The Final Blog.

My boyfriend referred me to take this class, as he had taken it three years before. Excited for an “easy A” as he called it, I expected there to be little homework and simple quizzes. Little did I know that the reason the class was considered such an “easy A” was because the work was actually enjoyable. It’s safe to say this media class was the most interesting class I’ve taken at De Anza so far. For once, I actually looked forward to weekly homework assignments and found myself engaged in lecture rather than just barely managing to stay awake. I enjoyed hearing how my peers have been affected by media, instead of only reading the book and seeing what it says the media effects on society are.

My favorite part of the course was viewing Bowling for Columbine for the first time, a movie that I now consider one of my all time favorites. After watching in class, I went home and downloaded it to my computer, forcing my boyfriend to watch it and discuss it with me, something I have NEVER done before with something I’ve viewed in a classroom setting. I never realized the cowardice of those in American society before that moment.

Another thing I really enjoyed were the classroom discussions. I’m not a very talkative person, so discussions were never something I enjoyed in school, but, being an opinionated heavy media user, I felt like I could actually contribute something. The discussion that sticks out in my mind most would be when we talked about the most influential books. I felt foolish for not realizing books such as Harry Potter and Dr. Seuss were as influential as all the books I chose.

The last thing that I will always remember about this class is garfieldminusgarfield.net. In the textbook, it mentioned the site, saying it was a critique on social disorders, showing Garfield's owner Jon all by himself saying the most pitiful things ("I don't need a date" he says in the first panel, while sulking in the next two).

All in all, this has been my favorite class, and I would definitely recommend it to others just as it was recommended to me.

Week Ten: Media Ethics/Law

In 2009, sixth grader Natalie Jones chose to do a report on Harvey Milk, the first elected openly gay official. The day before she was supposed to present this to the class, she was called into the principal's office and was told she wasn't allowed to, saying it was due to sexual education. This is considered censorship of her right to free speech as stated by the First Amendment. This also violated the California Education Code because they misused a school policy to justify the censorship. It's hard to believe that California, home of the Castro, still harbors such blatant homophobes that will do anything to keep gays segregated (even if it is through silencing a 12 year old from reading her 12 page report on a homosexual man who made history).

Link to the report can be found here.

Advertising

In Old Spices' new body wash ad campaign, the brand uses a suave, chiseled black man whose confidence in his sexuality makes him the perfect spokesman for this product (the slogan for which is simply "Smell like a man, man.")

Some of the propaganda techniques this ad uses:

+ Beautiful people ("Look at your man, now back to me...sadly, he isn't me...if he switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he's me.")
+ Glittering generalities ("Anything is possible when your man smells like old spice and not a lady,")
+ Name Calling with the repetitious accusations of the woman viewer's man smelling like a lady
+ Stereotyping by creating a man that a woman could only dream of (sexy AND ready to shower his lady in lavish gifts)
+ Disinformation ("It's an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again! The tickets are now diamonds!")

Week Eight: Academic Research Project

TOPIC: Social Networking and Today's Youth

Many social networking sites set age restrictions (most often 13+). Children ignore these age requirements, exposing themselves to things such as cyber-bullying and sexual content. They also post personal information either on their profiles or through comments for anyone to see.

Who's to blame? With the new free application craze, more and more games are popping up on social networking sites that appeal to younger children (for example, crazie cabby, wild ones, cafe world, the infamous farmville), thus drawing in children younger than the required 13+.

Week Seven: Internet

On wikipedia, there are 280 social networking sites listed, and out of all those, i've heard of blogster, buzznet, cafemom, classmates.com, deviantART, facebook, flixster, flickr, friendster, gaiaonline, imeem, last.fm, linkedin, livejournal, myheritage, myspace, stickam, tumblr, twitter, and xanga--only twenty. The sites I've heard of that aren't listed are stickydrama and formspring, a current favorite for drama crazed teens. Absolutepunk, a music networking site, also wasn't listed. A site I have never heard of: Amie Street. It was created by Brown University students and serves as an online music store/social networking site.

