Addition to my bibliography posted on the 14th.

I know I started with body image, but I believe that I moved to religious tolerance because it hits closer to home and is more politically charged. I come from a community that is ultra conservative and family oriented. The people who live there will defend their friends and family to the ends of the Earth, but if you're different or an outsider than it's a different story. I can't tell you how many articles and links I've seen on Facebook of people back home posting against President Obama -- he's not a citizen, or he's Islamic, etc. I see these posts, and I think to myself, why would it be so bad if he was Islamic, do people not realize what a beautiful religion that is? No, I don't think they know anything about Islam except what they hear on Fox News. It is sickening to me. I would not consider myself a scholar on other religions, and often I'm sad by how little I know, but I think that there are many people who know nothing and think they know all that they need too. If we are going to have a better world and a better global political climate, we're going to have to learn.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my project yet, but I want to promote religious curiosity. I want people to learn more. They don't need to be searching for a new religion. They can keep what they have; but as a humankind, we need to try to understand each other better for the good all and for the good of the individual.

What I found in my research is that religion is an extremely important part of people's lives and can cause a lot of disturbance. It is also a touchy subject, which is why most people avoid it. Like I said earlier, it is politically charged and everyone gets up in arms about it frequently. But I also learned that education can lead to increased tolerance. This made me happy and this is what I want to focus on. There are a lot of negative things in society and in our classes theoretical discussions, but I want to focus on the good and on change. I'm really excited to move forward.

If you would like to see the other research I did for the original deadline, please see the annotated bibliography posted on the 14th of October.

Austin, J. Susan. "Religion in Elementary School Social Studies: A Vehicle for Attitudinal

Change." Religious Education. no. 5 (1976): 474-487.

This study tested whether introducing curriculum in religious study in social studies classes would increase religious tolerance or not. It was effective and it did increase tolerance and decreased ethnocentrism. Sadly, I don’t think doing something this extensive would work these days. This was written in ’74. If someone did this now, it would like cause an uproar about keeping church and state separate. But it does link education to tolerance, which is an extremely important partnership

Engebretson, Kathleen. "Foundational Issues in Educating Young People for Understanding and

Appreciation of the Religions in Their Communities." Catholic Education. no. 1 (2012): 49-64..

She talked about important aspects of religious teaching that teachers should be aware of. It is difficult to teach students about other religions and tolerance if they belief their own religion to be far superior, if they are fundamental in their religion and therefore staunch believers, if the teacher doesn’t know how to broach the difficulties of history and what some religions have been a part of in the past, and where critical reasoning and judgment have a place in religious study. Religion is a hot topic, so in order to make a good difference teachers must be prepared for everything. I want to be prepared for everything.

Rosenberg, Morris. Society and the Adolescent Self-image. 1st ed. Middletown, Connecticut:

Wesleyan University Press, 1989. 64-81 Chapter 4: The Dissonant Religious Context. Print.

This chapter explored the effects of adolescents who grew up in communities of their religious peers vs. adolescents who grew up in communities where the majority was a different religion. They discovered that “children raised in a dissonant religious context have lower self-esteem than those raised in a consonant context, and that the more dissonant the context, the smaller the proportion who accept themselves.” I like this chapter because religion is a really important; well it is to me anyway. Coming from a childhood where I was in the extreme minority, I definitely think it is a factor in how kids see themselves and their social status with peers.

Schweitzer, Friedrich. "Religious individualization: new challenges to education for

tolerance." British Journal of Religious Education. no. 1 (2007): 89-100.

Though this paper is written about adolescents in Germany, it is super applicable to the United States too. He explored the common religious view of individualism. This is a more personalized form of religion where a young person make a distinction between their own faith and the faith taught by institutions. They may have a denomination and go to Church for the camaraderie of other people, but come to their own conclusions separate from the religion. Many of these youths claim to be very tolerant of other religions, but this paper finds this answer to be superficial. They are tolerant of various Christian denominations but have misguided assumptions about other religions like Islam. Friedrich proposes education as a way to help young people learn how to respect other religions. I loved this article and what it pointed out about the problems of moral relativism. I think everyone, secular, individualistic, or whole-heartedly institutional, should learn about other religions. “I am convinced that religious differences are an important dimension of many tensions and conflicts that are related to intolerance because religion and religious divisions are part of cultures deep structures.”

