Easter music and video

This is appropriate for Easter. Oops, I'm a little late.

http://sonofmanproject.com/

Uplifting

I love this story.
http://www.bigtommovie.com:80/

Whatever You Do, Don't Read This

I was surprised at how much I got into writing this letter to my Hebrew teacher. I tried to be nice, but direct and really tell her how I felt. I have a lot to do right now, but I thought a lot about this letter and revised parts of this over and over again. If you want to understand more about my experience in watching this movie, see my post entitled, "So Desensitized" from a week ago or so.


March 31, 2010

Shalom,

Pesach semeach. I have been thinking for awhile about sharing with you some of my concerns with watching the movie, Be and Become for your class. I haven’t been sure how to do this exactly and I feel like there hasn’t been a good time to bring it up with all of the stressors your family has been through recently. I am writing a letter so that I can express better than I could in person some of what I felt while watching the movie and how I am affected. If you have any questions for me or would like to discuss it further in person I am willing to do that.

I was unpleasantly surprised by a couple of parts in the movie—two parts in particular. I’m guessing you are fairly familiar with this movie and know what scenes I am referring to. Both are sexual in nature. One involves the adoptive couple in bed together and is rather brief. The other one is considerably longer. It involves a scantily clad female seducing the main character in the dance club by helping him take off his clothes in her private room, touching him, and exposing herself enough so that he would give her money. This scene was especially disturbing considering that these characters in the movie don’t know each other at all prior to this interaction. The brutal violence that follows their interaction only makes it worse. I don’t even know all that happened because I was averting my eyes for half of the scene.

To be completely honest, I was shocked that a movie assigned by a BYU teacher would have such content. I honestly felt like I was betraying BYU and its standards by watching this movie in a classroom that is set aside for the important purpose of learning. I felt like I was watching trash that would hinder anyone from learning truths about life. I realize that people have differing levels of sensitivity to media content. I think males in general may be more affected by sexual content than females. I know I felt disturbed watching these scenes and felt very uncomfortable with them. This bad feeling didn’t just leave right after the movie was over unfortunately. It was lingering. I now have scenes etched in my mind that I wish were not there. As a result, I want to strongly encourage you not to show that movie to students in the future, or at least to edit out parts of it.

I admire your interest in refugees and immigrants and some of the plights that they may experience. Your humanitarian spirit is impressive and encourages me to be more humanitarian minded. I really mean that. I can glean some value in learning about and seeing some of the difficulties of immigrants or refugees though saddening and disturbing they may be. Depictions of poverty, communication frustrations, cultural misunderstandings, or societal difficulties may help me and others have more compassion and understanding for God’s children when these depictions are not obscene in nature. However, I cannot see any value in watching depictions that desensitize viewers and hinder compassion rather than fostering it. Watching immoral behavior of others normalizes so much of what modern day prophets warn us against today and does not increase faith, hope, or charity to help others. I understand that people may be taken advantage of or be put in difficult situations that are part of real life for them. However, I believe that seeing obscene depictions of such tragedies does not help anyone to assist others. Seeing it may increase pity, but not compassion because such content brings the viewer down and makes them less able to lift others up. We can really only understand and help others when we are sensitive and susceptible to be influenced by God’s love, not when we are hardened or desensitized by obscenity. Please do not encourage your future students to watch this movie unedited. Todah.

With a lot of forethought and feeling,


Eliyahu
(Jason Burningham)



I'm curious to see how many people read this post with the title that I gave it. I'm performing a little personal pyschological research : ), so if you read this post will you please leave a comment telling me you read it? Even if you don't have anything to say about it, just say "I read it." Thank you.

Sexual content in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?

Here's my sexual content assignment that I've been saving to post for this really busy week of school.

1. What programs did you choose?
I don’t watch TV and the assignment instructed to not change my habits. I e-mailed Dr. Coyne asking her what I should do for this assignment, suggesting I could maybe do the shows I need to watch for our content analysis project. She suggested that I watch a movie. So, since my wife wanted to watch, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” that’s what I did.

2. How much sex is in the programs? Keep a running tally for each program and write it below.
There wasn’t any sex in the movie thankfully.

