Lecture Reflection & Media Idol
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| Source: psu |
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| Why so serious? Source: Sam Carter |
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| Children being checked for radiation exposure after the regrettable disaster Source: The Guardian |
Instrumental Surveillance provides information that is useful in
everyday life. News about latest movie, stock market price, fashion ideas, etc.
“Sex and the City”, “The Devil Wears
Prada” performed a surveillance function for fashions and designer
clothing.
Lecture reflection
Welcome to the second week! This week, we studied the social effect of mass communication. In our humble opinion, mass communication is harmful in a harmless way; that is our ironic theory upon this platform.
Mass media is use to inform, persuade, amuse and enlighten the audience. Mass media also enable different elements of society that are not directly connected to converge. Mass advertising attempts to link the needs of buyers with the products of sellers. For examples, voters in the constituencies learn about the activities of their elected officials through newspapers, TVs and radios.
For us to have a better understanding of that, a paradigm is used. There are two different approaches in the said paradigm. Namely, functional approach and the critical/cultural approach.
Functional
approach emphasizes the way that audiences use mass communication and the
benefits people receive from media consumption. For example, tsunami and
nuclear debacle at Fukushima, Japan. All news cable covered the event, reporting
on the effect and its aftermath. TV cameras in Japan gave viewers inside scoop as rescue missions
and reliefs are being conducted. News reporters “embedded” with amateur video
provided unprecedented eyewitness coverage from the location. Scientists and
experts offer their analysis on the event.
Taking an example of National Day Celebration for critical/ cultural
approach, the person uses critical/ cultural approach would be interested in
looking at other elements of the process. During the celebration, many
newscasters wore Malaysian flag pin, batik / national dress, and some channel
incorporated the Malaysian Flag into the graphics they used to introduce
National Day Celebration and campaigns associated with it.
The two takeaways points from the
lessons are beware surveillance and instrumental surveillance. Examples of beware
surveillance is when the
media inform about the threats from terrorism, hurricanes, tsunamis, depressed
economic conditions, increasing inflation, etc. These warnings can be about
immediate (TV station interrupt programming to broadcast tornado warning) or
long term or chronic threat (newspaper runs a series about air pollution or
unemployment).
Source: http://www.independent.ie/regionals/newrossstandard/out-about/best-singers-ever-30081506.html
Michael Jackson a.k.a "King of Pop" or the "Legend" was born on 29th Aug 1958 and tragically died on 25th
June 2009. He’s an American multi-talented artist. He is a famous singer and also a
great dancer/performer. He started at an early age of eleven as the lead singer of Jackson 5- a popular Motown group. At the age of 13, he pursued towards a solo artist career whilst working along with the Jackson 5. He actually invented his own dance moves which became
iconic. Many people especially his fans imitated his signature dance move dubbed as the
moonwalk, pelvic thrust, 360 spin, toe stand, the kick. He had a very distinctive voice that is capable of various ranges. His significant way of grunting, the way he pronounces "shamone", his high pitch "ow" and "hee hee" is often layered on top of most of his songs. He puts in tremendous amount of emotions in all of his songs. He has a very flexible voice that could go from low soft and sweet tone to powerful tone.
Besides of being a songwriter, he’s a record producer as well as an actor. The songs he produces conveys deep messages. “Heal the World”, the
“Earth Song”, “Man in the Mirror” and “Black or White” are just a couple of
examples written by him to inform the world through his meaningful lyrics. He joined performing arts circles at an early age as the lead singer of Jackson
5 (popular Motown group) After all, he has pursued his own music career as a
solo artist at the age of 13. He had his very own style: -the glove covered in silver sequins that he
wore on his left hand. His “anti-gravity bend”- he invented a special shoe to accomplish the 45
degrees bend. He made everyone faint...women to man squeal like crazy teenage girls. He sold over a hundred million record. MJ died tragically in 2009 at the age of 50 and the
cause of death is believed to be cardiac arrest.
source: http://www.mjfancommunity.com/barbara.html
His appearance changed drastically,
his face, skin colour, eye hair and nose was completely different compared to
how it was when he was younger. As for his skin colour, Michael suffered from Vitiligo. It is a skin disorder that destroys pigmentation. It is a genetic
issue that came about from his father’s root. He openly admitted during Oprah’s
interview that he does use make up to cover up the uneven blotches but besides
that according to him, he did not consume on any bleaching products. As opposed
to media rumor, they made up rumors saying he was self conscious and didn't
wanted to be a coloured man that he was. His skin lightening issue cased a
great controversy. Many people don’t and will never understand his skin
lightening problem due to how the media has criticised him. His glove that he
wore on the left hand was not just created for his iconic fachion style but
also to cover up the obvious patches on his hand. It took him many year to
admit to his disorder. Media criticised him for “de-africanising” himself by
straightening his curly Afro and for performing plastic surgery on his nose.
All this was an issue to Michael
Jackson and during the interview with Oprah, he questioned the media with a
very important point. “let’s reverse it, what about all those millions of
people who sit out in the sun to become darker; to become other than what they
are, nobody says nothing about that...” the societies’ reaction when they were
aware about MJ’s skin lightening, it proved that we are still living in a world
where racism still exists. “As Jackson
himself once said, “What does my face have to do with my music or my dancing?”
These sentiments are the same as those expressed by Dr. Martin Luther King,
when he famously said, “I look to the day when people will not be judged by the
colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.”” it is a
question people and media who overreacted should consider about. Why does his
colour matter? Does this make him less of an artist? Nothing besides his
appearance changed therefore what were the whole fuss all about?
