Project Proposal

So for my project I think I want to study the people who go to Starbucks. It sounds weird but they are most definitely worth studying, especially the regulars. First of all, i work it should be easy to "go into the field" so to speak. Secondly, It gives me something to do while I'm working so I don't get bored at work (two birds with one stone). And third, its something I've always wondered about.

Basically, I want to study to Folk who come into Starbucks regularly along with the people who work there. Why are these people willing to pay 5$ for a cup of coffee? Is it really just the fact that the coffee is that good (I doubt it, it really isnt all that great)? Many of the customers come in religiously and get genuinely upset if you dont happen to have what they want that particular day, almost as if it will ruin everything about their day. Do the people who come in see Starbucks as almost some type of elitest coffee group? If so, why?

I hope to answer all of these questions and come up with more as I do more research. I can interview people while I'm at work, customers and coworkers alike. I have seen many odd things since working at Starbucks which I have never addressed. Things like how certain people come in around the same time every morning and form groups and friendships while waiting on line for their drinks together, but the second they leave the store its almost as if they never met. Or how the customers view us (the employees). Do they consider us friends because we see each other every day? Also i want to see why employees stay with starbucks and how they view the customers. I know many people who are very unhappy with the job but stay with it anyway, is there some reason why?

Obviously I need to refine my project a bit, be more specific with the study but there is alot to study. The groups formed and the traditions of coming every day are interesting. I will obviously have my biases as I am an insider, but that only makes it more interesting. I could even interview the people who no longer work for Starbucks, do they still see themselves as part of that culture? This is a very doable project and one that I find relativley interesting. The only concern I have about this project is how my boss reacts to me interviewing customers while making their drinks...

Changing of Fairy Godmothers

After reading "A wave of the magic wand: Fairy Godmothers in contemporary American Media" by Jeana Jorgensen, I kept thinking about how the image of your traditional fairy tale godmother has changed over the years. As Jorgensen stated in older versions of fairytales the sexual aspect of the fairy godmothers simply were not there. They were seen as strictly magically beings whose only role in life was to help the heroin. They had no real background, no real story of their own, nor did they have a hidden agenda. Jorgensen also makes a good point about the more recent fairy godmothers, and how they seem to have not only more of a background but a sexual aspect as well.

In Shrek 2 the fairy godmother has not only a sexual aspect but also a background and a hidden agenda. She wanted he son to marry Princess Fiona. She also advertised herself in a sexual way and expected her clients to do the same if they were to find that "happily ever after." They even gave her a background involving the King and her own arrangements as to what would happen to the princess from a very early age. (As i did not see the movie, or i did and simply dont remember, the latter more likely, im taking all of this from the article) In The Fairy Godmothers its the same idea. The godmother Elena has her own story, her own background, and her own agendas. She is described as good looking and she is actually looking for love. It is also told that she was formally a Cinderella herself.

All this reiteration of the article leads me to my point, that fairytale characters change with time. As the audience viewing the fairytale changes, the characters change in order to appear more approachable to the audience. For a long time fairytale godmothers had no real depth, nor did they have any agenda of their own. As time passes we find the idea of magic harder and harder to believe, even as a child, so a character who is stictly a magical being (such as a fairytale godmother) is incredibly hard to relate to. When these fairytales first started to be told (LONG LONG AGO) the idea of magic wasn't so far fetched, making these characters much easier to relate to. In the Fairy Godmothers Elena seems to be very approachable, I use the word "seem" because I myself have not read the book, but from what I take she seems very much like a normal person. She has likes and dislikes (such as the prince who she turned into an ass) just like the rest of us do. Also, while she was a cinderella, the reality is that there was no suitable prince charming for her, so she adjusted her plans and became a fairy godmother. Things not going as they should is an idea everyone can relate to.

The whole point is that as time passes people and cultures change. In order to stay in our current culture, fairytale characters have changed as well. As the movie Shrek makes evident, Fairytales are no longer always about prince charming getting the princess and everyone living happily ever after (as Shrek is far from prince charming and both him and Fiona end up as ogres at the end of the first movie). The image of the Fairy Godmother has changed to suit the needs of the audience, they are no longer always this magical being whos only purpose is to help the protagonist. They have backgrounds and stories of their own, as Jorgensen points out.

Two parts of self

In "Transformations- Fantasy of the Wicked Step Mother" we can see how children kinda divide themselves into different people. Not just themselves but their parents, grandparents or anyone close to them. Fairy Tales helps show children how to do this in a sense. It helps them use their imagination as a way of getting through difficult times in their early life. The example of the girl seeing her mother as both her mother and a martian is the perfect example. The girl's mother yelling at her and treating her badly wasn't really her mother at all, but a martian in the girls eyes. You can even use the example of the kid wetting his bed and saying that someone else wet his bed. Both show how a child will try to separate themselves from the reality of a situation.

