6A — Friday, October 27, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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The great unifier — or
divider: Facebook in ‘17
I was 13 when I first made
my Facebook account. I was so
young I had to say that I was 19
just so I could make an account.
But my little white lie quickly
paid off. Scrolling through
my
sister’s
and
brother’s
Facebooks, I was mesmerized
by the social network’s vivid,
true-blue aesthetic and the
concept of a “wall” for my
friends to use. I felt like I’d just
discovered fire.
At the time, Facebook was
largely
reserved
for
high-
schoolers and college students,
so you can understand my
excitement
in
joining
this
exclusive club. Simply having
a Facebook made me believe
I was ten times cooler than
I’d ever been. I immediately
devoted
the
rest
of
that
cloudless August afternoon to
designing my profile. Surely, I
thought, everyone would want
to know about my love of the
Boston Red Sox, or how skilled
of a Halo 3 player I was. After
all, wasn’t that what Facebook
was for — to share your
personal life online?
While Facebook continues
to satisfy this overarching goal
today, the social network has
shifted its focus to become
much more than a platform
to present oneself. Facebook
has become a marketplace.
Facebook has become a rolodex.
Facebook has become a news
source. And it’s done it all right
before our eyes.
One of Facebook’s latest and
most interesting features is its
marketplace.
Introduced
in
October of 2016, the Facebook
Marketplace allows the social
network’s users to buy and
sell items with other users in
their immediate area, similar
to popular apps like OfferUp and
letgo. The introduction of this
secondary market provides an
outlet for users to sell or acquire
items for which they otherwise
wouldn’t receive any sort of
compensation, and it’s one of
the social network’s strongest
new additions.
Beyond
its
official
marketplace,
Facebook
has a number of unofficial
marketplaces
among
its
user
groups.
Every
week,
my Facebook feed is flooded
with
friends,
or
friends
of friends, posting in the
“University of Michigan Class
of 2019” Facebook group to sell
anything from concert tickets
to coffee tables. At least among
my friends, this is where the
real business of buying and
selling is done, since users on
these informal marketplaces
often
have
mutual
friends
with other members of the
group. Not only does this make
buying and selling safer, but
it also makes it more personal
because both users understand
that they’re transacting with a
real person that their friends
likely know.
Personally, I’ve found these
unofficial marketplaces to be
excellent — only last week I
sold one of my football tickets
to a friend’s sorority sister
in just a few hours and our
conversation ended up as a
debate over how much we
liked the Yeezy clothing line.
However, it’s also important
to recognize that Facebook
isn’t the most ideal site for
users (see: 2016 presidential
election), so the social network
may ultimately have to modify
its market features to avoid the
fate of Craigslist, which has
developed a seedy reputation
due
to
“Craigslist
Killer”
Philip Markoff.
Along
with
assuming
the role of a local market,
Facebook
has
become
an
online rolodex. With more
than 2 billion active users each
month, it seems like everyone
has a Facebook account. It’s
rare today to search a person’s
name on Facebook and come
up empty — from children
to
great
grandparents,
every demographic is using
Facebook. While other social
networking sites like Twitter
and Instagram boast similarly
massive user bases, they don’t
come close to matching the
ubiquity of Facebook accounts.
To me, the fact that I can
find nearly everyone I know
on Facebook is incredible. It
means that I can meet a person
and immediately connect with
them on the social network.
I can even message them,
or anyone for that matter —
a feature which, critically,
Twitter and Instagram lack
— on these sites only already-
connected users can directly
communicate
with
each
other. This is one of the least-
discussed, yet most beneficial,
aspects of Facebook. When
my friend’s phone died and
we became separated at a
concert this past month, I
relied on Facebook to message
my friend’s friend to find
them. Without Facebook, I
would have had no means of
communicating with either of
them.
The other piece of Facebook’s
rolodex involves all of the
pictures, ideas and personal
information it maintains for
each user. While users may
post some of their pictures,
for example, on Instagram,
they typically post all of them
on Facebook, which has made
the site into a repository
for personal data. Although
having to go to just one site to
find all of a person’s digital life
is convenient, I have serious
misgivings about the misuse
of this personal information.
As we saw during the now-
infamous
2016
presidential
election,
Facebook’s
troves
of data can be exploited by
shady
entities
to
further
their nefarious goals. Using
Facebook’s data, these firms
develop marketing strategies
that play up to users’ fears or
desires and manipulate those
sentiments.
