Hogs behind money

    Besides cultural and historical factors behind monsters, money is also considered a crucial factor that leads people to be monstrous and cause social problems. Just as what we read or see in the news, many people step into the evil abyss of pursuing more and more money. This kind of pursue is endless and is like drugs that might make those hogs lost themselves while they are not even conscious about it.

    What comes up to my mind first is a Korean TV show called “Pinocchio”, which presents both positive and negative side of journalists and other media workers. The story begin by presenting news about a fire in a factory, a firefighter was framed up by the reporter, people regards the firefighter as evil, because the dead body of every other firefighter is found but his. The news says he fled without considering about his other colleague. After 15 years, the whole thing finally come to obvious, that the owner of factory colluded with the reporter in TV station, making her report fake new and transfer people’s attention from the fire in factory to the firefighter’s dereliction of duty. All these behavior is because the owner is afraid of losing all these wealth. So he used money to collude with reporter. At the same time, the reporter, who makes the fake news, is also a hog that did immoral things for money.

    Back to our real life, there are also some people that lost themselves because of sickly lust for money. For example, I saw a piece of news recently says that there are some people who take exams or write papers for others for money, which is immoral. This is also not respectful to others who put their own effort to study or to compete for job positions.

   Thus, money can corrupt people, and make kind, normal people monstrous in some ways. That is a more realistic factor compared with cultural and historical factors.

Zoo York

Many things separate us humans from the animals. Whether its opposable thumbs, conscious thinking or the concept of trading tangible goods for other tangible goods or services, we can attest our superiority to certain things. Money has to be one of the most powerful and influential concepts that has propelled us as a species to be more than our ancestral counterparts. This being said, we have not completely escaped our primal instincts and we still exhibit many traits seen in the animal kingdom. One of these traits is the desire to be an alpha male, a leader, one who dominates and demands respect. In our hybrid existence, this type of power usually goes hand in hand with financial success, Think about it, the alpha male in a wolf pack is the first choice when it comes to reproduction. The following picture perfectly shows that this is still a thing in modern society, 

  

This being said, capitalism may only be today's way of becoming dominant. While not all business transactions are the most civil, i dont believe being rich makes you evil, only dominant. 

Money is like The Force

Like duct-tape, money has a dark side, a light side and it holds the world together. While there is a common theme among our generation to bash and villainize "the one-percent", I would argue that the image of the one-percenter has been romanticized into that of a malicious, monstrous, wallstreet executive-type. While I don't disagree with the claim that there exists a sect of the population that fills the aforementioned image, I do believe that the upper-income earners of the country are not inherently evil and are not out to destroy the working class.

A few statistics that changed how I thought about the one-percenter:

• The top 1% of households in the US make >340k annually. (2010 Census)
• The top 1% of income earners in the US make >194k annually. (2010 Census) 
• The median salary of a bachelor's degree holding adult (82k) is in the top 9%. (2008 Nat. Cen. for Ed. Stats.)
• The median salary of a master's degree holding adult (99k) is in the top 7%. (2008 Nat. Cen. for Ed. Stats.)

To me, these statistics told me the real "one-percenter" isn't really that rich. Now, that's not to scoff at nearly two hundred thousand dollars annually for an individual, but that amount is far from the "driver-please-take-me-to-my-private-jet-while-I-day-trade-shares-of-BRK-A-on-my-iPad-11" image that many perceive them as. 

The one-percent give back quite a lot to the country (maybe not as much as they should but that's for another day). The top one-percent in the US pays 45.7 percent of the total income tax revenue (2014 Tax Policy Center). 

What I'm trying to say is, I don't think money turns people into monsters and the anti-one-percenter movement is a little misguided. There certainly is a problem with wealth distribution but I don't believe there is an evil cult of Illuminati CEO's manipulating the system. The one-percent has simply become the scapegoat for the flaws of the current conditions, like the witches of Salem. 

The decline of the middle and working class of the US can be attributed to a lot of things, just like the harsh conditions that the communities in colonial America faced. There is worry and stress about what the future holds and instances of corporate greed, such as Bernie Madoff, has started a witch hunt on America's wealthiest, just as an admission of witchcraft spiraled into hysteria in Salem. 

Another neat factoid: 32k annually puts you in the top percentile of the world (Oxfam), which is about 40% of the US population (2010 Census). So I think we could all show a little more gratitude for what we have and what our country has done for us. 

The Purge

The first example that comes to mind when discussing the monstrous nature that money and power brings about is none other than The Purge. While this movie is not very well put together (in my humble opinion), it does illustrate a conceivable desire to do evil that exists in all people. On this one day, all crime is considered fair ball and people can do as they please. This ability is not exclusive to the rich and powerful but is extended to all races, classes, and ages. The important thing that I note is the huge upper hand that the wealthy possess. If the rich and powerful are willing to participate in the Purge, they have the means to gather up equipment, resources, and willing participants to join them in their doings. Should they decide to hunker down for the night, they have the financial means to put up safeguards to protect themselves from harm. Clearly this gives an immediate and unfortunate advantage to the privileged members of society.

