Food

As everybody is heading home for the upcoming holiday and will be getting together with family and friends to celebrate I couldn’t help but think about how big a role food has in our lives and how important a medium it is. I come from a unique background, my mother was born and raised in Mexico and moved to the United States when she was 13 years old, making me half Mexican. Most people don’t really know this about me as it certainly is not obvious but if you ever came to my house or came to my family’s Thanksgiving dinner this would quickly become apparent. Most families start the Thanksgiving meal with a traditional appetizer such as salad or pumpkin dip with gingerbread or any other traditional American appetizer. However, at my house we have an extremely unique appetizer and our Thanksgiving would not be the same without it. Every year we start Thanksgiving with a traditional Mexican Tortilla soup served with cilantro, avocado and tortillas. This is everyone’s most favorite dish and often people leave asking to take home the leftovers. We have had several friends come to our Thanksgiving dinner and every time they have been amazed by this dish and often really enjoy it.

                To my family, especially my mom, this dish is a reminder of her heritage and her home and it is a way for us to celebrate our Mexican heritage on this very American holiday.  It is also a way for our family to show our friends where we came from. I am sure that we are not the only family with a unique holiday dish, but I think if you stop to think about the different courses served at Thanksgiving you will see that each of them is sending a different message. Food is often used to in times of celebration and can say a lot of different things. Recipes are passed from generation to generation in an effort to maintain a message over the years. It is an extremely useful way to get a message across and often times leaves you very satisfied.

The Beauty of Cars

Roughly four years ago I went with my father and picked out Beatrice, and while it wasn’t until a few days later that I brought her home I knew that as soon as I saw her she would play an extremely important role in my life. While things have not always gone smoothly with Beatrice I know that she will always be there for me and I will always be there to defend her when anything bad is said about her. It may not seem obvious from the beginning of this blog but Beatrice is my car, a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It is certainly not the best car out there, and I have had to take it to get many repairs but it is amazing to think about how important that car is and what it says about me. Many people have many different approaches to buying and having cars. Some people thing that cars are simply a means of transportation to take you for place A to place B. Other people believe that cars are a symbol of your social status and say a lot about you. People spend thousands of dollars on cars just to get a message across that they have enough money to spend a fortune on a toy. It is also interesting to consider what type of message you are sending with your car and how people judge you. The other day my friend went to court to fight a speeding ticket that he got while driving his Porshe Cayenne. The judge heard his ticket, stressed the fact that he was driving a Porshe, and then denied his appeal. Now I have gotten my fair share of speeding tickets while driving Beatrice, and often times I was driving well above the speed limit. However I have appealed every single one of my tickets and have done so successfully without any issues. There appears to be two reasons for the fact that I successfully appealed my ticked while my friend did so unsuccessfully. The first being that I argued my case better than he did (which I continue to tell him is the case) and the other is the fact that he was driving a sports car that is known for its speed while I was driving a Jeep which certainly is not known for its acceleration. It is clear from this example that cars really are an incredible medium and the messages they send across are very obvious. So the next time you are picking a car, which probably won’t be for a little while, just try and think about what message you want to send.  

If you have been to career connections or if you have been trying to stay atop the latest social networking trend you have undoubtedly come across the professional world’s version of Facebook, LinkedIn.  Now while you might not be able to post pictures on LinkedIn many of the features of Facebook, such as connecting with friends and people you know and posting messages to others are available on LinkedIn. Additionally, you can see how the people you know are connected with other people and you can create your own “web” of professional connections. However, articles and books such as “Facing the Facebook” are not written about how LinkedIn is destroying our communities or how it is distracting us in the classroom and causing our critical thinking ability to decline. No, LinkedIn continues to operate and function as its cousin Facebook is taking the abuse.  But what is it about LinkedIn that make it so much less controversial than Facebook? Is it that you can’t post pictures? No. I believe that what makes Facebook so controversial is its users and the setting in which they are using it. Facebook is used by mostly college students and those recently graduated. While older generations are beginning to use Facebook the main problems come from the use of Facebook by college students. LinkedIn however is used by professionals who use it for their professional life and to help them further their careers. People believe that younger generates abuse Facebook and use it as an opportunity to post inappropriate content on the web. It is as if society has created two characteristics of social networking sites, those that society deems inappropriate and should be monitored and censored on a constant basis, and those that should be used for professional careers and that should be used to an individual’s advantage. I truly believe that this is an unfair generalization because if Facebook is causing so many issues in our society LinkedIn must be examined under the same microscope. I think it is extremely interesting to compare these two social networking sites and while they have minor differences in their features, they are treated unequally because of their users.

