Blog Assignment # 7: Hotel California

The song I chose to analyze is a classic from the Eagles. The song it titled, “Hotel California”. I heard the song when I was in middle school because the band happened to be my dad’s favorite band. When I was younger, I thought the song was about hell or about Satan. The song was written in the late 1970’s, more specifically in 1977 and the album it came from was title, “Hell Freezes Over”. The story initially seen in the song is that a man traveling to a resort called Hotel California is a place that is inviting and exciting but in the end, it turns out to be some sort of terrible dream. There are references to a dark place that “You can check out of, but you can never leave” or the lyrics that state, “We are all just prisoners here of our own device”. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized the metaphor within the song. There are orientations in the song that can lead someone to believe it to be about a cult or possibly a group of people but in reality, the metaphor is about always wanting more than one has or never being satisfied. The title of the song is actually referencing to the state of California but really it could be generalized to include everywhere that materialism takes place. The stanza of the song that really makes it apparent about wanting more than what we have is when the song references a woman with a Mercedes Benz and her being “Tiffany twisted”. There are also lyrics in the song that say, “this could be heaven or this could be hell”. I believe the band meant that they were stuck in between finding the place tempting but also seeing that there was an evil or underlying meaning behind it. I believe it was meant to reveal the emptiness the life of excess could bring about. It can buy a person all the things they desire in the world, but how truly happy can they be? Once someone desires a material item, who is to say that is stops there? The reality is that it doesn’t because there is always going to be something we don’t have out there. The band has come out and said the interpretations about hell and about satanic cults are false and that in reality, it was about America and consuming excess. He said they were interpreting the “high-life in Los Angeles”.

Link to the song:
Hotel California- Eagles


Lyrics to the song:
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
’this could be heaven or this could be hell’
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say...

Welcome to the hotel california
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the hotel california
Any time of year, you can find it here

Her mind is tiffany-twisted, she got the mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

So I called up the captain,
’please bring me my wine’
He said, ’we haven’t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine’
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say...

Welcome to the hotel california
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
They livin’ it up at the hotel california
What a nice surprise, bring your alibis

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said ’we are all just prisoners here, of our own device’
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
The stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
’relax,’ said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave! 

Iconic Images Blog Assignment

I chose the food pyramid as my iconic images because as a part of health education, it will be my job to focus on nutritional guidelines for patients, especially in an overall health wellness setting. Health education focuses on a variety of subtopics but most commonly nutrition is a recurring theme in this area.   Typically, most individuals recognize the food pyramid, provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1992. It was formally titles the Improved Food Guide Pyramid and was initially adopted from Denmark to replace the earlier food groups classification system. The original food pyramid consisted of horizontal lines separating the six food groups (dairy, protein, vegetables, fruit, grains and fats). The horizontal lines originally served two purposes: to separate the different food groups, but also to represent the percentages of each food group that we should be consuming on a daily basis. It is based on four different levels with one or more food groups on each level, such as the level with protein and dairy for example. 

This iconic image has been changed but experts agree only to improve the research that has been completed in the area of nutrition. The USDA as an updated version of the original created a newly improved food pyramid called My Pyramid in 2005. The new image was created to emphasize physical activity as well moderation all the food groups in appropriate combinations. The food pyramid has now included a new symbol, an individual on a set of stairs, to represent the physical activity aspect of maintaining good health. It also includes the measurement of food items in ounces and cups instead of the previously used measurement of servings. 

The food pyramid has always been a well-balanced nutritional guideline for Americans to follow to carry out a healthy lifestyle. It had changed to encompass physical activity and overall health wellness over the years since it was introduced. I believe the food pyramid to be a metonym in today's media formats. While, it can be viewed as simply a pyramid-shaped diagram consisting of pictures of each type of food group, it also took on the metonym of simply good nutrition or more generally nutrition education. It was replaced with a different idea that was closely associated with it. When one speaks about the food pyramid, it is usually an unspoken assumption that an individual is seeking to get healthier or possibly change their eating habits to include more nutritious choices. It has been associated with getting healthier and possibly happier with the new changes being made. It is an iconic image because America has been promoting this idea of a healthier lifestyle as we face more and more problems with diseases. In the United States today, the norm is larger portion sizes but with it comes problems of heart disease and possibly obesity. The United States Department of Agriculture wants Americans to refer to the pyramid as a reference tool on how to eat certain foods and particularly which foods to choose over others, which would reduce risk of diseases. More evidence of this is that the USDA now has a website for children and young kids to target Americans early before their eating habits become permanent or possibly spiral out of control. I think the USDA uses the pyramid in brochures, pamphlets, and promotional tools for nutrition education.It is now used among our public schools to help promote healthy eating. The food pyramid serves to foster the overall idea of healthiness (with the idea that following the guidelines will help createan overall healthier well-being) and has evolved since it was introduced in 1992. 

Sources Used for this Assignment:

http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/index.html

http://www.lifeclinic.com/focus/nutrition/food-pyramid.asp
http://www.healthy-eating-politics.com/usda-food-pyramid.html

Blog Assignment # 5: Images of War

The concern among the portrayal of images of war is the idea that some photos should be altered or not shown at all to avoid certain reactions from the viewers. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag argues, “With our dead, there has always been a powerful diction against showing the naked face” (70). I believe Sontag is correct in assuming that the closer we feel or relate to the individuals in a certain photograph, the more likely we are to depict them in death without revealing their faces entirely. Take for example the events of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. There are no pictures that exist of the dead that were found among the rubble and ruins of the buildings. Americans did not want other Americans to get emotionally disturbed or to cause chaos if pictures of the dead had been released in mainstream media. It seems that the farther away a disaster or war occurs in, the more likely we are to show photographs of the victims as naturally and revealing as possible. The idea is that maybe if we separate ourselves from those we see in the photographs, it will be easier to view them as they are in death. Surely, this would not be as easily done for the families or friends of the victims. Another example is Letters from Iwo Jima, which is a 2006 war film directed and co-produced by Clint Eastwood. The film portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers. While this film is suppose to portray the way the Japanese would have written a war movie, the film still contains evidence of American viewpoints. To prove this, there are numerous scenes in the movie that show the Japanese soldiers getting killed or hurt, all the while showing their faces up close. A gruesome example of one of these scenes was when all the Japanese soldiers decided to commit suicide in the cave rather than submit to the enemy. Another scene in the film showed the Japanese capturing an American soldier, but the film does not show the American’s face up close as they stab him to death. The camera actually moves to the wall of the cave simply to show the blood splashing across the wall. The concern is whether we can view pictures as raw as they come even when they appeal to those who we can relate to. While concealing the images of war, we cannot fully consume artistic images as they should be shown, raw and unaltered.