Week 10: Chapters 3 and 4

Chapter 3:

In class we discussed the typology of artists. With the typology of artists most go through "sexuality as metamorphosis" going from being a teenage girl to a woman. The artists' videos also can be fantasy fulfillment and power. Then we talked about the story techniques of the videos based on camera work/angles and editing. The camera angles disturb me at time because it offends me that with the angles, women seem like objects and mannequins, just there to make the artist look good. This degrade of women is one of the main reason why I don't like or listen to rap--that and the lyrics are absolutely horrible. I guess that's why the saying is: "you can't spell crap with out rap."

I really like the quote that "sexuality is a much more prominent feature, with videos continually pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable. Near nudity, lesbian chic, and (compared to network television) more-than-suggestive depictions of sexual activity abound. Thus, many artists attempt to compete for airplay, media attention, and record sales by exploiting their sexuality to greater degrees." In most videos on television today, the material is extremely suggestive or flat out obvious. It's a shame that most girls can't just sing and have a normal video, but instead they have to be scantly clad and surrounded by men, trying to get their attention by her choreography or siren-like voice. To me, it seems that videos and artist constantly toe the line and try to push the line for what can be allowed and what can be censored. I remember when certain curse words would be blocked out, but now only a few get bleeped out and the videos are easily seen unedited online.

Chapter 4:

In my opinion, video games are getting out of control. I agree with the authors in that these games are giving wrong gender impressions to pre-teen and teenage boys. Girls are viewed as vixens that are damsels in distress that need strong, steroid-taking men to save them. I wish that video games would be a simple as just the Mario series that I used to play. In my house, we weren't allowed video games, but were only allowed educational computer games. The only bad thing about Mario was the Princess Peach character originally had to be rescued, but with Mario Party games, you could compete against the boys with Princess Peach and actually beat them.
The violence in our schools have definitely increased. Although I don't believe there is a cause and effect of violence in video games and violence in real life, I do think that they can add to it. Parents are naive and give their children games without looking at the rating or knowing the content. Personally, I think kids should stick with the old school Oregon Trail, Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego and Math Treasure Storm. Those are the good ol' games and the only violence/evil you could do was to not cure your enemy of a broken arm on Oregon Trail. Oh well...maybe we can start banning extremely violent games like in Europe.