Final Project: Violence Against Women in Media

Sam Courter

Sam Frace

Natalie Guyon

Cindy Himes

Rachel Hopkins

Isaac Lephart

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One for the road; super heroes and princesses

I enjoyed our debates about the good and bad of super hero culture.  It makes sense to study it as the super hero market is booming; constantly having remakes, influx of comic books, prevalence of video games.  It is a dense theme to study, full of intrigue and questions.  The interesting aspect that these characters can both incorporate negative and positive messages makes the super hero world full of greys instead of black and whites.  We see gender roles and norms being challenged and contested.  With our obsession, it also reflects in the popular media with certain shows, like Toddlers in Tiaras and any type of show featuring house wives, where the women have princess like tendencies.  It challenges both the comic book themes as well as when we talked about the issue of wealth and popular culture; the disparity between our fascination with the poverty stricken to the lavish and ostentatious of the rich.  These can be breeding grounds for debate between the harm this can cause and also the possible benefits, too.

With male super heroes, more often than not we see this male character as honor bound, regulated by ordained laws and rules, sometimes as reasons to go against those constructed laws, use of violence to stop violence, ironically, emotionally devoid/detached and always the savior of women.  It constructs a role model for little boys that can give them strong tendencies and backbone but also can reinforce archaic thoughts on gender roles and norms.  The emotionless male, incapable of expressing themselves, always brooding, has to look like a "badass", can be taxing to us, as men.  I find it frustrating that men are nearly always depicted in movies, games, television and so on as strong, but emotionally detached figures.  And if they have any remote since of emotion, they are instantly gay.  Straight men cannot have emotions?  And what does it say to gay men that they are stereo typically labeled as flamboyant with their emotions?  Probably outright offensive.

I find myself artsy, reflective on my thoughts and emotions, not particularly "manly" and aggressive in that respect.  So I wouldn't be surprised if I come off out right gay to some.  It's completely absurd, but it happens.  Many norms that males fall under, I simply have no interest in, and perhaps it is how the media depicts us straight men, especially of my age.    Media depicts me as a cold wall, hard to sympathize for, constantly drinks and parties, watches football and so on.  I couldn't be further from that norm. Men are capable of showing emotions and they do not have to be gay to express the way they feel.  Gay men are not always "girly", flamboyant etc; they can be super manly too, have "bro" time, pound 6 packs and have a blast watching football.  And much like how I could feel about women's take on how popular culture and how they are depicted, I find it a necessity to fight for my difference, to say that these norms are absurd.  Women are not over sexualized, stuck in a different reality where they are a princess and must be pampered and what not (which the media seems dead set on).

I definitely sympathize for their cause as I have a cause to fight, too.  A straight man can fight for gays.  A straight man can also be very in touch with his own feelings without being gay. There is nothing wrong with being gay.  He doesn't have to be a devoid wall.  He shouldn't be judged on his masculinity from what his hobbies are.  The idea of both masculinity and feminism is utterly idiotic.  Being versatile in both roles, strange as the thought is, has allowed me to appreciate both causes.  We are all our own superhero, it is our choice into which we like to see our own heroic characteristics as.

All aboard the Civil Rights Act 2.0

The last few weeks have been a slight bummer; we can't seem to get a break of seeing the glaring issues that still reside in our country.  Our country can say we are striving for reforms in terms of civil equality but from Dr. McCauliff and the the messages the class is trying to establish, I make the argument that this is all rhetoric with crossed fingers, with a mean grin.  Which also brings up that preconceived notion that rhetoric has a crooked tendency, touched on quite frequently throughout the first weeks of class and as an underlying theme from then on.  The LGBT community have been fighting for now years for legalized marriage yet the trend of homophobia is still rampant.  I have friends that are deeply homophobic and know of others that take fairly ridiculous actions to avoid gay couples; literally stepping off of a side walk from passing a couple.  It is utterly despicable  and pathetic, just because of a sexual orientation that differs from the norm, we act completely uncivilized over.  Due to America's tendency to be Christian in religious followings, it also doesn't help that in some interpretations, but not all, of the Bible label homosexuality as sinful.  I will end with that on religion as I do not plan to argue over religion, bash, or criticize, however it is an issue that must be noted.  It also does not help that any type of ethnicity or sexuality that does not conform to white american or heterosexual orientation depicted in popular media has to conform to a since of moderation.  We can only approve of each type in small doses, within a specific context and under regulation.  We admire Ellen for her stance and her coming out (but only after time had settled after the storm that had been caused from that moment), but god forbid we see her partner and their affection towards each other.  But it is totally okay for our white ethnicity to display damn near pornographic footage in everyday life throughout popular TV.  Just watch an hour of MTV, you'll get an idea.

