This did in fact work for a few weeks, but when the pond froze over for the first time that winter, we found out mother nature still had one more task to overcome. We arrived for another hunt, only to see our duck blind capsized in the middle of a frozen pond. What seemed to have happened, was the ice expanded in size and popped the cemented beams out of the bottom and again the blind rolled. At this point I presented an idea to my father that I had been withholding, because I felt that it was kind of silly. I suggested that we by a couple ropes, tie the ropes around the base of two large trees and then to the blind, and then re-cement the posts into the lake bottom. The ropes have the slack taken out of them so that they are pulled tight, this, along with the posts holds the blind in place, and is still working to this day. We do still have to occasionally hammer a post back into the bottom of the pond, but we haven't showed up to hunt and had to fix the blind since then.


Conner's story:


Everyone has solved a problem with a creative solution in their life, whether it be a large problem or a small everyday nuisance.  The most recent problem that i solved creatively was the latter of the two.  The car battery in my car died on a cold icy day.  My best friend came over to my house to help me change it, but we ran into a problem fairly quickly.  The bolts that secured the battery in place within the engine compartment required an Allen wrench to remove, but there was an obvious design flaw.  There wasn't enough space between the side of the battery and the side of the engine compartment to turn the longer end of the Allen wrench.  So after nearly an hour of fruitless attempts to remove the rusty bolt, i had the idea to flip the Allen wrench over and attempt to turn the shorter end of the Allen wrench.  This created the space we needed to turn the bolt, but didn't allow for enough leverage.  So I had the follow up idea of using a screwdriver as a wedge between the side of the battery and the short side of the Allen wrench.  This provided just enough extra leverage to get the bolt loosened enough to finally remove it and allow us to replace the battery.


Ryan's story:


Only a few days ago actually I encountered a problem myself that took a combination of jerry-rigging and creative thinking. My girl friend shows horses and has won over three hundred ribbons, which are the equivalent of medals. She wanted to put them up in our house, so I came up with the idea of creating a ribbon rack that stretches down the wall of the hallway in our house. So on the day I decided to finally create this rack I walked into the garage “gungho” ready to build an amazing rack. Well I soon found that I did not have nearly as many of the material I thought I did in my head. For wood I was limited to a couple of 2x8’s and a bunch of plywood, some graffiti covered courtesy of my friends. For supplies I had a tool box of various tools ranging from wrenches to a drill but no saw. So after I made a quick trip to Lowes and got a saw and some orange and black spray paint to make it look nice, I could finally start. The first problem came up when I found that I had absolutely nothing to use as a work bench. After some walking around I came across two cinder blocks in my backyard, so in short work bench found. For the most part cutting the 2x8’s into the right shape went smoothly. The next problem came when I needed to cut the plywood into strips so that the ribbons could hang on something but every time I tried to use the saw the plywood just splintered and broke apart. A little frustrated I dug through my tool box and found a box cutter and decided that it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot. 30 min later I had finished cutting the strips of plywood with the box cutter and then snapping them off like a Kit Kat bar. It was finally time to install it on the wall after spray painting them. This is where it gets fun as I had 4 anchors for the dry wall. When I finally screwed the board into the wall I found that the screw that came with the anchor was too small and the entire board could just slide out. So I ended up having to screw a screw twice as large as the original into the anchor to make it stick and use some zebra duct tape nicely supplied by my girl friend on a piece of plywood that splintered and was starting to break. Well after all that it seems to have turned out well; here is a picture of the first section of the finished product with some of the ribbons on it .

Conclusion:


Problem Solving is a skill that is utilized by nearly every person on a nearly daily basis.  It is not a skill that everyone just naturally possesses, however.  Despite this it is an invaluable skill that everyone should know how to do, and continually work on throughout their lives.  These ideas are all demonstrated by the three stories above.  In all three stories there is a problem presented, which is then contemplated.  The next step is enacting a solution, Austin had his solution to the duck blind problem, Conner had his solution to the poorly designed car battery, and Ryan had his solution to a lack of proper materials.  This demonstrates the way in which problems are an integral part of every person's life, and thus so is problem solving.

Many would say that sweat shops and other forms of "unfair" labor are crimes of humanity for the way that the owners of the shops treat their employees.  Workers at shops and factories such as these face miniscule wages and terrible working conditions, but are these conditions not better than working as an underage sex slave?  Some have suggested that fair trade might be the solution to end unfair labor in third world countries, but this concept might present many worse problems than low wages and poor working conditions.  In fact, the implementation of a fair trade policy with countries that rely heavily on sweat shops could very well lead to a step in the wrong direction as it pertains to creating better jobs for the people of that country.


What fair trade actually does, is raise the floor price of a specific item, so that producers of that item are encouraged to produce more, and new producers are encouraged to join the market. In the short term, fair trade is a successful concept, workers get paid higher wages, and the demand for an item is being met with an increasing supply. However, it is the long run of fair trade that opponents of the policy fear. As the supply and demand scale begins to tip, there will be a surplus of the product, but no demand for it. This surplus beings to make prices drop, and the market begins to lose money. The Cato Institute's Brink Lindsey refers to fair trade as a "well intentioned, interventionist scheme... doomed to end in failure."


