Friendship through Spongebob?

For this week’s blog post I want to focus on Spongebob (yet again). My roommate and best friend, Paloma, LOVES spongebob. She has the tendency to relate everything in our lives (good or bad) to Spongebob (and sometimes the movie Hot Chick). However, the point of this blog post is that for the most part I usually know what she is talking about and she is usually right.

Why is Spongebob (a cartoon) so realistic (to an extent)? I addressed this little in my midterm paper but this time I am wondering why it is that Spongebob ties in so much of reality. Not so much how I tend to find Spongebob counter hegemonic but more of how I tend to find Spongebob as a Kid’s show that actually is doing more than teaching them about dominant ideologies. I find real life lessons in this show that I personally think can be used in real life. For example hating someone, competition, saying sorry, having a friend that is way too stupid. Of course many people could say this about a lot of kid’s show but there is something different about Spongebob. I believe although this show will forever be a show for kids is generally directed toward Adults. I still watch Spongebob when I am stressed out.

The best example I can provide is Paloma’s favorite examples of US. Two best friends that have the tendency to be really REALLY stupid. She compares our relationship to Spongebob and Patrick way too many times in one day. This makes me question, growing up watching this show did it possibly change the way that we see best friends? Did this relationship on TV form how we think of relationships in real life? There are too many examples of how the two of us act like this cartoon. Is that just us or were we made to find people like Spongebob and Patrick?

Political Fandom

After being our class discussions about fandom it got me thinking about what is it that I personally am obsessed with. I had a unique list that went from Buffy to The Phantom of the Opera back to Buffy over to Buffy and it looped around back to Buffy. However, I did think of one other thing that I happen to be a little obsessed with, Music. I have multitude of favorite bands (all time favorite being Kill Hannah) but one has recently had my attention, the band Rise Against.

Rise Against is a highly political band that I absolutely LOVE. They are known for writing highly political songs and making very political music videos. Not to label but if people were to ask me to generalize all I could say would be that Rise against leans left (far left). However, I do not like to categorize the wonder of their political stance.

What does this have to do with anything? After our discussion in class about what fandom does to people, society and the world as a whole it got me thinking about how Rise Against influence their fans. Of course the majority of us that follow Rise Against know their political stance. However, many people follow them and do not truly listen to their lyrics and do know necessarily know how political they are until they watch a video. Below I have included a video that I feel speaks the most to our general public and is very easy to understand (you should show it in class just because we need more alternative/ rock and less hip hop). However, the point I am trying to make is that I believe that political bands such as these can influence their fans to do more than dress a certain way like Lady GaGa or go to conventions like Comic Con. I feel that with political videos like these they intend to inspire people and open their eyes to more than just the culture of the fandom and more of the politics of the fandom. Can Band inspire a revolution? Who knows…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MjLKjPc7q8&ob=av2e

What are Scary Movies teaching our Children?!

In the spirit of Halloween (Somhain) this week I feel the need to do a blog post on Scary Movies. My roommate and I love scary movies and all weekend whenever we were home we would turn on the TV and watch whatever scary movie happened to be on. However, this week on AMC they mainly showed the Halloween movies. Paloma (my roommate) and I have never really seen them so we sat down and decided to see what all the hype was about. Paloma thinking I always know everything ever in the world asked me 100,010 questions. However, there was one question that really got me thinking about the development of older movies.

Paloma asked me “Why are older movies always so raunchy?” Oh course, if you did not know majority of the Halloween movies are just people having sex, screaming and then dying in gory ways. This is when it occurred to me the true meaning of old fashioned scary movies. One of the main points always stressed in these movies is always “Sluts Die.” It is always the ones having sex that are killed first. It stresses that sex is dirty, it is sin and for that you will be punished and thus, they die. If you thinking about it too, it is always the women that die. So now it comes down to gender and a debate about women’s sexuality.

This got me thinking more and more about jokes that are always brought to my attention about the sad truth of scary movies. This first one that usually comes into play is “the black guy always dies first.” A joke used for many years but, it got me thinking. Why does the African American always die first. When looking back at old scary movies we can see the hints of the idea that black people are just too stupid to live all the way through the movie. Now this brings race into picture. African Americans are portrayed as the perfect victims who cannot survive due to their inability to outsmart the killer.

