An idea from the reading....

An idea that I found particularly interesting from the reading, was the idea that we should address things such as sex and violence and that they are not necessarily a "bad" thing. In the bible, it heavily discusses these issues and they are not taken lightly. Should we live in a world where we can pretend these things don't exist? As Christians is that what we are called to do? Close out the world..... I don't think so and I don't think the author did either. He talks about the idea that Christian writers and producers should exclude these very real things from their productions, however instead of glorifying them, actually representing them in a true light is important. Mass media as we know it, is HUGE. Our media diets are also extremely large. We live in a day that is consumed with messages. America loves violence and lets face it... Sex sells... So as Christians, what should we do. We should speak, engage in conversation about the pros and cons of these topics. The worst thing we could possibly do is not do anything at all. We should engage in media and understand and analyze it. Taking this a step further we should discuss films and their content instead of turning away from an R rated film. We could be missing out. As Christians we need to step out of our comfort zones and get comfortable being uncomfortable. Violence and Sex exist, we have to understand that.

Eyes Wide Open

I really feel like the concepts in the book that we discussed were things we really have been assessing all semester. It was good that we read the book in order to bring the ideas back together and almost lay them right in front of us. As Christian students it is so extremely important that we learn things like this. We are all struggling for our own identities and constantly taking in media every day. It's important that we don't shut our selves out from the rest of the world but engage in popular culture with our peers and neighbors. It is important to know and understand the things which others take part of. If we decide to live in a bubble we are not living as testimonies as we should be. Engaging in the culture which we as people have created is good, we should know and understand things that are in our every day world. We should look at things as Christians not pornographically, but in an analytical way. Taking something from the things we engage in. Hopefully by doing these things we will form relationships with friends and people around us so that they might understand what it is to be a Christian and at the same time we live our lives as we are meant to live them.

hmm.. But they are bad in the sense of DEMOCRACY!

Democracy is what are country was built on..... and in our reading it states that, "Political narrowness inevitably leads to a narrow range of genuwine choices at elections and since meaningful voter choice is vital to sustain any democracy, to that extent, the contemporary mass media's constricted politics weaken the foundation of the democratic process.". Because they are so few corporations running everything, choice is very limited. There is not a proper representation of the entire news spectrum... What does make it onto the news is then accepted as what is the news, however there is a whole other side to the story many times that never gets told. The idea that ALL news isn't "newsworthy" is bad for the democratic process. All of this concentrated private power is almost troubling to think about. Do we, as viewers, really know what's going on in the world, or do we just think we know. Is what makes the news really even what matters, or is it what makes the media giants the most money? It's interesting to think about our media diets and all of the things we are consuming, why and what we believe and are faithful to.

A question of the danger of conglomeration.. Is it really all that negative?

Would we as viewers truly want to take in all that the world has to offer? I think we couldn't possibly process all of the information that is available at any given second..... I believe that this could be a possible perk to there only being the big 6. The idea that we have a little variety, but not too much variety. When people are given too many choices, they usually can't make a decision. In this direction then, it is good we only have 6 big corporations in control because that's probably all we could handle..... Okay.. that was a silly approach, of course I think more of the human mind, I believe more information is better and less bias is very important. Let's face it though, when we go to sell our selves(watch tv) we don't want to sift through the channels for something we MIGHT like, We want to turn on the t.v. and turn it to our favorite show and know it will be on at our specific time.... We have this reassuance because these media giants are so extremely huge.. Because they exist, they market to what we like to consume. That's why are favorite shows are on at 8:00p.m. Thursday night weekly etc. They are the reason we have 2 minutes of commercials instead of 20 and they make this possible for us.... SO I guess they arn't SOOOOO bad after all.

The DANGER of Conglomerations....

In our reading it talks about the idea of the BIG 6, it states that, "Mergers of this size further dwarfs news as merely another industrial byproduct. As dramatized by the case of the las angeles Times, the new mergers deepen the dangers of more deterioration of news as a handmaiden of its owners' corporate ambitions, endangering the future of the independent and diverse public information on which democracy depends"... This is indeed a problem.... It seems as though news is very much reflection the owners ambitions. If we truely had 6 (the big 6) individual dominant companies we would be in better shape than we are in. The truth is that there are six but they are all intertwined and joined in earning profit together which means to me that they are not 6 individuals but much less than that.... We more than likely probably have about 2 media giants, or even scarier of a thought would be that one company controls it all. There are laws against monopolyzing, but if 6 diff. companies independently own stock in each other then it seems they can go around the law. The reason this is so bad is that this means that all of our information is extremely limited by the owners of these companies, they obviously wouldn't air something that could crunch their numbers even if that something were beneficial to us as viewers. If our news reporting is narrow than our choices are also, meaning that we don't recieve ALL of the information ALL of the time..

my faithful fandom

I have a strange amout of fandom for someone very important in our country. I have been a fan of President Bush for quite some time... I am still faithful to him for many reasons. It's strange because most people do what the mass's of other people do.... I however feel very differently on this subject. Most people are not in Bush's favor and think I am strange and maybe crazy for still liking him. I think he has this genuineness about him that I love. I definitely do not envy the position he is in and I think that's the best answer for anyone. He acted when something had to be done and I really feel he would have been critizied either way on any decision made as anyone in such a high position would. I feel like after all the negative media I have seen in the past years and all of the things that have been said I have a offly strange fandom for I still find faith in this man. I feel as though he has stuck to what he promised.... Fandom for someone who may not be extremely well spoken, but I feel has a good heart and a love for God.

My parasocial relationship with Dane Cook

There is something about Dane Cook that I love. Strangely enough we have never met. For some creepy reason I feel as though I know his personality, possibly I just easily relate to some of his less raunchy humor. I am not obsessed, but there was a period of time where I used his jokes on a daily basis. I think it is interesting how some of us can easily relate to people we like, just because we like them or simply envy their humor. I had a 76 on my parasocial relationship when we talked about this topic in class. It's very interesting to see how some people liked their person they chose, but they wouldn't be in any way in a friendship them. I am glad to say I've never had a conversation with Dane Cook through my t.v. but I would love to meet him in person because I think he's hilarious.