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Friday, February 9, 2007

Anna Nicole Smith was an idea for a blog topic...well..still kind of could be one!

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Think Progress » VIDEO COMPILATION: Anna Nicole Smith And Our National Media Embarrassment
Okay, as you are surfing the web you'll find sites (at least at first & if you're lucky) that are about your topic from a non-normative perspective. Think critical analysis...op/ed...
So...why the heck did Jessie link here?!?!?
This site has a great compilation of videos on the "breaking news" that is Anna Nicole Smith's...if you've been good students...you won't know this news yet....DEATH!!!
However, this site dismisses her as a "National Media Embarrassment," which seems to make (at least at first glance) to diminish the whole culture that propelled her into fame into the first place...no she's certainly not more important than news about Iraq (a point made by ThinkProgress), but she is no more a national media embarrassment than just about every day (in my opinion) that Bush has been in office! For your blogging purposes, think of this site as a good example of the pros and cons inherent in any hegemonic cultural production...pros the site is resisting the dominant power controlling the media; cons- gender? fame? what exactly did Anna Nicole Smith do to become newsworthy in the first place?
She was totally freaking successful! She built a brand out of the messages society sends women! Think of her as a pop-cultural version of Steve Jobs at Apple! Instead of dropping out of college and running a corporate iEmpire, she dropped out of high school, married a billionare, posed in Playboy, and had her own reality show...she's pathologized for being famous for because she got the media's attention and made money off of ---women's sexuality in and the dominant messages about what it means to be a "woman" in "America" (albeit an extreme...but perhaps that's why she's famous? hmmm...I wonder...???).
No, she didn't start any wars, nor did she populate the world with iPods; furthermore,
she certainly didn't create the dominant cultural messages that women in the US are fed from birth!

Google Co-op - Custom Search Engine

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Message to students:
Look! It's a special google search for your blogs! Now you have another place to "google" yourselves...oh right, wait, I forgot! I'm sure none of you have ever "googled" yourselves :oP hehehe
Okay, so this search engine will only google search YOUR blogs! If you've changed the title and/or the URL of your blog, please email me! I can't add you to the link list with a dead or unknown URL (and the title change should be made here so it's accurate too), but for the search engine, it's really the URL that matters, so please make sure you have given me the most up-to-date info about your blogs!!!!
Google Co-op - Custom Search Engine

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