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.

Rue is an Angel

Could there be a better film to show exactly what Adorno & Horkheimer think filmmaking can do to a society? Nope, Hunger Games hits it right on. In the fictional world, the Capital has been hosting and showing the hunger games for over 70 years. It is both propaganda and distraction. The people gain a little bit of hope, enough to keep going. This hope isn’t in their own life or situation, but for the character created on the television screen. Their life’s as good as it’s gonna get. The show creates a unity. There is a classical harmony to the games – it’s exciting, competitive, and full of emotion. This unity is unbalanced, problematic. It shows kids killing kids, yet only a few – like Cinna – are able to see the reality and brutality of it all. Another way they create unity and stitch people into the games is how they film it. They have so many cameras that get really good quality footage. The cameras fly around and can always get the best vantage point. In life there is always the fight between how things are and how they ought to be. By creating an image that looks more and more realistic, the Capital is able to show the game’s reality as if it were how life ought to be, not just how it is right now. They even show clips of old games with awe and respect; it’s a never-ending process.

Hunger Games could also be viewed under the lens of our own reality and what it says about Hollywood and society. One of the saddest things about this film is not what they portrayed but how some people reacted to it. Hunger Games went against a cliché by making some of the most admirable and honorable characters black. Cinna, the only Capital citizen we see who really understands how messed up the world is, and Rue, the innocent, angelic girl who dies helping Katniss succeed. I’m so happy and proud that Lionsgate made those choices. There is no need to perpetuate the idea that black people are less awesome or more likely to be villainous. That’s preposterous. Many fans were upset that these two characters were black. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hunger-games-were-you-upset-rue-was-black-because-a-lot-of-other-people-are-2012-3 This website has a few twitter posts in it like, “Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the little blonde innocent girl you picture.” She could not have pointed out the cliché much better than that, and this probably describes many people’s ideal and what they wished they had seen. They wanted Prim’s twin to be shown. Blonde hair = angel, not black hair. Here’s another article with more quotes that infuriate me: http://jezebel.com/5896408/racist-hunger-games-fans-dont-care-how-much-money-the-movie-made “Kk call me racist but when I found out rue was black her death wasn’t as sad #ihatemyself.” The first quote is upsetting because she was basically saying that little white girls should be the cute innocent ones, and not little black girls. But this last quote is almost beyond words. He had the gall to say that the color of her skin made her worth less and made her death less valuable or substantial. There is a reason that some deaths, some situations don’t make the nightly news. It’s because people are still racist, and I hate that.

And lets be honest, she's probably one of the cutest little girls, black or white, that I've ever seen.

Ooh is that a text. Excuse me I'll have to get that.

The readings and the film Digital Nation (2010) gave me a lot to think about this week. One of the biggest conclusions I’ve come to is that details can’t bog us down because there are a lot. Should Media Literacy Education (MLE) have a political agenda; should it be a separate subject or taught within existing subjects; should we encourage production; should MLE be supported by media organizations? Having to have every question answered is being politically correct to a fault. Nichole Pinkard decided to act instead of taking part in a never-ending philosophical debate. She helped create a program. It may not be perfect, but it is helping students now. Yes, it will need adjustments, and yes, it may not be perfect for every student, but I would much rather be a part of that program then the multitude of studies being done on the topic of media and it’s affect on children. I would rather be involved with helping people then sitting and looking at the world cynically.

Cynicism is the problem that I had with Digital Nation. Yeah students, including myself, multitask when it isn’t the most efficient way. Yeah we probably have a shorter attention span, and many people don’t read books anymore. But how dare they define and stereotype everyone. Guess what? I, a young woman, read over 30 books this summer, and many of them I read on digital devices. I sometimes forget my phone at home and don’t really care that it’s missing. I write my notes in class with pen and paper, and I rarely bring my laptop with me. Maybe I’m an anomaly; it wouldn’t surprise me. I have hope for my generation. I think we will find balance.

