Finals

I am so glad this year has finaly come to an end. This is my last year and i have never been more excited and more scared in my entire life. I hope i look back in these days in classes at my time at the University and find that i miss it. I want to be able to take what i have learned during my time here and use it, maybe not to save the world or find a cure for AIDS, but i want to be able to use it to make my life better and the lives of those around me. Univeristies impact people in a big way, you learn about free thoguht ans what makes you you, and my time has come to g out in the world and use it. Any suggestions??

Television codes

Codes in Television shows
Television shows contain certain social codes that lead to stereotypes. There are technical codes, social codes, conventional representation codes, and ideological codes.
In a previous study, Codes of Television, by John Fiske it is revealed that televisions attempts to makes events and people seem a certain way by language, dialog, dress, and camera angle.
The study uses a scene from a television series, Hart to Hart, to illustrate these findings. The episode was about couples on cruise ship. One couple is a detective team and the other couple is jewel thieves. The study uses two scenes from the show. It goes on to explain how the lighting is different for each couple and the camera angles are also different. This leads the view to think certain things about the characters. For example the light in the dectectives couple is a softer light while the jewel thieves are shown in a harsh bright light. The dialog between the couples is also different. Some other things that affect what the viewer thinks are lighting, editing, music, and theme song, casting of characters, costumes and sets. All of these codes lead to reader to form opinions and stereotypes of the show and characters without even watching the whole show.
My corpus is an episode if the television show Nip/Tuck. It is episode 9 from season three, titled “Hannah Tedesco” The episode is about a face transplant surgery. The dialog between the characters, the camera, angles, and the music all lead the viewer to think certain things. The show presents people with unrealistic bodies and gives them the ability to change anything. Kimber one of the lead characters in the show is always shown in revealing clothing and has a job as a porn star.
The episode is roughly 52 minutes long. It contains a scene insinuating sex between non couples and talks about some explicit subject manner. While the theme song and credits are playing at the beginning of the show mannequins are shown on the screen. The manequinns are being drawn on with red lipstick to shown where incisions would be made for surgery. The lines are around the breast and face, leading the viewer to believe bigger breast are better. The last mannequins face turns to a woman’s face. This could lead woman to think that they should look like a mannequin and flawless, when in truth that is not how most women look.
The open scene contain Christian walking into is office where there are two woman waiting, and he says, “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself.” The women are normal looking and the camera angles are the same on both the doctor and the ladies but the dialog here clearly has a strong message. There are two other scenes in the show where the same line is spoken to two other patients. This line seems like it encourages people to be dissatisfied with there body image. In another scene Christian stands over the woman when he talks to her. This makes it clear that one character is dominant over the other one. This woman patient ask look like a Kimber Doll, an inflatable life-size sex toy. She wants to look like the doll because her husband is obsessed with the doll and will no longer be intimate with her. This is an unrealistic image for a woman to have but yet through this scene it is portrayed as ok.
In another scene the viewer is introduced to the real Kimber, A real woman that is Christian’s fiancée and porn star. . Not only is she a porn star but also she starts a workshop series called “Bringing out the Porn Star in You”. Every scene that she is shown is she is also shown in a low cut short dress lot of makeup and high heels. The also has large breast and blonde hair. This depicts woman as sex objects and lower than their male counterparts.
The dialog, dress, and casting in this show lead the viewer to believe certain things about the show and the characters. These views and stereotypes that are formed can lead over to what is thought about real life. The show portrays woman in unrealistic ways and say that what isn’t perfect can be fixed with surgery. It also shows dominance of men over woman. Every woman wants something in the show and the men are the ones that can give the woman what they want. The dress, dialog, and characters are all part of the coding that is in television shows. That is coding like this in all types of televisions shows.