I mainly use social networking just to keep in contact with friends, but I've found that it's seldom anything but trouble. Recently, after a low key falling out with some friends, I blocked the people involved to keep things calm (I didn't want to read their negative statuses about me, nor did I want them to twist my own statuses into something about them). This plan backfired. Hours after I did this, one of the girls involved found out and was extremely offended. She commented my best friends default picture with an insult directed towards me and tried to tell me off through other means of social networking (insults over formspring, AIM, etc). She became so frustrated, she eventually showed up to my house. Regardless, I still log in daily and waste plenty of time that would otherwise be spent studying.

Week Six: Television

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DULT4L8c8IM
- Length - 2:43
- Description - High-Definition inherently means "high resolution", since the resolution of high def and standard TV differ (480 lines with standard analog television vs. 720 or 1080 with high-defintion).
- Chapter 9: Television
- Question - What are the differences between pillar-boxing and letter-boxing?
- Answer - If watching a widescreen dvd on your standard television, lines on the top and bottom of the picture would be show. If watching a fullscreen dvd on an HD television, lines would appear on the sides. These lines are respectively called letter-boxing and pillar-boxing.

Week Five: Movies or Recordings

2009: This Ain't No Fashion Show -- The Subtle Way
2009 wasn't the greatest year for music in my opinion. It wasn't until the end of 2009 something was released that really caught my attention. The main reason I love this song so much is that I got to hear it in every stage of production, starting with the rough thirty second sound bite (titled "Stewie" after the character in Family Guy) that the band had before they went to Seattle to record with my favorite producer, Casey Bates, who helped to create the perfected CD version. My boyfriend showed me the sound bite one day when we were driving through LA by hooking up his iPod to his car speakers. The next version I heard about a month or two later when his friend Jamie opened a folder of the music on my macbook sent to him by Casey Bates over email. The final version i heard at a party I went to in November where Jamie came in with the actual CD ready to show it off.

Listen to "This Ain't No Fashion Show"




1979: Don't Stop Me Now -- Queen
I have yet to meet a person who doesn't like Queen. Whenever I'm out hanging with friends and having a good time, we'll put this on and sing to our hearts content. It's the ultimate feel good song, as Queen is the ultimate feel good band. My dad introduced me to the band when I was very little by playing his Queen records and dancing with me. When I was a fifth grader and my dad bought a truck which had a CD player in it, he bought the full Queen CD collection and played this song.

Listen to "Don't Stop Me Now"

Week Four: Magazines

NAME: Bay Scene

CONCEPT: The scene in the Bay Area is slowly dying out. As time passes, more venues and bands close down and relocate to the Sacramento/Stockton area, which isn’t a drive that is easily made on a regular basis. This magazine aims to bring the scene back to the Bay by recruiting promoters, spreading local music, and letting the bay area know of the need for more REAL venues, not just teen centers and churches.

READERS- This magazine is aimed at hardcore music lovers between the ages of 16 – 24.

COMPETITION- AMP magazine, AP; both magazines are a staple in the lives of hardcore music lovers everywhere; key word being “everywhere”. This magazine will focus on the bay area only, which has seemed to be forgotten by many touring bands.

Five Advertisers- Shine Drums, Live Nation, Pandora, Local Music Stores, Channel 92.3 radio station

Five Articles-
- 10 Best Bands You’ve Never Heard of
- The Pros and Cons of “No In and Outs”
- Upcoming Shows for the Month
- Venue Breakdown
- What Every Promoter Needs to Know

COVER- The cover will have BAY SCENE in bold, shiny print and all caps. A big picture of one of the bands featured in the “10 best bands…” article (a live performance shot) will be on the front.

BOOKS

Invisible Monsters
If beauty is all a person has, what happens when it’s taken from her? Chuck Palahniuk’s brilliant critique on modern day societal values centers on the shallow nature of today’s culture, and the great means one will go through to achieve beauty. Being a typical girl who struggles with self-image on a daily basis, reading a story about one girl who loses her beauty and soon after watches her whole world crumble absolutely fascinated me. After being in a car accident where she loses her jaw, she’s left with nothing. She loses her fiancée. She loses her best friend. She loses the admiration of the public, now being treated as this “invisible” monster. The moral is that beauty is superficial in every respect. If beauty consumes a person, her relationships will be superficial, and so will her happiness.

