Trust me, I'm not a doctor but, I watch Grey's Anatomy

Television has a crazy way of making us believe that we can do anything. With 3 seasons of Law and Order we can crack any case in real life. A few episodes of Grey's Anatomy seem to be the only qualifications to be able to properly diagnose friends and family. I won't deny that after binge watching Breaking Bad that I definitely grew more paranoid. But why?

According to a 2009 study done by Brian Quick from the University of Illinois involving the affects of viewers of Grey's Anatomy concluded that "heavy viewers of Grey's Anatomy perceive this program to be credible" (Quick, 2009). This means that the way the doctors, surgeries and procedures on the show are perceive as truth to the people that watch the show consistently.

During this study, Quick discussed cultivation theory and how it connects with the amount of television that is being watched by users. According to masscommtheory.com Cultivation Theory is the idea that "high frequency viewers of television are more susceptible to media messages and the belief that they are real and valid...heavy viewers of TV are thought to be 'cultivating' attitudes that seem to believe that the world created by television is an accurate description of the real world."
The more television people watch, the more they believe messages to be real, and their perceptions of how the media portrays different characters also have the potential to be engrained into the minds of its viewers as truth.
 
Knowing the impact that television has on our perception of everyday life, the content of these messages can be detrimental. Even if TV consumers watch a program and are aware that the source is invalid that is sometimes not enough. According to the "sleeper effect" we can "hold onto a piece of information while gradually forgetting it came from an unreliable source" (alternet.org). So while television consumers are being cautious of the inaccuracy of portrayals and information, eventually it can become truth in our minds. 

For example, the legal drama Boston Legal showed an episode in 2007, where a child had an allergic reaction to which the teacher used an EpiPen on the student. In the episode the EpiPen did not work, and the child died soon after. EpiPens are helpful and effective ways to help an allergic reaction, however people had a new image of this device after watching the episode. A study led by Jakob D. Jensen from the University of Utah showed a number of students this episode, and afterwards there was a significantly higher amount of doubts about the effectiveness of EpiPens. The media is not guaranteed to have 100% accuracy, but upon watching the media on a regular basis we can believe its messages as truth, as well as changing our perceptions of the world dependent on what we are watching. Keeping this in mind it is important to remember that portrayals in the media are not always accurately describing reality, and watching Grey's Anatomy incessantly does not make you a licensed doctor, but a regular television consumer.

Do Romantic Movies Influence Our Personal Romantic Beliefs?

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      The romantic comedy genre was the sixth highest grossing category of films between 1995

and 2010, it had over $10 billion in gross revenue during this 15-year period (Hefner & Wilson, 2013). However the question is does the public's viewing of romantic relationships affect the way people view real romantic relationships? Hefner and Wilson (2013) conducted a study that looked at what romantic ideals were prevalent in the top 52 highest grossing romantic comedy films from the last 10 years. In addition, they handed out a large-scale survey of 335 undergraduate students, who were asked to report their romantic comedy movie viewing and their beliefs about romance. 

          According to Hefner and Wilson (2013) both male and female adolescents seek out romantic content in television and movies in order to gain information about dating. In addition, Hefner and Wilson (2013) cited that past research regarding romantic comedies suggested that romantic media tends to cultivate idealistic or even unrealistic beliefs about romance. An example of this is when a survey was conducted on high school students and found that heavy viewers of romantic television were more likely than light viewers to hold traditional dating role attitudes, such as the belief that men should be in charge on dates. In other words, romantic content influenced the beliefs of the viewers of romantic ideas. 

        First Study 

       The first study looked at the construct of the romantic ideal as comprised of the following four themes: love conquers all, idealization of partner, soul mate, and love at first sight. This study found that all (98%) of the movies chosen in this study contained at least one romantic ideal expression, so any of the four previously mentioned. 

