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Simona Barca

Urry Tourist Gaze

All over the world the unsung armies of semioticians, the tourists are fanning out in search of the sign of Frenchness, typical Italian behavior, exemplary Oriental scenes, typical American thruways, traditional English pubs.

Urry uses confirmation to affirm the idea of the tourist gaze, that whenever we are tourists in foreign countries, everything we see becomes a staple of that country and its culture. Not only does everything we see become an extension of our idea of that country, but we bring our own preconceptions of what we expect and try to fit our experiences to match our preconceptions. For example, if you see a couple kissing in the street in Paris you will view that differently than seeing a couple kissing in the street in your hometown somewhere in Nebraska. In Paris, its romantic and expected. That’s how it should be. In Nebraska it’s probably more of an annoyance. If you see someone eating a croissant in Miami, you probably won’t think twice about it. If you see someone eating a croissant in Paris, it’s suddenly oh so French. When tourists go to Paris, the city of love and croissants, they expect to see those things, so when they do, their preconceptions are affirmed. It’s a lot like confirmation bias. When you go somewhere looking for something specific, you will probably find it. And when you do, you will exclaim how right you were about the whole thing. The reality, however, is that you found it because you were looking for it, not the other way around.

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Simona Barca

Going it Alone

In “Going it Alone,” Rahawa Haile uses confirmation to  argue for a particular version of a story. Specifically, she focuses on the outdoors nature experience from the angle of a black woman taking to the woods by herself. The larger narrative, which is tales of experiencing the solitude, the adventure and isolation of the outdoors, is generally exclusive to people we associate with outdoor leisure: white men. By sharing her own experience hiking the Appalachian trail and inserting the history behind people of color not being welcomed in the outdoors culture, Haile not only shares a different angle of a known narrative but explains and educates why that is. She also offers solutions for how the gap can be closed, and that is by using advertisements and media to show that people of color belong in the outdoors too.

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Samuel James Conroy

Confirmation Progymnasmata

Giorgia Alù & Sarah Patricia Hill composed a great article about experiencing others’ cultures without having outside influence on the way you see these cultures. The authors talk about the “Travellers’ visions” that warp the way we experience our vacations or travels. They quote Italian poet, Guido Gozzano,

“I must free myself from the remembrance of too many descriptions – from those of Marco Polo, deliciously archaic, to the modern and sentimental ones of Pierre Loti – in order to reenter reality, to see the much-awaited object with my own eyes” (1917, 233).

Gozzano is saying that since there have already been famous travelers across the globe, their vision and experience impacts your own journeys in not per se a negative way, but to make you want to experience what they did.

An issue with this is that a lot of the time, these impressions are wrong. Back in the early days of travel, artists would usually exaggerate their paintings to meet the demands that consumers had to see the “wild and exotic” places around the world. This was seen with illustrations added to Marco Polo’s writings about the east. Artists would then add graphics to Polo’s writings to make it seem wilder than it truly was, and usually these illustrations would contradict from the writings they were supposed to be describing. This makes me wonder if any travel adventure can be completely free of influence anymore. The internet has allowed everyone to become a travel writer, so anyone with a computer can read about really anywhere. Therefore, any travel trip has already been influenced making the world of travel largely one of stereotype.

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Ehren Joseph Layne

Black people are wild savages, yet we can’t venture into the wilderness? – Thesis/Argument

