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blog 11 Jour 4250

Today was about Disney and how their movies show particular races and social orders. 

One group talked about the hierarchy that exists in the “Lion King”. This is how the lions are the top of the food chain and that they can be equated with white people and Mufasa can be thought as a white man hold all the power in the land. An idea that came up during discussion was that Nala was stronger and a better fighter than Simba, but when Scar was defeated at the end of the movie, Simba was given the role of King because of the tradition that was in place that only the men could have the power. The hyenas were also a topic of discussion because they were symbolized as the bottom of the food chain and they had voices and accents that would be perceived as inner city black people from New York. This would give the symbolism that only white could have power and other minorities could not because of the “Circle of Life”. While I can see these themes that come from the discussion of the movie, I can’t judge the movie because it has always been my favorite Disney movie since I was little. 

We also watched a documentary about the monopoly that Disney would become even though the film came out in either the late 90s or early 2000s with Tarzan I think being the latest movie at the time of the documentary. There were ideas that I already knew about how the marketing of Disney movies were very successful regardless if the movie was success at the theater. They have so much power, and like said in the documentary, people are afraid that if someone was to speak badly in any sort of way that they could be sued and not have the strength to fight back. Then with all of the mergers that they have done today. Disney may be the strongest company to date and people like in the documentary would challenge Disney may not be heard because of the strength that they have.

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blog 10 Jour 4250

This class we discussed about Latinos in the media industry.

The reading discussion had to do with the idea of using the different terms of illegal immigrant and uncdoucmented worker. While most people think these are two different terms, in reality they mean the same. Most people think that the illegal is someone who is a criminal coming over the border for exile and the worker a person who works in America but is having a little trouble with getting over the border. There is this massive negativity toward the illegals since they are presented so poorly in media. 

We then watched a documentary about Latinos in the film industry over the past several decades. Even since the beginning of film, Latinos are seen as savages who are only looking for white women and finding trouble. The same idea can be presented with the modern stereotype of the Mexican gangster who is involved with drugs and the sort. The only positive spotlight I could see for Hispanics were the very early Latino actors of the 1930s and spy kids. The only film that I can think of that has a majority Latinos cast and gives a positive light to them is the Spy Kids movies. The first one was released only in 2001. Overall this is a very late period for a movie like this to occur. There obviously needs an overhaul on how Latinos are represented.

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blog 9 Jour 4250

We discussed about twilight, the bachelor, sweet 16, and watched ““Get Out”.

It is not surprising the problems that came up during discussion with the twilight movie. I personally thought they were never good to start with an the archetypes that come out are not surprising. The fact that Edward is shown to have the power over Bella is very cliche and that belle is a complete mess throughout the film series. Putting the men, and white, in power is very old idea of what vampires are. I didn’t know that all of the werewolves in the movies were actually native Americans. It think that some one from the studios would have noticed this and would have said something.

The next was the bachelor tv show. It is a show that I am wondering why it is still shown today. It shows a man essentially dating multiple women at once making it seem to some guys that dating multiple people is ok. This also may make women especially some girls think that this is how dating works and expected something like this in the real world. Also that women have to fight another women to get a man even if they are in a relationship.

Sweet 16 is a show that again that I don’t know why it still goes on. The kids are  spoiled kids who have never had someone tell them no. The show may represent how what children may think how to treat their parents. The parents do not know how to react to their kids when they have tantrums. All they have done is buy their kid something to get them to calm down and the kids will go on in life thinking there will hand outs most of their life.

For Get Out, it was they first time I saw the movie. It was really good and there were very interesting themes but I would need to watch it again to watch more in detail for these themes. Jordan Peele did a very good job with this film.

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blog 8 Jour 4250

Two of the stories we discussed in class were about video games and how they can affect people. 

