Origins of Fame

As we try to find the roots of why the Kardashians are famous it leads us to find that they have many facets to it. I feel the family got there notoriety from their father who was a lawyer know for the OJ Simpson trial. But many other believe it was her sex tape. Without her father’s career and her stepfather’s notoriety no one would have cared about the sex tape. From all of this she got her show, which lead to the representation of her actual talent and possible model and fashion career. Although what was the key event that defined her celebrity? This got me thinking as to at what point in someone’s media career do they transfer from nobody to somebody? When is it that you can truly identify the point that a person becomes famous?

The Class of 30 Rock

The once NBC but now Comedy Central television show 30 Rock is a great representation of multiple classes in one centralized show. The range is from working stiff like Kenneth Parcell a simple page and to the head of NBC Jack Donaghy. You can see a large representation of class in all of the in between characters. All of the people that make the lowest income are depicted as ignorant and back woods southern like Kenneth. They use his stupidity and desperate need to be like to represent why he is only ability to do the job of an NBC page. Even other characters that have a lesser jobs are depicted as balding fat unable to get relationships or are an ethnicity. You can see how the people of race are either simple writers or a receptionist for the upper level employees. As we move up the social ladder in 30 Rock the people become more intelligent happier and better looking. This depiction gives off the perception that to be successful it takes unrealistic qualities like beauty to gain an important position. It is this Show that exemplifies all aspect of class but shows them with specific stereotypes that are unrealistic.

Community Gender Roles

I watched this prior weeks episode of Community and I noticed a lot of the Tough Guise that Jackson was talking about. One of the main characters Jeff really embodies that front that men put up to be accepted and viewed in a certain way. Jeff for those who don’t know is the “cool” dude who loves all thing that have to do with women, scotch and looking like he doesn’t care. Now in this episode, the group of Community, go to a house warming party for Troy and Abed. During which we see a lot of the qualities that Jeff attributes to masculinity. He teases Troy about is to scale model of the Indiana Jones rolling boulder scene and comments about his virginity. This indicates that by being a virgin and creating the model that he is less of a man. Troy acts as the foil to Jeff by being a lot more childish and fun but still trying to be that manly figure. He even tries to show his manhood by saying that he “knows what cigarettes are” as he takes out a case and then puts one his mouth and chews on it…it was a candy that only appeared to be a cigarette. It is interesting to see the contrast of these two as they show what they define as masculine. Troy does the not so accepted masculine thing but still puts up a front. While Jeff’s personality is his guise, worrying about the safety of his women friends and feels he needs to guard his actual personality to appear manly.

Stereotypical McDonalds

I remember this one specific McDonalds commercial because of how odd and stereotypical it seemed. In it depicted mostly people of color riding in a van to work. I thought the commercial hit on a lot of stereotypes that shouldn’t have been brought out. One of which was why did they have to ride a van? I am sure that if they were depicting mostly white people on there way to work they might of chosen a car pool theme while everyone in this was in a community run van. Also the way McDonalds chose to send the message was by using a woman rapping about her breakfast foods. McDonalds also had the woman singer use the word “wack,” which no longer seems popular, but since she was of a different race McDonalds must have thought it was fitting. The use of the rap seemed unnecessary and out of place as we viewed the people commuting to wherever they were going. I also noticed that the neighborhood that was depicted did not seem as developed. This led me to believe that maybe they were marketing the dollar menu to this group because they might not be able to afford the actual menu. This sort of advertisements seem to perpetuate racial stereotypes that have no bearing on the food McDonalds is trying to advertise for

http://vimeo.com/20379504

Housewives Taste Morocco

Last tear on the Real Housewives of New York the women decided to take a group trip to Morocco. Now for some, you would think it would be a culturally enlightening experience, but for these women it was filled with stereotypes. Even before they took off for the trip many of the women were overly concerned about their safety, whether they were going to be in danger in the location of where they were staying, when clearly they were going to be given the five star treatment. Once they arrived they were even more enamored with their preconceived notions. One of the housewives even stated that they were not going to leave their bags alone from the idea that her belongings would be stolen. On a trip to such an exotic place it is common sense to want to take in all of the culture you can. But for these women it was more like they were trying to recreate the Sex and The City 2 trip the Middle East. They went on the camel ride and had an extravagant dinner in the middle of the desert in an amazingly draped tent. They used their stereotypes to guide how their trip went, and from what was shown in the show experienced little and learned little about the culture around them. To me it seemed that the trip all together was not about education but for bragging rights of an adventure to a new and different country.

