Olympic Closing Ceremonies

Okay so I loved and hated the closing ceremonies. I would call it probably close to a 50/50 draw. I HATED the closing ceremonies because of some of the musicians *cough, Avril Lavigne, cough* not all, and I really could care less about the formalities of the ceremonies with speeches for ministers and all that, but that's what you got to go through during the ceremonies I guess, that's really the purpose of them right?

But I LOVED the ceremonies after they lowered the torches and started the big skit on making fun of ourselves, beginning with William Shatner. It was hilarious!! I'm not a fan of William Shatner but in the right context, he was pretty funny, and Catherine O'Hara's speech was soo true to heart! :D Michael J. Fox's speech was short and sweet and then they went on with the giant mounties, beavers, hockey players etc. to make fun of ourselves some more. I thought it was hilarious! I love to make fun of our own stereotypes! I love that Canadian's are known for being really polite, saying sorry, loving beer, and our cultural word eh! I love these because they are so easy and fun to mock, and the closing ceremony was the perfect time to tell the world that these stereotypes that other countries associate with us are jokes and we are comfortable enough with our country to make fun of them ourselves.

Now down to business. Encoding and Decoding: So Stuart Hall wrote a book about interpretation and how an encoder would make something to mean one thing but the decoder could interpret it to be completely different. To put this into context with the closing ceremonies we could talk about my favourite part. I'm not the encoder so I could be far off with this but I'm pretty certain that the encoder was trying to make fun of our own country. The encoder wanted other nations to see how polite and funny we are and how we are comfortable with ourselves to make jokes. The decoder: me and the rest of the world :P, can decode it in different ways. I decoded it the same way the encoder wanted me to interpret it (at least I think) but other people could be offended with it. Some people might not want other countries to think we are stupid, immature and cannot take anything seriously. BUT IT'S A JOKE PEOPLE!!

Another scenario we could look at would be the musicians that I hate. Obviously I decoded it in a negative manner. The encoder (i'm assuming once again) probably did not want Canada to hear the musicians in a negative manner, it just all depends on a person's musical preference.

Overall I would say, through Stuart Hall's 'active process of perception', that I am 'Negotiated' because I understand what the encoder is trying to portray, but because of my personal interests and preferences, I do not interpret everything correctly.