                                   FACEBOOK                                                                         

                          LINKEDIN

Skype

About midway through last year my roommate turned me on to Skype and showed me many of the great things that it can do. You can keep in touch with people from far away without ever leaving your desk. You can not only communicate with them through instant messaging, you can see them and interact with them through video chats. It was amazing to me as I had never really thought about doing it before but it really me think about how staying in touch with my friends could never be easier. I went to high school around the area but many of my friends decided to go all over the country. I have never been the best at keeping in touch but now I have no excuse, with one click of the mouse I can Skype my friends and see them and talk with them as if they were in the room sitting next to me. I really think that it is an amazing use of technology and it has no questioned changed the way that I communicate with my friends. I never thought that it would be so easy to talk with my friends who are now in California but now I can do it on a regular basis.

I thought that this medium ties very well with the reading in that it is an example of how technology is reshaping space and is allowing me to create m own virtual community. With the click of the button I can reconnect with my friends from high school as if things had never changed. It allows me to stay close to the people I want to without ever leaving my room and without a plane ticket or a bus ride. I am very glad that I was told about Skype and I’m glad that it is making it so easy to stay close to my friends.

 

It Must Be the Shoes

The other day I went into champs and looked at the shoes because I was debating if it was time for me to buy a new pair of shoes. I came to this question because I noticed that my white Air Forces have become dirty and they have lost their “crispness”. They are not too small, or too worn down, rather they are just not as clean as they once were. This got me to thinking about how shoes are truly media and every industry; from professional sports to music to TV commercials are aware of this. Nike earned millions of dollars by creating Air Jordans, Michael Jordan’s own shoe line, they created commercials that suggested that his success was based on his shoes. Rappers have created countless rhymes suggesting how important their shoes are to them and how shoes are truly an expression of themselves. People have very different clothing styles but shoes are something that everybody cares about.

I think that this relates to the reading in chapter 4 in that certain norms and conventions about shoes have developed overtime and they have been influenced by many different factors of different media industries. These norms have influenced our decision making and now when we purchase shoes we are not just considering what style fits our foot and what is comfortable, rather we think about all of the different media influences and think about how they have influenced our opinions. As I began this blog with a simple story of debating whether or not to buy a new pair of shoes I couldn’t help but think about how I used to buy shoes. I would go into the store, try several different styles on and see what I thought was the most comfortable. Now though, I am influenced by Air Jordan TV commercials or different hip hop and rap songs and my decision making process has become much more complicated. Ultimately I decided not to buy a new pair of shoes. While there is no question that my white Air Forces are very dirty, I like to think that media has not completely influenced me and I was able to decide that my shoes are still very usable and I can buy some shoe cleaner if I really want to make my shoes more clean.

Air Jordan Commercial:

(How could you not want these shoes now?)

I am Queens Boulevard

If you have access to HBO, or if you know how to watch TV shows online, than you are lucky enough to have access to watching HBO’s hit TV show, Entourage. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Entourage follows the life of a budding star actor as he goes from his first role in a Mentos commercial to the star of the highest grossing film of all time. What I found interesting about this show is that the shows main character, Vincent Chase, is one of the few actors in Hollywood who cares more about making a quality movie than he does about making money. In the beginning of his career Vinny decides to act in an independent film called Queens Boulevard which is based on life in his hometown, Queens, NY. Vinny makes the movie and it is a major hit in the independent film world. Seeing the success, one of the major movie studios, Time Warners, decides to buy the movie and make several changes to make it more “appealing” and “commercially sellable” to the audience. When they show the changes to Vinny it is very clear that they have ruined the movie and have changed the meaning because they want to make it more sellable and more appealing to audiences and advertisers.

I think this example ties extremely well to the chapter 2 reading in that it demonstrates how the media industry works and operates. Vinny struggles to find a studio that wants to produce the movie because he only has a limited number of options and because they believe that the movie won’t be commercially successful. When he finally does find a studio willing to buy the movie they manipulate the movie and make major changes because they think it will sell better that way. In the studio’s mind all they care about is making as much money as possible while Vinny doesn’t care about making money but wants to make a meaningful movie. It is very interesting to see this dynamic work, and in the end the powerful movie studio beats the small actor and changes the movie and tries to make as much money as they can. In the end the movie study is motivated by the advertisements and how they will be able to sell the movie rather than the movie’s meaning.

