Discussions of the week 10/22- 10/26/12

     This past week our class gave individual and group midterm presentations.  These presentations covered various topics researching the pornographic industry.  Our classmates or groups could choose to research any given topic pertaining to the content, production, or audience reception of the pornographic industry.  So far, we have seen two individual presentations, and two group projects.  The topics of the presentations ranged from violence in the porn industry; the promotion/ profits hotels gain from offering porn in their rooms; and Production, Marketing, & Distribution of Time Warner.  The last topic is what my group decided to do.  There was another group that actually did the same topic as us, but they approached their research in a different way.  They looked into laws against porn, declining revenues, and profits.  My group chose to angle our research to examine the secretive hidden cross-marketing, the hidden profits, and the social economic impact of the porn industry getting closer to reaching mainstream media.  Although our two groups had the same exact topic for our midterm, each of us found different ways to angle or studies and the information we found.  This project was very insightful, because it was never an industry I questioned, nor looked into.  I never questioned profits made by porn, nor did I ask who receives the benefits.  I never knew until now, that so many large media industries and companies generate millions or billions of dollars in revenue, while staying secretive about it.  These companies gain a lot of money, while they do not attach their company image to the porn industry, because pornography is still very controversial among many.  Something my group found had mentioned that porn is only for certain people, and those certain people who like it, will know where to look for it.  With that being said, much marketing isn't necessary.  It is obvious that media companies know that sex sells, and they capitalize on this fact by consistently pressing people's boundaries of their comfort levels.

Social Class in the Media

     Over the past week, our class viewed a documentary called Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class (2005), directed by Loretta Alper.  The documentary discussed different examples in how social class is portrayed in the media.  Although media promotes the idea that moving from one social class to the next one is easily achievable with hard work, it seldom shows the realities of such.  There is a long history in media promoting the idea of this "American Dream" being attainable; however, it is not shown very often in the media where people fail to do so.  The mainstream media eventually strayed into highlighting the struggles of people in the working and poor social classes, but this is usually followed up by how they overcame that and ventured into a higher social class.  There are also consequences in the way media frames these identities around characters who are depicted in working and poor social classes.  The documentary explained and highlighted examples of these identities when discussing television shows like The King of Queens, The Simpsons, and Roseanne.  Going further into explaining how the identities are framed around these characters in the working social class, the documentary explained how they are often represented as inadequate, lack intelligence, or show social awkwardness.  They then integrated gender and race into the identities of working class people in the media.  The documentary explained that Roseanne was one of the first television shows that represented the struggles of a woman and her family on a low income, working social class.  Before this show media did not show the demand of most households requiring women to work to sustain a means of support.  Someone in the documentary had noted, "most women work because they have to, and television doesn't exploit work as a necessity to survive."  Roseanne highlighted this reality within the realistic culture of working class families.  The documentary had also discussed race integrated with poor or working class depicted different framed identities in media as well.  Colored people in the media who played characters in poor and working classes showed two different trivialized story lines.  It either showed colored people already situated in a middle or upper social class, that had to work to get there, but it often does not show their struggles, or hardships in the process.  This is showed in the storylines of television sitcoms like The Jefferson's and The Fresh Prince of Belair.  It shows colored people who aspire to reach the next social class, but their community they live in, people they surround themselves in, and lack of intelligence hold them back from ever being able to accomplish it.  This framed identities is shown in movies like Boyz N The Hood, and South Central.  Obviously media does not depict the realities of the working and poor social classes, because they always want to reinforce the idea that this "American Dream" is achievable and attainable with hard work and dedication.  Do not misunderstand me when I say that it possibly is, and there are very small number who do, but the reality is without the resources to succeed with the hard work and dedication, the likelihood of moving up in the framed economic classes are next  to a dream.
Boyz 'N The Hood

Media's Illustrations of African Americans-- (Week of 10/8- 10/12/12)

   
Over the past week, we watched a documentary called Color Adjustment (1991) directed by Marlon Riggs.  This documentary analyzed racial relationships through television sitcoms, and how stereotypes and portrayals of African Americans are framed in the media.  The documentary went further into discussing how certain stereotypical roles of African Americans influenced and imposed certain frames and ideas on its viewers.  The film went back to tracing the beginning times when African Americans were integrated into roles on primetime sitcoms after WWII, and analyzed the way their role was framed.  Many of the beginning roles were silent or very little spoken characters depicted as musicians, clowns, crooks, or maids to white authority.  The film used Andis and Andy as one of their many examples.  This was before the civil rights movement.  Through the civil rights movement and beyond it, the roles of African Americans on television shifted somewhat, but it still pressed the boundaries of comfort with the white culture America was so profound of.  As television became a more popular household item and family activity, white culture on television was depicted as pure, decent, and beautiful; the idea of African Americans playing this role at this time seemed very problematic.

