In class we discussed the advertisement of birth control. The discussion centered around the fact that these advertisements tend to avoid the fact that birth control is actually for preventing people from becoming pregnant. I thought that was very interesting and in fact, birth control is not really discussed that much at all in the media. if the topic isn't avoided at all, when it is discussed (outside of advertisements) birth control is talked about for it's side effects (ie clear skin, etc.).
Recently, there are shows popping up on every network that revolve around the controversial pregnant teenager. ABC Family's "Secret Life of the American Teenager," MTV's "16 and Pregnant" and it's sequel "Teen Mom" all depict the lives (fictional and non-fictional) or teen girl's who have unexpectedly become pregnant. As these shows should be/have the potential to be very educational to young girls thinking about becoming sexually active, producers have actually skipped over one very important issue: the pill. These shows completely skirt the issue with contraceptives only being mentioned a few times in it's first season--not at all in the MTV shows. The issue is very horrific to some, like Stanford Professor Nancy Brown who "gets frustrated when she watches movies pass up perfectly good opportunities to add a line or two about contraceptives of STD's." As an example she provides the following: "when Juno's dad, after he learns that is daughter is pregnant, tells her, 'I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when.'" She suggests instead, "what would be a lot better is 'I wish i had talked to you about birth control when you were 12.'"
These shows skirt the issues because networks, like advertisers, know the political/religious controversies such conversations could stir up--so instead of discussing it at all, the pill is avoided all together.
This week's topic kind of bothered me as the topic dealt with some sense of racism in advertisements. I remembered the soap advertisements in which blacks and whites are represented as dirty and clean. It really bothered me but I understand it was the advertisement companies' own strategy to attract consumers since at that time most of consumers were composed of middle and upper white classes. One specific advertisement that I remember is that a white nanny cleans of a black baby with a soap and the baby turns into white. This dramatically shows the racism at that time and even overtly presented in the advertisements. However, white consumers would be interested and attracted and eventually buy the goods. So I found out the advertisements actually reflect the social or cultural problems but sometimes in wrong ways. In one of the Korean advertisements which shows not racism but some sense of stereotypes, insurance companies try to appeal people by showing insurance would bring happiness and safety to home. It is actually true that having insurace is better than not having it and it would be safe to have it. However, the ads only reflects only good things so the side effect of insurances in Korean society is never revealed. Vicious people try to take advantage of insurances; they harm themselves or others on the purpose of getting paid by insurance companies. This is actually a serious social problem in Korea. Thus, people should not all believe what ads reflect; they should be aware of the hidden things in the advertisements.
At the end of class on Wednesday we talked about birth control. In particular there was that commercial for Yaz in which a group of girls are at a club and talking about the benefits and risks of birth control. This commercial is ridiculous, because women don't do that in real life. Here's a funny video that parodies the real commercial, as well as the real thing.
I think the parody does a great job at pointing out the flaws in the commercial. For example, they make fun of the fact that one of the girls just happens to be a gynecologist who knows everything about Yaz. It's highly unlikely that that would happen in the real world, and the parody takes advantage of that. I think this commercial does a good job of making fun of advertisements for drugs in general. Drug ads these days often feature people in everyday situations who know much more about the drug than anyone in that situation in the real world would ever know. The drug company wants us to feel as though your everyday neighborhood gynecologist knows everything about Yaz and feels fine discussing the drug at a club, when this is highly unlikely in reality. It's amazing what the lengths to which the drug companies will go to get us to buy their product.
What I loved about reading this article was, it was on the day I began to put the finishing touches on my final paper where my group and I explored male stereotypes, that ultimately lead to the creation of a television show based in New Jersey.
I think that this article, at least for me, really drives home the point that this class has set fourth from the begging. As people who want to be involved in any business that involves media, advertising, marketing, and public relations- in order to deliver the message, we must be six steps a head of the curve in order to keep up with popular media trends.
Looking at television channels and networks such as MTV, VH1, Bravo, and HBO who have stayed smart to the trend that audiences are craving a look into the life of "real people". According to the article, "the skew that these shows are able to reach, for audience, is truly phenomenal. Among women ages 18 to 49, the appeal of the New Jersey “Housewives” is 50 to 60 percent above the average for all cable shows, said Henry Schafer, executive vice president at Marketing Evaluations, the company that compiles the “Q scores” for likeability of TV series and celebrities."
To me, if you want to be a producer, you must understand the importance of advertising for your product.
This week we discussed the underlying messages in soap commercials. Although a lot of the messages were generally about racism, some, like most of the present ones, are more centered on sexism. Swiffer has recently launched a campaign that involves the personification of mops and brooms. In these commercials, these housewives are dumping these brooms and mops for a more efficient Swiffer. And afterwards, these mops and brooms come back looking for them, trying to win them back with flowers and bands playing Player’s “Baby Come Back.” This action of trying to romance the housewives suggest that these cleaning tools, if they could have a sex, are male, which indirectly suggests that women need these tools, males, to get the cleaning done. Although we generally think cleaning is a women’s task, these commercials continue to enforce how women are weak and will always need the help of men to get the work done.
In class last week we discussed the introduction of soap into society and its ability to bring forth many racist ideas and concepts. For example, when soap was first introduced it was often advertised as a product to not only simply cleanse the skin, but also "cleanse" the skin of people with darker complexions to turn them lighter. Obviously this concept is impossible as well as very racist. Many images in advertisements displayed a caucasian person using soap to "scrub off" the dark complexion of a black person. Obviously this is an impossible endeavor and almost unbelievable to even think of. The use of soap as a "cleansing" product in more ways than one during that time led me to contemplate the issues of skin color that still run rampant in society today. Unfortunately, many celebrities and people even today attempt to lighten their skin or choose to become lighter rather than darker if they have a choice through surgery. It is doubtful that these people have their ideas from those soap advertisements from many years ago, however, for some reason even in today's more open minded era there is still the concept of white superiority in people's minds. Celebrites such as Rihanna, Michael Jackson, and Nicole Richie have all created skepticism around their significantly lighter skin colors.
For example:
Nicole's skin is obviously lighter. Whether this is due to makeup or treatment it is uncertain, however, since her body appears significantly lighter in color it is doubtful that she used makeup.
