Parents vs Prinesses/Superheroes

The princess culture and the superhero culture both have the potential of turning little kids in to spoiled narcissist and/or aggressive douche bags. The princess culture enables little girls to be self-involved and grow up to be materialistic. These girls, at an early age, develop a sense of entitlement and when something doesn't go the way they want, unforgiving complaining can be expected. Likewise for little boys, a superhero culture can teach to fight first and ask questions later. If a boy doesn't feel like reading the comic books, then he'll just look at the art work of heroes fighting. I'm not saying every little boy and girl will turn out this way, but for those that do, it seems that it could have been prevented very simply, with parenting. The media is everywhere, that much is a given. Fighting the media is no easy task, but parents don't need to isolate their children from tv and the internet to keep their kids normal. Just making sure their kids have both feet on the ground is good enough. I firmly believe that as long as parents don't over indulge their princess or hero, than this culture of overspending and fighting could be better handled. It's ok to say 'no' to your little girl and to put your little guy in the corner. It won't make these people bad parents, just the opposite; they'll be thanked by society later on in life. Let the kids have fun and be a princess for a day or save the world from an evil robot. I just hope it doesn't go too far.

Growing up Disney

Like most people in class, I grew up watching Disney movies. I would beg my mom to take my brother and me to see movies like Lion King, Mulan, and Hercules. My brother and I would sit quietly during the movie with a bucket full of popcorn and watch as Mulan argues with Mushu. Once the movie ended, we would walk out singing and laughing while still trying to finish the popcorn. It's movies and moments like those that come to mind when I think of Disney, and I'm not the only one. Disney has created a dynasty of cartoon legends that still have an impact on kids and on people like me. Disney has cornered the market in entertaining thousands of children worldwide, but they are also successful in cornering a different kind of market. I like to think of it as the Nostalgic Corner. The Nostalgic Corner is for "old" people like my brother and me who loved the Disney movies so much, we will not hesitate to take our baby sister and younger cousins to see a Disney movie. And if the Nostalgic Corner is full of people like me, Disney can expect to stay at the top. Even with older people reminiscing about their childhood, Team Disney still has little kids across the country who will want to drag parents to movie theaters and Disney World. They continue to have success in capturing the next generation of Disney-lovers, but I'm not complaining. As they say, hakuna matata and always let your conscience be your guide.

75 tweets later....

After completing the tweets required for class last Friday, I began to read some of the tweets I posted and I came to one tragic conclusion, my three-year old sister will never know about the Power Rangers. She will not experience the awesomeness of the original Looney Toons. She will not understand cool catchphrases such as, "the bomb." The world that we grew up has changed and I can't help but feel too old. Every Saturday morning, Annette, my baby sister, asks for her cartoons. Some are entertaining but most are clearly made for toddlers like Annette. Between the Twitter assignment and Annette's cartoons, I realized how different her childhood will be from mine or anyone else who grew up in the 90s. Today's world is much more baby sensitive, for example, did you know there is a whole tv channel devoted for children like Annette and any other kids under 5? These channels teach toddlers how to count their fingers and share their toys. Sesame Street was the only thing I ever watched that showed me how to count but I was never a big fan of PBS, unless the Magic School Bus was on of course. Instead, I preferred to watch cartoons like Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life, both of which were iffy for kids to watch. Annette and others her age will undoubtedly benefit from modern technology. Maybe when she reaches to be our age, she will reminisce about the cartoons she watched and have the same feelings we have when an episode of Rugrats is on tv.

Baghdad Blogging

When it comes to world changing events like 9/11 or more recently, the disaster in Japan, most of us will do one of two things to learn about the latest news: 1) we will reach for our television remotes and instantly change the channel to something like CNN or MSNBC. We instantly want to learn or hear more about what is happening. We see the reporters already in locations like Japan or in New Orleans, during Katrina, and we trust the reports because they are experiencing the effects of the disaster and see the reactions of people, army or volunteers. 2) we may not be able to get to a tv but with the world being connected with the internet, everything is just a few clicks away. Websites like ABCNews and NYTimes are just two of the favorites millions of people will visit as an alternative to watching tv. With huge corporations like these, people who write blogs and attempt to share their experiences, views and news with the world are deemed un-creditable and unreliable. Baghdad Burning was a blog by an Iraqi woman and she talked about life in Iraq during the war. Through her blog you can witness the terrifying events of everyday life for her and other women in Iraq. While blogs may be biased or lean in one direction more than the other, it's still, in my opinion, a source to gather different view points. Reporters from CNN and ABCNews may tell us how life is being lived in foreign countries like Japan after the earthquake but they get to go home and get away from it all. Blogs have the opportunity to give updates days after the reporters go home.

