radix MEDIA STUDIES • UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH-HUMBER

MARCH 2014

RADIXONLINE.CA

The best and brightest in Canadian television and film will gather in the heart of Toronto for the Canadian Screen Awards this month.

Backed by The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, the program offers a chance to showcase and embrace home-grown talent.

Andrea McGrath, the coordinator of the academy, said the list of attendees is top secret, but not for long.

“We will be announcing presenters over the coming weeks, our first announcement of that will be next week so keep your eyes on the website.”

Veteran Canadian actor Martin Short is also set to host the award show. This will be his second-straight year hosting.

Helga Stephenson, the academy’s CEO said Short is notorious for bringing in laughs, and is welcomed back due to popular demand.

“We love him and he enjoyed doing it. You know, you don’t find very many people like him. He can act and sing and dance. He’s a very unusual talent. Completely unique.”

The CSAs, only two years old, came to be when the academy decided to merge the old Genie and Gemini awards.

Stephenson said having the two shows work together “makes a stronger statement about Canadian talent.”

The show has 24 film awards and 20 televi-sion awards.

Nominees include Orphan Black the sci-fi thriller on Space Network, and The F-Word, the romantic comedy film about friendship star-ring Daniel Radcliff.

There are also awards for content created on mobile devices. Generally they are videos that air only online.

“They’re online pop awards. So they’re pieces that will accompany and supplement online TV shows or ‘webisodes.’ We have five of those awards.”

Academy chair Martin Katz announced the nominees noting that 2013 was a standout year in Canadian entertainment.

“This was a year marked by a record-break-ing number of submissions, ref lecting a robust level of activity in the screen-based industries in Canada.”

This year marks the academy’s 65th year cele-brating Canadian arts and cinemas.

During the nominations ceremony, Stephen-son said that the Canadian Screen Awards continues to recognize Canadian talent from old screen sweethearts like 1920’s “Mary Pickford to Martin Short, we have been blessed with the best, a tradition we intend to carry forward.”

Stars to shine brightly at Canadian Screen Awards

The impact of advertising on chil-dren’s lives has always been a concern for Theo Selles.

Selles, a psychology professor at the University of Guelph-Humber, has always thought it would be hard for children to think for themselves when they are being bombarded with corpo-rate messages telling them what to eat, what to play with and what to read.

“How are we going to get children to think critically about corporations if we have them branding everything?” said Selles. “I can just imagine the slogan, ‘critical thinking by Ronald McDonald’.”

Selles’ viewpoint was challenged, however, when he attended Dr. Greg Kelley’s feature lecture, “Your Kind of Place: Branding in Children’s Culture,” at the University of Guelph-Humber on Feb. 6.

Last year, the Guelph-Humber media studies professor had students from his subcultures & mainstream media classes participate in a field project, where they would collect and archive material from children under the age of 14. This included jingle parodies, hand clapping, jump rope rhymes, jokes and insults.

“As a result, they started to collect and populate this archive with the wealth of really interesting material,” said Dr. Kelley.

“I noted that product names were mentioned and parodies of commer-cials started to appear.”

As in, he mentioned how children sang a different version of the Sleep Country Canada jingle, replacing “why buy a mattress anywhere else?” to “why buy a mattress, you’ve got a couch.”

Dr. Kelley said the material reminded him how much children’s culture is shaped by commercial influence because of the creative manipulation.

His study suggested the parodies and nonsense weaken the messages of corporate interest.

Dr. Kelley said he describes this as an early form of culture jamming, which is a tactic used to disrupt the dominant message.

He said whether children consciously register it or not, when they poke fun at the corporate world, it shows they can – and are – thinking critically about advertisements.

“I think it’s great the way kids mock corporations, because perhaps it will lead them as adults to not be as suscep-tible to advertising and buying into what they’re told to be like,” said Selles.

Parodies on the playground

BY KRISTINA KIRKALDY

Children riddles are being revamped with satire

PHOTO COURTESY OF: THE ACADEMY OF CANADIAN CINEMA & TELEVISIONBY CAMISHA MILLER

CSA honours Canucks who’ve made a global impact

The world of the tatted and searching for work

Joey Nero, former Humber College student, has a full sleeve tattoo. A sleeve tattoo is usually a collection of smaller tattoos that cover most of a person’s arm. A phoenix, crow and a cross are depicted on Nero’s right arm, with phrases that are meaningful to him.

“Whenever I have an interview, I don’t take the chance. I’ll cover up my arm with a long sleeve shirt. I don’t want to give the employer a chance to cast judgments on me.”