Michael Jackson's lighten skin was perhaps partly due to disease, however, people also agree that he may have lightened his skin cosmetically as well.
All of these dark complexioned celebrities may have purposefully lightened their skin tones which shows an emphasis on the importance of skin color and the idea of light superiority. It is sad that even today people with darker complexions still feel the need to lighten their skin. Hopefully some day people will truly be able to be happy with their color, size, shape, etc. and love themselves for who they are.
On Wednesday class, we talked about the characterisitcs of drug commercials. Those commercials usually describe their products as "panacea", telling people that all the bad symptoms would be gone with their products. This reminds me of a commercial, which I see whenever I watch online CNN news.
This is a commercial of Vicks-Nyquil. It's a medicine for a cold. The ad shows many people who seems to have a hard time while sleeping, because of a cold. And the ad says Nyquil is needed for 'better looking tomorrow'. The ad says that it will be good for using 'the nightime, sniffing, sneezing, coughing, aching, fever,' seeming like it is a panacea. Like this ad, commercials for drug products often depict their products as a magic, saying that whatever your conditions are, the product will make the conditions better. The interesting thing about Nyquill commercial is that there are a lot of versions of this commercials, yet the ads never show us how people look like tomorrow. They promise 'for better looking tomorrow,' but they are not directly showing how people are better looking tomorrow. If they are showing people who are completely recovered people, they are telling lies ( we all know that it is hard to be recoverd in a day!), but....what a smart ad!
The myth of scientific truth is something that our society loves to ignore. As Jon pointed out, we love to trust the pharmaceutical ads because we lack the expertise to say if it is false or not. The advertising companies are allowed to advertise in America and nowhere else in the world. That alone says a lot. The advertising companies are taking advantage of our trust in doctors in order to sell their product. Rather than treating medication as a cure for someone’s serious illness, they are creating it into a product that is fashionable to buy. People can now request the same drugs, rather than being subscribed. This commoditization of medical drugs has resulted in people thinking they have the symptoms advertised and taking medications for ailments they do not actual have. Half of the commercials seen on TV eventually have to remake a commercial to explain all the new-found side-effects on people, but by that time the drug has already been mass-consumed.
The way these advertisements work is by showing people with these whatever ailment and placing them in a situation where they cannot be social, go on with their daily lives, or go out at night, but once the person takes the drug being promoted they are then able to go out and have fun with the rest of the world. Once one part of the body is fixed, you can be a better person all around that is able to go out into the world and be loved. The drugs sell a lifestyle. All of these advertisements blur the line between scientist and artist. Science is being created into something sellable and loveable, rather than serious, healthy, and reliable. This is not the direction our medical profession needs to take. Attempts to get these types of ads off the air have been thwarted by our fabulous capitalistic ways because the pharmaceutical companies have put so much money in these ads that they will do anything to stop the ban. People need to become more educated about what they are putting into their bodies and ad companies need to stop taking advantage of people’s trust in doctors, because one day that trust will be ruined.
This week the part in our reading about genetics interested me alot. When we were talking about eugenics in the class, I remembered about mixed dogs, which are popular in Japan. Recently, designer dogs, the mixed dogs which are artificially produced by crossbreeding are having a boomlet in my country. There are a number of new kinds of dogs which are produced by crossing different kinds of purebred dogs, and they attract people who want a unique dog different from others'. Considering only poodles, there are tons of these crossbred dogs such as Cockapoo (cocker spaniel/poodle), Poo-Shi (Shiba inu/ poodle), etc .
Poodles are considered to be beneficial to crossbreed because they are very intelligent and have a non-shedding, hypoallergenic coat, which people who are allergic to dog fur are often not allergic to. But the production of these designer dogs is controversial. Opponents argue that many of the breeds are not beneficial; the breeders of designer dogs just focus on producing mixed dogs which have unique looks. (To my surprise, when I am making this post, some strange guy talked to me; he wanted to take a picture of this image of poo-shi dog above on the right because it's cute! Appearance of a mixed dog can attract people this much lol.) In addition, sadly, many dogs' lives for crossbreeding in puppy mills are wasted because of failure in breeding.
I felt that crossbreeding is like a game now. It seems like the breeders play with the dogs' genes thinking "what if I mix this gene with that gene?" It might do improve species of dogs but it seems that dogs are used to appease human desire to have better dogs ......
Today we are close to the state that we can have designer children. On March 2nd of 2009, a Los Angeles fertility clinic, which offered a month before "to let parents choose their kinds' hair and eyes" shut the program down because of the public outrage (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/designerdebate/）. A transhumanist, James Hughes, says, "designing children is in the same category as abortion. If you think women have the right to control their own bodies, then they should be able to make this choice." He adds, "There should be no law restricting the kind of kids people have, unless there’s gross evidence that they’re going to harm that kid, or harm society." As technology has developed along with human desires, the meanings of what used to be human nature has been changing. Birth controls enable women not to have a child -not to produce life. Plastic surgeries allow human bodies to be segmented and changed. People do not necessarily have a sex to have a child because Artificial Insemination is available. And now we can pick up only superior genes that the parents want and can have a perfect child? They all have develop human lives. Sterile women can have a child with the AI. But with humans desire such as choosing traits to have a pretty or smart one, some scientific technologies might be going too far. What is the meaning of life, sex, body...? where is diversity? With the designers baby technology in the future, we all (or all "rich" people who can afford to enjoy the benefits of the tech.) will be able to have super kids.
We consider ourselves a civilized society, yet "Bodies...The Exhibition" is so popular that it has been shown at the South Street Seaport for over four years. The exhibit displays the preserved remains of twenty two people and two hundred sixty other specimens, which include a pair of male genitals and a woman who has been vertically sliced into fourths. Are we living in a civilized society? Or have we reverted back to the days when the remains of Saartje (or Sarah) Baartman were put on display, as read and discussed in class? Are these people any different just because they are not American?
Not only is the idea of displaying dead people for profit really desecrating the dead, it is also very barbaric. Clearly people get some weird thrill from viewing corpses and body parts, because the exhibit is extremely popular and shows no sign closing anytime soon. People excuse and hide this fascination with the dead by claiming to be interested in the scientific knowledge gained by viewing this exhibit. As said in class, it is also reminiscent of the holocaust, when all kinds of medical experiments were performed on concentration camp prisoners in the name of "science."