1. 40% of the movies had the romantic ideal expression of having a soul mate.
2. About one third of the expressions fell into the idealization of other category
3. One quarter of the expressions were coded as love conquers all 
4. Less than 10% of the expressions were categorized as love at first sight 

          In addition, the first study suggested that the romantic films included in the study held only some of the romantic ideals, whereas they also challenged or contradicted some of the other romantic ideals. For instance, some movies made fun of the romantic ideal of love at first sight. Some proved this ideal false and incorrect.

Second Study

          The results of this study suggest that exposure to romantic comedies is related to

young people’s endorsement of romantic beliefs, but this relationship is not as strong as what the researcher's predicted. They found that repeated viewing of romantic movies was positively related to

only one of the four beliefs that make up the romantic ideal: idealization of one’s

partner. So in other words, people that viewed romantic movies a great deal are more likely to have idealization of one's partner as a romantic ideal in their personal life due to viewing this form of romantic media. 

Conclusion      

         All in all, romantic movies hold four common romantic ideals: love conquers all, idealization of partner, soul mate, and love at first sight. The most common romantic ideal is that of partners being with their soul mates. However, the audience is only strongly correlated to believe in the romantic ideal of having an idealization of their partner in their own personal romantic lives. 

References:

Hefner, V. & Wilson, B. J. (2013). From love at first sight to soul mate: The influence of romantic 

      ideals in popular films on young people’s beliefs about relationships. Communication                           Monographs, 80(1), 150-175. 

Gender Stereotypes

When we look at television, commercial, and advertisement what do we see in regards to the ideal female or the ideal male? In Media, Women and men have been strictly stereotyped for years dating back to the beginning television and advertisement. Men and women play major roles in identifying the different gender stereotypes within society. From the choice of color in a newborn room to the type of movies selected for viewers are all results of gender stereotyping within television and commercials. When you look at commercials of the past and today. You’d see that when identifying or promoting sales of certain items those who are in charge of promoting those items selectively use specific people to identify for specific things. For example, when you look at this 1950’s ad you’d see the advertising promoting the sale of a refrigerator. However, instead of having a male as the face of the advertisement there is a picture of a female instead. There stands a woman in an apron in front of the fridge. This woman gives off a very home-like look portraying a stay at home wife, or a mother of 3 as the representation of mothers to attract the motherly, home-wife type of buyer. According to Chris Baker’s Cultural Studies Theory and practice, Baker states that womanhood may be defined as “passive and subordinate, that is being tied to housework, husband, and children… most women (34) were depicted as housewives.”(318) there is this sense of a woman in pertaining to being motherly, and submissive that would attract other women in that role to purchase a refrigerator. Just like this ad nothing had entirely changed. Woman are still being referred to as submissive and nurturing. However, for men this is totally different. For men, in advertisement and television, men are seemed to be portrayed as more dominant and powerful. Most of those who are placed in male ads are seen a masculine lacks emotion. 

When looking at this next picture of a modern male ad you may see a gentleman who seems to have been working very hard. The man is caring tools, wearing a hard hat, who is promoting the sale of boots. Now, the question that may arise is why can’t women promote the sale of these boots? When looking for the sale of hard-core heavy duty boots most of the time the PR’s main focus is to gear towards the hardworking man. In this case promoting a hard-working male who seems powerful and dominate will attract just that. There is the promotion of masculinity which can be identified as “strength, power, stoicism, action, control, independence, self-sufficiency, male camaraderie/mateship, and work amongst others.”(Baker 312) Why is it that we and media place a specific perception of the male and female population in reference of negatively stereotyping by gender instead of making things as a natural base? Why can’t men sale refrigerator? Why can’t women sale boots? It is in fact that they can, however, many will probably not see it as convincing due to a pre-conceptualize idea of what is selectively accepting and what’s not. Has society’s idea of genderlect stereotyping changed? Maybe. 

There are now multiple ads that promote gender equality within the commercial, television, and ads production. In this particular video listed. There is a promotional video that points out the idea of conceptualizing the idea of a girl in attempts to change media’s perception of the definition of a girl and making their audience aware of the unknowingly stereotyping of the idea of what a girl looks like. This video may not only bring aware to the gender stereotyping of females but attacking those ideas starting at a young age to skew the idea of the conceptualized idea of what a girl may be defined as. According to a CNN article by David Perry entitled for strong daughters, stop with the sex stereotypes, It states that our culture should fight this idea by “working against the grain, resisting gendered language and emphasizing the internal over the external”.