In addition, the whole movie centers around an affluent group of youths, a wealthy family, and one unfortunate homeless man who is the target of the evenings Purge. Throughout the movie there are various ways for humans to become monsters. The group of youths are on a war path to kill this homeless man for being an unworthy member of society. The family who unwillingly comes in the way of this hunt actually resorts to hunting the homeless man themselves in order to protect themselves. Unfortunately, the only one through the whole movie who seems like they have neither say, nor interest in the engagement is the poor vagabond. I see this as an metaphor for how the rich and powerful have the world in their pockets and play whichever games they desire, even those that make them monstrous.

Money Monster

The first thing I thought of when I read this weeks post assignment was King Midas and how his greed destroyed everything he cared about by turning it into gold.  Although Midas is a great example, the example I will be using is similar in that both rulers loved gold.  For my example, I will be using the tale of Robin Hood.  As we all know he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. But why?  In the tale, King Richard the Lionheart is obsessed with his wealth.  Due to this obsession, he raises the taxes making it hard for the peasants to live their daily lives.  In the Disney version, we can see that his obsession is much deeper in that he sleeps with his riches.  This obsession with his wealth and his actions are what make him monstrous/ a monster.   Not only this but his peasants viewed him as a monster. 

A more modern day tale of this type of monster would be Wolf of Wall Street.  Like King Richard, the main character Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, was obsessed with his wealth.  But unlike King Richard, Jordan acted differently with his wealth.  First, his occupation is different, he didn't have the ability to raise taxes.  However, he was able to lie to people in order to sell penny stock and make it big in the stock market.  Second, instead of saving his wealth he spent it on women, drugs, and alcohol.  This is different from the historical greed monster in that they kept their wealth.  This is confusing to me because it makes me wonder; when did this attribute change in greed? If greed used to mean you kept all your wealth, why does it mean spend all your wealth today? My guess would be capitalism and the industrial revolution began this change.

Blog assignment #3

POST DUE: Tueday Oct. 13 by Midnight
COMMENT DUE: Thursday Oct. 15th by Midnight

Hi Everyone,

I named this section of the course “Capitalist Monsters” because it deals with the figures and functions of monstrosity that emerge with the rise of Modernity, specifically with capitalism as a global economic system and colonialism as a globalizing process. By now, the idea that monsters are products of their specific cultural historical contexts should be familiar to you all. We’ve had opportunities to discuss this in more open-ended class discussions, and have looked into ways that the early modern, feudal societies produced monsters in particular ways (witches and werewolves). Last week, we’ve seen in “The Wreck of the Sea-Venture” the ways in which the poor and dispossessed were often characterized as monstrous, especially considering how threatening a mob of disgruntled, underpaid, and overworked people were to those in power. We could, conversely, say that the investors and profit-seekers themselves could be characterized as monstrous for their disregard for human life in pursuit of money. Money corrupts, as the cliché goes.

With this in mind, I’d like you to use this next post to analyze an example of how excessive greed or extreme exploitation (resulting in poverty) might play a role in the creation of a monster. You might think of examples that are cast in the realm of the supernatural (such as the lawyer as actually the devil), or may show fully human people behaving in monstrous ways (criminals, corporate CEOs, politicians, etc.). Does money create monsters? Feel free to write about anything from a fictional text (movie, tv show, novel, comic) to a non-fictional characterization of a historical or contemporary individual.

A Muggle's Perspective on Witchcraft

After being immersed in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, who among us wasn't disheartened at the realization that we are all just living humdrum muggle lives.  Some of the more diehard Harry Potter fans might even be in denial of this as they are still expecting an owl to deliver their Hogwarts acceptance letter.  So how is it that the same figure that caused such fear and moral panic in the early modern period has become a source of great joy and fantasy in the 21st century.

I think that the witches and wizards of Harry Potter are feeding into and feeding off of the current culture that fosters the uniqueness of the individual.  The witches and wizards have created their own secret world where their differences can be celebrated.  In the trend toward the secularization of the world, the satanic connection to the transgressions of the witch has been somewhat lost.  Don't get me wrong; I am well aware of the connections some religious zealots have made between Harry Potter and satanism. The witches and wizards of Harry Potter seem to go out of their way to completely detach themselves from the world of the non magical people.  This is a departure from the view of witches as an active threat to those living wholesome Christian lives.  The only transgression most of the witches in Harry Potter have committed is in wishing to live separate lives from normal society. There is one wizard that wishes to eradicate muggles, but I dare not say his name.  Anyways, the witches and wizards of Harry Potter represent a growing sense of the acceptance of differences and the realization that the world is a more magical place because of them.