Media Moment

I found this video and I felt really upset for two reasons. First because is a video of a tribe and the guys who are recording they treat them as clowns and second because they record a girl and by doing this, the girl seems uncomfortable but she stays there because they are offering food to all the group of the tribe.
What it is sad is that we sometimes do not act humanly, we believe we have the right humiliate people just because we believe we are superior as westerns.

CNN Rapist Sympathizing Reporters

"CNN broke the news on Sunday of a guilty verdict in a rape case in Steubenville, Ohio by lamenting that the "promising" lives of the rapists had been ruined, but spent very little time focusing on how the 16-year-old victim would have to live with what was done to her."

This seems to be yet another perpetrator of the accepted "Rape Culture" in our society today, I would like to here some of your opinions on this. How do you think the media should have responded and does this seem right to you? Is it is CNN's job to give an unbias account of events?

Zoe Saldana on her Latina Roots and Roles in Hollywood

 (You can start the video from 1:25 and end at 2:20)

In our last class, we discussed Latina American women in the media. This video of an interview with Zoe Saldana on Chelsea Lately is very relevant to what we had discussed in class on the myth of Latina women and also the representation of Latina women in the media, especially Hollywood. Zoe Saldana is half Dominican and half Puerto Rican and raised in Queens, New York. Zoe had fun showing Chelsea and the audience her Latina roots and the Latina stereotype by pulling back her hair, revealing her big hoop earrings and jokingly says all she needs is some gum and she automatically looks the part of a Latina Queens girl and showing she can also have the accent as well. Zoe explains why most people have never even heard an accent when she talks so that she can avoid getting the "Maria" roles in Hollywood. Zoe Saldana is a respected actress in Hollywood and her choice to remain "neutral" in Hollywood has certainly given her opportunities to be multiple films that are all diverse in characters she plays and also does not portray the Latina woman stereotype.

Can you guys think of any other Latina women that are "neutral" in Hollywood? Do you think that by being neutral, we can have more representations of women of different ethnicity in the media?

FOX-CT Reporting Video for Women's Day

 

I stumbled upon this video when I was browsing videos on YouTube. 

Do you guys find the compilation of this video for the report on Women's Day insulting towards women? 

Throughout the entire video, the camera focuses entirely on the women's breasts as she is walking and it is "ironic" that this is the choice  for the camera shots for a report on Women's Day. Although the FOX-CT television network could get in trouble for showing the faces of women without permission, in my opinion there could have been other ways to shoot the video of women without just the emphasis on the breasts and without showing the face.

What are your thoughts? 

Media Moment: Twilight - Rape Culture

I was browsing Tumblr and came across these Twilight passages:
[Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault, rape culture, victim blaming]

"His lips crushed mine, stopping my protest. He kissed me angrily, roughly, his other hand gripping tight around the back of my neck, making escape impossible. I shoved against his chest with all my strength, but he didn’t even seem to notice. His mouth was soft, despite the anger, his lips molding to mine in a warm, unfamiliar way.

I grabbed at his face, trying to push it away, failing again. He seemed to notice this time, though, and it aggravated him. His lips forced mine open, and I could feel his hot breath in my mouth.

Acting on instinct, I let my hands drop to my side, and shut down. I opened my eyes and didn’t fight, didn’t feel… just waited for him to stop. "  Twilight: Eclipse p. 331 (Bella and Jacob’s first kiss)

The lines before that (via wejustkeepswimming.tumblr.com):   

He still had my chin—his fingers holding too tight, till it hurt—and I saw the resolve form abruptly in his eyes. 

“N—-” I started to object, but it was too late.

And after he assaulted her she punched him in the face but due to his “super human strength” she broke her hand, said “Don’t touch me!” and then:
“Just let me drive you home,” Jacob insisted. Unbelievably, he had the nerve to wrap his arm around my waist.
I jerked away from him.

AND THEN while he was driving: 
“…There is so much I can give you that he can’t. I’ll bet he couldn’t even kiss you like that—-because he would hurt you. I would never, never hurt you, Bella.”
I held up my injured hand.
He sighed. “That wasn’t my fault. You should have known better.”

