Bulworth

This movie, Bulworth was the most influential movie among the 4 to 5 movies that we watched. While watching it, I liked the white protagonist who was running for a new election. In the beginning of the movie, he was just same as other candidates. He was conservative, did not shout for any change, and had no real power. As he becomes scared about dying, he started to be an active politician. He could do extreme things which he could not do before because he was going to die anyway. However, as he began doing what he really wanted to do, he felt the importance of change in the country. He wanted to live more and bring change to the education, economic system, and black relationship. I really liked the movie until Bulworth sings and give speeches of what he really think about. I did not think that the movie would kill him at the end. I wanted to see the real changes that he brings to the country but the movie stopped him from progressing more. The movie was showing our reality. In reality, the place where blacks, whites, and Asians are all considered equal. There is no place where poor people can become rich. The gap in economy will always remain. Whenever an innovative person comes out, the society kills that person. We do not let that person to live and bring out the real changes. It is because we ourselves partly want the society to remain constant. When we have money, when we have certain social status, we do not want changes to occur. If we are not the ones who are suffering, we do not care. If we are the ones who are being suffered, we do not have any power to bring changes. No one can actually make changes. That is the problem. Some people say that education can solve this problem. However, is it really so? Education is a part of current problems in the society. I don't think the kids who gets education from our generation would ever think about brining changes because we will tell them that it is extremely dangerous.

Social media??

Social media is a cyber place where people can meet and discuss. It is usually deeply connected with the Internet. Most types of it contain network systems. Facebook is one of the most popular social media and things like "naver blog" or "blogspot" are also types of social media. I'm not sure but I guess MSN is also a social media. I think its strength is that it is a two-way communication. When a person writes a controversial idea, it can gain strength or lose strength immediately. People read what others think and comment on them freely. Actually, this strength can also be a weakness at the same time. Being free is dangerous. We do not know how much people can criticize on some issues. This is quite scary.

Media Study Assignment 3

After watching "Heathers"

To me, this movie was quite shocking. In the movie, the main characters, Veronica and JD kills one of the Heathers and two seniors. They try to conceal their crime by making the event to look like suicides. From the start, the story was terribly strange. However, what's even stranger was the attitude of the teachers in the school where they go to. After this tragedy of students committing suicide (according to what they know), they made this event seem like a cool thing. By doing some activities like sending messages to dead Heather and making a film about the memories of dead students, teachers were creating a mood. A strange one. Saying as if committing suicide is acceptable. As if death can bring people to be valuable and famous. In the movie, even parents of Veronica were influenced by the film that was on TV. As this mood of suicide became normal, medias such as TVs and radios started to talk more and more about this issue. As media became more flourishing, the students started to change their ideas about suicide. To them, suicide was not a far away thing anymore. Whenever they want to, they could commit suicide. One example was Veronica's close friend, who was once one of the Heathers. After many of her friends committed suicides (not actually, but she thinks like that), she became very depressed and try to kill herself. She was affected by the media which portrayed suicide as a common thing that can always happen. And, because she did not experienced suicide, it was even more difficult for her to figure out whether the information of the media was reliable or not. Different from this friend, the other friend, queen Bee started to gain more power by using the medias effectively. She tried to be the second queen in the group Heather. She participated in the film thing actively. She wanted to be the leader. Moreover, in JD's home, his father showed Veronica and JD, a TV news showing the destruction of a huge building. It was kind of portrayed in a dramatical way and JD's father felt happy and thrilled about it. These are all the strange things happened in this movie. In this movie, the media has a distinct role. It affects people.

Media Study Assignment 2

-Is the state of the media really as bleak as what is portrayed by the movies we've seen in class? How and why did this change occur?

-> I believe that the state of the media is not the same as the one portrayed by the movies. In the movies that we saw, we looked at only small portions of the media. It is true that media has a role of persuading normal people. If we only think about that particular role, the media can be considered as a very scary tool of influence. However, if we think about other roles of the media, it does not seem that much bleak. Other than persuading people, mass media can give information to people. This does not seem that much important but we will not be able to live properly without the updating information provided by the media. The media gives joy to people as well. Most of the topics that we talk about with other people are the topics that came out from the media. In the movies, the media is portrayed as a very extreme thing. However, when we look at our daily lives we can find out that the media is not really bleak as the one portrayed by the movies.

-How can the principals of a true democracy be revived? The mass media must play an important role in that process, but much needs to be overcome and changed before they can occur.

-> In democracy system, it needs to be possible for normal people to express their ideas freely.

If the media does not exist, people cannot follow this rule properly even though they know about it. The problem of the media is that sometimes it can control people to have certain opinions on important topics. For example, about the mad cow disease, people were angry and upset after watching some biased documentaries. The media can make people believe, like, and hate things that we do not usually have opinions on in the first place. The media helps us to express. However it can influence us to revive a true democracy.

Media Study Homework

1. It was quite hard for me to understand this first question. Inception? What does this mean by during the inception of the U.S.? If the start of U.S. can be considered as settlement and independence, only paper media existed at that time. Maybe I can consider the commercials as one type of media. Commercials encouraged people to move to the new world. Or, newspapers might have existed. News papers at that time were mostly used at giving informations and sometimes persuading people to participate in some actions. Therefore, mass media was largely focused on factual events and sometimes opinions.

2. In the film, that we watched last class, media is used as a tool to inform, stimulate, and sometimes even deceive normal people. Through media, the main character could alter people's thinkings and pretend as a good and justifiable person. He could advertise tobaccos effectively through media. Media can always be biased because the producers are humans. Today, media act as persuading machine to people.

3. The roles of media have changed from informative to persuasive and decisive. Like what Noam Chomsky concluded, media nowadays act as emperors. Media can control people's minds and actions. Media has power. How to use that power effectively is the main questions that we need to ask and think about.