Matchmaker or Molder?

This week I was turning on the TV as background when The Million Dollar Matchmaker came on. Now I had seen the original tough love a few years ago, but I hadn’t really seen how the premise was all about creating the ideological woman and man in society. Patty the matchmaker whom the viewer is following screens the perfect men and women for her millionaires, but as she does this she draws on stereotypical roles that these people should be filling. It is not uncommon for her to tell her millionairesses that they are taking up to manly of roles and need to “lose their penises.” She finds it anti womanly to be openly sexual or taking on the roles most prominently preformed by men. This brought on the thought that she thinks should women should not be as masculine if they want to find love. Do the women have to revert to an ideology to be appealing? I got a sense of this when I watched what the millionaire men described what they were looking for “Hot with a big personality, loves to go out, great in bed, but a housewife and the mother of my children.” Now in my mind these things don’t go together. Patty also tells men that they always should take the lead, “its always better to order her food for her.” Just a perpetuation of how women are losing their voice because of how a man needs to behave. All of the men seem to be looking for subservient women like that of the cookie cutter fifties housewife with a 21^st century body and sexual drive. From this I can only see that Patty is creating a situation where she is repressing some of women’s masculine qualities to only fit the ridiculous ideologies of the men.

Office Relocated

The other day I decided that I would watch the U.K. Office and try and note all of the differences that had to go on to make the show appealing for an English audience. I chose the first episode of the first season to view. Of course the location of the show changed and the offices are now in Slough England. This helps to create a real and relatable place for the audience. When I began watching I noticed that the plotline was almost identical to that of its American counterpart. Many of the same jokes were made, but the dialogue for the joke was completely different. In the American office Michael gets a fax from headquarters and says to Pam “We have a special filing cabinet for faxes, it’s the garbage” while in the U.K. version Bent calls it “the waste paper basket.” Another joke was when Jim, or this version Tim puts Dwight’s, or Garrett’s stapler in Jell-O. Garrett from this version of the Office calls it Jellies. It is very clear that for the jokes to make sense they need to change the slang. Other words that were different from our dialect were “redundancies” (down-sizing) “slag,” “mental” and “twat.” Another thing that I was noticing was that the language used was much more blunt because they swore more freely saying things like “shitty” or “cock.” The thing that I found to be the most interesting is that the ideas or characteristics of the characters will still similar Dawn, the Pam character remained a soft spoken moderately pretty receptionist. Ricky, the Oscar of this series was still a different ethnicity only this time he was Indian. And lastly the Kevin of this show was again a fat dull man.

A Clockwork Ideology

Earlier this week I was watching A Clockwork Orange, a film about British scoundrels that engage in their so-called “ultra violence.” Through the first half of the film it was very clear that the main character Alex and his band of “droogs” prided themselves on living a counter hegemonic lifestyle. The group had full disregard for any sort of laws or common ideologies. They believed that everything was theirs for the taking. It was not uncommon for them to steal, beat up someone just out of dislike and skip school. They further created a counter hegemonic lifestyle by creating their own slang that is both hard to understand and unlike any other kind of language. At one point in the movie the main character Alex is caught and is sentenced to 15 years in jail for murdering a woman. Alex decides to reform his ways and after two years in jail he undergoes a severe new treatment that forces the subject to change his ideologies and conform to the hegemonic view of society unwilling him by making him feel sick every time he sees a violent image. This new treatment exemplified how the government tried to control the views of its people with images. Alex passes through the treatment but has lost all capabilities to act out on his own terms, because whenever he is confronted by a counter hegemonic want he feels seriously ill and is unable to act on it. This creates a situation where Alex feels completely helpless to others and feels that all he has left is to kill himself, he attempts this but fails. The government is blamed for his attempted suicide. The government tries to glaze over this accident by doing experimental surgery on Alex’s brain, further controlling him with hegemony. The final scene is of a delirious Alex shaking hands with a government official and media taking pictures to put a spin on the terrible accident.