Numerous Essays and Coffee Cups

For the reading we had to read to essays, one being the one about the Simpsons in the early 90's and their effect on African Americans and the other about MTV's sexual objectification of women. I found the MTV one more interesting and thought provoking so I chose to write about that one. The essay talked a lot about a show NEXT and how it really reduced women to sexual objects as opposed to human beings with personalities and brains. I thought the show was stupid but I never really thought about the implications it had on its viewers until now. The essay was right though, it really did make girls seem like they were just meant for looks and thats all men should value them for. MTV in general spews out a lot of negative ideals and sad thoughts to millions of young adults all over the world, which I guess produces this world we're living in. I can't really take it when tween girls  act like grown up and dress like the girls they see on MTV and gossip girl and other various shows of that nature. They try to act mature and glamours no matter where they are, however the interpretation of glamorous that they have is really just being slutty. These young girls cake on make up and raid the mall every weekend searching for the perfect outfit to make the cool guys notice them and like them. Some might say that this is simply the normal behavior of a teenage girl and has nothing to do with the filth MTV is showing, while it is true that teenage girls act like this moderately, MTV is definitely amplifying the level of which it is happening and affecting a broader base. Girls now are wearing outfits that are very revealing and designed for men to notice them and for girls to be jealous of them. I remember in High School a girl would be wearing a veryy revealing outfit and my guy friends and I would talk about it and be like damn did you see so and so she looks sooo hot today. Later that day I would talk to one of my girl friends and they would talk about the same girl being like omg what is she wearing, she's such a slut! I'd just sit there and be like yeah! so i didn't look like a pig, but deep down I knew it was trues. It is not so hard to look through the sexual mask, a lot of girls put on to realize that they are pathetic and trying too hard. Women should be respected as brains and personalities as much as their bodies. 

Another channel that has a lot of bad shows such as next that objectivity women is vh1. vh1 airs a ton of reality and reality dating shows, in fact it is its specialty. In the past few years it has been plagued by meaningless shows that depict women as objects only meant for pleasing men. Shows such as rock of love, flavor of love, tough love and hundreds of other shows it seems has the same effect. On tough love in particular one man teachers women how to change their personalities and looks to get men to like them. This is the epitome of objectification. Women have to change who they are o that men like them, my girlfriend talks about this show and how messed up the idea is saying that men usually do things to impress girls not the other way around. I think its true, but I also don't think people have to change to find someone. I mean the whole concept behind a soulmate is that you find someone who accepts you for you and loves it. Shows like these and channels such as MTV and Vh1 are corrupting the minds of the youth all over the world and it is seriously troubling. I hope the era of reality television comes to an end soon. 

-bluey

Life According to TV

This reading I thought was a lot more interesting especially the Life According to TV article. It was talking about the different effects that tv has on people and the connection between the amount of the tv one watches and the thoughts they have. I have always heard tv brainwashes people, though I never fully believed it to be true. Through some of the studies they were discussing in the book, I was truly taken back and amazed at the true affect tv has. It said at one point that the more tv one watches, the more they start to agree with the ideas being presented. For example a survey was taken and heavy tv watchers said that it was okay to not want blacks to move into their neighborhoods and other racist ideas; I was appalled. I couldn’t believe it. I guess I was surprised that I had never seen it before and that I didn’t notice what was happening through tv. Blacks and other minorities are stereotyped on tv which millions of people see and therefore becomes propaganda of some kind of incognito white supremacy media group. It’s basically fucked up is the only way I can really describe it to be honest. The book also said that women were portrayed as weak on tv and therefore were more likely portrayed that way in real life, which is also seriously fucked. I’ve always heard people talking about how hard it is to make it as a woman in the corporate world, or I guess in any kind of discipline and now I understand that it truly is that hard. It must take amazing determination to fight such hidden adversary everyday because of the shows people are watching at home.  Also young girls watching these shows think that they will have to grow up to be just like the women on tv, subservient wives to their husbands almost as second class citizens! I don’t accept that. It is sort of a tragedy thinking that somewhere in America little girls want to be doctors or lawyers but change their minds and just want to be one of the desperate housewives because its glamorous, it almost makes me sick.