Along
with
transforming
into
a
digital
rolodex,
Facebook has become a news
source for its users. Through
its
“Trending”
section
on each user’s news feed,
Facebook
presents
relevant
news
headlines,
complete
with links to full stories on
news platforms. Due to its
prominent placement at the top
right of each user’s news feed,
it’s difficult for users to avoid
reading
Facebook-generated
taglines for news stories. This
location is a clear attempt by
Facebook to promote its brand
of news among its users and
convince them to drop more
traditional news sites in favor
of
Facebook’s
aggregated
stories.
Frankly,
this
section
of
the social network is highly
concerning to me. Having such
a mysterious and omnipotent
corporation such as Facebook
controlling
news
headlines
that are seen by billions of users
is downright terrifying to me.
I hate returning to the same
example, but, as we saw during
the 2016 presidential election,
the language and placement
of news headlines can have a
substantial impact on users’
interpretation of the news
and their level of trust of the
media. Considering Facebook
has such low barriers to entry
for its advertisers, who’s to
say that that lack of a strong
verification process doesn’t
carry over to its news sources?
My fears appear especially
apt given that Facebook has
been
“slow
to
cooperate”
with ongoing Congressional
investigations
into
Russian
efforts to influence the 2016
election.
Similar to its marketplace,
Facebook has a more unofficial
version of its news section,
which comes in the form
of users’ news stories and
articles. Using a “share” tool,
users can post news stories to
each of their friends’ individual
news feeds. While the intent
of this feature is obvious —
to promote users’ stories to
their friends — it is seldom
used purely for this purpose.
Rather than simply inform,
these “shared” stories, in my
experience,
usually
create
heated debates among users. As
I’ve observed, users, especially
recently, often promote biased
or partisan news sources with
headlines
corresponding
to
their
ideology.
The
result
is news feeds clogged with
controversial
(even
fake)
news stories containing tense
comment sections that can
quickly
become
incredibly
aggressive.
While not as troubling as
Facebook’s aggregated news,
these “shared” news stories
remain somewhat distressing.
Users only “share” the stories
that
truly
resonate
with
them, and this endorsement
frequently
divides
users
on
critical issues. Personally, my news
feed is often inundated with news
stories “shared” by my friends
about President Trump, which
regularly
leads
to
aggressive
debates and, sometimes, even
derogatory comments and hateful
allegations. While this is partially
a result of the hyperpolarized
political climate prevailing lately,
Facebook is enabling many of
these tense arguments by allowing
users to parade the news stories
they support on other users’
digital spaces.
As concerning as Facebook’s
news platform is, I don’t see the
$500 billion corporation scaling
back any of these new features
anytime soon. That’s why it’s
on us, now, to overcome these
challenges, to preach civility
over conflict and to not allow a
social network to divide us as a
nation, and as humans.
CONNOR GRADY
Daily Arts Writer
NEW MEDIA NOTEBOOK
The
important
form
of
documentary
today
never
airs in theaters. We view it
in grainy windows on social
media, on shady video sites
that
don’t
regulate
their
content. Sometimes, we see
edited versions on the evening
news, or sandwiched between
paragraphs on our favorite
news site.
The
footage
that
has
exposed the deadly use of
police violence against Black
men in the United States is a
phenomenon of immeasurable
sociopolitical import, and our
culture has yet to correct itself
even an inch in combatting the
evils that this documentary
has brought to forefront of
discourse.
I
have
been
drastically
disappointed
by
recent
attempts by mainstream art
to capture the horror of these
videos.
Kathryn
Bigelow’s
controversial
“Detroit”
is
the latest in this string of
disappointments, a work of
historical fiction that attempts
to
retroactively
document
a
past
injustice,
one
that
happened before smartphones
could have shone their light on
it. It failed because it played the
events as a traditional thriller.
“Detroit” ’s inoffensive but banal
formal structure betrayed the
gravity of the horrific racial
murders that made up its
subject. Real violence became
pop movie violence.
I
became
even
more
disappointed
by
“Detroit”
when I realized that decades
earlier, Bigelow had already
tackled this subject with a
narrative film, and not only
was this film astoundingly
more successful in capturing
the
horror
of
documented
police violence, but it also made
key predictions about the role
of technology in uncovering
injustice that were terrifyingly
prescient.
