Hello Class,
Please post your responses to last Thursday's readings (Jenkins and Seiter) and our screenings here. Consider how Jenkins and Seiter might respond to what we watched in class. How do those screenings trouble the basic assumptions of the media effects approach to studying youth and media? What most struck you about the clips from Paradise Lost and Bowling for Columbine (in relation to the topic of media effects and its critique)?
Your posts should be a minimum of 200 words.
I really found Henry Jenkins article to be fair and accurate. I think that if he were to see the columbine video as well as the other one he would think it was an unfair assessment of teens. In his article he specifically speaks about goth culture and the way they are viewed. With the video about the 3 goth children that were convicted of rape and murder he specifically talks about something that caught my attention when reading. He says that "thier roots in romanticism and in the aesthetic movement, thier nonviolence thier commitment to acceptance, their strong sense of community, their expression of alienation." Just as it is unfair to judge aq black man because he wears baggy clothes or a hoodie it is just as wrong to judge someone who wears all black and stays to themselves. I like that he presents the argument that the media is absorbed and used to the viewers liking. He presents the arguement that a 16 year old girl used the same media that the kids in the littleton case did yet she found that the same images emphasized the power of friendship, the importance of community, the winder of first romance. I don't think that he would feel the video was an accurate depiction of youth as a whole because they didn't use other examples of children that used media to thier advantage and instead they painted an image of goth culture being dark and satanic.
ReplyDeleteNow with Seiter it is a bit harder to predict how she feels because she presents 2 sides of an argument in her article. She tells us of the 2 different professionals that have been in their careers for quite some time and have 2 very different views on children and media consumption. On the one hand Gloria believes that children can watch and distinguish the difference in violent matter from reality. Sara on the other hand believes that media does play a role in a child's behavior. She talks about how the child is basically regulated by what the parents supplement such as consumer goods. While I do not agree with Sara I do agree with one statement she made. She said that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is particularly popular with African American children because it had no racial bounds, and speaking as an African American I do believe it was one of the most popular shows with my particular demographic. I Think Sara would most agree with the videos portrayal of the different teens while Gloria would think the opposite.