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Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection 10

As the semester wraps up, I now begin writing my final blog post for this class. While it wasn't your average way to take this course, I still learned a lot about the modern media landscape and what it takes to be a media literate journalist. Traditionally, this class is meant to be taken in person and be heavily discussion based. Due to unfortunate circumstances, the class was moved to an online format this year, where I have had an interesting time navigating the material. Dr. Everbach let us roam free on how we wanted to tackle this semester, and I think learning at my own pace and coming to my own conclusions without the influence of others was beneficial in a way I might not have seen were I to take this class in person. When discussing modern day media and the way they shape such sensitive topics such as race, gender, sexuality, etc, you are bound to get heavily mixed opinions on what people think about certain topics. I myself am also easily persuaded to think how someone el...
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Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection Part 9

 For class this week, we myths about social expectations about men and women and how they are perpetuated in specifically entertainment media. A big topic of this unit was SCWAMP framework, or  Straight, Christian, White, Able-bodied, Male, Property Owner . The idea is that films enforce these ideologies subliminally through its characters and their relationships, themes, story and other instances. Lind analyzes the Twilight  series and how it enforces all of these tropes, which I found interesting, yet very far-fetched in a sense. However, I cannot deny that these themes are present in a lot of older media, however hidden they may be. A show I am watching  currently is The Sopranos, which is a very complex show told through its characters, yet does also reinforce a lot of the SCWAMP themes.  The first one which is very obvious is that the show is very male-dominated. While Tony's wife Carmela plays a central role in the show, a lot of the other female character...
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Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection Part 8

For our class this week, we   addressed the ways Latinx people and their stories are framed in mass media and considered how to make these portrayals more equitable and inclusive. This topic is especially important to me as my girlfriend is of Mexican descent. Her culture and heritage are very important to her and I have gotten to learn so much more about Latin/Hispanic culture through her. There are a ton of stereotypes of Hispanic people in the media, some being good and some bad. A very common frame is that Hispanic workers are usually agricultural and work low-paying jobs. While that is true to an extent, it tends to be portrayed across mass media so much that many people develop an identity of Hispanic people in that lens. Another common and unfortunate frame is that they are immigrants who came to American illegally, don't speak English and are involved in some sort of drug trade, which leads to negative views of Hispanics altogether. My experience has been very different. I ...
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Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection Part 7

 This week for class, the topics we were given was over Arab and Asian perceptions in the media. One discussion topic was to breakdown the different Asian communities that we see either at our college, UNT, and in our hometown, and then discussing the media coverage of these groups. Seeing as I have an Asian roommate and had many friends back in high school, I feel well suited to talk about this topic. In my community at UNT, there are a wide variety of Asian groups. My roommate, Andrew, is Vietnamese, and he participates in the Asian Student Association as the Athletic Director. Aside from just having an Asian Student Association, UNT also has student associations for Filipino, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and Japanese students, as well as a multitude of other organizations. To be honest, I didn't even know that ethnic groups had all of these different sub-sects of organizations specifically devoted down to people from one country all the way up to Asian people as a collective. I think ...
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Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection Part 6

Our topic for class this week was violence against women in music videos and images of women in the media. The main goal was to decipher how women are portrayed in media and the stereotypes that they are portrayed to have. I particularly liked this week because we were able to break down two songs that I am familiar with in Eminem's "Love the Way you lie" featuring Rihanna as well as how Nicki Minaj portrays herself in her music. As mentioned in Lind's book, music like Eminem's song only empowers the feelings about women that society can have: that men and women are equally responsible for perpetuating violence in relationships, that women asked to be abused, and violence is a means to ignite sexual arousal. In that section, Lind goes on to say that "although females can be violent toward male partners, the opposite (men attacking women) is the norm. Representations negating this reality rigorously reduce perceptions of male accountability." While this i...
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Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection Part 5

This week, our class took our midterm exam, which required us to write 10 short essay questions over various topics that we've been looking over throughout the semester. As I was taking the exam, I was refreshed on some of the content that we had to write about, and was reminded of how interesting they could be. One question asked us to use examples from the film "The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords" and analyze what they did for the Black community at time when prejudice was high. I went and skimmed a transcript of the documentary and found the bit of information that said how the Black Press propped up its community, which was essentially through humanizing them. All of this to say, I felt inspired being reminded of what a community who is facing hardships can do for each other in order to keep spirits high. Another question I enjoyed answering was on how corporate ownership of news organizations affects media output. One thing that I haven't looked over much i...
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Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection 4

 This week, my undergraduate project number 1 was due in the form of an essay analyzing a historical artifact and the way it depicts people. For my essay, I chose the Marlboro Man ad campaign, and had a fun time analyzing it. I had previously discussed the Marlboro Man in a class during my freshman year, and was able to fully analyze how it played on societies views of masculinity at the time it aired. A fun fact I found was that Marlboro cigarettes were originally aimed at women because filtered cigarettes were viewed as feminine. For the project, I was also able to interview my parents about what they thought of the ad at the time, for which they said they didn't think too much bout it when it was popular, but now they can notice how modern advertisements incorporate more diverse elements. Coincidentally enough, the topic of the class for this week was masculinity and how it plays a role in our society. In my essay, I incorporated a chapter from Lind's book, Honing Hegemonic ...
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