Disney

     This week we discussed the vast reaches "The Magic Kingdom" has, for some people it's almost like a religious pilgrimage to load up the whole family in the ol' truckster like out of the classic movie National Lampoon's Vacation and head on out to see the mouse and his friends. However, I think an even more significant trip would be taking the family to the nations capital, Washington D.C.

     Now stating the obvious here there isn't the sexiness of going to Washington D.C. like there is in going to Walt Disney due to it not being a theme park but just the amount of history and knowledge that is in that city with the Museum and national landmarks is truly overwhelming. I certainly know that not everyone is a history junkie like I am but I certainly think it would serve a lot of our younger generations some good to see first hand some of the symbols that epitomize our country to people around the world like The White House, Lincoln Memorial, Arlington Cemetery, or the Vietnam Memorial Wall. 

     I'm a firm believer in looking back and trying to learn from some of our greatest accomplishments & challenges in our past and then using the tools we have now to learn from them. George Santayana said it best when he said this -"Those who are unaware of history are destined to repeat it."   

Intertextuality

     This week in class we talked about examples of Intertextuality, a lot of the examples I found involved the animated TV show "Family Guy".  They like to take a lot of different movies and put their own "Family Guy" spin to it. If you look at this Top half of the picture you have the iconic picture from the Movie North by Northwest and then on the bottom you have Peter from Family Guy reenacting that famous scene.

     The second example from the Family Guy is a pretty iconic scene from the movie Star Wars with it being reenacted by Stewie & Brian from Family Guy with them playing the roles of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. 

     Lastly, I have an example from the show The Simpsons where they are depicting Mr. Burns as the killer from the movie "The Silence of the Lambs".  I find this one amusing due to how Mr. Burns is always talked about as being a very evil man and then he is shown as epitome of evil in this example. 

 

Coolness

     In our readings we looked at the a couple different viewpoints on what is considered cool. If you take a look at Klosterman article he talks about the exclusivity of things that are cool. Take for instance the example he cited about about cereal and the "Trix Rabbit" is always denied his craving of some of the sugar in a bowl that they market to children. By making it only for "kids" it has the image of being exclusive and therefore they are in the cool club.
     If you look at the piece by Quart that if I may say was brilliantly narrated in class (shameless plug for person that read the Frontline Questions, I know lol) Anyhow, she talks about how hard she has observed children trying to be cool and how active they are to represent that in different forms of social media that is out there. 
     If you look at both viewpoints I think they are both strong arguments and are valid however they just seem to differ a bit.

Comparing Violence

In class this week it was all about violence and how we process the things we see on television or in movies. The video "Mean World Syndrome", Gerbner talks about how its not that media violence makes us more violent, what the video does a great job of showing is that the underlying cause is that media violence causes us to have anxiety and fear of being a victim of violence and the more people were witness to this the anxiousness in them became elevated. 

There is some definite similarities to the "Mean World Syndrome" and the Article that features American Civil Liberties Union in the way that they do not see a problem with media violence which in turn makes the case that there should be no need for new regulations in regards to violence in media.  As noted in this article, the FBI has recorded a decrease in youth violence over the past few years, so the argument about media violence creating violence acts and aggression among children is incorrect. Something that backs up what the FBI study says is that Gerbner mentions that crime rates have decreased. Even though crime has been on the decline the one thing that stands out is that gun purchases have been on the rise. 

Both articles that we have read and the video "Mean World Syndrome" have shown great examples of issues that I have mentioned here. With that said my own personal view is that I would side with the stance that the ACLU takes. I don't feel more regulations are necessary but more dialogue between children and their parents is what is needed. If parents put more effort into being a parent and not letting a video game, or television show be the babysitter/parent I feel the impact would be seen in a positive manner down the road.