“Am I ugly?” This is the name in which numerous teenage
girls have named some videos they created at home and upload it later in
YouTube as a way to receive some feedback of unknown and anonymous YouTube
users confirming or denying their supposedly “ugliness”. Those videos seems to
be one of the most recent trends among teenagers between ages 11 and 13. The
videos were posted mainly for girls although there are some boys who also
posted similar videos (Gray 2012).
These
videos can even reach a considerable amount of viewers. One of them has been
posted in December of 2012 and has reached 3.4 million of viewers. The comments
range from supportive messages (E.g: “I think you look pretty and nice”) to
awful and aggressive ones (E.g: “UGLIER THAN A DEMON”) (Gray 2012). I am just
trying to figuring out how much pressure of how desperate one of these girls
might feel just to put their concept of themselves under scrutiny of anonymous
and total strangers. The girls mentioned that the main reason for posting those
videos were that they received negative comments by their peers at school and
they were bullied most of the time (Gray 2012).
Herbert
Blumer in the reading 12 about “Movies and conduct” discuss about the role that
motion pictures has in children and girls and boy at a young age. Some of the
perspectives that the author offers about the influence of motion pictures in
people are arousing different positive and negative emotions and imposing modes
of conduct. More importantly, “in the case of the girl, in particular, desires
for beauty, for sophistication, for grace and ease, for romance, for adventure,
and for love are likely to come to the fore” (Peters & Simonson 2004).
Some other
recent studies have been conducted about the media’s influence on body image
disturbance. In this study, Thompson and Heinberg have presented some
information related to a survey conducted by Psychology Today. The survey has
indicated the tremendous impact the mass media has in transmitting the cultural
ideal of thinness, beauty especially for women. This study conducted among 3,452
participants showed that 23% agreed that movie or television influenced their
body image and 22% attributed the influence to fashion magazine models
(Thompson & Heinberg 1999).
Blumer
discussed the impact of motion pictures in high school student as they were
expectators. He also describes how this tool can become a very powerful
educational tool when even home, school or the community is unable to introduce
them in the new world they are entering at that age. He even mentions that when
the strength and capabilities of institution might be higher to mold attitudes
and behaviors, there is a “condition of emotional detachment” which leads
individuals to accept what motion pictures show as a norm (Peters &
Simonson 2004). In addition, I might say that this notion of the influence of
motion pictures in young people as mere spectators has evolved since now
technology allows them to create their own videos or motion pictures as a way
to express themselves and show how media is influencing on them. This is
something that definitely was not possible at Blumer’s time.
I think
maybe something interesting to see those days would be how much impact does
movies have in teenagers. Do you think they are the only medium that can have
such a high influence on them? What about social media? It might be a good idea
to see some statistics about it. In addition, do you know of any films that you
believe are promoting education and positive values among teenagers?
Sources:
Peters, J. D., & Simonson,
P. (2004). Mass Communication and American Social Thought. Key
Texts:1919-1968. Maryland, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
In this excerpt from Crisis Magazine W.E.B. Du Bois yearns for equality among the arts and says that blacks will not truly be human until their art is seen as equal. As a proponent of "Negro Art", Du Bois became a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance, which saw a flowering of intellectuals, writers, painters and patrons in Harlem. Du Bois believed that whites and blacks alike saw a prejudice when they analyzed art from blacks. He even points to some artists who superstitiously try to pass themselves off as white just to be taken on an "even" playing field. Du Bois, here is yearning for the Platonic truth. He says " The apostle of beauty thus becomes the apostle of truth and right not by choice but by inner and outer compulsion." If "negro art" is seen as inferior, then the truth for an entire race, in turn, is seen to be inferior. As art is a tool for propaganda, du Bois argues, the black artist struggles to have their version of the truth heard. Du Bois also calls for freedom from white dependence. If a black artist has to impress white publishers to be published the kinds of stories and portrayal of black in white dominant media are "Uncle Tom's", Du Bois argues. Blacks should be able to portray their own story and show their struggle in pure and honest portrayal of the truth, unadulterated by white prejudice. When blacks can support and print the art of fellow blacks and this art is seen as equal and not then, not only will it be independent and self-sufficient but reflective of the true "humanity" of truth for these black artists. So the struggle isn't just against the white ideas, but of the own ingrained prejudice that blacks have being handed down "white ideas" about art and culture. He is, in essence, arguing for an independent culture, a black culture.