My reality TV

Pick a night and turn on your tv. You will find most channels now have some sort of reality tv show. We can change the channel to watch the latest episode of Jersey Shore or watch an exciting performance on American Idol. We might prefer to watch people starve themselves on Survivor or watch them get fired by Donald Trump on the Apprentice. Personally, I always enjoyed and hoped Flavor Flav would find his true love on the Flavor of Love, I'm still hoping for you Flav. Point is, there are so many kinds of reality shows now days that we don't need to watch shows like Jersey Shore, Real World or Celebrity Rehab to get our fix of drama. And for the parents out there who don't want their children watching men and women in their early thirties getting drunk in public, there's tv shows for the entire family to get hooked on together. Shows like Cake Boss and Kate Plus 8, those kids are so cute, are more family friendly and little-kid appropriate. Television producers realize that not everybody wants to watch the drama unfold all the time. So they capitalized on viewers who want to watch tv shows about things more relatable to them. For instance, Yes to the Dress and Flip This House are two examples of show viewers tune in night after night as an alternative to the drama. Personally, I'm more a fan of shows with competitions bewteen average joes. The Amazing Race and Top Shot are among the top on my list. But the truth is, ALL reality tv shows are addictive. Good luck America, soon our country will be governed by the Situation as President and Flavor Flav as Vice President. I'm officially throwing in the towel.

Group Project: Video Games and Women

Ashley knapp, jesus Martinez, tyler pittman, steven towle, matt patton, mikey whiteker, renee Atkinson

GOALS/THESIS: Our video text will address the issue of stereotyping of women in the medium of video games. It will take a historical approach by illuminating the milestones in women in video game history as far as female characterization is concerned. The Damsel in Distress, the Dangerous Midriff, the Just One of the Boys, the Ghost Girlfriend, and other tropes will be discussed with examples. These will be integrated into video examples of the same stereotypes in other medias such as television and movies from the same time period to show the male dominated industries provide a limited vision of women through the male gaze regardless of the particular medium used. We will also touch on how consolidation has limited the consumers options , like in Rich Media, Poor democracy. We will tie in some o f the definition about masculinity to the documentary Culture of Cool, and how important the virtual citizen soldier is to our ideas of masculinity in video games, terrorist thwarting movie and television plots.

INFLUENCES: Our group has a variety of viewpoints in it. We have some members who haven’t played video games since childhood, we have some members who love video games, and some members who only play video games occasionally. Our group has 3 women and 4 men, which will influence how we look at gender issues to come out a bit more evenly. Our group’s perspective is limited by all over us being enrolled at the same Midwestern college as far as education level, socioeconomic class, and geographic influence.

Idea for video: A composite documentary using existing video game play footage, video game trailers, film trailers, television ads, and scenes from movies and film with voice over narration summarizing main ideas. Dissection of each stereotype will be divided into two parts revealing the stereotype in the video game via video scenes and audio explanation, before following it up with a Film/TV example of a similar trope using footage and voice over narration.

Our introduction will feature a quick history of video games contrasted with a history of films and tv (Not in-depth, just things like starting dates, demographics of industry leaders. )

Our conclusion will feature in reiterating our main argument with more evidence that video games are gender segregated, and revealing that films and TV are much the same way. It will end on a hopeful note that all mediums are trying to draw in all audiences, though, and hopefully attain a more balanced portrayal of gender.

RESOURCES: We will secure the resources we need by dividing up the labor for the project. Because we will not be shooting new footage, we need only to ensure the group member doing the recording has an adequate microphone. We will always be able to share audio files digitally if we cannot arrange a time to meet in person. We have divided the job of project idea, initial script and outline, video gather/conversion to different individuals in the group.