Wagner, Paul A., and Lillian Benavente-McEnergy. "Genuine Religious Tolerance: Is It a Thing

of the Past in Public Schools?." Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education. no. 3 (2008): 327-349.

“Increasing numbers of people in North America today think society is approaching a perilous chasm with regards to religious tolerance… The purpose here is to show that tolerance in the search for truth, any truth – including the religious – and respect for self expression are good things.” These authors are proponents of truth; they don’t believe that religion should be pushed at schools, but it should also not be avoided. Avoiding religion completely, avoids a huge part of our culture and hinders students by stunting what they are allowed to be curious about. I believe that this is absolutely true, and I hate how some people fight on the side of ‘political correctness’. Teachers should not preach at school, but students should be allowed to explore their own spirituality and the beliefs of others.

I Am The Master Commander: aka Wonder Woman post

Before watching the film, I thought of Wonder Woman with a negative connotation. She’s just the silly sexy female, Superman-like superhero who was made so that there were girl super people too. I thought there was no way to make a film about her without being sexist because sexism was in the very seems of her costume. In many ways, I was very wrong. I saw Wonder Woman after she was “tamed, regulated and instrumentalized by the culture industry” as Zipes would say. Over the years, she has been manipulated so much that at times you can hardly recognize her (but I bet she was a really great fashion designer). It was nice to hear about the original 40’s Wonder Woman. She was strong and kicked butt, but she also had a woman’s heart and compassion (not for the bad guys of course). I felt empowered watching this film; yes I am a woman and yes I am awesome. I adored the little girl who dressed up as Wonder Woman and discussed how she had been affected and inspired. I don’t think there could be anything as noble or more noble than that girl. The film also made me sad. I have been missing out on this super hero and her awesome possibilities because of my pre-conceived notions. The culture industry was successful at making her seem “immoral, trivial, useless, and harmful”. It’s a downright shame really.

The last quote I will take from the text is this: “the ultimate cultural value of fairy[/superhero] tales today depends on how we convert technology…to create more just and equitable social orders.”  I whole-heartedly agree with this, and I am excited to attempt it in this class. I believe the little girl in the film could do wonderful things with the character Wonder Woman if she chose to. Marvel may think that they own her, but in reality, we the audience own her. We can continue to let others write her story, or we can make some of our own. I thought Jonathan McIntosh’s work was so artistic and profound. He cut right to the heart of his complaints and displayed them to the world in a professional aesthetic way. He uses technology to heighten and expand his critiques in a way that Zipes would be proud of. It’s exactly the stuff Zipes was talking about in the quote used earlier in this paragraph.

Hans Christian Anderson made up most of his fairy tales, but he utilized the things he knew, the common motifs of the time. His stories have become so classic that many assume they were oral stories and folktales long before Anderson’s wrote them down. We can make a difference because we can make stories too. There is no barrier to entry in this endeavor, and with a bit of technology anyone can spread their stories to millions across the world via the Internet. Now we might not all get notoriety, especially not to the degree that Anderson has, but we should as filmmakers and citizens, strive to make our world better, leave our mark no matter how big or small. I may not be Wonder Woman, but I am Abby Grout, and that’s good enough for me.

Ron Paul?

In his article “Changing the World in the Network Society”, Castells describes the patterns that he has found in networked social movements.  Kony 2012 shows many of these in its lifespan: networked in multiple forms, becoming a movement by occupying urban space, local and global at the same time, viral, non-violent, etc. Kony 2012 was not spontaneous in origin and leaderless, which were two important factors that Castells listed and are obviously connected.

