media impact on gender stereotypes

The dreaded advertisement break. I don't hate it because it breaks me away from a show (that's just a small annoyance), but I do hate adverts because they perpetrate some of the worst gender stereotypes that I have ever seen outside of the views of ignorant individuals. It's mostly adverts for cleaning products or other products geared specifically toward one gender or the other, like "mens'" shampoo. Frankly I don't see why men and women need separate shampoo, apparently because "womens'" shampoo fragrances are too feminine. In reality its the same exact shampoo with just a different scent, and usually not as good smelling either. But men who put on this shampoo will get all the girls roaming after them in the streets (ego much?).

But it's not only advertisements that are full of stereotypes, they are just the most overt. TV shows are often full of stereotypes from the housewife to the effeminate gay man to the criminal black gangster. And while these characters are not one-dimensional like their advertisement counterparts, they have problems and they try to solve them during the course of an episode and we can see more than just their stereotyping image.

Because the media is so full of stereotypical images, and we are a nation full of major TV consumers, children, teens, and even adults often try to portray themselves how they see people in their group are on TV.

At school for instance girls are seen at being better at english and social studies while boys are better at science and maths (though experience has shown me that girls are often much better then boys at...well basically all of the subjects :P). Jocks might often dumb themselves down in order to portray the sporty image (one of my friends has often talked to me about a friend of theirs that has dumbed themselves down in class).

In politics we punish those who stand up for their political beliefs, like candidates who stand against the death penalty by saying that they wouldn't want somebody who raped their wife subject to it (that question seems very personal and out of order anyway), and that reinforces the image that men with wives or husbands should be so overprotective of their partner that they go mad with murderous rage like an ape. If a woman cries in politics, like Hillary clinton during the 2008 primaries, she's seen as strong for being able to show her emotions, while if a man were to do it, while there wouldn't be calls of "he's weak!" we've at least moved beyond that point, he wouldn't be seen as a stronger man for it, the media, and society wants male politicians to tote their guns. Yeah! You put your finger on the button to release that nuclear bomb and you show those dirty terrorists!

The Media controls how we interact with eachother everyday and it almost never leads to a better society, it leads to more problems with how people relate to eachother. The media has to be conscious of the images it is showing and try to show more strong, positive minorities so that people, especially minorities, have a positive model to try to follow instead of the negative stereotypes that are often shown.

Weeds

*note* I change all of the post times to central standard in the Post Options area of every new post, so the time 9:37 really IS 9:37

My First choice for a telly show for the third media lit blog would have been Shameless by Paul Abbott.  Unfortunately Shameless is an import from Channel 4 in the UK.  Even though American and British values overlap in many ways they are not perfectly the same, and in the end I thought that the project definitely called for an American show.  That limits my selection a bit.  I don't watch much American TV as censorship deeply perturbs me.  Because of this I'm limited to the channels IFC, Sundance, or any premium movie channel, so I decided to go with the hit Showtime programme Weeds.

Weeds is a show whose main character, Nancy Botwin, a widowed suburban California mother who struggles to keep up monetarily with the lifestyle that she has had since before the death of husband.  In order to pay the bills and keep her family satisfied she turns to dealing weed (street weed, as selling to the California government would be legal as California has medical marijuana).  This illustrates the american value of having material comfort.  In order to keep up with her neighbours-conformity-, while also providing the newest and best for her children Silas and Shane and her brother in law Andy, such as a car for Silas or cable to keep Silas-and Andy (PPV anyone?)-occupied.  If she didn't have a steady flow of income-even from an illegal source-, Nancy would be seen somewhat as a failure in her slice of suburbia. 

In order to provide all of these amenities to her family Nancy is very active in her work, she deals to all of the suburbanites who like to keep it secret, as well as expanding to colleges and other areas, even making a cover business for her dealings.  Nancy is quite the entrepreneur, even having paid workers like Sanjay under her.  If one value is shown the most during the show, it's Activity and Work, and similarly to this her work leads to Achievement and success.

The show also takes on the value of freedom.  In one case it's that Nancy is showing freedom and individualism by creating her own business, albeit an illegal business.  The show also tackles freedom of speech, in such issues as a student protesting Bush's Iraq war, and when non-religious jew Andy Botwin decided to capitalize on the success of Passion of the Christ by making a T-shirt with the crucifixion and the words Christ died for your sins, only the shirt had a typo and it ended up being Chris died for your sins.  Later, when the younger Botwin son Shane wore the shirt to school the principal and the PTA made a huge deal of the "anti-christian" label on the shirt, which shows Conformity again, yet in a caustic way, criticizing hypocritical fundamentalists, who also try, during the course of the series, to fire a gay gym teacher, which of course they fail at, and open-mindedness prevails. 

The last thing the show illustrates  is youthfulness.  Most of the characters are young or youngish and beautiful.  As well as illustrating the physical youthfulness, it also shows the mental traits.  In one episode when Nancy catches Silas and his girlfriend having sex she doesn't go all afterschool special on them, she merely made sure they were sufficiently educated on safe-sex and talking to Silas' girlfriend about her feeling, because she can't control whether or not they have sex, which is a very modern and young outlook.

Weeds is a boundary-pushing show that is geared toward a more liberal audience, and while the main storyline is something that is definitely, at this time, illegal, it still is a very positive show that tries to instill in its audience all of the positive values of America.

worried about media conglomerates?

In the United States we hold dear our constitution and shun anybody or any institution which would infringe on the rights granted to us by that document.  If a despot President were to try to gain unprecedented amounts of power either Congress would hold impeachment trails, or, if the Congress were in league with the despot, we would overthrow both, or at least we are constitutionally able to.  If the government were to try to limit free speech or freedom of religion or nonbelief or any of the other ideals we hold dear, we would vote them out of office. So why then, do we allow Media corporations to for monstrous conglomerations which can influence just those?  Conglomerations hold power over us, they can control the choices of products we have, or at what price we buy them.  Conglomerates can buy up all of the newspapers in a region and make all articles meet company standards, or show advertising for only their products.  We can listen to music from Atlantic records right before going to see a Warner Bro's Film, and, just before bed, watch news on CNN.  In other words, conglomerations are all around us and can, to a certain extent, control us.

Deregulation is not the answer to this.    Consumers need protections.  Not the traditional protections, such as laws against obscenity in broadcasting-the government isn't our nanny-we need tougher anti-monopoly laws to ensure that one company doesn't get too big, to make sure that one source isn't so much influencing public opinion.  Humans have a tendency to follow blindly when there are no alternatives, but when the market is full of alternatives, humans can pick and choose to form opinions, with conglomerations, and all our information coming from fewer sources we are like cows being take to slaughter.  We need protections, or one day we'll not only be watching Warner Bro's movies but sipping WarnerCoffee while watching that movie, in Six Flags, Minnesota