Two Heads are Better than One

One of my favorite assignments yet; reading other’s blogs. It is so fascinating to see how people having the same assignment but going about it in totally different approach. This assignment gave me the chance to examine this and reassures how brilliant my classmates are. I choose not only classmates but friends of mine to give my insight on their blogs. Since we all had the same writing assignment it showed me that the phrase “two heads are better than one,” is without-a-doubt precise. Certain essential ideas and thoughts I neglected in my blogs were brought up and efficiently explained in theirs.

The first blogger I decided to take a look at is a good friend of mine Kevin Marshall. This was the first assignment of the year and Kevin’s first blog ever!

Kevin's musical talent: singing and playing the piano

The assignment itself was to demonstrate his understanding of the course objectives, the importance of media and to critically think about a “text” his is familiar with. Here’s what I had to say:

Kevin, your blog was very well written and beyond interesting to read. Your word choice in language and overall writing skills are very impressive. Your blog opened my eyes to certain ideas I have never thought of. For example, I found it very interesting how you analyzed The Biggest Loser. It has never crossed my mind to explore the impact The Biggest Loser has on our society. Because i am now certainly media literate, it does not make sense how such an impactful show never crossed my mind to explore. It might be because I am not overweight myself; your humor was also very liked on my part.

I like how when you brought up terms your audience may not be familiar with, you without a doubt explained the meaning efficiently. You focused very well on imbedding the idea that media literacy is possibly one of the most important concepts to acquire as a spectator of every type of media. You spoke to the readers by keeping them engaged with knowledge that the average reader would probably not know.

Your blog however lacked attractiveness. There are no pictures, media clips or hyperlinks to help me better visualize the ideas you were presenting. Nevertheless, previewing your other blogs assured me you only lacked attractiveness in your very first. I must say, I am awestruck with how your first blog turned out and am positive each blog became only more impressive.

The second blogger I certainly wanted to look at is a sorority sister of mine, and long time friend Allison Wachtel.

Allie and me on my 19th birthday! (she's on the far right)

Her blog assignment was different than Kevin’s, rather exploring the field of Ideological criticism, which is clearly explained in her blog. She focuses on the impact of conglomerates and what’s known as a “culture of consumption.” Here’s my feedback:

Wow! First and foremost, my first impression of your blog was amazing. It is colorful and intriguing, making me not want to leave your page at all but keep reading. You embedded pictures, videos and hyperlinks that all helped me understand the point you are trying to get across. Being that the theme of your blog focuses on Disney, the pictures brought back only fond memories I have of my childhood.

Your introduction to this blog was so relatable being a 20-year-old woman who also grew up surrounded by the Disney Culture. AS you mentioned, my whole family loved Disney as well and to this day still does. I too started to realize that these messages being embedded into all of our brains are anything but surreal, but rather detrimental. You explained the ideological approach clearly, as if the reader would be ignorant on the topic, which is very thoughtful as a blogger.

Though your blog was remarkable, expanding more on how big of a conglomerate Disney is would help the reader fully understand the importance of this. Maybe telling the reader the specific media Disney owns would add onto the blog. Overall, your blog was very exciting to read and I’m sure others readers without a doubt agree.  

My last but certainly not least blogger I looked at is Gerard Dalsey.

Gerard!

His assignment was to take a media text that serves as an effective vehicle to demonstrate his media criticism skills. He must describe the test, and use a specific approach and apply it. Here’s my response:

This blog of yours interested me because personally, I am not a viewer of The Sopranos. I was very clueless on what exactly the television series was about. However, after reading the blog I think I could actually explain to someone else the plot without a problem. It is clear that a reader such as me who knew nothing about the show would be able to understand exactly the show you were analyzing.

I think narrative criticism was an essential approach to examine when it comes to this series. Because I needed a refresher on what exactly the Aristocelian Approach was, you told the reader right in the first sentence which was very helpful. Overall it is obvious you write very well, keeping me and I’m sure the rest of your readers intrigued, wanting to keep reading. I also think the program you choose was an interesting choice and worked out in your favor.

Your blog on the other hand lacks the visual aids I want to see in a blog. Though you did embed two pictures, I would have liked to see hyperlinks sending me to a page about narrative criticism for example. Also, a video of the series teaser would have been accommodating to your explanation of the series. Generally, your blog itself was written well and didn’t stop keeping me engaged.