For a country like the U.S, that is so "concerned" with human rights, it is extremely hypocritical to allow this exhibit to remain open. The method in which these cadavers were obtained is clearly suspect because China has an extremely poor human rights record. The medical establishment there would not think twice about recycling the organs of executed prisoners to make money. Human rights advocates have continued to question whether these dead bodies were legally obtained; more likely than not, they are the bodies of prisoners and were not legally obtained. China executes between two thousand to three thousand prisoners a year and has a long history of using condemned prisoners for medical purposes. The people on exhibit no doubt suffered during their lifetime. At least now that they have died, probably in a horrible way, they should be finally allowed to rest in peace not "pieces."
In class this week we discussed the false imagery we gain from watching commercials that deal with things like birth control or tampons and who they wont necessarily show the main reasons why the consumer will need the product. advertisements today do not sell products, they sell a lifestyle. Bacardi sells the life of wealthy good looking people sitting by the pool, Gucci sells European sophistication, Tommy Hilfiger sells the American Way, and commercials of tampons and bill control sell everything but sex and periods. In one commercial that is purposely ridiculing itself because of the company's awareness that its consumers are tired of the traditional ad, tampons are the main subject but the girl in the ad is wearing all white clothing, stating that the audience will like her because she's "racially ambiguous" and that you'll buy tampons because we want to look just like. She is saying this all to the camera in order to catch the attention of the viewer because its separation from THIS:
and adaptation of THIS:
This new tactic of advertising is smart, funny, witty and overall refreshing from the old and redundant commercials that cease to grasp any of our interest.
In our class discussion of Anne McClintock’s “Soft Soaping Empire:Commodity Racism and Imperial Advertising”, I was most intrigued by the fact that commercials for cleaning products almost always feature white people and white clothing.The YouTube clip below shows a Tide commercial from the 1950s.A mother and son are on the beach, and there just happens to be a sturdy clothesline, proudly displaying an array of clothes that are “clean and bright like the sun on the sand…the kind of clean that you like best next to those you love”.The mother in this commercial sports a perfectly pressed white dress, “her skin and clothes epitomizing the exhibition value of…domestic leisure” (McClintock 514), while the son is wearing white swim trunks and gets wrapped up in a big white fluffy towel by his mother.These are what McClintock refers to as “the white raiments of imperial godliness” (517).There are no traces of anything dark in this commercial, not people, not clothes, not the environment.Everything is bright and sunny and wonderful, and most obviously, white.This is certainly not unusual for the time period, as the ‘50s were a time when blacks and whites were still segregated, but the bombardment of white in this commercial reflects a world without color, which is certainly not reality.
In an ad from the past few years, not much has changed.Of the several hands that are featured turning the washing machine dial, only one appears to be the hand of a black person, and when an actual person is shown, it is again, a white woman.Also, the shirts that are shown being cleaned are, of course, white.It is also interesting to point out that the background music used in this commercial is hip-hop and is likely performed by a black artist, yet the voiceover is the voice of a white woman.Could it be that advertisers were trying to, in a sense, cancel out the fact that the woman in the ad is white by adding what they believe to be music that is representative of African American culture, in a sense trying to be more evenhanded?
Also, both ads feature woman doing the laundry with not a man in sight.The women in both commercials look like they are never so happy as when they are doing laundry.They appear to be positively thrilled.The present-day commercial possibly features some men’s hands, just like it features one black hand turning the dial, at the beginning of the commercial, but the person actually doing the laundry is a woman in both instances. Even though this second ad was made approximately 60 years after the first ad, and we would like to see ourselves as a progressive society, white is still the equivalent of clean and cleaning is the job of the woman.Personally, I cannot wait until they stop trying to make my whites whiter, and figure out how to keep my blacks from fading.
Most commercials for cleaning products feature women doing all the dirty work. They are seen mopping, sweeping, and scrubbing while most men featured -if they are present at all-are seen sitting in the background or adding to the mess. Take for example this Bounty commercial:
Typical of most cleaning product commercials, the woman is shown cleaning up after the men in her life and enjoying every minute of it. As a woman I can say first hand that women do not enjoy cleaning nearly as much as is depicted in these commercials, especially cleaning up other peoples messes. In fact we would much prefer if the men in our lives would clean up after themselves, and maybe even clean up for us!
Pine-Sol seems to have gotten this message and incorporated it into their new campaign, which depicts men cleaning while the woman sits back and relaxes:
The commercials claim that pine-sol is so powerful that men will want to clean for their woman. Yet these commercials are so extravagant and fantastical that it still seems as if men cleaning is only a dream in a fantasy world. Perhaps one day the themes of the Pine-Sol and Bounty commercial will merge and we will see a husband happily cleaning up for his wife. Until then it seems all we women can do is dream...
In the article "Soap," Anne McClintock discusses the historical context of soap in relation to the ways in which it is advertised. The methods used in many of the advertisements were often racist and relied on age-old connotations of dark skin as somehow dirty and unclean. A similar and equally disturbing phenomenon is occurring in several Asian countries, where light skin is one of the ultimate signs of beauty. All one has to do is type "skin whitening" into Google to see that there is a massive market for people looking for ways to lighten their skin. These results range from soaps that claim to make your skin lighter to skin whitening pills. For many Asian cultures, lighter skin is indicative of a higher social status and power and, therefore, beautiful. Those with much darker skin are considered unpretty due to connotations of the lower, working class.
I've grown up often times hearing my mom tell me not to stay out in the sun for too long because I'll get so dark she "can't see me," but as a Filipino-American, I'm well aware that my heritage is notorious for its cautionary sun exposure warnings. These advisories are not because of the potential skin cancer that I could get from being outside in the sun (at least explicitly), but solely because of how dark my skin will become. In the Philippines, often times television programs only feature light-skinned celebrities (which are the only kind of celebrities in the Philippines) and TV personalities. In advertisements for Jollibee, the largest fast-food chain in the Philippines, only fair-skinned families are depicted eating from a bucket of Chicken Joy.
