School's Out For Summer!!

After finishing up this cluster, I feel as if I will view the world much differently. I now know that many others view me as a white, middle-class, female. Automatically people may assume that I’ve had a lot of privileges and opportunities that they haven’t. I feel it is my job to be prepared for these uncomfortable situations and let others know that even though I may have experienced white privilege during my lifetime does not mean that I haven’t experienced my share of hard times or even discrimination based on gender. After learning and figuring out what sociological imagination is, I feel as if I have a better understanding of individuals. I know what my values are, I know what I believe, and I can bet that at some point my beliefs and values will be challenged, but it is up to me to draw the line. I know now that it is important to stay media literate as well as keep up-to-date with the news. How I choose to do this is my choice. I am my own gatekeeper. I can surf the channels, radio stations, and web as I choose. I will stay informed at my own free will. I am ready to be done with college and move into the ‘real’ world and be a grown up!


Audios Amigos!

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world.
Tom Brokaw

The Consent is Yours to Make...

Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion was a tough read, but he made some interesting and well made points throughout his discussions. I really liked the point that he made about how the media ‘manufacture’s consent’. I felt like he meant that by this the media manufactures consent from the everyday consumer. By tuning in and watching a certain media or by using a specific type of media you are in fact giving your consent to the manufacturers. By giving them consent their media continues to succeed so they continue to produce it. For example, by tuning into Channel 4 news, you are giving them the consent that you like their show so they in turn keep producing the show. I feel that Lippmann’s sums up this idea perfectly with this quote: “"the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda; it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."

The flow of the consent has to start at the top and work its way down. Even though the everyday consumer, like myself, grants their consent by indulging in a specific media the gatekeepers still control what is shown. The control of what is shown by the gatekeepers starts at the top with the elite and works its way down.

In our class, I feel that a majority of the media that we’ve looked at have all required a gatekeeper as well as a manufacturer’s consent to keep them going. The thing I feel that it connects too most is the gatekeeping theory. The theory states, “The people who hold decision-making positions in our society actually select the information and ideas that will be allowed to pass through the ‘gates’ and be incorporated in our culture.” Therefore, although we give our consent to watch a certain media produced by a certain corporation we are in fact giving our consent to the gatekeepers. Our consent gives them more power to decide exactly what information is allowed to us through the specific media that we choose.

TECK productions presents:

"Confidence"

A story about the life of Judge George "Tookie" James

The First African American Judge in Beaver County

Come and view this documentary that is produced by TECK productions of the Mass Communications/Sociology 109 cluster.

When: Thursday May 3 12:45pm-2:00pm

Where: Mueller Theatre

Westminster College Campus

New Wilmington, PA

"Confidence"

Our documentary has been going well. We’ve made three trips out to see Judge and we have everything filmed that we want. We’ve gathered some old pictures that we are going to use in the documentary and if we need more we are going to find some old Westminster yearbooks since the Judge is an alumni. We’ve started creating our poster to advertise the showing of our documentary. We really just need to edit everything and get it the way we want it.

Fantasy or Reality...Maybe Both???...You Decide...

For this assignment I decided to watch TV shows that I normally don’t watch. I usually don’t watch too much TV so it wasn’t hard to pick. My evening started out with “Little People, Big World” on TLC. I had never heard of this show before but my roommate had it on so I decided to watch it. I also watched “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Bachelor” on ABC.

Little People, Big World, on TLC, easily exposed me to things the I do not experience in my own reality. This show is all about the Roloff family — an extraordinary family composed of both little and average-sized people. The family starts with the parents, who are both little people, they are diagnosed with dwarfism. They have four children all of whom are average size except for one. It was quite interesting to see how the family interacted with one another as well as with others. TLC follows the family around and you get to see what they do everyday. The Roloff’s live on a farm. By watching how hard the ‘little’ people worked to make their farm successful as well as raise their children, I learned a lot about their lifestyle. I have never lived on a farm or met a ‘little’ person, so this experience is something that I would have only seen on TV.

On Dancing With The Stars I ran into a cast of people who I normally wouldn’t “know” since most reality shows lead you to believe that you “know” these characters in some way. Most had achieved some sort of fame all the way from a former Miss USA, an undefeated female world boxing champion, to a former USA Dream Team Ball Player. Now I normally don’t watch this show nor do I normally go ballroom dancing with my friends, but I enjoyed the show. I am involved with dance and love dancing so this show really appealed to me. During our weekly Dance Theatre Tech classes we’ve even had a few lessons on ballroom dancing so watching it made me want to take some more lessons.

Now, I faithfully watched The Bachelor a few seasons ago during my freshman year of college. No matter how much I knew that the reality of something like this ever happening, I still enjoyed watching. I tuned in each week to watch the women fight over this man they claimed to love, that they’d only known for um about three weeks. Not to be a Debbie Downer, but how can you claim to love a man you barely know, especially when there’s hordes of other women trying to get to know him as well. Anyways, I watched the show and although I disagree with the point, I have to admit that I enjoyed watching the drama. This show defies reality as I know it. Now the fact that all of these people are searching for their true love, I can relate too. All the drama and one guy dating 16 women—not a reality that I know. The only other place I think you might find as much drama between women is either on a cheerleading squad or on a sorority suite.