     America began to face the penalties of this racial suppression in their everyday lives, once the
civil rights movement had started.  The first time in history, African Americans were being showed on the news,  on the everyone's television leaving them a witness to their victimization.  The brutality of reality was brought into peoples homes, and people began to side with them for their rights: whites and blacks.  Because of this, the people who were against the idea, acted out in more brutality and backlash than ever before.  Eventually African American gained equal rights after the civil rights movement; however, their portrayals on television sitcoms began to not only represent them equal in their commercial roles with the other characters on the show, but also depict them as being more "white" than before.  A sitcom that trivialized this idea was Julia, where there was an African American main character, but she associated herself with mostly white individuals, and lived in a predominantly white neighborhood.  This sitcom was a nice idea of hope for an American Dream, but it did not represent the reality of the hardships African Americans were still fighting to gain the resources to achieve.  Many years later, The Cosby Show, had portrayed these same concepts of success, but incorporated a fully successful African American family, that associated with both white and colored people; therefore, more African Americans were featured in the sitcom.  This did not change with the hardships of reality in attempt to gain equal resources to success levels so high.  With that being said, The Cosby Show inspired hope for the American Dream.

    Through the media stereotypes are imposed on the characters that portray anything but white, most of the time.  Native Americans are portrayed as stoic and emotionless.  Italians are portrayed as mobsters, brutality, silent yet have powerful social statuses.  Polish are depicted as pollack, lack common sense, or stupid.  Middle Easterns are depicted as dangerous, suicidal, and terrorists.  Irish are short-tempered drunks, and violent.  Mexicans are depicted as illegal immigrants, slave workers, gang members, or as a part of the drug cartel.  Asians are depicted as kung-fu artists and great martial artists.  Then going back to the documentary, African American have dad many stereotypes and myths imposed on their American identities through media. I could go on and on listing this list of imposed stereotypes the media structures around every full race that has a different heritage, religion, skin color, or origin, than the trivialized predominantly white American culture.  This trend is nothing new, in fact, these stereotypes are embedded in the sole foundation of America and unfortunately its history, even before media.  Media has just enforced these stereotypes to play off of people's levels of comfort and

make money off of it.  It not only enforces these ideas, it spreads these preconceived ideas and judgements into the growing minds of future generations, not allowing the stereotypes to die off.  I have included some pictures that enforce these stereotypes in today's mainstream media.

The Industry of Porn --Week of 10/1- 10/5/ 2012

     Over this past week, our class studied and discussed the pornography industry from three different angles: production, content, and audience.  We began the week by watching a really disturbing documentary called The Price of Pleasure (2008).  The documentary discussed a number of different topics underneath the topics of porn.  To begin it discussed how men are not only the predominant consumers, but also the producers and directors of the industry.  Another strong issue discussed was the objectification and portrayals of women in pornographic films.  Then it discussed the violence depicted in pornographic films against women.  Porn has been around longer than many of us have been alive, but the industry has grown so much over the years that some of it crosses moral and unethical boundaries.  It used to be something people consumed in their privacy, but since the internet and it becoming viral, porn is everywhere.  The documentary mentioned the porn industry being a $9 billion industry today, which continues to still expand its profits.  Porn is said to exist for pure fantasy, but the problem is when some of those fantasies are extremely demeaning and/or violent towards others.  Then this topic becomes even more problematic when certain guys or people isolate themselves into these fantasy worlds, when it then becomes difficult for them to separate fantasy from their actual reality.  This then can be dangerous, because then someone could actually be hurt.  There were many disturbing issues raised in this documentary, but I must say the violence shown was a little hard to bear to watch.  Specifically, there was a scene in the documentary that showed S&M porn scenes.  These weren't the typical violent domanatrix style porn, but more so mirrored a scene from the horror movie, Saw.  The girl shown in the scene was tied up to a torture contraption with her neck, hands, and feet all tied together.  The guy in the documentary addressed that this style of porn could be the future of the industry.  I thought about this comment the rest of the day because I could not imagine how that "being porn" could possibly be some sadistic, perverted, crazy person's fantasy!  The scene mirrored a horror killing scene so perfectly, the only thing missing was the blood.  It is just disturbing to think that someone could claim the edge of murder as their fantasy.  In my opinion, that person could have some screws loose, and might need a psych evaluation to reassure they are mentally stable.

     After viewing the documentary, later that day I watched a documentary on the History Channel about Hugh Hefner, the infamous founder of Playboy magazine.  I though it was interesting his intentions of starting the magazine.  He addressed equality, and freedom of sexual expression.  In the clip below he also claims his preferences of eroticism over pornography.
All about Hugh! (view from 1:15)

The next clip is merely about the rise of Playboy and its founding purpose!  Awesome clip, please watch!
ALL ABOUT PLAYBOY