POST #1

Power and the Media

In society, there is a societal order that has been established and at the top of this order would be the ruling class who holds all of the power.  They possess the ability to influence the proletariat with or without resistance.  This correlates to many of the readings we have been assigned so far this semester as the media is owned by the ones with power. So it is us the audience that is being controlled unknowingly by these media owners.  In the end, it is a capitalist societal structure where the wealthy sit at the top being fed dollar signs from their lower counterparts. 

There is a use of propaganda for the ruling class to infiltrate audiences with their ideologies because if they are the ones producing what we are entertained by, they have the opportunity to show off their own reality. In our media there is the ideology being presented to us of the dominant classes way of life.   With advertisements showing off lavish lifestyles or hit tv shows whether portraying teenagers from the Upper East Side or the so called reality of crazed millionaire housewives. Viewers are being placed firsthand into what their life could be like if they were to have a higher income, a life that they would desire.  Hegemony is the use of these psychological advances to show the proletariat that their reality is unrelatable to the life of these media millionaires but they have given them what they consider "common sense." We know that we will never own an apartment on the Upper East Side or have a yacht but we are intrigued by this lifestyle and feel quite insignificant in our position of society. bell hooks has coined her three terms that can describe the society in which we live in: white supremacist, patriarchy and capitalist, all three can be seen through the media and attitudes today.  If the audience was to come together and present an alternate view they would quickly be marginalized.  It is a battle being presented of ideological domination between the ruling class and the others 

They reassure us that there's a time or place for everything. Declaring what's right and wrong, they can strengthen stereotypes and murmur the false humilities of "common sense." - Barbara Kruger 

The media has portrayed women with a negative connotation.  Women are not typically shown as individuals but as a man's accessory as if a woman must constantly have a man in her life and that her body must be a certain way.  There are is an aspect of sexism found in our media that creates an attitude towards woman on how they should behave, look and their social role in society.  Advertisements often show a bony model which is suppose to be the ideal attractive female but real woman are not like this.  If they were it would be quite scary.   Even in television we see a constant role and use of women for an entertainment purpose.  In "I Love Lucy", Lucy is considered the main character but her role is just an average housewife nothing special, so she makes us laugh from time to time but when her husband comes home it is her primary job to take care of him.  Women should be shown in their own careers making their own life.  Another example of the use of women in television is Kelly Bundy from "Married with the Children", upon entering the screen we hear loud cheers and screaming of men making her an object of desire.  Kelly is no longer a person but an object that needs to be obtained by the male viewers.  Woman are constantly being put in this position and it reflects their behaviors and ideals in real life.  They are expected by men to be sexy and obedient all the time but what really is attractive is a woman who doesn't need a man or have to rely on her looks, she can obtain power in her own way.

bell hooks explains that it is the pedagogy, the full development and education of a human being, of popular culture that is vital to our understanding of the media.   Popular culture is the vernacular that predominates in a society at a point in time, where social life must actively be involved by the public. There is a clear brain washing effect found in popular culture where we place a value on the recognition of images and media more than substantial information or a fabricated version of the truth.  We can call popular culture the 'culture of the people' where our society is determined by materialistic objects and trends that are meant to define us.

Popular culture consists of the aspects of attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, customs and tastes that define the people of any society - Ray Browne

We begin to associate feelings and understanding through objects because our culture has become one of a capitalist society.  As people we are no longer individuals but a target market, idealized for the goal of a sale.  The gaze is the idea of being desired or stared at but in this context not through the eyes of another person with romantic interests they are advertisements and greedy business owners preying on the consumer.  The cycle of a capitalist society is the revolving idea of consumption to consumer, but the consumer is working in the consumption of goods only to buy the products being distributed. The gaze is the way the advertisement affects us, the spectacle is the image itself that is creating this feeling and the way of looking is how we feel about the image or the want for that object.  These objects may not be needed but they are created a lovely persona of their own to make consumers want them.

Society is changing rapidly and we are surrounded everyday by more diverse environments.  That was not really the case fifty to sixty years ago, and it is our generation that should be thankful for that.  Representation is seen through image-making and the media of our times.  This specific topic interested me and I as a caucasian male have not really been a victim to stereotypes.  While most comedy is based on this, is it really as funny as we think to pick on someone for their individual culture. What is even scarier is the lack of knowledge we know about other places and people.  If we hear someone is from Africa, we have been instructed to think that they HIV or wear odd clothing but this is not true at all.  So it comes to question do we get to truly represent ourselves or is it the dangers of these single stories that define us.  They are called single stories because it is a one sided definition or description of a gender, class or race.

As the new generation, it is our job to be cautious of the images and media that we make to be an exact representation of an individual not just a group.  We should be empowered to teach others and not give in to this social issue that is destroying our ideology of what our lives should be like instead of it being dictated towards us.