Source:
John Fiske, The Codes of Television, Media Studies:A reader, Marris, Paul;ed. Thornham, Sue;ed. Edinburgh University press 1996

Nip/Tuck season 3 episode 9 Sean Jablonski-write, Michael M. Robin-director aired:11/15/05

Project

I want to show somthing about the type of people that commit crimes. I am going to collect the blotter from the Dallas Morning News for a weeks and catalog the type of crime as violent or non violent, what the crime was and what the race of the person was who commited the crime.
We did a reading ealier in the semester about how some news staions only showed the crimes on tv that were commited by minorites, even though everyone commits crimes. Thise type of selective showing leads people to form negitive options about certain races. The media has the ability to shape the opinions of people.
I want to know if the newspaper does the smae thing or if it reports crme about all different types of people.

Video Games

Sex and steroetypes have now seemed into videio games and are polluting the minds of children. Even though the a 29 year old male is the peson that studies hahve found play the most video games, its children that are impressionable by what they see on the games. A 29 year old male should know what is right and what is real about a video game, while a child might not be sure.
Video games contain obsord amounts of violence, and people with unrealistic body types.
These unrealistic body types lead yonug peole to believe that woman are suppose to have overly large breast and tiny waist and men should be well chisled bodies. These images can lean young people to have harsh opinions of what they themselves should look like and could lead to unhealth habits. The way that woman can be portrayed in theses games can lead yound men to belive that this is way that real woman should be treated and it's not. Games show naked woman gagged and begging to be killed and prostitues being killed after sex. Those things aren't acceptable in real life, so why should they be in a game.
Second to the 29 year old that play the games are adelescent boys.
These boys should be seeing more holesmethngs than these things that are contained in these games. The top 10 selling games all contain violence and unrealistic body images and that isn't healthy for today's youth.
There should be ways to entertain these young men without filling their minds with garbage.

Sex and the Movies

Sex is once again used to sell something......movies. Some form of sexual cotent is found in alot of movie trailer and previews and this is fact because of the study done by oliver and kalyanaraman. In fact "on average the previews contained 1.51 sex scenes per minute" and that's alot of sex for a 30 second to three minute clip. Obviously the whole movie doesn't have that much sex in it and the producers can choose to put anything they want in the previews and trailers, but why do they always choose to show the sex. The movie industry is a multi billion dollar industry and whatever producers are doing is working becuase lots of movies are still being made. And they ae being viewed because of sex. In addition to movies promoting sex to sell themselves, it seems like the sexual portrayals tend to be about woman. Some it extremly short skirts such as in Empire records and other in other ways csuh as bathing suits or in a bed, as eluding to the fact that sex has just happened or is about to occur. Why can't the previews just tell what the movie is about without all the sex.

sex symbols

So throughout this class we have learned how everything degrades woman and makes everything about sex. As much as i want to believe that this isn't true, i came to the understanding this week that men see woman as sex symbols even if that is not what the woman is trying to protrey.
So i was working on Monday Tuesady night, at a fine dining restaurant in Addison, and i was solisited for sex by one of my customers. I did nothing to bring this own, and i wasn't dressed in a provacative manner, infact i had on black pants and a black high collared shirt. This man dined alone and said he was a business man from L.A. and was leaving Wednesday. He sat at my table fro serval hours and i always made simple conversation with him when i walked by to fill his water glass, which is part of my job. So as the night when on his conversation got my inapropiate and he went as far as to bluntly ask me if i was "getting any lovin" to which i replied i had a serious boyfriend and my private life was none of his business. Apparently that answer didn't suite him because he then patted my butt, but apolgized and said he was reaching for my arm. The man made me uncomfortable and i didn't go over there again till it was time to give him his bill, and that time he invited me back to his hotel to "cuddle or watch a movie, or something else, but whatever i wanted" and he said he would make it worth my while. I have hime his change and when he left he left a map to his hotle, the room number, and a phone number.
Since did the average waitress become a sex symbol? It really makes me think that society leads men to belive that this kind of behavior is ok, and it's not. Not everyone wants to be seen like that.