I am Black and have no idea how to start a fire. I don’t know how to hunt, have very little knowledge on how to traverse large landscapes, and I can’t, for the life of me, pitch a tent.  If you were to place me in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains, I’d survive for 2 to 3 days max; 4 days if I don’t eat the blueberries that were obviously not blueberries. Even with all my non-knowledge of the great outdoors, I am – as Black people are commonly referred to as – a wild savage. To some, or many, white people, I am the epitome of savagery and should forever exist in the wild or as a slave; they believe that I should have no rights, that I have a brain the size of a pigeons’(pigeons are considered a delicacy in some regions of the world so thank you for the back-handed compliment white man) and that I am, above all other flaws, a good-for-nothing…, well, you know the rest of the phrase. As a black man with no survival skills, it is difficult for me to understand (the outdoors, obviously) why there continues to be this link between my blackness and the wilderness. I am very much aware of the history between black people and nature. Rahawa Haile in her personal essay “Going it Alone”(a powerful piece that I very much enjoyed) gives the example of Harriet Tubman who, among many things, was an expert hiker who understood how to traverse the hundreds of miles of woods and mountains that lay between the North and Southeast regions of the US. She is an example of a black person who was – even if not by nature – very knowledgeable of the outdoors, and with that knowledge, she was able to save hundreds of other enslaved black people. I must mention, however, that Harriet Tubman is no longer alive(may she rest in peace) and that black people(thank god) are no longer enslaved. In the US, the majority of black citizenry live in or near metropolitan cities. Many of us, myself included, rarely venture into the wilderness, and those of us who do(like Rahawa) have a mixed experience with it. Rahawa is a black woman who adores the outdoors and understands it extremely well. As she attempts to embrace the wilderness to which she feels extrinsically linked, she cannot avoid the racism that exists as a byproduct of her ancestor’s enslavement. In her essay, Rahawa recounts, time and time again, the racist interactions she’s had with hikers not like herself(meaning white), and those who live in towns parallel to common hiking trails. She talks about a time where another hiker didn’t believe she was “black” because real “black” people don’t hike. I can’t wrap my head around how black people can be savages when many of us know nothing of the wilderness, and even if we do, we aren’t “black” because knowledge of the outdoors is reserved for white people. I direct this question to any white man who may be reading this: are Black people savages for your convention, or because hip-hop is the closest thing to monkey culture that you know?

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Catherine Dodd Corona

Going it Alone

A Confirmation on Haile’s Rarely Discussed Observation

This story shocked me. I knew the American south and even the rural Mid-Atlantic was not understanding of diversity but some of her conversations and discoveries surprised me. Including the “Black face soap” and a man telling her she is not “Black-black”. While those interactions are telling of the struggles of being black in America, they are not the main aim of her article. She brings up a not often talked about struggle black people have which is their excitability to nature. Later in the article she mentions her connection to nature and the nostalgia and clarity it brings her. Yet, society does not cultivate a place or advertise the outdoors to black people so there is no encouragement to black communities to get out there, explore, and reap the benefits. She sums it up when she references Evelyn C. White and her essay “Black Women and the Wilderness”. She states, 

It says to the minority: Be in this place and someone might seize the opportunity to end you. ­Nature itself is the least of White’s concerns. Bear paws have harmed fewer black bodies in the wild than human hands. She does not wish to be the only one who looks like her in a place with history like this.”

Traversing nature and being outdoors is already uncomfortable and challenging, so one can imagine adding the discomfort of not belonging. And this discomfort proceeds the exciting comfort new experiences bring. In some cases it can be traumatizing. This trauma comes from the lost sense of belonging. Belonging is especially important, and that feeling is often a matter of perspective. As Pierre Bourdieu writes, “The relation to the world is a relation of presence in the world, of being in the world, in the sense of belonging to the world”. Haile is showing that there is a weak relationship between black communities and the outdoors.  I never thought of this dilemma but it triggers my memories of black classmates not being able to swim and not having any outdoor experience at all. Haile also touches on the history of the outdoors for black people. For a long time being in the wilderness was a matter of survival not leisure, yet Harriet Tubman is rarely commemorated for being an important outdoor leader. In a way saying black people should just get out there and experience the air is also ignorant. It seems like the opportunity for black people to get outdoors has walls closing in at all sides. But there are ways around this. The way Haile ends her article is exceptionally beautiful. She pulls quotes from a book that discusses the reasons for hiking the AT trail. The last one she quotes being, “I want to be a role model to black women who are interested in the outdoors, including myself.” She then goes on to acknowledge the power this hiking can have. Not only does Haile highlight the struggles of being a black woman in the outdoors, but shows how important it is to cultivate a more comfortable space and more importantly to advertise the outdoors to black communities.

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Ehren Joseph Layne

Hi! I am Antiguan – Response to “A Small Place”