The first one had to deal with hate speech in video games and online gaming. The game discussed in the reading was Resident Evil 5 and there were arguments saying that the director of the game may have used some time of racism in the game. Personally I do not believe so. The director and the development team are from Japan and the game was released back in 2009. I believe the racial tension of blacks are not as prominent in Japan since they generally are much more respective of people than us in America. As a gamer, the idea of the potential racism never hit my mind when watching the game a few years ago. Some of the discussion that came up, I couldn’t understand where they were trying to go with me having played games for years.

The next story was about people speaking in online chat in video games. Pretty much every thing that was said is correct about online chat. Many people are racist, use racial slurs, and any other type of discrimination during a game because we know there is no consequences to what they do. I personally do not know how to fix the problem since it is very difficult to punish someone with using hate speech because there are too many people for one team to try to get on. 

We watched the video of sports being political. It was interesting the correlations between sports and the military that come up. It also doesn’t help when the coaches try to get the players to get violent with the opposing team just to win. There does need to be a change to the culture of sports. 

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Blog 7 Jour 4250 (start of final blogs)

We looked at how the LGBTQ community is represented in the media. We discussed about how some individuals might get more screen time based on their backgrounds compared to others. 

The case between the white teenage girl and the black boy was the main example for this. It brings to light the bringing up of a child can changed how a story is told drastically. The white girl was told as a girl in a good suburban area where it was very mean bullies that would lead to her suicide and also being fairly rare for something like that to happen. On the other hand, the black boy was shown as being innocent in a terrible area that had a higher poverty rate and where crime is fairly rampant, so the boy’s suicide was tragic but not unexpected. This shows how we just assume that where we live gives us an automatic percentage chance of committing suicide. 

The next discussion was talking about the internet is used for a vast amount of cyber bullying, especially for thr LGBTQ community. Like discussed in class, the most likely reason this happens is because there is little consequences since you can talk about someone and have no one know about you. There is this incognito of no one seeing you in person. These bullies feel invincible because it is very unlikely for someone to find them and punish them for their actions. The main tragedy is that the LGBTQ community are the ones who are discriminated in very large amounts on the internet. 

We also had a guest speaker that talked about LGBTQ in the film industry. He brought very interesting examples of how this community have been represented in the film era. I was surprised with how long ago the first gay like character was shown. I knew that gayness was seen as a mental disease but yet these older movies still showed these characters on the big screen. He had a lot of examples but couldn’t show all of them for time, it would be interesting to see the rest, especially the ones before the 80s.

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Blog 6 Alternative Assignment Jour 4250: Carolyn Barta Bio

She would start her journalism career in 1961 right after graduating from Texas Tech with a bachelors in journalism. During this time, Ms. Barta would be of only a very few women that would have the job of journalist, and even then the stories would be about women like material such as housekeeping, news about the society, and etc. It would take her years to finally get away from that type of writing and be able to do local news. She would then become a national correspondent and travel around the country and report about politics. She would later have some jobs with the Morning News. Most of her career is at Dallas Morning News with nearly 35 years under her belt. She would make many political friends along the way and write some books about some other polictians. She would also get her Masters at the University of Texas at Austin. She is now a teacher, as of 2012 when bio was written, at Southern Methodist University teaching journalism in hoping to train future journalists. 

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Jour 4250 blog 5

In class we listened to a guest speaker about islamophobia and watch a movie on our prison system. 

The speaker on islamophobia showed points that I knew would still exist, such as people think Muslims have a holiday for on  9/11 for the terrorist attacks. These people think that Muslim extremeists kill a lot of people every year, but as the speaker pointed out, a large percent of those killed by these groups are actually other Muslims. Probably one of the more sickening things that the speaker showed was people on hidden camera congratulating people who were either mean towards or denied Muslims. Every single time it was a white man who did this. Also it was surprising how few people didn’t do anything to help.