3. What sexual messages are portrayed in each of the three programs?

The figure of the primary female character in the movie was ridiculously thin (she’s a clay figure so they can do that) and had really long legs, and big eyes. I think they tried to make her attractive or something. Her and the primary male character attempt to kiss each other without knowing each other very well or very long. There are several ensuing scenes of unsuccessful kissing and in the final “happily ever after” scene, the movie closes with a successful kiss between the main characters.
One random camera shot in the movie gives a close up of the buttocks of the police man. I’m not really sure what the point of it was, but it shows his skin tight shorts that reveal his crack and all, covered by blue shorts. I guess there are several shots of one character clothed in nothing but his underwear. It was harder for me to pick up on things like this that involved males rather than females. I notice more easily when females are clad scantily I guess. Go figure.

The all-powerful PowerPoint

What did we do before PowerPoint? I mean, how did teachers teach anything? This week I have used a couple of simple PowerPoint slides in seminary lessons I've taught. It has made certain activities much more convenient and easier to do with the class. Today I went to a little presentation about buying a home (not that that will happen anytime soon). I don't know how the presenter would have communicated his ideas very well without PowerPoint slides. Seriously, since when have people been using PowerPoint and what did teachers do before that? Is PowerPoint used in junior high or high school classes now? I can't think of it ever being used in my classes until BYU. I guess people used overheads, but that just seems harder to make and less effective for learning. What would the world be like without PowerPoint? Ponder that one over your next bowl of cereal.

So desensitized

As part of an assignment for my Hebrew class I had to watch this movie about an African refugee in Israel. My teacher told us it was her favorite Hebrew movie she had seen so I had high expectations for it. A group of us watched it in the basement of the JFSB one evening and I couldn't believe what was in the movie. I felt like I was somehow desecrating BYU's building or something by watching it. I had to look down during two sexual scenes--one quite short, and the other for what seemed like a really long time (but was probably only a minute or so--so as to not see what was happening on the screen. The student in charge of getting the movie for us from our teacher and playing it was indecisive about whether to fastforward it or not. She said she thought "it doesn't show anything" but I couldn't believe that she could classify what was happening with people taking off their clothes and what not as not showing anything. I think she realized when it was too late that she should have fastforwarded the movie. In any case, I felt like my spirit was offended and I was surprised that a BYU teacher would have us watch this movie. I feel like I should talk to my teacher about it, but I'm not sure how to go about doing it. It made me realize more how our society is so accepting of such depictions and that people as a whole are so desensitized to sexual scenes and suggestions. It honestly makes me sad when I think about it.

TV and interacting with my in-laws

I was at my in-laws house for most of the day today in West Jordan because my wife's brother's family is in town from Colorado. Although I would say that my wife's family isn't big into watching TV, because of the NCAA tournament the TV was on most of the time we were there today. I couldn't help but notice how much it drew everyone's attention, including my own, and seemed to sort of limit really meaningful conversations. We were there to see my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their daughter and son since we only get to see them once or twice per year, but we were all distracted by basketball games on TV. Also, my sister-in-law was intent on playing games on her ipod during part of the time as well. As we were driving home to Provo I couldn't help but feel like we had all missed out on opportunities to build relationships. Media is an interesting facet of our lives.

Disney Channel

I just had the wonderful experience of watching one episode each of "Suite Life on Deck" and "Sonny with a Chance" on the Disney Channel for the content analysis project. I must say that I wasn't too impressed, but what can you expect from shows like that? At least they were pretty much clean. If I had my "sexual content assignment" cap on I wouldn't have had much to go on, but there was one weird part in "Suite Life on Deck". One of the main characters practices using a whip. As he's whipping, the whip goes off screen and comes back with a women's bakini top or bra or something. You hear a little female scream off the screen and the whip recoils with this article of clothing. I think it was supposed to be funny. I'm not really sure how they thought of that one. Also, in "Sonny with a Chance", there is some young adolescent hand-holding, snuggling and one kiss. It seems like the whole goal of these shows is to make the viewer laugh. They definitely try to appeal to adolescent-minded audiences.

