mdia1002 final assignment

Little Town

 

Natalia Jastrzab discovers the stories behind a quiet provincial town in Poland that holds the memories of some of the greatest atrocities ever committed against mankind. 

 

There are so many trees, and very little traffic. People with wide smiles and crinkled eyes gossip at the marketplace as they buy fresh bread and fruit. Concrete-grey apartments blocks, with colourfully painted balconies, stand in the middle of sprawling meadows full of bright flowers. It’s the middle of spring, and the sky is a happy blue.

Located 60km from the old capital of Krakow, with a population of only 45 000, the Polish town of Oswiecim is a modest and quiet place. Although it hosts nearly a million visitors per year, few are there to see the town itself. Oswiecim is largely known by its German name of Auschwitz, and is the site of the largest Nazi extermination camp of WWII.

Even though I am here to visit relatives, there is no getting past the fact that 1.5 million people were killed here. The evidence lies all around you. The railroad tracks that transported thousands to their death still lie on the ground, stretching all the way to the horizon. The buildings of the concentration camp still stand, ugly brick shadows spread out over the grassy landscape. Even as I drive to the supermarket, I pass the barbed wire fence that still borders Auschwitz I and catch a glimpse of the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate, the dull metal of the words forming a distinct contrast to the pure blue sky behind it. Instead of going to the supermarket, I pull over and book in for a tour, absorbed by the eerie scene.

Visiting the camp itself is a humbling and life-changing experience; as you walk through, you are confronted with the ghosts of Auschwitz and the atrocities committed against them. Their voices whisper to you through the physical things they have left behind; suitcases, shoes, shaving brushes, photographs. There is even a glass case of human hair on display. For most visitors, it is by far the most thought-provoking part of their vacation.

After the tour, I walk back to town while the rest of my tour climbs back on the bus to drive back to Krakow. Very few stay behind to see what the rest of the town has to offer. Residents of Oswiecim are quick to remind you that they live in Oswiecim, not Auschwitz- and despite being a memorial to those who died, it is still a place where life goes on. I speak to Tomek, an elderly tour bus driver. “People often add a lot of mythology to the Auschwitz site,” Tomek says in his heavy accent. “They say oh, there is no sun, no birds, nothing grows there, and of course this is not true.”

Before the Second World War, Oswiecim was a thriving centre of Polish Jewish culture and a popular vacation spot for many people in Krakow; now, it continues to be an important local centre for trade and industry, and boasts many attractions for tourists to explore, such as a castle, beautiful churches and the Rynek (marketplace). Polish people have a warm, hospitable attitude towards strangers, and if you speak Polish- or at least attempt to- they will treat you like an old best friend. 

“This tragedy happened in the middle of Europe, in a typical, quiet, Polish-Jewish town,” Tomek said. “As Primo Levy [a former prisoner of Auschwitz] said- it happened here and it can happen anywhere, it happened once and it can happen again. And this is the crucial message of this site, and something we need to take with us.”

“And of course,” he adds, giving me a beaming smile that stretches across his wrinkled, friendly face, “there is so much more to this town than just the concentration camp. The people of Oswiecim have so much life and love to give, and we are very happy to meet you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION

Natalia Jastrzab z3290391

Tutorial: Thursday 10-11am

Word count: 550

 

For my piece, I used Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism to identify the appropriate styles and standards for the genre of “New Journalism”. There are few sources that tell you how to write creative non-fiction pieces, but Wolfe’s extracts pointed out some of the most important techniques, or “devices” used by journalists to create a short-story kind of ‘feel’ in their piece.

One of these devices identified by Wolfe that gave “the realistic novel its unique power”, is the use of scene-by-scene construction rather than retelling by historical narrative. I have done my best to compose various ‘scenes’ in my piece rather than just run through what can be found in the town of Oswiecim; the first scene is my original perceptions of the town, the second is my visit to the concentration camp, and the third is my conversation with Tomek. Each scene is characterised by different use of imagery, and in the third, realistic dialogue is used to involve the reader. As Wolfe says, “realistic dialogue… establishes and defines character more quickly and effectively than any other device.” I crafted Tomek’s dialogue so that you feel he is an elderly Polish gentleman with an accent, who is friendly towards strangers and proud of his town: “we are very happy to meet you.”