Children arent the only ones who use their imagination to escape from reality, adults do it too. Think about it this way, don't adults who are following religious practices use their imagination to help them get through life. Most have never seen god or spoken to god nor do they believe they have, but they all come together and in a way escape from reality. (I by no means wish to offend anyone... just objectively speaking) The same way a child will use his/her imagination to escape from reality, so does an adult.

Another thing is the morals of these fairy tales. One of the morals discussed was that its not good to have ill wishes or be impatient but thru good deeds you can make things better. These are morals that have been passed down from generation to generation. I remember watching things like "The Lion King" and getting these same messages. In a way, these morals in of themselves are tradition. They get passed on from old to young, who then pass them on again and so on and so forth.

"Transformations- Fantasy of the Wicked Step Mother" does a good job of showing how fairy tales do more than simply entertain. Fairy Tales teach kids how to use their own imagination and also pass on morals to live by. The child seeing his mother as two separte entities is only one example of how fairy tales help kids get through difficult times in their lives. The morals on the other hand are morals that have been passed down long before Fairy Tales, and the morals themselves could be considered a tradition.

Emergence of New Media

With the way blogs and new forms of media are changing the world lately certain definitions or preconceived notions need to be changed. The one I would like to focus on is the idea of a folklore and how it has changed because of this new media. Folklore is anything and everything dealing with people, their customs, rituals, groups, etc... That's to put it simply. It is the expression of culture. With new medias such as facebook or myspace or any blog the expression of culture has changed. People from all over the world can communicate with each other and never meet. They can discuss everything and anything, become the best of friends, share experiences, yet may never know each others real names. This new media formed a new kind of folkgroup and a new kind of tradition.

The new folkgroup is related to each other because they share the expeirence of being online and participating in online activities. In this sense, nearly everyone is part of this new online folkgroup. They communicate with each other using medias like facebook or blogspot and even the act of using these can be considered a tradition or ritual so to speak. Many people check their facebook or myspace religiously, on a daily or every few days basis. In that sense, just the act of constantly checking your facebook would be considered a tradition. Granted, not everyone does use the media as often as this, but many do.

The internet and these new medias make forming folkgroups and traditions much easier on a more massive scale. The internet brings people together from all over the world, geography is no longer an issue when it comes to blogs. Any blogger can be from anywhere around the world. Cultures, previously formed based on geographic location and influence, no longer have these boundries set upon them. Medias nowadays make it so that you can be part of any culture or folkgroup regardless of where you live.

This blog was a little scattered but the main idea is that due to new medias, the previous rules of folklore and folkgroups hold less weight. Cultures and traditions that would form in a group of people close to each other no longer has those geographical limitations. Just being on the internet is a new tradition and forms a new culture. Not only that but it also connects people to other cultures and traditions all over the world. Like I said, anyone can form a folkgroup with anyone else all over the world. They can become best friends and not even know each others real names. The new forms of media, like blogspot, facebook, myspace, or even the world wide web in general brings people together who would never have met or spoken otherwise. In a sense, it makes the world a much smaller place.

Vernacular Web Blog

A few things kept on coming to mind while reading "Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web" by Robert Glen Howard. One of these things was the idea of class distinction, which is also the most obvious. There are two distinct classes, those, I guess the word I'm looking for would be participating, in the Institutional and those participating in the vernacular. The vernacular being in a sense the less powerful class while institutional is the dominant class. The most obvious example taken from the article would be the Kerry-Edwards Blog example. To get directly to the point, "The controversy began in July 2004, when the Kerry-Edwards Official Blog announced it was removing all links to a very popular blog named Daily Kos. On Daily Kos, a Kerry supporter named Markos Zuniga made incendiary comments about American contractors who were videotaped as they were burnt, dragged from their car, and hung on a bridge during the military conflict in Iraq. The Kerry campaign dubbed Zuniga’s comments “unpresidential language” and removed all links from Kerry’s site to Daily Kos" (p8). In this example the vernacular, on the surface anyway, appeared to have a voice and through that voice power. Unfortunatly they did not, once that voice was no longer in favor of the Institutional the links to the blog were cut. The events to follow should've and probably were foreseen, if those participating in the Vernacular could not voice themselves on that blog, they would do it on closely related blogs, and their entries would not be favoring.
To some degree this could even be compared to what James C. Scott was discussing in "Dominance and the Arts of Resistence." While it is not as drastic as the slave/master relationship, it is compareable. The idea of a blog gives people another form of that "backstage discussion" that Scott talks about. People can anonamously speak openly about what they disagree with and such.

