Violent Lessons Equal Violent Men

When we expose young boys to increasing levels of violence what are we teaching them about manhood?  I have been challenged to answer this question and as such I have found a few examples of violence in media that would influence young boys to become violent men.

When we think of a masculine trait the first one most will think of is Strong.  Our men must be strong.  There are many meanings behind this one word.  They need to be mentally strong, as in showing no weakness emotionally and physically.  Crying is a huge no no and shouldn't even be considered.  This is an emotional weakness that shouldn't be shown and therefore by not crying they are seen as strong.  

Now there is also the physical and literal meaning of strong as in how much can you lift.  This translates into gym work, muscles, and violent tendencies. These violent tendencies are cultivating through their media consumtion.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emma-gray/bushmaster-rifle-ad-masculinity-gun-violence-newtown-adam-lanza_b_2317924.html

This ad specifically targets men.  This is obvious through the usage of the 'man card' comment.  Now, what does this teach young boys?  This teaches them that firearms are manly.  What are firearms primary purpose? Specifically, what are assault weapons primary purpose?  Its violence incarnate.  We are teaching young boys to pursue violent hobbies in order to be a man.  That one must love guns and own them in order to be a man and to have a 'man card'.

There are many other facets of this problem.  The genderization of movie genres, the popularization of war games/first person shooters, the expectation of men to be strong and fight other men to be seen as manly are all other things that turn young boys into violent men.  But this is a start to get your feet wet after all.

Advertisements and the Emotional Appeal

For this post, I will be going into how emotional appeals work in images.  Specifically advertisements and also news/journalism.

First off let us start with an advertisement.  I have chosen this image from Tom's Shoes

https://jofads98.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/poverty-toms.jpg

The reason I have chosen this is because I have mixed feelings about Toms as a brand.  On the one hand, they are trying their best to help but they are entirely misguided.  Here is why first off if you look at this image it's in black and white.  This gives a feeling of sadness, desolation, they are poor and need our help.  They need our American Corporations to help them.  These types of ads further the narrative that African people need our help, they are beggars for life, and they cannot survive without us.  All of Africa is undeveloped and yadda yadda tons of other they are lower than us bullshit.  Toms is one of those brands that turns these people into dependents because why would you buy shoes when the Toms truck gives them to you for free?  So there would be no shoemakers, no shoe stores, and no job creation for these people to start developing.  By giving away stuff for extended periods of time we are destroying jobs and an economy.  But back to the point, this image is supposed to make you feel sorry for them, make you want to help, buy those shoes so that those poor children can have some.

Now onto the Journalistic image.  Taken from BBCs article UN: World Faces Greatest Humanitarian Crisis since 1945 is this image

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39238808
This picture is of a child in Yemen who suffers from severe malnutrition.  Hunger in Yemen is a dire problem but lets analyze the image now, shall we?  First off the boy is on a hospital bed it seems, in a dirty building, just look at the airconditioning unit in the window.  This is not a sterile environment.  The positioning of the child along with the lack of a smile bring forth feelings of sympathy for the child.  We want to help him, we now have a face to the problem.  We can now see how this problem is affecting others so we naturally want to help.

All in all both images sends out this message of helplessness.  These people cannot help themselves so we must help them.  Now in some cases, aid is needed.  It is important to help others, but it is not ok to push a narrative that all of these people are helpless.  That all of these people constantly need our aid.

Videogames Violence: Its not so bad

Videogame Violence always is under attack.  Always.  I mean it.  Always.  But why?  Is it because its new?  Is it because people don't understand it?  Are afraid of it?

Personally, I love Videogames.  I am an avid player and viewer of videogames.  Its a type of media I greatly enjoy.  Videogames relieve my stress, help me calm anxiety, and overall just give me a short reprieve from my nonstop go go go life that I currently live, with being full time in school and almost full time at work.  But I was happy to learn that my love of videogames may actually help me.

TIMAU did a study on Videogame Violence and how it affects the brain.  This study found that there is very little correlation of aggression and violent videogames but, did find that they improve visuospatial cognition which helps people in careers such as engineers and surgeons.  These videogames work specific muscles in our eyes that force us to notice small changes in color and react to them quickly.  This is one of the first parts of our eyesight that fades with age as said by the Huffington Post.

