Lately we have been talking about media and how it implants certain images about gender, race and ethnicity. I never realized how much the media has made me believe things about certain people. I like watching Family Guy which has a lot of jokes amongst the show but I can now see how certain images that they show had given me a different persepctive on items. I at first am embaressed to say that I believe in or thought that what they were saying was true, but like stated from the Sarah Silverman article, many of the jokes that people say come from what others were thinking but are not able to say.
During class we talked about two views of media within our society. One that stuck out to me was the hypoedermic model which states that the media injects in people (beliefs and values). I truly believe that this view is correct. I feel that many parents in our country allow their children tow atch very innappropriate shows at such a young age. I remember being in high school and watching the news and hearing about a young boy around the age of eight who committed suicide and thought that he would be able to come back to life, because Kenny on South Park did all of the time. How did our society get this far into thinking that it was ok to show someone killing themselves then coming back to life, as if nothing happened? Violence use is a major problem in the United States, so wouldn't the media want to stop the use of it, and help people stay away from this terrible problem?
Maybe some people in our society do not feel that everyone will take the message that way and thus they believe it is ok to portray those things? I had asked a bunch of my friends what they thought about the South Park incident and many believed that it was the parent and the kid's fault for not knowing the difference between fake and reality. I agree that it should be the parents responsibility to tell their child what would really happen, however and eight year old in my opinion should not be watching a shoe that is made for the older age group. My question is, is it good to show an ad that has a caption saying your not a man until you have a gun, or until your serving your country and killing the enemy? Do we feel that we need to teach our men and some women to be tough and not to take crap from people? Whatever happen to being able to turn the other cheek and rise above all of the violence? As a society if we potray negative things as being good things then in the end wont all of the positive things in life be totally forgotten?
Today in class it was brought up that we take things away and present people with a new idea of the world. I wonder who benefits from this if people are not seeing how the world really is? Is it the leader of our country who decides what is the best and worst for us? To me, I thought that I could come up with things to sell to people and tell how and what to believe in, considering how easy it is for our society to be persuaded. Our world is filled with more problems than just racial jokes, it goes more indepth with education, people on welfare, crime and the economy itself. If we continue to block people from what is really going on in the world then we are doing more harm than good. It is troubling to see that a lot of people now just go with the flow and do not voice a lot of their opinions? Perhaps, it is because they do not want to turned on?
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