College in the media

In the media, college life is most often referred to as a very stressful, but at the same time a very exciting part of life. In the MTV show called “College Life”, there are various episodes where the story revolves around students having fun and partying more than studying and stressing out for tests. They are usually in some kind of a mess such as being broke and having to move out, breaking up, or wild spring breaks, etc. Additionally, in the movie “College (2008)”, three high school guys go to a nearby University and pretend to be freshmen. They go there to find out how “wild” college can be. They pull off various pranks around the school and get in trouble. The pattern of similarity about college life is very obvious in the media today. Wild parties, spring breaks, pranks, money trouble, etc.

In the movie “College”, the high school students pull off lots of pranks around campus, and discover how “wild” college is. Some girls also like them thinking they are freshmen for real. They do outrageous things and portrays college life as just partying, drinking, etc instead of stressful life, studying, anxiety, and more. I think this kind of a situation is not heard of today. That is why it makes this movie a unique source because of the representation of college life. I have never seen or read any media other than “College” which portrays college life like as it does.

Analyzing the sources above, and their portrayal of college life, media teaches us that college is less about studying and more about fun. The academic part of college has gotten no attention at all from the media. The reality is that college isn’t all about having fun, it is also about sleepless nights and “finals week”. The consequence of this is that when people are ready to go to college, they have expectations which are shaped by the media. I am not saying that college is not a fun experience. I actually can’t wait to go to college myself. But I believe that the media is shaping the people’s views of only some aspects of college.

Representation of School in Media

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Similarities of School in Media

There are a profuse amount of similarities in media that is centered on high school, college, and all of their functions. A huge similarity in media about school is the presence of some type of social hierarchy. There’s jocks, nerds, drama kids, and preps along with many others. Some of the most popular movies, songs, books and TV shows show this as a part of high school. The movies Mean Girls and High School Musical are totally centered on this idea. In Mean Girls there is a huge war between the popular kids (plastics) and the rest of the school population. Everyone is always trying to get back at the plastics and vice versa. In High School Musical a relationship is destroyed because of clique differences. Cliques define whom you can date in High School Musical. The social hierarchy is central to most movies about high school.

Mean teachers are very prevalent in media about school. For example, in the book Speak, there is a teacher that the students have named “Mr. Neck”. He patrols the halls giving out detention and heckling kids who are tardy. When he teaches he is a relentless dictator, giving out F’s without reason. In the show Drake and Josh on Nickelodeon, Drake’s math teacher always gives him F’s regardless of circumstances. She is also a very negative person, always handing out detentions and discipline. In my experience in education, I’ve never come across a complete devil teacher as the media portrays it.

A corrupt administration seems to be a staple of popular media about school. In the show Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, the administration is always trying to make the kids miserable by canceling events and cutting classes. They don’t care about the student population. All they care about is the money side of the education system. In the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the principal of the school tries to expel, suspend, and, discipline Ferris because of a personal grudge. He only thinks of himself when dealing with other people and is typically very cruel and inconsiderate. Overall, media portrays school administration as very corrupt and greed people.

Uniqueness of School in Media

Uniqueness is a rare thing in popular media. Many shows and movies follow the same formula for success, milking as much money off of it as possible. The coverage of the Columbine shooting was unlike any other school media. Nothing else captured real and raw violence done by the students like this event did. In normal media about school, violence is dramatized to the point where it is completely fake and even comical at times. The footage of the columbine shooting shook people to their core and made them look at schools in a different way. Violence does happen and it is not what the popular media portrays it as.

The book Speak is unique in the way that it portrays high school. There are some portrayals in the book that are standard throughout media, but the main message is totally unique. The book follows a girl named Miranda who has just entered high school as a freshman. At an end of the summer party, she called the cops because a senior boy had raped her. Everyone at the school ostracized her for what she did and she walked around the halls without a single friend. Nobody knew why she called the cops, only that she did. Speak really captures how cruel high school can be for a person that doesn’t fit in or conform to the standard ideology. Popular media portrays high school bullying as a joke. Bullying is looked at as something that’s not that bad and isn’t that hurtful. Speak really shows the psychological and physical damage that bullying and exclusion can do to a person. Bullying does happen and it is an extremely serious problem.

A final unique piece of media that is centered on school is the song Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd. Popular media may paint school in negative light, but almost all American media says that you need an education to be successful. The song’s opening line is, “We don’t need no education”. It paints a very dark picture of school, stating that it is pointless and not worth your time. It also says that school is a form of mind control, teaching you to a certain ideology. It states that we are all conforming to certain views and are “all just bricks in the wall” of our school and a bigger society. There aren’t any other single pieces of media that portray formal education and school in such a dark way.

Consequences

The media is teaching us about a lot of things regarding school. It teaches us that teachers are mean, the administration is corrupt, and that there is a big social hierarchy in schools. It also portrays students as lazy troublemakers. Some of these portrayals contain a lot of truth, but some are far from it. Simultaneously, media also strays from the standard representation of school. Most of these representations deal with the psychological damage that can be done to a person as they work their way through the school system. These portrayals can lead to some very wrong assumptions about the education system.