And then:
He grinned over at me. “You kissed me back.”
I gasped, unthinkingly balling my hands up into fists again, hissing when my broken hand reacted.
“Are you okay?” he asked. 
“I did not.”
“I think I can tell the difference.”
“Obviously you can’t——that was not kissing back, that was trying to get you the hell off me, you idiot.” He laughed a low, throaty laugh. 
“Touchy. Almost overlydefensive, I would say." 
I took a deep breath. There was no point in arguing with him; he would twist anything I said.

Then when she gets home, to where her father, Charlie, the police officer, is:
 “Why did she hit you?”
 “Because I kissed her,” Jacob said, unashamed.
“Good for you, kid,” Charlie congratulated him.

Do you think this incites rape culture? Or does it show an accurate portrayal of what sometimes happens after rape? In this case, Bella (the only woman in the scene) physically tries to stop Jacob, as well as verbally says after the incident that she did not welcome Jacob's advances. Jacob responds by gaslighting,  “Touchy. Almost overlydefensive, I would say." Her father -- the person whom you'd think would be the most protective of Bella -- reinforces Jacob's ideas about how to treat his won daughter! There are no other females in this scene that Bella can lean on for support. Knowing that this was written by a woman (Stephenie Meyer), what do you think her intentions were?

BlackFace/RedFace

French magazine titled "Numero" uses the 16 year old blonde hair blue eyed model Ondrian Hardin to pose as an "African Queen"...I guess there wasn't enough black women to choose from.  What does this say about European culture? What are your thoughts...

This must be a trend...Here is the "Red Face" however with the British model Michelle Williams. Why use an actual Native American when Michelle Williams can do it? What are your thoughts ???

Media Moment 2

I saw this video, and immediately thought of our class.



What do you think of the fashion industry's standard of beauty? Do you find it attractive? Think it is damaging to young women? What do you think can be done to change that, if anything?

Media Moment: Quvenzhané Wallis Is a Cunt.

During the Oscars, The Onion jokingly tweeted that Quvenzhané Wallis (star in Beast of the Southern Wild and Best Actress Oscar nominee) is a cunt. What struck me was not the actual tweet (posted below), but the response it got. 

@TheOnion: “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a c--t, right? #Oscars2013” 

I read about this though The Daily Beast article by Tricia Romano titled The Onion Tweets That Quvenzhané Wallis Is the C-Word. I'm not sure if her editors decided that "the C-Word" would be more appropriate, or if she chose to use it herself. Either way if I were her, I would have fought hard to have Cunt in the title. 

The Daily Beast article contains some Tweets from people who lashed out at the comment:

"Technology writer Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing posted: 'Fuck you, @theonion. Calling a 9 year old black girl a "c*nt" violates the most basic principles of what it means to be human. Fuck you.'"

So, because this girl is only nine -- and black -- calling her a cunt means you violate the most basic principles of her humanity? I think this comment perpetuates the cultural idea that the word cunt is dirty and derogatory. And this, coming from a woman. 

Females have it, but they are afraid to say it -- especially in public. On the flipside, I've heard both males and females trow it around as if it were a "bad word". 

My first media interaction with the word was through Eve Ensler's book The Vagina Monologues, where she reclaimed cunt as a word of empowerment. 

Quvenzhané Wallis is silenced throughout this whole ordeal. There are no comments from her whatsoever. Was is for the so called "preservation of innocence"? 

Cunt is a pop-culture no-no, yet I'm positive people still choose to use it, many times with negative connotations. What is your history with the word and how can we make progress from here?

PS. This ordeal reminded me of an interview where Samuel L Jackson tries (and fails) to get the reporter to say nigger. What correlations can you make from the Django interview and the Wallis incident?

Double Standard?

I am posting this video, even it happened a while ago, it is about the covering of the story of how a mexican female reporter was treated in the looker room of the NFL Jets team when she tried to interview Mark Sanchez. It got my attention in the way that one anchor tried to defend Ines Sainz and the other one encourages the audience to think about it is wrong to dress the way the reporter did and because of that she deserved to be harassed.
 If the reporter was an American, she will get the same treatment. Was the reporter's dressing fault to be harassed? And what is a "proper" dress code for a hooker? By deciding how a woman has to dress in certain way it is not form of censorship, what about freedom of expression?