“Strange
Days,”
Kathryn
Bigelow’s
1995
secret
neo-noir
cyberpunk
masterpiece, not only does
this, but offers a message of
hope and change in the face
of the crushing hegemony of
neoliberal white supremacy.
Initially,
“Strange
Days”
seems like a forgettable but
good pastiche of noir genre
elements in a cyberpunk future.
You’ve got your noir antihero:
A
disgraced,
slimy
former
detective who hangs onto his
principles by a thread (Ralph
Fiennes, “The Grand Budapest
Hotel”),
his
trusty,
badass
partner who grounds the film
in morality (Angela Bassett,
“American Horror Story”) a
mysterious macguffin, a sex
worker caught in a deadly bit
of trouble, a femme fatale and
of course, thugs who protect
the interests of their evil
employers
with
violence.
Where
“Strange
Days”
becomes
something
more
than “Chinatown but in the
future, man” is when the secret
our antihero stumbles on is
a recording of an execution-
style murder of a Black activist
by the LAPD. Bigelow made
the film in the aftermath of
Rodney King, the white-hot
rage of racial injustice becomes
imbued as the driving force of
the plot.
Bigelow’s first stroke of
genius was in recognizing and
portraying the fundamental
flaws in our society that lead
to racial violence and injustice.
The world of “Strange Days” is
a very near future that’s only
slightly more grimy, alienated
and violent than reality. Her
extraordinary
set
designers
and artists painted the perfect
geohell, a Verhoevian late-
capitalist Los Angeles where
desperate masses clash with a
fascist police force as capital-
owning aristocrats cavort in
skyscrapers.
The
key
here
is that the inequality is only
slightly exaggerated, unlike
in films like “Elysium” when
the
class
metaphor
is
so
cartoonish and over-the-top
that the connection to reality
is lost. I suppose “Strange
Days” shares some formal DNA
with “Blade Runner,” another
sci-fi neo-noir where themes
of exploitation and slavery
are
central,
but
“Strange
Days” fearlessly confronts the
issue of racial social justice
where the “Blade Runner”
films pull punches. Where
“Blade Runner” attempts to
ground the audience’s pathos
for injustice in applying the
consequences
of
slavery
and violence to exclusively
White
characters,
“Strange
Days” directly confronts the
repressive violence against the
Black working class.
Bigelow’s
second
stroke
of genius was her casting
of the two main characters.
Casting the brilliant Ralph
Fiennes, whose star-making
roles the previous two years
in “Schindler’s List” (as a
Nazi) and “Quiz Show” (as
a
charismatic,
handsome
Protestant groomed to replace
an
unphotogenic
Jew
on
television) established him as
a symbol of clean-cut WASPs
in positions of immense power.
It is deliciously subversive
for Bigelow to cast him as a
self-serving white guy who
changes when he discovers the
horrific injustices perpetuated
against minorities in America.
Angela Bassett’s casting, hot
off of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm
X,” was equally brilliant, as
her character is not merely a
strong and fierce badass, but a
powerful, sympathetic moral
voice that goes beyond acting
as Fiennes’s sidekick and acts
as the catalyst for enacting
racial justice.
And finally, like all great
sci-fi filmmakers, Bigelow uses
ideas about future technology
to make moral statements
about society. The “wire,” a
Google Glass-like device that
allows a user to record their
experiences or to experience
the
lives
of
others,
is
worryingly predictive of body
cam footage and the ubiquity
of smartphone cameras. Just
as Spielberg made an argument
for due process and against
prior restraint with the crime-
predicting
technology
in
“Minority Report,” Bigelow
treatises on the role of social
technology in the future of
both crime and justice.
While
“Strange
Days”
remains an extremely dark
dystopian film throughout its
runtime, one of the things I
liked best about the film is that
it offers a glimmer of hope and
justice at the end. The central
fantasy of this movie is that the
people at the height of power
in our society saw the tapes of
police brutality and acted to
change it. If that fantasy is ever
to become a reality, we need
more fearless, experimental art
like this.
JACOB RICH
Daily Arts Writer
Digging up ‘Strange Days,’
a socially-aware neo-noir
FROM THE VAULT