There are huge consequences to the way the media represents anything. They form the viewpoints of school for a mass audience. They have helped form a distrustful and negative viewpoint of school and all of its functions. People distrust the students because they see large amounts of cheating and lying in movies. They think that teachers don’t care about their students and repeatedly fail them because that’s what they see in the media. The coverage and brutality of the Columbine shooting caused the creation of the lockdown drill. If Columbine wasn’t covered in the way that it was covered, schools wouldn’t have that drill. The media has shaped the world of school and it’s hard deviate from that point of view. The media is completely shaping our society’s view of the world and are controlling our minds in a way. The ways in which they represent things are the ways in which we see the world. This can be good if these representations are the wholesome truth, but as many people know, the media isn’t completely honest all of the time.

Representations of Soldiers

There are several similarities in the representations in how media portrays soldiers, particularly with respects to soldiers out of the western tradition/civilizations. The vast majority

of media portray soldiers as good and honorable men who work towards protecting the lives of people in weaker positions. For example, the movies Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor characterize western (American) soldiers as innocent young men who are called up to defeat the ‘Axis of Evil’. Yet even something like the television show Hogan’s Heroes, from the 1960s and 1970s, keeps the enemies of “American ideals” (freedom, liberty, etc.) in a sort of dumbed down stupor while the Americans were cleverly conspiring.

It is quite peculiar that in most of the media forms, America or the other western civilization has soldiers that never seem to lose a battle. Or if they do lose a battle, there is always a retaliation or a glorious come back to win the war. Unfortunately there is a stark difference in this from reality. America and its allies do not always with the battles or the war for that matter, saying otherwise completely ignores portions of history.

In my studies I found very few examples of representations of soldiers in media that does not conform to the ideas I set forth in the previous two paragraphs. A couple instances that I found were the movies: Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, The Thin Red Line, and A Few Good Men. These movies seem to show the soldiers as performing dishonorable activities while in the field of combat, but in the end many of them were punished for their actions. A Few Good Men in particular gives a dynamic look at the actions of soldiers and the idea of a “chain of command” during a time of military worship.

The consequences of the media’s portrayal of soldiers in such a positive light are vast and wide reaching. When seeing constant representations of soldiers as good, honorable and continuously victorious, we become blind to the situations that these men and women go through. No longer will we pay attention to suffering that people go through, instead we will have blind loyalty and give ignorant praises of glory. I do not mean to say that soldiers have never done anything that is just or right; but when we characterize an entire group and their actions as just and right then there is a real, and very present danger that we overlook atrocities commit by these people. One only has to look to Nazi Germany to see that a society can blind itself to reality when there is not an accurate representation of events in the media.

Equity vs. Equality - Why does the difference matter ?

Equity vs. Equality - Why does the difference matter ?
Matthew Falkowski Hour 3
Media Studies

There is a huge difference between these two words Equity is to be Fair. Equality means Equal which is easy to remember because its in the word. For example if you had a child that was 8 years old and a child that is 18 years old. When they got allowance you gave about what each child needs based on their age and expenses. For the 18 year old you gave $100 dollars per week because of gas, movies and going out to eat. For the 8 year old you only gave $25 dollars per week because he only has half the expenses like movies. This would be fair because your giving money based on their age and the expenses that come with age. An example of Equality is if you had a 18 year old you gave $100 dollars per week because of gas, movies and going out to eat. For the 8 year old you gave $100 dollars also per week even though he only has more than half the expenses. This would be Equality because even though their expenses are different your still treating them equal.

Equity vs. Equality

Equity and Equality are two distinctly different ideas with a border that is sometimes easily obscured. Equity is the “fair” distribution of resources according to some objective or outside factor. For example, if two people were working the same job but one of them got more done, then this person would get paid more than the person who did less. In a perfect world, this is very similar to tipping your waiter or waitress at a restaurant. Equality is distributing resources in the same way to everyone. An example of this is something like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; everyone has these rights regardless of situation. The acknowledgement of the difference between the two (with relation to media) is particularly important. With the control of media environments usually being equitable with relation to the amount of money that a group/company/individual has, people that are not able to control much of the media have their voice drowned out. An equal media environment puts the same value to all ideas and so everyone gets to be heard. By pursuing policies that promote equity, not everyone is going to benefit. By striving for policies that promote equality, we all will reap the rewards. After all, is it right that someone is disadvantaged just because of their name, race, ethnicity, or social status? No it is not.

