How do the media encourage or discourage the creation of social and cultural identities?

Social and cultural identity has been shaped by the media in multiple ways and by many different groups. The media has a way of speaking to certain groups and getting its message out to a large number of people. Through all forms of media this is true. Newspapers, the Internet, television, and all other forms of media exploit certain groups. These groups include race, gender, and social class.

Cultural codes, brought upon us by the media, can be a very degrading form of cultural and social identity. This form of cultural identity has especially affected women. Women are seen in our culture as being emotional and not as strong, both mentally and physically, as men are. As a result of this, girls are, from a young age, encouraged to do “girly” things like play with Barbies and discouraged to do things that boys would do like playing in the dirt. This may seem harmless as children but as children grow up and this social stereotype is furthered, it can affect these children into adulthood. Even today women are generally paid less for doing the same job that a man does.

Media stereotyping has also been a setback to social and cultural identity. The gay and lesbian community has been stereotyped in the media since the silent films of Charlie Chaplin. Gays and lesbians have never been ignored in the media but the way they have been perceived has for the most part been negative. Most of the time, gays are shown as sissy or weak. Gays were often times killed by the end of a movie. Today, the gay and lesbian community is beginning to see positive characters and even shows on television and in the media. The positive view of gays in the media has help further the gay rights movement. Although the view of homosexuals is changing there is still stereotyping. In the American Pie movie series, lesbians are seen as the pinnacle of sexiness while gay men are still looked at as “gross.”

Identities are also produced by demographics. Where you’re from, what you do for a living, and even your income level play a part in your social identity. A great deal of money goes into finding out demographics for products, TV show, amd movies. It is sometimes easy to see what demographic a product is being pitched to just by seeing where an ad appears. Most commercials being played during an episode of Hannah Montana are going to be products intended for young girls to buy. During a tennis match you might see an ad for Rolex watches that are being pitched to wealthy males. Demographic play a role in social identity just by exploiting what a group may like.

The media has shaped the way people view their own social or cultural identities. Through cultural codes, stereotyping, and demographics, people are subject to change by watching, reading, or viewing things they enjoy. The affects are both positive and negative but with a more open-mindedness to change, the affects will ultimately be positive.

Brian House

What is the relationship between media and history? How are media technologies developed and what processes are at work as new media slip into becoming old media?

Media and history have always been tied together. Bringing a deeper knowledge to people about a certain subject has always been the intent of media. From the telegraph to the Internet, technologies have helped the media bring history into the living rooms of every American.

The Newspaper was a technology that brought even the common man news about the world and more importantly, his own country. The newspaper was and is a place where political views and stances are shared. This media is quickly changing and due to the economic downturn may soon be a media technology of the past. Since the events of 9-11, the Internet has been steadily taking over the newspaper industry. The Internet has made information about absolutely anything available to everyone. With a newspaper, you would have to wait until the morning to hear about stocks or get the details about an event but with the Internet, that information is available instantaneously.

The Internet is changing the way that the world works. Political campaigns are spending incredibly amounts of money on websites for their candidate. Protests are now available to watch from any country. During the election of the last president in Iran, there were large protests claiming that the race was fixed and that not all the votes were counted. Iranian protestors used their cell phones to take videos and upload them to the Internet. This allowed the whole world to take notice and try to take action. There was a movement in the United States to try and get our government to help the citizens of Iran.

The Internet didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. People have always had a yearning for knowledge. Newspapers helped bring knowledge to everyone. When the radio was introduced people were able to hear music from other areas and get news broadcasts. When television came along, people were able to see moving images of the unfolding history. Pearl Harbor, The JFK assassination, and the Vietnam War were all shown on television. All of a sudden, rather than seeing one image on the front page of a newspaper, people were seeing moving images of tragedies in their living rooms. Newscasters were now the people who brought the knowledge to everyday citizens. Walter Cronkite reported on the Vietnam War and claimed in one of his nightly newscasts that the war was not going anywhere and the only way out would be to negotiate. To know the kind of power that newscasters had, President Lyndon Johnson said after Cronkite’s comments, “ If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

The media will continue to influence history and because of the pursuit of knowledge that every person is born with, technologies will continue to get more advanced because of the importance of the media bringing us our history. Although media, history, and technologies are always changing, the fact that all three affect our lives will ensure that all three will continue to adapt to our needs for information.

Works Cited

Grossberg, Lawrence. Media Making Mass Media in a Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2006.

Winston, Brian. “Introduction: A Storm From Paradise: Technological Innovation, Diffusion, and Suppression.” Media, Technology, & Society: A History: from the Telegraph to the Internet. Pp. 1-18. 1998

Mitchell, Greg. “Cronkite’s 1968 Dissent on Vietnam Helped Save Thousands of Lives” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/cronkites-1968-dissent-on_b_238788.html

The Magnificent Obsession movies from 1935 and 1954 showed the progression of media over twenty years. The differences between the two movies were very apparent even beyond the black and white versus color. Being familiar with video editing processes today, I found it interesting to see the differences in editing techniques and the way that editing was taken into account while filming.
Watching both movies and seeing the difference in editing was amazing. In the 1935 version, shots had to be very carefully planned out because the shots were very long whereas in the 1954 version, the shots were short and chopped up. It is an interesting contrast because on one hand you have very thought out shots where the camera is moving with the characters to tell the story which is more personal and intimate (1935) and another that is grabbing attention by having fast shots and having close ups and wide shots (1954). In the 1954 version they would show a person in a car and then the car driving by. It is a series of shots that isn’t really seen in movies twenty years before that.
The time period between clips was a huge difference between the movies too. In the 1935 version there was a clip that was almost a minute long. In the 1954 version the longest shot was around 15 seconds. Both of the longest shots came during a scene with a lot of dialogue between 2 actors. In the 1935 version there were less cuts between two people and more of a steady shot capturing the whole conversation. In the 1954 version there still long dialogues but more cuts from one person talking to another.
Today, it is much easier to edit a movie because of computers. Editing is something available to almost everyone in some form or another. The way that editing has progressed to the standard of today is much like the progression from the 1935 movie to the 1954 movie and you can still see aspects of both today. Today the cuts happen faster and shots are shorter. In a dialogue scene there are multiple cuts between the two people talking and the shots are much tighter, or closer than in the past. In the 1935 version there was a lot of sweeping shots by the camera with minimal editing and in the 1954 version the camera was more stationary with more cuts. Today we see a combination of sweeping camera shots and a lot of cuts.
The Magnificent Obsession movies were both shot and edited well for their time period. Looking back and watching the progression of twenty years shows us how quickly media can change; media that we don’t even think of. Everyone thinks of how movies have changed but it is really the little things like editing that help the progression along.