Best Disney Parody... ever!

I recently stumbled upon this AMAZING Disney mashup on Facebook.  I cannot tell you how much this video made my night yesterday - this is a must see for anyone who loves Disney or at least has sat through a few of their movies.  Please give it a listen (heck, its got almost 83,000 likes on YouTube!).

I don't mind if you lie in my bed

*love*

Hedley:  Kiss You Inside Out

You can watch the video on YouTube here.

* Post title extracted from Hedley's Kiss You Inside Out lyrics.

It's hard to forget the first time...

Somebody That I Used to Know, by Gotye, is pretty popular of late. Yet, I cannot stop loving the first version of the song that I heard a few months ago.

I was browsing YouTube for songs from Ingrid Michaelson's newest CD in early January when I stumbled upon this song:

The title screams that this is a cover, but I actually didn't pick that fact up until a few weeks ago when Gotye's version became popular in my hometown.

Today I am loving this song.
....
and those glasses, oh my goodness!

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

You can participate here.

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

You can participate here.

1. I'm loving that in 24 days E will be in my hometown... I have a feeling these WILW posts will be very countdown driven over the next few weeks ;)

2. I'm loving Sara Haze's song, Lovely. A beautiful, beautiful song with lyrics that we all need to hear every once in awhile.

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

You can participate here.

1. This week I've been loving Paolo Nutini's music. I absolutely adore this man's unique voice. E introduced me to Nutini's music earlier this year and I fell in love.

2. I love the muffins I made this past Sunday night. They were so so so yummy. I usually can't get muffins to rise like the store-bought variety, but I managed to with this recipe.

Also, never ever make a Facebook status that says: "I can't believe what is in my oven right now!" People assume you're with child and not that your ever-so proud of your rapidly rising muffins! Whoooops.


3. And, what I love most of all? In just a few short day's I'll be with E. I'm off to England!

Tune in Tuesday

This past week I've had Adam Lambert's Fever stuck in my mind. I usually don't listen to his music unless it pops onto the radio... Perhaps American Idol being in full swing has influenced my music selection? That show is seriously one of my guilty viewing pleasures.

You can participate at G-Read's Tune in Tuesdays here.

Tune in Tuesday

I participated in Ginger's Tune in Tuesdays at GReads back in December 2010. It feels like yesterday. I know it sounds so cliche, but time is flying by lately... can you believe it's already March... and almost Spring!

I thought I'd give Tune in Tuesdays another shot this week.

E and I had a late night craving for desert and drinks during our latest visit to Vancouver Island. On one of the city's main streets we found a little Irish pub. Live acoustic music greeted us before we opened the door. Inside, we found Paul O'Brien with guitar and microphone in hand.

What I'm Loving Wednesday!

You can participate here.

Tonight I love Ingrid Michaelson's music.

A few months ago I heard The Way I Am on the radio. I loved the song but I never picked up on her name.

While surfing the net a few hours ago I stumbled upon more of her music. Her songs are catchy, lyrical, and calming.... and I absolutely love her outfit.

Side note: Ironically, at dinner tonight my fortune cookie said that someone from my past would come back into my life "very soon"... hmm.

Tune in Tuesday

I recently stumbled across G-Reads - a lovely book review and music promoting blog. Each Tuesday she hosts Tune in Tuesdays, a meme which highlights favourite old or new songs... and I couldn't resist joining in!

Picture Me Wednesday - 2010 Week 5

Last week I went to a Carrie Underwood concert. I must admit that I am not a country music fan.

However:
1. I do love American Idol and a lot of Carrie's music.
2. I have a friend who is addicted to country music.

And...
3. I was able to score front row, side of the stage tickets.

How could I say no?

How Fantasy Becomes Reality

Has a book every shaped how you feel about or behave in society?

In How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence social psychologist Karen E. Dill argues just this. She claims that people chose to believe, instead of critically examining, what they read. She suggests that people often get lost in a storyline and acquire the beliefs of its main characters.

