Week 6 Blogging Catch-up

The Making of a Media Literate World:

I found this article to be a useful and provocative summary of media literacy, why it is absolutely essential to teach in schools, and ways to apply and teach it in classroom settings. Before finishing the article, I had a distinct feeling that this was written by a high school teacher. He outlines the issues of media today very systematically and even-handedly, and proceeds to give five ways that media literacy can become more engrained into the minds of young people. From taking this class, I was aware of a lot of the ideas that the author was relaying, but I thought that he particularly did a good job organizing and describing the ways in which media literacy can and should be implemented.

Something in particular that stuck out for me was when he talked about how media is retelling the “stories and values” of America today. No longer are our parents, community members, and role models in the driver’s seat; the massive conglomerates of media dictate what we should know and how we should feel about those things. This isn’t to say that media has overthrown parenting and the teaching of sound morals, but it is an inexorable truth that media has a large impact on culture. The values brought forth from media are often contradictory to that of which parents strive to enrich their children with. Rather than preaching “good” things such as: responsibility, independence, mindfulness, critical thinking, and self-confidence, media tends to sway people towards holding a reliance towards products, a poor self image, mindlessness, and above all that happiness is achieved through material consumption. Media promotes several of the seven deadly sins including gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, and envy. I am happy to see that education is catching up to the amassing juggernaut of media dominance and I hope to see media literacy taught in a more widespread and universal manner.

Killing Us Softly:

1. I found the idea of women portrayed as passive, vulnerable and silenced, as opposed to how men often appear violent and aggressive to be an interesting and disturbing truth in advertising. Women are told that power is unattractive and that their greatest assets are in their body and appearance. The trivialization and general nonchalance of society towards this issue is astounding. Both women and men are victims to advertising shaping culture; but as she so eloquently points out, the impetus for women revolves around their sexuality and appearance.

2. Advertising sells values, images, and concepts of love, sexuality, success, and normalcy. “It tells us who we are and who we should be.” For women, it tells us what beautiful is and that if you do not look like Michelle Pfeiffer, than you better try your damn hardest to get to be.

3. The part about how girls’ self-esteem plummets when they reach adolescence is truly sad and horrible. Right when they reach a certain age, they are expected to be sex symbols rather than whole people. This video reveals that we are stripped of our wholeness as people and expected to fit into small windows of what is “normal” in order to be happy and successful.

4. Models are so damn skinny. It is revolting how we prize our women to look like some of these emaciated, dismembered, and compartmentalized women. It is perpetuating a wretched societal complex that advertising is helping to carry out. Being that skinny cannot be comfortable or healthy in any way.

5. Men are victims as well, but not sexually as women are. Instead, we are fed thoughts that values such as sensitivity, empathy, and compassion are feminine and girly and that we should strive to be more aggressive, powerful and dominating. Media is turning people into parts of a whole, and is teaching people to be ashamed of their deemed masculine or feminine attributes.