Tattoos in the workplace have come a long way but still many offices choose to remain uniform

said Nero.His instincts are right according to some

career advisors. “First impressions pretty much stick,” said

Christine Colosimo, career advisor at Humber College. “Don’t forget, employers don’t spend a lot of time with candidates. You pretty much have seven seconds to make a good impression.”

In her 10 years of experience working at Humber’s Career Centre, Colosimo said she knows of situations where people have gotten their tattoos surgically removed because it was deterring them from moving on professionally.

“I say this to students regardless; you cannot go wrong in any environ-ment as long as you stay professional,” said Colos-imo. “This is not only my opinion but the opinions of employers I know. If you have tattoos on your arms, make sure you wear a long shirt and play it safe for starters”

She also suggests removing piercings. “Employers don’t want to sit through an inter-view and be distracted by the ‘click-click’ of a tongue ring, or the view of a tattoo or nose ring,” she said.

Bradley Zorgdrager, third year media studies student at Guelph-Humber, said he didn’t get a job because of a body modification.

“It would have been my first job,” said Zorg-drager. “I had my lip pierced when I was younger, and I was told that they can’t hire me there because of it. That definitely took the wind

BY PIA UNLAYAO

out of my sails in the job hunt.” This did not stop Zorgdrager – he now has a job that he has been working at for six and a half years, and he still has his piercing.

Zorgdrager believed people stereotype about tattoos and piercings.

“People tend to think I’m a badass, which I’m totally not,” he said. “I don’t even drink. I’m obsessive with my grades. I don’t fit into any generalizations people seem to make about modified individuals, except for the music I listen to. That, I really, really fit into; I like it heavy and angry.”

“It is best to be conservative when it comes

to looking professional in an employer’s eyes,” Colosimo said. “Then after getting the job and proving yourself, body modifications may not matter so much as time passes.”

With that being said, she noted there are still some professions that stick to the traditional route, like business and health care.

Zorgdrager said, “Having them is certainly more common now, so I would assume the reac-tions are less intense. In general, having body modifications is almost expected now – almost everyone has at least one – but for some reason, having visible ones or a lot of them is still stig-matized. Hopefully that will change.”

Martin Short hosting the 2013 Canadian Screen Awards.

PHOTO: EPIPHANY KLODT

“”

Employers don’t want to sit through an interview and be distracted by the ‘click-click’ of a tongue ring or the

view of a tattoo or nose ring.

“”

How are we going to get children to think critically

about corporations if we have them branding everything?

HANDLING EDITORS

Megan KimmererCody Loconte

Andreas Pandikiu

WRITERS

Laura BreiterJames Gike

Carter HughesKristina KirkaldyCamisha Miller

Pia Unlayao

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Laura BreiterCarter Hughes

James GikeEpiphany Klodt

LAYOUT EDITOR

John Samuels

FACULTY ADVISOR

Stephanie Matteis

TECHNICAL ADVISOR, PRINT

Jasmine Kabiling

TECHNICAL ADVISOR, ONLINE

Marc Tavares

CONTACTRadix

Room GH 408University of

Guelph-Humber207 Humber College

Blvd.Toronto, ON

mail@radixonline.ca

RADIX • UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH-HUMBER MARCH 2014

There’s a new media studies course on the schedule this semester and it’s open to all streams – though students in one section want to keep others out.

Digital Design II, which was added in Janu-ary, is open to all students in media studies.

“This course should be mandatory for only the digital communications and image arts streams,” said Andy Suchann, third-year digi-tal communications student.

There was such a high demand for it during the course selection period that another section was opened up according to an email sent out by Nasreene Corpuz on behalf of program advisors.

“It was unfair to only have one section,” said Rachel Armstrong, third-year digital commu-nications student. “There were only 35 spots for all of third-year media. I can’t understand why a public relations student would want to take a design course.”

The course material is geared towards the digital communications stream. The focus is on elements of design through the use of many of the Adobe products.

Students can choose between this new course or client relations and project management.

“There isn’t really another course geared towards design,” said Rebecca Lynch, third-year digital communications student who says the new course is better than the alternative.

“The Client Relations course is more for those interested in the entrepreneurial aspect of the media industry, and is for those who see themselves in a leadership role in the future,” said Jerry Chomyn, program head of media studies.

Client Relations did not appeal to third-year journalism student Rochelle Erskine, who had some experience in digital design from high school.

“I took Digital Design instead of Client Relations and Project Management because being creatively independent has always been more important to me than the business aspect,” said Erskine. “Some of the projects I have heard other students doing for that class are assignments I did in high school so I had an idea already as to what the class would be about,” she said.

Third-year digital communications student Britney Kruger doesn’t understand why anyone outside of digital communications would want to take the course.

“I know a lot of journalism students who struggled with the first design course. I don’t get why they’d take the second, which would naturally be harder.”

