Sunday, March 6, 2011

Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us

Christensen's Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us
Argument:
Christensen’s argument is “Our society’s culture industry colonizes their minds and teacher them how to act, live, and dream.”  This is done through children’s books, movies, and other media and technology. 
I completely agree with the idea that what we see in the media influences how we grow up and act.  It is apparent in the beginning of her article when the student made a comment about stories not being cute, but learning to manipulate people into believing one thing.  I was stunned right then at how true most of this was.  It continued to show how cartoons and movies are stereotypical as well.  There is barely any evidence of black, poor, or even GLBT people on TV.  The focus is primarily on whites.  When children watch TV they are actually watching a false reality of how the world is.  For instance, Disney movies only show one way of life.  Until last year, you never saw a black princess in a Disney movie.  This was also a very controversial idea.  I believe that if we follow Christensen’s idea of influencing people, we should at least do it in a good way.  We should be showing black people, as well as GLBT.  The book, Prince and Prince we read the other day was the first time I have ever seen a children’s book, movie, or idea revolved around this issue.  The quicker we get the information out, the sooner we solve the problems around these issues.

I would like to talk about the movies on TV and see if anyone actually has seen a movie around any of the issues we talk about in class because I don’t believe I have.  It is time that we start speaking about the issues and solve whatever problems there are.

3 comments:

  1. i completely agree! the quicker we get the information out the better. also the book we read in class was the first time i have seen a book about these too. i thought it was terrible that the library had to put such books on reserves so no one would destroy them. i thought that was awful. but i agree the quicker the word gets out the better.

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  2. I agree with both of you. Why wait? The longer people put off this issue then the more severe things are going to get. It's amazing how when I was a kid my parents didn't care which cartoons I watched. All I would do is sit and laugh my head off and now parents limit their children to which shows they can and can't watch because of this issue.

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  3. I agree. The more we become aware of these things and make children aware the better off we are. I was watching a special on the "first man to have a baby" one day and I found it fascinating. The man was born a woman but then had a sex change. I can't remember exactly but I think he met up with his now wife who could not have children. I think it was before his final surgery he started to go off of his hormones that made him more masculine and took women hormones to become pregnant. All of his identification was even legally changed over to say he was a man, although he was pregnant he still considered himself a he and was having the baby simply because his wife could not. This relates I feel because they decided that they book they were going to read to their baby was a story about a daddy seahorse that was had a baby. If anyone does not know it is the male seahorse that carries the baby. Thought that was cute!

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