Seeing Gender

I remember being in middle school at about the age of 12 or 13. One of the biggest movies that year was Gladiator directed by Ridley Scott, and staring Russel Crow. Piratically every boy in my 6th grade class was talking about it, and practically every mother that attended my church was repelled by intense level of violence in the movie. In short, it was one of those "ultra violent" master pieces of my childhood that was supposed to "define cool." While at my local Blockbuster, I had the chance to rent the movie. In school I was studying Roman Mythology at the time, and I was never one to "mix work with pleasure." Seeing that I was unsure if I would enjoy the film, my mother offered an alternative. She suggested her all time favorite movie Gone With The Wind. While skeptical at first, I found the film to be highly enjoyable and it remains one of my favorite films to this day, though I am still sometimes embarrassed to admit it. Why? Because of the way media influences gender identity. There was no written rule that said which of the two movies should appeal to either sex, it was just that Gladiator seemed to be the more masculine choice. The main character was a man, the villain was a man, the leading actress in some part played the "damsel in distress" etc. Gone with the Wind, by comparison seemed to be much more feminine. Half of the main cast was female, most of the scenes centered around female interaction and response, the story focused on a love triangle as opposed to an "epic struggle."
This does not mean that only men can appreciate Gladiator or viceversa, but base on the culteral norms of the time, I felt somewhat silly for admitting which of the two films I enjoyed the most.

Escaping

We often use the media as means of escaping and forgetting our problems of everyday life. How is this possible and why do we do it? What is the appeal? The answer will vary from person to person, but the simple answer is that every form of media be it movies, TV, video games, Broadway productions, comic books, novels, etc posses the abilities to capture our imaginations and bring them into another world. But what is it about this other world that makes it so interesting? Often these worlds can be larger than life with characters that embark on epic quests or take part in desperate struggles. Other times they can be grounded in realism with characters that have believable but unique abilities. Some times they can be very similar to our own world with characters that are average and unremarkable, but humanistic and relateable. What the media does is give us a situation or set of circumstances that we know are not real but imagine could be real. It then presents a limited, but physical manifestation that allows us to further suspend our disbelief. I know there is no such thing as Superman, I know a man cannot fly, but I can imagine what would be like if there was such a person. Seeing someone portary Superman on screen finishes the work my imagination started.

A Day in the Life

The media is all around us. Even now as I'm writing, music is playing from my radio, I have a YouTube video of Barack Obama's inauguration, and I'm running AIM. To many distractions at one time? Perhaps, but how many can say that this is not the norm for a typical study session? For so many people the media as becoming more easily accessible and it is becoming more integrated into our everyday lives. Information whether in print or electronic is presented to the public in a variety of methods. For me, most of my media consumption is absorbed through the Internet. I use it for just about everything school related and I use for it for entertainment purposes more often than I watch TV. Newspapers are becoming a bigger part of my media consumption as well. Last year I was required to have a subscription to the New York Times for one of my classes and I have the same deal going for my principles of electronic media class. I'm still not in the habit of picking up the paper every day but I am getting better. My biggest form of media consumption probably comes from movies, I am a huge moviegoer especially during the summer. Although once a movie is out of theaters I find that I don't have a strong a desire to watch it even if I rushed to buy the DVD.