What Jane Addams says in “The House of Dreams” is an argument
for propaganda. She argues that the public needs to use its collective power to
project the idealized society we want rather than the society we have.That the medium has such a reach into the
psyches of the consuming public, “The Theater is making the minds of our urban
populations today.” These feeble-minded people have to be protected. We need to
protect the masses from themselves - give them what they need, not what they
want.
Apply the argument to TV and follow it to its logical end
and you get Newton Minow’s “Wasteland Speech.” And now the argument is for
exploiting the medium to control minds and promote what they view as good. Trust us we now best.
So entertainment is used as escapism. It’s a bleak view of
reality. Addams writes, “the theater is the only place where they can satisfy
that craving for a conception of life higher than that which the actual world
offers them.”and “The drama provides a transition
between the romantic conceptions which they vainly struggle to keep intact and life’s
cruelties and trivialities which they refuse to admit.”
Adams says bring the person back to , back to reality and
back to personal relationships but so did Minow. 50 years later he said, “Program
materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer …and remind him of the
responsibilities which the citizen has towards his society.”And people make the same arguments against
reality TV today, it’s trash. But we like trash, and consuming hours upon hours
of trash hasn’t destroyed our society and never will.
After reading sections 1-11 in Peter and Simonson's Mass Communication and American Social Thought, the work of Jane Addams immediately intrigued me for a few reasons. First, was the overall concept of Hull House which she opened in 1889 for new immigrants arriving in Chicago and getting acclimated to live in America and second, her overall views of theater and the impact the stage had on this group of youth.
Hull House
In "The House of Dreams" Addams explores the dangers of the theater as a place where young people can satisfy the craving for conceptions of life higher than that which the actual world offers them. (Addams) Growing up, children can use their imagination to create scenes with their toys and dolls but as they age, Addams depicts this imagination may come from reading books or for the welfare child, going to the show. As one who loves broadway, I could relate to the feeling you have as the curtains close after a show, being swept up in an imaginary world with new the possibilities, emotions and ideas running through your head that you've never thought before. The problem here is that theater has a strong power that forecasts life for the youth and may create a false image of the real world.
Is it better to live in complete reality with just the facts or let your imagination run wide and dream the impossible? A modern day issue similar to Addams concerns would be reality television. Millions of viewers now tune in on a weekly basis to watch "real people" put in unique survival, dating and life style circumstances. The rise of realty television is staggering. In 2001-2002, reality TV accounted for about 22% of the prime time TV audience watching the top 10 programs. By 2011, it accounted for 56%, an increase of almost 155% (MarkingCharts) But has realty television consumed our lives and changed the thought process and perception of youth like theater did in the early 1900's?
Readings 1 through 11 in “Mass Communication and American
Social Thought” by Peters & Simonsen present varying opinions on forms of
new communication from 1897 to 1931. As Cooley’s “The Process of Social Change”
suggests, social, cultural and political life all change when new media of communication
are introduced. In these readings, themes emerge of freedom, adventure and a
better world – as well as the negative side of being presented with these new
adventures and how they change people and the world adversely.
Cooley, Park & Burgess, Dewey, DuBois, Lasswell, Bernays
and Sapir discuss the positive elements to the new forms of communication.
Cooley, Park & Burgess, Dewey, DuBois and Lasswell touch on the themes of
freedom and “a better world” communication creates. The move from word of mouth
to written records was “revolutionary” said Park & Burgess, and “news has
freed mankind from the control of political parties and social institutions.” Communication
allows everyone to share in a common life, proposes Dewey. With communication, “learning
and teaching come into being and there is no event which may not yield
information” (Dewey). When combined with education, communication “forms the principal
free institution, without which no other sort of freedom could long endure, and
by the aid of which we may hope to gain more freedom than we have … freer development
of individual involves, of course, a freer development of the social order”
(Cooley).
DuBois relates art and beauty to communication, discussing “all sorts
of ways we are hemmed in and our new young artists have got to fight their way
to freedom.” DuBois hopes for a day where art will be reviewed and acclaimed by
“free and unfettered judgment.” Through the art of the written word in the propaganda of World War I, Lasswell
explores how President Woodrow Wilson “embodied the faith of the idealists in a
better world.” In his propaganda, Wilson speaks of a “better world, when wars should
be no more and a brotherhood of democratic peoples should bury their heritage
of ancestral rancor, and march toward a world of fellowship and reconciliation”
(Lasswell). The success of this positive communication showed that “propaganda
is one of the most powerful instrumentalities in the modern world” (Lasswell). These
far-reaching techniques of communication not only increase the sheer radius of
communication but also “lessen the importance of mere geographical contiguity”
and will cause us to “remap the world both sociologically and psychologically”
said Sapir. Bernays added that while public opinion can be easily manipulated,
at the core of communication techniques for the mass distribution of ideas “is
a tenacious will to live, to progress, to move in the direction of ultimate
social and individual benefit.”