In class we discussed scientific truth, and the advertising of prescription drugs. When thinking about it, I was alarmed to discover how many prescription drugs actually don't use people in their advertisements. One might think that pharmaceuticals would require a human demonstration, after all these drugs are generated to MATCH the human biology, but perhaps when marketing to people with "problems," the best way to entice an audience is to remove the problem from the person.
Immediately my mind runs to Zoloft. A little blog, two eyes and a frown, is used to create a relationship between ad and audience. We are supposed to relate to this blob, to see our emotions and actions in this blob, and mirror the blob in taking pharmaceutical action to counteract our depression. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vfSFXKlnO0
I find this representation of human depression a bit, unnerving (no pun intended). The commercial somehow rides the thin line between sad and depressed, not feeling well and being biologically unwell. The over simplification of the nervous system is also quite unsettling. However, from the mind of an advertiser, I can certainly see why they may have chosen this approach.
Just like in our discussion with birth control, there are certain items within the medicinal world that still remain taboo. Sex and Insanity seem to be two of these. However, a drug is developed, and our health care system allows us to become target markets. We are no longer prescribed drugs, we are consumers. The the worst possible thing an advertisement can do to its consumers is put the audience on the defense. So instead to stating what makes depression "depression" rather than just a bad day (or a bad month cough cough finals), they over simplify, they provide euphemisms that soften the blow, and people are no longer embarrassed and are willing to remain consumers. Furthermore, the use of the blob is not only a visual representation of this simplification, but also allows this drug to cater to the every-person, the wide audience of people, expanding their product placement to everyone, old, young, male, female, black, white, blob.
While it seems utterly ridiculous, it's still alarming to me how when I watch this commercial, you wonder "Hey, I feel like that blob! I want butterflies and no more rain clouds! Could I be depressed?"
Our discussion this week included the topic of how birth control (and other prescription drugs) is presented in the media. Birth control advertisements seem to illustrate every benefit besides its primary use (to prevent pregnancy) in the television commercials advertising the pill. No matter what brand or type of birth control is being advertised, the consumer sees a definite shift to focusing on how the women who take the pills look and behave (fun, sexy, young, carefree), rather than discussing the actual preventative purpose of the pill.
For example, in this Yaz commercial, the women are shown metaphorically releasing all sorts of symptoms (fatigue, bloatedness, moodiness, etc.) in literal balloons. But none of the balloons say “chance of getting pregnant.” The woman articulating the use of the pill clarifies that Yaz can make your periods lighter and less frequent and also make your skin clearer, and quickly mentions that “Yaz is 99% effective.” Effective against what? The word “pregnancy” is only heard/seen through text at the bottom of the screen; all other references to the primary purpose of the pill are swiftly and vaguely represented.
Like we discussed in class, birth control pill advertisements are shifting away from clarifying the actual use of the pill; instead, they highlight every benefit of the prescription except preventing pregnancy. Women are shown as happier, more carefree, and sexier (and have clearer skin!) all because of the pill. The fact that they are not pregnant seems to be less important than all of the other physical benefits they experience, although the former is typically the only reason women buy “the pill.”
I've included a couple of clever birth control ads for your enjoyment.
What we learned about soap ads made me look up another example of a racist one and came across this one:
This is a horrifyingly racist soap ad for N.K. Fairbank Company. The young white girl is asking the young black boy (who does not look happy) why his mother does not wash him with that soap. This clearly represents the white girl as superior to the black boy. Her skin is radiant and white because she uses that soap, and so the black boy should use the soap in order to become pure, because he is not already.
This is an American ad.
And then, I came across this Italian Laundry Detergent Commercial and boy, was I surprised.
It is quite hilarious, but it does bring in serious issues. Even though the guy that the woman in the ad changed was a creepy and gross man, that the company chose to use a black man in the ad was pleasantly surprising. I know it says "Coloured is better" so it makes sense that the man is black, but STILL!!!
It reminded me of a reading that I did in Human Culture and Communication first semester called “Dis/orienting Identities: Asian Americans, History, and Intercultural Communication" by Nakayama.
In brief, Nakayama explains to his readers that when he was in Paris one time, he was shocked when a French woman ran up to him, assuming that he spoke French. "Living in the U.S. I rarely encounter people who assume I speak French." Americans tend to assume that Asian-Americans cannot speak English or are directly from Asia, and lots of racist jokes and such come out of that. When in fact, many Asian-Americans cannot even speak their native land's language.
Why is this the case? Why is it so hard for Americans to grasp the fact that Asians are...HUMAN, and not ASIAN?
The ridiculousness of the Yaz commercial set in the club was a hot discussion topic in class, so I thought this video was appropriate in highlighting the unrealistic nature of having three knowledgeable professional women discussing their birth control habits on girls' night out. This made me think: what other kinds of ads are out there similar to these Yaz commercials? This video pokes fun at tampon ads that feature women whose joyous demeanor could not possibly exist at that time of the month:
Such ads really just ignore reality all together in order to sell their product. For some reason, portraying a woman actually suffering through her period and endorsing a tampon brand wouldn't sell, so instead they decided to have women frolicking on beaches and dancing in white clothes. Seem strange?
Again, here's a parody that points out the obvious that the original Wii Fit ad neglects to mention. We often don't think about the underlying meanings or happenings in advertisements that we see on television, but when you stop to think for more than a few seconds, you'll come to some interesting conclusions.
After touching on technology today in class, and talking about how we have become really attached to technology, I began to think about this article I read about a guy getting shot because he wouldn't hand over his phone. He was being robbed on the Brooklyn Bridge, and he refused to give up his cell phone, so the assailant shot him in the leg. The article was titled "Tough Call" and talks about how New Yorkers may be a little too attached to our cell phones.
But strangely, on some really weird level, I can empathize with the man's choice. Cell phones have become a part of who we are. I don't know anyone my age without a phone, and I barely know any people who don't have their phone on them 24/7. Many people complain they feel nervous or anxious when they leave their phone at home. I even know people who sleep with their phones in their hand, or right next to them. Has our relationship with technology become to close? I understand the comforting feeling of always being connected to others and knowing that people can reach you, or vice versa, whenever they need or what. The article also brings up the idea that, "cell-phone users are free to do a number of things the phoneless are not—like showing up late to dinner, or rescheduling appointments on the fly. They are, in short, free to be more irresponsible adults" (http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/n_10247/).