Our Family's TV History

In the 20 months that my wife and I have been married, we have owned three different TV's, all of which we have received for free from various people. In fact we have two TV's right now. The funny thing is that we don't hardly ever watch TV. We thought each successive TV was an upgrade, but this hasn't necessarily been true. Our second TV was bigger than our first, but the picture sometimes would have a green tint, and some channels didn't come through very clearly. We received our third and latest TV probably about a month ago from my wife's sister and her husband. So, I think the only three things we have used our TV for in the month that we've had it is test it out the night we got it by watching our wedding DVD, watch a Tuesday devotional once (usually we're on campus to do that), and watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for the sexual content assignment for this class. That's the extent of our useage of it. It's bigger than our other one that is now sitting by our door waiting to be taken to DI or something, but we're a little hesitant to take it away after our experience last night. We turned on the TV around 10:30 to see if we could find the BYU basketball game score, but for some reason all but of a few of the channels on this TV were fuzzy. We eventually had to settle for listening to the end of the game on the radio as we fininshed our game of "Lost Cities" (card/board game). I didn't realize this TV was like that. I'm not sure why it is. Oh well.

Annoying online ads

This morning I was rushing to finish this big assignment for my Hebrew class and I needed to use an online English to Hebrew dictionary. Well, I know a really good online dictionary for Korean because I have taken lots of classes for that, but since this is my first semester of Hebrew I didn't know where to go. I found several dictionaries, but can I just say that online dictionaries are sometimes not worth it for the plethora of ads that appear on them? Sometimes the ads give me a headache because they're moving and shaking on the screen. Other times they give me knots in my stomach because they're approaching pornography. One dictionary I went to probably had 10 new ads for every word I looked up. The page was really busy and annoying. I didn't use that dictionary for long because of all of the ads. I found out that Google translate doesn't have ads and that was nice.

Media Malfunction at Stand for the Family Symposium

Media can be a powerful tool in instruction. It can enhance learning and illustrate a point poignantly. However, when media is a primary part of a presentation, instructors run the risk of that media malfunctioning or not working properly. This happened to me one time when I was teaching a short ten-minute lesson that determined at least in part whether I would be able to continue on a path that could possibly lead to being a full-time seminary teacher. Today I witnessed another media malfunction that, although handled well by the presenter, seriously limited the understanding of what was being presented. This was at the Stand for the Family Symposium and the presenter was discussing pornography's effect on the brain. His PowerPoint slides probably could have helped the audience understand what he was talking about regarding the brain. He still did a nice job though.

Your blogs are distracting me

So, now that I finished part of a test for my Hebrew 101 class, my first priority in school is to study for the media test. Unfortunately, I haven't done more than a little yet. There is a lot of information to know that I do not know well at all. It's a little overwhelming. Well, I need to study a lot for the test, but what did I just do for 35 minutes? I read classmates' blogs! In my head I justified it because I was doing homework for this class. I have to make two comments a week, right? And I like to read through several posts or several people's latest posts and comment on the posts that most interest me. I'm generally a pretty low media use guy, but I got sucked in by the blogs. That doesn't happen very often. Good job. You are captivatingly interesting blog writers.

Netflix--a source of conflict?

If you read my last post you'll know that I don't like people feeling they deserve something or their entitled to it, when they haven't done anything to earn it. I'm guilty of this attitude too though. I am ungrateful for a lot of things, including things like nice computer labs and technology resources across campus, the use of our church building's basketball court, relatively well kept roads and a free country. If any of these things were changed, I would probably be unhappy about it, even though I am not really doing much to deserve a lot of those things. Well, I want to write about another experience with something that was "free", but actually caused some temporary hard feelings between my wife and I.

My wife and I receive a Netflix ad in the mail probably once every month or so (not to mention all of the Internet ads for them). The ad offers a free trial of Netflix for a given period of time (two weeks maybe?). If you cancel your trial after that time and return any video you have then you don't have to pay anything. Well, my wife signed up to do this awhile back and she ordered a DVD to be sent to our house. Neither of us our big movie fans, but I especially have a hard time not feeling like I wasted my time when I watch a movie. Most of the time I watch movies is because my wife wants to watch something with me on a weekend night. But we probably only do this once a month or so.

