Final Reflection

Blog 10

Before taking this class I did not know much about the stereotypes, oppression, and racism found in the media today. I guess you could say I never thought about it or open my eyes to realize it. I am so happy that I took this course because there were so many things that I was able to learn through out my semester. Ideology and hegemony is something everyone should learn, because it helps decode the environment we are living in and absorbing. It helps when one questions what they see in order to get a better understanding of truths. For instance, if girls and women knew that the images they see everyday of skinny, sexy females is a fictional reality, then less disorders, such as, anorexia, bulimia, and depression will decrease among the population.

Retrieved from

            Looking into video games and what people go through when experiencing the game was an eye opener also. I never knew that the Marines used the video game Doom as a training and disentwining mechanism for war, and a lot of people in the world play it for fun. It was also crazy to see racism and oppression towards females and other ethnic groups. Usually main characters are white, and, if one is playing a combat game, one will be shooting at another race with a white hand. Also, females are portrayed as big boobed, tiny waste, and have a very sexual appeal to them to arouse their gamers. There is not one female character, besides Princess Peach, who is not very sexually explicit.

            Needless to say, there are many things about gender, race, and class in the media that can be learned if one stops to recognize and open their eyes to it. Most of the population (mainly white people) believe that what they see in the media is true or the way life is, but in actuality the media world is very different than the real world. To get to know the real world, people need to turn off electronics and look outside.

Gay Communities are Becoming More Prevalent in the Media World

90210's Teddy Gay Character

Will and Grace

Blog 9

           In the documentary Further Off the Straight and Narrow the director shows how gays are booming and becoming more prevalent on television today. On cable television, homosexuals can be more divers and open to new characteristics unlike network television. On network television homosexuals must abide by the rules to be a “normal” (heterosexual) gay character, otherwise, the character will be casted as a joke. The television show Will & Grace (1998-2006) started the popularity with a homosexual cast; although the show was a success, the gay men in the show never had sexual explicit scenes. The gay men were never seen kissing another man or having a sexual relationship with another man. The show also did not have a gay community, it was largely based of off a relationship between a man (Will) and a woman (Grace). Will & Grace is a show that followed the rules to be a “normal” gay character on network television. Other shows on network television have gay characters, but the gay characters are rarely the main character. In 90210 (2010), a guy named Teddy came out of the closet. Before he came out of the closet, Teddy was in a lot of episodes and was becoming a main character. After his character came out, Teddy has been seen less in the episodes. Although Teddy is seen less now, the show does have Teddy kiss another man on network television, which fights the rules of a “normal” gay character a little; however, Teddy is still this macho, masculine character and not a “floozy”. According to Jay Clarkson, to normalize a gay character is to portray them as “’real men’, but their strategy for confronting homophobia is limited to challenging the conflation of gender and sexuality, and does not seek acceptance for those who degrees of transgression are higher. It does not challenge the fear or hatred of gayness” (2011, p.340).

            Having cable television helps the gay community a lot, because they are not dependent on advertiser to produce their show. Shows like The L word and Queer Eye for The Straight Guy can be more expressive and realistic. The L word portrays lesbians and the troubles they encounter in their everyday life. The L Word also shows lesbian sexuality: sex scenes, kisses, relationship issues and so on. The L Word became a break through for the gay community, even though some of the things shown gay members do not agree with, they will still watch the show because it is the only thing close to their lives and what they go through. These break out television shows are just the beginning. Since the 1990’s the gay community has been trying to become more prevalent and rightfully stigmatized. The gay community has successfully been trying to come out and it is going to keep getting better for them, since this era is about equality. Once viewers are used to seeing gay characters and story lines, then the issue of wrong stereotypes and not having a main character that’s gay eliminated. However, trying to make a transgender become more visible is the next fight to take on. Transgenders are barely seen in the media, except for when MTV’s the Real World casted a transgender.

References

Clarkson, J. (2011). The limitations of the discourse of norms: gay visibility and degrees of
           transgression. In Dines, G. & Humez J. M. (Ed.). Gender, race, and, class in media (pp.
           335-40). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage

Sender, K. (director). (2006). Further off the straight and narrow: New gay visibility on television 
            1998-2006 [Documentary].