While I understand this perspective, I find myself wishing it wasn't true. I think that we need to become less dependent on technology, and I think it would be interesting to see what it was like to live in a world where we couldn't contact anyone, anywhere, at anytime.
Recently my mom sent me a funny little email about the generational gap between her childhood and mine:
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning...Uphill...Barefoot... BOTH ways yadda, yadda, yadda
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!
But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!
Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!
There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!
Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car..We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless.
We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!
There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD!!! Think of the horror...not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please!
And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent...you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen...Forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!
There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-finks!
And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!
And our parents told us to stay outside and play...all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside...you were doing chores!
And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place! See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!
Regards, The Over 30 Crowd
It's funny to think how drastically different our childhoods are, even though we are only one generation apart! I can't even fathom how different the childhood of my future children might be. With the constant evolution of technology, and the ever-changing relationship with our society, only time will tell how the next generation will live, and how ridiculous our way of living might seem.
I couldn't help but laugh in class today when we began our discussion with women and their platonic relationship with the act of cleaning and their cleaning products....in reality, a lot of women are not compulsive cleaners or homemakers who spend all their live-long day on their knees scrubbing the tile floors. I laughed particularly because my boyfriend, Ben, cleans up after me and he even cleans the dishes at my own house! I laughed also because of my suite mate, who we affectionately pet-named "mom," since she cleans the bathroom after us slobs and takes out our garbage. I never really thought about advertisements targeting that classic, old-fashioned woman who house-cleaned because through my experience, women are not always the ones cleaning, like the example of Ben cleaning my own house.
Later, when asking my roommate if she had ever seen a commercial where a man was portrayed cleaning, she responded briefly: "No, but I've seen one where a man spills sh*t!"
After discussing the miraculous ability for dishes and pans to seemingly clean themselves (showing monkeys even before using actual women), and how since the early 20th century women are now shown with their cleaning products: Mr Clean as the anatomically perfect man-cartoon who helps real life women get the tough job done, or mops ringing the door bells of its ex-user's house (having found a much healthier, efficient relationship with Swiffer wet jet mop), with the background music "Baby, Come back!" alluding to his desire to remain as the reliable cleaning product.
Sarah Haskins of CurrentTv, sarcastically comments on how the media portrays only women in domestic house care cleaning product commercials. Particularly, Haskins, discusses the sexualizing of the female through cleaning product commercials implying that women are sexy when they clean the dirty, dirty sink and toilet. By employing cheesy romance songs, or using sexy, pseudo-Hispanic male accents to discuss how a sponge cares about preserving a female’s soft hands after using the sponge to clean the sink, it is actually quite disturbing to see how women are portrayed. Haskins makes a joke about how having that iconic number of "99.9%" of bacteria fighting chemicals within your armed cleaning product can protect women from sexually transmitted diseases and “kills e-coli, MRSA, and even Herpes!” As if these things will appeal to women. She concludes tongue-in-cheek, by saying that the next time you feel disgusted cleaning after your family or your husband’s messes around the house remember that cleaning products can: “Seduce you, romance you, or protect you from STDs. Remember, it’s not a chore, it’s a date!”
More and more people have realized this trend of women and their cleaning products as well. I stumbled across a letter written by a disgruntled female who commented on the out-of-date and traditional quality of Mr. Clean commercials, suggesting "Why not have men cleaning? She explains how such commercials "seem to reinforce the idea that cleaning and maintaining a household is woman’s work," further claiming that there is no “female gene” or that women are “natural” cleaners. She continues stating, "Mostly women did the cleaning over the years because men went out to work, while women raised children at home, so of course they cleaned if they were at home, and had to clean up after their children," but in this day and age, we have a lot more stay at home fathers, and it's about time things change!
YET! EUREKA! Alas, I have found a fairly dated Dawn dishwashing detergent commercial starring men!
Still- the men in the commercial still appear as manly. Wayne Knight comes into the kitchen taking a picture of a man with an apron, hunched over the sink cleaning dishes, making him a spectacle. He announces "WOAH! HERE'S ONE FOR THE MACHO HALL OF FAME!" insinuating how men are not usually found in this setting. "Com'on Mr. Stoneage! Today...guys wash pots!" Wayne rebuttals: "Mr. Liberated has taken on Floor grease!" The commercial continues with the male claiming it takes no effort to use Dawn, that all he needs to do is soak the dishes in with Dawn and Voila! They're clean! This commercial comments on how men are "no good" in the kitchen, and how the single, bachelor types can easily half-ass cleaning and get away with clean dishes. ha...
In conclusion, it's imperative for Pledge, Windex, Dawn, Mr. Clean, Febreeze, and all those other cleaning product brands to start incorporating men in their commercials and advertisements and stop playing off stereotypes.
Anne McClintock's article, "Soap," she discusses the historic connotations of soap and the methods of advertising according to these connotations. The advertising methods were often racist, promising to cleanse the impure and set soap in a scene of domesticity and femininity. One company with particularly controversial advertising is Pears Soap which, "became intimately associated with a purified nature magically cleaned of polluting industry". Advertisements for soap portrayed it "luminous with its own inner radiance... pulsating magically with spiritual enlightenment and imperial grandeur" and "offered the promise of spiritual salvation and regeneration through commodity consumption". While current advertisers have all but departed from the use of racism in soap ads, the notion that personal hygene products have some sort of magical cleansing power still pertains. Take, for instance, the advertising campaign surrounding Gillette's for Women razors called "Venus" which uses the slogan, "Reveal the goddess in you". This implies by commodity consumption a woman can 'reveal' smooth, shapely legs that are obscured by hair and represent her femininity. She will become instantly more beautiful and attractive. Furthermore the word 'goddess' is connotatively mystical and associated to a woman who is adored for her beauty and class. The campaign plays on images and words which are unrealistic to most women, but promise the status of 'goddess' if one uses the brand.
