Blog Week 2

This week the class was presented with an image by Barbara Kruger which is untitled, but is referred to as “questions.” You can easily find this image through Google’s image search. The image consists of an American flag with the phrase, “look for the moment when pride becomes contempt,” replacing the stars, and questions like, “who is free to choose,” “who is beyond the law,” and” who is housed,” replacing the stripes. Our task was to decide whether the words compliment the image, or vice-versa. I responded by saying that the image magnifies the meaning of the words. I think this because while these questions have a lot of meaning behind them, the presence of the flag broadens the viewers understanding of the topic. In other words the image addresses the feeling that our government has taken pride to an extreme to the point that we think that it is our responsibility and our right to police the rest of the world, and make all of the decisions because we see ourselves as better than the rest of the world. In other words, our pride has led us to contempt as the image hints at.
I do not necessarily believe that the government is making the wrong moves, but I think that we are causing a lot unnecessary animosity to be directed toward us because of the way we have handled some situations. More importantly, I think that we need to focus more on protecting America itself instead of trying to targeting everyone who dislikes our country. After all, this strategy doesn’t seem to be working (the group responsible for 9/11 has yet to be brought to justice). My point is that we will never be able to make it so that everyone thinks that America is the greatest place in the world, but we can make sure that everyone in the United States loves America by giving them a reason to.
On a lighter note, we were supposed to read the online article, “Taking the You out of YouTube,” which is about the recent sale of the new media monster YouTube to Google. The article’s main topic is what will happen to these Web 2.0 companies as they are assimilated into the giant corporations like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Basically, the article presents two possible outcomes of these buyouts. One is that the corporations will take the “you” out of these online places and overflow the sites with ads. An alternative is that the vast networking power of these conglomerates will actually improve the quality of the site. Only time will tell.