Sunday, December 13, 2009

My Blogging Experience



At first, blogging sounded completely boring and redundant to me. When I first started writing, it did not feel natural and none of my ideas really flowed. However when I chose topics that interested me more, I enjoyed writing more and my thoughts on the topics kept flowing.
I wish I chose more topics I was interested in that still related to what we were discussing in class. Another difficulty I had besides choosing a topic was being consistent with the time frame I posted. With my athletic schedule, I found it hard to post on a weekly basis.
After this class I think I might continue a blog, but a completely different topic. I was thinking I would do a bi-weekly blog on the experiences I had during my first season of college athletics. Since there is so much down time on the road, I feel this will be a perfect activity for me. Some topics I'd like to discuss are life on the road, transition from high school to college sports, team chemistry, and the games themselves.
Overall, I enjoyed blogging and am excited to continue it in the future.




Thursday, December 10, 2009

Family Guy: Race and Gender


I wanted to analyze another one of my favorite shows, Family Guy. This show gives great examples of how race and gender are all portrayed in the mainstream media.
Take gender first. Peter Griffin is the typical stupid oblivious husband figure like Homer Simpson. His wife, Lois, is always shown correcting his elementary mistakes. She is also shown as a sex object.


African-americans are shown as being ghetto and lacking proper english. It falls into the typical black stereotype.



Family Guy is one of many shows that create stereotypes. With technology growing is there any way to prevent these stereotypes from happening?

Saturday, December 5, 2009

The Globalization of Hip-Hop: Reggaeton



Ever since hip-hop hit the United States in the '70s, it has been interpreted by many countries around the world. It has even been developed into a second type of music, reggaeton. Reggaeton takes hip-hop like beats and Latino music and blends them.


The artists also take the style of many famous rap artists. Daddy-Yankee is the best example of how globalization has hit the rap industry. The goals of a reggaeton artist are the same as a rap artist. They want the money, cars, clothes, women and fame. These pictures are of two completely different artists. The one on the left is reggaeton artist, Daddy Yankee. The one on the right is Drake, a Canadian hip-hop artist.
Hip-hop is expanding more and more due to globalization. Many hip-hop artists are even collaborating with reggaeton artists to make a glocal music world.

Tiger Woods: 21st Century Privacy




In our day and age, the words privacy and media do not mix. Tiger Woods found this out the hard way. If you are completely in the dark, Tiger Woods was caught cheating on his wife. Information such as text messages and voice mails to the mistresses have now gone public. Something so family oriented is affecting not only his image, but his endorsement deals as well.




Gillette has taken him off commercials for the time being. Also, Gatorade is discontinuing his line of drinks. This is something that has nothing to do with his golfing ability, yet his off-field actions are affecting his life as a whole.



It's hard to believe now in the 21st century that if you type it, say it or text it, it's public.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Women's portrayal on Heroes




Recently in class, we have been discussing women and how they are portrayed in the media. I applied the ideas to one of my favorite shows on NBC, "Heroes." The show centers around people who have special abilities, like levitation and teleportation, because of a certain genetic code they posses.
Many of the characters' powers relate to their personality and how the creators want them to be portrayed, especially for the women. Hayden Panettiere's character, Claire (middle). Her special ability is rapid cellular regeneration. This means when she is hurt, she cannot die or even have a scratch on her. She is shown as the innocent cheerleader. From one season to the next, her sexual image keeps increasing as well as the increase in amount of women throughout the show.
In Season 2, they added a new character Elle. She was played by Kristen Bell (left). She gave the opposing side a good looking girl of their own to rival Claire. They became enemies and competed in a the male fantasy of the ultimate cat fight.
Looking at the show in a different light made me think of what I was watching more carefully.