Well, after taking a long break from writing on this post, I guess I should come back and finish it. Oh wait there’s a post on Facebook I have to go take care of.

Another problem I had with the film is the in-proportionate amount of time they spent on video games. Video games can be addicting and over-used. That’s not new. It’s been a part of video gaming since it was first created, actually before that. What’s the difference between the new video game shops and arcades of the 80s. Some kids spent all of their time in arcades trying to beat the high score, other kids – or adults – spend copious amounts of time playing dungeons and dragons or LARPing. This is nothing new, and people can always find a fantasy world to escape into if they really want to. You shouldn’t blame media for being abused by humans. You should blame people: parents, marketers and other business people, the kids themselves for accountabilities sake. Media can be good or bad.

I just felt like the overall mood of this film was negative, and I didn’t like that. I loved Henry Jenkin’s little speech, but he got nearly no airtime. That made me frustrated. The guy who was one of the narrators (the one that had a necklace when they showed a clip from a few decades ago) showed us an Asian country, Japan?, that sang songs and taught their students how to have good etiquette on the internet, but then he said that it wouldn’t work in the United States. Why? He never explained, which seemed odd to me. Technology is never going to go away. We are not all going to turn off texting or Facebook. Instead of complaining, we should learn how to use them better.

 Then at the very end he said, don’t worry I still have hope for digital media in the future. It felt like a band-aid to wrap up the film. I think he has grown up into one of the old fuddy-duddies that he used to make fun of. Do we all become that someday? I guess I’ll just be Bubbie and make Jewish foods.

Dead-On vs Neon

The relationships between media, self, and society are deep and varied. They give and take, affecting each other for good or for ill. One especially complex relationship is between society and film re-makes. Media is often a good indicator of what society finds important at the time of the media’s creation. Re-makes this idea a step further because there is an earlier document to use as a comparison; this comparison reveals which elements have been diminished and which have been brought into the limelight, showing the current priorities.

In Media Literacy Education, a class I’m attending at BYU, we watched Hairspray (1988). I hadn’t seen it before, but I had seen Hairspray (2007) once, a few years back. The two, with nearly twenty years separating them, are quite different. One of the biggest distinctions, that I noticed, is their portrayal of the romantic development between Tracy Turnblad and her dashing counter-part Link Larkin. In the ’88 version, the two start dating almost immediately after Tracy joins the show. There is not much fuss about it, and the story turns its focus onto racial inequality instead. In ’07, the romance takes much longer to develop; the story focuses more on this relationship than anything else. Audiences love a good love story. The ’07 film panders to this by making the story about a chubby girl wooing Zac Efron. It’s a shallow cop-out.

What it also shows is that media, in this vein at least, cares more about money than anything else. The Hairspray from ’88 was made for about $2 million, and it made back over $6 million on that investment. Compare that to the one filmed in 2007: its budget was $75 million and it made $200 million worldwide. They got big names, made it a musical, added in sleek, colorful art design, and lost all the deep meaning that Hairspray had going for it in the first place. Yeah, it still had much of the same storyline, Penny Pingleton still fell in love with Seaweed, but it lost its bite, its power.

One of my favorite scenes in Hairspray ’88 was when Mrs. Pingleton wandered around the ‘bad side of town’ looking for her daughter. Her fear was over the top and ridiculous. She screamed and freaked out at nearly every turn, and it was easy to laugh at her and the fantastical way she acted. The reason I loved it, though, is because it spoke of a sad, true reality. I’m from a city in Georgia, and yeah, there are parts of town that white people rarely go. Twenty-five years hasn’t changed that. Race relations is a hugely important topic in society still, though some people believe that racism is done and gone. I think those people are crazy, and I’m so sad that films like Hairspray are being re-made with dulled messages and pure spectacle. Hairspray ’88 may have been silly and over the top, but it kept its eye on the prize and never forgot what it was about.