Hip Hop controversies (Free Writing)

I realized i hadn't done this blog when going through my blog log, so here it is!

Tricia Rose was born in New York and spent her childhood in Harlem. she has a BA in sociology and her Ph.D. in American Studies. She is currently a professor at Brown teaching Africana Studies and is the director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. One of her most well known books is Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Tricia believes that hip hop isn't dead now a days, it's just underground now. I agree with her view saying that rap music isn't the necessary cause of violence, though some of the themes and lyrics of popular rap songs today are violent. I feel like that takes away responsibility of the action someone takes by blaming it on rap music or any other source that they consider to be violent and caused said person to act out. What i believe is that people blame rap music for violence because its a majority of black men in that genre and it is the stereotype that they are inherently violent and deviant, that people hate on it so much. even though there are plenty of examples of violence in many other forms in popular culture like TV shows, movies, and video games. 

One of the main points that Tricia makes is that we all share popular culture, its the one thing we all have in common, no matter our background. This is so true, people everywhere are influenced by the media and popular culture, even if they aren't consciously aware of it. not only that is you can't escape popular culture unless you turn off every form of social media, radio, TV and so on. This sort of reminded me of Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Orenstien, she tried to keep certain princess stories away from her daughter, but she still knew who Snow White was without her mothers help. this just proves that no matter how much you try to keep popular culture out of your life, it's always going to be around you and influencing you at a young age. so really parents can't try to keep their kids from listing to rap music or violent video games because it's everywhere, because thats what sells in our society and it's not going to go away if someone can make money off of it. 

*I wonder what it is about violence that sells in our society? 

Final Project!

Final project
GEND 354
Lauren Veyera & Nicole Connolly

Our final project is an analysis on Freedom Writers
we decided to be creative and use Tumblr!

Tumblr link
Freedom Writers

Teens and the media

Like a few other people, I found searching on this topic to be a lot harder than I originally thought it was going to be. What kept popping up in google were issues teens have with body image and self image. This doesn't surprise me at all though, because the media does manipulate everything with photoshop and I'm glad people are speaking out about it! the reason that so many girls, women and even men, have body issues is because of the unrealistic ideals our society has posted on every video, billboard, movie and magazine. This is a cause of many mental health issues today like anorexia, bulimia, and depression. These issues are extremely serious and can consume peoples lives to the point of no return.

These issues reminded me about the quote by Orenstein from Cinderella Ate My Daughter, "And guess who preformed better on a math test, coeds who took it after being asked to try on a bathing suit or those who had been asked to try on a sweater?(Hint: the latter group; interestingly, male students showed no such disparity)". Though the end of that quote makes it seem like body issues only effect females, that is incorrect. It's so sad that now a days people can't love there body's for how they are. but this is the society we live in today. Women especially are pitted against each other in competition, constantly comparing one another and then bullying girls for looking "different". During my search i found an interesting blog about how basically Photoshop is the devil (kidding, but it still is the the root of some kind of evil).

I looked at some other blogs and was happily surprised about the many different organizations that teens have for themselves. I would like to know if everyone had problems finding information about teens? I kept finding links about how to control my teen when they talk back...lol

Queer Representation

All of these articles were very interesting to read about. I agree that there is misrepresentation of the LGBTQ community in media. Even though there are more "queer" characters in shows and movies, there isn't a clear or fair representation of all walks of life of the members of the LGBTQ and that image can be misleading and stereotypical. What you see most of the time are white, upper middle class gay or lesbians who are extremely attractive, flamboyant or sassy. The problem is, is that the writers of the shows are probably straight and they dictate how the character acts on screen and this is where the stereotypes come into play. The media is concerned about making a profit, so they have to be able to sell it, but what is shown on screen isn't real life. there are many poor, homeless, middle class, lower middle class, white , black, asian, the list goes on.

Another thing that happens in media with LGBTQ community, lesbians especially, is over hyper sexualization. usually when a LGBTQ character is in a show they are never in the same relationship for long or jump around to different partners. Speaking from personal experience when watching shows i don't think iv ever seen an extremely provocative sex scene between two men, but i definitely have seen lesbian sex scenes more often in TV shows. This is because lesbians have become some thing for straight men to fantasize over (They don't want you guys, get over it). I also think the reason behind the scarce amounts of sex scenes between men comes back to our societies value of masculinity and if a show has a scene like that there is a risk it could backfire. Also, there are straight people playing homosexual roles in the media and thats just another reason there is a whole population of people being misrepresented. The casting director really couldn't find some LGBTQ actor for the role? but even if they did find one, they would still probably be directed to act in a stereotypical manner versus a normal human being. You can't see someones sexuality, so the media and even everyday people, use stereotypes to label a person gay, straight, bi, ect.

* My question for class would have to be if anyone else noticed the difference in representation of sex scenes for gay men versus lesbians? or am i just not watching enough shows? haha