I remember when this video first came out, and I remember watching it. I was moved by its images and music, but I did not act. I sat to the side to watch it all play out. It very successfully caught the attention of the entire country, but the majority of audiences were like me. Not many people showed up to plaster the town with Kony signs, especially in comparison to crowds that protested for Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street. Some have referred to this phenomenon as “slacktivism” or “clicktivism” because people think that they can change the world by just sending some unknown non-profit money and all the problems will be fixed. That’s not how it works.

Going back to the leader problem, this video has an obvious front man and one company that paid for its creation; this created a place for scrutiny. In leaderless movements, anyone who wants to question or criticize has to speak to all of the protestors at once. Like trying to cut off the head of a school of fish; you can disperse them for a second, but then they regroup as big as before. Movements are normally focused at changing what the government or rulers are doing, because of this they have “deep, spontaneous distrust… towards any form of power delegation.” This quickly showed in the Kony 2012 campaign. People wanted to know who Jason Russell and Invisible Children were, and many, if not most, people were automatically suspicious of him. Because of this attention and scrutiny, Russell had a mental break. With this breach in image, and the lack luster showing to poster the cities overnight, the movement trickled out of public interest.

At the end of his essay Castells sums it up really well, “Influence of social movements on politics and policies is largely dependent upon their potential contribution to the pre-set agendas of political actors.” So it seems to me that people like Ron Paul are more likely to make a change than Jason Russell. Yeah, some people see Ron Paul as a joke, but he is definitely a political actor. He can bring issues into elections that would not have been their without him. While Russell’s activism dwindles into nothing, Ron Paul will be here for years and years to come. Now, I’m not saying that I’m a proponent of Ron Paul, meaning that I vote for him or want him to be president. But I do wish that more people would do similar things. The two party system is struggling, and I believe that having more independents based in various communities’ ideals could really help to change the political geography of our country.

Self-Image Annotated Bibliography

            I love the research I’ve been able to do on this subject. I think that a lot of adolescent kids have pretty normal lives without to much drama, but there are factors here and there that do cause stress and disturbances in their life. First of all is gender. Growing up is more difficult for girls than it is for boys, for the most part. Another cause is being different, whether that difference is religious, body shape, fitness, birth country, irregular family structure, it can be nearly anything. Anything that makes a teenage different, than the beautiful blondes on the magazine covers, makes them a target to their peers. There are a lot of things for kids to be critical or worry about. And with sexuality becoming a more common topic in television and everyday life, it’s becoming a more and more important issue with teenagers. For goodness sake, most kids create idealized sexual expectations and are disappointed by the real thing, many foreign born teens avoid bringing their parents to school functions so that their peers don’t see how different their parents are, and most, if not all, teens worry about how they look and how they should look (skinnier or more muscular). Honestly, being a teenager these days must be exhausting.

            Regardless of all of these possible pitfalls, it’s not all a black hole. There are points of light. Like I said earlier, most adolescents don’t have ultra-dramatic lives. This idea is just perpetuated by the glamorizing media. In reality, most kids are able to cope with the stresses of their changing bodies, their different religions, and other factors. One of the most important influences in kids’ lives are their parents. The parent’s beliefs have a huge effect on their children. These beliefs affect how they teach their children, the rules they set, and what they expect of their children. These rules and expectations have dramatic effects compared to parents who have a more hands-off style. Teens need this direction; they believe themselves to be all knowing, but often they don’t completely perceive the consequences to their actions.

            Another point of light I found was the article about the effects of becoming part of a service group. Boys who did service for their community regularly were more involved, less likely to get in trouble, and had more self-esteem than boys who did not do service. This reminds my of our church and the big push we have for our young people to do service; it really does help. For some reason that study found that girls weren’t affected very much by doing service. I may disagree with this, but it’s what the study found.

            My coming of age wasn’t very dramatic, but it wasn’t easy either. Self-image is an interesting and important part of that age group. I want to know more about it so I can help young people get through it and know that things get better and that they can do it. I got through it. I think this research will help me a lot as I work more on this project.

Baran, Stanley J. "Sex on TV and Adolescent Sexual Self-Image." Journal of Broadcasting. 20.