Thus, I have concluded that old fashioned scary movies are just sexist and racist. Maybe this Halloween season you should look more closely at the movies you are watching and what they are really trying to teach you.

http://youtu.be/X-q-AWD_8AY <-----The Rules

Is Funny the new Tough?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuOc62x9cCc

For this week’s blog post I could not think of what I wanted to do. I wanted to focus on Katz’s video because I found was he was saying very interesting. However, it is difficult to just turn on the TV and hope to find a show about a woman being abused or men being overly masculine and then write something educational about it. So for this week I am taking a different approach. I am using a clip from one of my favorite comedians, Jim Gaffigan, to talk about how I believe that some comedians such as himself use comedy to challenge masculinity.

Katz’s explains in his video that how media effects masculinity. He explains the ever changing view of strong and tough men and how the importance of strength has become more and more evident over the years. However, I feel that since the release of Katz’s video the world has made some in allowing men to show a side that is less masculine. However, this is only in certain situations. In this case I am using standup comedy as my example.

In this clip we of course see Jim making fun of females and how they choose to dress on Halloween. However, the joke takes a twist when he expresses himself as an overly sexual “kitty.” In this case Jim is comedy to challenge masculinity. He addresses himself first as cat woman and then continues on a path that represents him as a sexual being. We find this funny because he makes it humorous with the sexual nature of his costume. The important thing to note is that it is through this humor that we find it acceptable to act this way. Jim Gaffigan is a highly respected comedian; therefore, it is acceptable for him to make a fool out of masculinity and sexuality.

With Jim Gaffigan as my example I feel that masculine culture is always being challenged through comedy. It is funny for grown men to go on a stage and degrade themselves for humor. But why? Why is it that we find this funny? Maybe it is because we know that there is more to masculinity than being tough. Maybe masculinity needs humor, curiosity and a good joke here and there. Jim Gaffigan makes these jokes more and more and brings himself to the center of all of his jokes, he is the victim of his own jokes. Then why is he never seen as less than a man? Therefore, does a man really need to be tough and demanding or can he be funny and silly?

TLC'S The Sister Wives

For this week’s blog post I am choosing to write about TLC’s newest reality show hit Sister Wives. This is a show that based on the lives of a polygamist family that lives in Nevada (Recently moved from Utah). This is the story of a man named Kody, his 4 wives and his 16 children. The show has recently made a huge hit on reality television and is in its second season. Kody and his family see this show as a chance to educate the public about the beauty they find in polygamy and the lives that they lead. For them this is a legitimate opportunity. However, why is it that we watch it? Personally, I know what I watch this show. First off I love it and as a religious studies minor, I find it FASINATING. I do not understand their life style it is not one I would choose to lead; however, it is one that I encourage myself to learn about and am trying to understand and more importantly respect. But for me, that is a scholarly and personal stance on why I watch the show. Therefore, I forced myself to question why is it that other people watch this show?

This show and this family face a great deal of hate and judgment. This is shown in the show itself and all throughout other media sources such as the news, talk shows and all of the internet. People of American culture have been normalized to think that polygamy is in fact immoral not matter what religion or culture you are. It is a stereotype that all forms of polygamy are forms of female oppression and abuse. However, this show is working to show that this is not always the case. I found this to be a great example of what many people would consider a variation on “the third world woman.” I feel this way because although these women are not of the third world they are still looked upon as women that are almost seen as other than what normalized western culture is. Polygamy is not an acceptable western ideal and therefore they are looked at through western bias.

I also find it interesting to question why it is then that we watch this show if it is completely counter hegemonic. Media studies tells us that it is through media that we learn what dominant ideologies are. However, this show is clearly not a dominant ideology of our culture. Then why do we allow it on our broadcast? I believe that this show is not put on TV to educate us (the reason I watch it) it is on TV for us to judge. This show has such a high viewing because it is in our nature to judge those who are not like us. Since majority of our culture find this life style to be immoral it is only moral for us to view it and judge those who are “getting it all wrong.”