Wolfe identifies the third device as the “third-person point of view”, which gives the reader a feeling of “being inside the character’s mind and experiencing the emotional reality of the scene “. I chose to use the first-person point of view. Since a travel article is a recount of a personal experience, the majority of travel articles are written in first-person, with the exception of “how-to” guides such as the Lonely Planet series. I was careful to write in a way that drew the reader into the experience, such as using detailed descriptions: “The buildings of the concentration camp still stand, ugly brick shadows spread out over the grassy landscape.”

The fourth device is what Wolfe identifies as “recording… the entire pattern of behaviour and possessions through which people express their position in the world”. In my piece, I wanted to capture the importance of the Auschwitz site as a memorial to those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis, and I wanted to demonstrate how visiting the camp is a life-changing experience. However, I also wanted to focus on something that is often overlooked, and that is the beautiful town of Oswiecim and all the friendly, welcoming people that live happily there. In my piece, I tried to capture their desire for Oswiecim to be recognised as a town in itself, not just as the site of the largest concentration camp of WWII. I did this by recording some of the attitudes of the townspeople- “residents of Oswiecim are quick to remind you that they live in Oswiecim, not Auschwitz”- as well as some of their behaviours- “people gossip at the marketplace”- in order to give a full description of what Wolfe refers to as their “status life”. I believe that it is especially important in travel articles to try and examine the mentality of the local people in the place you are visiting, so that the reader can compare it to where they live and what they already know. I also wanted to take an original angle on the subject of Auschwitz, and try to examine the psychological implications on the townspeople who live so close to the site.

As my grandparents live in Oswiecim and I have visited a number of times, I did not have to do a lot of research on the town itself. My research was limited to accessing websites such as staypoland.com to obtain exact population numbers. I also adapted a quote I found on crakow-life.com about the “mythology” visitors add to the Auschwitz site, to include in my own article as something Tomek (a made-up tour bus driver) had said.

 

 

LIST OF REFERENCES

Wolfe, Tom, 1973 The New Journalism London: Picador, chapter 3

http://www.staypoland.com/about_oswiecim.htm

http://www.cracow-life.com/poland/auschwitz-oswiecim

Photos taken from www.worldofstock.com

 

 

mdia1001 assignment one

Secrets – my powerpoint presentation about the power of secrets in the contemporary media landscape.

Minutes for ARTS1091 tutorial 3

MINUTES FOR TUTORIAL 3 (Monday 2pm)

By Natalia Jastrzab and Philip D’ambrosio

 

First we had a discussion led by Ben and Michael.

 

We:

- Discussed the lecture and how global warming was used as a case study for how facts are used/presented by politicians, the media, etc.

- Talked about ecologies of practise à Who knows what they’re talking about most? ( We though scientists because they do all the studies. The media on the other hand- media professionals don’t really come from that factual basis. Reporters and journalists portray their facts completely differently; they’re trying to make sales, etc.)

 

Michael asked the question: Is/can there be a balance between science/journalism/political facts to get the right message across, effectively?

We determined that:
- articles are still based on facts. BUT articles have a viewpoint and will use certain facts to steer things in a particular direction à different publications push different political agendas à what is the “right message”?

- we can all get engaged with different sourcesà we as an audience are able to ‘pick and choose’ between publications.

 

We brainstormed examples in the media of “spin doctors”.

- Children overboard

- Al Gore documentary “an inconvenient truth” v an anti-global warming documentary (any documentary can spin it a certain way)

- Radio presenters

- Advertising – choice of words create an image, emotive language

 

 

We then looked at the Miller & Rose article. We focused on breaking down the language and getting a better picture of the policy document.

 

Key terms:

 

Rationale

• fundamental reason serving to account for something
• statement of reasons
• type of discourse
• created to justify why things have been created
• political rationale: moral form; ‘care factor’
• see the language as a tool that drives the particular body/program along. Vocabulary of the state – own kind of language used.
• Morally coloured – political rationality, the good of whatever organisation it is -  grounded on research knowledge, made thinkable through language that drives that technology/machinery within the organisation.

 

Territory

• field of thought
• place
• domain or Provence

Government

• Exercise an influence over people to guide.

