Reflections on Module 2
After watching the video of The Smurfette Principle (Tropes vs Women), it is very eye opening to the idea of the proportion of men and women in media. It focuses a lot on the idea that men characters are shown a lot more in media that young children watch. I believe this video gave of a strong concept to think about because at a younger age we are already having children engage with the idea of men being more dominant in society over women. Children learn to grow off what they experience and come across, therefore they learn to grow up with the image of society that we provide them to see. It is not only the younger group age that deals with this, but also in the adult group age. The entire industry focuses on having men in their productions rather than having a women being the protagonist, even if there are women in movies, commercials, ads, shows, etc, there are only very few. The Bechdel test also is another great example of determining this concept. One should pay attention to women in productions and recognize women do not have equal roles as men. This entire concept can be related to Barnyard, where a mans voice is the protagonist in a kid’s movie and most of the other characters in that movie are also men. So relating to what re read, if it is important to teach kids media literacy at a young age, I believe it really is because our society is shaping this idea for kids that men have the upper hand.
After completing the readings required, what really stood out to me was chapter three in Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture: Why Media Is Not the Answer by Sternheimer, Karen. It focuses strongly on cyberbullying, homophobia and suicide. She speaks about how media is to blame for a lot of the tragic cases that occur daily. For example, Tyler Clementi is a bisexual man that attends Rutgers University. He committed suicide after his roommate secretly videotaped him having sex (Sternheimer, 2013). What was eye opening to me was that I am aware that society is ran a lot off of media, but the idea that people end their lives due to cyber bullying is devastating. Cyber bullying is a serious thing that occurs on a daily and is all done through media, weather it is done through Facebook or texting. This also makes me ponder on how media has a huge impact on society and lives, weather it is positive or negative. Chapter four speaks on how popular culture might be making us stupid. What do you guys think? Spongebob squarepants is not the brightest show, so with its lack of informative knowledge, does it make us think us more cognitively? As media can be a negative impact on us, I believe in some terms, media may also have a positive impact on us. It all just comes down to how we wish in lighten our selves from what media provides.
Media can be scary..