My last observation about this show was its viewing time. I have begun to realize that this show is really only put on during nighttime slots. I feel that this is because nighttime slots are not considered family slots for children of certain ages. I have a theory that since this show is not aggressive in nature and is generally a decent and whole hearted show, this means people believe that children would be dangerous to children. Although it is here for us to judge it is clearly not here for non judgmental impressionable children.

Therefore, I feel like there might be some corrupt nature behind the true meaning of the Sister Wives.

Eating the Other and Animal Nature

For this week’s blog post I am focusing on the ideas of “Eating the Other.” As I was sitting on my couch being tormented by my roommate’s love for E! News I could not help but tune in to try to find something to blog about this week. I was fortunate enough to actually find something worth blogging about. For once E! News gave me something to actually think about instead to just rolling my eyes at the rich egotistical people on the show.

On E! There was an entire segment on Rhianna’s new scandalous photo shoot that portrayed her as a sexy and dangerous powerful woman. However, I took something different from this. After reading Bell Hook’s article about “eating the other” I saw this once again as an example of portraying African American Women as sexual beings with animalistic traits. This photo shoot was just another way of White culture eating the culture of African American women. Therefore while trying to find Rhianna as a risk taker it is just another way of showing African Americans as animals. IN CMN 102 we talked a lot about how African Americans are portrayed as animals in media and I think this is a prime example. Now with the information provided by Bell Hooks I just see this as another way people can devour African American sexuality by making it look animalistic and risky. Eating the other becomes easier when you feel that you have something to gain from it, such as risk that leads to experience.

Ridiculous Religulous

This week as I sat at a friend’s house and did my religion homework he began to ask me a multitude of questions regarding why I chose to have a religion minor. I explained simply why I loved religion so much and why I think it is important to understand religion. This encouraged him to bring up a movie he saw a few years ago. He wanted to know my opinion as a religious studies student on what to think of the documentary Religulous. Religulous is a documentary staring Bill Maher and his attempt to criticize religion throughout the world.

I agreed to watch this film out of curiosity only to be enraged throughout the entire film (similar to the experience I had in class the while watching the film on Islam). I found this documentary to be a sad display at what I think Bill Maher thought was an educated attempt at approaching religion through an atheist point of view. I found disgusting displays of racism, stereotyping and sexism throughout the entire film and an extreme amount of ignorance for every religion he mentioned in the film. On a personal critique I found this film a waste of time, energy and a sad attempt at trying to be intelligent and witty. However, for the sake of this class I am going to put my personal opinions aside to explain this in a more intellectual way, with Marxist Analysis.

While watching this film and not so silently raging inside I was able to pick up on the most obvious representation of False Consciousness and Ideology. I have never seen a more obvious example of these two things before in a media source. However, this film took the cake. The first thing that you need to consider while watching this film is to understand who the directed audience is. For this particular film it was most definitely for atheist, non religious and critical religious viewers. Once I understood this I could see the ideas of False Consciousness rearing its nasty head. How this occurred was through the power that has come out of the atheist movement in the United States recently. Since this was a film directed at atheists this gave the narrator a instant source of power. He himself as a (in)famous TV spokes person and political figure he holds an outrageous amount of power and in this situation can be seen as the power source that is leading the ideas of what would be considered the ruling class. Therefore, the viewers who are seeing him in a light of superiority would be fooled into thinking that he has the ideas that represent all of the ideas of the ruling class and in this case the atheist movement (which is not the case).

The second theory that I noticed was the theory of Ideology. This again has to do with the power of the atheist movement in the United States in recent years. The Marxist definition of Ideology explains that what is being said is considered an applicable socially political belief (42). In this case even though I personally find no relevance in what Bill Maher has to say it is not uncommon for people with less religious understanding to take what he has to say to heart. The Marxist definition also explains that when it comes to ideology it makes it difficult for ordinary people to understand that they are being exploited and victimized (42). In this situation I could see this happening. With the Atheist movement becoming so strong, religious individuals are accepting their criticism as more of a normative practice. Therefore, with Bill Maher making such heartless jokes and irrelevant comments I can see how religious individuals would not even notice anymore that they are in fact being targeted.

In conclusion with this evidence supporting my decision, I find Religulous completely ridiculous.