A Summary of Media

      This semester I have really enjoyed taking media. What started as a filler course became one of my favorites, as we discussed issues that I found myself caring about. I started taking part in class discussion because I was interested in the topics. Particularly feminism and the representation of women in the media because I found I could connect myself to these problems. It sometimes seems as though I’m the only one who is offended by women in the kitchen jokes ect. but hearing everyone share their opinions shed a new light on the issue. Along with discussing these topics, I absolutely loved the video projects we were assigned in this class. I consider myself to be somewhat of a creative person and the openness of these assignments really allowed my group members and I to think outside of the box and have fun with the videos. Overall Media has been my favorite class this year and I would encourage all younger students to take it if they have the opportunity. 

Drunk Teenagers in the Making

           Producing a music video was a challenge Angus, Kristen and myself decided to take on this past week, and I, unfortunately, was stuck editing it. I must say it was the most difficult project I’ve taken on using iMovie and I have learned a lot about the program. The reason this project was so difficult was the fact that I had to coordinate the lyrics and the movement of the people’s mouths. Sometimes it just didn’t match up and I was forced to delete the whole thing and use random footage we hadn’t planed on using, or do the best I could to make it look like the people were somewhat singing the lyrics. When editing I found that I had to slow down and speed up a lot of footage, sometimes speeding up a clip will change the way you look at it. My favorite part of the video is the end when the hall is filled with people and the footage is speed up. Because of the speed things seem more hectic and fun. Overall this video was a challenge but I enjoyed learning more about iMovie and I also respect music video producers a whole lot more now!

Over Priced Marriage

         Weddings are supposed to be an intimate celebration of the marriage of two people but it seems like TV channels like TLC and movies like Bridesmaids, Bride Wars, Wedding Crashers ect. Have turned them into almost a competitive sport. We watch movies that show people competing for the best wedding that will top all of their friends and impress everyone. Weddings have turned into a way to show off how much money your willing to spend and how much time you put into planning your magical day. This is all because of shows like 4 Weddings in which brides compete to win honeymoons and judge each others weddings on things like food, venue and dress. Isn’t this making your special day a little to commercialized? With all this attention around the wedding industry, it has grown substantially. Retailers are taking advantage of the fact that weddings have so much emotional meaning they can charge whatever they want for the dress that brings tears to your eyes. Other than the competition aspect of the wedding, they are being marketed as the most important day of our lives. I agree that it is a huge event and a very major milestone but the way they have been built up is a bit ridiculous. Not everyone can have a wedding like those shown on TLC’s 4 Weddings and we aren’t all willing to pay $5 000 for a dress. So have we done the same thing to weddings as we have done to Christmas and over commercialized them?

#Twitter

                 Twitter is one of the biggest most hip websites out there and takes social media to a whole new level. On the “Twitter-sphere” you can be following what Kim Kardashian is doing in Ireland this week, and what your neighbors opinions are on the MTV Movie awards all at the same time. Twitter is a good way to communicate to large amounts of people about important issues in the world and get many opinions, and other peoples thoughts on the topic. However, people don’t always use their 140 characters for good. More often than not, my twitter timeline will be filled with song lyrics and @BadLuckBrian jokes. Twitter has the potential and is sometimes extremely useful for spreading news really quickly and getting it to reach a lot of the younger generation, but mostly people tweet about movies and make witty/funny comments in hopes of upping their followers. Among all the jokes I think there’s hope for twitter to grow and become more of a place to share news stories and spread opinions and ideas. But for now, it’s a little bit of that and a lot of jokes, pointless hashtags, and privileged teenagers complaining about their #firstworldprobs. 

Backup Wives

Polygamists have been in the news a lot over the past year after the première of TLC’s ‘Sister Wives’, a show that follows a family of polygamists while they add a new wife and her children to the family. Most people in the western world have the same feelings towards polygamy, the thought of one man with multiple wives seems wrong and unnatural to most of us. It is actually illegal in almost all states including Utah where the biggest populations of American polygamists live. However polygamy is legal in around 50 countries world wide, most of them being African or Muslim. I think the major problem with polygamy is that people just don’t know how to define it. Is it a religion or a cult? It can easily be defined as a cult because it’s extremely different then the norm and completely immoral in our culture. The idea of polygamy is offensive to feminists and in a lot of cases the relationships are abusive. Not to mention how far back it sets women’s rights! What gives the men rights to have multiple wives, leaving women unequal and jealous. Back to the TLC show, it really makes polygamy out to be harmless and everyone is just one big happy family with everyday problems. They are choosing that lifestyle with their own free will, but that’s not the case with a lot of polygamists and being forced into a plural marriage is common in many countries. So we all know that’s not right and shows how poorly women all over the world are being treated, but what if you chose to be in a polygamist relationship? Some would say it’s the same as choosing to be in a same sex marriage, just a different lifestyle. You can probably see the controversy over the topic and I don’t think it polygamy will be legal in Canada anytime soon.