The way the free trial works is that you can order any movie they have to be sent to your house in the mail. As soon as you watch it and send it back to them they will send you the next one you order. You can do this as many times as you want in the two week trial period. They are pretty fast to respond. I think we got our next movie two days after we sent our first one back in. Well, with this program you could watch several movies for free if you wanted to or had time to watch the movies and return them soon after you received them. However, I didn't feel like I had more time to watch movies just because they were free. My wife, however, motivated by the "free"ness of the movies, wanted to get our "trial's worth" of movies. When I told her I felt like I didn't have time to watch more than one movie per week on the weekend, she had a hard time. She wasn't too happy that I wouldn't make more time to watch free movies with her, and I wasn't happy that she was expecting me to. I thought it was interesting that this media promotional could become a source of misunderstanding between us. We had different expectations I guess about how we were going to use the free trial. I have since sworn off of free trials (just kidding, but I am a little wary of them).

Disclaimer: I hope this doesn't sound like I'm criticizing my wife. It's really not meant to. I tried to be open and honest. My wife is great--seriously.

Freebies

This post is tied to media somewhat, but it may be hard for you to see that tie right away. Be patient.

So, once upon a time there was a boy named Jason. He volunteered to help man a booth for a little while that was set up to advertise the Stand for the Family Symposium and help register students to go. Whoever was in charge of the booth earlier in the day had bought doughnut holes to allure students or something. Jason was aghast at what happened during his short tenure at the booth. Students would pass by and grab doughnut holes without a second thought. It was "free" to them and therefore fair game to anyone and everyone. It seemed like the passers-by felt they needed to get some doughnut holes before others ate them all. Some students simply grabbed them in stride as they passed and a few others, stopped quickly, asked if they could have some doughnut holes and then scampered away as soon as they had the treasure in their hands. This happened intermittently over the course of probably half an hour or so. Jason could not believe what was happening right before his eyes. It really was shocking, astounding, eye opening, and surprising to him. The most amusing doughnut-hole snatcher came up and asked if he could have some doughnut holes. Jason didn't answer him. Instead, Jason simply asked the student if he had heard of the symposium before. Since the student had no idea what the symposium was, Jason proceeded to describe briefly some of the highlights of the symposium. After about ten seconds the student was becoming very antsy, but listened politely. After Jason realized this student could care less about the symposium, Jason decided to save the student from having to stand and listen any longer. The student was visibly relieved, scooped up the last few doughnut holes and merrily went on his way. Jason couldn't help thinking of the word "entitlement" over and over again during this experience.

In defense of the students, unbeknowdst to Jason at the time, there was a sign somewhere at a different booth that said there were free doughnuts at our booth. This advertisement was half true.

The reason I think this story ties to media is because I think advertising through media has created this attitude where people are fine with, and even sometimes feel entitled to, receiving something for nothing. At the BYU men's basketball game halftime today there must have been three or four games at halftime in which the winner got some free item like an i-pod. Advertisements seem to be saturated with this "FREE!" message. If you buy this you could win a million dollars. If you listen to this, you could win this ridiculous prize that you did nothing to receive. My favorite (or rather least favorite) is the jewelry store billboard next to the gas station by campus on the corner of 800 North and 700 East that says something about if it snows then your purchase is "on us". I don't know the details, but it sounds ridiculous to me. Is the allurement of receiving something free so persuasive as to influence purchasing that much?

In talking about these ideas with my wife, she had a good suggestion in regards to the free hot chocolate BYUSA gives out. She felt like it would be much more beneficial to make receiving hot chocolate conditional on something simple like doing something nice for someboday that day that you wouldn't normally do. If this was the condition, most students may not remember to do that, but probably a handful would, and that handful could make a difference. I think it would cut down on the entitlement our culture seems to be breeding.

Since the experience with the doughnut holes I have been more conscious of my own "entitlement" to free things or services. Really I think it's more commonly discussed as "ingratitude." I am realizing how ungrateful I am sometimes. We just expect certain things to be done for us, or be given to us without thinking twice about the work, time, effort or money put into it by another. This can include good grades in school, a holiday bonus from work, financial support from home, having our church leader spend time counseling us, amongst many other things.

