Tokens in OnDemand

Yesterday, when relaxing after finishing my homework, I was looking for movies to watch on Comcast OnDemand.  For those of you that are unfamiliar, Comcast has a channel in which you can choose ready-to-watch shows and movies.  In the right hand corner they always have advertisements running of new features to OnDemand.  Yesterday a commercial on repeat was for "Black Cinema" in the "Movie Collections" section.

While this was not very surprising to me, the movies that they previewed for this section all had two common themes: basketball and hardship.  While there are over 20 movies in this OnDemand section consisting of all different genres of film, the three that they advertised all had a black lead playing an athlete and up against diversity and poverty.  This is a clear representation of tokenism, having the only black cinema represented be the athletic and diversity cliche movies.

Lost and Gilligan's Island

The other day I heard a rumor that the original unaired pilot for the popular 60s show Gilligan's Island, was the basis for the newer show Lost.  While I was not able to find out through research if this was actually true, it got me thinking on the similarities and differences of the shows.  Both of the shows involve a plane crash of a group of people on a desert island, who are forced to live there waiting to be found.  And both were very popular and well-recieved shows.  But the plot of the shows are played out very differently.  Gilligan's Island is a happy- go- lucky comedy where as Lost is a dark, action-packed thriller.

Although these shows have very similar premises, the way the show played out is starkly different.  I believe it has to do with what the audience will accept at the different time periods.  Lost premiered nearly 40 years after Gilligan's Island.  How does the audience at the time of the show dictate the material that is played?  Why is a modern audience able to watch a darker more sinister show?  How do the current shows on television reflect our society and morals today?

Photo Source 1, Photo Source 2

Junior Theme Post #1

This past week has been Junior Theme work.  For last Monday we had to have 5 possible "why questions" in order to start exploring one of those as our topic.  When I actually got to class on Monday and started exploring my topics, I released that not 1 of them would work/ got me interested enough.
Winston Churchill once said, "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm".    This quote has certainly reflected my work over the past week.  By now I have chosen my topic but over and over throughout this process I have had to go to square 1 yet again.  I had to continue to search for new inspiration, in topics that I was unfamiliar with previously.  The only reason I am where I am now is because I accepted the (multiple) failures that I had experienced, and continued to keep looking.  I just hope I can maintain the "enthusiasm" Mr. Churchill described when I am 3 weeks into the project!

Every Breath You Take

Last night I was listening to the Police song Every Breath You Take.  While it is an amazing and was an incredibly popular song, the lyrics of this song are creepy.  The song describe a man's obsession with a women saying that he is always watching and that "[she] belongs to [him]".  But the song was misinterpreted by many people.  Sting, the lead vocals and songwriter of The Police, in many interviews believed that the song has been taken the wrong way by many.  When writing the song Sting said "he was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance and control" but couples have told him "that it was the main song played at their wedding" and many more believe it is a beautiful love song.

This song and the confusion behind it remind me of the poem by Theodore Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz".  This poem describes an abusive and drunk father and relationship with his son.  He describes a night with his father where the father is drunk and is beating the son while dancing.  This poem, like the Police song above, was very misinterpreted when it first came out.  Many believed and still believe that the poem represents a joyous moment between a son and his father, as represented by Dr. O'Conner's (an educator at Millikin University) analysis of the poem here.  It was not until recently that people noticed a abusive undertone to the poem.

In what ways do songs and poems get misinterpreted?  And how does this reflect the individual who analyses them and the time period in which the original analysis was made?

The Onion Reflected in Class

The other day I was looking at videos on The Onion's website.  The Onion is a news station that broadcasts fake news stories in order to satirise the government, legal system or pop culture.  While most of the news stories that they show are hilarious, they all have a backing of some truth.  I was specifically struck by a video entitled "Judge Rules White Girl Will Be Tried As Black Adult".  The video describes a young teenage girl who is tried for a brutal murder of her classmate.  The judge decides to try her as "a three-hundred pound black male" and the jury should imagine her as such.  The photo below stuck me in a similar way as the video.

Although this video and photo were comical there was a strong undertone of truth of a sometimes racist justice system.  In class we have talked a lot about African Americans in the justice system during Reconstruction projects and during our TV tokenism discussions.  

During our plans for Reconstruction, many of the groups decided that in the justice system in that era, there should be separate judges and juries for tried African Americans.  They believed that the separate legal systems would provide a non racial bias justice.  But the groups made clear that this would be a temporary practice, till after America could move past racism.  But as shown in the onion video above, is America at the point that the Reconstruction groups expected?  If this practice had been put into use would it have ended by now?  Is the justice system in America unbiased racially?

During the TV tokenism discussion with Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor we discussed how blacks in television shows often play the role of "authority minority", commonly a judge.  They do this in order to dispel stereotypes of African Americans as the onion video depicts them.  Does the TV token African American judge successfully negate these stereotypes?  How is this reflected in our justice system?

Turnabout and Defining of Genders

During our class talks about Huckleberry Finn the issue of gender roles has been very prominent.  We talk about the different ways in which women are portrayed in the novel and how this affects the way the book is viewed.  In a scene where Huck dresses up and tries to fool Mrs. Judith Luftus into believing he is a girl. She is able to discover that Huck is in fact a boy, not by a physical characteristic but by the fact that he can throw a brick and does not know how to thread a needle.

  

In school there has been a lot of talk about the upcoming Turnabout Dance.  If you don't know, Turnabout (also known as Sadie Hawkins), is the dance where the girls ask the boys and then pay for their dates.  While this gender role reversal can be a lot of fun for one night, there is an undertone of discomfort when asking a guy to the dance and paying for everything.  

In our society, as reflected in Huck Finn, there are specific roles assigned for genders in society.  While we have accomplished more women in sports and in many different jobs previously associated with males only, it is still rare for girls to ask boys out, pay for dates and dinners and propose to a man.  How are gender roles defined?  How prominent are gender roles in our society?  In what ways and to what extent does straying from these roles add discomfort or a to the situation?  Is straying from these roles a positive or a negative goal?

Meta-Blog Post, Second Quarter

Please look at the post Using Connections as Tools.

Blogging this quarter has been more difficult for me than the first quarter.  This is not a comment on my inspiration for blog posts, I believe that more and more in my daily life I am looking critically at the world around me, consciously trying to decipher why people make the decisions that they do.  But the difficulty has been with the transition from idea to coherent blog post.  I get inspired by the things around me but then I can't represent my ideas in writing on a post.  I really love the inspiration blogging gives me and how it lets me connect in my own personal way to huge issues, but the major challenge has been to represent that feeling, and to have others feel my same inspiration.
As for the transformation of my blog posts from first quarter to second, I believe that I have started to address some of the goals I set for myself.  In my meta-blog post from first quarter I said that "A change to my blog that I would like to see in the future is finding a news topic or article before linking it to class".  I believe that I have accomplished this well.  In my post Using Connections as Tools, Depressive Realism and Society and Harry Potter 7, I had the idea for the blog post from my every day life, before linking it to class.  I believe this shows a sophistication in my ability to draw connections to class from a preexisting idea or interest.  
Like last quarter, my favorite part of the blogging process has been the commenting.  If I am struggling to put my own thoughts into words then I will go and comment on another person's blog post.  I feel that commenting is very much an escape as well as a way to challenge the views of others.
My goal for next semester is to keep my blog posts consistent.  I have to make myself move past the difficulty of the transition process from idea to words and continue to write posts.