04/22/2008 "That's All Folks!"

I really enjoyed making this culture journal because it forces us to see how this class really does compare to the real world. My favorite journals were the journals where I got to bring my own experiences and favorites into the journal, for example the drive-in theatre entry, the favorite song entry, and the favorite t.v. entry. I also enjoyed looking at the AFI's 100 greatest movies list comparing what I have seen to it, and how my movie tastes compared to the list. Creating this journal was a very positive experience and has made me much more aware of a lot of what we have gone over in class when I an encouter it outside of class. With the adveritising, I seem notice the different types and the sexism used a lot more now than I did before this class.

04/17/2008 Advertising Gone Wild!

This was actually an ad used in Mexico by the Absolut Vodka company, and it was very controversial from the moment it came. In the Absolut Vodka ads, they show what a perfect would be like, the absolut world, and in this ad it depicts mexico controlling half of the U.S.A. like it did before the U.S. took over that land 100s of years ago. Although they took the ad away, it is still shown all over the internet. What many people and I did not like about this ad is how it says that the U.S. should not own that land and that it belongs to Mexico, and in a perfect world or absolut world Mexico would still control that territory.

04/15/2008 Advertising

The rhetor of this ad is the Dallas Stars of the NHL, and this pic was taken of a billboard in Dallas. This ad was made shortly after the NBA referring scandal, where a NBA ref was accused of betting on games and giving out calls so one team would win. The intended audience of this ad is sports fans, mostly fans of the Dallas Stars. The desired outcome of this ad is to get more people to come to their games, and try to get NBA fans to come over to the NHL. The ethos in this ad is that the Dallas Stars are a credible source because they are a well-known sports franchise. The ad also uses Pathos as it appeals emotional to sports fans about the scandal in the NBA.

04/08/2008 My Favorite T.V. Show

My favorite t.v. show has to be Sportscenter. It is the only show that I watch on a consistent basis. Sportscenter is a daily news show devoted entirely to sports and sports related news. I watch it almost everyday to get my fill of current sports news so I can stay updated to the wide world of sports. The demographic for this show is mostly males and from the age of teen to mostly middle-aged. So, I pretty much fit right in to their demographic as a male college student who loves sports.

03/31/2008 This Film is Not Fairly Rated

The movie "But I'm a Cheerleader" is a comedy about a girl named Meghan, who is a cheerleader and has a boyfriend, but doesn't like kissing her boyfriend often and is very touchy-feely with her cheerleader friends and has pics of women in her locker at school. She is then supsected of being a lesbian by her parents because of this and is sent off to a "sexual redirection" school called True Directions, a gay-gone-straight camp, to try to turn her straight. The MPAA gave this movie a "R" rating which I feel is unfair and limits the core audience that I believe this audience was aimed towar. I feel the movie should be rate PG-13 because it has a sexual theme, but not more than most "PG" or "PG-13" movies these days. The sexual themes in this movie are mostly homosexual which I feel is the only reason this movie was given a "R" instead of a 'PG-13" like it derserved.

03/25/2008 My Favorite Song

Choosing a favorite song was rather difficult. Since I could not think of just one song to pick, I decided to just choose my favorite band, Linkin Park, then my favorite album of their's, Meteora, then I picked my favorite song on the album, Numb. Below are the lyrics to the song.

"I'm tired of being what you want me to be feeling so faithless lost under the surface I don't know what you're expecting of me put under the pressure of walking in your shoes [caught in the undertow / just caught in the undertow]every step that I take is another mistake to you [caught in the undertow / just caught in the undertow]I've become so numb I can't feel you there become so tired so much more aware I'm becoming this all I want to do is be more like me and be less like you can't you see that you're smothering meholding too tightly afraid to lose controlcause everything that you thought I would be has fallen apart right in front of you [caught in the undertow / just caught in the undertow]every step that I take is another mistake to you[caught in the undertow / just caught in the undertow]and every second I waste is more than I can take I've become so numb I can't feel you there become so tired so much more aware I'm becoming this all I want to do is be more like meand be less like you And I know I may end up failing too But I know You were just like me with someone disappointed in you I've become so numb I can't feel you there become so tired so much more aware I'm becoming this all I want to dois be more like me and be less like you I've become so numb I can't feel you there Is everything what you want me to beI've become so numbI can't feel you thereIs everything what you want me to be"

For the cultural impact, I looked at what the band has done culturally. Linkin Park has been involved in a lot of different charitable acts. They helped raise money for hurricane charley victims in 2004, and hurricane katrina victims in 2005. They have donated over $75,000 to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in March, 2004. They helped relief efforts for the 2004 tsunami victims by staging several charity concerts and setting up a fund called "Music for Relief." They performed at Live 8, which was a series of charitable benefit concerts set up to raise global awareness.