(1976): 61-68. Web. <http://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/jbem20&id=63&collection=journals&index=journals/jbem

As much as I hate to admit it, young teenagers have a sexual self-image that is much more important to them than it should be. This article is from the 70s, but it has only gotten worse. Movies are getting more explicit, and with channels like HBO getting more and more popular, this problem is rampant. Kids create idealized versions of how sexual relations work and are ashamed when they are still virgins, thinking that everyone else aren’t virgins (even though most are). I doubt I’ll use this information too much in my presentation, but it is an important subset of young peoples’ self-image that I need to be aware of. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2432591/Porn-pernicious-threat-facing-children-today-By-ex-lads-mag-editor-MARTIN-DAUBNEY.html) this is an article that talks about the effects of porn on children.

Cohane, Geoffrey H., and Harrison G. Jr Pope. "Body Image in Boys: A Review of the

Literature."International Journal of Eating Disorders. 29.4 (2001): 373-379. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eat.1033/pdf>.

Although I am leaning more towards self-image instead of body image, this article is still valuable. It says that “boy’s most common concern regarding body shape was being underdeveloped.” Some boys wanted to be thinner; others wanted to be more muscular. Also, “In general, body satisfaction among boys is positively correlated with self-esteem.” Boys may not be as critical as girls, they still have a very similar problem in terms of body image and how that affects their self-image.

Grogan, Sarah. Body Image: Understanding body dissatisfaction in men, women, and children.

2nd Ed. New York City: Routledge, 2008. 41-80. Chapter 3: Women and body image. Print.

This chapter goes over the results of a body image questionnaire given to women. As would be expected, most women desired to be skinnier than they already were and that the perfect cultural image of a woman is skinnier. On of the more interesting findings is that “women who wish to be thin are mostly influenced by what they think other women prefer, rather than by what they think that men prefer.” Social pressures come from both parties. When people think of body image or self-image, they normally think of women’s problems. Though this is not always the case, it is definitely a huge issue that must be addressed. I can’t ignore the elephant in the room.

Jones, Merle B. "Self-Image and Perceived Parenting Role Expectations on Adolescent Fathers."

The University of Manitoba. (1999): 94-100. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0006/MQ45067.pdf (accessed October 2013).

This article talked about teen pregnancy and their effects on the father. I found this fascinating because most of the time the focus is on the mother. They found that these young men have low self-image. They want to be involved in parenting, but “unrealistic expectations and the inability to combine the developmental tasks of adolescence with the responsibilities of fatherhood increase their vulnerability to parenting failure.  Two different groups of teen dads were given questionnaires, one group were in the process of raising children, while the second was waiting for their baby to come. The former reported feeling very confused and ill-prepared; the other had high parenting expectations believing that they would be competent and able to parent well. This shows adolescents inability to project future consequences of their actions. I just found this article hugely fascinating and new.

Offer, Daniel, and Eric Ostrov. Patterns of Adolescent Self-Image. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Inc., 1984. 5-16. Chapter 1: The Self-Image of Normal Adolescents. Print.

This chapter was a lot more positive than a lot of the other things that I’ve read. It quizzed a lot of adolescents and found that most had pretty normal, good lives. It’s not always as dramatic as some adults make it out to be; teenagers are not always in the “throes of turmoil”. But it did mention that gender is a significant factor. Female participants were markedly less confident and had less self-esteem than their male peers. I think this reading is important to keep our heads straight and realize, that although many may go through significant troubles, a lot of kids have normal less dramatic coming of age stories.

Rosenberg, Morris. Society and the Adolescent Self-image. 1st ed. Middletown, Connecticut:

Wesleyan University Press, 1989. 64-81 Chapter 4: The Dissonant Religious Context. Print.

This chapter explored the effects of adolescents who grew up in communities of their religious peers vs. adolescents who grew up in communities where the majority was a different religion. They discovered that “children raised in a dissonant religious context have lower self-esteem than those raised in a consonant context, and that the more dissonant the context, the smaller the proportion who accept themselves.” I like this chapter because religion is a really important; well it is to me anyway. Coming from a childhood where I was in the extreme minority, I definitely think it is a factor in how kids see themselves and their social status with peers.