Perry, David M. "Opinion: How Sex Stereotypes Harm Girls - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 29 May 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

Baker, Chris. "Cultural Studies Theory and Practice." Cultural Studies. N.p., 2012. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

The Death of a (Woman's) Career

After watching his filmography over the years, one thing is for certain: Johnny Depp likes his women young. To be specific, at least 11 years younger than himself. In only one of his movies has he had a love interest be less than 5 years younger than himself, and once the age gap between him and the leading lady spanned a whopping 33 years. It's become an obvious trend that in Hollywood, the leading men age while their love interests don't. The same trend can be found in films starring actors like Denzel Washington, George Clooney, Richard Gere, and Tom Cruise (to name a few).

Author Whittington-Walsh (2013) comments on this phenomenon, saying "Growing old, apparently the biggest social taboo for any female, means the death of a career, causing some celebrities to visit plastic surgeons and request that they be transformed into themselves" (p. 182). The pressure to stay young that is placed on women (celebrities in particular), while recognized as being unfair and unattainable, is still the standard. Comedian and actress Amy Schumer shared her thoughts on the subject by writing and starring in a satirical video on Comedy Central titled "Last F*ckable Day". In the video, Schumer runs into a group of actresses who are celebrating one of their own's 'last f**kable day'- that is, the last day that the media considers them attractive. In the video Tina Fey (one of the actresses Schumer stumbles upon) explains the idea of the 'last f*kable day' to Schumer, commenting on how Sally Field was Tom Hank's love interest in Punchline, and then 5 years later was playing his mother in Forrest Gump. 

This idea of women aging faster than men is not unheard of- scholarship on the subject has been written. Lincoln and Allen (2004) found that research conducted by the Screen Actors Guild suggests a "double jeopardy effect" for female actors who experience aging differently from male actors throughout their careers. Although as of 2000, 43% of Americans are over the age of 40 (US, Bureau of the Census, 2000), women over age 40 received only 24% of all female roles cast in television and film, while men over age 40 received 37% of all male roles. The Screen Actors Guild (2002) also noted that obtaining roles in feature films posed an even greater challenge for female actors over the age of 40. However, this gendered age gap in films continues today, as shown by the charts above. It begs the question, when will the playing field between men and women finally be even?

(Source Used)

(Source Used)

What Happened to Christmas

What Happened To The True Meaning of Christmas?  

Whatever happened to the true meaning of Christmas? How have we forgotten that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Christ's birthday and become so greedy?

I remember growing up knowing that we celebrated Jesus Christ's birth on Christmas and spent time with our families unwrapping gifts that "Santa Claus" put under the Christmas tree. It was a magical time for children. Trees were decorated with angels and mini figures of the virgin Mary and baby Jesus under the tree in a stable where he was born. Over time Christmas changed and the meaning or symbol of Christmas is no longer the same.  

 

 

As seen on the image above on the left side, Christmas changed we have become greedy and have forgotten the real spirit of Christmas. We now use this holiday to celebrate Santa Claus who is our hero, the gifts and Krampus who is the shadow of Santa (bad) as seen on the video above.

The media sends this idea to children that throughout the year they should be good so that Santa Claus brings them gifts on Christmas but if they are bad Krampus will bring them coal or worse as it is portrait on the trailer above.

The media also encourages or helps children and adolescent  with the kind of gifts they should ask Santa or their parents whereas before, gifts were a surprise here is an example of the sort of thing the commercials or article would say: "Long ago and far away, in a simpler time – Christmas was truly magical. It wasn’t about Ipods, gift cards, impressing every acquaintance with a gift card or adolescent wish lists that were a mile long". These kinds of commercials are now found everywhere encouraging kids to be greedy and forget what Christmas is in reality.

 http://www.professorshouse.com/living/holidays-seasons/christmas/articles/what-happened-to-christmas/

The International Meaning of Time

Comm 322: Cultural studies

Professor Padilla

Jamie Stratton

11/16/15

The International Meaning of Time.