All that the failure of the fair trade scheme will bring is the reinforcement of other negative industries. As fair trade in its short successful run before it fails will cause a large number of sweatshops to close and thus just as Kristof stated in his passage that with out sweat shops the workers, usually kids will revert to other means of earning money. The most prevalent being that they will resort to becoming sex slaves. Now, it is understood that the fair trade system in no way is trying to cause this. However, this system when it fails, and fail it will, will have caused massive changes to the ways that undeveloped countries earn a living. Most of these changes for the worse such as the previously mentioned sex slave industry increase due to the closing of sweatshops. It is because of this that the fair trade system is not the solution to the problems of the worlds economies.

Do Sweat It

There are many aspects of modern global society that are less than ideal.  Perhaps one of the most confrontational of these aspects is the global use of sweat shops.  On the surface, this issue might seem to have a simple answer, but this is far from the truth.  Many people are quick to denounce even the smallest support for sweat shops, but the truth is that sweat shops are a necessary evil.  Every person who is against child labor and low wages is quick to promote the discontinuation of every sweat shop world wide.  What these activists seem to forget is that many of the people who are employed by sweat shops depend on that job for survival or because it is the best option available to them.  This means that until a better solution is ready to be implemented we must continue to deal with these sweat shops.


It has been a commonality for their to be only two parties of thought the first is the anti-sweatshop party publicing protesting sweatshops, seeing them as an unacceptable evil. Pushing for lawsuits towards large companies such as Nike, and Forever 21.

Such public dispays are a commonality for these anit-sweatshop groups.

When asked about the working conditions in sweatshops, sweatshop supporters argue that the wages these workers make only seem inferior compared to salaries in the developed world. Compared to subsistence farming for example, the pay is many times greater, and the work is equally as many times easier. It is said that if these jobs didn’t improve the living standards of the workers doing them, no workers would take the jobs. Sweatshop supporters argue that if not for these jobs, many people would be forced into subsistence farming, and many women specifically would be forced to use prostitution as a way to make money. When the Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated fifty thousand children were dismissed from garment industry jobs in Asia. Being forced to find other jobs, many of these children had to resort to jobs, like “stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution.” The State of the World’s Children study by UNICEF in 1997, found that these other jobs proved to be a greater threat to the children’s’ health that garment making.

As consumer we should be aware of where the clothes we are purchasing are coming from and who they are made by. However, we should not boycott a company if it employs a sweat shop. Sweatshops are a necessary evil, which is needed in the developing countries they reside in. Without them the people of the country turn to more unpleasant means of gaining income. This statement is not to be mistaken under any circumstance as us as a blog group believing that sweatshops are a good thing. Quite contrary to that we believe that they are a very unpleasant institution; however, they are needed in countries they reside in until a better alternative can be devised.

Andy Warhol: Cultural Artist

Throughout the history of art, defining people have been setting the standard for what is culturally acceptable as "fine art."  The art timeline is full of critics denouncing works of art for not fitting the mold.  One art movement, however, changed the stiff standard of legitimate paintings: Pop Art.  Pop Art is a form of art that expresses the popular ideas of the time (thus POP Art) through the use of vibrant colors and simple subjects.  Pop Art is motivated by the feelings behind the art, and not as a custimization to what art critics at the time wanted or even expected.  Among the leading Pop Artists of the original movement was Andy Warhol.  One would be hard pressed to find someone with an art background who doesn't know of Warhol's works.

Many of Warhol's works are recognizable to the Average Joe, but perhaps none so much as his painting entitled Campbell's Soup Cans.  Campbell's Soup Cans is a painting of one of each of the thirty-two Campbell's soup flavors available in 1962, the year in which the work was painted.  When asked about the inspiration behind the work, Warhol stated that an art gallery owner, Muriel Latow, suggested that he paint, "something you see every day and something that everybody would recognize."  Warhol reportedly loved the idea and chose to paint soup cans because that is what he ate for lunch everyday.  Warhol's use of an everyday item that meant something to him personally represents his bold indifference to whether or not his works became critically acclaimed.  Warhol painted simply for the joy of painting subjects he loved, and not to satisfy the likes of stuck up art critics.

Not only a pioneer of painting pop art, Warhol was a pioneer in the business of pop art. In 1962, Warhol founded a business, named the factory, which he intended to use to mass-produce his paintings. In order to truly make his art “pop art,” he would have to get his paintings in the main stream. Warhol employed an army of other artists, in order to make silkscreen prints of his paintings. In addition to making prints of his paintings, Warhol also used his factory to make approximately 300 underground films, most of which were very odd compared to normal films of the day. Also produced in the factory, was a line of shoes deigned by many of the artists employed by Warhol.