Tag: videos

Food is Art

Jordan Brown Leave a comment

Food is a huge part in everyone’s lives.  Not only is it essential for life, but it is also a huge part of people’s social lives.  One of the easiest activities to do with friends is to have a meal them, and to go out to eat.  The food network and the internet have also brought attention to the idea that food is art. There are so many videos going viral on Facebook of beautiful pastries and cakes being made.

One of my favorite youtube channels about food is bon appetit.  My favorite segment is about this chef remaking people’s favorite childhood snacks from scratch.  She does not have a recipe to go off of, she just looks at how the food is constructed and continues to make it until it is a perfect (if not better) replica of the food.  She will spend sometimes up to two weeks trying to perfect one recipe. Some examples of what she has made in the past is Skittles, Oreos, Cheetos, and Pringles.

Another very popular youtube channel and also has viral videos on Facebook is Tasty.  Tasty does a variety of videos with their most common type being making a dessert with some friendly music playing in the background.  My favorite segment of Tasty videos is when a chef makes gigantic versions of food. He has made a pizza slice the size of a cookie sheet, and a burger the size of a pizza pan.  I enjoy it because you not only watch him cook but he also explains how he is making it so that you learn how to make a normal or giant version of the food.

Another popular food segment is called Worth It.  It is a segment from Buzzfeed’s youtube channel. The videos feature two people who pick one food and go to three different restaurants around town to try the same food at three different price points (low, medium, high).  The show is interesting to watch because you get to see what the different restaurants do to the food that makes it a different price. It’s also great if you live around the area or are planning to travel there to already know of some famous restaurants to try.

Come At Me, Patriarchy

Jeannie Marie 4 Comments

So, I’m on Youtube. I’m getting ready to watch some sort of video, possibly even just listen to a song while I’m doing my homework, heck, I don’t remember. But of course there was an Ad blocking my way.

Youtube ads are not always a curse to me. Sometimes they’re actual videos, and I like it when they make the “ads” a trailer for a movie. That’s not so bad – it’s not commercialism shoving it’s big ugly face at me in a constant attempt to get me to spend my money on worthless crap. I like movies, and even though they do represent a certain section of commercialism that thrives off of people like me who love to be entertained, I think they still have something to offer.

This, however, was not a movie ad. Darn.

The music started up. It was good music, I noticed. Some pop artist? Maybe. When i jiggled my mouse over the screen, the title came up at the top.

Stuart Weitzman | #ROCKROLLRIDE

Uh…okay. I still have no idea what this is, but hey, still marginally better than a Febreze commercial.

And then I noticed the shots. The angles of the camera. The filters stolen directly from a high schooler’s instagram. This was meant to be “artsy.”

And, of course, objectively I can say that it was creative. It did some cool things with the camera, and the editing was pretty neat with some frame effects. But something was wrong. Oh, so wrong.

The subject of this short film? music video? thing? was in fact two beautiful women. Flowing blonde hair, legs that went on for miles and miles and miles, and some gorgeous trees all around them. Perfect for the film, right?

But instead of presenting these women as women, as people who deserve respect, as people who have opinions and voices and are allowed to think and speak and act however they want – these women were dehumanized. Shots of legs and butts were in front of my screen and I just wanted to go onto the set and yank the camera out of the directors hands and shout YOU ARE RUINING DECADES WORTH OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS. Until the very end of the video I didn’t even get a good look at the faces of these beautiful women. The material itself wasn’t all too bad – it showed the women getting dressed in cute outfits, riding bikes on a trail, driving a flashy cool red car, and, the kicker, riding a motorcycle.

These things in themselves aren’t dehumanizing. Some of them, such as the motorcycle and the expensive car, are things typically attributed to men. But by shooting the women’s butts, by not showing their face, putting an extreme emphasis on their bodies and the way they looked next to these props, it made them seem like objects – like they were just toys that the director was playing with.

You may ask at this moment how this even remotely relates to art. “You’re just an angry feminist ranting about something you happened to come across.” You bet I am. But the fact that the director wanted this to be taken as art, as something to be critically analyzed and thoughtfully considered is a joke. This isn’t art – it’s objectifying women. And what’s worse is that it’s an ad on Youtube, going out to thousands upon millions of people who click on their favorite cat video. This ad-disguised-as-art isn’t art.

It’s a joke. A joke that isn’t funny anymore and needs to end.

For reference, I’m not including a link to the video because I’d rather not promote something that shouldn’t be getting any views at all. Instead, enjoy this lovely video of kittens who love Star Wars a bit too much.