And after watching how sports constructs the hyper masculinity and militarism in popular culture, both differing ethnicities, gender  and sexualities are still in jeopardy.  It is a tragedy, but it is a reality.  Homosexual men oppressed to come out due to hyper masculinity in sports is shameful.  Women being oppressed against pursuing a passion within sports, also a complete shame.  Who ordained one person to strip a human of their rights and of their status as an equal?  What is so hard to comprehend that we are all human beings, all with common goals of living life to its fullest potential?  And yet we still struggle with the acceptance of equality, the acceptance that of ethnicities other than whites as being equal; I still see our ethnocentrism showing with our blatant world policing and other ridiculous acts of hegemony.

 I am filled with so much anger and sadness; why can we not live in a world of peace?  Why must be war with others?  Why must we have violence within our relationships?  And our popular culture and media gratifies and conforms to these issues.  Why is equality such a hard thing to come by in this day and age?  We still have a long road ahead of us before we can fully be happy with our situation.  I believe classes and mentalities that Dr. McCauliff are selling (don't misread that statement) are future hopes for us.  We, as a collective body, can show our underlying issues to the public.  We have a duty, now, to promote progressive trains of thought and these can be simple thoughts, too; the mentality that everyone, you, me, him and her, are equal.  Culture is a beautiful thing...it is also a terrible thing.  We have the power to make a change.

http://religions.pewforum.org/reports/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_homosexuality

Encouraging Optimism

The recent video we watched about video games and creating a better world to live in gave an encouraging outlook.  Perhaps not just through video games that this experiment may work, but it is an interesting concept to encourage video game developers into creating games that cater to real life events.  I mention "not just through video games" because this experiment may need more exposure to our reality, even with how popular games are today.  But that is beside the point, what I really took away from her speech was encouragement.  There were numerous themes that I could relate to not just as a gamer but also as what makes up my core being and personality.  I feel like I am one of the few that still holds hope for a better future when my world around me is cynical, so goddamn cynical (pardon the language).   I would love to see a world that promotes epic wins much more and a body of humans that can work together much more extensively and intensively than what we are at now.  Just through Ball State alone in the past year I have noticed courses being more proactive with group work; of course it brings up a lot of growling and unrest from our students but that is our Western mentality struggling with change.  This class has shown how individualized we have become, I will not go into much detail because my last blog was nearly exclusively about individualism in America and I would like to avoid repeating myself.

But the whole thing about relating the gamer mentality of limitless optimism, coordination and collaboration and the drive for an epic win to real world situations filled me with hope.  I'm an anthropology major with a great amount of hope and optimism to learn about other cultures and seeing if, as a whole world, can collaborate and coexist and much more peace than what we are at the moment.  Pretty gigantic dream, right?   Well, it seems like I am not the only one that is willing to fight for this change and I greatly approve of it.  From other anthropological studies, I could only imagine that Asian countries, especially Japan, may be at the forefront of this change (not because of the gaming stereotype) but because of the strength they have and the roles they play in group work.  Westerners reluctantly deal in groups, so it seems and so it is to be believed in our studies and living day by day, keying into how humans behave.  And with group work not being incredibly prolific in America but games are...we may see some advancement in these ideological changes.  This could be a fantastic portal for future development and experiments that can create new generations of less apathetic and overly critical thinkers, hopeful and extremely mindful of the future.  Critical thinking is great, but I notice so much biased thoughts and generally uneducated, spontaneous reactions to today's world.  Makes sense with what we have been studying; instant access, instant reaction.  A gaming mentality that emphasizes strategy, planning and collaboration may allow us to bite our tongue more often and cause for longer, more critical thinking before we take that big step forward.  

Conformity, is it really that bad?

Conformity has been a hot topic in our class and how it is viewed in popular culture today.  It seems like a love-hate relationship; it both can make us feel more like an individual and, ironically, take that individualism away.  In this I mean we may align ourselves to certain sects, cliques or groups that fits our interests and so we can talk about them, share our thoughts and feelings towards.  In these groups of interests we may feel a bond from these other people that share similar interests, but it also can collide with the American obsession with being an individual.

 For me, it is to the point where the pursuit of being an individual is completely and utterly ludicrous.  Among other reasons, I think hipsters take so much hate is that because they are expressing themselves in an oddly ironic but ultimately unique display of individualism and we may feel a bit of jealousy as their display succeeds in what they are trying to do...but why is being completely unique so special to us and why are we pursuing to such outrageous limits to express that we are truly unique compared to everyone else?  This is by far me not saying we all should be carbon, clone copies of the 925ers, but this obsession for being unique may ultimately be damaging to oneself well being. Who cares if everyone is watching Walking Dead, Big Bang Theory, Top Gear, Family Guy, Adventure Time, Honey Boo Boo and so on?  If you like the show, then watch and  enjoy.  I do not see the point in where we have to avoid some popular medium to consume if it is trending.