Equality vs Equity

Equity is treating people fairly and equality is treating the people the same . An example includes for equity, if you’re a parent and you have two sons. The youngest son has straight a’s and the oldest has straight c’s. You reward the youngest 50 bucks and you reward the oldest with 5 bucks. For equality if they both have straight A’s, then you give them both 50 bucks for their hard work

Equity vs. Equality: The Difference, and Why It Matters

The differences between equity and equality are both the fairness of the two and the problems with them as well. In the case of equity, you adjust consequences, etc. to the situation, and in the case of equality, you just make sure everyone is equal. Both have flaws- in equity, how you adjust to the situation is entirely dependent on the person doing the adjusting. Therefore, even though in the best case scenario equity is the fairer choice there is a question of bias- if the decision-maker is biased, then the decision is as well (I may think that it's fair based on the situation to not let someone with a drug problem stay out as late, but someone with different views might think differently). Same with the case of equality- sure, everyone gets treated the same, but is that always fair? Should a kid with a sprained ankle be forced to run as many laps as a kids with uninjured ankles? (no, obviously not). The difference matters in a big way- equity vs. equality is debated for pretty much every topic that effects us- politics, parenting, media, rights, etc. It's becoming increasingly more important, especially as we grow older and the world changes not only politically but media-wise as well, to be an active voice in our community and nation. If we don't know the difference between two of some of the base things that effect our decisions, if we can't tell which one we think is best in whatever situation, then how can we accurately decide on the issues that our effecting our lives?

Ethical Media Recommendation
Evan Kramer

When we think of something or someone being ethical in 21st century America images of smiling faces and long strands of different coloured hands clasped together with words like peace and love plastered near by come to mind for the most ideal of thinkers. But how is one supposed to represent real life, or something close to reality, while remaining ethical in the peace, love, and harmony sense of the word? Because we all know that life is not always harmonious and is, as the movie says, a battle between love and hate. Life is perpetually filled with things that are unethical (racism, violence, etc.), but it is not unethical to examine such issues in a society through storytelling and the use of the media. Case in point, Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do The Right Thing.
The movie tells the story of a young pizza delivery worker, Mookie (Spike Lee), who works for a Sal’s Pizzeria, an Italian family owned restaurant which is across the street from a Korean family owned corner store, all on a predominantly African American and Puerto Rican street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. There is a multitude of characters varying races and ethnicities, and on one sweltering summer day racial tensions and internal bigotries explode in conflict. And while there are aspects of Do The Right Thing that are not ethical, because Lee is using the media of film to tell a story that presents the audience with an honest, intentional examination of society the movie is ethical.

What should we be watching?

There are many people that believe that videogames teach bad behavior to our society, and I do agree that some do. But there are exceptions that are completely ethical and ok for anyone to play. The most popular game that fits this category would have to be the Madden NFL Football franchise. This game does not create or promote the use of any stereotypes that are used in our society. It simply promotes the NFL teams, players, and organizations, and does not encourage any violence off the football field. Madden Football shows the realism of the contact that takes place in football but at the same time demonstrates the rules and guidelines that are necessary to participate in sports and society.

The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air

The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air is a sitcom television show about a boy (Will Smith) that is from a low-income part of West Philadelphia, and moved to Bel-Air California and lived with his rich uncle and his family. Through out his time in Bel-Air he gets into a fair share of trouble, which never makes his uncle happy with him.
The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air shows ethical behavior and choices in every episode. In all of the episodes it shows Will getting into harmless trouble with his uncle and going against his rules. But when Will gets caught his uncle always gives him the correct punishment for his actions. He always learns from his actions and does not repeat the same one twice. In the end of the show it always shows the family coming together in the end. The show helps show teens that you need to learn from your punishments and come together and be with your family in the end.

Ethical Media

Ethical TV show

The television show that I think is ethical is Two And A Half Men. I think it is ethical because it shows how a brother takes in his brother and his son when there are going through hard times with the divorce. He also takes in his brother Alan’s son Jake. Which they are tying to adjust when the brother Charlie is a higher class resident of California and he lives on the beach and drives a jaguar. He is trying to help his brother Alan get a new girlfriend so that they can move out and start over.
The television shows how a family member can help out another family member that is going through hard times. It also shows how your family will always be there for you when you are in hard times. The brothers also illustrate how you should help out people because they may return the favor.


http://www.tv.com/two-and-a-half-men/show/17206/summary.html

Parental Guidelines

1. Make sure to keep more gruesome aspects of media from children, such as in movies or games. These can have harmful effects on child development. (Do not buy Gears of War).

2. As kids mature, make efforts to befriend them and learn what types of media they like to use on a regular basis. With this knowledge you can better monitor their media activities.

3. Older kids or young adults should not be subject to as much restrictions. Specifically, ages 15 and up should very few restrictions on media use. For internet, however, make sure to emphasize the lack of privacy and the dangers inherent in online activity to them.

4. Make some effort to reduce the passive media consumption of kids, as it can reduce their productivity and academic effort. (Possibly limit to 2.5 hrs a day). Do not be a tyrant, though, as it can breed resentment and rebellion.

By: Dan, James, and Yuanchao

Ethical Media Representation – U2

U2 is a band that started out in Dublin, Ireland in 1976, when its members were just teenagers. Over its many year career, the band campaigned vigorously for civil rights and humanitarian aid for the less fortunate. Examples of this are its advocacy in Live Aid, Amnesty International, and the ONE Campaign.

These ideals are epitomized in one of their latest albums, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, an album which I actually own. In it, the songs “Miracle Drug”, “Love and Peace or Else”, and “Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own” all serve to further their efforts for social justice and human rights. Because of this, I believe that this album is a great example of an ethical aspect of the media, as it gives a great criticism of modern rights violations and oppressions. If societies all grew up to respond to these criticisms, then the whole world would be a better place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U2