Looking Back

The past semester has really been an eye-opener for how much media surrounds be daily life. The 7-9 hours of media exposure bombard me with hundreds of ads. But the overall effect of this media on my life is that the media begins to almost build up a culture of its own around me, surrounding me with ideas that benefit the media rather than society. It's almost like shaders but for the human eyes only allowing you to see below the surface. Miss representation is an amazing example of the effect media has had on me, specifically my outlook on the world. Companies such as Disney create a culture by shaping young impressionable minds into believing that it's natural to have young women seen as sexual objects of desire.
But my awareness of the media around me and the techniques they use will help me to look at situations the media presents to me and analyze them to comprehend their full intent. This will primarily help with advertising being able to look behind the brand and societal norms that have been formed around this brand as well as seeing what the actual product is selling. I'm now able to tell if I want to buy the product based on the product rather than the culture surrounding the company. My newly acquired skills will also help me dive further into political opinions appealing to certain emotional appeals in order for support.
Overall, this course helped me see the world media presents clearly with my own view rather than the one they want me to see. My media consumption habits have been changed this semester by this course and I have begun using much less media then I used to. It was such an eye-opener when I finally looked at my phone usage and it totaled up to about 9-11 hours a day. I'm proud to say that now my average has been lowered to about 7 hours per day. It's still high but improvement doesn't happen overnight. But more importantly I actually looked into any product that I was buying or any media scheme I was following making sure that when purchasing something at a store rather than the concept. This media literacy is extremely important in order to have e clear view of what's happening in the world around us. Without media literacy, we would let the media have full control of our world. Becoming an educated consumer helps us to see beyond the high status that companies wants you to buy and see the actual product that company is selling. More than anything, it makes me think twice because its extremely easy to purchase something on amazon with an impulse decision. From this class, I've become more aware of the world that surrounds me even though its changing rapidly. In all honesty it was a bit of a shock to realize that the little tweaks and quirks commercials have can have an effect on whether the consumer buys the product or not.
For example yellow is seen as a happy color because of so many things associated with it so if you put a sunset yellow theme in your commercial or advertisement, it's likely more people will flock to this product. However if you put a less appealing color such as a dark green, it may attract less people because its not as visually appealing. This is my takeaway from the Media blogs. It was a way to help me polish my glasses to see the up-in coming world even more clearly.


 

     

 

Miss Representation's Misstakes

The validity of the statistics

After watching MissRepresentations, it was pretty clear to me that the idea of women through mainstream media has been corrupted and now women are displayed as objects of lust a desire for men. I also agree that the next generation needs to be raised to think of women differently. They threw so many statistics and supporting details involving numbers on how the media has negatively impacted the minds of many young women across the country. The one thing that I wondered is with all these statistics they've given us, how many are accurate to what they entail. Although it does bring the problem of the mindset towards women to attention, I can't dismiss that some of these statistics may be exaggerated to fir the needs of the documentary. One of the most shocking statistics given 78% of the women at the age of 17 are unhappy with their bodies. The vagueness of this one statement was enough to put me on edge. If they had added a supporting detail of how unhappy they were then it would have been more believable. However all they said was that these women were unhappy with their body. This one statement is so vague because being unhappy with your body could vary in everything from physically harming themselves because of the way their body is to just simply being uncomfortable with who they really are. Due to the vagueness of this statement, I want to see for comparison what the statistic for men is since everyone has insecurities in one form or another.

Black Mirror Review

Episode 1

Mr. Masincupp introduced to us as a class a new series and after giving us a brief summary about what the show is about, I stayed up until 12am that night because after i finished my homework I decided to watch an episode and I haven’t been able to stop watching. Heres a brief summary if the first episode. This is a world where every interaction could change your fate forever. Everyone has a score from 0-5. Your average rating could determine if you’re qualified for a job or if you are allowed to buy a house in a certain area of town. Often people of middle class are around a 4-4.4 average rating. The elites are around 4.6 and above. These are the upper class citizens that live in mansions with high paying jobs. The character of this episode, is Lacie Pound.  She wants to buy a luxurious house in a more expensive neighborhood but she cannot afford the weekly payments. However if she reaches a 4.5, she can qualify for a 20% discount. While figuring out what to do, her childhood bully reaches out to her asking her to be the maid of honor at her wedding. They’re both extremely fake to each other and both are only in it for the points. She plans to give a tear-jerking speech where all the prime members (the elites)  attending the wedding will all give her a resounding reviews. Basically yelp but for humans.
For me, the most interesting part was the end of the episode and how Ironic it was. She ended up getting to the wedding after a 9 our truck ride due to the flights being canceled and uninvited to the wedding. After being arrested, she insults a man in the cell next to her as he stares at her for a creepy amount of time. What’s interesting is that while she’s in this cell, she begins to speak her mind because she stops caring about what others think. It’s Ironic because while physically she’s imprisoned, mentally she’s been set free.

The Mooks and Midriffs that raised me

The Mooks and Midriffs that raised me

I grew up like many kids watching shows of channel 226 on the Disney channel, cartoon network, and sometimes even Nickelodeon. After watching the frontline episode "Merchants of Cool," I realized that many of the personalities I watched as a child were based around these types of characters. They were often the goofy character that was always doing dumb things to appeal to audience. I reflected on the personalities that I had watched every day from 2:30-4:30 at my grandma's house waiting for my mom to get off of work and taking a trip down memory lane was a different experience than watching nostalgia compilations at 3am in the morning. I thought about all the characters in the shows that I had watched that were based around Mooks or Midriffs and realized there was a lot more than I expected. To my surprise, some of my favorite characters from my favorite shows had been a Mook or a Midriff. Then I started thinking about what the show would be without these personalities and in all honesty, they'd be quite boring, and not as playful as a show designed for children should be. This is how many television companies keep their watchers loyal. These characters were what made the show interesting and even though they were often side characters in the shows, they would always somehow find a way to make themselves noticed. Besides the often childish storyline, the main factor that separates children shows from shows meant from adults is these childish personalities that appeal to the child inside of you and even as an a teenager or young adult still find new ways to amuse you.