As an avid reader, I too have been caught up in a storyline and have invented my own similarities with a main character. For example, when I was young I used to read The X-Files books non-stop... and then I decided I wanted to be a pathologist just like Scully. Well, that didn't turn out.

There are larger implications with reading, too. Past psychological studies purport that a positive correlation exists between reading romance novels and not using condoms - thus increasing your chances of STDs and a whole host of other problems (Dill, 13).

Reading a book on a new-to-you culture can leave you with either negative or positive opinions on a group of people... which can lead to the formation of stereotypes and impact how you behave towards others. It is imperative to read multiple viewpoints and to always think critically.

Dill argues that we have a tendency to believe what we read, even when it is near impossible for what we read to be true. Remember the hype for the release of the last Harry Potter book? I'm sure it is near impossible for any of us to forget. Dill claims that the massive turnouts the for release of Harry Potter books occurred because Harry is real to readers. I'll let Dill explain:

[Readers] know he's not sitting in a castle somewhere in England. Yes, they know people can't really shoot lightening bolts out of a magic wand... But J.K. Rowling is one of the richest women in the world because she's made characters and situations that are so human and meaningful to us that we choose to hold them in our mind's eye as real, even though part of us knows they are not real in the mundane sense. I guarantee you, for many people in the world, Harry Potter is more real than their own next-door neighbor (Dill 84).

The sad thing is that Harry Potter, and other literary figures at that, are a lot more real than some of the people I bump into on a regular basis. Perhaps I read too much?


Dill's work is very broad. Here are just a few more interesting points:
- On average, Americans spend 2/3 of their waking lives consuming mass media (I think this would apply to Canadians as well).
- Media capitalizes on how our minds function - people are unaware of the effects of exposure to media as the mind is largely unconscious.
- The results from eating food high in fat are not immediate - eat a piece of cheesecake and you don't automatically gain 10 pounds. How people consume and are affected by media works in a similar fashion. After playing a violent video game you don't immediately go outside and punch that annoying neighbor of yours square on the nose... but add up a decent amount of exposure to media that portrays violence and you'll be more prone to act aggressively.
- Exposure to degrading music (ie - violent, racist, or sexist lyrics) is correlated to individuals engaging in sexual activity at a younger age.
- Video games are highly stereotypical. Currently the overwhelming majority of victims in games, or the bad guys the gamer is sent out to kill, are Muslim.
- Female bodies are disproportionately presented in both video games and films for children. For example, if "Lara Croft were real, she couldn't do the athletic tricks she does in the game - she'd be lucky to be able to stand up with those huge breasts! And if Disney's Princess Jasmine were real, we'd probably find her alarming because her eyes are bigger than her waist." (Dill, 134-135).
- Media can be helpful - journalists have brought attention to domestic violence which has led to increasing amounts of attendance at shelters.


Overall, Dill argues that we need to be critical of what we view in the media. Media is created by big businesses who wish to sell products, not to entertain people. We need to be aware of the impact of exposure to the media. We can still watch our films and television, play video games, and surf the Internet... just be sure to incorporate real-life activities into your life like sports, arts and crafts, or even picking up a book.

The bottom line?
Awareness of what you consume is key.

Pink Think

How was Eastern America? Amazing. Great. It went by far too fast and by the end of my stay I really didn't want to leave. After 7 hours of flying westward I'm once again surrounded by BC's mountains and the pacific shoreline... and a fairly decent amount of August readings.

Lynn Peril's Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons marks the end of my just-over-a-week hiatus from CTR.

Peril writes a compelling analysis of how the colour pink has been historically linked to notions of femininity. It is argued that pink think, defined as a "set of ideas and attitudes about what constitutes proper female behaviour; a groupthink that was consciously or not adhered to by advice writers, manufacturers of toys and other consumer products," has been in existence since the 20th century (Peril 6). Pink think suggests that women should be utmost concerned with fashion, beauty, marriage, and procreation.