The Bell Jar
I felt like I was Esther Greenwood incarnate the moment I read the inside flap of the book. It wasn’t until page four when she realizes straight vodka is her alcohol of choice that I was absolutely sure of it. As would be expected of Sylvia Plath (a woman who committed suicide by shoving her head in an oven as her children were fast asleep, creating a domino effect since her son soon followed mommy’s influence), this tale is about a talented woman’s downward spiral.

The Last Lecture
Robert Pausch was given a death sentence. The Columbia Professor diagnosed with cancer was told he had a mere six months to live. Instead of spending as much time with his wife and children as possible, he set out to write one last lecture about his life’s achievements and the lessons he learned. This inspiring tale of a brilliant man’s accomplishments is most notable for the advice he gives readers/listeners. (My favorite is “If there is an elephant in the room, introduce it.”) This book taught me to never regret, and always live life to the fullest, ‘cause towards the end of life, myspace surveys and facebook drama won’t matter; what will matter is the friends you made, the things you accomplished, and whether or not you made a sufficient enough mark on society.

Week Two: Media Impact

Researching: Images of women in the media set an unrealistic standard that young girls try desperately hard to achieve.

Methodology: Survey teenage girls about the effects of socialization on their self-image.

Test Hypothesis: Ask the subjects to provide height and weight, what they consider themselves (fat, skinny, average etc.), what they could change about themselves if they could, the magazines they like best, which woman celebrity they would like to look like most.

Prediction: Teenage girls will compare themselves to women who either had their bodies surgically altered to attain society’s unrealistic perceptions of perfection, spent thousands of dollars and many hours with the best personal trainers and dieticians, or had their portraits unbelievably photo-shopped [for example, the above cover of Demi Moore, a picture that has been highly publicized lately by those opposed to photo-shop being used on magazine pictures (in this picture, her left hip seems to have vanished)]. Majority of girls surveyed will show signs of low self-image, and think that having a BMI of 22 is the new BMI of 30.

Week One: Different Forms of Media

Movies: When it comes to movies for me, the more indie they are, the better. I probably watch on average about five movies a week.

Book: I started reading at a young age and always have a book i'm reading leisurely.

Newspapers: I never really liked the paper when I was younger. I used to just go straight to the comic section and discard the rest, like most other Americans unfortunately. It wasn’t until I made the front page of my local newspaper for something insignificant I did on what must have been a slow news day when I was seven that I gained interest. Now, I’ll read the paper whenever I have free time.

Magazines: Music magazines have always interested me the most (as you can tell the moment you step into my room and see my walls heavily adorned with cut-outs and clippings). I won’t lie, I used to buy them solely for the pictures, but now I’d like to think I’ve matured a little, reading about my favorite bands and their accomplishments and goals because I’m genuinely interested and not just ‘cause I think the drummer is cute.

Recordings: My iPod and Comcast On Demand: two things I can always turn to when I’m nearly paralyzed with boredom.

Radio: Most avid music lovers are either disinterested or disgusted with the radio, or, so I’ve noticed. Disc jockeys can take one good song and overplay it to the point of physical deterrence. A prime example would be Boulevard of Broken Dreams, the bitter ballad by Green Day, a band whose past hits about masturbation didn’t have their chance to shine until their satiric album American Idiot caught the public’s attention in 2006. Even though my distaste for the radio is great, I’m still guilty of being a talk show listener as I drive to school in the morning whenever my iPod runs out of a charge.

Television: Television is something I’ll always turn to in desperation. Seldom do I ever watch it by choice.

Internet: The Internet – the melting pot of mass media. I’ve been caught up in this information age just like most of my peers. I used to feel devastated and cut off from the rest of the world for not having my phone with me. Now I feel that same way when my macbook can’t get a solid connection to the Internet.