Do 9 Year Olds Need An Iphone XsMax

Do 9 Year Olds Need An Iphone XsMax

This weekend I attended the wildlife camp 4H On the Wild Side. This camp was high up on the mountains of Nevada City where this weekend it was pouring rain. This was a camp for 4th-6th graders from public schools for kids to learn about biology and the environment. They chose to attend this camp which specified that there was no cell service and they were here to learn about biological topics chose by the staff here. Which is why I was so surprised by the fact that a majority of the kids were so uninterested in the curriculum. Actually you know what I take it back because I most likely would be daydreaming as well if I was there age so that part I could understand. However the thing that surprised me the most were the amount of kids that were on their cell phones playing games or trying to find service. I thought, rather I had hoped that these kids would bring out some card game or board game or even just talk to their classmates about something, anything. Instead they all pulled out their phones and started playing some video game. The thing that baffled me most was that each of these kids had an iPhone 8 and above. One of the kids in my cabin even had an iPhone XsMax. I have the same phone and I already feel guilty for having such an expensive phone but for someone 7 years younger than me. I remember my first phone was when I was at promotion from 6th grade to 7th grade. After a year of begging my parents finally decided to get me a phone. It was a green iPhone 5c which had already come out for 2 years. It wasn't a terrible phone but it was already more advanced than I needed. Seeing these kids makes me cringe a bit to wonder what was going through their parents' heads when buying their 9 year old child a phone worth the price of a laptop while they're still in grade school.

Asian Community on the Rise

Asian Representation in Movies

 Not to sound like a complete social justice warrior or anything but I really appreciate that the Asian community is getting a larger role in the movie  Industry. I honestly remember thinking a few years ago about how Asians are sort of like the punching bags of society. Not just in movies where  often they are the laughingstock of the entire film but outside the movie sets as well. When some racist comment was made back in 2015-2016, Specifically towards Asians, everyone would just go along with the joke and nobody stood up or commented or even said hey that’s a little bit racist. Other minority groups would often get a bit more respect  and someone would speak out against any racist comments even if it was purely a joke. It honestly bothered me that at the time,  I am most likely wouldn’t have done anything myself. I let myself believe that I was deserving of these comments just because of my ethnicity.
Not even in just the movie industry but also on social media platforms just Instagram and Twitter, I’ve seen those of Asian ethnicities stand up an out rage against not reall not even in just the movie industry but also on social media platforms just Instagram and Twitter, I’ve  seen the Asian community and out rage due to the inconsiderate and  flat out racist behaviors from those of other ethnicities. With all that said let’s get back to the main point of the movie industry.  Shows and movies such as fresh off the boat, to all the boys I’ve loved before, and crazy Rich Asians has given the Asian community an opportunity  of relevance in the near future. I think the goal is to get these movies to not be  predominately white males and to mix it up a bit. Possibly thats just a bias because of my heritage but I would be much more eager to see a movie where the main role wasn’t the stereotypical cis gender straight white male. Movie companies can actually take advantage of this and encourage a larger audience to see their movies.

Too Cool for Skool

Merchants of “Cool”


 Although merchants of cool was a documentary made into thousand and one, it still seems like these are parents trying to crack a code of teenagers When in reality they’re making it more complicated than it should be.  I believe that each generation has their own definition of “cool.”  Back in high school, my dad wore a leather jacket and drove around his motorcycle. In the eyes of my mom, she was “the coolest kid on the block”  which still makes me laugh today because these were her exact words. I believe that there’s a boundary  between how much parents can’t understand about the children of this generation. Each generation has split and one generation cannot fully comprehend that of another because they aren’t immersed in the culture and environment as said generation.  Since even in 2001,  A majority of the economy is made up of teenagers. So companies often try to break their way into the “cool” environment In order to better market their products.  Finding the trendsetters  what is the main point of the documentary so far but in today’s culture I’m not so sure teenagers even use this term anymore..
 The reason I say there’s a split between generations is because every time  I have to explain a joke to my mom or dad multiple times before they actually understand.  Just approve my own theory I did a little experiment with my dad and tried to explain to him what a flex was. It took us about 35 minutes and if I had a dollar for every time he asked me why? I might be able to afford that new car I want.  He asked me for an example of what a “flex”  was and I explained to him Yeezy‘s were a flex. After showing  him a picture, he was more confused than when he first asked. His response was “these shoes shouldn’t be worth nearly as much as they’re sold for. Why would someone spend so much money on shoes? All you do is walk in them.”  I couldn’t explain why people would want to wear this and could only tell him it wasn’t about how it looks but the status it gives you.  As I was writing this, he agreed with my ideology that this was a cycle in which the generations have a split.He said even when he was a teenager and was riding his motorcycle, his parents would still question his decision saying how it was just another mode of transportation but more dangerous.  The reason these larger companies are successful in their marketing and selling of their products is because  heads of advertisement departments are paid to understand the culture to the best of their ability and produce products that cater to the needs of the consumers.