Here is a commercial for Venus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stQdnGIHrbg&feature=related
Some people argue that hip-hop is politically consequential because activists can use the music and the culture that surrounds it to communicate with young people who might otherwise shun politics. There is something to this. For example, in 2004 the superstar P.Diddy fronted a farily successful voter-registration campaign called "Vote or Die." And HSAN once co-sponsored a rally to protest about a proposed $300m cut to the New York City school budget. The cut never happened. That $200m is a tiny slice of what Ne York spends on its schools, and lack of money is far from the mail obstacle to improving them.
Civil-rights activists in the 1960s were inspired by protest songs, but the songs did not drive the movement. Political change requires hard and often tedious work, and the thousands of weary volunteers working for Barack Obama can attest. Incidentally, one might think that Mr. Obama's spectacular rise undermines the argument that a back man can never get a fair shake in America. But Mr. Nkrumah shrugs that even if Mr.Obama is elected president, he will be powerless to implement progressive politics because the corporate power structure will not let him
1989: Carlton Douglas Ridenhour and William Drayton have just released a song that will mark their spot on the hip-hop history timeline forever. Succinctly put in 3 lines of a song: "We got to fight the powers that be/Lemme hear you say/Fight the Power" became the mantra for Ridenhour's and Drayton's career. Those lyrics should sound familiar, being as they come straight from the mouths of the front men of the hip-hop group Public Enemy, Chuck D (Ridenhour) and Flavor Flav (Drayton). Their single, Fight the Power talked about everything the group stood for.
The group had a clear message they wanted to convey through its
politically charged lyrics. Its urgencies to "Fight the Power" of American media and unfair treatment of the African American community could be detected in all of the songs. Ironically however, the group was signed to the most widely known hip-hop recording label: Def Jam Records. The group rapped about standing up against media, but it was actually a player in the game. Def Jam was responsible for getting the music out, distributing cd's, organizing concerts, etc. Public Enemy needed Def Jam to be able to spread its message.
This unfortunate reliance is not surprising. As George Lipsitz states in "Diasporic Noise: History, Hip Hop, and the Post-Colonial Politics of Sound," "Post-colonial literature, Third Cinema, and hip hop music all protest against the conditions created by the oligopolies who distribute them as commodities for profit. They express painful recognition of cultural displacements, displacements that their very existence accelerates. yet it is exactly their desire to work through rather than outside of existing structure that defines their utility as a model for contemporary global politics [...] the desire to work through existing contradictions rather than stand outside them represents not so much a preference for melioristic reform over revolutionary change, but rather a recognition of the impossibility of standing outside totalitarian systems of domination" (510). This is the same kind of thing we see in more contemporary music as well. People speak out about the very same "oligopolies" that give them the opportunity for their message to be heard. Many share Public Enemy's dissatisfaction with the system, but few do anything about it other than sing.
Public Enemy is not however, one of those groups. They duo left Def Jam Records in 1999 after disputes over free downloading. Turns out, Chuck D is in favor of file sharing and online sites such as Napster which allow the music to be shared free of charge. At least to this group, taking action to support their claim is more important than the profits that come with it.
The most interesting topic we discussed this past week was that of rapper's lyrics and their targeted audiences. Many people assume that since rappers are discussing degenerate people, drugs, violence, crime, and abuse in their songs that people whose lives revolve around these characteristics are the ones purchasing the album. This is in fact a myth and surprisingly the majority of the money these rappers are making come from middle to upper-class white teenage boys and young men. For some reason, this demographic of people are most interested in the music produced by the likes of Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Jay-Z and so on. Because of these wealthy kids willing to support artists such as these, the rappers are usually laughing all the way to the bank. An average person may think that kids living in ghettos and in poverty are the ones supporting these artists work, however, usually people from that background do not even have enough money to begin to pay for a twenty dollar CD. Obviously the desire to have music such as rap produced by many of the famous artists today are fueled by someone and these people are usually the white upper to middle class. I doubt Lil Wayne and Kanye West enjoy listening to white men singing folk music and acoustic guitars in their free time (although one never knows), so it is interesting to think about why white people enjoy listening to rappers scream profanity and discuss drugs, crime, violence, and abuse....
As I presented postcolonial media theory in class, I become very familiar with that topic. In these days, we all live within technological effects. Even now, posting on the blog is through the technological development. If technology has not advanced like in these days, we would never imagine how terrible and unconvenient our lives would be. There can be some exaggeration that technology rules over people. It is true that computers connect all people in the world and make them closer no matter how distant they are. Also, the hybrid of humans and machines is an interesting fact to discuss. In movies like Metrix, Batman, and the newest one Avatar, humans are combined with technology and transform into more developed forms. It is, though, impossible in these days for human beings to combine with machines and become new features. It can be possible in digital spaces and maybe later in future when technology has even greater power than now. Moreover, the utopian universalism is another thing which interested me. I do not know how appreciative I should be to thesedays' development in technology as I am so used to it. Utopian universalism proposes that anyone in the world had to be connected to be 'free'. This theory is very far from postcolonial media theory which focuses on sort of old-fashioned ways in media.
On April 22nd, 2010 The New York Times revealed that Glamour Magazine was named "Magazine of the Year" by the American Society of Magazine Editors. Glamour was presented with the most awards, followed by The New Yorker and National Geographic. I admit, I am not sure why Glamour won. However, since I do not know much about the magazine industry, I am sure there is a very good reason. I have found that in the past, Glamour has not been the first magazine I reach for when I am purchasing my monthly magazine fix.
However, I think from a media critic's point of view, that I should most likely start reading it a bit more. The people that Glamour tends to have on the cover are completely relevant to the current times. It seems as though it has a very healthy balance for a magazine targeted at women. Yes, there is the necessary superficial "do it yourself" remedies that we all look and also a more sophisticated spin with human interest pieces and other kinds of articles.
For an advertiser, this magazine would be a dream to purchase space in because it hits a target audience of many different kind of women who are looking for different things. Yet, they all have in common that they want to be a modern women with glamour...or one would assume.
Media today is being more and more integrated into our everyday lives. Growing at an exponential rate, we now see ourselves virtually (no pun intended) merging our behaviors, habits, and thoughts to coincide with the use of new media technology. Two very different forms of media reminded me of a type of "post-colonial media theory" in which humans disappear into oblivion with the help of new media.