My professor is the only professor of mine at Towson University that has made blogging a requirement of a course. Without having her as a professor, I would probably haven ever blogged in my life. I am thankful for this.

"blogging done right"

Blogging is enjoyable, a stress reliever and first and foremost, fun! Blogging has made this class more enjoyable, rather than writing an APA style paper for example. Not only have I learned new computer and media criticism skills but I learned to appreciate and pick up a new hobby! Hope you enjoy all my blogs and hopefully you’ll be seeing me a lot more.

Who’s the one to blame?

Have you ever wondered why and how our social values came to be? For the fact that different cultures have different social norms and values, we certainly as humans are not born knowing these ideas. Instead, they are embedded into our brains by of course our friends, family and environment. However, have you ever thought about how greatly media have implanted these ideas as well?

Ideological Criticism is a theory that deals specifically with exactly that. Ideology itself is a means of exerting power. It is a tool that dominant elites use to extend control over those of less dominance, which in turn helps to maintain existing power relations. It refers to how our social norms come to seem natural, obvious and even just plain like common sense.

Ideological Criticism has everything to do with hegemony and power relations. It examines how these ideas are embedded in our media and how ultimately, they serve primary the interests of the dominant elites. The elites are the ones that made these ideas typical and customary. However, I’m sure we all agree we could certainly go without the damaging messages that are embedded through the media. Nonetheless, ultimately the reason this isn’t changing is because elites themself go unchallenged. 

Dominance.

Political Economists are people very concerned with this appalling social problem we are facing. They study how media advances the interests of dominant elites and how they at the end of the day still preserve control.  More specifically, they examine the role of ownership in our society, such as conglomerates, the production and distribution practices, and the link between the ownership of media and ideology. Inclusive, whoever owns our media owns the ideas and social norms that are being put into our brains. As weird as this idea may sound, I find this almost identical to brainwashing.

Political economists continue to examine the issues that this pertains to; the social role of advertising, consumerism, consumer culture, culture of consumption and globalization. Commercialization within young infants, toddlers and children are without a doubt the most important audience this is affecting.

Two films in particular shed light on the work of political economists concerned with the power of media to shape our social values; Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood and the Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power.

Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood is a movie we watched in class that started off with the statistic that kids influence the advertising world by about $700 billion a year. WOW! That is a huge number and shows that children are a major influence in the advertising/marketing world and that is why they advertising to children is so important to the marketers.    

The film goes on to talk about the idea that “kids are growing up faster younger,”and without a doubt is true. Age compression has become dramatically more prevalent than it has ever been. When I hear the world “tween,” I think of a 9-12 year old child. Marketers categorize “tweens” as anyone aged from 6-12! This is the age group marketers are targeting with these ideas. It is sad, corrupt and unethical that is what our marketing world has came too.

A young girl wearing almost nothing, modeling as if she were in her twenties.

The same messages from the media, aka elites, are being planted into these children’s minds. Ideas such as girls being taught they need to be not only pretty but sexy and boys need to be overly violent, manly and always maintain power, are being taught at the age of 6.

Personally, being around children often, I have noticed the age compression that has occurred, younger and younger every generation. Age compression has influenced the clothing children wear, their ideas about life and has enhanced them sexuality. Products marketing these undeveloped children are beyond sexual and teach young women they must be sexual, flirty, and even “easy” at such a young age.

Bratz, a very sexual, young children brand is only one brand off the top of my mind that perceives itself as innocent. Bratz is a brand that not only sells dolls but also different scandalous outfits for them to wear.

Bratz dolls all seem super sexualized with skimpy clothing.

The dolls itself have very voluptuous lips, long straight or wavy hair, seductive eyes, long eyelashes, with skinny bodies. Clothing is sold separately and includes products such as heels, make up for the dolls, mini skirts, fur jackets and mini jackets. The brand itself sells that being fashionable, hip and sexy is tremendously important.

 The movie Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power reinforces these messages and stereotypes planted in children’s minds but precisely investigating Disney’s media and their “magical” “innocent” and “pure” family friendly movies, shown to kids as early than even before they can walk or talk.

I googled "Ideological Critism" and this is one of the first pictures that came up.

Who doesn’t love Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and Mulan? I know I used to watch these repeatedly. I certainly still watch these movies but only now I see them differently. I notice the appalling gender representation of girls.