 

Population

• Number of persons
• Number or body of inhabitants of race, gender, class
• Defined

 

Technologies

• Number of technologies at play, programs, stats, documents and prcedures into place; therefore they are technology
• Strategies and techniques making programs operable = technologies
• P186

Programs

• P181/3 M&R
• P189-191
• Realms of design put forward by people
• Put into operation
• Designed by certain people, eg committee’s and organs. work on programs

 

Problematise

• Breaking down the issues; how do we want to view certain issues
• Dialogue/demystification – what issues is this policy talking about
• Who is making the statement
• Why is it being made
• Where does it come from
• Other statements made previous
• Who does this benefit
• Government is a problematising activity; constant awareness and shifts
• Real against the ideal

Language

• Performative

 

 

Analysing the questions:

 

Q1: morals behind this

Who are they target (population/territory)

What is the issue

What are they framing

What langs.. are they using

WHY!?  Outcomes /because of this

 

Q2: issues

What are the problematising from that issue

What are they considering to be the problems of the issue?

 

Q3: documents that form the moving wheelsà acted upon.

Look at what programs are being put into place

Where does it come from, who set this up

What groups of people are involved

How are the general public involved

Egs: look at the organisation and see what they have in place

See their rationale, have certain programs for implementation the local content

What is acted upon

Programs then deployed by technology

 

Programs: à requirements/ HOW

We need 8 hours of televsion

What we are going to be doing?

Documents that stipulates what is going to occur

 

Technologies examples:

Audit system

Weekly meeting

Outcome to measure

Code of practice

 

 

Q4:

Technologies: are the doing

Break this down into components eg technology

Who do we need to protect?

Mechanism for deployment

Eg ABC code of practice

arts1090: blog for week 11 readings

Debating Identity from During, S “Cultural Studies”. 

 

Identity is central to the way we identify and understand each other. During distinguishes between two different types of identities; given/inherited identities and chosen identities. While given/inherited identities are more hard to change (eg. Polish, Australian, female), chosen identities are based on “cultural, material or ideological choices or preferences” (student, sales assistant, Gossip Girl addict). It is often these given/inherited identites that mean individuals sometimes have “little power to choose what features will be used to identify them- these are determined socially, from the outside.”

In other words, people are judgemental. They choose to define you depending on whatever suits them best. A good example of this, which I see on a daily basis: “do you know Becky? You know, umm… she goes to this uni, she’s short, brown hair…”

During suggests that identity is won at the price of reducing individuality; so once you are defined as a “female”, you are lumped in with all the other “females” of the world. But on the other hand, your identity helps define your sense of self as a “socially situated individual”. By knowing who you are, you know where you fit in to society, and how your characteristics fit into your environment to determine where you should be, what you should be doing. As During says, “societies, identities and individuals do not exist independently of each other.” 

Does this limit our freedom as an individual? After all, society tends to label each identifying characteristic with a particular role or even stigma. For example, in the 19th century- the century of Jane Austen, Dickens, convicts in Australia and industrial revolutions- being a “woman” meant you were a loyal wife, a dedicated mother, and a submissive person that did not have independent thoughts or feelings.

This is also an example of how “the relative weight of identities changes across time and space”; “woman” means something very different according to where you are and when. African “women” living overseas in poverty have a different role in society than modern Australian “women” who have well-paying jobs and families and watch Sex and the City religiously. “Women” in the sixties were a marginalized group advocating for change. These are the sorts of things During refers to as “identity politics”.

Identity politics has some difficulties, as summarized by During. This includes national identities, which tends to “invent legitimating histories or traditions which can be politically exploited”. He gives the example of the Scottish kilt, which is probably the equivelant of the Aussie wifebeater.

As During says, there is no getting away from identities- “it is impossible to exist in society without a proper name”. Funnily enough, it is technology that is allowing some individuals to develop new identities separate to their own. Take a look at secondlife.com, a website that works off the idea that you can live a life completely separate to your regular life- look different, have a different job, learn different things and even have a relationship with a different person.

Even though During mentions nothing about the media and how it relates to identity, my understanding is that media plays a role in the way we identify ourselves; for example, I am a dedicated Sydney Morning Herald reader and a fan of Grey’s Anatomy. It also gives us possibilities to develop new identities by playing games such as The Sims and even Neopets. This can be a bad thing (pedophiles, etc) and a good thing in that it allows those who are shy introverts in person to express themselves in a public forum.

