South African Subcultures: Kwaito

Kwaito is a South African music genre which begun during the 1990's in Johannesburg. This type of music stands out from the rest for its easy catchy lyrics and african sounds which are sung or rapped over a slow distinctive house melody consisting of deep bass lines and percussive loop samples. The style of the people who represent this genre is was so fashionable back in the 90's when it promoted the label Loxion Kulca(figure 1) , Dickies(figure 2) and Converse All Stars sneakers(figure 3).

Figure 1

  

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

People often compare the similarities between kwaito and hip hop whereas they are far different compliment each other to a point, kwaito is about living a simplified life and simplified lyrics, fashion and dancing and in hip hop it is about representing elements such as rap( rhythm and poetry), b-boying, skate boarding, grafitti and battle rap(cyphers where rappers come together and show their poetic skill against each other). Ofcourse today all these elements of both kwaito and hip hop may have crossed paths or even disappeared from the branch of a subcultures to become subcultures of their own. Today we have a music genre from the North West of South Africa named "Motswako", and this is basically a setswana version of kwaito and hip hop, which can be said to be venecular hip hop lyrics on kwaito beats or even hip hop beats, this type of style was given birth by kwaito music and is now a subculture on its own.

Links:

http://www.sahistory.org.za/performing-arts/kwaito#content-top

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui3q2g55z3A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph8_DyOnSbM

Digital Age

Links:
http://www.google.com/glass/start/
http://www.oculusvr.com/
http://www.android.com/wear/
blog.us.playstation.com/2014/03/18/introducing-project-morpheus/

Technocentricism of Postmodernity

Firstly the word "technocentricism' refers to technology being the centre of everything, and "postmodernity" is a late 20th century movement in the arts, architecture and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Therefore what Konik is saying is that basically we as humans of the postmodern world has become so centred to technology that most of the things we do today depends on technology, for example: in this assignment 1 blog entries we had options to either write all this information on an exercise book and hand it in for marking or we could use the internet and upload to a blog instead, well the option we chose is quite obvious, I mean we are the so-called generation X. Even our elders knows us as always staring on the screens of our cellphones, computers, and with smartwatches and technological glasses being on the developing stage at the moment one can say that we are never going back and will forever miss on the physical contact we used to experience with other people when growing up. Today we rely on technology for everything and this is because everything is online, from the answers to the question we have on our everyday lives, to the step to step tutorials about anything we need to do. Therefore Konik has a point by arguing that we are being dehumanized by technology through refering to a movie called Sonrezo's Pulse. 

Modernism and Postmodernism

The Modern and the Postmodern: Contrasting Tendencies

The features in the table below are only often-discussed tendencies, not absolutes. In fact, the tendency to see things in seemingly obvious, binary, contrasting categories is usually associated with modernism. The tendency to dissolve binary categories and expose their arbitrary cultural co-dependency is associated with postmodernism. For heuristic purposes only.

Modernism/Modernity	Postmodern/Postmodernity
Master Narratives and metanarratives of history, culture and national identity as accepted before WWII (American-European myths of progress). Myths of cultural and ethnic origin accepted as received. Progress accepted as driving force behind history.	Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for history and culture; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: counter-myths of origin. "Progress" seen as a failed Master Narrative.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explanations in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything.	Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent theories.
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases for unity.	Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases for social/national/ ethnic unity.
Master narrative of progress through science and technology.	Skepticism of idea of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions.
Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity.	Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities.
Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family. Heterosexual norms.	Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising. Polysexuality, exposure of repressed homosexual and homosocial realities in cultures.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.	Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party).	Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles.
Root/Depth tropes. Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the superficial, the signifier).	Rhizome/surface tropes. Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers without concern for "Depth". Relational and horizontal differences, differentiations.
Crisis in representation and status of the image after photography and mass media.	Culture adapting to simulation, visual media becoming undifferentiated equivalent forms, simulation and real-time media substituting for the real.
Faith in the "real" beyond media, language, symbols, and representations; authenticity of "originals."	Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience.
Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs. popular culture). Imposed consensus that high or official culture is normative and authoritative, the ground of value and discrimination.	Disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture. Mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories.
Mass culture, mass consumption, mass marketing.	Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller group identities.
Art as unique object and finished work authenticated by artist and validated by agreed upon standards.	Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality. Art as recycling of culture authenticated by audience and validated in subcultures sharing identity with the artist.
Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a totality. Quest for interdisciplinary harmony. Paradigms: The Library and The Encyclopedia.	Navigation through information overload, information management; fragmented, partial knowledge; just-in-time knowledge. Paradigms: The Web.
Broadcast media, centralized one-to-many communications. Paradigms: broadcast networks and TV.	Digital, interactive, client-server, distributed, user-motivated, individualized, many-to-many media. Paradigms: Internet file sharing, the Web and Web 2.0.
Centering/centeredness, centralized knowledge and authority.	Dispersal, dissemination, networked, distributed knowledge.
Determinacy, dependence, hierarchy.	Indeterminacy, contingency, polycentric power sources.
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness.	Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness (art, music, and literature).	Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture, intertextuality, pastiche.
Design and architecture of New York and Berlin.	Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas
Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, human and machine.	Cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human and machine and electronic.
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of pornography.	Androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of pornography, porn style mixing with mainstream images.
The book as sufficient bearer of the word. The library as complete and total system for printed knowledge.	Hypermedia as transcendence of the physical limits of print media. The Web as infinitely expandable, centerless, inter-connected information system.

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Created by Martine Irvine

Link:

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/pomo.html

Benetton! Benetton! Benetton!

United Colours of Benetton has been known not for the colourful clothing they manufacture but rather for the controversial posters of theirs which they claim to have bring awareness of the things happening in the world towards the public. We will look at some of their posters throughout the years and comment on what changed and what stayed the same about the views and posters of the company found by the Italian Benetton family during 1965.

1982

1991

1993

1996

1997

2012

2013

2014

Looking at the images above one would realize that United Colours of Benetton never comprimizes when it comes to their  posters, they tell it like it is and this is on of the reasons that people see it as exploiting the people they use as models on their posters because they advertise the Benetton company with these posters instead of helping these people. It seems that the Benetton advertisements has become mild throughout the years as we can see in the most recent images of theirs above, either way, the company is being recognized by doing what no other company dared to do. Even to this day there is a history of their posters but only from about 3 years back, well the others could be absent because maybe, just maybe there is a limit on digital space for a website or could it be that they are too controversial maybe? 

“We did not create our advertisements in order to provoke, but to make people talk, to develop citizen consciousness,” Luciano Benetton assures us. - See more at: http://top10buzz.com/top-ten-controversial-united-colors-of-benetton-ads/#sthash.8egiyPTs.dpuf

Well I guess he achieved his goal because people are talking, and when people talk sometimes it is hard for them to stop. 

Links:

http://www.benettongroup.com/media-press/image-gallery/brand-campaigns

http://top10buzz.com/top-ten-controversial-united-colors-of-benetton-ads/