Another idea that crossed my mind while reading the article was the idea of groups and folk. I could be wrong, but couldn't you consider those participating in their respective sides, the Vernacular and the Institituional, to be groups. Along this same line of thought, couldn't a folklorist analyze what brings these respective groups together? Even if I'm wrong and they couldn't... I'm going to do it anyway. As already stated the Vernacular (or the everyday speech of the people) is in some ways compareable to slaves or surfs, even if not to such an extreme extent. Those participating in it could be considered the less powerful of the two classes and this is probably what draws these people together to form the group. The common trait here is the idea of going against the institutional, even while your going along with it as stated in the Kerry-Edwards Blog. The institutional would be considered the more powerful class. Obviously if its a lack of power that brings the Vernacular group togetherm then it is the having of power that brings the Institutional together to form their respective groups. The Institutional, in cutting off links to certain blogs in the Kerry-Edwards example would be similar to putting down a revolt of sorts. Again, all this being not to such an extreme extent, but at its "grass roots" so to speak.

Basically, while reading the article the idea of classes crossed my mind quite often. I could be wrong in my train of thought but where there are classes, there are groups, and where there are groups there are people. (If that makes any sense...) The vernacular would be similar to the lower class while the institutional would be similar to the more powerful class. As always, it would appear the powerful are acting in the best intrest of the weak, but the Kerry-Edwards example shows that once you go against the best intrest of the strong, the powerful can easily turn on you, or away from you.

Whitness of Ballroom Dance

Like most people I know, when I hear Ballroom dancing I think of white, upper-class, middle-aged Americans doing an tense, uptight, slow dance of some kind. The thought of "Latin" never really crosses my mind even though it should. One of the things I found interesting was "modern genres were most often characterized by my informants as 'elegant,' 'classic,' and 'beautiful.' They were discussed as manifestations of a shared past, as dances from 'our grandparents' generation.' Again this brings up the idea of tradition and authenticity. In folklore, tradition is a huge thing. People have a tendency to cherish the past/old and almost put it on a pedestal. It gives people a shared experience, bringing groups together for a common idea. This does not just apply to ballroom dancing obviously but everything that can be considered sacred.
Honestly, the whole whiteness thing in ballroom dancing wasn't really that far off in the sense of upper-class anyone. The author even states that he had trouble keeping up with his partner financially and in turn led him to feel slightly embarrassed. It can be hierarchical. On the other hand, when I thought of "Latin" dancing I didn't really think of upper-class or middle-aged. In fact I thought of normal dancing since it is something I grew up around and am used to. Latin dancing is more intimate than "modern" but in my opinion it also has less rules. More of feeling than technique. Something that jumped out at me was how Rita states that "perhaps I was born in Brazil in another life." People identify with dance, culture and the experience of it all. Again going back to tradition, people, especially in this article, wanted to feel like they were apart of something more. For them, dance was a way of doing that. Rita identified with the performance of "Latin" music and in turn she felt as if she could have been Brazilian in another life.

Jazz Festival Respone

Upon reading "Producing the Folk at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival" one thing that jumped out at me was the term Authenticity. The article states "In the 1960s, Allison Miner came to New Orleans in search of the authentic, and helped create a festival that reflected her own admiration for "Real Music." The idea of authenticity or even tradition for use of another word is big in folklore. Allison Miner was in search of not just any music or food or anything dealing with the festival but the real music, the real food, the authentic New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Thinking along the terms of real music I would assume she means the music from that area. The bluesy/jazzy music, not the Dave Matthews Bands or any other famous pop/rock bands. Louisiana is known predominantly for its Blues and Jazz music. In wanting to pay homage to the "real music" Allison Miner is expressing a common ideas that most of us share. One being that authenticity is in fact always better and another being that the old is sacred. She wanted to pay tribute to the "living legends" to use her words, not just listen to good music. At the Jazz and Heritage festival people are looking for more than just music or food. They are searching for a shared experience. They want to eat the authentic New Orleans food and listen to the "Real" New Orleans music. Essentially, they want to experience the real New Orleans. As already stated, the idea of authenticity and tradition are important to people, especially those who are going to the Jazz and Heritage Festival.
One other thing worth mentioning in this article isn't so much dealing with the topic but the article itself. The way both writers approach the topic and write about it. They have both been attending the festival for quite some time making it difficult for them to be objective about the topic itself. As a way of dealing with this problem they simply state as much and in fact decide to use each other as informants. This is a great way of approaching the problem simply because you know your going to be slightly bias, might as well state as much to the readers. This lets them know from the start where your coming from without making them feel as if your trying to sway the reader one way or the other.