Media's Vision of Reality

Media is one of the best ways in which our portrayals of the world we live in get out to the general population. It utilizes our senses of sight and sound and deals with our emotions in a way that it can captivatingly get a point across without much effort on our part. The artistry that goes into creating each and every shot to a film or any aspect in which film is utilized (ie. tv, internet, etc.) creates effects that cause us to react in a certain way in which the director intended. Through the director vision, we experience their "shared vision of reality", delving into topics and genres in which they feel will best get their point across on thematic subjects, or just humanity and morals in general.

One topic I would like to delve into is that of gender roles and how each of the sexes is portrayed within the media. Women, specifically, have a variety of stereotypes branded upon them (as do men and a every type of person in general, but just focusing on women for the moment). Women typically are seen as the house keepers, the mothers, the caregivers of the family. They stay home and cook and clean and have a very old fashioned ideals. While the other end of this spectrum is the very revealing, skinny, showy sexy side of women that is portrayed in the media, always showing that we are not skinny enough, your "this" isn't like "that", you aren't pretty enough, you'll never be enough, etc. It sets a very set and impossible "Barbie Doll" image that is virtually impossible to duplicate and sets standards to a ridiculous level. One example that shows this side of media and the impossible figure in which society has created for women, and how we should just learn to accept and be ourselves is the movie 200 Pounds Beauty, where a girl, in hopes of impressing the guy she likes but doesn't feel like she do that because she is over weight (even though he felt for her to begin with), got a surgery to remake her body until she was petite and socially "gorgeous", but turned into an ugly person inside, and the guy ended up liking the old her better. This movie is trying to convey to us that we shouldn't let society shape us, but that we should shape ourselves and accept who we are, because when you try to be something you're not, nothing ever goes right.

The next topic I want to discuss are simply resurfacing themes that I've noticed throughout a variety of media types. Topics such as acceptance in general (a main example being that of homosexuals, such as in Glee), our fascination with the upper class (mostly in watching them flip out on each other and their overall dramatic lives), along with our appeal to heroism, but not only that, but also seeing the side of the antagonist in a way that the villain is the main character. Violence is also another aspect of media that we have become extremely desensitized to.

Going into one of media's favorite themes, the search for acceptance, there are multitudes of examples of films and shows where the main character is driven by the need to only feel accepted by their peers or their family or just by the world in general. They want to feel important, like they have purpose, like they are wanted. The television show Glee is a popular example in which a bunch of outcast misfits and people from basically all different areas and groups/cliques within the school join together to make something beautiful and find acceptance from each other.

As stated above, the deep characterization within both heroes and villains is an intriguing topic to explore from all angles. We've all seen the stereotypical hero movie, where the good guy beats the villain and gets the girl, but what is fascinating is when films take us into the stories of each and every character, good and bad, and explains their stories and situations and experiences so that the lines between who is truly good and who is truly evil is blurred. For in reality, is anything ever so black and white? One great example for such blurred lines of characterization is the show Once Upon a Time (which i highly recommend), tat delves into each and every story book character you can think of and intertwines all of their stories so beautifully that you can't get enough and you need to know what happens next.

As a last note, violence is something that media has been dishing out to us ever sense we were children. Cartoons such as Tom and Jerry along with the Looney Toons were especially violent, and even children shows today, even Pokemon, show sides of violence to solve our problems. The amount of blood and gore relayed within most modern film footage today can be utterly revolting. The fact that we have been desensitized to such utter savagery to the point where we seek out blood and gore within films is sickening to an extent, and it is embedded within us at a young age. Most people find any sort of violence within film to be extremely entertaining, along within real life, but this has been programmed within us be society sense we were children and if you think about it, is rather disgusting.

As a total, media portrays to us society's norms and expectations, along with a directors outcry against these certain ideals. It is a mesh of calls to action along with messages hidden within deeper plots and and themes and ideas that we can all relate to and sympathize with. Media is our societies way of connecting us all together, but the question remains, are each of these connections a good influence upon us?