Think about Ariel, Belle, Cinderella, Snow White and about every main female character in Disney films. Every single female has big breasts, tiny waists, big butts, and is incredibly beautiful. They also are very seductive, even a female character in animal form.  

Also, the end of every Disney Fairytale, no matter how strong and independent the female may seem, the man always ends up in some case, saving the female. For example, Mulan starts out as a dependent woman for the fact that she acts as if she were a man. When she comes back home though after the war, she goes back to her womanly duties and has a man take care of her from then on.

Again, in The Little Mermaid Ariel falls in love with a human. In reaction to this, she gave up her voice for the man. In the end she marries him but he solely feel in love with her body since she was never able to even speak to him.

What are the messages do you think young girls think when they see these things?  

Disney obviously has a huge impact on our children through their well-known Disney movies and The Disney Channel but these are only two of the vehicles Disney has control over.  For those of you who are not aware, Disney is one of, if not the biggest conglomerate we have.

To name a few different media Disney owns—ABC kids, ESPN, Miramax Films, Lifetime, A&E, the History Channel, the Biography Channel, SOAPnet, Wondertime Magazine, ESPN the Magazine, Hyperion Books for Children, The mark Levin Show, Good Morning America and Sportscenter/Monday Night Football.

Disney also owns 277 radio stations in the United States. Disney owns at least one of every different vehicle of media.

If I were a Political Economist I would be concerned, mostly because one company owns so much of what we are consuming. One group of elites controls what we are taught as our social norms, starting from when we are born. Political Economist will continue to research commercialization and childhood but personally, I don’t think these messages will ever depart but only worsen for each generation.

Mockumentaries

Mockumentaries are the new up and coming genre in media. For those who are not familiar with this fairly new genre, a mockumentary is a category of television and film that acts as if a documentary but is in fact fictional. We are starting to see this genre more and more including popular television series such as The Office, My Life as Liz, Reno 911, and Summer Heights High.

We might wonder why this genre is all of a sudden becoming so much popular than it was before or can even ask ourselves why we enjoy these types of shows. By digging deeper into these media we can help to understand these types of questions.

Modern Family, as one of my favorite shows seemed to be a perfect example of a mockumentary I wanted to better understand and critique. For those of you who are not familiar with Modern Family, this is a show all about a comedic, relatable family. The father Jay has two children, Claire and Mitchel who are both now parents of their own. Claire is a housewife, married to Phil with three children Haley, Alex and Luke. Mitchel, representing the gay population, and his partner Cameron adopted a Vietnamese baby named Lily. Jay himself remarried a gorgeous Columbian woman named Gloria and helped to be a father figure for her son Manny.

It seems as if Modern Family targets people of a Caucasian background but is not limited to that race only. I make this assumption for the fact that the initial family members in the show are Caucasian, yet Gloria and Manny and Columbian and Lily is Vietnamese. Correspondingly, this show seems to reach a wide spread age demographic of 18-49 according to this article.  

To critique this show I decided to use the genre criticism approach. For those not familiar, this approach has a unique collection of elements and develops framework that serves to attract the audience’s attention.

Overall, genre criticism is considered to be at the intersection of the three different parts of the cultural diamond; text analysis, production analysis and audience analysis. For those who are not familiar with the cultural diamond, the textual analysis is concerned with the power of text to make meaning. The production analysis is how specific genre formulas serve to attract large audiences. Last, the audience analysis is how we use, interpret and make meaning from texts.

Genre criticism consists of three different approaches; aesthetic, ritual, and ideological. I will be looking at all three of these approaches to fully understand and learn about Modern Family.   

The first tactic, aesthetic is an approach that is very “superficial.” It identifies the stylistic features, looking at narrative structure and audio-visual codes. Overall, this approach stops short of providing insight.

As I already talked about before, because Modern Family is a mockumentary, the camera shots and angles act as if a documentary. For example, even on one scene from the latest episode, Mitchel and Cameron get into a car accident and the camera angle is from the inside of the car. The camera does not always seem sturdy and sometimes acts as if a professional is not the one doing the taping. Also, there is absolutely no music in this show which is a very popular characteristic of mockumentaries. As you can tell, the aesthetic approach shows very apparent features about the media.

The second tactic is the ritual approach generally provides the audience with insight of why we are attracted the genre. This could be reoccurring themes for example. The approach helps us to understand how texts of a genre interact with cultural forces such as the production or audience.