            The whole article in general really made me sick and afraid to watch tv. I had been thinking about getting cable for the tv in my dorm room, which is mainly used to play video games on, but now I don’t think I’ll be running to best buy for a cable wire anytime soon. I used to watch a lot of tv when I was little and I’m kind of afraid of the toll it has taken on me. It is basically a drug in my opinion and a very addictive one at that. People spend hours in front of the tv just starting at it. How can people say that drugs makes an individual stupid and that they just sit on a couch for hours killing their brain cells, but turn around and say that the two hour season finale of lost is on tonight? In my opinion they are the same thing. The difference between doing drugs and watching tv habitually is…I’m not sure what the difference is. You sit on a couch for hours doing nothing, you get stupider, according to the article you eat more, and then you get tired of sitting there and go to bed a worthless human being. They are the same thing exactly. Tv is a druggggggg!!!!!!! It is a very dangerous drug too, because it can brainwash people. The example I can think of best to describe that is campaign ads. When an election is coming up every other commercial is a campaign ad telling you that the Republican candidate beats baby seals on Christmas then the very next commercial is an ad telling you that Democratic candidate wants to pile all the garbage in the world on some obscure third world country and drop a nuke on the sucker. All these campaign ads run your mind this way and that and you don’t know what to think. You are being brainwashed and its very obvious, because when someone asks you about the democrat you immediately recite the nuke the scum campaign ad and when they ask you about the republican once again the ad takes over your mind and moves your mouth for you. The tv is nothing more than a dangerous source in which one can publicize his or her own ideals and slam it into the minds of millions of other people.

            Next time I turn on the news I want to see a segment about the amount of brains that died today due to tv instead of the four people who died from swine flu.

Am I going to see that segment?

I guess I’m done watching the news.

 

Tv can make you high and if you’re not careful you’ll od, and you won’t be able to recover; you’ll just become another lost cause to file into the ranks of the ignorant mass.

 

Gtg. Jersey Shore is on!

-bluey

Introduction to The World is a Text- First Reading

To be honest the first reading was kind of boring and hard to get through at times. Some of the topics covered I thought were kind of pointless to talk about like the geico case study. I mean I understood what they were talking about and how big of an impact the company has made with all of its commercials but I mean the whole time I was reading it I just realized how much I hate geico commercials. Most of them are so very stupid these days and it just makes me want to cry. The gecko was an original idea and I suppose it still is but I honestly it just annoys me at this point. The same goes for the cavemen and the stack of money with the two eyes, oh man that's the worst; it gets me every time. I guess I'm not really in the target market for which geico is trying to sell its products to because I am not looking for any kind of insurance so to me it is just a pointless commercial that I have to get through before I can get back to my preferred programming. It is also very annoying how often they play their commercials, however the number of commercials and the different types shows that they are working because they are making money to keep making new ones. The geico thing kind of distracted me throughout the rest of the reading because I was just annoyed haha. I found the topic of semiotics interesting in the beginning of the reading however. 

Semiotics is the study of signs and through the reading the topic of signs and reading and interpreting signs kept coming up, especially analyzing them as text. The book was talking about how Starbuck's has signs everywhere with using certain types of things in their stores to evoke a certain emotion in its customers. The Earth tones coupled with the art and lighting give the coffee shop a certain high class boutique kind of look to it. Everything about Starbuck's is a sign that is meant to be evidence of sophistication or class. These signs effect people more on a subconscious level in which they do not full out realize what the store is trying to show but the message gets across and the signs work much like a stop sign works. 

Overall the reading made some good points but parts of it were unnecessary and distracting. I hope that the next reading is a little more lively and the very words fly off the page and pounce my eyes drawing me closer and closer into the page until I myself am one with the words allowing me to dance freely around the letters and let the paragraphs invade my mind........or maybe not. hahahahahah =) LATER!

-Bluey

The Significance of My Name

My name is Atin Vishwanath Mittra. Atin is an Indian name which means new. My mom picked the name because she wanted something unique, and if you ask me she succeeded because I've never met or heard of anyone meeting another one. My middle name originates from a saint's name. My mom went to a priest before I was born and he told her to name her next son Vishawanath so she chose it as my middle name. An interesting thing about my name is that Mittra means friend so Atin Mittra means new friend and that's not a bad thing to be called at all.

-Bluey