music videos and sex

so we have learned that girls in little clothing are used to see beer,fashion, and now music. Music videos are becoming more and more scandalous. There seems to be a near naked girl in everyone. Sometimes it is actually the singer herself and sometime it is just some hoe, as in the case with Snoop Dog's "Gin and Juice" video or Sor Mixalot
's "Baby Got Back". It seems like nothing sells anymore without being related to sex. For example Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera had first albums that portrayed this as wholesome American Girls, by there follow up albums there weren't looking the same. They made this decision, would their albums have sold the same if they hadn't gone in such a sexier direction. It is hard to tell and it seems that other people have continued to follow in their footsteps as sex symbols instead of the other way. Sex sells and people don't want to take a chance of their album not selling or their music video not being watched. Not only does sex sells but the way that scociety thinks now is what makes sex sell. Maybe people should start thinking for themselves and not so much following protocal and the world wouldn't reley so much on sex appeal.

beer = sex

So apparently sex is used to sell everything, not just designer shoes and clothing, but beer too. The thing that bothers me is that there seems to be more controversy surrounding beer ads than fashion adds. They all sell sex, not the products they were intended to sell. It seems like beer ads are yanked from the tv for being contrevesal or degrading while fashion ads aren't banned from magazines for the same thing. I want to know why these products can't sell themselves. Why do they have to have to use skantily clad woman to sell their products. I didn't realize how much sex sold beer until i got into this class. I seem to critque comercials in a whole new way now. I don't even remember some of these commercials but they are made for a male audience. I didn't realize how much they were made for the male audience until i was describing the commercial with the 3 girls pillow fighting to my boyfriend and he distinctively remember the commercials and all the details about it, but he couldn't tell me about the superbowl that was being played at the same time.

Let's Look at Porn

Porn is an everyday part of the american advertising world. it has slowly over timed come to be sush a part of adds that we don't even know what the adds are about anymore. Naked woman pleasuring themselve in pictiures is not advertising, it's soft core porn. Take for example the Marc Jacobs shoe add, there is a woman laying ont the bed with her rear end exposed and her legs over her head and she is looking striaght at the camera in a way that doesn't make me think of shows. She screams sex and shoes and if there wasn't a title on the bottom of the page that read Marc Jacob shoes, then i wouldn't even know what is ad was about and this could be the front of a porn movie or magazine. wOMAN are portrayed as sex abjects on the fornt of so many main stream magazines, such as 17, vogue, and elle; everyone sees these magazines and sees theese skinny half naked woman looking at them. What kind of modle those this set for children growing up? and when is the last time you saw the from of a magazine with a woman completely clothed on it? Adds need to go back to being more about what thet are sellung and less about the sex.

"all american Girls"

so we read the case profile last week and it showed clearly how people stereotyped the girls before they really did all the research. It shows that news can stereotype in spot news cases. Once the story broke away from spot news and it had been a few days, a new stereotype was setup. This shows that the media is wrong in their stereotyping and need to work on reporting in a more objective way to help save their own image. The paper changed what the girls were portrayed as after a few days and this seemed like they didn't do their research in the first place.

week 1 post- news habits

News comes from many places. I personally get me news from online newspapers, cnn.com and the radio on the way to school. Teachers are another good source of news for me because they are always bringing up current events in class. I also have a subcription to TIME magazine. I am not going to lie, i don't read as much news as a should. I Listen to the radio everyday on the way to school, but actual reading of the news is probably only an hour maybe to a week. I try to read something everyday but it doesn't always work that way. Today however i did read, and i read on cnn.com that more people live together that are not married than ver before. I don't think when i comes to race, and gender issues that the news is covered objectively and fairly. It seems like minorities get way more new coverage than non but the news coverage they get also isn't as positive as the news coverage of non-minorites. The same is true about people with disablities. It seems like the news focuses on negative aspects alot of time.

yeah

hooray for me i finally figured this out after two weeks are i now have a blogg for class