Theme 3: Digitizing of old media

With each passing year, technology advances more and more. Media that some thought would never change are becoming digitalized and transformed to be more accessible for the users/audience. For example: people now have the option of reading a book on their iPad or Kindle, or even listening to a podcast of someone else reading it for them instead of having to carry around a book. Things in paper form are becoming obsolete, and the more electronically-ready something is, the more likely it is to survive. In a piece entitled “For the love of reading,” the author experimented with different mediums to use in order to read, and found that she loved having the actual book and experience of reading overall. For many others, things like reading a book or reading a newspaper are the same for them - even if they are reading on a screen because we live in a fast-paced world where convenience often wins over quality.

Newspapers are facing the same problem as books, but on a grander level. Newspaper revenue relies heavily on ads, and so, with newspapers moving online, the ads now must also move online. The subscriptions that papers get are now also jeopardized because people can get their news for free after just logging onto their computers. The industry itself has had to adapt to the digitizing of society, and now the “old” newspaper has no choice but to move online. If certain newspapers can not adapt, they’ll basically be extinct.

The next type of changing media is the well-known song decoder, Pandora. Pandora has brought something new to personalized radio. By choosing only one song, “musicologists” are able to match your song preference to songs that are similar in genre and style. The result is a fascinating smorgasbord of music you might not have ever heard, or might have forgotten about. I believe that radio’s future looks promising in the form of Pandora because it will give new artists a chance to be listened to by a wide audience, and it will seem almost accidental when a new fan is created. DJ’s and radio stations are told to play certain types of music as priority because of how much they’re paid, and I’d like to believe that Pandora has allowed for it to be fairer for new artists.

Chucky: an unappreciated Slasher

As a young horror-movie fan I was never excited to see Jason in the plethora of Halloween’s or Freddy in A Nightmare on Elm Street . I will admit that Jason had this kind of admirable determination to aggressively kill teenagers just because, and Freddy had the fact that he could get into your dreams and do some serious damage – the place you should have been able to escape to – working for him. With these things, and by following the blood-spilling guru himself, Alfred Hitchcock in his movie Psycho (1960), they’ve set the bar high for other slasher films. What then happened was either an attempt at mimicking their slasher techniques, or a seemingly endless loop of re-makes and sequels to try to capture that audience’s attention. This worked on me for a little while, but there was one slasher who I believe did not get the kind of recognition he deserved.

Charles Lee Ray or “Chucky” was the star of Child’s Play (1988), and yes, I am fully aware that he is a doll that can be easily kicked into another room if he tries to attack you. What Chucky critics failed to realize was that his size worked as much for him as it worked against him. My fondest memories (if that’s what you’d like to call it) of Chucky is in the very first movie. As Clover points out, most successful slasher films have a formula that has been working for them: the killer is a psychotic product of a sick family or disturbing past – yet still human, the victim is almost always young, female, and beautiful, the location is a “Terrible Place”, and the weapons used are everything but a gun. Chucky did not escape all these predictable slasher traits, but certainly had some of his own.

The antagonist himself, while a slasher, was creative in his overall presentation. Chucky was not always a killer doll – originally Charles Lee Ray was a serial killer who sought refuge in the body of a “Good Guys” doll using voodoo to transfer his soul. The history behind why Chucky is a serial killer is never fully disclosed, but it’s obvious in the beginning of the film that he has some background with the mafia. It’s safe to assume that because of how most slasher films are, his family life probably played a part in his insanity. The way he makes his way into the lives of the family he chooses to terrorize is fortuitous: a homeless gives him to the victim who is the young, beautiful and blonde Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) who then gives him to her son, Andy. All of this works out in Chucky’s favor because now he has a young soul to go into.

The storyline of the movie basically just follows Chucky as he tries to take over Andy’s body and kills anyone who tries to stand in the way. The death count includes people like innocent bystanders and custodians who had the nerve to lock doors that Chucky wasn’t tall enough to reach anyway. Unlike other killers, Chucky had a purpose that was present through out every subsequent movie, and that was to be human again. He killed like other killers did - in an out-of-the-box kind of way.

One scene in particular stuck out (in Child's Play 3) when it showed a garbage man being crushed to death by his own truck once Chucky took the control after tricking him into thinking a child was stuck. This is an example of the death of a male being viewed as more common, while the death of a female is usually drawn out. To me, this was proof that his size had nothing to do with his clever plans. He was able to scurry past his victims in the blink of an eye and hide in places where normal-sized people would not have fit. Chucky was very much a killer you should take seriously.

With Karen, her encounter with Chucky in the living room when she realized the doll was alive was like a game of tit-for-tat. They went back and forth with Chucky slicing her ankle and her then propelling him behind a couch. Karen was the distressed female, but of course, she survives in the movie.

I believe that Chucky was a successful slasher in his early years. As time went on, him getting married and having kids were clearly just to squeeze more movies out and eventually his time was up. The teeny boppers that are drawn to anything that heightens their senses, whether it be sexually or psychologically, started to lose interest when the plot for killing no longer made sense. However, in his prime, Chucky did exactly what a slasher was supposed to do, and that was have you fear the act of death and not so much the unkillable killer.

Blame it on the cold

One more day till I'm free!

& surprisingly, I feel great (dun na na na na na na na). In all seriousness though, I'm not missing Twitter all that much. It's like I'm going back to life before Twitter, and I'm starting to remember how I use to find out what everyone was doing: by asking.

In the beginning I wanted to make a big deal about this, but not tweeting really isn't a big deal at all. I'm glad that I was able to tear myself away from this little bit of technology. It taught me that I have self-control, and that even if I can't deny how much other forms of media have a hold on my life, at least I could stop doing this one thing.

I just told my friends about my little experiment and they're all saying they miss my tweets and that they couldn't believe that I - the person who got them all hooked on Twitter, Twitter's biggest fan and poster child - was able to stop for even a few days. Um, I'm sorry? -_-

Aside from Twitter deprivation, I've been sick and that might have added to me not feeling the need to tweet my misery. This is most likely from yesterday in the city, since I decided to look cute I didn't dress for the weather. I did, however, see Avatar in 3D (Finally! & it's my new favorite movie of 2010. I cried. Again) and get these delicious, heaven-on-earth-tastin' cupcakes. . .

And consider investing in this highly unnecessary, but cute gadget. .

But enough about me. Hopefully everyone had a stellar v-day and isn't feeling too media starved.