See you all in semester two and thanks to all who read these blogs,

Natalia Jastrzab (z3290391)

mdia1002: tute posting 4

May 9, 2009

 

Robots set to take over modern warfare: fact, or science fiction?

By Natalia Jastrzab

 

The future is here. Machines built to fight wars instead of humans are rapidly dominating battlefields across the world, and Australia has become one of 43 countries now building military robotics.

In the White Paper, released last week by the Australian Government’s Department of Defence, it was revealed that more money is to be spent on robotics.

Peter Singer, the author of such novels as ‘Wired for War’ and ‘Children at War’, explains how robotics have been developed by the American government in recent years; “we went into Iraq with just a handful (of airborne drones).” Now there are over 7000 unmanned planes and 12 000 ground robotics in the US military.

This includes robots such as the PackBot, built by iRobot. The PackBot, described by iRobot as “the multi-mission tactical mobile robot”, is waterproof, shockproof and capable of climbing any surface. Originally used to diffuse roadside bombs, armed versions are now being developed, to “keep warfighters out of harm’s way.”

Other robot prototypes, such as the drones in the sky, have powerful cameras installed and are used as spy satellites. The information provided by these “powerful eyes in the sky”, as described by Singer, can mean we respond to threats much more quickly.

However, concerns about the breach of individual privacy and other moral issues have arisen. These technological developments have the capability to change the nature of modern warfare forever, and it might not be in a good way.

As Singer says, “what does it mean to when and where you go to war if you can now go to war without sending humans into harm’s way?”

 

 

Additional sources for further information:

 

“iRobot: PackBot”, http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=171

“Peter W. Singer”, http://www.brookings.edu/experts/singerp.aspx

“Wired for War”, http://wiredforwar.pwsinger.com/

arts1090: blog for week 10 readings

A telling symbiosis in the discourse of hatred-multimodal news texts about the ‘children overboard’ affair by Mary Macken-Horarik

 

I am yet to meet someone who hasn’t read and appreciated Maurice Sendak’s amazing picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. It has been called one of the most popular books of all time, along with books such as Harry Potter, the Great Gatsby and Lolita. However, I know plenty of people who have read none of the aforementioned books, save for Where the Wild Things Are- the reason for this being that the whole book is only ten sentences long. Not everyone has time for hundreds of pages and millions of words. But everyone has time for ten sentences and a whole bunch of pictures that are easy on the eye.

We live in a fast-paced, busy society that is dominated by images; images on billboards, magazine covers, the television, the little ads on the side of our Facebook. Advertisers know that images are far more effective than words in absorbing people, as they are engaging and take little time to get their message across. Seeing a picture of a bottle of Coke, recognising the Coke symbol and the ice-cold bottle of soft drink, and deciding that we want a Coke with our lunch is a considerably faster thought process than the time it takes someone to read or hear a descriptive story about how good a bottle of Coke is.

Macken-Horarik explores the scandal associated with the media coverage of the asylum seekers in the “children overboard” affair in 2001, and “the ways in which photograph and story helped to co-create the fiction”. After all, words are not the only thing that create meaning in a news story; “interacting communicative resources such as the visual, typographic and layout” can also contribute.

Every front page news item is accompanied by a photograph to help us make sense of the story. Macken-Horarik acknowledges that the “communicative power of media texts rests on more than linguistic foundations”, and in this way, we need to analyse the layout of the story, the headlines and the photographs as well as the words, in order to get a sense of the ideational meaning behind the text. 

Macken-Horarik explains that the ‘children overboard’ affair was “a campaign dominated by images”, as “photographs of people in the water were crucial to the Liberal Party’s justification of its hard-line border protection strategy”. These photographs acted as “evidence” for the LIberal Party’s transformation of the event into a cruel and cheap stunt by boat people to gain unlawful entry into Australia; the acceptance of this claim depended on “a working faith in the complementary truths of word and image- the belief that the photographs the politicians released bore out the truth of the story.” 

