Concerned Citizen

SUBJECT: Melissa Kaufler

Hadley Holyoak

Bryce Bolick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmRzuIG5MLA&feature=youtu.be

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "I don't like that person. I must get to know him better."

For our subject we chose Bryce’s friend from home, Melissa Kaufler. Melissa is a young adult that has spent many years being actively involved with the democratic political party. We believe that Melissa is a concerned citizen because of her efforts to enforce involvement with politics and the decision making of our great nation.

She is from our home town of Santa Clarita, and we were able to connect with her over memories of campaigns and through sites like facebook, the Signal (our hometown newspaper), and good ole’ google we were able to pull together a reflectional documentary on different backgrounds of people that grew up in a similar environment.

A concerned citizen is someone who works to participate in a movement or activity that is beneficial to their community, or changes something so that their community can improve. Melissa’s desire to encourage people to register to vote was her way of bettering her community. Even though we disagree with her political opinions in many ways, we believe she is doing aservice to her community in promoting the need to vote and have empathy for others. When you find you disagree with an individual, you may need to look harder to find the good that they contribute to the world, but it is there.

When editing together this short documentary, we quickly realized that we had much more footage than was needed. We decided to focus our attention on her actions that she took towards something she really believed in, and not so much on her political opinions. The main message we wanted to get across was that she helped her community and promotes democracy and empathy, which are admirable traits. We included images over her audio, which we hoped would give more of a profiling affect and help the audience to understand who she is as a person, who she was, and who she aspires to be.

In the article that we read for this project, entitled Human Rights and Culture: From Datastan to Storyland, it argues that paying attention to the art pieces in certain communities is a way to become aware of societal issues that aren’t necessarily showing up in the stats. Art is a beneficiary to society, for the world cannot be run by those who only know math and science. We should pay attention to the artists we have now, for they are more attune to the social issues around them due to their seeking for inspiration in all corners of the world, and we should not limit the creativity of our young people. For someone to become a well-rounded citizen it takes exposure to multiple aspects of our complicated world: science, math, art, issues, etc.

Many create documentaries, such as the one we created, about someone who shows their desire to change something in their community that they see as an issue, or someone who simply participates in something they see as beneficial. In this way does art raise awareness to a particular aspect of society that many should be aware about. Even though I vary in political views from Melissa, she did share some powerful statements about the importance of voting and it has inspired me, and hopefully others, to become more involved in that aspect of life as a free citizen.

Game for Change

Soccer Dads

file:///Users/openlabuser/soccer%20dads.html

For this project I chose to tell as story of the not-so-talked-about social issue I call "Soccer Dads." This refers to those parents, dads or moms, that begin to become so involved with their child's extracurricular activity that they almost seem to forget their child altogether and use these events as a means to relive their childhood or just add a stimulus to their dull adult lifes. It has a bit of a Disney Channel Original Movie feel to it but I believe that it is a real problem, and maybe the kids are learning to chase their dreams from these motion pictures, but the parents sure aren't learning to back off. 

I had a minimal dose of "Soccer Dad" syndrome in my childhood as I was put into multiple extracurriculars: cheer, ballet, soccer, basketball, tennis, and drama. Ultimately I found my passion was in the theatre arts, and I pursued that all the way through my senior year of high school. My parents were very supportive of that decision and made sure to come to all my shows and cheer me on. However there were instances in my life were that "Soccer Dad" effect came into play. When I was in my elementary ages I participated in the AYSO soccer league (all of the kids in my family played soccer and my dad coached all of their teams, except mine, but thats a side issue). I was young and so found pleasure in running around in circle occasionally kicking a ball and elbowing other girls in the face. As I got a little older in the following years I slowly began to lose interest and found myself dancing on the field or picking daisies. It was then that my mom signed me up for a community theatre workshop and I found my passion. The "Soccer Dad" syndrome often times caught hold of my dad and he would yell at me to "pay attention" and "stop goofing off." My younger brother Kai was a much better player than me and so my dad found an outlet for his soccer enthusiasm and luckily I was let off the hook. Many years later another instance occurred with signs of the "Soccer Dad" syndrome when I decided to choose performing in a play over being on the JV tennis team. My dad had trained with me for months in order to prepare me for the tennis team tryouts, and I made it! But when I found out it was the same time as rehearsals for a play I was a ensemble member for, I went with the theatre option. For a long time he gave me a lot of grief about that decision, and it is not an absurd thing. "Soccer Dads" are not horrible people with no motives: they often want whats best for their children and are using their personal judgment to decide that. 