I am proud of my Antiguan roots(Jamacia Kincaid is also a distant relative of mine – small island, everyone is related), yet could not help but feel sorrow while reading Jamaica Kincaid’s “A Small Place” and recounting the history of my mother’s birthplace. I’ve come to accept the fact that all contemporary culture originates from the malevolence of white men; men who would have never accepted the state of being a slave but felt pride in owning one; men who hated being conquered but felt morally justified in conquering; men who protected their families but were willing to destroy others. Devilish, evil, white men, whose reign and terror has forced those terrorized to condole themselves; culture, then, is born from the sympathetic feelings of the oppressed, who use their common horror as a means of social security. In attempting to understand Antiguan history and culture, a single principle must be presumed: we did not ask for this. We didn’t ask to be descendants of slaves. We didn’t ask for a corrupt government. We didn’t ask for the Syrians. We didn’t ask for Americans, Europeans, and – in general – white people. We didn’t ask for this hell, and if you wish to understand my family, my history, and my people, it must be known that we feel great sorrow for the oppressed, for we are them, and we, unfortunately, will never be anything but them. Jamaica Kincaid forced me to take a painful look at Antigua’s history and contemporary culture, both of which are demeaning to Antiguans and are heavily influenced by white men. As much as I agree with Kincaid’s view of Antigua, and appreciate her candor when speaking about our culture and our people, I am – and believe Kincaid is as well – horrified by our reality and often find myself – as Kincaid proclaims – baffled by the unsettling, egotistical nature of oppressors. 

Note: I didn’t really have an agenda while writing this. There’s no underlying plot nor thesis: this piece was really just me venting in a very constrained manner( I could’ve said a lot worse, worse). I had writer’s block trying to construct a piece about something so personal and felt that these were the only words I could say for now.

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Lucas Enrique Fernandez

Gill’s A Profile of London

Confirmation:

In A.A. Gill’s A Profile in London, through his expansive knowledge and witty down-to-earth word choice, Gill provides the reader an explanation of why it is better not to do the most touristy things in London. Instead of idling at these tourist attractions, he recommends a plethora of other spots that locals prefer.

We all look at the crowds of tourists on the Mall and think: What is it you see? What do you get out of this? Like every Londoner I know, I’ve never seen the changing of the guard. It’s an inconvenient traffic snarl-up every weekday morning.

This quote captures part of the essence of why many despise tourists. They are a nuisance that takes up space and are so fixated on “sightseeing” that they never actually see anything about the place they travel to.

Another main point in Gill’s article is that many outsider’s perception of London is incorrect and formulated from an old lens. When you go to London you see that it is more diverse than you would imagine and many of your preconceptions about the area end up being false. I believe this holds true for travel across any place. When people travel, they do so often for the purpose of fulfilling a desire to see the old preconceptions of the intended area they made up in their heads. This is why people want to see The Great Pyramids or the London Eye. These landmarks are remnants of past times that do not change, so the tourist will fixate on these things rather than the changing area and culture that surrounds them. This is why I agree that the tourist should take it upon themselves to stray from the tourist attractions and preconceptions in their heads and “think like a local” so they can go to areas where they will see another type of beauty and experience culture.

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Phillip Wade Wilson

Gendered Environments – Confirmation

“Advertising’s promotion of overconsumption – most frequently through constructs of gender identity – is a major link between overproduction and environmental degradation”

In the advertisement I am using for my MP2 project, gender roles play a huge part in how the women and men in the advertisement interact with the environment. As Hope explains in chapter seven, “Gendered Environments: Gender and the Natural World in the Rhetoric of Advertising”, when referenced in relation to nature women are depicted as consumers and men are made out to be producers in advertising. This very aspect is present in all the scenes of women and men in nature.

Women are shown to be one with nature. A woman looks over the mountainous region of the Middle East. A woman walks gently in soft sand leaving only a shallow footprint behind her, even being sure to step over low hanging palm leaves. A woman is washing her face in the waters of an oasis as the sun gently shines through on her. All of these representations show women interacting with the environment in a way that shows she has the utmost care for her surroundings and all, like Hope’s characteristics state, are slim and acting passively to nature almost as if they give the earth the consent to dominate them. Hope explains that women are not compared to the earth but rather they are the earth, and in relation to the way men are represented it makes sense they are positioned this way.

Men are the opposite, where women look as if the earth is dominating them, men look as if they are dominating the earth. And as I stated before it should be no surprise women are in a passive position because these advertisements are playing on the gender roles society has semiologicaly created for men and women. In the advertisement I am using for my project, a man takes the lead in a hike through a mountainous region with a woman, a man is already waiting for the woman who is coming outside, a man is diving down into the Arabian Gulf to hunt for clams, a man cracks open a clam and reveals a pearl. In all of these situations, men are not solely dominating the environment but also the scenes where they are interacting with women. Even when the man finds the pearl, the next scene shows a woman wearing what is to be assumed a necklace from that very pearl – they cast the man as the producer and the woman as the consumer.