After briefly talking about Meyrowitz and Baudrillard in our mass communications class, I began to see how some of their arguments make sense. Meyrowitz argues “that the very existence of television is an influence on society because it breaks down the physical barriers that separate people (Hanson, 2005, pg. 256).” For example, in Little People, Big World, I experienced life firsthand through the Roloff family. I learned what it entailed to run a farm and I also learned some of the challenges and obstacles that little people overcome everyday to live a normal life. Because of the ‘physical barriers’ in my life I never would have experienced this. TV broke down these barriers and showed me what someone else’s life is like. This influenced me so that now if I ever meet or know a little person or even someone who lives on and runs a farm I know a little bit about them, therefore influencing society. Although the barriers are being broken, the barriers are broken are through the media, which is controlled by the gatekeepers. In a sense then the gatekeepers decide what barriers are broken and what we see.

Baudrillard argues that we can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality, especially in television. I have to go both ways on this. I can see where Baudrillard’s argument rings true. In most TV shows, the distinction between fantasy and reality is very thin. Especially to most of the people who are on the shows (The Bachelor). Another example: Grey’s Anatomy. I watch this show faithfully (even though it was not included in my prime time viewing from above) and the show seems very real. The viewer needs to take a step back and realize that although the ABC producers do a great job of making the show seem real, making these people seem like real surgeons, they are not. If you do not understand that, then I feel you are in danger. I also feel that I can argue against Baudrillard’s theory as well. In the Bachelor, at least for me, it is very clear to me that this in fact is not reality. Twenty five women all competing for a man, to fall in love with him, and marry him. Honestly how long do they think that marriage will last??

I feel that if a person has a good balance in their TV viewing they will be just fine. A person can learn a lot from TV by having their physical barriers broken down and experiencing something new (Meyrowitz). This person needs to take Baudrillard’s argument into consideration though. It is ok to learn something or experience something new from the television you watch, you just have to be smart about what you consider to be real.

The American Dream....NOT!

While reading American Sports, for my “Sporting Spirit” English class, I was learning all about how in the 1970’s people started this quest for fitness. They would jog, run, swim, cycle, walk, or play racquetball all while they smoked fewer cigarettes, drank less alcohol, ate less red meat and consumed more white meat. The most interesting thing that struck me was this sentence, “Being fat in America became the greatest single sign of personal failure.”

WHAT??? Today over half of the population of America is fat or obese. Yes, according to USATODAY 65% of adults are overweight (half of those are obese, meaning about 30 pounds or more above a healthy weight for their height). This just amazes me that only 30 years after this ‘fitness craze’ that so many of our citizens have become overweight.

The book does let on though, “Dieting had its negative side; a Gallup poll in 1986 estimated that three million Americans, most of them women, suffered from the eating disorders of anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia. If exercise and dieting failed to obtain the desired figure, the most affluent Americans increasingly resorted to plastic surgery.”

So obesity is not our only concern, today it is estimated that 8 million Americans have an eating disorder. To me, what I learned from this is that in our world today most of our citizens are either fat or they have an eating disorder. What kind of image does this promote to young children? Now wonder they grow up with distorted pictures of what they are to look like. I know that I am not obese, nor do I have an eating disorder. I wonder what percent of Americans actually live a healthy lifestyle by exercising and eating right like I do???

Grey's Anatomy

One of my favorite TV shows is Grey’s Anatomy. When I first started watching Grey’s it was on Sunday evenings at 10pm after Desperate Housewives (my other favorite). As of March 28, 2005 right after the show came out and was on Sunday evening’s the ratings proved that the show retained 67% of Desperate Housewives viewers and averaged 16.2 million viewers.

This season the show was moved to Thursday nights at 9pm. The ratings did not drop after the show moved to Thursdays, in fact, I think they may be higher than before, so it obviously seems like Grey’s has a lot of loyal viewers that would follow the show to any night or time slot. According to Zap2it , Grey’s is ranked third in the Top 20 Network Primetime Series: Total Households. Now for household ratings Grey’s is ranked 14/4/22.0 in ratings/share which is about a 16,008,000 household audience. Zap2it states that this is about 22,304,000 viewers. Grey’s seems to have a wide population of viewers, although CBS airs its show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation at 9pm on Thursdays. Seems to me as if Grey’s still does quite well airing at the same time.

Now I know that these numbers are not exactly correct. My friend watches Grey’s at its normally scheduled time and while she is watching it, she tapes it for me. I miss Grey’s every week due to dance practice so I watch it either later that evening or Friday morning. After I watch it, I usually have several other friends who will borrow the tape to watch it as well. I know that many other people do this because there are over 100 members in our dance organization who all miss Grey’s each week. Therefore, the recorded number of viewers is not always correct, because they can record that my friend is watching it, but then they cannot record how many viewers view my tape of the recorded episode.

Seeing how high the ratings are even though I know that they are not always accurate leads me to believe that Grey’s will not be cancelled anytime soon. The ratings have steadily increased since Grey’s Anatomy was first shown, so I have faith that the numbers will continue to rise and I will be able to view brand-new episodes of my favorite show for many seasons to come.