Working Class- The Classic Idiot

Blog 8

Click to go where the photo was retrieved from

The media is filled with stereotypes, and the one thing that never gets old is the working class idiot (as seen on the Simpsons, Family Guy, King of Queens, The Office, and so on). “Studies of comic strips, radio serials, television series, movies, and popular fiction reveal a very persistent pattern, underrepresenting working-class occupations and overrepresenting professional and marginal occupations, minimizing the visibility of the working class” (Butsch, p. 101). The working class is said to be taboo because no one talks about it unless it is the middle or upper class. The media wants to produce settings with lavish stuff to get people wanting to live lavishly like their favorite television show. However, when the media does script a working class family, the main character (mainly the dad) is a complete idiot.

Click to go where the photo was retrieved from

            In Family Guy, the father, Peter, is a working man trying to provide food for their family. However, Peter is said to be diagnosed as a retard in the show (only a couple time it has came up). Peter is also a belligerent drunk and likes to get into stupid schemes. In other shows, such as, The King of Queens, Doug is also a working man at a UPS delivery type of job. Doug is seen as the funny man and does stupid things to make people laugh. Doug is the comedy in the show, and so is Peter the comedy of the show. Other types of shows and movies with working class introduced seem to have a common theme the idiot. Do the media conglomerates believe people in the working class are stupid, lazy, and obnoxious? Although these characters make us all laugh, couldn’t there be more of a realistic representation of the working class out there? The real representations are barely visible. In the movie Maid in Manhattan, Jennifer Lopez plays a working woman, Marissa, who is a maid at a hotel. Marissa is shown as a hard working woman and will do anything to get ahead for a better life for her and her son. In the media there are realistic views of the working class; however, realistic views of the working class is hard to find and recognize since it is so taboo.

 

Maid in Manhattan

            In order to see more realism and less fictional stereotypes of the working class, people may not feel embarrassed they are part of the working class. Since the working class is taboo because no one wants to talk about, then eliminating the negative stereotypes will allow people to open up more. We need to eliminate:

…[the] attitude based on the presumption that these sitcoms repeated again and again-that this man is dumb, immature, irresponsible, lacking common sense, often frustrated and sometimes angry. This legitimates his low pay and close supervision at work... It is that disrespect that is the ultimate “hidden injury” that working class interviews expressed… (Butsch, p.107).

By eliminating the stereotype sitcoms represent of the working class, the working class then may feel appreciated and well represented opposed to underappreciated and underrepresented.

References

Butsch, R. Ralph, Fred, Archie, Homer, and the King of Queens: Why television keeps re-creating
           the male working-class buffoon. In Dines, G. & Humez J. M. (Ed.). Gender, race, and, class in 
           media (pp. 101-9). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage.

Video Games and the Violence Behind It.

Blog 7

Are people becoming more violent due to video games? Video games are becoming more prevalent in households. About 90% of households have video games and an average of an hour worth kids are playing video games everyday (Hutemann). Consumers of video games invest their emotions and the main characters become more real, because the consumers believe they are the ones actually doing it. The more real the video game looks the more real it is going to become for the players. Even the Marines use the video game Doom to desensitize themselves for actual combat war. Killing and seeing a lot of blood and gory, for the Marines, in the video game Doom provides training and conditioning for the Marines.

Doom

Since the Marines use the video game Doom as conditioning, training, and desensitizing along side with trainers telling them what is right and wrong, what about the rest of the population who play the video game for fun and no one telling them what is right or wrong? Is the rest of the population assumed to not become desensitized and supposed to know automatically what is right or wrong? I do not think so; otherwise, the Marines would not need supervision while playing the video game. If this video game and other video games help desensitize their consumers to killing and seeing gore then this may help with the rising numbers in violence. In video games, people are not shown about remorse for killing or hurting someone/thing, but, instead, are given point for the most people someone kills. Killing now becomes a rewarding mechanism to consumers. Just one of my blogs below, Tough Guys, men act out how they believe is considered macho and masculine. Hurting or killing someone is a way to show respect. Could this notion also been drawn out from video games and not just movies, television, and advertisements? Although there is no factual truth about video games making people more violent, there might be an underline of desensitization of the violence that occurs if someone routinely plays Doom, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and so many more games.

References

Huntemann, Nina (Producer). (2007). Game over: Gender, race, and violence in video games.

DVD

Racism In The Media

Blog 6

          When it comes to mainstream television, stereotypes are always going to be prevalent among all communities, classes, races, and genders. African Americans have been depicted as maids (slave, caregiver), natives (“savage”), and clowns (minstrel) on American television since the 1950’s. In shows, such as Amos & Andy, there is an underline of racism through the shows. African American characters are stereotyped as the clown, crook, and lazy in Amos & Andy and many other shows. There are few television shows on African Americans and their family values, way of life, and so on. It is very important how television shows portray African Americans because everything the public absorbs will start to think the negative stereotypes are true (real). In television shows today, such as The Game and Everybody Hates Chris, the stereotypes have remained but in a more implicit way.