Van Leeuwen explains the relationship between images and words well; while words provide the interpretations and long-winded explanations, images are what provide “ideologically coloured angles” that influence the “barely-concious, half-forgotten knowledge” within people that leads them to draw conclusions about what sorts of people these asylum seekers might be, in the same way that the image of a blonde-haired, pretty girl accompanying a story about murder might lead the audience to sympathise what they see to be an innocent girl.

It is interesting to note that Peter Reith banned the taking of photographs that could “humanise or personalise asylum seekers”, to avoid photographs “creating sympathy for asylum seekers”. So instead of taking pity on the plight of the asylum seekers, we see them as monsters who throw their children into the water just to gain entry to the country; Macken-Horarik notes that this generalises the punitive behaviour of asylum seekers in saying “this is what boat people do, they are all like this.”

The visual strategies of categorisation explained by Macken-Horarik note how images can signify people as “culturally or biologically ‘other’.” In another context, for example, the image of the lifejacket may have contained different connotations, such as a story about the survivors of a plane crash. In this context, “the use of the life jacket is taken to prove the suspicious motives of boat people and thus to confirm our sense that this is what they are like by nature.”

Lots of people would not have time to read the whole article about boat people. However, plenty would look at the headline and the image accompanying it, and draw their conclusions about the situation from that. In this way, we see how influential the image is upon audiences, and how it can mean the difference between a criminal and a victim. 

 

By Natalia Jastrzab

z3290391

arts1090: blog for week 9 readings

The Linguistics of Blame by Kate Clark

Kate Clark’s chapter reminds me of the essays I used to do in high school. My old English teacher could pull long-winded, big-worded meanings out of anything – “The cat sat on the mat. What does the cat symbolise?” – and Clark looks at everything from headlines used in articles to specific words used in the description of criminals to explore how particular people might be ‘blamed’ for particular crimes… and it’s not always the attacker that’s held responsible for his actions.

Clark explains that “all news items are processed through minds. They must always be subjective, therefore, conditioned by the ideology of the language user.” In saying this, she means that every story included in the news has first been subjected to the interpretation and influence of the journalist; they choose what is written, how it is worded, and thus how the victim/criminal is portrayed.

I believe these subjective interpretations can be both conscious and unconscious. Clark explores articles in The Sun, which she believes “takes a radically different stance not only from other newspapers, but also from the source, a legal ruling.” She explains that “this sort of reinterpretation suggests a more conscious bias, amounting to manipulation.” Maybe these journalists are writing with a more specific agenda to suit the values enforced by the organisation that employs them.

Clark analyses “naming”, pointing out that it is “a powerful ideological tool” that serves as “an accurate pointer to the ideology of the namer”. Take a prostitute and a mother of three that have both been victims of rape. The name “prostitute” carries unpleasant connotations, whereas we normally associate “mother” with purity, beauty and love. We judge the prostitute critically, while feeling pity and compassion for the innocent mother. Now imagine that the prostitute and the mother of three are actually the same person. The name the journalist selects to use in the news report of the rape can say everything about the ideology of the journalist, as the audience forms a very different perception of the victim according to what ‘name’ is used to identify them.

This is the process of labelling that you can see in every article; “blonde”, “attractive”, “23-year-old”, “female”, “dedicated nurse”, “bright student”… and, as Clark explains, “only certain victim roles are linked to ‘fiend’ attackers”. There are others news reports in which the attacker is named sympathetically or not at all; in these, the labels differ dramatically, going so far as to include “Lolita”. In this way, we draw our own conclusions about which victims were deserving or undeserving. The “Lolitas” are the deserving victims, the prositutes, the ones who brought the crime upon themselves. The undeserving victims are the innocent ones, the weak ones, the ones blameless for the incident.

And so we come to see how, according to what words and labels the journalist chooses to use, the “blame” for the crime is determined; sometimes it’s the actual criminal and sometimes it can even be the victim. As Clark explains, this is “a judgement passed by the newspaper. A radically different perception of the crime could have been given by choosing other structures.”

I think there is no such thing as an objective news report, and the best option for us as audiences is to take everything written in papers such as The Sun with a grain of salt. Often we don’t know the whole story, so it’s hardly our place to pass judgement on the prostitute who may also be the mother of three.

 

by Natalia Jastrzab (z3290391)