 Queen's Boulevard Clip

The Many Shades of Slim Shady

                Back when he first came out Slim Shady, aka Eminem, was one of the most unique and interesting rappers in the industry. He was a white man from Detroit dominating a musical genre filled with African-American artists. What made him so interesting was that he was different, someone that the white suburban kids could relate to on a level that they couldn’t with his black counterparts. Eminem knew this and he decided to take full advantage of it. His first single was “My Name is” and it was an extremely clear parody of the society we lived in. What was so interesting about it was that it evoked every type of active audience. Anyone could listen to it by themselves in their home and determine what the song meant to them. The song could be viewed in the social setting and people could analyze the jokes it was making about our society. Or finally, people could talk amongst their group of friends and try and debate the many meanings of the song. It was a revolutionary rap song and audiences around the world could come up with many different meanings to it.

                Slim Shady did not stop there though, he went on to record numerous hit records, such as “Stan”, “The Way I am”, “Lose Yourself” and countless others. What made him so successful though was that different social groups could find different meanings from his song. Those coming from the urban poverty stricken area could relate to the struggles he faced everyday in his life and what he had to overcome to reach his success. White teens from the suburbs could relate to him as there was finally a white artist in the genre that they enjoyed. It is amazing to think of the many different social groups that he was able to reach, and that is why he will always be considered one of the greatest rappers to ever live.

                Rap and Hip-Hop are my favorite musical genres and Eminem is one of my favorite rappers. I used to memorize his most popular songs and listen to them any chance I got. Just as Janice Radway’s research illustrated that romantic novels were a way for women to escape reality I used Eminem’s songs to transport myself to a different world. I used his music as a way to get amped up for a big basketball game or I would listen to it in my room as a source of entertainment; whatever the situation, for that brief moment I would suspend my reality and let go of everything and just enjoy the music. To this day I can put on a pair of headphones, and take myself into another world by just playing one of his many songs.

Eminem-My Name Is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNPnbI1arSE&ob=av2e

It is extremely fascinating to walk down the street or to go into a gift shop and notice the different suggestive T-Shirts available. There are shirts with cartoons on them, with quotes from TV shows and even ones with provocative quotations written on them. T-shirts have evolved and have turned into a new type of media. One of my friends has a GTL t-shirt (picture below) and the reaction he gets from people when he wears the T-shirt is pretty funny. Some people who don’t even know him come up to him and start talking about Jersey Shore or ask him how often he GTLs. Wearing certain T-shirts have turned into a way to communicate with people you barely know and to show some of your beliefs.

While it may not be as suggestive as the news or political commercials, I believe that T-shirts can also influence the way people think about certain topics. Chapter 7 suggests that the news and other TV programming can influence people’s views regarding politics and other important topics. A funny or thought provoking T-shirt can have the same influence as they can spark an intense debate about an important issue. For instance, while it may be an extreme example, the T-shirt below with the caption “we are your government” can strike up a debate about the role that the government plays in our society. Some people may argue that the government should be less dominant and controlling while others may argue that they are not influential enough. Either way I believe that T-shirts can influence people’s opinions and can force people to talk about important subjects that they otherwise would not have.

 

Why Did Denzel Have to be Crooked Before He Took It?

The other day I went to go see “The Town” with a couple of my friends and after the movie I started to think about the role that movies have on our society. I consider movies to be one of the largest media in our society. They are able to reach a national audience, they are accessible to nearly everyone, and they can be watched at one’s convenience. What is amazing to think about though is the influence that a movie producer can have on our society. Producers and directors have a specific vision that they try to get across to their audience. They use several different tactics, including actor choice, camera angle, lighting and dialogue, to get their point across. Often times, if a producer is good enough, he can manipulate the audience and get his point across without them every noticing.

Chapter 6 in Media Society discussed the different stereotypes that movies have reinforced over the years and how different minority groups, specifically African-Americans, have been portrayed in movies. One of my favorite movies of all time, “Training Day”, stars one of my favorite actors, Denzel Washington. Unfortunately, this movie reinforces some negative stereotypes about African Americans. Denzel plays a glorified cop who is the leader of a Narcotics police force. His team deals specifically with high profile drug traffickers and criminals. Throughout the movie the audience learns more about Denzel’s character and discovers that he is in fact a crooked cop. Years after the movie came out a Rapper named Jadakiss wrote a song called “Why”. One of the lines in this song is “Why did Denzel have to be crooked before he took it”. This line is referring to the fact that while Denzel Washington has played numerous roles before “Training Day”, the first time he received an Oscar was for his role as a crooked cop in “Training Day”. I think this is extremely disappointing and that the first time Denzel is recognized for his acting achievements is when he played a role that reinforced an extremely negative African-American stereotype.  

