Tonight I watch an episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. In my opinion this show is one of the best shows on television right now. To me this particular show reinforces hegemony in many ways. The first way that comes to mind would be the way that the show portrays the rich life. These women talk about how they “have a lot, BUT they want even more”. They are so fortunate in their lifestyles however its not enough. They are considered to be better than the average hard working citizen because they have so much money. The show records in the homes of these women and it is very typical for them to have a ridiculously large jumbo mansion, with only two people living in it.

Another example would be parenting of the children on the show. One women has four nannies for her two children. That makes it seem as if rich children are in need of hired helped to care for them as opposed to the parents. All these women have a “staff” working for them, a house manager, maids, cooks, etc. Their lives are portrayed to be so easy to live, due to the fact that they have a lot of money. This, to me, signifies that the rich and famous are more important people than the average working class people, because they have tv shows about them and it shows the fabulous life and not the struggles of everyday life.

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/violence_entertainment.cfm

For some time now, people have tried to connect music to violence saying there is a direct relationship between the two. Using the media centered perspective; one would believe that because a song or television program says that it’s cool to carry guns or start fights, then they must do those things in order to be perceived as cool to their peers. I would argue that music and television has no such influence on individuals because it’s just for entertainment, but given that I believe music can persuade a listener in a positive way, and then it must be able to influence listeners in a negative way. I think it’s more of our youth that are taking the lyrics of songs and actors of television programs so literally, not comprehending that these people are paid to “act”. Even if the artist singing or rapping a song paints their lives to be such a disaster, the children need to realize that either they are flat out lying or embellishing a bit. Either way, they are doing these things in order to get richer and to attract a large fan base. I don’t believe all music or television programs are lies or bad even. There are a lot of positive out there, however I would agree that more celebrities need to be more open and honest given that they can have such a major influence on young people.

Tonight I am watching a movie called Stepford Wives, which came out in 2004. This movie is very entertaining to watch however humor aside, it can set the advancement of our culture back a number of years. In the movie the wives are perfect wives in that they cook, clean, have intercourse with their husbands on cue, dress perfect, have the perfect manners, etc. All the women in the town are perfect sex kittens and all the men are nerds. The men work and women are the homemakers. Later in the movie you find out that the men create these women and they are controlled by a remote controller the husbands have. The men being the ruler and maker of everything within the town promotes masculine hegemony. The white males are dominate and portrayed as better than their wives. The movie plays on the stereotypical roles that men and women are suppose to fulfill. Years ago women were expected to behave similarly to these roles but over the years up until today these roles have combined and are no longer gender specific. Some women nowadays are educated, work impressive jobs, hold executive positions, etc while some men become stay at home dads, the cook of the family, u name it. The cultural roles of men and women in America have started to mush together so the fact that this kind of movie with this message being portrayed in the year 2004, blows my mind.

http://www.casttv.com/

Television has improved drastically since its beginning. It started off with a few channels and came on and went off at certain times. Then came more channels and constant programing. Cable tv became really popular. In recent time, its become harder to get watch local channels without cable. You must now have a device hooked up to the television to view these channels, however cable is steadily increasing its usability. One major feature of cable that the customers believe is a must is the DVR box. With a DVR box, the owner can record several different programs on tv while watching something else or even watching nothing at all. Now with all that said, sometimes certain shows are not recorded for some reason, some people may not have a DVR box, or some may have internet but not cable. Theres a new phenomenon in the internet allowing viewers to watch ALMOST anything that has aired on tv. My favorite site to catch up on missed television is Casttv.com or Hulu.com. Both websites, plus tons of others, are free websites for people to use. The ease of accessing such entertainment has increased the dependence Americans have on television. I think the fact that being able to watch television online at any time, may send children the wrong ideas, like placing too much value on these fictional tv programs.