Addams, Anderson, Lippmann and Lynd & Lynd express their
views of the negative side of new forms of communication such as movies, books
and magazines. Lippmann also warns that the ideal of a well-informed public
through the news is unrealistic. A person will experience a “romantic age in
politics and is no longer moved” and the “man does not live who can read all
the reports that drift across his doorstep or all the dispatches in his
newspaper” (Lippmann). New media disengage people from reality and threaten morality. Movies “satisfy the insatiable desire to know of the great adventures
of the wide world” said Addams, but these movies are becoming people’s moral
guides and will therefore subject some of them to the “overwhelming temptation
of illicit and soul-destroying pleasures.” Anderson said books and magazines
take away individuality, as men’s minds are “filled to overflowing with the
words of other men” and men are found talking “glibly and senselessly.” In
their field study in Muncie, Ind., Lynd & Lynd found “Middletown appears to
read magazines primarily for the vicarious things in fictional form they
contain. … Since 1890, there has been a trend toward franker ‘sex adventure’
fiction.” Movie ads in Muncie also promised adventure: “go to a motion picture …
and let yourself go! … All the adventure, all the romance, all the excitement
you lack in your daily life are in – pictures! They take you completely out of
yourself into a wonderful new world” (Lynd & Lynd). Activities such as
reading are being chosen less often than going to movies and utilizing new
media.
As these authors discuss regarding communication, the sheer
number of new media that confronts society in this progressive era can be
enlightening or overwhelming, leading people down higher roads to education and
better judgment or instead making poor moral choices and losing their
identities in the face of public opinion.
After reading the
excellent excerpts from section I in the Peters & Simonson text,
I decided that I wanted to focus on the two selections regarding propaganda,
"The Results of Propaganda" fromPropaganda
Technique in World War"by
Harold Dwight Lasswell and “Manipulating
Public Opinion: The Why and the How” by Howard L. Bernays and how these two
works relate to the mass media communications world of today.
Often, the word “propaganda” invokes the
mass media campaigns of war times when governments would issue paraphernalia to
swirl up public support for the troops, raise anti-opposition fervor and just
generally influence and sway public opinion. An example of this is seen in the
Uncle Sam poster depicted below. Often, it is seen as a form of brainwashing
rather than it similarity to advertising, an evil, at times, scheme to get in
the minds of the recipients and to make them think or act in a certain way. However,
is this necessarily a bad thing? After all, advertising strives to influence
public opinion as well, often to feel positively about a product or service,
very similar to propaganda’s goals.
Socrates would never have had an imaginary girlfriend. If
Notre Dame football player Manti T’eo insisted on a face-to-face meeting with
Lennay Kekua he wouldn’t have been manipulated in a cruel hoax that led him
fall in love with a fake personality who died of fake cancer. If Socrates had
his way, no one would fall victim to catfishing, that weird phenomenon of our
internet age where someone pursues an online romance using a false identity. As
we discussed in class, Socrates, in The Phaedrus, finds truth through dialect. Face-to-face. In person.
It seems increasingly difficult to find the truth today,
even though we have more information than we can possibly process and
communication is everywhere. A friend of mine posted this picture of Bill Gates
holding a gun, along with the text of a high school commencement speech attributed
to Gates. I looked for more information and discovered that Gates didn’t
deliver the speech and the gun is a work of Photoshop.
In Chapter4 of Mass
Communication and Social Thought, we hear about publicity, public opinion,
newspapers and social control. Robert Ezra Park and Ernest W. Burgess write
about the importance of the newspaper as "the great medium of communication" that provides information used to shape public opinion. But Park and Burgess say the newspaper can't "compete with the village gossips as a means of social control."
Today, social media, blogs and Oprah are the village and newspapers can't compete with the gossip on Facebook, Twitter, MoveOn.org and the Drudge Report.
What's worse is that news reporters are sometimes complicit in a system that allows the spread of gossip and clouds the truth.