Peril does an adequate job in illustrating the prevalence of pink think during the 1940s to the late 1960s. She describes the differences in children's toys (fire trucks for boys, dolls and dating games for girls), college education (academics for males, home economics for females), the differing perceptions of unmarried men and women, and the notion that men enter the work force to support a family while women begin working in order to find a husband. She illustrates western consumerism's preoccupation with pink in advertisements of female products. And she stresses that females are socialized at a young age to be timid and subservient to males.

At the end of her work Peril suggests that pink think is still prevalent in our society... children's toys continue to be highly divided by gender stereotypes, women's magazines continue to stress the importance of cosmetics, fashion, and body image for attracting a mate.

Much of what Peril discusses is similar to Valenti's He's a Stud, She's a Slut (previously reviewed) only in a more historical context. Though I am a self-professed lover of history and gender studies, I recommend reading Valenti's version. Valenti portrays similar information in a much more engaging and entertaining fashion.

While I was reading Peril's work I did begin to wonder just how strong the association between the colour pink and women's products are today. Peril's work contains excerpts of old 1900s advertisements to illustrate her point... so I went out to search through my own belongings to see just how prevalent pink is... I believed my obsession with the colour purple would make a dominance of the colour pink near impossible.

A first glance at my possessions proved my assumption correct... if only for a short time. I really have nothing, save a Maid of Honour dress, that screams of pink. But then I looked more closely. Many pink book spines shouted out from my book collection... pink CD covers for female pop musicians stood out violently against the typical black and white album artwork. The text on my romantic comedy DVD cases were bright bright pink. My collection of Sex and the City seasons 1-6 DVDs? Yes, those are bright pink, too. My Mini Mouse key chain is even pink.

Pink and femininity are intrinsically linked through consumerism. Pink is warm, flirty, fun, bright, passionate, and perhaps even a colour that suggests the shyness of a blushing individual. But can this typify an entire gender? I beg to differ.

The Cellist of Sarajevo

For the past few months I have been contemplating reading Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo. I've seen it at the local bookstore many times, read its cover, leafed through its pages, and always placed it back on the shelf. A book about the killing of civilians in Sarajevo, Bosnia? It just sounded too depressing.

I finally decided the time had come to give Galloway's work a shot when I noticed his book sitting on the shelf during my latest trip to the library. When I saw The Cellist of Sarajevo advertised as local literature - Galloway is from a suburb in BC's Lower Mainland - I felt I had no choice but to sit down with a coffee and digest his work word for word.

Galloway portrays a country's experience of civil war and its tendency to dehumanize society. He describes intense scenes of disparity and hope: a country's army murders its civilians who merely wish to cross a street; a cellist plays Albinoni Adiago in G minor on war torn streets for 22 consecutive days as an act of deviance; counter-snipers attempt to protect the people of Sarajevo; and parents struggle to stay optimistic in the presence of their children.

Galloway's work is graphic. A poignant part of the novel is his suggestion that the news media's presentation of war stories distances the audience from events. It was a powerful scene and I feel the only way to give it justice is to provide an excerpt.


After witnessing the bombing of one of Sarajevo's streets, Dragan, one of the main characters, disagrees with a journalist videotaping the resulting carnage:

"It's not that he doesn't want the world to know what's happening here. He does, or at least he agrees with the argument that the world is more likely to intervene if it is forced to see the suffering of innocents. It's just that the scene the cameraman will capture is in no way representative of what's happened here today. It's the aftermath.
A dead body won't both anyone. It will be a curiosity, but unless some viewer knew the hatless man it will mean nothing. There's nothing in a dead body that suggests what it was like to be alive. No one will know if the man had unusually large feet, what his friends used to tease him about when he was a child. No on will know about the scar on his back he got from falling out of a tree, or that his favourite food was chocolate cake...
None of this will ever be said again, has simply vanished from existence. But these are the things that make a death something to be mourned. It's not just a disappearance of flesh. This, in and of itself, is easily shrugged off. When the body of the hatless man is shown on the evening news to people all over the world, they will do exactly that. They may remark on the horror, but they will, most likely, think nothing of it at all." (Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo, p 232-233).

It's sad, but this happens all too frequently. Most of us in the western world are accustomed to having dinner with the news playing in the background providing footage of death and war. It is almost as if the dehumanization that occurs in countries at war continues into the living rooms of those in the west.

