Module 2
When learning about the “three models of media literacy” in module one, I believed that we could only be one. This caused some concern because I saw points within each that I could agree with. In the beginning of module two, we were asked to give thought to which model we felt we fit into. I was relieved to hear that it is common to be representative of more than one. I, like our professor, find myself connecting with both the Protectionist and Constructivist models. A quote from our textbook helped me to finalize my stance; “focusing on popular culture places the entire burden of educational disparities onto individuals or parents, while completely disregarding the stubborn nature of racial and economic inequality, which is often reflected and reproduced in our educational system” (Sternheimer, 2013). What that quote meant to me is that there is not one way or one blame, but a mix of things that either works or doesn’t.
I found The Children are Watching: Struggling with Stereotypes to be incredibly impactful. This chapter really put into words what I believe many of us think about all the time. “Media can contribute to a stereotype just by reporting it often” (Cortes, 2000). That quote made me think about the way media contributes to the depiction of individuals with disabilities as: victims, struggling, special, and needy. The way they report us with hero worship and pity creates and continues the stereotype of individuals with disabilities being less than those without. I realize that may seem like a drastic comparison, but I challenge you to watch news stories about people with disabilities and really think about how they are categorized. The other day I saw a story where they continuously called one of the students “special needs” and the other “normal.”
I find myself looking at much of the reading from the lens of disability because of my personal and professional experiences with it. When reading Out of the Mainstream: Sexual Minorities and the Mass Media, I could not help but think of voting of all things. The quote that sparked the though was “representation in the mediated reality of our mass culture is in itself “power. Those out of the media are powerless” (Gross, 2001). We are in election time and right now there is a huge campaign to get out the disability vote. That quote made me think about how the media chooses who is important. They focus on the veteran vote, the female vote, and the young vote, but even though individuals with disabilities are the second largest minority group, the media does not give them “power.” The campaign I mentioned lends to the notion in Professor Tollefson’s book; The Inversion of Visibility that the “biggest problem we are facing in society is that we have a hard time believing in possibility and imagining that things could be otherwise” (p. 125). If society were able to look past the depiction media has provided of individuals with disabilities and could see them as the strong minority group that they are could you imagine how different things would be?
In the Persuasion and Argumentation class I took last semester, we watched a movie called Merchants of Cool and much of what was discussed in the Advertising to Children and Teens article made me think of the film. Teenagers in the film were spotlighted as the main group to be sold things and to make things cool. A main point that was made in both the article and in the film was how important product placement is. Whether a banner at a concert or a favorite actor drinking from a Starbucks cup, the small message is getting through to the viewer. Children and teens specifically feed off of anything that will create or maintain “cool” status. In this day and age, these age groups are clinging to this status for the same reasons as their parents and grandparents, to feel good. However, young people these days carry the stress of cyberbullying on top of the normal playground spats of previous generations. “Cyberbullying seems like a new, more menacing form a bullying, like a mutating virus that is more dangerous than the one from which it originates” (Sternheimer, 2013).
As an ending, since watching the video about the Bechdel Test, it is not looking good out there! I have found a few more to add to her list.