         Thinking on the matter of our upcoming blog, I struggled to find a topic that i was interested in and that i wanted to write about. I, like any other student at this point, found my self stressed and anxiety ridden because i could not think of what to post and thought of the many other classes i had work for. It then came to me that our idea of time and our use and of it as a culture can be very different than that of other cultures, and can even shape our world around us greatly. In our book Cultural Studies, it brushes over this briefly in the begging of chapter 12. I thought it would be interesting to delve into this topic a bit more and take a closer look at how time is used and viewed, and how it shapes cultures and nations.

        Since my first international trip when i was 4, i have loved to travel and experience new cultures. Understanding a different way of life and new people is important to me. It was later in life though that i truly began to appreciate time and learned patience. I was on my first trip to Kenya to do missions work with my church, and the long and short of it is that very quickly i learned that there was such thing as "African time". I'm assuming most of you have never been to Africa, but if you plan to go, you need to understand this term. For example, the church i go to back in Connecticut has a set schedule which is routine and common place to almost everybody: Food is put out 9:30 AM, worship starts at 10 sharp, announcements at 10:30, Pastor speaks at around 10:40, service ends between 11:15 and 11:25, simple. When in Nairobi, the service went something like this: Morning pray starts between 7Am and 9 (not required), worship may start between 10Am and noon, Message from pastor may start any where between 11 and 2, Service ends between 12 and 4 (patrons of the church) may arrive anywhere between 6Am and 4Pm. This may be confusing so to really make it simple these experiences really highlight what "African time is. While in Nairobi, our van driver was scheduled to show up at 4Pm, he rolled up at 5:30 and told us he saw a friend on the side of the road and "spoke to him". To the other Kenyans, this was not a problem to them and was accepted. As irritating as this was, it was something that had to be not tolerated, but adopted as normalcy. The following trips taken over the next few years, I learned to accept this and adopt the African culture in that way.

           African countries are not the only that have different views of time, and it should not be the only highlighted. I have been fortunate enough to travel to different place, and i've come to realize that, unlike what i had thought, the rest of the world didn't function how america does, as a go go go society. Of course there are some countries that do, and some that have areas which are more fast paced then other, but for the most part, each country has there own unique time management code. In France, lunch is held as usual, between 11Am and 2Pm, but from 2 to 4 business's shut down and life stops and nearly everybody sits around drinking coffee or tea  talking, reading, or merely observing. In Ireland, the nights to go out are Tuesday and Thursday, as opposed to friday and saturday. On top of that every bar in your average town or city closes at midnight sharp, as opposed to most establishments in the U.S. In Ecuador, People take their time in an everyday aspect, and have a "Siesta" time, a short nap, each day which occurs in the early afternoon usually after the mid day meal. This tradition is practiced in many countries with warmer climates and originates from the Mediterranean region. Finally in Italy, life is usually fast paced much like the U.S. Except for when it comes down to meals, which is almost always a family matter. Sundays are the main time for family, and on this day dinner is eaten as early as 2Pm, and the day ends after that ensued by a time of rest. 

         

         It is interesting to look at these wide variety of cultures and the traditional norms in regards to time, and see how their society is affected by how time is treated and handled. Where I live in America, it is a million mile per hour culture. Positioned right next to New York City, Fairfield county doesn't stop and things need to be finished before they're even started. I have grown up very time conscious and am ultimately punctual for the most part. The proof here Padilla is that i have never been late to any of your classes. I theorize that because of this though, people in my county tend to be stressed, grouchy, and rude. It ends up becoming a society that is more focused on self rather than relationships. In Kenya however, and many other African countries, the slow time culture does something different to society. Progress is generally slow in many aspects of Kenyan life, so slow in fact that the government often times hires Chinese engineers and workers to construct city infrastructure and road ways because they know it will get done quicker. However, This relaxed life style leads to a culture that is centered around relationships and the community, and ultimately people are friendly, welcoming and talkative.
         Time is something that is man made, and it is what society makes of it. The vast differences between nations in the way they function and their cultural properties due to something that theoretically does not exist is absolutely incredible. We can be shaped and molded by a function that the populace has created, and the effects of this function on the world stretch farther then people imagine.

