Persuasions: Identities, Stereotypes, & Fights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eica-_nnPs

Who hasn’t played video games as a child?  I know I did.  I first started off with games that dealt with mathematics and reading.  As I reached the age of 7 I started to play racing and more intense games.  Once I hit 9 I encountered violent video games such as Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto.   I was able to handle guns and blow peoples heads off.  It was fun and made my adrenaline rush at the same time.  I would at times scream “die , die” and even start to curse while playing these game similar to how the characters in the game would curse.  As I grew older these games didn’t seem that exciting.  I became used death and blood splattering all over in games.  Also in reality I would see fights breakout all the time and not even care.  These game made me think that violence was fine and that everyone does it.  I realized that violence is a big issue and these video games have a negative effect on children.  Parents should stop their children from playing games such as these.

The topic I chose to work on is violence in video games . I want to focus on how such games such as grand theft auto, counterstrike, and mortal Kombat promote violence and encourage kids to some of the actions these character do.  Parents need to censor these game from there children. Children don’t really know right from wrong. Some may think since them murdering people virtually in these games and stealing money from banks to gain points it’s fine to do it in real life.  Distinguishing reality from fantasy is difficult at times. In these game blood is splattering all over and hookers slaughtered, children over time become desensitized to death and violence that when they encounter it in reality it doesn’t seem to phase them.  This is a problem it should phase them because death is a big deal.

We all have our own definition of beauty. What one person might find beautiful another person might not. Whether we realize this or not we also have our own definition of health. What does being healthy really mean? According to most people being healthy is having a good blood pressure rate, not having any types of disease and not being restricted from a particular type of activity. However according to others being healthy is simply being skinny or being underweight.

My parents are from China and most Chinese people are very skinny and the celebrities are even skinner. My mom’s definition of being healthy was not having any disease and such and also being very skinny. Starting from a young age my mom would tell me that I was fat and that I needed to lose weight compared to my older cousin who lived in China. When she watched Chinese movies on tv she would tell how skinny and pretty the movie stars were and when she took me shopping she would hand me clothes that were at least a size bigger than I was. This made me really insecure about my weight and I became obsessed with it. I became anemic and I would always go on diets every few months or so.

The topic that I chose to do is the media’s influence on our health. Everywhere we look we see beautiful models and celebrities on ads, magazine covers, side of public transportation, televisions and just about everywhere else. The majority of models on runways and in magazines are skinny, underweight and what most people might describe, perfect. When we see these people many of us will stare, comment and wish that we look like that person. Some of us might even go to great lengths like starving ourselves and going on extreme diets just to look like the model/celebrity we saw.

In my actual paper I plan to write about how girls (not all) are raised to believe that being underweight and really skinny is healthy; also the great lengths that many of us might go through to achieve that. I also plan to educate my readers on the different eating disorders that many young people have today.

media artifact:







I would like my topic to be about the way the media promotes consumerism amongst young children. From such a young age, children are being showed through numerous commercials to buy, almost worthless products to endorse there hedonistic nature. Not that this is a bad thing, because biologically speak, humans, let alone, animals in general are hedonistic being. The fact that the media industry epitomizes commercials like “Hot wheels”, and “Barbie Play House” as a source of happiness leads me to the conclusion that this can hinder a child’s ability to control him/herself. I consider this to be a successful topic because this is not I problem I feel commonly address in society. Surveys from institutions like A.C. Nielsen Co, a company that measures trends in the media industry, predicts that out of a 65 year old person’s life, 9 years are spend watching Television. This is quiet troubling because this means that advertisers, the same ones responsible to get as many people enticed by a particular product, are responsible for a great portion of the 9 years of an individual’s life spent watching Television. Three examples of sources I will be using are; Social Forces Academic Journal, American Academy of Pediatrics, and The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behavior. In my paper I plan to address how advertisements foster a growing dependability for material items which indirectly endorses narcissism. For example, “Sketchers” the shoe brand, has commercials using the power of aesthetics to draw the attention of kids in, after this, they go on talking about why you need sketchers.

In today’s world, the media plays a large role in everyone’s life. People can be loved or shunned from society based on one single thing they do. This may not be the fairest thing, but it’s how things work in our times. People who are consistently in the eye of the public are even more vulnerable to have to deal with the effects of their actions. One of the biggest examples of how the media could affect how a person lives is Kanye West.

Kanye has been through pretty much everything you can go through as a public figure. He did so much in the rap industry and was considered one of the best of our time. He gained support and recognition all over the world. He sold millions of albums, had sold out tours, and everything anyone could want. People looked up to him and respected him. Then at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009, he changed the way most people looked at him with one action, interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech. With this, he instantly lost thousands of fans. People couldn’t believe what they saw and how someone could do such a thing. The media portrayed West as a bad person. It was replayed over and over, there was no way he could change what had happened. It even made him leave the country for a while just to get away from all the negative attention. This is how the media and society can change a person’s life in literally seconds. All it took was one wrong action to change all the positive things Kanye did in his career leading up to this. Some still feel negative towards him and will never regain their respect for the rapper ever again.

For most of this year, Kanye has been back making more music and getting more in touch with the public and his fans. He’s put a lot out to the media to help salvage his image and people’s perception of him. He’s even issued a public apology to Swift acknowledging he was wrong. In my paper, I plan to show the whole rise, fall, and now rise again for Kanye West and how the media has played such a major role in it. After being put down and made out to be some type of monster by the media’s focus on one action of his, Kanye West is now using various forms of media to get his message out to society that he is a good person and deserves to be given another chance by all.

media artifact

Media Artifact

I’m a very complex guy and I’m very picky when it comes to the girls I like. I’ve come to find that I like girls that are well spoken, smart, funny, sarcastic, caring, and talkative. I like girls that I could have a conversation with about anything, the type that I can take out to dinner and not be worried that I’ll get embarrassed because of her behavior. But the sad truth is that none of these things are what I see at first. When I’m walking down the street the first thing I do is look at a girls face and if I don’t find her pretty I usually walk away, not bothering to take a second glance.
I was raised with a sister who is three years older than me and when I was a child I would sit and watch as she would take her Barbie and Ken and have them make out, and this stuck with me for quite a few years. I believed that only girls with curves, straight teeth, and long hair were attractive. Not only would I see my sister play with these dolls, I would see her sit these dolls on her bureau and fix her hair so that her and Barbie had the same exact hairstyle, and I thought to myself “If my sister looks like Barbie, then every girl should look like Barbie!”. It was not until years later that I discovered that some of the most attractive and interesting females I’ve come to encounter look nothing like Barbie.
Along with Danielle Minch and Vicky Vien I am going to make a still motion film demonstrating how people who waste their lives looking for perfection will end up alone. Our media artifact is an advertisement for a line of Barbie’s called ‘Barbie Basics’, where there are 12 Barbie’s, all of different races. The sad truth is that no real women looks like any of these twelve, so going after a human look alike is a waste of time.
In my actual paper I will write about how men are raised in a society where women are presented as meat and we are raised to believe that only certain women are attractive. I will also make it clear that there is no real Barbie out there, and that we as men ought not focus on looks only, but what lies underneath the surface. The truth of the matter is that I need a REAL woman in my life.

My Point Exactly.