Next was the movie “13th” which was about our prison system. It’s sad when our prison system is privatized and in order for these companies to get money they need more inmates. We have a large incarceration number and hardly anyone says anything about it. There our individuals in jail who did petty crimes, but they get 20 years. This is most likely part of the reason many people don’t believe in our justice system when someone could have the same sentence for having marijuana and someone who performed armed robbery. While what these men did was illegal doesn’t mean we need to take away decades from their lives.

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Jour 4250 blog 4

Today was probably was one of the more shocking days. The amount of sexuality that was present with women was actually very surprising. In the documentary “Killing Us Softly 4″, it just shows how little we have gone from using women was object for advertising in the recent years. I don’t watch tv and read magazines as much as I used to, and I know that women were used for their sexuality to promote products, but not to the extent that was presented in the film. Seeing how much goes on today, I am unsure of how we could fix a problem like that with how incorporated into society these ads are. 

One of the most shocking ads on the film was for a hair product, the name of the product I do not remember. It talked about how a woman’s breasts might be inadequate; listing tons of reasons why a woman might not like their breasts, from not big enough, to too small, and everything in between. Then at the end of the ad, the hair product states that at least you’ll have good hair. In my mind I was saying, “what on earth does a hair product have do to do with the look of a woman’s breast, there is no correlation between the two.” If some poor girl or young woman saw this, then maybe they would think that if their breasts aren’t good enough then they should have the prettiest hair by using this product. It’s disgusting how they just put down woman. I just hope next week video about islamophobia won’t be that bad, but with how our country is acting right now, I highly doubt it. 

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Jour 4250 blog 3

We looked at a documentary called “The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords”. This was a very interesting film regarding the growth of the black press since the 19th century. I figured that the workers for these newspapers had to do hard work but not to the extent that would said in the film. The man power to just get a newspaper from Chicago to the southern states seems like an absurd amount of energy. Though the white community in the south tried to get these papers to not arrive in their towns, the black press always found a way. This movie really showed the dedication and hard work that went in to these newspapers and the hardships they had from the white community. I haven’t done the research but I am curious if some of these newspapers still exist or if they have been bought out by some of the extremely large newspaper companies that exist. Again this class just keeps opening my eyes to the difficulties that minority have had in the past and today in the media. I am curious to see what the advertisement media will have to show. 

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jour 4250 blog 2

We discussed about women in the media and how many of them are mistreated in the work place. There were some interesting topics that came up; such as younger women having a higher likelihood of being hired over older women because of their looks and not their experiences. It was surprising how many individuals in the class had witnessed and been part of this, including the professor. 

We also watched two TED talks that showed some intriguing points. The first video about a model was surprising to be because the woman presenting said that one of The most self conscious people she knows are her fellow models because they have to keep the “perfect” look that these magazines and photo shoots want. I thought models would have some of the biggest self of esteem since they are being photographed all the time. 

The second video was talking about feminism in Africa. I know Africa is the shining example of feminism and women are still fairly oppressed by men in the country. An example of these that the presenter talked about I found odd. She was going to a restaurant and the waiter did not say hello to her and only her male friend that was with her. This shows that we as a people still have a long way to go before we have equality everywhere

A statement she made would sum up that lecture very well: “Long ago power was based on who was the strongest and it was always a man.” This is most likely why women are oppressed because men are afraid to lose their power they have had for many millenia.

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Jour 4250 Blog 1

Viewing “White Like Me” and the discussions after opened my eyes to what this class can show. As a white male, I know that white privilege exists me for but I never really sit down and think about it. Seeing the struggle for the black community in the documentary really shows that considering how old the country is, we haven’t moved very far towards everyone having equal privilege. I remember hearing from one of my Hispanic classmates, the problems that came up during there lives growing up. I have never seen any of the problems they talked about because the people around me never had to experience those types of hardships. As a science major, I have never really looked at social issues that this class has brought up. Now a days there is so much diversity in the science community that I never payed attention to ideas such as white privilege. This class will help me take a step back and see issues affecting every field and not just my own.