Entry Assignment, William Leader

This is my entry assignment. I apologize for being late. I am a RUE student (I took five years off between sophomore and junior year) and senior concentrator in Political Science (IR track). I have always been fascinated with media. Books, films, Ataris and Nintendos mediated childhood escapism and fantasy that was much more alluring than my surroundings, which could most readily be described as a whirlwind tour of America’s most bland suburbs (my father having been an up-and-coming IBM executive during the corporation’s heyday).
My brother and I played with the first PCs made by IBM, but we devoted most of our waking hours to my father’s 8mm video camera – making primitive stop-start animation with legos and clay. What draws me to media is the power of the image. International relations is comprised basically of power relations, and the media permeates every aspect of modern life – becoming more “real” than interpersonal interaction.
I am attracted by the technologically oriented aspect of the course, along with its focus on praxis in addition to theory. The web log or “web blog” seems a particularly fitting medium for discussion of Barthes. Although technically writing, the blog more closely represents speech in its immediacy, familiarity and dissemination. This entrance assignment, and its public posting, positions each of us, the students, as subjects for analysis – by virtue of our parole vide, we are exposing ourselves while attempting to expose Barthes.
While perhaps another iteration in the motif of speaker as policeman / analysand, the implication of both audience and orator, student and teacher in speech tends to break down the inequity inherent in power. Student contribution on this level implicates us in “laying down the law” – an idea abhorrent on its face, but tantalizing.