Rumbaut, Ruben G. "The Crucible within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented

Assimilation among Children of Immigrants." International Migration Review. 28.4 (1994): 748-794. Web. Oct. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2547157>.

“For children of immigrants, that developmental process [, going from Adolescence to adulthood,] can be complicated by experiences of intense acculturative and intergenerational conflicts as they strive to adapt in social identity contexts that may be racially and culturally dissonant.” The strongest predictor of lower self-esteem and higher depression was the measure on parent-child conflict. Stress comes when the child doesn’t want to be as culturally involved as the parent, or cares more about being accepted socially than getting good grades. The next strongest predictor is gender; girls have a worse time than boys. I found this an extremely enlightening article; especially because I am a natural born white American. It’s hard for me to know what life is like for others. It is nice to become closer to well-rounded on this subject than I was before.

Seginer, Rachel. "Adolescent Future Orientation." Developmental Psychology and Culture. no. 1

(2003). http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=orpc (accessed October 2013).

Future orientation is the image individuals have regarding their future, as consciously represented and self-reported. “The question is not whether but rather how families affect adolescent future orientation. In constructing their future orientation adolescents reproduce family socio-economic status. This is also reinforced by what schools they go to because of where they live (lower class adolescents go to lower-level high schools). Another huge factor is parental beliefs. Parent’s ideas and expectations for their children have a direct effect on the motivational component of future orientation. Parents are a huge factor in the development of adolescents, as is clearly shown. It is definitely pertinent to my research.

Simmons, Roberta G., Florence Rosenberg, and Morris Rosenberg. "Disturbance in the Self-

Image at Adolescence." American Sociological Review. 38.5 (1973): 553-568. Web. Oct. 2013.

Self-image disturbance is much greater in the 12-14 age group than the 8-11 age group. The 12-14 year olds have a higher level of self-consciousness, greater instability of self-image, lower self-image, and a more negative ‘perceived self’ (they are less likely to think that parents, teachers, and peers of the same sex view them favorably). The biggest difference is between 11 year olds and 12 year olds. This is possibly due to puberty, entering junior high school, and/or not being the biggest and oldest in the school (going from elementary to junior high). I find this interesting because this defines my audience. Self-image can apply to everyone, but most especially to these kids. I also liked the four dimensions they listed for self-image: self-consciousness, stability, self-esteem, and perceived self.

Switzer, Galen E., Roberta G. Simmons, Mary Amanda Dew, Jeanne M. Regalski, and Chi-

Hsein Wang. "The Effect of a School-Based Helper Program on Adolescent Self-Image, Attitudes, and Behavior."Journal of Early Adolescence. 15. (1995): 429-455. Web. Oct. 2013. <http://jea.sagepub.com/content/15/4/429.full.pdf html>.

I’m really interested in self-image and why we think the way we do. I also think that actions can affect emotions. This article is really great because it discusses a possible solution. In this article it discusses seventh graders who were part of programs that did service for others vs the control group that did not do service. The program did wonders for the boys involved, but showed little effect on the girls. “Although girls did report feeling more like better persons after having participated in the program than did the boys, the results indicate that boys were the main beneficiaries of this program; participating boys exhibited positive changes in self-esteem, depressive affect, involvement, and problem behavior relative to other groups.”