03/25/2008 Radio

Today as a society, we do not like to wait for anything. This has really come to life with all of the upgrades in technology, that make the older technology bigger and faster. Today, people would not want to wait 30 seconds for their radio to turn on. People are already becoming annoyed with the 1-5 second delay it might take once you push the on button. People are also listening to the radio less because of all the commercials between songs, which is why XM statellite radio is becoming a huge hit. I know personally that I disslike listening to the radio because of all of the commercials, and have started to create a bunch of cds for when I am in my car, so I do not have to listen to the radio.

03/11/2008 Drive-in Theatres

Drive-in theatres use to be a big part of our culture, but have fading out at a rapid pace. When I was young, my family use to go to the drive-in theatre a lot during the summer months. What was great about the drive-in was paying one price and getting to see two, sometimes three, movies in a row and could bring your own food and drinks without having to sneak them in your jacket or bag.

I have a lot of fond memories going to the drive-in theatre with my family growing up. We would go and see family and comedy type movies. Two movies I recall seeing at the drive-in for the first time were Disney's "Pocahontas" and "Flubber." We would usually go in my dad's pick-up truck, so we could sit in the bed of the truck without worry of having a bad view through the widow of a car/van. My brothers and I would usually bring our sleeping bags to sit in to keep warm on the cool summer nights, while my parents would bring folding chairs to sit in. We would also bring a cooler filled with drinks and snacks for during the movies.

03/11/2008 The 100 Best Movies

OF AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list, I have seen a total of 36. Including, 5 of the top 10 movies, and also 5 of the bottom 10 movies. The majority of the films that I have watched are from the bottom half of the list. The highest movie on the list that I have seen is #2 "The Godfather" and the lowest ranked film that I have watched is #99 "Toy Story." I was surprised by a few of the movies on the list, for example "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" being as high as #34.

One film on the list that I have yet to see is the #1 rated film, "Citizen Kane." Below is a review of the film by BBC's David Wood.
"A fictional biography of media magnate Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) - a thinly veiled William Randolph Hearst that brought Welles and RKO all kinds of problems - that recreates a life in flashback, Welles' "Citizen Kane" was a startling cinematic debut by any standards, and from a 25-year-old made it nothing short of remarkable.
Beginning with Kane's lonely death at his crumbling and ornate Xanadu mansion, the film details the destruction of Kane's childhood when his mother unwittingly inherits a legacy and his resulting adolescent realisation that part of the legacy includes a newspaper, which Kane decides to run personally. From there, Kane builds a media empire, dabbles in politics and women, and eventually starts to alienate all those around him.
A potent metaphor for the betrayal of principles, the souring of the American Dream, and an intelligent mediation on the corrupting nature of power, the film's reputation is nothing short of gargantuan. Regularly cited as the greatest movie ever made, there's no doubting its pure brilliance and status as a contender for so lofty a claim.
What is beyond doubt is that Welles and his collaborative troupe of Herman J Mankiewicz (screenplay), Gregg Toland (photography), Robert Wise (editor), and the fantastic cast of leading players managed to invent a whole new cinematic vocabulary. The attention to detail (ceilinged sets, the meticulous creation of Xanadu) and technical brilliance (deep focus photography and hitherto unchartered camera angles) combined to influence the future of cinema. "Citizen Kane" is the margin by which all of Welles' later efforts came to be judged and also, in many ways, the benchmark of film production."

