Lecture 2 - Existentialism

We start lecture 2 of the last semester of HCJ with our old friend Nietzsche. We open with the well known phrase of his “God is Dead”, meaning that God as a whole didn’t ever have any existence. He believed that if there was no God, there is no need for morality, more importantly no meaning for morality. Nietzsche says that this allows us to have freedom to decide for ourselves with our own personal values. The open sea is a metaphor that is commonly used to show this belief system of Nietzsche’s. This whole system of thinking, we were told soon after, was known as the End of Certainty. Nietzsche felt that this was the chance for mankind to be free. He believed that freedom allowed us to find our true selves. This is where his phrase “the over-man” or the German translation “the übermensch” comes from. The over-man defines himself and his place in the world with the decisions he makes of his own free will; “one is not born a woman, but becomes one”.

 Heidegger is the next philosopher on this histories check list that shall be covered. He wrote the famous book Being and Time was about what it meant for a person to exist. In this book he concludes all beings have a Dasein, a creature of ‘presence’ that lives in each and every one of us.  “This entity which each of us is himself . . .  we shall denote by the term Dasein.” (Heidegger, Being and Time). This idea of Dasein can also be read in the sense that a person only exist from the time they are born until the moment they die. He believed that we were stuck in our own minds, when applied to an individual; this can make everything impossible to understand for we can never be fully understanding of what is happening to us. He also believed that being part of this world is not spatial; he believed that rather than being ‘in’ the world and being just ‘there’, we are engaged with it. The world needs to exist for us to exist. We are defined by our engagement and involvement in the world and when we are asked to describe ourselves we do not speak about our true selves only the social aspects of our selves. This way of thinking is an exact opposite of Descartes famous words “I think therefore I am”.

In an existentialists view there is no such thing as a blank slate, instead there ‘facticity’, something that will define you on your development through life. For example; where you are born can affect accent and lifestyle, how wealthy your family are also determines these aspects. This is known as ‘Moral Luck’. Existentialists also see the future as the most important dimension, as it gives us the opportunity for possibility. There is an obviously link between this way of thinking and Heidegger’s theory. This link is transcendence. Transcendence is my reaction to my very own facticity. It relates to how define ourselves through the use of reactions from facts we’ve learned that we had no control over.

Jean- Paul Sartre also had a very valid opinion on this movement of learning who we are and our place in the world. The main idea of Jean-Paul Sartre is that we are, as humans, "condemned to be free." He believed that humans cannot escape choice. Everybody has to make choices in order to progress with their lives but you can however hide away from it. However, Sartre believed that this could also be a bad thing as a person should not follow society; they should be their own individual. Each person should take responsibility for their own actions and not place the blame on anybody else or lie to escape punishment.  A main point from Sartre that is appropriate to end on as it something i truly agree with is we are allowed to escape our past, and every person has the right to be able to do so. Every person that uses their past as an excuse should however be exempt from this as there is no excuse. 

The Battle of Algiers

The viewing for this lecture was the war film The Battle of Algiers. Before the screening of the film we were told that this film in particular was a “handbook/guide” for all wanna-be terrorists. So it sounded delightful from the off. This film, released in 1966 is a war film based on the Algerian War, between 1954–62, against The French Government in North Africa. The film highlights both the French troops and Algerians using every form of violence they could think of in order to kill the other including makeshift bombs and walk by shootings and suicide acts. One in particular that stuck in my mind was a makeshift bomb placed in a woman’s handbag; she then leaves the bag in a cafe full of people. I think you can guess the rest and probably predict how the film pans out.

Lecture 1 – Film and Network – Is technology changing due to social status or is it the other way around?

The first lecture of Semester 2, the last semester I must add in which we do HCJ *sad face*, we were introduced, well informed more about, to the changes that the introduction of television and film had on journalism and how it has helped it develop into what we know it as today.

As we learnt from previous lectures, Newspapers began with the Gutenberg Press. It’s safe to say that with the help of advances in technology, printing of documentation is a lot easier than it used to be when the Gutenberg pressing system was the only method of printing. The basic layout of newspapers; Big Bold Title, possible headlining picture, catchy by line etc, have all stayed pretty similar to how they were in the 1950’s. 

As you can see from these pictures not a lot has changed. But one thing I have learned from reading the tabloid newspapers that when a story is particularly serious, or “juicy gossip” in most cases from The Sun, the headline takes up a lot of, if not all like in the above picture, of the front page. These papers as we’ve learned previously were conceived from the American-Style ‘Picture Papers’. These picture papers were the nearest thing to television in the 1930’s, before it was invented; they were the people’s way of seeing the world. Following the end of the Second World War there was a huge baby boom in England and by the late 50’s and 60’s this generation of youngsters were in their teenage years. Britain during the 50’s and 60’s was very affluent with full employment across the country and the introduction of the welfare state meant that every citizen was entitled to free healthcare and education.. This however wasn't the biggest point of impact however was in the introduction of Television.

A huge impact on the sales of Newspapers was at the height of the ‘Baby Boom’. But when television was broadcast in 1958 the ‘Baby Boomer Parents’ would be in there late thirty’s/early forty’s, making them a loyal audience to the Newspaper but The Mirror, the biggest paper at the time, didn’t think about the Boomers themselves, they were in their teens and television was a very attractive concept to them. And why wouldn’t it be attractive to them, it carried programming like Coronation Street, they are very appealing to teens, well, the ridiculous ones.ITV also brought a new technique that hadn’t been previously explored, ITV contained advertisement breaks which allowed companies to advertise their products to the younger generation who had disposable income, unlike their parents who suffered the hardships of the war. This allowed advertisers who had previously only been able to advertise to a newspaper audience to reach out to a wider target audience on the small screen. Also because of television, particularly the political side of it, caused the journey of the enlightenment to come to an end. 

Rupert Murdoch, as we know is one of the most well known tycoon of the 20^th and the 21^st century, began his British newspaper empire in the late 1960’s when he bought The Sun and The Mirror in an attempt to persuade young people to stop watching television and pick up a newspaper. He re-launched The Sun as a modern newspaper for the younger generation by including a free pop out magazine containing gossip, horoscopes and the sports results. This became a major part of the newspaper and magazines were also included inside the newspaper. Unfortunately, as we saw not long ago in the news, The Daily Mail was closed down due to the phone hacking scandal and became a Sunday Only newspaper. But during its time, sales of the newspaper increased and so did Murdoch’s empire. Currently, he is the owner of News Corporation and Twentieth Century Fox Broadcast Company.