Whew, that was pretty long.

Mormon Message Ritual

For a year or so I have had Sunday morning meetings before the regular church block. I haven't been disciplined enough to go to bed the night before at an earyl enough time so that I could wake up the next morning with time to study my scriptures before my meetings. If I tried that, I would probably have been falling asleep reading my scriptures because I went to bed pretty late. However, to help my Sunday mornings still have a little bit of Sabbath morning feel I started watching Mormon Messages as I eat breakfast on Sunday mornings. Mormon Messages are little YouTube videos the church has created that teach gospel principles, often in story form, in only a couple of minutes. Often there will be music or words of general authorities in the background as the video follows a short story line.

This has become my little personal ritual. It's early enough that my wife is sleeping and its still and silent outside. I have come to look forward to finding what new video they have posted and what it motivates me to change in my life.

Noodle

I'm taking Hebrew 101 this semester and for that class I had to watch this Hebrew movie called "Noodle" with a group of students taking Hebrew. It's about a pair of adult Israeli sisters who have a strange turn of events in their life and find themselves taking care of a 6-year old immigrant Chinese boy whom they cannot communicate with. They speak Hebrew and he speaks Chinese. This boy's mom has been deported back to China and the sisters are trying to figure out how to reunite this boy with his mother.

This movie jerks your emotions in every which way. I think I probably felt sad, scared, confused, amused, frustrated, repulsed, exasperated, joyful and probably several other emotions throughout the course of this movie. It was definitely captivating and very dramatic. There were so many twists and surprises regarding the relationships in the movie. The relationships were so mixed up that it was a little much though. I think Israeli culture may have a little more liberal view of marriage relationships or something than we do.

Right after this movie I had to run to an intramural racquetball game. My wife and I are doubles partners and I had had one of those crazy days where I was scrambling to finish a paper for another class in between all of my classes so my brain didn't stop running 100 miles per hour all day. By the time I was at the RB to play racquetball, I felt like I needed some time to unwind or something from the movie. The movie had been so tense and dramatic that my mind just felt busy. It made me think about the power movies have on emotion. I think I am extra sensitive to it or something, but it was hard for me to transition to talking to my wife and playing a racquetball game. I think sometimes people are drawn to movies that elicit emotions that fill a hole in their lives. It's like trying to find fulfillment through some pretended medium.

Reading #2

More recently I have not read many books other than textbooks. However, one book, not a textbook, that I read for the class Religion in the Home was called Making God Real in the Orthodox Christian Home. It was a pretty simple book written by an Orthodox Christian priest about ways to practice religion in your home as a family. I’m really interested in other religions anyways and to read and learn about another religious tradition specifically as practiced ideally in the home was fascinating to me. It was salient. It made me think of ways that I want religion to be practiced in my family’s home and motivated me to be better about making sure it happens little by little now even before my wife and I have children. The book, and more specifically the class, made me think about different career fields that I had not considered pursuing before.

Reading

As an elementary school student I read a lot—The Boxcar Children, The Hardy Boys, The Work and the Glory, you name it and I read it. My brothers used to tease me because even though I really liked to play sports and was generally pretty good at them, I often preferred to read a book in my bedroom by myself rather than go outside to play. Sometimes when people would interrupt my reading I would be upset. Once I reached junior-high age or so, I stopped reading books as much for my personal enjoyment. I started reading textbooks and doing homework until, by the time I was in high school, I don’t think I read any books other than school books and scriptures. That’s how it is now as well. I rarely find time to read all that I’m supposed to for my classes from textbooks and journals, so I don’t make time to read other books either.
Because I read so many books as a child, it’s difficult to pick a favorite. At the time, though, my favorite may likely have been The Work and the Glory series or The Kingdom and the Crown series. Both are written by the same author, Gerald Lund, and have similar historical fiction flavors with adventure, triumph and tragedy woven into very real occurrences of the past. The Work and the Glory takes place in the early first half of the 1800’s in connection with the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. These books follow a fictional family that participates in many nonfictional events in church history. Similarly, The Kingdom and the Crown follows a fictional family through significant religious events, but the timeframe is Christ’s mortal ministry and the setting is The Holy Land. I liked both of these series because they were fun and exciting to read, they had distinct characters who had realistic strengths and weaknesses, and I learned a lot of real stories surrounding church history and the Savior’s life that I had not known before. Learning these stories helped me learn truth and discover what I believe more fully. They helped me have a richer context when I read my scriptures as well so that I could understand the words of God more fully. I think that in adolescence I had strongly identified myself with my religious beliefs. Maybe these books made me feel like I better understood who I was.