The movie "Toy Story" came in at #99 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list. "Toy Story" was an inspirational story about two toys efforts to rescue each other and return to the little boy that loves them before he moves away. At the beginning Woody and Buzz Lightyear compete with each other to be the favorite toy, and come to have a strong dislike for each other. Throughout the movie the two bicker a lot, but end up needing each other and end up rescueing each other in different ways. Woody rescues Buzz from his ignorant ways about being a toy. Then Buzz resuces Woody from his the neighbor kid who harms toys for fun. Then after all of they have been through, the two come over their hate for each and work together to make it back to the kid they love.

03/04/2008 What a Magazine Says About You

The only magazine that I read regularly is the TV guide magazine, which comes weekly to my campus mail box. This magazine does not really fit to my profile. The usual readers of this magazine are middle aged women, which can be seen in the advertisements and the type of stories written in it. Most of the columns are gossipy, and geared toward hardcore fans of different shows. The advertisements are usually for different types of medicine, cigarettes, and ways to quit smoking.

02/28/2008 Newspapers

I think that newspapers as we know them are slowly dying out. The internet is the major factor why, but also the abundance of television news stations is also playing a factor. Most people today, seem to want to have everything now, they don't want to wait around for anything. With newspapers, you have to wait til it is delievered every morning(unless it is a weekly paper), and by the time you get it and read it, the news is already old and more stuff has happened that needs to be reported. This new news will be readily available online and on t.v., along with the news that is in the paper. The newspaper use to be the major source of local news with some national and international news, but now there are local news stations, which have internet sites of their own to compete against the internet sites of the local newspapers.

02/26/2008 "National Enquirer"

This is the cover of the March 3rd, 2008 National Enquirer. Most of the major stories in this issue revolve around celebrity gossip. The main cover story is about Jamie Lynn Spears and how her boyfriend is not the father of her baby. The other stories covered in this issue and featured on the cover are about Jessica Alba having twins, one of American Idol's hosts/judges having plastic surgery, and Jennifer Aniston finally getting revenge on Angelina Jolie over Brad Pitt. Half of the cover stories seem to be believeable like the Jessica Alba, and Jamie Lynn Spears stories because of the type of stories they are, but the other two don't seem to be believeable. I find it hard to believe that Jennifer Aniston would plot for four years to get revenge on Angelina Jolie.

02/21/2008 Intellectual Freedom

To me, intellectual freedom is the right to publish your own opinions and ideas without others censoring/changing them because they don't agree with theirs, and it is also the right to seek out any information on any subject without being questioned as to the purpose of their research. Intellectual freedom is important to me because it allows everyone to share their opinions without the fear of being punished for having a different viewpoint on any particular subject then the mass audience or the government.

02/14/2008 OUTFOXED

Prior to watching "OutFoxed," I knew that there was some bias in the media and especially in the news industry, but I never knew exactly how much bias there actually was in the news.

After watching "OutFoxed," you can clearly see that there is bias in the media, but you can't really say that the bias is just toward a liberal view or a conservative standpoint. In the documentary, they show how Fox News Channel has bias towards conservatives, but in doing so, the documentary itself proves that it has a bias itself, against Fox.

This documentary takes such a biased stance against fox that they make it hard argue against their point. I have watched the Fox News channel for years, and the majority of the time they just report the news as it is.

02/14/2008 "What is NEWS?"

News is a piece of information about either a person, thing, or event that has happened recently, but for a news station, this definition changes slightly. To a news station, news is a report of information about a person, thing, or event that has happened recently and is of interest to report, or newsworthy. Newsworthy material changes from station to station as some report celebrity gossip, sporting events, politics, and local, nation, or international events.

Many of these news stations are competiting against one another for viewers and ratings. They try to accomplish this by trying to report news as soon as it happens, or even before it happens by making predictions, as in political elections or in sporting events. But by doing so, they can mislead their viewers by making wrong predictions, and reporting the wrong news by trying to be the first to report it can also be dangerous.

02/11/2008 "Free" Speech

This image shows how we sensor music to our youth. Whenever this image is attached to cd, you must be atleast 18 years of age or older to purchase it, and also any music with this label is banned from being sold at Walmart, or be played on the radio, but their censored versions are allowed at both.

02/11/2008 Control Room

The film "Control Room" reveals how great of an impact that the media has on its own culture and how they can twist different subjects to get across the message that they want their viewers to see. It also proves that the highly advaced nations, like America, are not the only places that the mass media has an effect on its citizens.

