This sentence came from chapter 15, seeing and making culture. More specifically the piece was looking into the way that media effects culture. This literature was very specific and identified one type of culture and how they have been constantly portrayed and stereotyped in vast amounts of media. In regards to the underprivileged or lower class this is something that must be very hard to break within the views of society. The reason that this topic caught my attention so much was due to the overall way that media portrays situations and we never question a lot of the actions. For example in class we watched a video that took this topic even farther and examined Disney as a company. In this examination many revealing findings came out and aspects that I would have never even noticed before. For example, in the beauty and the beast the woman is continually abused by the beast and she forgives him and in the end finds a way to love him. When critically examining this it shows that girls should allow men to abuse them and in the end they will change. This gives women the idea that they should stay in the relationship no matter how they are being treated. When we watch Disney at first glance this is not something that we think about, but when taking a different perspective we can see that their are hidden messages that might not be the best for kids watching these movies. While doing more research on this topic one of the things that kept coming up was the way that the media portrays individuals with mental illness. We continually see these people being portrayed as crazy, dangerous and people that we should take all action to stay away from. We often even see these people in horror movies or haunted houses used to be scary or people that we should run from. US News wrote an article on this topic and stated when we educate ourselves on this topic we can truly "distinguish between fact and fiction, stereotype and reality and the characters onscreen vs. our real life peers". By doing this we can actually realize that individuals with mental illness are not all criminals and violent. The most important thing to keep in mind with all of this is no two people are exactly alike and therefor we should not treat people this way. After researching and discussing this in class the topic really stood out to me due to the fact that I never knew it was an issue. This is something that for me I can now see was a problem and that is why I wanted to write on this topic. Now when I watch TV, movies or consume any type of media no matter what reputation a company has, like disney who is supposed to be a fun experience for kids, I should not take everything at face value. Continuing to be critical will make sure that I am not conforming to false assumptions on individuals in society. I hope that more people begin to realize that this is an issue and begin to look deeper into what they are consuming on a media perspective.
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