Chapter 10

Two Homological Critiques: iPods and Cavemen

By: Christie Omodeo

Part One: iPodA homological study of media and discourse

• Homology is a formal parallel across different objects, actions, modes of experience, and so forth. Characteristics of discourse itself create a form that generates similarity across the variable content of different experiences and texts.

• Many technologies such as the iPod and other portable media players have a media logic that is formally parallel to a linguistic function: the secret. A secret is not found in nature. It is instead a dramatistic/narrative device.

• A secret is dense, condensed, concentrated with power. There is more meaning and impact stuffed into the words of a secret than into many other sentences.

iPad Nano The iPod nano is packaged

like a secret and it continues to be intimate and personal after it is opened and used. The text argues that the packaging reinforces how we use technology, which I haven’t thought about before. I tend to rip open the box and either store it and forget about it or throw it out.

• A technology is never composed of merely the electronic or mechanical but is also made up of the social uses of the electronic or mechanical. In terms of the nano, you can download and listen to music that you like on the device, but socially you can share your ear buds with someone so they can listen to the song as well, or bond over the fact that you both have a nano.

• I remember when nanos came out they were a big deal, but I didn’t have one. I remembered wanting one because my friends had one. I liked music just as much as them, but my parents couldn’t afford to get me one. I felt like I was missing out on an experience, missing out on something my friends had.

There are unlabeled tricks to get to the item more easily, like with CD cases I learned to pop the case open by the spine instead of trying to get the tape off at the opening initially, then it is easier to bend it and remove the tape, instead of struggling to pick it off at the opening.

The author describes how the nano as well as

other objects are protected and enclosed by

multiple layers to protect the “secret,” so it is

not as simple to get to it.

I had never thought of packaging as trying to

hold in a secret, but saw it as an outside layer of

protection, to protect from damage before it is

purchased, to show that it is a new item and not

used, and to discourage opening the item before

it is purchased or stealing it.

MacBook Pro

&

iPad Air

Apple packaging is always sleek white, with the logo on it, a silver apple. I have several apple products, and the packaging is different sizes depending on the item, but the same general packaging. I can see how that is seen as discrete and keeping the contents a secret.

iPhone 5

The ipod is more clearly seen as a secret because it will whisper into your ear through earbuds. I’m not sure what constitutes whispering, but my ear buds certainly aren’t always at whispering volume level. The point the text is making, is that when you have the earbuds in, unless you have the volume really loud, it conceals what you are listening to. Not only do I do this with music, but I have an ipad and on my lunch breaks I usually watch a show, using my ear buds to conceal the sound, what I’m watching and what the characters are saying in the show. Some of the language isn’t always work appropriate, so I can keep that a secret.

You can also hide the ear buds when they are in your ears because they are so small. I can do this fairly easily because I have long hair. I remember doing this in high school, when I finally got an ipod. I would hide the cord under my shirt and have on ear bud in one of my ears, concealed by my long hair.

A secret is antisocial in many ways. Often, those who spread them will disavow it. A secret is passed from one to another, but not broadcast to masses. Secrets are very far from democratic. Even the large groups, such as civic organizations or religions, that manage secrets, do so through some amount of exclusivity. Secrets are spread through personal decisions to tell and personal commitments to accept. Nearly any religion or organization will make you swear, affirm, or attest to something before they let you in on the information.

Part Two: Queering the GeckoRACE, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, AND MARGINALITY IN GEICO’S CAVEMEN

Camp is a style that is particularly allusive: “Its primary mechanism is the insertion of an old, tired image into a new context, recycling history’s waste, which is usually a product of an earlier mode of production that has lost its power to produce viable cultural meaning” (250). Camp has often been understood as an instrument of political struggle against an often oppressive establishment.

Queer Theory Queer theory is useful for understanding

ways in which texts disturb widespread, established categories. Queerness is not only about sexual orientation. Queerness is about queer categories, and how struggles over categories of any sort manage social and political power. Queer theory developed as a way to question hegemony, to disturb categories that prop up power.

So easy a caveman can do it

Geico created a caveman campaign for their company. The slogan was, “So easy a caveman can do it,” which uses a stereotype that cavemen aren’t very intelligent. The commercial uses that, and shows cavemen taking offence. The campaign was a success and a television show was made because of how popular the commercials were, but the television show was a flop and got cancelled. It was poorly written and not funny as well as putting focus on racial and sexual stereotypes, which people took offence from.

“cavemen” spring implications of low intelligence, retarded social and intellectual development, lack of cultural refinement, and so on. Cavemen implications are conjoined with those for experiences of gay men and of African Americans. The equations created by this merging of categories threaten some amount of toxicity within texts that seem cute at best and boring at worst.

In the commercials and the show they were making a parallel between experiences of African American’s and gay men with cavemen. Homology is clearly used in the ad campaign as well as the television show.

Works Cited• Brummett, B. S. (2015). Rhetoric in Popular

Culture. SAGE Publications, Inc.• Images- https://www.google.com/imghp?gws_rd=ssl

THE END