Before watching this film, I never really realized how biased our nation's news stations could be, and the overwhelming affect that it has on us. The film shows coverage of the Iraq war from the view point of AlJazeera, Iraq's leading news source. What they report as news is biased toward what they want their people to see. They show all of the negatives of the war that are happening to their people and country, but never show how the war is helping their country. Watching this film and seeing how they are showing this biased view actually shows us how are news coverage is just as biased. All we show is how our country is trying to liberate Iraq and bring democracy to the rest of the world.

So now matter where you are or who's news you are watching, what you see must be taken with a grain of salt as it is always going to be biased.

02/07/2008 Agenda Setting

Today, I watched the nightly news from channel 12 and channel 6 news stations. They both had an emphasis on local news, and both reported on almost all of the same stories. The lead story and story the spent the most time on, was a late breaking story of a house fire in Pittsburgh. Most of the emphasive seemed to be on negative stories, like the story on the house fire, and the was a story of an armed robbery. These stories didn't seem to shape or distort the viewers perception, but it does seem to send out a negative message because of the negative connotation of most of the stories. The only bright spot was when they switched their coverage over to sports and reported about the penguins recent success.

02/07/2008 Scrooge McDuck

For my image, I choose this picture of Scrooge McDuck. The medium I used to find this image is the internet, but the medium that this image is from is television. Scrooge McDuck shows that how our culture is greedy and that most of us believe that money buys happiness. Scrooge McDuck is often seen swimming through his room that is full of his treasures. Some people have tried to estimate how much Scrooge McDuck is worth. One "Time" article reported McDuck's fortune to be one multiplujillion, nine obsquatumatillion, six hundred twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents, while "Forbes.com" reported that he is worth $28.8 billion.

No matter how much treasure Scrooge McDuck has amassed, he is always trying to find new ways to increase his fortune, and will stop at almost nothing to obtain these treasures.

02/07/2008 Media Use

Weekly hours of media use categorized by different mediums

Medium Category / Hours of use

Television / 28

Radio / 2

Recordings / 12

Magazines / 3

Books / 7

Internet / 35

Video games / 10

Total / 97

Before class, I never really thought about how much the media affects me and the amount of which I use these different mediums. Although, I believe that these numbers can be misleading because many of them are used at the same time which changes how you have to look at the total. The medium that I use most often, as shown above, is internet. This number seems a lot higher than the others, but most of the time I am using other mediums at the same time such as television, recordings or video games. I use the internet for a variety of reasons, such as entertainment, information, and communication.

02/05/2008 "Mickey Mouse Monopoly"

Disney is and has been a huge part of our culture aimed mostly toward children, and is considered by many to be wholesome family entertainment. In response to "Mickey Mouse Monopoly," I disagree with their overarching theme that Disney is specifically using racist and sexist ideas and characters and trying to teach them to our youth. Disney movies are a small percentage of what kids watch as they grow up, and practically everyone I know or have met has grown up watching Disney movies and the like, and it seems that the environment in which they were raised, not what they have watched on film or on TV, has had the greatest impact on how they perceive other people. The documentary showed some instances in past Disney movies that may have appeared to be racist or sexist, but I don’t think any of them were blatantly obvious, and there were a few where I still can’t see what was wrong with them, for example the hyenas for the Lion King. So in my opinion, Disney is not a problem for our culture, but it is our culture itself that needs to be fixed. Also, Disney is in the works of producing a new movie called “The Princess and the Frog” which includes Disney’s first black princess.

In the film “D2: The Mighty Ducks,” there are several black characters and female characters portrayed throughout the entire film and have prominent roles. The team starts out with female characters of Connie Moreau, and Julie Gaffney, and with one black character in Jesse Hall. They are picked to play for team USA in the Junior Goodwill Games in Los Angeles. After losing to team Iceland, they are challenged to game of street hockey by a group of local kids in LA, which has a mix of black and white players. They teach the ducks a few lessons, and Russ Tyler (played by Kenan Thompson) a black kid from LA joins the team and helps the USA ducks win the gold. These black players are depicted as equal to everyone else and even superior in some aspects, and the female players are shown to be just as strong as the males and stand up for themselves on and off of the ice.