Wednesday, June 29, 2011

For my final project i decided to look at the way african american teenage boys are depicted in the media. I noticed that when watching television, and looking at magazines, and the news african american boys are mainly depicted as drug dealers and gangtsters. My project reminds me of the movie we watched in class Tough Guise. The movie made a very valid point, if men are constsanly shown to be tough thats what they are going to grow up and believe thats how they have to be. If African American teenage boys are constantly shown depictions of their peers as drug dealers and gangsters thats what they are going to believe they have to grow up to be. Not all African American teenage boys deal drugs or are in gangs. This stereotype of african american men has been around for many decades and still today is seen in mainstream video. I took some clips that i thought showed this stereotype of teenage African American boys. Ialso found a really good article that talked about these stereotypes and the need for young black men to have positive role models. Here is a link to this article. Hopefully one day people will not be judged by their race or stereotypes of their race.

                                                                                     P.S.
                                                                         Please excuse the quality of the movie it's my first time making one. I had fun doing it but needless to say i'm not great at it. LOL :)

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Tolman and Higgins: Argument

Tolman and Higgins argue that females should learn to say yes. In their article How being  good Girl can be Bad for Girls they talk about how girls are always taught to say no to a guy which can lead them to be confused about when to say no. Most girls say no to something that they really want a guy to keep doing to them so when it gets to a point where they really mean no the guy doesnt take them seriously which can lead to rape. Tolman and Higgins argue that females need to learn that it is okay to say yes to the things that you do like or do want to happen. By saying yes to a man when you do say no he will know you are serious and not playing the whole no means yes game with him.
Our Society creates such a contradiction for women. All the media really teaches girls is that they have to be sexy and desirable but when a women does this in real life she is labeled a bad girl, slut, whore etc. Like in the movie Easy A  (heres a link to their main page) the main character is in her class and they are talking about the scarlett letter and its telling how women shouldntcommitt adultery and if they do they need to be put to shame. Hello?? What about men? why isn't it that people shouldn't not be adulterers whether they are male or female. Easy A showed the basic contradictions that women face in society. Before she lost her virginity no one cared who she was. Once everyone thought she had lost her virginity everyone had something to say to her. To the other females she was  bad girl to the guys she was "Easy". Why is it a good thing when a boy looses his virginity but a bad thing when a girl does?

Monday, June 13, 2011

Krassas: Hyperlink

While reading this article i noticed how krassas talked about the positioning of men and women in magazine articles. I went through the magazines i had in my own house and noticed that this was true for most of the articles that showed both men and women. The men were always positioned at a higher angle than the woman as if the woman was inferior to the man. Krassas also talked about the way magazine articles depict men and women. Women are always shown with little to no clothes on while men usually are fully clothed. They may show some skin but not nearly as much as women. I googled some maxim magazine covers and all of them had a women posed very sexy and wearing very little clothes. Here is the link to these maxim images .
    I also found an interesting article that related to this article and some other things we discussed in class such as christiansen, about the way women are depicted in the media compared to how men are depicted. this article titled Females as Sex Symbols in the Media talks about how women are always portrayed as weak and can't do anything except be beautiful and sexy. Although it was a little confusing to understand the exact methods in Krassas study i did get the main point which was that women are mostly shown as subordinate to men in magazines especially in Maxim magazine! Below is a video of a maxim magazine photo shoot. The women are barely wearing any clothes and every pose is a sexy pose. never are they posed as strong or smart.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Talking point # 4

So for this aasignment i found an interesting video called why teens lose it...a video produced by teens for parents. i found it intersting because it showed one of the discourses we talked about from Raby. it shows the storm. in this video the girl is upset over orange juice. but when you get to the end she really was upset about something else. i think the teens who produced this video were trying to show adults that teenagers just like everyone else get frustrated too only when they do their labeled as acting out and being bad instead of having someone care enough to try and get to the bottom of whats really bothering them.