Midterm Essay 1

In the age of YouTube and online demand television shows, sitting in front of a television is soon becoming obsolete. During this break I played golf with a buddy who just got back from Finland for work. Their television shows were terrible and he claimed the only way he kept his “insanity” was online television. Because the internet extends globally, anyone can access any information from anywhere. Such a opportunity seemed unimaginable only decades earlier, but in today’s day and age it changes everything. First off, marketing television shows not only try to attract the viewer to maybe sit in front of the tube, but also compel the viewer to check out the networks webpage where more of their material is readily available day and night.
Not only our major broadcasting stations being effected by this change, but now they are competing with form of media like YouTube. The show Lonely Girl 15 (http://youtube.com/watch?v=dZN-Wye4rDE) has become a popular drama nationwide, possibly globally, and is taking away the attention from many viewers from similar shows broadcasted on the main television networks. With the easy access to a wide audience, being a professional entertainer or just an entertainer is as easy as uploading a video. For example searching on YouTube I found a group of guys who I found hilarious. They seem to be a bunch of college buddies who make videos and put them on YouTube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZJvHAvq397Q). MTV should pay them to make shows on their network because everything they’ve done excels in comparison to any attempt at comedy on MTV I’ve seen recently.
This point brings me to the reasons why YouTube has become so popular. There are no censors to a certain extent. Obviously obscene porn is not available here in the United States, but other than that the limitations are quite low. Because of this fact, people can express themselves without getting the “OK” from corporate offices like every major television station has too. Therefore, one persons vision is that ones persons vision and comes off in the exact manner they want to such a large audience.
Having this large audience in terms of the social and political ramifications means that no area is off limits. There is always someone out there that does not like somebody’s art or political stance, and because of this new age ability to access almost anything, artist and politicians must be ready to defend anything they do. No longer can money buy security from criticism, the spectrum of possible “haters” extends far too wide for anyone to shutdown somebody else’s personal view.


When visiting the first part of the exhibit The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image the one piece that I personally enjoyed the most was “Up and Away” by Michael Bell-Smith. First things first, I liked how I played a lot of the video games in the piece. The way the screens just flew by one another made my eyes feel as if I was being lifted upward. Even though the screen stays still, the way he designed the intrusion of the next background made my eyes feel like I was dreaming. I don’t quite understand how he did it, however, the visual effect compared to nothing I had ever witnessed before.