Galloway also proposes that music is a powerful form of communication and allows people to express joy or recall happier times. When homes in Sarajevo do have power, people turn on radios and CD players in the hopes of listening to music and dancing. And the cellist, the grounding focal point of the novel, is able to stop civilians, soldiers, and counter-snipers from action by merely playing his music. Galloway seems to suggest that music is a way to regain humanity, emotional connections, and sensitivity to others in a world ravaged by war.

It wasn't until I was finished reading The Cellist of Sarajevo that I looked up Albinoni Adiago in G minor (you can listen to it here). This is the song that was performed by the fictional cellist... and the song that was played by Vedran Smailovic, the actual cellist who played in Sarajevo's streets in 1992. The novel is premised on Smailovic, who defied imminent danger in order to honour those who were murdered during the Siege of Sarajevo. Needless to say it is a beautiful and moving piece of music.

Love the Way You Lie

Are song lyrics literature?

I remember the first English class I attended in university... it was all about poetry. I've always had a thing for poetry. Somehow a poem can sum up so much in just a few eloquently placed words. It is the exact opposite of me - I'm one of those people who tend to write over the word limit in any assignment. My professor introduced us to poetry by claiming that song lyrics are the modern day equivalent of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare's Sonnets, or Donne's The Flea. Since that class I've looked at song lyrics as another literary outlet... a much less wordy and more poetic one.

Which takes me to today...

While I was driving to the hospital this afternoon the new Eminem and Rihanna song came on the radio. It's called Love the Way You Lie (You can hear it here). You know what I 'love'? The way this song is so completely messed up. I 'love' it so much that I just have to write about it.

The song has some very prime lyrics. It glorifies domestic abuse. And I know I'm not the only one who thinks of Chris Brown when they hear Rihanna's "I like the way it hurts[,]... hear me cry... because I love the way you lie." Eminem continues this charade by discussing an on-again-of-again relationship that involves him physically attacking ("push, pull each other's hair, scratch, claw, bite, throw, and pin") his partner who continues to say she loves what he's doing to her. Ohh, not to mention his claim that "if she ever tries to fucking leave again, I'mma tie her to the bed, and set the house on fire."

Where does this leave us as the audience? With a first glance at the lyrics it seems like the grand message here is the condoning of physical abuse.

The song shows the psychological turmoil that exists within relationships that involve abuse... the fact that the partners' want to be together but hate each other, he doesn't want to hurt her but he does, and she's upset and hurt but she loves him. Even if the song is illustrating psychological turmoil, it still promotes a very negative relationship dynamic.

Furthermore, our current society tends to blame the victims of abuse. A woman undergoing a court case to charge her rapist will have her own clothing brought under question - as if how she dressed signified she was game to be sexually assaulted. And, alike to this song, women experiencing physical abuse in relationships are often blamed for staying in that relationship. Rihanna's lyrics reinforce this idea - it becomes easy to blame her for her abuse because she keeps on going back. So, instead of a song discussing domestic abuse in a new and more thoughtful light, we have Eminem and Rihanna reinstating stereotypes that prevent those experiencing abuse to acquire needed assistance and recognition in society.

On the plus side, it is refreshing that Eminem admits he is also experiencing physical abuse even if it is only having his hair pulled. Men very rarely comment on their experiences as victims of domestic abuse. At least the song begins to address this version of domestic abuse in today's society. However, Eminem's 'victimization' is a very very small segment in a song that concentrates on a female saying she enjoys being repeatedly abused by her lover.

I find it saddening that a song like this has become so popular in a society that has large rates of domestic abuse. Eminem and Rihanna's Love the Way You Lie merely promotes violence and unhealthy relationships... and yet somehow this song has made it to the Canadian Top 20... number 17 to be exact. Honestly, out of all the songs playing in Canada this somehow reached number 17?


***** As a side note... earlier this year one of my professors sent my Family Sociology class this video of Keira Knightley and domestic abuse. Thought I'd pass it along.