Training Day Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caqE0DY5t_8

Jadakiss "Why":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-cpL--0AQA&ob=av2e

Football, TV Commercials and Budweiser

As I was watching football, like I do most Sunday afternoons, I noticed that one of the first commercials I saw was for beer, specifically Budweiser. This got me thinking and I started to remember some other memorable beer commercials that I have seen while watching sports on TV and I couldn’t help but think of the famous “wassup” Budweiser commercial (link below). When it originally aired everyone adopted the “wassup” saying and it soon became the social norm. You would greet your friends or start talking to them on the phone with a long and over-emphasized “wassup”. Looking at the commercial now, there are several things that I noticed that I overlooked when the commercial initially aired. First, only the males say “wassup” to the other males, the females are either silent or not in the commercial. Second, everyone in the commercial is relaxing and having fun while watching the football game. Thinking about it this commercial made me assume that I could only say “wassup” to my male friends and not my female friends, and that in order to enjoy myself while relaxing or watching a football game I needed a Budweiser to make my experience complete. I have obviously learned that this is not the case, but I think it is extremely interesting that a commercial could have such a large impact on me. I believe that this ties in to the chapter 5 reading because the commercial, without me realizing, caused me to make false generalization. Budweiser viewed me as the consumer they were trying to reach and determined that the “wassup” commercial was the best way to do it. They used imaged and real life situations to influence me in a way that I didn’t realize until now. It is very interesting to think of the effects that a beer commercial can have on me without me noticing and can change the way I interact on a daily basis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDTZCgsZGeA

Define Media

           There are many factors that contribute to the constant struggle to accurately define media.  People have millions of unnoticed interactions with media every day, as they have saturated the global culture. Media are constantly changing as new technology develops and people discover new ways to utilize their surroundings. However, the biggest factor that makes it so difficult to define media is that it can have a variety of meanings to different people. People consider a number of things, such as cupcakes, lights, cards, or even tables to be media which makes it very challenging to explain. However, with close examination it is clear that media are anything that can be used to help communicate information with others or to express a specific thought or opinion in a way that will reach an audience.

            A crucial aspect in the definition of media is that it helps aid the process of communication or expression. One person must try to convey a certain message in an understandable way to another. In the book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man Marshall McLuhan writes “the content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph” (8). McLuhan provides examples of the different tools available for use through media and illustrates that media are used to interact with a variety of people. These tools are utilized in order to effectively express a belief or get a message across. Without media these interactions would be empty, leaving individuals no means to express their thoughts.

            Another key element of media is that it is something that anyone can utilize in order to share a piece of themselves with others. It is a way for the individual to let their opinion or belief be heard and to receive feedback from the audience. Sometimes it is not important what people are saying, but rather that they have a means by which to say it. One of the greatest functions of media is that “media [are] the extensions of man” (1). It is a tool that is available to individuals in order to interact, learn and grow with others. The global society continues to expand as media evolves; it is furthering the reach of mankind and turning what was once a limited society into a universe of endless possibilities.

             Often times an individual has many different media to choose from in order to communicate information or express their opinion. What is important to understand is that different media are not equal and choosing one medium over another may have varying results. An important aspect of media is the reaction of the receiver and that “each medium tends to produce a different experience for the [audience]” (26). Media can be used when expressing a certain idea but it does not guarantee that it will be appropriately received. An individual may choose a medium that leaves very little room for interpretation or they can choose one that invites interpretation and new ideas. There are a countless number of media in our society and it is important that when considering which one to use the individual chooses the medium that is right for them.

            The global society has been shaped by the media it is surrounded with. Evolving media has resulted in new ways to communicate with friends, receive news and important information, and grow in a world that is constantly changing. Media is a central part of everyday life, and because of that “if the media were eliminated, nothing else would be the same” (6). Society has grown to take for granted the millions of media interactions that go unnoticed every day. People don’t think that by wearing a Red Sox shirt they are communicating to the world that they are proud of where they live, or that a family recipe passed down from generation to generation expresses their strong family connections. However, any object can be used as a medium, as long as it is being used to communicate information or express a thought or opinion.