The movie was very interesting. I think that the extreme way things were portrayed in the movie were necessary. Showing that extreme example of how people sell out for things like TV can perpetuate stereotypes. The ending was necessary in my opinion. The violent ending showed the extreme emotions that people can feel about TV. I don’t think that the message would have been as powerful had the characters lived. Overall I think the feel did a good job of making its point.
The thing that made me think the most was the comment about using “Indian Giver.” I have heard of the phrase, but I then realize I never use it. The project on colorism was very interesting. I was unaware of the different treatments of African Americans with various skin tones. It almost seemed like a much more negative version of things like “I prefer guys with blond hair and blue eyes.” Or parents wanting their children to have curly hair over straight hair. Colorism seems like something that could be a very big problem for girls growing up in that situation. As far as the “Tough Guise” video goes. The pressure for young men to be strong or tough is still there. The best example of this in my life is the way my little nephew views the world. When they are over on the weekends, he feels the need to go work in the field with the “big boys.” To him boys work on the lawn, fix things, and spend time outside while the girls are supposed to be inside cooking dinner. He was only four when I noticed him doing this. Fixing this problem is not something I can see happening in the near future. Young men are constantly told what big boys or men are supposed to do.
While I agree that the picture can be bad because it happens to be a picture of a white person displayed as good and an African American person displayed as Evil, I understand what the people that allowed the picture to be published were thinking. As I said in class, at first glance I didn’t realize it was a white guy and a black guy in the picture. I saw to basketball players. I am not a basketball fan, and the only reason I know who those two individuals were was because of recent events making them the topic of most conversation. Without any context, I agree that the picture could be bad, but because both players are wearing jerseys and one is holding a basketball it is obviously tying to play on the tradition of displaying certain individuals, regardless of race, as good or evil based on events happening in the sport. I do not think that the image should be offensive. I agree with what most people said in class about the context of the image. The people that released the image probably didn’t think about the race issue when printing. I also believe that had it been Lebron displayed as the good guy and Dirk displayed as the evil guy nobody would have an issue with the picture.
The current way that the news reports crimes or victims is questionable. In class on Tuesday everyone had some really good points. Using the Caylee Anthony example is a good way to show how the media likes to show white females in a victim situation more so than any other race. I don’t think that the news should focus on one missing child more than the others just because the situation is more interesting. Many kids go missing all the time and the news doesn’t focus on those children when they could be helped. I can see that the way crimes are currently reported seem to show different races in a negative light. I don’t believe that they should stop reporting crimes, but getting better witnesses can be a start. It does seem like the reporters find witnesses that don’t seem very intelligent or knowledgeable to use in the story. If they were to use people that show a variety of diversity in people of all races, it will help the situation. The news needs to start trying to show people of every race or background as equal in the sense that victims and criminals can come from any background. They need to try not to scare people when reporting crimes. Coming from a small town and watching the news report crimes I always had the impression that big cities were scary place full of crime. It didn’t matter what race people were. The news to me just showed that crime was the biggest thing happening. I think that in general the news needs to focus less on crime and more on other events happening in the world. Ratings seem to be the only reason they make a big deal out of crime stories, so they should find a way to increase ratings without using fear.
Today’s Class was very interesting. I think I’m going to like this class. I will be posting my thoughts and comments about the issues discussed today in a another post. I hope I do well with expressing my thoughts through this blog.