Nicole Dimson, who teaches the course pushed to have a new one implemented.

“I went to the chair and said that students are only exposed to this material for a short time in second year. After that, most students will never be exposed to it again,” she said.

In the workplace, freelance designer, Wayne Tindall says that the more students can learn the stronger their resume will get and that can’t hurt.

radix

New course has students voicing curriculum concernFour streams vie for spots

Parking Wars are at an all-time high for undergrads, drivers look for solutions

The lack of parking spaces at Guelph-Humber University is driv-ing students crazy.

“I’m sorry the parking lot is full. Please head over to the Queen’s Plate lot.” These are the dreaded words from security guards that third-year Guelph-Humber student Michael Carey and many other students hate to hear.

Carey, who has a school park-ing permit said, “It’s really frustrat-ing commuting all the way here and thinking you’ll be early for a class and then hearing that you have to go to Queen’s Plate. I’ve been 20 minutes late for class a few times.”

Students without passes are getting into the main parking gate with excuses like, “I’m dropping

off an assignment” or “I’m picking someone up,” before taking a permit-only parking space.

“It really upsets me. I pay almost 600 bucks to park here and some days I can’t even find a spot. There’s something wrong here.”

But Karandeep Devgan, who works for security at one of the park-ing gates said that they can’t ques-tion everyone. “You can’t give everyone who comes through that gate a hard time. How can you break up the people who are lying, with the people who actually need to hand in an assignment?”

Driven to distress: students want answers

BY JAMES GIKE

PHOTO: LAURA BREITER

”

Left to right: Bokyung (Kelly) Kim, Vice-President Masham Khan and President Shaila Shafique of the Women in Business Society.

BY LAURA BREITER

There is a lack of female role models in business, according to Guelph-Humber’s Women in Business society.

This is what the society is trying to address. Their goal is to establish more female mentorship for women wanting to get involved in business.

“I think in my last four years, I’ve only really had a handful of female professors,” said Shaila Shafique, president of the Women in Business Society, “The major-ity of them are male.”

“The biggest problem is finding the female mentor outside [of school].” said Masham Khan, vice-president of the soci-ety, “Since we all know that business is like a man’s world kind of thing, we wanted to do something important.”

After bringing in some guest speakers who they thought would offer insight into

New society aims to assist women in business

BY CARTER HUGHES

Help wanted: more examples of empowered women in the workplace

the business world, they discovered a gap.“Some of the [women] that we wanted

to come in as guest speakers couldn’t really relate to some of the students…they didn’t really know what [we] were going through now,” said Shafique.

This experience galvanized the society members to take on the mentorship role themselves and try to and bridge the gap.

“You can be a kinesiology student, psychology student and you can still join,” said Bokyung Kim, a society member, “You’re going to be working for some corpora-tion one day and you need to make yourself presentable and we’ll help you to

get there.”“[The] idea is to give them the platform

for that,” Khan said. “It’s not specific to the business program.”

Inclusivity is the idea that drives the society. As Shafique said, “There needs to be equality, there needs to be proper poli-cies in place where everybody is equally acknowledged, no matter what gender you are, no matter what level of limitations you have.”

To contact the society e-mail them at wibs@guelphhumber.ca.

PHOTO: CARTER HUGHES

There needs to be equality, there needs to be proper policies in place where everybody is equally

acknowledged, no matter what gender you are.“

PHOTO: JAMES GIKE

Professor Nicole Dimson (right), played a key role in getting the course implemented.

Rob Kilfoyle, the head of public safety at Humber College, said, “We do try to keep some spaces availa-ble but I don’t believe that’s an offi-cial policy.”

For students who choose a pay-as-you-go-parking method, Kilfoyle suggests planning ahead on those busy days.

“Plan trips earlier. I know it’s easier said than done but it’s gener-ally known that the parking lots fill up quite early and so coming that late in the day your chances of finding a place on campus are slim. It may be best to go directly to the Queen’s Plate lot.”

Kilfoyle understands the dilemma for students and the overly crammed parking lot situation. He said the school just purchased a new lot with more space for students to park.

“We just acquired a parking lot over at Woodbine, we call it Wood-bine and Downs it’s near Highway 27 and Carrier Drive, again not very close but it’s another opportunity for students who want to come to the North campus,” he said.

“We are also working with our transit partners to try to improve and increase transit options to the campus so it’s kind of a multi-pronged approach.”

This additional parking lot still requires a shuttle bus to and from the campus, which leaves students unhappy with the situation.

Carey said, “I would like to see more parking spaces added to the campus so we don’t have to rely on an open parking lot or a shuttle bus to get us to class on time.”

“”

I pay almost $600 to park here and some days I can’t

even find a spot.