Pyro

One of the opening quotes to the film X-Men 2 is, “Sharing the world has not been humanity’s defining attribute.” Racism has been a problem for humanity for as long as anyone can remember. It’s a man-made virus that seems immune from any attack. X-Men 2 does a wonderful job of commenting on racism and different types of “otherness”. Humanity, often portrayed as a white man, represents the self in the ‘self vs. other’ diagram. His black, Asian, and Hispanic brothers and sisters are left to be the ‘other’. In one of the most poignant moments of the film, Striker brings out his mangled son, who is only still living with the help of a machine. When asked what he had done to his son, he responds, “He was already dead.” Striker believes that mutants are sub-human, as good as dead, and that they should just all die. Magneto’s not much better; he’d be just as happy for all the non-mutant people to die. But where would it end for either of them? With the new precedent for killing those who are other, who would next fall prey to the purge?  And Magneto, would he be satisfied once the people were gone, or would he want a class structure determined by who had the best powers? My opinion is obvious biased based on how I wrote these questions, but I truly believe that once you start down this road that it never ends. Destroying the ‘others’ never solves anything because there will always be someone to fill that role. In reality, we will always be different – race, gender, religion, political views, etc. God didn’t create billions of identical children. We must accept each other and become a melting pot, all under the same banner, united in our diverseness.

                Overt racism is easy to see and is exemplified by Striker’s character. He says his son is dead to him; he calls Wolverine an animal and a failed experiment; his offensive comments have no end. It’s important to fight against this offensive language, but it isn’t the entire problem. There is also inferential racism, which is more passive and difficult to pinpoint. Magneto falls prey to this type of racism against his own kind. He wants mutants to be recognized for their powers and the wonderful things they can do. He takes this idea a step too far, which creates problems. He wants mutants to be seen and treated as Gods. Because he believes this, he is willing to kill innocent people and take advantage of them. For him, the end justifies the means. How is this inferential racism, you might ask. Well, he reinforces the preconceived notion that mutants are a dangerous, manipulative, and villainous breed. In any social cause, I am very wary of those who are willing to resort to violence. That violence could end up being called terrorism or freedom fighting in the history books; it just depends who writes them. I believe in standing up for what you believe in, but in much less drastic ways.

You Go Glenn Coco

“Mean Girls” is as complicated as North Shore High. None of the girls there seem to act of their own free will. Except Cady, but she loses that will as she befriends Regina. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The screenplay for this film was written by the notable Tina Fey, who has been known to defend women’s rights, especially in the realms of comedy.

“Girls get a lot of mixed messages ­­– they are told, ‘Girl Power!’ and what does that mean? It means you wear a T-shirt that says, ‘Girl Power!’ but you call each other b******. You make fun of a girl for being a virgin and you make fun of a girl for having sex. There is no right place to be.” – Tina Fey

This philosophy definitely showed itself in Cady and Regina’s relationship. Regina noticed Cady because she was a pretty girl; she invited Cady into the group under the pretense that she has to look out for her fellow girl. In reality, she just thought Cady would be moldable since she’s never been to public school before. Then they proceed to do a multitude of crazy things, because they’re girls and that’s what they do. Cady follows along as they: write terrible things about other girls, gossip about each other, wear revealing clothing, and perform a ridiculously sexy Christmas number. McRobbie wrote about this in her article about Post-Feminism, “She seems to be doing it out of choice, and for her own enjoyment…perhaps as a test of [her] sophistication and ‘cool’.” Fortunately, they are each able to grow up a little by the end of the film. They may not be best friends, but they can tolerate each other without breaking into a fight.

                The other part of the film that troubles me was the use of the romantic interest – Aaron Samuels. I wanted everything to be right; I wanted it to be the perfect girl movie. But I would argue, and Mulvey would agree with me, that there is still a huge problem with male gaze in “Mean Girls”.  Mulvey finds that, in film, women have “functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the screen.”  In Media Literacy class we discussed how they achieved this in older films, the girl they wanted to show off would happen to be a show-girl or performer. They use similar devices in “Mean Girls”; they are the sexy royalty of high school. Oh and Halloween is as good an excuse as anything, “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” These excuses allow them to show leg and cleavage to all audiences both in the story and in the audience. I agree with Mulvey that the male gaze is definitely present, but that troubles me. Does Cady really have to end up with Aaron in the end? I wonder if audiences would have been satisfied if they hadn’t got together.

Other questions I have: Is it impossible to make a film without male gaze? Or a better question, is it possible to make a commercially successful film without male gaze? I don’t know the answers to these questions, though do I lean towards ‘no’ right now. We have a long way to go, but with creators like Tina Fey, we will move in the right direction.