Lying E-mail

So, I like to think I'm not someone that gets annoyed easily or has a lot of pet peaves, but I tell ya, I cannot stand really long surveys. I received this e-mail a few days ago that showed up in my inbox as coming from President Samuelson. I've never received an e-mail that said President Samuelson was the sender. I opened it and it talked about some national college experience survey or something and how he would appreciate it if I took it. I decided I didn't have time for it then, but that I would do it soon (I have this weird hobby of taking surveys and I try and be a good citizen : ).

Well, after a crazy week I started taking this survey today that said it should take about 15 minutes. I thought that was pretty reasonable. Well, let me tell you that I don't know if people could even have gone through the whole survey without reading any of the prompts and filled in all of the bubbles in 15 minutes. As I took page after page of the survey, I kept thinking I must almost be done. Well, I wasn't. I'm not sure how long it took me in the end, but it was closer to an hour and 15 minutes than it was to 15 minutes. It was ridiculous. I felt lied to. No one could have taken that survey, trying to give accurate feedback, and been done in 15 minutes. No one.

I decided to reply to the e-mail saying I was disappointed and frustrated that the e-mail had been so misleading in saying it would only take about 15 minutes so as to have more people take their survey. I thought about stopping several times, but I thought that I must be close to being done, and that it would be a waste to close it out when I was so far into it. It was interesting that when I hit the reply button in my e-mail, the e-mail address that popped up was not President Samuelson's or any BYU e-mail address for that matter, but some national college survey organization's. It made feel a little better that it was not President Samuelson lying. It was simply an organization that President Samuelson was condoning.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

So, last night my wife and I watched the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The most scandalous part in the whole movie is probably either when the senator's daughter comes into a scene with a sleeveless, spaghetti-strap dress on or scenes showing some characters drinking alcohol. That was the worst!
I couldn't help but think, "What has happened to our standards?" This movie was made in 1939 and is so much cleaner than even some PG movies today. It was not rated. According to Wikipedia standardized ratings weren't used until the late 1960's (probably because there weren't movies bad enough much earlier than that), but a little earlier than that some local governments tried to ban certain movies with something similar to a rating system. Interesting.

The Power of TV in the Prop 8 Case

I'm really interested in the proceedings of the Prop. 8 case in federal court in California (for more info about that check out this blog: http://www.protectmarriage.com/blog/). I recently read how, a couple of weeks ago, an order by Judge Walker to televise the proceedings of the case and make them available on the Internet as a way to inform the public presented serious problems for the defenders of Proposition 8. As a result of the judge's order four of the six expert witnesses of the defense bowed out just prior to the trial because they feared backlash from such widespread availability of the evidence they would share to defend traditional marriage. Some of these witnesses were professors who feared repercussions in their careers. Not long into the case proceedings, which officially started about three weeks ago, the US Supreme Court repealed Judge Walker's order, but it was too late to regain the expert witnesses.
This case, which will probably eventually be appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court will affect our country greatly. It will likely determine whether traditional marriage is upheld in the U.S. or whether same-sex relationships will be allowed to be viewed as marriages. I thought this was an interesting evidence of the power of media in the world today in such a significant issue.

Media Bias in Politics: Oh My, That's Some Strong Language

I just read a political article online that my mom sent out to some family members. My family has these fun political conversations through e-mail sometimes and my mom sends us a lot of articles and things to read. I am interested in the issues, but am hard-pressed because of time to get into them too deeply.

Anyways, in this article I just read, there is some strong language about the media and its biased portrayal of politics. I agree with some of the general ideas, but I don't know that I would express it as strongly as the columnist who wrote this. Below is a juicy excerpt. What do you think?