Photo retrieved from

            In Everybody Hates Chris, the main characters still have the maid/slave, “savage”, and clown/minstrel stereotypes. Chris’s father Julius has two jobs to make sure the household has money, but most of the jobs Julius takes on are janitorial and assistant jobs. Janitorial and assistant jobs are a resemblance to be being a maid or slave to someone since they are working for someone. The “savage” stereotype character comes from Chris’s mother Rochelle who is short tempered, humorously sassy, cranky, and strict. Lastly, the Clown stereotype character is Chris. Chris is always the butt of the jokes, he is very unlucky which means he always end up in bad situations, and he wants to be a comedic in the end. In older shows, such as Amos and Andy, the stereotypes are made more clear and present, but, nowadays, the stereotypes seem to be more implicit. Shockingly, the stereotypes are still present today even after so many years of trying to get over racism and oppression. The African American community is stuck with “…naturalized representations of events and situations relating to race, whether ‘factual’ or ‘fictional’, which have racist premises and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions” (Hall, p.83).

References

Hall, S. (2011). The white of their eyes: Racist ideologies and the media. In Dines, G. & Humez J. M.
           (Ed.). Gender, race, and, class in media (pp. 81-84). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage

Good link to check out: http://www.thedefendersonline.com/2010/01/29/my-top-10-african-american-tv-shows-of-all-time/

Tough Guys Act

Blog 5

Jackson Katz believes masculinity should be designated as a public health hazard because there is a hard distinction between masculinity and violence. Katz’s documentary Tough Guise: Violence, Media, & the Crises in Masculinity talks about how men wear a mask to hide their vulnerability. Tough guise is a word Katz created as a metaphor for the “front that so many men put up that is based on extreme notion of masculinity that emphasizes on toughness, physical strength, and gaining respect and admiration from others through violence or implicit threat of it” (katz, 1999). The tough guise act can be hazardous to the public because there is a lot of pressure to act tough, and this means violent acts come out of the tough guy act. 85% of people who commit murder are men, 90% assault reports are committed by men, 95% of domestic violence are committed by men, 95% of dating violence are committed by men and teen boys, 95% of sexual child abuse are committed by men, and 99% of rapes are committed by men (Jhally, 1999).  These numbers could be high due to the stigma of a masculine male, and in order for men to seem masculine and dominant they must act out in violent way to gain “respect”. It is sad to say that little boys grow up knowing what it means to be a masculine man, and try to carry out these masculine traits in order to feel accepted by the public. Males keep the front of a tough guy act because they do not want to be seen as a “bitch”, “queer”, “pussy”, “fag”, and “mama’s boy” (Jhally, 1999). All the negative names men get for not being macho are girly ones, and no man wants to feel they are equivalent and weak as a female.

The media shows what it means to be a masculine man by showing buffed guys (WWE stars), boxing as a sport (giving praise to beating someone up), gang movies (such as, Good Fellas, American Gangster, The God Father, and so on), the role of a jock (mean, bully) and much more. “Since the late 1990’s, there has been growing attention paid in media and cultural studies to the power of cultural images of masculinity” (katz, p.261). The media has created what a masculine man should be and act, and the media, also, kept creating the same images and actions over and over in different forms which, then, instills the notion of what it means to be a man to everyone. If everyone had media literacy knowledge, then people will not take everything they see from the media as factual and, instead, question it.

I agree with Katz that the “tough guise” act should be taken serious as a possible health hazard. The media stigmatized males how to be tough and violent to receive respect, which could be the reason why reported abuse and rapes committed by males are extremely high. Seeing all the “masculine” male roles in the media, I believe, definitely could have affected males’ thoughts on how to act. Most of the time, when people see something on television and like the outcome, those people will then act out that same thing in their daily lives in hopes of the same outcome. The media could clam down the masculine, macho guy and make room for the calm, real respectable man, and then maybe the notion of masculine and violence can be distinguished as separate.