Modern Family unquestionably has reoccurring themes throughout every episode. For the fact of the major difference in all of the character’s personalities, each person always has somewhat of the same issues going on with them throughout each episode. Lets take Claire and Phil for example. Claire is a type a, thriving for success and a challenge type of person. Every episode she needs to win or beat someone or succeed at something new. Phil is the opposite of Claire. He is very silly and in every episode always seems to mess something up in one way or another. This idea goes hand in hand for each of the family’s drama as well.

Using semiotics, the study of how social production of meaning is constructed through signs, you are able to notice all of the signs embedded in the texts. You can tell by this show that reality is socially constructed. For example, this show uses many stereotypes, one being of homosexuals. Mitchel and Cameron have the stereotypical gay relationship. One is manlier than the other and both look like the stereotypical gay man. Nonetheless, they adopted a little girl from Vietnamese. This reality of gay men is being reinforced by how it is being socially constructed through this show.

Last but certainly not least, the ideological approach is what provides the full insight into the rhetorical force of the text. This approach views television texts as instruments of power and control. It examines the genre fully to understand how it naturalizes dominant ideology.

To examine this approach, I am going to focus primarily on Jay and Gloria. Jay is the most dominant throughout the whole show, the breadwinner. He lives in a very big house and always has nice things. He had one divorce and is now married to a young, hot Columbian woman who is unmistakably a lot younger than him. She does not need to hold down and job and her clever son lives with the both of them. This reinforces the rich older man with the young, trophy wife. All of these ideas planted into the show are reinforcing our ideas of gender relations, race and class. The ideological approach lets us realize how much media plants into our heads.   

By looking at the genre criticism approach we can now see how media shapes our lives not only individually but as a culture. We have looked at Modern Family through text, production and the audience for us to fully understand why this is so important. As I talked about in my last blog, media literacy is such an important characteristic to have to understand how enormous media impact essentially is.

Media Frenzy

Hi everyone. My name is Kelli Coughlan and am a junior attending Towson University. I am a Pre-mass communications major, focusing on advertising. I recently joined the AAF, American Advertising Federation and am part of the sorority Alpha Xi Delta. I’m currently taking a Media Criticism course and am using this blog to help me get my thoughts out there. Media Criticism is an important topic but many people over look how important it really is.

Media Criticism is a systematic process used to understand media texts as meaningful socio-cultural symbolic forms and forces. It helps us to critically think about our own media consumption as well as others, how media shapes our world and how it is popular culture. Overall, to understand the importance of media on cultural, social, political, and economic aspects, you must be media literate.

Mass media has tremendous power over all of our everyday lives. Media is used to get news and information, for communicating with others and for entertainment. Take a second to think about all the media you encountered today. Did you watch television or a movie, listen to the radio, walk by print advertisements, see someone wearing a brand logo or read a magazine? If I were to guess, I would assume you came across almost all, if not every one of these Medias.

You may ask, “What is so important about Media Criticism?” Well, the media literally has the power to shape not only our individual lives but our society and culture. Take a second to think about how we constantly try to emulate media; magazines, television shows, movies. We women want to look like those beautiful, skinny women in advertisements and believe this is the ideal women. Men want to be as tall and masculine as possible because that it the ideal man. Media has shaped this message to us throughout our lifetime.

The television show, South Park, popped into my mind first when thinking of a television show that does influence our perceptions and shape our values and culture. Though this is an example that may not shape our culture in the best way, not all media texts are negative by any means.

South Park for those of you who are not familiar with one of Comedy Central’s animated sitcom, is a show featuring four younger children, Stan, Kyle, Cartmen and Kenny. Stan is portrayed as a normal average kid. Kyle is Jewish. Cartmen is racist, obese and pretty much as ignorant as someone could be and Kenny is a kid with not very much money and mumbles as he speaks. Qualities about these characters help the comedic act of the sitcom. Though it is a comedy and much of the show is exaggerated to make humor, it reflects on how our culture is formed when analyzing the show.

This show breaks boundaries and brings up any controversial issue you can think of such as gay marriage or racism.

