Media Autobiography

Write a short medium long summary on how mass media has affected your life.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

If you’ve ever lived with an adolescent boy, you surely know the definition of consumption. You get the idea: food mysteriously vanishing from the fridge, pantries hollowed out within hours, and some days you even wonder if you’re living with a cleverly disguised bear with a voracious appetite.

That being said, a ‘voracious appetite’ is probably the best descriptor of my personal relationship with modern media. Partially from my inner yearning to appreciate the world but mostly from my indecisive tastes, I’ve learned to imitate stock brokers and diversify. Rather arrogantly and somewhat hyperbolically, I perhaps could call myself an amateur sommelier of culture.

M O V I E S

Favorites: Children of Men, 12 Angry Men, The King’s Speech

The following is an understatement: my family adores movies. I’ve watched thousands of films, from Hong Kong cop dramas to American B-rated sci-fi flicks. Why, one might ask? As it turns out, my father works in the film industry. Watching movies is more than simple family fun, but a central root to our family culture. I grew up with what were essentially film critics, who trained me in basic cinematography- how to look at camera work, acting, sound design, lighting, storytelling, and the many attributes of filmmaking. It was actually from this style of movie watching that I learned to be analytical and critical of everything I do. That isn't to say that it hasn't had its downsides as well. While I still watch movies fairly often, thanks to the fact that the number of films I’ve seen have made movie-watching into somewhat of a chore, I can only do so with a surprisingly bitter taste. I can't say that I fully enjoy it anymore.

T E L E V I S I O N

Favorites: Sherlock, The Tatami Galaxy, Downton Abbey

My mother and sister dragged me by the heels into television. To put it lightly, I had a somewhat rough start when it comes to TV. The female department of my household made the watching of, yes, Korean television dramas a well regulated and enforced part of family activities. I can hardly count the number of evenings sacrificed to the gods of cheap romances, misunderstanding drama, and historical epics. That isn’t to say that’s all I’ve watched: I’ve picked up recent HBO programs, older American broadcasts, British time travel science fiction (we all know what I’m talking about here). I’ve even built my own programs to help me sort and rank the amount of Japanese animation I’ve watched. It’s a little bit terrifying. To be honest, though, I can't really say whether or not watching TV is one of my highlights. Sure, I enjoy it and watch a surprising amount, but it has never been that important to me.

Of course, that isn’t all. For most of the day, I like to run the news in the background- usually a monitor dedicated to Fox News and one more dedicated to MSNBC. Criticize the two-party system all you want, but having two sides is one of the better ways to get a short glimpse on current events.

M U S I C

Favorites:

John Coltrane’s Giant Steps

Maurice Ravel’s Une Barque sur L'Ocean

Joe Hisaishi’s Summer

Despite playing the piano for eleven years, the clarinet for seven, and the trumpet for three, it wasn’t until just recently when I started to enjoy music. It wasn’t family, but rather three of my friends who turned me from an audiophobic to an audiophile. The first friend introduced me to composition- I learned of the work it took to sequence chord progressions, sample tracks, write melodies, and record quality audio. He revealed the differences between English 2-step and D&B. He taught me of the mathematics behind the sound waves and how to engineer your own instruments. Effectively, he introduced me to electronica and taught me to appreciate music.

My second friend, at the beginning of high school, turned out to be a complete audiophile. He was an exorbitant spender- he bought the highest quality headphones and amps for his only-lossless audio. He revealed me the flaws of your run-of-the-mill MP3 file and taught me the inner workings of headphone frequency response and soundstage. So I worked and picked up my own gear and it’s made a world of a difference. He introduced me to classical music and taught me to truly listen to music and its various nuances.

My final friend, at the end of high school, introduced me to jazz. He took my own tastes, which favored the Impressionist composer Joseph-Maurice Ravel, and transposed them to bebop and hard bop from the late 50s. It blew me away; jazz is an amazing blend of timbre, music rhetoric, and style. I was entranced and jazz artists, especially John Coltrane, quickly rose into my favorites. This third and final friend taught me to love music.

L I T E R A T U R E

Favorites:

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation

Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves

Robert L. Forward’s Dragon’s Egg

A lot of young children have a hard time vocalizing their tastes. They mimic others and are often indecisive, deferring decision-making to those who are more responsible. They sometimes have a hard time verbalizing what they like or don’t like. To me, one of the first things I remember telling others that I enjoyed was reading.

A brief glimpse: while I’ve read my share of Hemmingway and Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Vonnegut, and Steinbeck too, I’ve also taken a bite out of Ayn Rand, Lovecraft, Wilde, and Stephen King as well; I’ve read GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Lewis’ Narnia, Herbert’s Dune, Niven’s Ringworld. I’ve picked up Stephenson and Shakespeare, Heinlein, Clarke, and Peter F. Hamilton, Mark Twain and Mieville + Melville, and I’ll unabashedly admit to Harry Potter and Twilight too. I’ve read Brave New World, Ender’s Game, Frankenstein, To Kill a Mockingbird, Heart of Darkness, Catch-22, Siddhartha, Lolita, The Count of Monte Cristo, Neuromancer, The Invisible Man, The Jungle, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Lord of the Flies, Flowers for Algernon, The Things They Carried, Gatsby, Life of Pi, In the Time of the Butterflies, The Kite Runner, The Forever War, and A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Poor grammar aside, I’ve read much more than these well-known works, especially those forgotten works from my youth, but I’d like to make a point of my favorite author, whose works set the foundation for my love of science fiction and my adoration for everything that floats above our exosphere- the king of scifi, Isaac Asimov. Books are better covered in Week 3.

N E W S P A P E R S + M A G A Z I N E S

One local paper, one national paper, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek once a week. TIME once a month. Like clockwork. Though I’ll digress and admit that I prefer the internet for this type of news. Generally speaking, it’s more accurate, nearly instantaneous, and less biased due to rapid fact-checking and diversity. Also, for the record, the video game industry is larger than both the newspaper and magazine industry combined. Note that this is not particularly a bad thing. It actually matches trends, seeing as how the film and television industries are larger as well. 

R A D I O

Jazz on KCSM; NPR if I’m not in the mood. Internet radios and podcasts occasionally.

I N T E R N E T

"Internet, light of my life, fire to my soul. My sin, my steed. 
In-ter-net: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down
the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. In. Ter. Net."

- a play on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita -

To put it lightly, I may like it too much. If I were to label a form of mass media that is as massively consumed as its own name, I'd say the internet would fit the label perfectly. A perfect blend of speed, diversity, and comprehensiveness. No ideals or limits are enforced. It's a fantastic medium for essentially anything. Movies? Netflix. Television? Hulu. YouTube. Crunchyroll. Newspapers? Al-Jazeera. Reddit. Music and radio? Grooveshark. Pandora. Literature? Project Gutenberg. With that much diversity, it's hard to dislike it.

I've made some money on the side from making websites and I've won a couple national competitions for website and game development. So there's that too. My major, as of this moment, is undecided.