Videogames also have many other benefits.  The Huffington Post states in its article, 9 Ways Videogames Can Actually be Good for You, that some of the benefits include: increased brain muscle, increase in brain flexibility, decreased effects of dyslexia, and relieving of pain.

Videogames are not bad.  They may depict violence but most people on this planet have the common sense to know its a videogame.  It's not real life.  You can't do in real life what you do in videogames.  It's just logic.  And coming from me the most nonviolent, tree hugging, gun hating, liberal in my family of conservative, conceal and carrying individuals, I think violent videogames have no bearing on your aggression.  Because if it did, I'd be the one screaming at random people on the streets for the agenda they are pushing instead of my Uncle.

Happy Violence?????

I was asked the question what is happy violence.  It took a while for this question to sink in.  It never occurred to me that 'happy violence' is very prominent in my life.

To me happy violence means violence that doesn't have any true lasting consequences, as well as violence that is deemed 'good' by those who consume it.
Take The Avengers For example.  I love a good Marvel movie, the action, the plot, the quippy one liners.  However, this is textbook happy violence.

Have you ever watched an action movie and tried to keep track of all the property damage?  If you watch a marvel movie you'll fully understand why in Captian Amercia: Civil War, the government/world wanted their butts under control.  However, the Marvel universe is probably one of the only ones that actually addresses that issue no matter how minor they do.

Action films have so many explosions, death, and violence that has no lasting consequences.  Transformers for example, they destroy almost a whole city and no one seems to care until two movies later.  The violence was deemed good becasue 'the bad guys were defeated' but no one took into consideration that all the building that collapsed HAD PEOPLE IN THEM.  Its kinda ridiculous.

So next time you watch an action movie I emplore you to try and estimate how many people died, how much property is destroyed, and how many fights could have been solved without actually fighting.  Its an eye openeing experience for sure.

Who Controls What I Consume?

I consume a lot of media.  I practically live online so learning who owns what I consume and what biases I may be unaware of is something I should look more into.  So first of all, I am going to list the media I consume the most below.

1. Youtube
2. Tumblr
3. Snapchat
4. HGTV
5. Food Network

These are all the websites, social media platforms, and TV channels that I frequent.  Now to find out who owns each of theses media outlets.

1. Youtube - Google
2. Tumblr - Yahoo
3. Snapchat - Snap Inc.
4. HGTV - Scripps Network Interactive
5. Food Network - Scripps Network Interactive

What I find interesting first off is that HGTV and Food Network are owned by the same company.  This makes a lot of sense however when you put in the context of their programming.  They have advertisements for each others channels all the time so it doesn't surprise me too much.  However, this makes me realize that this one company monopolizes my TV intake.

"Plato: The Allegory of the Cave" commentary

When reading the Allegory there was one particular part that caught my eye.  At the beginning of this section Socrates, or what I assume is Socrates speaking from what I have learned from history and what background information I was given about Plato's writings, is describing a prison like cave.  The man he speaks of cannot move his head and only sees shadows of what he assumes is reality.  When he is able to move his head and look upon the world it doesn't make sense to him.  His shadows seem more like reality to him than actual reality,  This reminded me heavily of todays media, specifically advertisements and porn.

When I was attending my junior college, Moorpark College, I took a Rhetoric of Popular Culture course.  It was one of the most interesting classes I have taken thus far which is partially why I chose to take this course.  In this course, we watched a documentary about the Porn Industry.  In this documentary, it talked about some of the long-term risks heavy porn absorption has on males.  Most males see these women in porn WANTING sex all the time no matter the situation.  They assume that is reality, they see it so often that it becomes their reality.  They think that all the women around them in the world constantly want sex because that's how it is in Porn.  So when the real world hits and they discover that is not true it takes a long time for them to adjust to the 'light' from the 'dark' as Socrates put it.

Another example of this is in advertisements.  A lot of advertisements have this unobtainable beauty standard for women.  These standards not only become male expectations but also female expectations.  Women everywhere think these photoshopped pictures are reality and it takes a lot of work to break that.

This relation helps us understand media influence because it shows how the media can skew our perceptions on reality.  How we see the world and what we believe is real can be altered by the messages mainstream media puts out.  It takes work to change those realities as well and it has real consequences.

Hello all!

My name is Michele and I am a transfer student in their junior year.  I hope to finish my education at CSUCI smoothly.  This blog is where I will post all my assignments for my COMM 345 Class to be turned in.  Feel free to read them if you like.