Quesiton 13 - Bonus

The three waves of feminism began with women fighting for access. They wanted all women to have the same rights as everyone else. Basically they wanted to stop being objectified and thought of as real humans. The first thing noticed when looking at the picture above is that it is in black and white; this shows, along with the older car, that it is in a relatively old setting. This is when women were first fighting for rights. They were able to leave the house and start living a normal life. The picture also shows the beginning of the second wave, which is roughly in the 60s and 70s. In the second wave women wanted more social acceptance and wanted to start constructing what it meant to be a woman (i.e., it is not ok to take part in pornography). The man is opening and holding the door open for the woman. Women were able to start living a normal life but they wanted recognition and quality of life. The action of opening the door for a woman shows that they are there and men care. Finally, the third wave of feminism is building off of the first two, and they are beginning to want acceptance within each other. For example, if a woman decides to be a porn star, women around her should not judge and accept what she is doing because it is her own choice. Women want the opportunity to do what they want.

Question 12 - Bonus

The South Park episode starts out in the aesthetic where they are showing the Wheel of Fortune and showing how racism is going to apart of the episode. It all starts when Randy says the word “niggers” as the answer to people who annoy you on the Wheel of Fortune when the real answer is naggers. This is very similar to the Chappelle Show when everyone says “nigger” like it is not a derogatory term. They are trying to show some of the stereotypes of “whiteness” and that it is not right that white people think they are the most powerful and can say whatever they want. It then moves on to the critical when Randy is apologizing to Jessie Jackson (who he thinks is the emperor of black people) and says that he is really down with African Americans in the stereotypical dialect of a lower class African American. Finally it moves to the ontological when Randy decides to go to a black comedian where he ends up getting belittled and called “nigger guy.” He soon begins to understand what it is like to be called a name that he does not like. This is also very similar to the Chappelle Show when Dave Chappelle takes off his KKK mask and everyone sees that he is actually an African American. The people in the meeting realized what they were actually doing.

Question 11

Two Texts
Stabile – “Nike, Social Responsibility, and the Hidden abode of Production”
Breazeale – “In Spite of Women: Esquire Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer”

The Burger King ad comes from Maxim magazine, which is a male-viewed magazine. The ad is very masculine as seen by almost every element. Everything from the copy, to the position of the woman and sandwich, to the face the woman is making is making the ad very sexual which in turn makes the ad masculine. Like many other ads in male-viewed magazines, this ad shows the woman as an object and not as a person; they are solely a sex symbol to gain the attraction of a male. This ad also helps confirm one of Breazeale’s arguments about how Esquire magazine (also a male-viewed magazine) “by definition confronted the popular periodical industry and its attendant arena of marketing culture with a very different premise—that women as women have no legitimate social role to play” (p234). She also argued that what Esquire “convinced itself that what men are truly ‘in the market’ for is status achieved at the expense of women” (p240), which leads men to feeling more masculine because it makes them feel like they have more power and dominance. Nike has always been a very large company, and they have multiple branches of apparel and shoes that they target to different consumers. Stabile argues that Nike has become so successful because the company has become very good at “reach[ing] a target audience” (p199). This is very similar to almost every company that advertises in male-viewed magazines such as Maxim because they show their target consumers what they want (a form of masculinity in many cases) in order to sell the largest amount of their product. It is sad that women are sometimes objectified to get a product sold, but in today’s world, it is all about money.

Question 10

Three Texts
Brodroghkozy – “As Canadian as Possible”
Croteau and Hoynes – “The New Media Giants: Changing Industry Structure”
Havens – “’The Biggest Show in the World’: Race and the Global Popularity of the Cosby Show”

All three of the articles show a sense of globalization in their arguments. Brodroghkozy’s article depicts what the Canadian imagined community to be. She focuses on the English-speaking section of Canada and how the media has changed the imagined community to more of an American community. She argues that this is possible because “the United States today dominates the television environment of English-speaking Canada” (p567). This argument that American media is taking over Canadian television is backed up through Croteau’s and Hoynes’ article about media corporations combining to make very large and powerful corporations. After they write about what companies combined, they go on to argue how “growth in the size and integration of companies has been accompanied by other development: the globalization of media conglomerates” (p34). Finally Timothy Havens writes about The Cosby Show and how it has become globalized. He mainly describes how black sitcoms were developed, but then goes on to argue how “the world has witnessed a dramatic increase in the export of middle-class African American situation comedies” (p371). Finally, Havens discusses how people around the world are very similar because we all have the same taste in television shows, which goes back to Brodroghkozy’s article about how Canadians are starting to develop an American image through American television. The picture of the earth with people around it holding hands perfectly depicts all three of these articles. It shows that everyone around the world have become united through globalization, whether it be through the media or products. Also, all of the stick figures in the picture are exactly the same, showing that globalization is making everyone conform to one imagined community.

Question 9

The Onion news clip is about Oprah and the Fox news clip is about Whipped lighting show types of gatekeeping and agenda-setting functions. Gatekeeping is the process in which media corporations filter information before it is told to the public, whereas agenda-setting is how a media corporation makes their viewers think based off of what types of stories they show. Baym argued that people, especially the younger demographic, have stopped watching what we think of as the “normal” news. They have moved towards comedy news, for example The Daily Show with John Stewart because it “resembles much of the mainstream news media” (264) without the seriousness. In The Onion video, they are making fun of Oprah’s big give always (a show where she gives away presents to the audience) by giving the audience a one way plane ticket to Chicago where they can be buried in Oprah’s tomb and how news corporations actually televise it as news when in reality, it is completely worthless for people to know. It is the agenda-setting theory that leads them to do so because they know that is what their viewers want to see. This is similar to the Fox news clip where they are discussing an alcoholic whipped cream and comparing it to Four LoKo, a very controversial alcoholic drink. In both cases, the news corporations filter and only tell the viewers what the corporations wants them to know (i.e., they are gatekeeping in order make the viewer agree with their bias on a certain news story).

Question 8

Both documentaries speak about money, political economy, and the power and image of cultural studies. Political economy is how something, in this case Disney, can be powerful and control society and the people around them by their money. Cultural studies are how one’s image and people, also Disney, can control society and the people around them. In “Mouse Trapped 2010”, many of the cast members argue that it is them who make Disney what it is, and it is them who change the lives of many young children for the better. At the same time though, Disney doesn’t pay their workers fairly; however, since they have become so powerful through the amount they are worth, they are able to decide wages without problems. As one person said, Disney claims that their wages are competitive, but they examine the wages of companies in central Florida who base their wages off of Disney; therefore Disney is really examining their own wages. Grossberg states that with media outlets combining and growing, it “raises important questions about the powerful role of media in a democratic society” (p22). In “Mickey Mouse Monopoly”, they argue that the globalization of Disney is due to buying out of other media corporations; therefore, controlling the people around them through political economy and bias in their media.

Question 7

The video first shows a woman wearing solely a bra, and she is trying to seduce the radiator repairman by using techniques that are seen in early pornography. These techniques include her speech and apparel, as well as the way she presents herself, and her actions such as pushing her breast together in order to make her look like a classic sexy porn star. All of this is appropriated from early pornography. The video then reappropriates her to wearing clothing and special bras; in the past there were no push-up bras or padded bras. The video shows her padding her bra and wearing clothing and jewelry that direct a man’s vision to her breast or cleavage. She no longer has to act very sexy and wear close to no clothing because everything has changed since earlier days.