MAGical Final Act

Call me biased (and honey, who isn't?), but Media and Globalization brought together the most exciting, argumentative, and quirky personalities in any class I've seen before. As an undergrad, I remember loving my Media Studies classmates under Mark Escaler (six years ago!). And as a postgrad at LSE, I remember exiting each Representations seminar class delightfully dazed from all the heady geek- and pop culture-talk. But my MAG class tops them all, methinks. From Orientalism to cosmopolitanism, diaspora to disaster jokes, Roger Silverstone to Sonia Livingstone, being/becoming to roots/routes, death of distance to proper distance, Anderson Cooper to Malu Fernandez, our discussions were the most fearless and fiercest I've seen.

Our MAGical course culminated with the Creative Project presentations day, which was framed of course by the party theme of "Come as The Other." From a wannabe terrorist to a muse from "300" to a Chinese waitress straight out of Ien Ang's (2001) _On Not Speaking Chinese_, we brought our best self-representations to the show.Tami and Franz opened the afternoon by presenting their Intellectual Apparel tee designs. Franz, now famous among sophomore Theory students from his MediaTalk stint, continued to milk his performance with his and Tami's take on Bauman's "Through the media, we have grown artificial eyes but no hands to act upon the other onscreen." That shirt and the "media as environment" design indeed highlighted how the media have transformed everyday experience. But their Jon Ong and Silverstone's Army design was the sentimental favorite. Adrian, Kristine, and Diane's MAG Game Show totally topped the previous week's Mr and Ms Global Media pageant for asking some of the most provocative questions and eliciting some fantastic responses. Contestants Tami, Ayee, Dre, and Franz deftly fielded questions that ranged from "Heroes: Proper Distance or Not?" to "Starbucks: Place or Non-place?" to "Marimar: Imperialism? Global/local? Self-representation?" And as their teacher, I couldn't be more pleased. I had to pinch myself several times just to check whether it was all real; that game show splace looked like geek heaven to me.
From there we had delightful meditations on the constructions of Filipino-ness with Lesley, Ayee, and Hub's Photo Exhibit and Ralph, Marvin, and Seul-gi's "What is Filipino?" message board. Indeed we have gone a long way from discussing issues of misrepresentation and are now dealing with the more confusing yet productive issue of how one might practice, if at all, "responsible" patriotism. The power AND danger of essentialist discourses of nation in a globalizing world was well demonstrated in both the images and the texts that the two groups presented.

And from the national we also went global with Dre, Glaiza, and Redmond's postcard exhibit of "The Global Village." McLuhan of course has been much derided in our class for his utopian narrative of the global village as created by media technologies. And in the exhibit, I think we saw both the promises as well as the nightmares of the village as enabled and disabled by the media in contexts private and public, personal and political, with the lines being continually blurred.
Shan's video montage on proper distance provided an interesting take on Silverstone's now classic descriptions of media representations as "too close" and "too far." Indeed, there is a need to distinguish between "being" and "appearance" in the media today.Tin, Myka, Vicky, and Kryng's Talk Show brought the theme of The Other back to the fore in the concluding presentation of the day. The exercise where we all secretly wrote our testimonials to "We feel Other-ed when ____" drew responses that ranged from brutally honest to unusual to funny to painfully embarrassing. And once again I credit everyone for sharing their unspeakable stories to their classmates. Indeed, lest we forget, when we view the Other in the media, we should be reminded as well of the Other in ourselves.And from the Oprah Winfrey feel of that segment, where I thought everyone in the class was primed to give everyone else a big hug afterwards, we shifted discursive styles to Pinoy noontime variety show: all designed to make me cry of course. And from their goodbye video and testimonials (blink and you'll miss it! haha!) to the jetsetter tiramisu cake to Hub's delightful caricature (no despair of representation, for once!), this teacher here felt so incredibly humbled by these 19 wonderful students.Thank you for the most memorable four months. You have no idea how much you've affected who I am.

Let's continue to disturb the universe. The universe which we recognize, natch, as always-already MEDIATED.