References

Jhally, S. (director). (1999). Tough guise: Violence, media, and crises in masculinity

[Documentary]

Katz, J. (2011). Advertizing and the construction of violent white masculinity: From BMWs to

Bud Light. In G. Dines & J. Humez (Ed.). Gender, race, and class in media: A critical reader (pp. 261-9). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kid Photo Retrieved from http://www.sodahead.com/living/are-americas-boys-more-confined-

by-gender-stereotypes-than-girlsvideo/question-1796441/?link=ibaf&q=&imgurl=http://oldsuptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/april10/musclekid.jpg

WWE Photo Retrieved from

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=G45XH1kaT65bJM:&imgrefurl=http://www.pimpmyspace.org/comments/code/201532/&docid=0qSDinfGB6YgTM&imgurl=http://cdn.pimpmyspace.org/media/pms/c/8b/b1/1y/wwe.png&w=464&h=360&ei=cZDVToLFAeXLsQLLhaWHDw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=984&vpy=353&dur=406&hovh=198&hovw=255&tx=232&ty=149&sig=105670646833120343828&page=5&tbnh=123&tbnw=157&start=80&ndsp=19&ved=1t:429,r:12,s:80&biw=1280&bih=649

Pornography In the Everyday Life

Blog 4

Pornography is becoming more prevalent and normalized in the twenty-first century. However, the issue of child pornography or teen pornography is quite taboo. It is very hard to find any information on what the main idea behind teen porn is. No matter how one can type the subject into a search engine, as soon as the words teen and pornography are in the search engine the computer screen becomes filled with hundreds of different types of young teen pornography sites. Teen or child pornography is pornographic material featuring under-age participants. According to Wikipedia, child pornography is one of the fastest growing criminal activities on the Internet. Although child pornography is illegal, it is one of the most viewed genres of pornography. To get around the legal issues of this highly in demand genre of pornography, producers will do two things to avoid prosecution for making these videos. Producers make their videos across national borders, and, also, find actors that look very young and dress them in clothes that younger people wear. They do this because they really want to give off the idea that the actor is underage. By doing this, producers are not breaking any laws and are still getting the footage they need to make a video or photographs. 

The question is why is teen pornography in such high demand?  According to some research, the majority of teen pornography viewers are older individuals. Some individuals were asked why they liked to watch this type of genre in pornography, and they said “that being older than the actor portrayed as the teen in the video, it makes me feel empowered because I am older” (Interviewee, 2011). In an article, Sexy Thrills: Understanding the Erotic Thriller by Martin, K., someone said that watching teen pornography is like living a fantasy that they have, because being older they are no longer able to get someone interested in them that is good looking and younger. According to Jane Caputi:

When women demand and express their intellectual, sexual, and emotional freedom, society responds with both overtly woman-hating representations as well as the increased sexualization of children. In pornography, women are marked with clothing and hairstyles to suggest that they are children or teenagers. Everyday porn also shows women in poses and clothing that suggest they are little girls (2011, p. 314).

Women in the porn industries are actively playing the role of a young person in order to arouse their audience. I can not come to terms that these women are portraying a teen or child as a sexual object and understand the underline of it. I think teen and child pornography should be off limits and is disgusting. Not once have I ever wanted to be the “naughty school girl” for Halloween like most girls. Everyone is growing up with the notion of being the “naughty school girl” is hot, which is why it can be acceptable but, yet, these girls and women are not looking at the bigger picture of what they are doing and portraying. These women and girls just want to seem hot, arouse their audience, and, hopefully, make some money (in certain cases), so doing whatever it takes to be accepted by the male audience will be done. However, it would be nice to see the child and teen porn disappear for ethical reasoning.

References

Caputi, J. (2011). The pornography of everyday life. In G. Dines & J. Humez (Ed.). Gender, race, and

            class in media (pp. 311-320). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage.

Love’s Baby Soft Photo Retrieved from

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&tbm=isch&tbnid=cc4gF49uY8e8cM:&imgrefurl=http://byebyepie.typepad.com/bye_bye_pie/2010/11/pieces-of-wisdom-wednesday-whats-that-smell.html&docid=n0zF_5XE3xwRaM&imgurl=http://byebyepie.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54f9367fb88340133f5bb5081970b-800wi&w=392&h=550&ei=xK3VTpPKFtOI2gXCza2MAQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&dur=856&sig=105670646833120343828&page=3&tbnh=133&tbnw=94&start=47&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:47&tx=110&ty=111&vpx=460&vpy=190&hovh=266&hovw=189&biw=1280&bih=649

Martin, N. K. (2007). Sexy Thrills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
            Press. Print.

School Girl Photo Retrieved from http://aewl.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/school-girl.jpg

Wikipedia.com (20110. Child pornography. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org
            /wiki/Child_pornography