Saturday, December 2, 2017
Blog #3- Influence of Mass Media
Taylor Foerster
Blog #3
Blog #3- Influence of Mass Media
My final blog post is inspired by Banet-Weiser’s article We the People. The statement I chose was “Commercial media play a pivotal role in creating cultural definitions about what it means to be a citizen-indeed, our sense of ourselves as national citizens emerges from our engagement with the popular media.” Mass media has always been an extremely powerful tool, and its influence grows stronger with each generation. Myself and the rest of the ‘Z Generation’ grew up with mass media being a pretty large part of our lives. Everyone watched the same TV shows and movies, and looking back, it’s impact was very pretty profound in a lot of ways. What I noticed most as a kid, was how strongly kids reflected television personalities, jokes and opinions. To an extent, everyone can’t help but mimic the world they see, even without mass media. However kids are clearly more vulnerable. As a kid, everyone was impacted by mass media in a way that felt very transparent and saturated (myself included). Sometimes, it felt like it was to an extent where children’s personalities were just carbon copies of ones seen on TV, as if they’re personal identity never had a true chance to be refined by themselves.
One example of this comes from a friend I had in 4th grade. Deep down, she was a good person. However she came off very bratty, and almost every aspect of her character seemed like an impression of the character Miley, from Hannah Montana. In a lot of ways, this influence can have both good and bad potential. And no matter what it raises the truth of how much responsibility mass media distributors of children’s content have.
A lot of the kid’s content I see today appear much more conscious of this. A popular show amongst kids (and adults) today is Steven Universe. I’ve actually watched most of this show all the way through, and it presents itself as a lot more dedicated to the influence of its audience then most of the TV I was raised on. In a lot of ways, most kids can feel represented watching Steven Universe. In my first blog post I ranted about how a lot of the characters I grew up with were (subtly) racially segregated. Not only is the opposite true with SU, but the writers even have a protagonist that even challenges the standards of masculinity. Though people should continue discussing the power of mass media, I’m definitely excited for the future of kids shows.
Blog #2- How Men Oppress Men
Taylor Foerster
Blog Post
Blog #2- How Men Oppress Men
For this post, I’ve chosen a passage from what may be the most personal read of the semester for myself so far. Gomez’s ‘Man Up’, which is a read about the expectations of masculinity men have and do undergo. “Men are not allowed to be afraid.” This is true in a wide range of ways. This article revealed a lot of frustrations and feelings I have, and had a lasting effect on me. To begin, I feel it’s important to mention that men aren’t as oppressed as everyone else. However I believe that a core piece of understanding how and why other cultures are oppressed can be reached by discussing ‘toxic masculinity’. Or better put, the societal expectations and norms of manhood and strength men are expected to follow.
Ironically enough, where most oppressed groups are oppressed by those in power, men are ultimately oppressed by other men. A lot of this article was routed in the idea of fear, and how it’s weak for men to have, or especially display fear. The modern standards of masculinity have greatly improved. However it’s still true that a lot of men feel obligated to act tough, and not show emotion. To me, the idea of people naturally swallowing feelings and perpetuating a standard of numbness is extremely dangerous in a very dimensional way.
In a lot of ways, society values masculinity over femininity. Recently I’ve learned that, statistically, gay women are called in for more interviews then gay men. Part of me thinks that this is because society can be more comfortable seeing masculine traits in women, than feminine traits in men. Either way I’m glad we were asked to read this article, and very happy its a topic people are talking about.
Blog #1: Segregation in Mass Media
Taylor Foerster
Blog Post
Blog #1: Segregation in Mass Media
Hello! I’m Taylor Foerster, and welcome to my first post on my blog. The sentence I’ve chosen that has stuck with me was “Keeping whiteness an invisible and unscrutinized presence reproduces unequal power lines rather than disrupting them”. This was taken from “Between Speech and Silence: Reflections on Accountability”, by Ann Russo. This is a rather powerful idea, and worth blogging about for my first post. Russo managed an impressively complex essay, in which she discussed feminism, privilege, color, and much more. She eventually continues on the differences white people and minorities face. The passage I’ve chosen makes me think of two things: Caucasian being an invisible trait, and how it’s “not discussed”.
Growing up, my self-identity solely revolved around me being a person (for the most part). This was a very subconsciously liberating identity to have. An important topic Russo brings up, is that many minorities will grow up not thinking of themselves as a person, but as a black person, or latinx person, etc. I’m white, but I’ve never identified as such. To a certain extent, many minorities aren’t given the privilege of identifying as a person, before a ‘black person’.
This happens for a lot of reasons, however I think a large component that perpetuates this attitude is mass media, especially children’s media. Growing up, there were many TV shows I watched that subtly segregated white people and minorities. Though subtle (like most modern racism is), my sister and I grew up with little to no exposure to anything non-caucasian. Of Disney Channel’s most successful and watched shows, Hannah Montana has to be one of the most credited. This is a good example of subtle segregation for many reasons. The show took place in California, which contains the most minorities out of most U.S. states. Despite this, most characters in the show were white. If there were black characters, it was rare, or they were in the background.
Disney Channel still had shows with minorities, but most of the time they were for minorities only. Meaning Disney marketed white shows separately from black or latinx shows. It was rare to see a show where black and white characters were distributed equally.
I’m really only scratching the surface. There’s still prominent themes of subtle segregation in modern mass media, which is a conversation often left undiscussed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)