Quote: “Perhaps one of the greatest injustices that film and television commit, for us as people trying to make relationships work, these storytellers imply that relationships are easy. Even under the most horrible circumstances, love appears to conquer all.” (Warren Fassett, 200)
During the past semester in my communication and culture course we have been looking a lot at how our culture and what we as people in a a culture shapes us. When I was reading chapter ten in our text the quote above really stood out to me as something that relates to something we have been discussing all semester but this example really clicked for me. Where I grew up and went to high school in Western Washington there are predominantly white people so the people on tv pretty much matched my reality, there for when we looked at race as it is not well represented on television I had a hard time understanding what we were talking about because I had never really noticed it before. However when the subject changed to relationships and how they are painted different on the television screen than in real life things started to make sense. In a way you could say the puzzle pieces started coming together for me.
As a young child, I grew up on Disney Channel. At age nine Hannah Montana was my favorite television show and I watched it religiously. However in the show everyone was usually happy with each other and if they weren’t then the would fight for a day and then make up the very next day and everything was fine. If someone made a mistake consequences followed them maybe for a second, but not long. The real world is different though; if your parents get divorced you are not okay or fine the next day, if someone says hurtful things to you they don’t just leave a scar on you for one episode. The real world has more hurt, pain, anxiety, depression, and so much more. Love doesn't conquer all in just seconds, healing takes time, and there is no such thing as a perfect relationship. People still hurt, even when yu can’t see it from the outside; and that is just something that Hannah Montana, nor any other television show can express or teach us.
It was through my understanding of the fact the television can not completely portray real relationships, that I started to understand how many other people feel and see that they do not portray many other things accurately. One race of culture cannot be accurately depicted over television because not all people of one race or culture are the exact same, just like no relationship is the exact same as one on screen.
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