This show also redubs media, also known as reenacting another show or real life event. South Park however, redubs this media most of the time in the most disturbing, comedic way possible. This causes controversy about the show but after all, it is just entertainment right?I recently watched one of South Park’s episodes called Passion of the Jew. For a quick summary, it is an episode strictly about the movie most of us are farmilar with, Passion of the Christ. Cartmen, the racist, however looks at this movie as an eye opener that all Jewish people are horrible and starts to think like Adolf Hitler. Kyle, the Jewish kid, finally gets convinced to watch this movie and leaves thinking that his people are horrible as well. Kyle was greatly affected and influenced from what Cartmen had told him about the movie. The one movie, Passion of the Christ, affected these kids in such dramatic ways. The funny thing about this episode though is their redubbing of the actual affects of this movie had on our society. Even the fiction characters in media are affected by media in their world.

South Park is only one of billions of example of how media shapes us. Again, I want to reiterate that not all media are bad and some do have good consequences on society. Learning about the decoding of media is a way we can start to look at media as just entertainment. Once we realize how it is automatically influencing us is how we become media literate.

I want to achieve the goal of media literacy by the time this class is over. I want to learn about more strategies used and messages sent through media that I am not yet aware of. Studying this field and learning more on the topic will help me through my future career. Everybody should learn about this field of study because of the major impact it has on our society.

Not Only a Baseball Game but a PR Event

Everyone loves America’s pastime baseball. I love going to baseball games weather it is a little league, high school or professional game. I recently went with a few close friends to watch the Orioles play their second game of the season. Though we did not win it was still so much fun to watch.

Something new I was oblivious to before are all the advertisements covering almost the entire outfield fence. Advertisements included Coca-Cola, Toyota, Bud light and Verizon. These advertisements also appearing throughout the stadium numerous times really showing what soda, what beer and what phone company they have public relations deals with.

Another point I noticed is when I was younger I did not even realize the attempts that sporting events use to try to influence your behavior. When the tune to “Take me out to the ballgame,” play the whole crowd always goes wild, singing and dancing to the song. This makes me feel unified with the whole stadium, knowing everyone is doing the same thing all at once, hoping the home team will win.

An additional way they try to engage and influence the audience member is the “Kiss Camera.” For those who aren’t familiar, they find two people who look as though they are a couple and they show up on the big screen, where everyone is expecting to see a kiss. This is when you hear the female wave of “aw” in the audience. I find this very engaging because even when I’m just with a friend, I always try to get on it. This influences the crowd to feel another emotion if only for a few minutes. It is a nice change of pace from baseball and the competitiveness.

The stadium was very successful at changing everyone’s behavior because it gives the audience the feeling the belonging. It makes you feel like you are now part of the game and are part of the team in a certain way. Baseball games as well as any sporting event for that matter, influences us all more than we know. Next time you’re at a professional sporting event pay attention to this tactics and you will see exactly what I mean.

Advertising in Movies is Only Becoming a More Popular Trend

Product placement seems to be in almost every movie nowadays. Some movies are very blunt with the products they are trying to promote, others can sometimes be there without you even realizing.

17 Again, a movie made last year in 2009 is a movie staring Zac Efron, Leslie Mann, Mathew Perry, and Thomas Lennon. This movie is about a guy named Mike O’Donnell who married his high school sweetheart Scarlet O’Donnell. In high school Mike had gotten Scarlet pregnant and found out only a few minutes before his big basketball game which would have gotten himself a full ride into college. Instead of playing the game, he ended up asking her to marry him and lost all chance of becoming a basketball star. Once he is older, he wishes he could go back and be who he had always wanted to be. He wakes up as a seventeen year old teenager and gets a chance to redo it all over again. Saying anything more, would ruin the movie so I’ll give you a chance to watch it yourself.

Because it is a comedy and romance movie made so recent, I figured there had to be a lot of products which were secretly being advertised. For the fact that Zac Efron is one of my favorite actors as well, I figured I would re watch this movie looking specifically for the product placement I had not noticed before.

It turns out, product placement is everywhere throughout the movie, from food brands, name brand clothing, and cars.

For example, there are multiple food brands hidden all throughout the background of the scenes. It starts even near the beginning of the movie where Cap’N Crunch is being eaten for breakfast. There were also multiple candy brands such as Nerds and Pez in the candy shop where they eat ice cream. Easy Cheese, Nutella, and Pringles are also something that Zac Efron eats while noticing the appetite change from a man to a high school boy.