The negative message that was brought by Michael Jackson to the younger
generation is being a black is that he is supporting and promoting cosmetics surgery as he acts as appearance and look is much more important than
inner beauty. It causes a lot of young people to go for plastic surgery to
“beautify” themselves into whom they are not. Moreover, young people start to
aware of the importance of outer beauty and they judge others on the appearance
and look.
In contrary, positive
effects from this issue of Michael Jackson is, he is supporting freedom of
choice and to create awareness about human rights. He ignored the media and
haters and does what he wanted because haters got to hate right?
There is another issue of Michael Jackson that touched off a heated controversy. The child molestation accusation is still doubtful whether it is true or
not. This is because nobody were there to prove this situation. Also it is in
one’s nature to defend themselves which is what Michael and Robson was doing.
Robson claims that he has been molested by the superstar for seven year, from
age seven to fourteen. This case can be viewed from number of perspective.
The
continues repeated allegations of pedophilia seems as if many children that he “helped out” and “took care” accused him to get money out of him eventually if
they win the case. In Michael’s defense, we’d like to believe he was a victim
of innocence and naivete. Due to his extreme kindness and concern on children’s
happiness, he lowered himself to their level.
He had a rough traumatic childhood hence he aspired to be peter pan, the
boy who never grows old. He identified himself as Peter Pan to the children who
visited him, he got comfortable with them. Though it’s not an illegal act to
cuddle with children, the media made it to be. He cuddled, tickled and just
generally played with them.
Rumours were made saying he slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in a belief that it would grant him an unnaturally prolonged life by slowing down ageing process. This rumour was started by himself to promote the release of the Captain EO film in 1986. He was visiting the Hyperbaric Chamber at Brotman Memorial Hospital after he had burned his scalp whilst filming a Pepsi advertisement.Jackson donated vast sums of money to the Burn Center, making the purchase of this piece of equipment possible. When the press found out he was interested in purchasing the chamber, Jackson and his managers decided to take some photos of him in the chamber and plant the story of him sleeping in it everyday in order to get Jackson in the headlines
After all, Michael Jackson is still being known and remembered as
an incomparable superstar. His evergreen songs are still to be heard of, even after his death he released an album that was recorded before the event. Overall, he still has more supporters than haters. His
songs, movies and concert videos are still being played constantly by the media
everywhere even after his passing.
During one of the group discussion about Michael Jackson, everyone believed that he was an unique individual who doesn't conform to the social norm. Be it his sense of fashion, behavior, beliefs and way of living. We came to a decision that he is a man of his own, he was a role model to multiple generations. He was able to connect with people all over the globe, regardless of their nationality, race or ethnicity.
Michael Jackson was a great influence on teenagers of almost all continents. My group concluded that Michael Jackson’s lyrics could be interpreted into good pick up lines. Other than that, he greatly influenced young people of past generations to dance like him Many aspired to dance and sing like him. His song “Heal the World” is a very significant charitable song. Many famous celebrities get together and cover this song in order to raise fund. For example, in 2010 after the disastrous Earthquake Haiti suffered from, 80 artists, old and new artists did a collaborative cover to raise fund. This particular song has benefited many countries with the help of many artists.
Angelina Jolie Voight is an inspiring, humanitarian, actress and a mother of six. She was born on June 4th, 1975 in the City of Angels, California. She had received loads of awards such as Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. She started her career as an actress at a very young age and became a hit in the 90’s. She’s one Hollywood’s most top paid actresses. Jolie had married twice, Hacker co-star Jonny Lee Miller was the first husband married in 1995 and separated in the year 1999. A year later, she married to an Award winning actor, Billy Bob Thorntorn but lasted only for three years.
Jolie has printed tremendous amount of impact in this world. She’s devoted to the humanitarian society. In 2001 Angelina Jolie was made the Goodwill ambassador for the United Nation Refugees Agency. In 2005, Jolie received the Global Humanitarian Association Award by the UN of USA. In May 2013, Jolie announced in a New York Times op-ed article titled “My Medical Choice” that she underwent a double mastectomy in an effort to prevent breast cancer in the future. It is said that Jolie decided to go with the surgery after knowing that she has the gene called BRCA1 which means the chances of getting a breast cancer and ovarian cancer are very high.
One of the recent controversies that had to encounter was when she was questioned by one of the reporter about her favourite Chinese director and she said “I am not sure if you consider Ang Lee Chinese, he’s a Chinese artist and actor, I think his works and the actors in his films are the ones I am most familiar with and very fond of Taiwanese, but he also does many Chinese-language films”.
Taiwan and China have been at odds since 1949, when the Nationalists set up a rival government on the island following their loss to the Communists in China’s civil war. Jolie's remarks have let to a number of scathing comments online from Chinese Internet users, some of whom have threatened to boycott her movies, according to The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, in Taiwan, Jolie has received support for her comments, with one Internet user calling her a “brave and brilliant woman,” the Journal said. “Her comment about Ang Lee being Taiwanese shows she fully deserves to be the Goodwill Ambassador for the UN. She is not afraid to tell the truth,” another Taiwanese woman wrote on Facebook, adding that she plans to gather a group of her friends to support Jolie’s new film, according to the Journal.
We think that media portrays Angelina Jolie as a kind hearted woman who would do anything to change the world. We know that there are a few problems before when the media once called Jolie, incest because there was a time when Jolie brings her brother everywhere and they’ve even kissed in public. Besides that, portrays Angelina as a humanitarian and a homeracker because society thinks that the reason why Brad Pitt divorced with Jennifer is because of Angelina! But after time flies people respect her.
- GRANDEUR -
Researchers: Raaveeniya, Zaid
Writers: Raaveniya, Yao Qing, Yin Peng, Zaid, Bernard
Editor: Yao Qing, Bernard, Raaveniya
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