Though the bigger picture here is the use of these romantic and gender-based scenes to distract from the overconsumption and overuse of our environments across the globe. Many of the ads Hope refers to seem to be targeted toward Americans, yet this advertisement is a global one meant to attract the wealthiest citizens from around the world. Due to the constant construction, oil extraction, and overall global warming, the United Arab Emirates rivals the United States for the largest consumerist and consumptionist nation. While this is a travel advertisement, so the goal is to make it look as great as possible to get people to come, the use of human interaction with pristine waters and endless foliage essentially undercuts the reality of the situation. It makes me wonder, what it would really be like to visit since the advertisement almost seems like a work of propaganda (I have attached it below in a link).

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Nathan Ryan Reeves

Gender in Advertising Confirmation

As far back as I could remember there’s this effect from gender in the natural world, and how advertisers base their ads off of gender specific traits and emotions. It’s an obvious detail that I never put much thought into (just like every other concept in this class up to this point) and never thought bad about it. It just felt normalized and analyzing it gives me a better understanding of the topic. Hope questions what makes up an advertisement gendered environment, what visuals are most common, and how has this advertising affected depicted gendered environments.

For selling products it has always been the same for decades in most cases, men get advertised more manly products, and women get advertised more feminine products. In the reading, there is a great example of this in the defining characteristics of two ads, one for Niagara Falls, and another for the Panama Canal. The gendered environments are obvious where the Niagara Falls advertisement depicts a woman as the falls, the sight of the woman in the falls, still and elegantly posed under a rainbow, meant to personify the beauty of the falls.  Notice that she is one with the environment in the image, personifying the falls itself.

“Depicted as a voluptuous woman, the waterfall is a sign of nature’s unending fertility; she stands passively, a figure of seduction.”

On the other hand, you have the advertisement for the Panama Canal, depicting a muscular man ripping apart the landscape, and using his power to go against the forces of nature. This contrast to the feminine advertisement is point blank obvious that the themes surrounding the advertisements, where the male advertisements focus on strength and prowess, while the female advertisements focus on femininity and being more passive than the latter.

“Not unlike the image of Hercules, the 21st-century cowboy has work to do, and as in numerous images of “Marlboro Country” the male figure acts upon his environment, exerting control through his physical prowess. The “big country” defines advertising’s masculinized environment and excepting the occasional cowboy or Indian, space is there for urban man to play at adventure”

Not to mention there is more of a sense of “adventure” when advertising comes to masculinity in advertisements. Not saying that in the present day there aren’t ads where women are reflected as being adventurous, but it is definitely more common now than those older advertisements.

A quote stood out towards the back end of the article where, Hope writes about why this gender-based advertising works, while also relating it back to identity and general consumption of products.

“Largely composed of photographic images, contemporary advertisements appear to depict “real people” and “real” places… commodity consumption is necessary for the maintenance of gender identity in advertising’s stories, advertising must create mythic natural environments immune to the consequences of consumerism…”

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Samuel James Conroy

Confirmation Progymnasmata AD

Confirmation Progymnasmata

            Diane Hope does a deep look into the advertising world, particularly surrounding how men and women are portrayed in advertising. At the end of the day, an ad is trying to sell you a commodity, which means it is going to show you whatever the advertising company best believes will sell this product. Gender is a defining element in advertising. Since overconsumption and environmental degradation are becoming an ever-growing issue, advertising firms need to cover up these issues through their creative imagery, typically surrounding gender. This goes as far back as the ads for the Buffalo Pan American Exposition of 1901.

“Niagara,” personifies the 156 HOPE great falls as a slim young woman (see Fig. 7.1). She stands under a rainbow—still and posed, the fertile shape of breasts and legs revealed by her diaphanous gown as it is transformed into cascades of water that fall from her outstretched arms to the encircling river” (Hope).

The image can be seen here:

Then, for the San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition, a similar advertisement was done, except this time is was a man resembling Hercules. The advertisement shows the man splitting North and South America to create the Panama Canal.

The image can be seen here:

In the Hercules ad, masculinity is shown be how he is defining the land around him and literally shaping the earth, while for the Niagara ad, “Nature feminized is a seductive object of our gaze” (Hope). Overall, advertising has always painted a feminized environment as an attractive woman who is seductive in nature, while the man is a dominant force that shapes the world around him.