I am hoping to bring awareness to those parents that do not see a slight error in their methods of pushing their kids too far in something they do not want to do. Becoming too involved in the sport of it rather than being weary of how their kids are feeling. I am reminded of the movie Kicking and Screaming in which Will Ferrel's character takes the "Soccer Dad" issue to a whole new level of crazy, and gives no respect to the kids on the field. In the video "A Single Story" the speaker warns the audience of only listening to one side or one story about a certain place or people. I hope that we will not ONLY heed to the story of "obey thy parents" and give some attention to the kids and their needs. 

World Building

Toes as Sexual Organs

Hadley Holyoak

Travis Clark

Helen Butcher

Colton Elzey

When we were given the task to create a world in which toes act as sexual organs, our minds immediately jumped to popular culture and fashion. What position would the toe have in this world’s advertising? Would people even walk around on their feet? Shoes and socks began to take on an entirely new meaning. The BYU Honor Code and other religiously-influenced rules and regulations would be different. As we delved deeper into our discussion, we began to see the extent to which our unique reproductive organs would affect our new world.

The most jarring social discovery we made during our world-building was how saturated with sexuality our media is. As we tinkered with the media we consume daily (i.e. television, advertisements, websites, literature, etc.) we realized most of what we came across, no matter how innocuous it seemed, alluded to human sexuality. These sexual references ranged from vague innuendo to combative measures against STDs to the “sex sells” mantra parroted by unabashed advertisers. Our society’s subliminal sexual messages (and let’s face it-- not-so-subliminal messages) connect with media consumers on a base, biological level; sexuality is the timeless, universal aspect of the human experience. Sexuality drives our politics and not merely by way of scandal. Many of the divisive political issues within governmental, religious, and social hierarchies center around gender equality and sexual objectification. Women are voted for and not voted for because of the internal placement of their reproductive organs; centuries-old religious customs are deteriorating as individuals question why anatomy must affect spirituality; a college student’s performance art regarding sex crime legislation gains international attention as she advocates local change.  We kept these hot-button issues in mind as we constructed our new world and quickly realized that altering the location of our genetalia does nothing to alter the spirit behind our reality’s ongoing sexual dialogue; in a world where toes are sexual organs, our eyelines, not our focus, changes.

In his essay entitled “Design Fiction: a short essay on design, science, fact and fiction,” Julian Bleeker discusses how products of design fiction can only present selections, or corners of this new, imagined world. The author goes on to explain that these objects complete these fictional worlds because they encourage imaginative thinking. These small “windows” spark our imaginations, and we naturally fill the social gaps they leave. Theodore Twombly’s (Joaquin Phoenix) world within the film Her (2013) is an excellent example of how design fiction products can reveal something about the social landscape they’re found in. Like our group’s fictional world, Twombly’s world is marked by its members’ needs for sexual fulfillment. A pocket-sized gadget that houses an Operating System provides thousands of men and women with companionship, but as the film reveals the scope of the humans’ dependence on these gadgets, it becomes clear that the Operating Systems are a symbol of the culture’s isolation and social deficiency.

As world-builders, we embraced Bleeker’s design fiction concepts by creating artifacts that drew attention to various facets of everyday life. These products introduced a world with a completely different interpretation of the term “modesty” and an even more insatiable demand for shoe donations than what exists in our reality. Although our artifacts represent only a sliver of what this new world has to offer, their pervasiveness makes them “totems through which a larger story can be told, imagined or expressed.”