For example, in 1990, a young Kuwaiti teenager using an assumed name testified before Congress about Iraqi soldiers storming a Kuwaiti hospital, throwing premature babies out of their incubators and leaving them to die so the incubators could be taken back to Iraq. The account was reported in the press and repeated by then President George H.W. Bush. The story helped support the idea that the war against Iraq was a humanitarian issue, not one of access to oil. After the war was over, Harper's, 60 Minutes and the New York Times investigated the incubator story and discovered it wasn't true. It didn't happen. The teenage girl who testified before Congress turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador but not a single reporter tracked down her identity.
In the book, The Press Effect, Katherine Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman write, "The conditions of war made the press more willing to accept the incubator story and less able to determine whether it was true." In chapter 8 of our text, Harold Dwight Lasswell writes about the power of propaganda, especially when people like reporters, "are drawn into the service of propaganda to amplify a master voice."
So how do we find the truth? The pressure is on all of us to search for accurate information that doesn't just affirm what we want to believe.
And always be skeptical when a stranger wants to follow on Twitter.
Jane Addams has described in “The House of Dreams” the
negative influences that play can exert over young people by exhibiting
apparent realities and conducting them to over fantasize about certain aspects
of life (Peters & Simonson 2004). This notion of plays and its influence on
society, especially among young people and moreover women, could be compared to
the influence of television soap operas in Latin America. I took this example
because I had the opportunity to be part of the excitement generated by TV soap
operas among girls and even entire families and I have been always impressed
about the negative stereotypes that some of this shows are promoting among
young girls.
Storytelling is seen as the core of traditional and
modern media and as the reason for success of a mass medium, according to Debashis
Aikat in his work about Traditional and Modern Media. Street theaters,
television and staged melodramas are included in his category of traditional and
modern media. Thus, we can see the role of plays and television soap operas as
artifacts of storytelling and communication and how both serve in the
construction of a conception of life (Aikat n.d). In addition, both help to
build personal identity through identification with characters and they also
become moral guide for audiences, as Addams has discussed.
The stories and characters personalities’ has such a
strong impact on people’s lives. Addams does not “trust in media that promote
antisocial behavior and encourages flights of fancy among socially vulnerable
audience members” (Peters & Simonson 2004). She provided some examples of
different plays that encourage criminal behavior, revenge and moreover present
some negative stereotypes of how should woman behave in order to be “seen” and
keep attending those plays. She is impressed about how all these absurdities can
occupy an important part of leisure for Chicago society (Peters & Simonson
2004)
At the
end of the reading she proposes the idea of the city of Chicago offering more adequate
public recreation as whether plays in theaters could only have a negative
impact in society (Peters & Simonson 2004). If we also relate this notion
to the role and influence that television soap operas can have in Latin America,
we would say that they affect negatively the perceptions of people about moral
and life in general. However, there are some authors who present a different
perspective and say that soap operas in Latin America might serve as a vehicle
of both recreation and education.
In
fact, Umberto Eco, an Italian semiotician and philosopher, has described that
there are two contradictory perspectives regarding the role of television. One
group of people is called “integrated”
in they defend television as tool of communication and entertainment and the
other group the “apocalypticals”
rejected TV as they see it promoting violence and being superficial (Eco 1984)
Let’s
take a look of the perspective that, Beatriz Gonzalez, one Professor of
Communications and Master in Scriptwriting in a Mexican University has to say
about the role of soap operas. According the division that Umberto Eco has done
about perspectives on TV, she proclaims herself as an “integrated”. She
discusses that soap operas, especially in third world countries, have been used
as a vehicle capable of sending messages of social development and personal
growth. Of course, she makes clear that this has not been the initial purpose
that soap operas might have had initially (Gonzalez n.d).
The term “social” soap opera it has been
defined by Gonzalez in which it can become a tool to propose solutions and ways
to combat ignorance, abuses, misery, discrimination and sexual harrashment.
Thus, we see an opposite idea of what has been presented by Addams when she
states that plays in Chicago has served as a way to escape from reality and
that they had become a “veritable house of dreams”.
An
interesting phenomenon has taken place with TV soap operas in Brasil,
especially in those last 15 years. A famous production company of soap operas,
Red Globo (Red Globe) in Brazil have been including in their soap operas themes
such as alcoholism, sexual health, organs donation, preserving the environment.
This action has result in an award in 2001 of “Business in the community awards
of excellence”. A proof of this is new
approach to soap operas had been when a soap opera named “Lazos de Sangre”
(Blood Ties) has Camila as the main character. In the story, she has Leukemia.
