Farewell, Writing 340

With the conclusion of this summer's writing 340 class it is time to reflect on the past and look to the future.  First of all, this class helped me get back into the swing of writing analytical papers as I really hadn't had to write research papers since the beginning of my sophomore year.  I found that by the end of the class I was able to make concise and well-founded arguments and I improved my writing overall.   Research was a huge part of this class and I not only learned how to go about finding the best research for my topics, but also learned the art of footnotes and really maximizing my research.  My favorite assignment was definitely the first one in which we were asked to analyze a documentary and characterize it as art or education. This paper allowed me to truly look at how art functions in a documentary and the way filmmakers convey messages to society.  I really enjoyed watching the documentaries at the beginning of the class and since then have actually started watching them as a hobby now! The second paper, which asked us to research academic freedom and draft an academic freedom policy for our field, was one that I found challenging but learned a lot from.  I was able to really hone in on the prevalent issues in journalism and come up with suggestions for how cases in which academic freedom is threatened should be handled in the academic environment.  I enjoyed having the liberty to make my own decisions and it made me reconsider how academic freedom is handled and how often it is actually violated.  My final project, in which I studied the connection between communication, gender studies and psychology, allowed me to really think about cross-field connections and come to my own conclusion about how gender portrayal on television sitcoms affects society.  I found that coming up with my research proposal through the in-class presentation was a really good way for me to brainstorm about what I had already found out and wanted to find out more about and I found my classmates' feedback to be very helpful in gaging the course of my final research paper.  I found class workshops to be helpful and I wish we had devoted more class time to peer editing  and workshopping.  I found blogging to be a fun and innovative way to share my thoughts with the class and have actually begun my own blog as a way of expressing myself.  As an aspiring journalist I think that blogging is a great way to communicate to the world and setting up a blog for this class was a good starting point.  I am confident that I will use the research and writing skills I learned from writing 340 in my academic endeavors and, eventually, in my career.  I enjoyed this class and feel it was a valuable learning experience.

Media Mayhem: Can We Really Change It?

As most of you know by now, my final project is centered around the way gender has been portrayed in the television industry and the overall media trends.  Most of the research I have done contends that as a society our television gender portrayals have adopted the pattern of "one step forward, two steps back".  Modern sitcoms tend to portray the woman in a more professional light and as able to make professional gains but at the end of the day there still exists objectification and inferiority as almost every show results in the traditional role of the woman as a homemaker and wife.  One of the questions I am seeking to discover an answer to in this paper is how we can change these gender portrayals, or if we ever really can. Do you think having more female writers for shows and co-ed production teams would lend themselves to a more accurate, balanced gender portrayal?  Also. do you think the reason for these gender imbalances is because they are reflected in reality or do you think its simply because it "works" in Hollywood? What shows do you think do the best job or accurately portraying gender roles?? What about the worst? Get back to me!

Dark Knight Shooting and Bowling For Columbine

As I look back on my very first paper for this class, my analysis of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine and his argument that violence in America is highly attributed to violence in the media and the "culture of fear" surrounding Americans, I cannot help but make an unfortunate yet valid connection between Moore's claims and the horrible shooting that occurred in Aurora, Colorado last Friday.  Going to the movies and watching violent acts on the big screen used to be for pure entertainment.  Twenty years ago, a movie like The Dark Knight Rises  would be futuristic and seemingly impossible as innocent lives are taken in seconds and heartless villains seek to destroy the world one inhumane act at a time.  Unfortunately, some of the events that occur in this film are not only plausible but have occurred on a smaller scale in the last ten to fifteen years.  Movies are no longer pure fantasies and perhaps our mere exposure to violence on the big screen can be blamed for that.  The event that took place in that movie theatre is absolutely devastating and unsettling and yet, if we really look at the messages our film industry relays to audiences through violent films like this one, it almost seems as if the media is almost encouraging and rewarding acts of violence by trivializing them.  I mean think about it, evil people must have some sort of inspiration for their irrational acts and what better 'inspiration' as twisted as it may be, than the media? I can only hope that the shooting that took place teaches a lesson to filmmakers and American media to take a more critical look at the messages being relayed to the audience and the consequences of internalizing this violence.  As I said in my previous post, the media is the message and the messenger.  Maybe we should look a little more closely at the messages we are sending.....