1. Facebook: I'm sure we're all sick and tired of hearing and analyzing facebook, but it is often intriguing to think about this medium on a critical level. We build a profile via facebook, we post pictures, we write comments, we add videos. This, certainly, is the opposite of the "disappearing flesh" claim. However, what is almost more integral, more frequently used, in facebook are the "delete" features, the distinct "privacy" discourse, and the ever popular "detag." If I'm in a picture with someone I don't like, I detag myself. No, I still may have met this new frenemy in the first place, but with no virtual record, no one has to know. We discuss certain items in public, via the "wall" and in private, via "messenger." There's almost a code to this, a discourse, "why would she post that? At least message it, but don't post it for everyone to see." But who is everyone? Is everyone really all of our friends and family, or is it simply the big-brotheresque eye of the media, the "wall" knows what was posted, and the "wall" may be what we fear. We can delete ourselves, edit ourselves down, until we are not flesh and blood people with flaws and arguments, but aimiable, agreeable, popular people whose left side of the face you'll never see (after all, I only keep tagged photos of my good side).
2. Real-Time Multiplayer Video Games: Halo, Starcraft, World of Warcraft. Some I've only read about, some I've attempted, but either way, I can not find a more literal sense of one's reality, actions, thoughts, and idea merging with machine. In short, these games only allow for a handful of features (even if it's quite an impressive handful). You move, you run, you shoot, you hide, you jump. I cannot converse, I cannot bite my nails, take a nap, eat a sandwich. "It's just a game" my friends often tell me. But, during play, I rarely see my friends biting their nails, wanting to sleep, or eating. In real-time with multi-player features, their lives are virtually aligned with the screen, just like their opponents. They can talk to one another (limitedly), they can trade (fantasy items), they develop characters, identities, preferences, habits, and yet remain all in the limiting confines of the video-game code.
Perhaps these criticisms show that our "post-colonial media theories" of a new cyber world are not far off base whatsoever, and perhaps we can then reevaluate our own selves and regain control over the new media that surrounds us.
Hip Hop from African culture "blends music and life into an integrated totality , uniting performers, dancers, and listeners in collaborative endeavor." What the great jazz drummer Max Roach says in the article was memorable for me: "The thing that frightened people about hip hop was that they heard rhythm - rhythm for rhythm's sake.Hip Hop lives in the world of sound - not the world of music - and that's why it's so revolutionary . What we as black people have always done is show that the world of sound is bigger than white people think. There are many areas that fall outside the narrow Western definition of music and hip hop is one of them" (510).
Hip Hop belonging in the world of sound has broadened the music world and now it has become an essential genre of pop-music. It might be revolutionary not only because Hip Hop represented a different, unique culture but also it expresses the performer's mind and the singer's opinion on the society and its politics.
I wonder how revolutionary it was when it came to my country. It broadened up the Japanese world of music and the uniqueness and innovativeness caught the many Japanese young. Some singers brought Rap to the field and surprised people by the way they say words with rhythm. And the Hip Hop culture produced a new style of fashion, called Ｂ kei fashion (B stands for Breaking Dance and Bronx). When it came to Japan it had a different meaning from that Hip Hop had when it was brought up by African Americans in the U. S. But it also greatly contributed to today's J-pop music.
We are currently in the midst of a communicative and social revolution. We are using social media and the Internet as never before, and our habits today differ from those even just ten years ago. Many of us are addicted to our smart phones, laptops, and the Internet, and if we go without them for even a few hours we find ourselves distraught.
A study by the University of Maryland asked 200 students to give up all media for 24 hours, including their cellphones, laptops, TV, everything (read the article here). The researchers found that many of the students exhibited withdrawal symptoms similar to addiction to drugs or alcohol, with some students feeling anxious and craving their connection to their friends. Many of us college students feel that we must have things like Facebook, texting, and email, and if we don't have them we feel disconnected from the world. These days most events are planned on Facebook, and you talk to your friend for months at a time without ever actually speaking to them.
A more insane case of media addiction can be found in South Korea, here. A couple from outside Seoul were too busy raising a virtual baby to take care of their real infant, resulting in its death. They were apparently unemployed and distraught that their child was premature, so they decided to raise a perfect virtual child instead. Unfortunately for them, neglecting one's child to death is illegal in South Korea, and they were arrested. This is the most extreme case of Internet addiction I've ever seen, and is almost too crazy to believe. American college students may be too addicted to social media and cellphones to keep all their attention on their studies, but they certainly wouldn't neglect their child in favor of Facebook and texting (though some might argue otherwise). While this kind of addiction is not yet formally a disease, it could be put on the list and receive recognition as a serious mental disorder.
Kanye West has commonly been referred to as "The White Rapper," as his core audience is mostly upper-middle class college students with a penchant for anti-establishment sentiments. His three most popular albums, Late Registration, Graduation, and College Dropout, continually bash the college institution, referring to higher education as essentially pointless ("Some people graduate but they still stupid; they tell you 'read this, eat this, don't look around'...after all of that, you receive this [diploma]") The irony, of course, is that college students with ample time and money to spend popularized Kanye's music in the first place.
Hence, we come to a contradiction that is common in most rap music: "bashing" the same establishment that enabled the rapper's success in the first place. While artists such as Lil Wayne glorify street life, ("I forget a lot of sh*t but I cannot forget the streets) from drug dealing to violence, and criticize politicians (he has an entire anti-Bush rap,) the system of capitalism has provided for Wayne's success in the first place. Such a conflict is evident, for instance, in Lil Wayne's recent arrest for gun and drug possession: the illegal lifestyle that he raps about in his songs, that made him popular, that establishes him as a "G," is also resulting in his downfall. We see the impossibility of enjoying both worlds - that of "thug life" (tendency towards illegal activities) and "celebrity life" (i.e. conventional success- the check his record company writes him)
Indeed, mainstream rap is teeming with contradictions. I attended the Lil Wayne concert in 2009 and couldn't help but giggle at over-privileged teenagers screaming "You know that I'ma ride for my motha f*cking n*ggas!" Many rappers that are marketed towards mass audiences utilize their knowledge "street life" for their success and, in doing so, perpetuate the myth of the black "thug" who runs poor neighborhoods with a gun and a gang sign. They benefit from what one would consider an unfortunate situation- being born into the lower class. And they celebrate this lifestyle only after they've escaped it: Lil Wayne no longer needs to sell drugs to support himself. Now, he can rap about the days when he used to sell drugs.