Later, the producers of the show conducted a comparative study to detect
changes in health services. The study titled “Efecto Camila” (“The Camille
Effect”) revealed that the National Registry of Marrow Donor in Brasil
registered an average of 20 new donors per month and then in January of 2001,
when the soap opera emphasized the topic, there were 900 registrations
(Gonzalez n.d).
On the
other hand, another perspective on soap operas that I believe is aligned in a
way with what was presented by Adams is the work presented by a Mexican
researcher who is a Master in Philosophy Studies at University of Guadalajara. Tania Arias in her work named: “Telenovela:
Construccion del desarollo humano?” (Soap operas: Construction of
human development?). In this work, she focuses mainly in the effect of the soap
operas as a mass medium of communication which affects women as individuals
externally. According to Arias, feminine
identity as presented in the different characters is a representation of the
construction of patriarchal systems. Sexist stereotypes are presented to the
audience. She explores the example of a trilogy of novels shown during 1992 to
1996 in Mexico which were called: Maria la del Barrio, Maria Mercedes y
Marimar. All of them where characterized by the same actress in the main
character. They reached a massive audience in Latin America and in Europe as
well (Arias n.d)
Here it
is a trailer of this soap opera that was very famous around the 90’s in my
country and in Latin America. I am sorry that is in Spanish. I couldn’t find it
with English subtitles but at least you see the scenes and will have a sense
about what I am talking about:
Some
elements analyzed of these three soap operas are firstly the name of the main
character: Maria. In Mexico, this is one of the most common names and if is true
that the name Mary can evoke the name of the mother of God and a sense of
virginity it is true that the name Mary can also refer to a low level of social
and economic condition. This name has a connotation of poverty and marginality.
To sum up, the three novels presents the poverty and struggles of a humble
woman whose life it is going to be transformed by a man who lives in more
privileged conditions. Those stories are fake, distortion the reality and are
full of patriarchal content. What they present is the role of the women as a
passive individual who has to wait for a man to transform her condition. The
stories present a woman subordinated to comply with some moral rules where she
is dominated by men, conditioned only to marriage, procreation and protecting
children, as Arias described in her work.
The author even remarks that there are some
soap operas which even depict a woman of high social and economic status and professionally
developed who is still emotional dependent and subordinated by men. Those kinds
of soap operas as seen by Arias do not promote equality of sexes or equal
rights to both genders. In addition, they do not promote awareness in woman
that is conducive to their self-development. Thus, those types of Mexican soap
operas reproduce patriarchal systems where woman does not find growth and
development by herself instead she is subordinated to others (Arias n.d)
By
trying to reconcile those two contrasting points of views about the role of
soap operas in Latin America and how this relate to the notion of some media
and recreation can lead to negative behaviors and thoughts, as Addams
described, I have two thoughts about this:
1)As we
have seen that some Brazilian soap operas are creating awareness and promoting
social actions such as donating organs or preserving the environment…why they
haven’t start to change and present more positive role models for woman in
which they are happy and achieve success by living their lives in a different
way and not only being subordinated to men? Does American soap operas depict the
same reality? I am not trying to be seen as a super feminist. It is just that I
believe maybe soap operas are really misleading women by not helping them to
build a more positive, realistic and independent vision of themselves and their
potential. They aren’t even portraying a healthy view of relationships and love
and I think that is dangerous. In some way, I agree with Adams in the way she
sees some plays as promoting undesirable behaviors.
2)All the
stories are displayed in those plays and soap operas are just imposed by the
creation of producers, scriptwriters or are a reflection of the current state
of society and main aspirations of man and woman? Is this what people wants to
see or it is something imposed by others?
Peters, J. D., & Simonson,
P. (2004). Mass Communication and American Social Thought. Key
Texts:1919-1968. Maryland, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
For John Dewey community was the product of democracy, and
democracy was not just a form of government. It was a way of interacting with
one another and arriving at decisions together. He saw community as an extension
in space where participants refer to, react to, and consider the actions and
opinions of others, which in turn helps them to direct their own behaviors
(Dewey. 1964). Part of the effect of community was to break down barriers that
segregate people and to create greater empathy for one another. Dewey was very much
a progressive thinker, considering these idealistic views. But at the same time
I think he was firmly grounded in pragmatism, and had an understanding of what
was actually possible to achieve in community.