Media Exposure and Its Effects

As I've been working on my paper I have been doing a lot of different research about not only gender portrayals in sitcoms and how they have or have not changed, but also the consequences of constantly being exposed to the media.  Statistics show that Americans spend around 2.7 hours a day watching television and people ages 18-24 spend approximately 32 hours per week on the internet and social media.  With so much media exposure it seems only natural that we be affected by the images and ideas conveyed, right?  One of the major topics of my paper is the psychological consequences attributed with media objectification, profanity and violence including internalizing these images as not only normal but "embraced"and encouraging low self-esteem amongst women especially.  The media holds an immense amount of power in shaping our attitudes about ourselves and others and provides the "message and the messenger" to men and women all over the world.  Last year I had the pleasure of taking Stacy Smith's Communication 203: Communication and The Mass Media and learned a lot more about the severe consequences of a media that is appearance obsessed and entertainment driven rather than propelled by fact and wholesome entertainment.  At the end of the day Hollywood does what "works" and "sells" in the industry and often turns a blind eye.  Check out a trailer of the fascinating documentary Miss Representation, which premiered on the OWN network last spring.  It discusses the true destructive power of the media in exploiting women and the underrepresentation that is not only tainting our nation's politics and social movements but also shaping younger generations' low self-esteem and feelings of inferiority both on and off screen.  Do you think showing this film to students will have a positive or negative effect on the way they view themselves and the media? Do you think it will backfire and instead reinforce media stereotypes, or will it cause upheaval and anger which will propel change? Why? Do you think men and women will ever truly achieve parity?

Presentation Reflection

Today I presented some of the research I have found on my topic about gender portrayals in television sitcoms.  I focused my presentation on how television shows have progressed from the 1950s to the present in terms of how gender roles have been challenged, or in the case of most of my research findings, been perpetuated by the situation comedies.  I found the critiques/ suggestions from my classmates to be extremely helpful in giving me some direction to further my research.  I especially liked the idea of mentioning how sitcoms seem to be an easy place for gender roles to be poked fun at because they "work" in Hollywood.  One of the central focus points of media studies thus far has been on the function of entertainment as an outlet for society to comment on, ridicule or embrace social issues.  Sitcoms often satirize gender stereotypes, political issues or other tensions and do so in a lighthearted way that keeps viewers laughing while also encouraging them to think about the bigger issues at stake.  I think it could be interesting to discuss how primetime dramas that have focused on powerhouse, aggressive females have ultimately failed in the entertainment industry and explore the reasons for this failure in comparison to sitcoms' successes.  I feel that I have a good amount of research on the premise and impacts of various television shows from the 1950s and beyond but need to close some gaps in my research of just how much we are being affected by these gender stereotypes.

A Little Research Goes A Long Way

Hey everyone! This week I learned a LOT about how to research (thanks to our library session) and have begun to narrow my topic down.  I am still focusing on gender portrayals but have decided that I want to hone in on the way gender is portrayed in sitcoms specifically.  Another one of the key elements I hope to explore throughout my paper are the differences that exist between shows with primarily women writers and shows with primarily male writers.  Some of the research I have read so far delves into some of the statistics and common threads seen in television sitcoms in terms of how genders are portrayed.  One of the things I am having trouble with, however, is taking a stand on the extent to which gender portrayals in television, primarily sitcoms, have changed within the last 15 years.  Do you guys think men and women are being portrayed more realistically on sticoms today, or do you think there are still stereotypes that are being perpetuated that are not necessarily reflected in the real world?  Do you think women are becoming 'equal' on television, or perhaps more importantly, do you think they ever will be?

Ideas for A3/A4

Hello everyone!! I am currently brainstorming on what to do for my final paper in writing 340.  I am a Communication major and Journalism minor so I was thinking about studying gender relationships in the television industry.  I plan to use my research from my Communication 203: Communication and Mass Media course with Stacy Smith as well as the fields of gender studies and psychology to further analyze the gender stigmas in the television industry. My essay will combine research with my own personal insight to determine how men and women are being portrayed in television, which gender is more "equal" in terms of portrayal and also how stereotypes are either reinforced or rejected through gender roles.  I will look at what kinds of people are being cast in television roles and what these actors and actresses have in common    I know that sexualization is extremely prominent in the television industry and that outer beauty often defines a cast, especially for women, but I would also like to analyze what kinds of roles men are playing and whether or not these roles have changed over time or remained static.  I'm hoping to find some research on the psychology of gender roles and what characteristics are deemed 'desirable' in the television world.