Scientists are developing an electronic eye implant which they believe could help millions of people to see again. According to BBC, "the microchip works by stimulating cells around the retina. This in turn stimulates cells in the brain, helping people to see once more". Essentially, when light strikes the technology, it is converted into electrical signals that travel through the optic nerve to the brain and are interpreted as an image.
In "Post Colonial Media Theory," Maria Fernandez expresses her idea that in the future, "fleshed humans have evolved to greater integration with machines" and flesh becomes unnecessary and important. More recent developments to the project have led to the development of a Multiple-unit Artificial Retinal Chipset (MARC), in which, "a spectacle-mounted camera takes video that is then processed and transmitted into the eye by radio". The camera is attached to a special pair of glasses. These eye prosthetics make Fernandez's hypothetical flesh-less future a more plausible reality.
If today we can harness the power of technology to perform such a complex bodily function, such as sight, what will tomorrow's advancements bring? Furthermore, the idea that one's body is full of microchips, cameras, and radio receivers begs the question who is in control of your body. Is it still the person? Will people be able to tap into the radio signals and produce false images?
Conspiracy theories aside, it is a great medical achievement. However, the implications go far beyond medicine and into a future where our bodies run on technology.
This week, one of our topic was hip hop and its history. In the article, it says that "hip hop and reggae have also played roles in political movements opposed to apartheid in South Africa, in struggles for educational and curricular reform, and in battles against police brutality around the globe" (510). And even though it can not influence political movement, hip hop basically tells irrationalities of the society (musicians rap out their complaints through the hip hop music). This reminds me of Korean hip hop muscians, Tiger Jk. He is one of the famous hip hop musicians in Korea. When he attended Beverly Hills High School in LA, the fomer member of N.W.A, Ice Cube announced "Black Korea," which basically said bad things to Korean.
Tiger JK was shocked by this music, because he had admired Ice Cube before he announced the music. And Tiger JK wrote the music "Call me Tiger" to refute the Ice Cube's music, and got a prize on the Hip Hop festival in 1992. We can see that both Ice Cube and Tiger JK used music as a medium to express their complaints. Ice Cube wrote this because he was insulted in the Korean grocery market. And Tiger JK wrote the music becuase he was insulted, as a Korean, by Ice Cube's music. There are many ways to express complaints and dissatisfaction through the media, for example, through the TV news, newspaper, documentary films, and so on. And so far, Hip hop is also one of the successful medium to express emotions (usually dissatisfaction rather than pleasure).
Though we discussed Lil' Wayne, 50 Cent, Jay-Z and other popular 'gangsta' rappers and the sort of messages they spread to their mainstream white suburban crowds, there exists socially conscious hip hop that was forgotten in class discussion and that I briefly touched upon.
As mentioned in the reading, the African diaspora has wiggled its way into the music scape for hundreds of years. Most recently, a rather socially conscious hip hop has emerged. Topics of the genre are much like slam poetry in a sense, always commenting on religion, "resistance to violence, African American culture and advancement, the economy, or simple depictions of life in the projects/ghetto that reveal the struggle of ordinary people" (wikipedia).
The audience for conscious hip hop is largely underground, as most of the artists within the genre do not gain much commercial and mainstream success. Artists like Common, Brother Ali, Talib Kweli, Saul Williams, the Pharcyde, Nas, and KRS-One were not all big names as they are recognized now and are part of this socially aware rap genre.
The coining of the term was founded by the listeners and audience of the music and as a result, some of the biggest artists affiliated with the genre have been openly critical of its labeling.
Mos Def, the 'white person's rapper,' once commented on the labeling of the genre: "They've got their little categories, like 'conscious' and 'gangsta'. It used to be a thing where hip-hop was all together. Fresh Prince would be on tour with N.W.A. It wasn't like, 'You have got to like me in order for me to like you.' That's just some more white folks trying to think that all niggas are alike, and now it's expanded. It used to be one type of nigga; now it's two. There is so much more dimension to who we are."
Obviously Mos is socially conscious even when it comes to him including those outside of his genre and explaining that they are all part of the conglomerate and message of hip hop.
Mos Def's latest album, The Ecstatic, even begins with a quote on the track "Supermagic" from the famous African American human rights activist, Malcolm X in saying: "You're living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution. A time where there's got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built. And the only way is going to be built is with extreme methods."
These lines suggest that the socially conscious hip hop movement uses their words as leverage for support and inspiration of the listeners. Political, well versed, and hearty rap will continue to make its own path into the hearts of those who are conscious as to what they are listening to.
George Lipsitz article, Diasporic Noise: History, Hip-Hop, and the Post Colonial Politics of Sound, opens by discussing hip-hop artist Queen Latifah and the music video for her 1989 song "Ladies Choice." Lipsitz details that the music video uses hip-hop as a means of portraying positive images of African American women, in a society where hip-hop and rap videos consistently objectify women and portray them in negative ways.
Queen Latifah's use of her music as a form of activism didn't stop in 1989. In 1993 Latifah's song U.N.I.T.Y addressed the issue a women being referred to in derogatory terms. The song made a statement in the hip-hop community and won her a grammy:
Latifah has spoken out about the use of such negative language in hip-hop music, and the
messages it is sending to it's listeners. Latifah states, "When you get used to hearing the clean version of a song in the clubs or on the radio all the time, then you hear the explicit version, it's almost shocking, and it's really not very creative," she says. "It's like, 'If you could clean up this record and make it sound this good, why did you ever need to make it like that?" Latifah has also stated that it is up to artists in the hip-hop industry to make a change stating, "I think it is about time that we started policing ourselves, encouraging at least, ourselves to kind of clean certain songs up because it's just not necessary."
Throughout her career Latifah has continued to be an activist and use her influence in the industry to make positive changes. She's also heavily involved in charity work and giving back, especially to third world countries in Africa. Just this week Latifah helped to host American Idol's: Idol Gives Back, which raised over 15 million dollars for African charities dealing with aids, malaria, and women's education.
