Module 2 Readings

The readings and videos that were assigned for this module brought up some points that I had never heard of, or let alone, even noticed within our popular media culture.  I was embarrassed yet blown away by the YouTube videos discussing the “Smurfette Principle” and The Bechdel Test.  I have been watching various movies and television shows for quite some time now… I mean, I am a 90’s baby, how could I not?  But never have I ever noticed the obvious imbalance between males and females within the movies and TV shows I constantly grew up around.  To be honest, I never realized that there was only one female Smurf and only one female Muppet while I was growing up;  for some odd reason, this was perfectly normal for me.  But after watching and reading these module’s assignments, I am actually shocked and embarrassed by the amount of inequality that was taking place in almost every show and movie I grew up with!  Even my classic, favorite Disney princess movies fail The Bechdel Test due to that fact that even if there’s at least two or more women with names, they typically are talking about winning a man’s heart or just waiting for their prince to come.  I think that, nowadays, our culture is really trying to push against these “norms” of more male roles than females, and you can see it in a lot of the movies that are coming out recently.  For example, the newest Ghostbusters movie is a cast of four female comedians rather than the four male comedians we have been so accustomed to.  It will be interesting to see if these movies coming out with primarily female leading roles will end up focusing a lot of their conversation on men because when I think of movies like Sex and the City where females are the primary characters, they still end up talking about mostly about men, love and sex.

Aside from the Smurfette Principle and The Bechdel Test, I was very impressed with the five concepts and questions the Center for Media Literacy describes that all media literate people should keep in mind and ask themselves when viewing something within our media culture.  In order to better evaluate the messages being sent throughout the media, one should consider that: all media messages are constructive, media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules, different people experience the same media messages differently, media has embedded values and points of view (the are representations not reflections of a culture or genre of people) and most media messages are for profit and/or power.  Also, when viewing a form of media, the Center of Media Literacy suggests that one should ask themselves: who created this message?, what creative techniques are used to attract our attention?, how might different people understand this message?, what values and lifestyles/points of view from from this message?, and why is this message being said?  These core concepts and questions provided by the Center of Media Literacy were very helpful for me in that they gave me a bit of a guideline of what to look out for when viewing a medium of media.  I feel that these concepts and questions help dissect a form of media in a non-bias or judgemental way and help look at something in a more general, almost third-party way.

When completing any assignment or task, I always tend to try to make connections to my major/profession, Early Childhood Studies.  We started Module 2 out by learning the theories of Joel Baker in what create’s a child’s, and therefore adult’s, self identity.  Baker believes that family, close friends and current leaders are the main components that make up a person’s self identity over time.  We than learned how only in the United States, media is believed to be a primary factor in what create’s a child’s self identity, and this was incredibly interesting to me because it reminded me of the theory that got me into child development in the first place!  Known as the Ecological Module, a psychologist by the name of Urie Bronfenbrenner created a theory that explains how a child, and therefore adult, become who they are.  Similar to almost an onion, people are like layers, in that many factors over many periods of time affect who we become, some factors and life situations being more effective or more impactful than others.  Similar to Baker, Bronfenbrenner believes that family, peers and a child’s intimate community such as their school and playgrounds are the core concepts to who this person becomes.  This first layer is what Bronfenbrenner calls the “microsystem”, and there are two more layers that affect our life experiences and help in creating who we become as a result.  The next “layer” that Bronfenbrenner believes form a person’s overall being are the extended family, friends or neighbors, school boards and committees, community services, parent’s workplace and (here it is), mass media.  Known as the “exosystem” these are like the secondary factors in what create who we become .  Ironically, Bronfenbrenner is a Russian psychologist and not an American practitioner, and he, too, believes that the mass media is not a key factor in what our self identities become.  Sure, it does play an effect significantly in what types of communities and ideas we are exposed to, but like Baker and Bronfenbrenner, I believe that it does not need to be a key component in who we become if we don’t allow it to.  Here is an example that I found online of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Module to get a better understanding of what I’m describing and the theory that made me fall in love with the fun yet huge responsibility behind Early Childhood Studies; with the child at the middle, these are the layers that make up who we are, with the closest layer being the most effective and the outer layer creating an effect down to the child over time and through the community:

(source: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model )

Alright so I ranted about child development there, sorry!  Continuing back to our other readings… this reminds me of what we read in our class text by Karen Sternheimer, Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture.  Sternheimer specifically goes into detail about cyberbullying and just how much of an impact social media has on teen’s lives in the book’s third chapter called Does Social Networking Kill?  I was shocked by some of the results Sternheimer presented not because things were worse than I thought, but that this issue we sometimes face within our youth today can clearly be avoided by educating our youth to be aware of the social and mass media messages surrounding them.  Although cyberbullying can have horrendous and permanent effects on an individual, only six percent of teens have reported being cyberbullied (pg 57 Sternheimer, 2013).  Sternheimer continues to describe that the safety resides in the hands of us adults, but rather than keep our youth away from the media like many protectionist theorists would believe, it is important that we become aware of what is occurring online both in our own social media lives and our youth.  Instead of avoid our children from being exposed to things online, we should educate them about how they should proceed with interpreting it because internet protection and parental blocks only go so far.

The time we are living in is very unique in that our youth are dealing with issues and concerns that never existed in our human’s time here on earth.  Carlos E. Cortes discusses the idea of stereotypes in his article The Children Are Watching (2000) defining them as “evocative terms” that sent powerful messages or ideas when used carefully or selectively (pg. 2).  Although it breaks my heart to accept it, many negative biases and stereotypes have existed in our country from the minute our founding fathers landed here; and for our youth, these stereotypes get passed around so much faster via the internet rather than word-of-mouth like when my generation and previous generations were growing up.  Regardless of this, however, I think is is important that we do not protect our children against the media and educate them to be more aware, themselves, instead!