 I see the logic behind it, absolutely; American individualism and capitalism harbors all of these messages of being different, being unique, going against the norm and conformity.  But it is meaningless as sooner or later, one will ally themselves to certain cultures and groups and what I want to say about that is that there should not be any shame in that.  I have no shame in being apart of the gamer community, or being apart of the musical community, I have no shame in saying that I like brutal death metal or downtempo electronica.  These are all sects that I align myself to and yet I still feel like I am completely unique and without an identity crisis.  I simply do not care what other's think, why should I or anyone else?  It is our personal interest, let not others change that.

We are our own worst enemy, our mind is an incredible thing, but it can drive us completely mad.  Today's culture is straining our excellent mind into something ruled by capitalism and the drive to be unique.  These pursuits, if unchecked, will rule our lives and leave us hollow and alone.  So, my friends, fear not conformity and sects that you enjoy and like, embrace them; for we are social creatures and are passion driven, should there be shame in us to communicate about popular culture?  There should not be any shame that some of us enjoy popular music more than extreme underground, out-of-this-world genre and styles.  Same goes for other types of media.  For me, I like the adventure of finding new, against-the-norm medias.  There I can conform and follow the various cultures both popular and alternative types of media without feeling like I have an identity crisis.

Perhaps we should simply let up on the pursuit to acknowledge to everyone that we are different and just live for what we wish to be and without a care of what others think?  We have our hopes and dreams to pursue...not trivial, base concepts like vanity...

Social Media/Apathy and Lies?

Today's class and readings brought up an issue I have been thinking about lately; is our generation becoming apathetic on part by social media and not only that, are we lying to ourselves about it, too?  "I don't care", "I don't give a ****", sound familiar?  Other than "I'm sorry", saying that someone doesn't care is one of my all time pet peeves; what makes you not care?  Is it, for once, that you are not being talked about and therefore what ever that person said didn't relate to you?  Was it something not relevant to you to make you not care?  Now granted, there are things that I definitely do not care about, too.  I would be hypocritical to say otherwise.  But I do try to care about more things in life...because it simply seems like nobody else does(Perhaps an exaggeration).  

We live in a "me me me" world.  Everything revolves around us, for better or worse.  Try this new product for your good, this will make you feel better and look better.  The individual is heavy emphasized; within ourselves and within the social medias of today.  With our generation and contemporary social media and the advent of modern technology, everything is within our grasp at a moment's notice.  Instant gratification.  Which is awesome!  But also has significant flaws.  Internet connections are exponentially faster than they ever were; thus we can download faster, we can browse quicker, multi-task more efficiently...etc.  It has great power, but absolute power can corrupt absolutely.  And this corruption can be innocent, too, meaning it was never our intention to be corrupted by said power.  With today's tech, the media, and everything, we are more than ever connected to each other.  This can be liberating as can be exciting; we're meeting new people that we other wise couldn't have met, communicating with them too.  But as we were discussing today in class, we still feel lonely at the end of day from time to time, even when we have access to all of our contacts at a touch of a button (Weak ties from class and readings maybe the cause).  Not only do we feel lonely on occasion, I feel that our apathy is starting to become a major issue and the lies we put up about ourselves is growing as are the idea of lying to ourselves.

As we mentioned in class, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks has the tendency to allow us to "lie" about ourselves.  We can "perform" for our contacts and generally act like a different person than we would face to face.  Which, for all intents and purposes, may be necessary.  Honesty can hurt others, it can also make things awkward when a person is honest about a very personal situation.  But I fear that we may be lying to ourselves, which may breed apathy.  As we have been talking about social activism and such, I notice when I search our generation's apathy (there will be links at the end of this blog) that journalists note our apathy towards politics.  We simply are not as active with protesting in person or voting than before.  Is it because these things do not completely revolve around our lives? Do they give us instant gratification?  Is it trending?  Will it make us feel special and as a unique individual? We all complain about the issues in America, but we simply do it through social networks, it seems like we rarely ever take the time to talk in person about it, and actually start something.  I desperately wish to, though I have yet to find out the best way to do this.  

However, I think how the media depicts "reality" and our heavy reliance on technology causes us to shy away; political activism events are known to take time to coordinate and to set in motion.  And that stops us from pursuing because we're so use to having instantaneous results.  If it's not instant, then it seems like we do not care and we'll forget about the issue and go back to what we were originally doing; not solving the issue.  I worry that this will only be exacerbated in the future when a severe crisis is in effect.  We simply shrug our shoulders but deep down inside, we knew something was wrong, and we knew we could have talked about it.  

A positive look at our generation's apathy

Growing concerns

Counters to apathetic accusations

Tying media with apathy