I think this a really cool ad. This is a Levi’s Jean ad is representative of a new pair of jeans that hit the market for women. Often times women complain about not being able to find a pair of jeans that fit their body figure. With experience myself, I have worn a pair of male jeans before because the fit was better and more comfortable. I think Levi really targeted that particular audience with this ad. The ad shows a man and a woman wearing the same pair of jeans. If you were to crop out each of the heads and leave just one, the jeans look amazing on each of them. The words on the ad say ” The Classic Men’s fit, Now re-cut for women”. The advertisement and the new design really capture one another.

With the narrative perspective, the two events that are happening are both stative events. The first is the man happy and looking nice in a pair of jeans. The next is the woman happy and looking nice in a pair of jeans. Being organized by time and depict a relationship between earlier and later events, are both represented by the same two events here. The words of the ad tell that at one point before the new jeans, men had a great pair of jeans. It then says that later the re-cut the jean to fit women correctly and now women can enjoy the benefits of a nice pair of jeans just like the men could. The ad defiantly presents a unified story. The story is the before and after story of men and women with a great fitting jean.

This Nike shoe ad was a perfect ad to use the visual pleasure theory on. The theory says that images in media encourage the viewer to look “pleasurably” at the female imagines through a males gaze. When I looked at this image, I was distracted by the naked woman and the Nike shoe became nonexistent. I focused on how beautiful she was and how perfect her hair and body was. I began to look at her and compare myself to this ad, thinking that I wish that men (my boyfriend) would look at me the way that I am assuming they would look at her, given my own opinions of her. My self-image was skewed way more than normal because I am sure this photo has been retouched and she probably is airbrushed, however seeing such a perfect image, in my opinion, had an effect on my mind.

This ad definitely uses scopophelia in that Nike is using a “beautiful woman” or “sexy woman” to promote and sell their product. She is being portrayed as a fetish because she is naked and the product she is selling are a pair of tennis shoes, those two things have nothing to do with one another. I think ads like these are more harmful to our younger society and reinforce the wrong messages.

Today I am discussing my favorite music video by Beyonce Knowles called “If I were a Boy”. I am describing this video with the feminist perspective. This video reinforces the stereotypical roles of men and women in our society. I say that because in the video the roles of the couple are reversed. The woman (Beyonce) comes downstairs in the morning to her boyfriend cooking her breakfast before she leaves for work as a police officer. Next in the video they show the man brushing off a co-worker who was making passes at him, and continued to search for engagement rings for his girlfriend. On the other hand Beyonce was cheating with her partner. At a party the man see’s her dancing “too” close to her partner and he realizes something isn’t right. After the party, they go home and the roles are changed to the actual roles of the man and woman. You realize that throughout the video the man was truly the one doing the cheating, as society would expect of the man verse the woman; and the woman was the one cooking breakfast and looking at wedding rings hoping it will happen for her soon, as expected of a woman in our society.

The video reinforces what the normal roles of men and women are pretty much set in stone and are the same as they have always been traditionally, maybe following a cultural feminist perceptive.

Today I am writing about a movie I enjoy watching called Mad Money starring Queen Latifah, Diane Keaton and Katie Holmes. These women work in the Federal Reserve Bank, one of the most secure banks in the world, as janitors. All suffering from personal money issues, form an unlikely friendship and gradually rob this bank. The act in this movie is robbery. These women rob the bank by stealing old money that is suppose to be destroyed. The agents in Mad Money are Nina (Queen Latifah) who is a single mother of two little boys, Bridget (Diane Keaton) who is the wife of a rich consultant who recently lost his job and on the verge of losing all assets, and Jackie (Katie Holmes) who is a young woman who wouldn’t mind having it all. The agency in the movie would be their bodies, which they used to strap money on them to get pass security, and the back storage room of a bar where the money was stored. The scene was the Federal Reserve Bank. The women rob that location as well as consult about the robbery in the bath there. The purpose of them robbing the bank was to lift the financial burden that each of them were undergoing.

The fact that they needed the money and the bank was just shredding old money motivated the robbery. It is so hard to receive help the government or anywhere else when one is in a rough patch of their life, so these woman felt it was necessary to take matters into their own hands.