Racial Stereotypes in Crime

         Media representations of crime impact how the public understands the frequency and who the criminals and victims are. However, some groups are over or underrepresented as victims or perpetrators. For instance, White women are often times seen as victims, whereas Black men are often seen as perpetrators. According to Bjornstrom, Kaufman, Peterson and Slater (2010) an over representation of particular groups as perpetrators can promote racial or gender stereotypes or reinforce public hostility toward those groups as well.

        Bjornstrom, Kaufman, Peterson and Slater are all well respected college professors that conducted a study on race and ethnic representations of criminals and victims in crime news in 2010 based off of a National Study of television coverage. These authors found that public opinion and media coverage on this topic is paramount because their opinion and findings affect criminal justice policies, and differential treatment may result (i.e. harsher penalties for crimes that are seemingly more often committed by particular perpetrators). In addition, their results found that there was a relative over reporting of Black offenders and this is most likely due to the lack of power Blacks have politically, and the racism against Blacks and the fact that White people have more privileges than Blacks. Furthermore, there seems to be an overrepresentation in news stories focused on perpetrators of violent crime for the Black population. In addition, the media representation of Hispanics and Others is more consistent with market share and normal crimes expectation.

     According to Farbota (2015) Black people make up roughly 13% of the United States population, and white people make up 64%. However, Black people make up 40% of the prison population, whereas White people make up 39%. Even though there are five times as many White people than Black people, Black and Whites are incarcerated in equal numbers. This is not due to Blacks committing more crimes than Whites. Farbota finds that it is because Black people are more likely to be arrested, convicted and incarcerated than their White counterparts.

Statistics Taken Directly From FBI Uniform Crime Reports: 

• In 2012, 69.3 percent of all individuals arrested were white, 28.1 percent were black, and 2.6 percent were of other races.

• Of all juveniles (persons under the age of 18) arrested in 2012, 65.2 percent were white, 32.2 percent were black, and 2.5 percent were of other races.

• Of all adults arrested in 2012, 69.7 were white, 27.6 percent were black, and 2.7 percent were of other races.

• White individuals were arrested more often for violent crimes than individuals of any other race, accounting for 58.7 percent of those arrests.

• The percentages of black adults and white adults arrested for murder were similar, with 49.3 percent being black and 48.3 percent being white.

• Black juveniles accounted for 51.5 percent of all juveniles arrested for violent crimes. White juveniles accounted for 61.6 percent of all juveniles arrested for property crimes.

• Of the juveniles arrested for drug abuse violations, 74.0 percent were white.

• White juveniles accounted for 55.2 percent of juveniles arrested for aggravated assaults. 

       To summarize, research suggests that Black men are overrepresented in crime in media and this false information provides support for false stereotypes that Black men are dangerous. This overrepresentation affects policy and makes racial profiling more common (Bjornstrom, Kaufman, Peterson & Slater, 2010). Black men are then more often targeted for crime and are judged more harshly than Whites are. They are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and incarcerated (Farbota, 2015). Media should be more conscious of the crime reports they release to the public. They should not have any overrepresentation of any group of people. Media has a huge affect on the publics' view of particular people groups and they likewise influence public policy. Therefore, they should ethnically provide all the facts and not practice racist reporting. 

References

Bjornstrom, E. S., Kaufman, R. L., Peterson, R. D., & Slater, M. D. (2010). Race and ethnic 

representations of lawbreakers and victims in crime news: A national study of television coverage. US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, 57(2), 269-293. 

Farbota, K. (2015, September 2). Black crime rates: Your statistics are racist. The Huffington

Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-farbota/black-crime-rates yourst_b_8078586.html 

Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2013). Crime in the united states in 2013. Retrieved

from https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43