Brands of clothing and accessories that really stuck out during the movie were Ed Hardy and Ray-Ban. On the first day of school as a teenage, Zac gets decked out in Ed Hardy gear and realizes it was not as cool of a style as he had hoped. They even related his look to Kevin Federline making it seem even less cool. However, the next day he makes sure his style is perfect by wearing Ray-Ban glasses. This promoted Ray-Ban very well but Ed Hardy did not get the recognition as I’m sure it had hoped.

Two main product placements however that had the most success in being noticed were the Audi r8 and all products related to Star Wars. The Audi r8 was represented as a very cool car to have and really caught my eye when it first appeared on screen. Also, the house in which the movie mostly takes place is decorated with Star War products from Star Wars statues, Darth Vader helmets, lightsabers and even a bed as a land speeder. This had the largest impact because of all the frequent showings throughout the film.

I feel as if most of these products were chosen to show diversity and make this film different than others. Also, there is no question there was money involved with using these products. 17 Again is only one movie I truly analyzed involving product placement but movies will surly only become more and more involved in promoting products.

Maybe You Should Judge a Book by Its Cover?

In our generation I don’t believe nearly as many people read books as they should. Books are great. For me, they are therapy. They let me leave my life if only for an hour and jump into someone else’s. Books let you live the descriptive details that in movies you probably do not even notice.

When thinking about books that have changed my perspective on life, there are so many different books that pop into my head. Yet, one book stands out because I just finished it last week. I remember seeing the cover of this book and thinking I really should read this book. I could tell it was not just a book with no message, but a message that everyone should read to learn and understand.

The book is called Loose Girl: a Memoir of Promiscuity by Kerry Cohen. Since this book is a memoir, it made it even more appealing in my eyes. If you think only the title sounds a little risky, you’re right.

The book however it not just about sex throughout a young girls life. It vividly explains why she was so promiscuous from an early age to her late twenties. It shows the feelings that are hidden behind the idea of needing to be loved. This book showed how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy over many different experiences.

I grew so much from this book. It made me realize before judging someone by their actions, you need to step back and look at the reasons why they do act a certain way. People express feelings in ways they might not even notice.

All books have different messages, some more important than others but every book does have one. That is why I like books so much. Books are so different, with different authors, ideas and views on life. Every book I have ever read has had an im pact on me one way or another. The impact may not have been noticeable, but after you finish the last page of any book, you learn something new.

Women Marketed as Objects. What Else is New?

All forms of mass media we see have stereotypes hidden within them. However, it seems as if females are most targeted with negative connotations, usually with the same ideas in mind; females must be shown as thin, beautiful, powerless, innocent and sexual all at once. Combining all these ideas of the “perfect women” has caused major destruction on the way our society perceives females. This problem will only become worse if nothing is done to stop this.

Dear Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana ,

I see disturbing mass media everywhere, every single day. Yet different ad’s are obviously more unethical than others. The one ad in particular that caught my mind when thinking about this topic is an ad by yourselves, Dolce and Gabbana. This ad is insulting, nauseating and repulsive.

How could an ad like this even be able to go public? The messages this picture shows are truly horrible.

The female in the photograph is of course gorgeous, with the perfect body and face. She has clothes that are skin tight and small for that matter, with very high heels. She looks helpless with her pelvic area up in the air and a man’s hand literally holding her down. Four other men are surrounding her, just watching this situation occur with no expression on their faces except looking at her as if she were nothing but an object. All four of the men also symbolize masculinity with my define muscles they all seem to have.

This picture symbolizes that men are more powerful than women and women are nothing but helpless and property of men. The message it also sends to the public is that women must be sexually open to anything and with anyone. This provokes domestic violence toward women. It looks as if this man is not only going to hold her down and have sexual acts with her himself, but with his other four “strong, tan friends” as well.

However this ad does not surprise me. It is sad that a company which should advertise class, produces media that is nothing close to classy, yet the total opposite. Yet it is only not surprising because it is usually high class brands that send off these messages. This would explain the pressure that is publicly seen with Hollywood stars.

We need less of ads like these. We need media to show women as strong, dependent human beings of all shapes and sizes. Without the media enforcing these thoughts and ideas, the oppression of women will only increase overtime. Thank you.

Stalking or Keeping in Touch? I’ll Let You Judge

Do you have a Facebook? If you don’t, do your friends have one? Or your parents, siblings or even grandparents have fun? I’m sure you said yes to at least one of those questions. It is crazy how nowadays almost everyone I’m around has a Facebook.

What is Facebook exactly though? Is it a way to keep in touch with long lost friends or the people you see on daily basis? Either way, I’m not sure about everyone else but when I go on Facebook, by the end of my thirty minutes or so online, I usually find myself on a page of someone I don’t even really know or even have never meet.

Is it healthy to be so fascinated by the status or photos of people we really probably don’t really care about or even talk to? Facebook also encourages infatuation, which turns into actual stalking by definition, yet no one really thinks of it this way. Facebook has become so addicting and so consuming that some people’s idea of fun is Facebook itself.

After reading an intriguing article called, “How Facebook Is Taking Over Our Lives,” it is clear that I am not the only person who feels and acts this way toward Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I still update my status and upload photos on a week-to-week basis but I still find it sad this is what people of our lifetime do on their spare time.

The communication of our generation had strictly turned mostly to technology. We no longer send letters in the mail or even a simple phone call but rather send messages through Facebook or comment on their wall. We lost most of our real life communication. Instead of receiving phone calls we now receive notifications. Is this healthy for us? And if it isn’t, is there anyway we can change what has become so dominant in our way of communication.

However, Facebook has very much increased the world of advertising. Even without paying for an add on the corner of a website, but just uploading a status saying, “Free Grand Slams at Denny’s today,” enables us to advertise for anything and everything. On the other hand, Facebook has very much impacting the workplace and classroom, in not the best way possible. People focus less on their work if the Internet is available. It is easy to get caught up on having Facebook on an open tab at all times. This makes it possible for you to see when notifications are received so you can respond back quickly. Yet, because of how addicting Facebook is, once opening that tab for a second, it could lead you to open up link after link, resulting in a very big distraction when trying to get things done.

Facebook has changed our Internet fascination dramatically.  With 175 million people on Facebook, the popularity will only increase until a more popular and sophisticated social network takes over.

Disney: Not quite what we THINK it is

Disney is great for children of all ages. It enhances ones learning and is such a kid friendly channel right? That’s what we’re brought up to believe at least.

However, once fully analyzing Disney movies from The Lion King to Cars, we realize this is far from the truth.

There are countless subliminal messages that neither parents nor children realize how much it affects a young mind. Disney creates stereotypes, showing the writer’s personal ideas of certain races, genders, and religions, exc. and implants these ideas into our brains unconsciously. BRAINWASHING? Seems like it to me.

Just a few simple, broad examples that repetitively show up in Disney movies are the idea that women need to be dependent upon a man, the idea of what women should look and act like, and the idea of stereotypes of different ethnicities. Also, many movies which Disney has made has multiple secret “dirty” images or ideas, which is obviously not appropriate for movies that target children.

The Lion King:  This movie that countless numbers of ideas that children should not grow up believing. This movie not only shows family betrayal, violence and hatred to others that seem “different,” but even stereotypes what kind of people are evil and which type of people are good. For example, in the movies the only “evil” characters are dark skinned. The hyenas and Mufasa are both dark skinned where the innocent lions are clearly the lightest skinned characters in the whole movie. Also, looking at high vs. low class and elite power, it discriminates against anyone who is different than you and makes children think it is not okay to be friends with someone who is different. Simba, the King to be, is anything but praised to be friends with Timone and Pumba, who could be considered low class in this scenario.

The Little Mermaid: No matter how innocent this movies seems from the outside, multiple ideas of Disney overlaps in this movies as well.Again, Ursula, the evil sea monster is dark skinned again, and on top of that little overweight, where the King’s family, including Ariel, seems to be as white as can be. Next, all of the girls and women in this movie are super skinny, with long, wavy, beautiful hair and has curves every girl wishes she had. This implants the image of what women and even young girls should look like and should want to look like.

Cars: Though this may not be as extreme as other Disney movies, one issue in this movie really bothers me. The character of Mater in this movie pretty much represents someone who has a disability. They made this character with a lisp, a little bit dumber than the rest of the characters and just an outsider. They also did everything to make him look as unattractive as possible.

Disney does anything but enhance the learning of our children. In almost every, if not every, Disney movie, there are stereotypes that we can no longer overlook but start to only notice more malevolent actions Disney brings to the big screen.