"There was no way our forefathers could possibly have foreseen the amount of harm the media could generate today. TV, radio, and the World Wide Web have quite literally become the assault weapons of liberalism's worldview. The American public is no longer being truthfully informed.

"There will be a price to pay for our lack of attention. When all is said and done, the media may cost us everything, including our liberties and freedom. Way too many in the press are agenda-driven, crazed ideologues. A biased presentation is shown nightly on all the mainstream news networks. They taint and slant the political and social issues of the day.

"'We The People' must make them stop. Let's bring them down and force the issue by way of peaceful demonstrations and a boycott of their advertisers. It is about time we began a media blitz of our own. Through concerted action, we can coordinate rallies that end up at the doors of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and all their alphabetical affiliates." (Marie Jon, http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=547130)

Oh my Hannah Montana--He Could be the One Part 1

So, in reading other students' blogs I came to this realization: I'm not the most exciting blog writer. Oh well, what can you do?

Last night I had my first taste (and hopefully my last) of Hannah Montana. Prior to this media class I wouldn't have even known that this TV show existed. I had never heard of it. Did I mention that I'm more than a little media illiterate?

I watched it by special assignment as part of our group project for this class to try and make some final decisions about our coding based on some feedback we received from Dr. Coyne. My wife was nice enough to watch it with me. Neither of us watch TV and although she had heard her third graders talk about it before, she had never seen the show either.

In the end, we probably spent as much time talking about the show after watching as we did watching it. Our verdict was that it was a long 23-24 minutes of fluff and meaninglessness with a poor excuse for a plot. I don't know if we could have handled much more of the show. It felt like every second of it was trying so hard to be funny and entertaining, but it wasn't. It was very fast paced.

Aside from the story line and dialogue of the show, two messages the show gave that we didn't appreciate are 1. Parents are ridiculous in their expectations and you can get your way with them if you try hard enough. Hannah's dad was such a pushover. He was simply a character there to be manipulated by Hannah. 2. You should find the ugliest, most original and immodest clothing you can find and wear it. Holy Hannah's wardrobe had some pretty interesting outfits-- some of which didn't bring the word "modesty" to mind.

Anyways, the show was trying to be a little too cleverly funny for us, but, in reality, the messages could have been much worse. The end

Celebrity

I had an interesting experience Hometeaching two days ago that made me wonder why we value celebrities so much in our culture. To make a long story short, my hometeachee and friend went on and on about his experience with a celebrity idol of his. He was still on cloud nine from the experience and the experience had been three days before. It made me wonder why it made him so happy. What is it about celebrities that make people so interested in them? What makes a celebrity so important that simply seeing them perform in person makes a normal guy's life blissful for several days in a row? I don't have the answers exactly, but I know that part of the effect and power comes from the media.

The Textbook is Right

As I was speed reading through chapter 1 of our textbook a few days ago, I thought of an example that illustrated perfectly some of their points about children and the media. Children experience media differently from adults (because of their cognitive development level) and different from each other as well.

Over Christmas Break my family watched "Night at the Museum II" together. One of my nieces, a five year old, loves my wife and was sitting on my wife's lap during the movie. At certain points in the movie that were humorous and action-packed, my niece was terrified. She would duck her head into my wife and plug her ears at certain parts. Interestingly, the other niece and nephews in the room were not similarly affected. Now I make the connection that my niece's reaction was likely largely due to her cognitive development level.

My Family's Discussion About Facebook

Over this Christmas Break, my family had an interesting discussion about Facebook. There were some avid proponents and some sworn enemies. Interestingly, my oldest brother, who may be a slightly more liberal voice in my conservative family, was the primary sworn enemy. He didn't like the idea that he couldn't control what people posted on his page. He specifically mentioned that he didn't want some high school friend (apparently he had some rowdy high school friends) posting something inappropriate on his page and then have one of his young men (he was a bishop until just a few months ago) see it. A sister-in-law rebutted that with explaining how she had some neat missionary experiences through Facebook.
I don't use Facebook much, but I can see both of their points. I have also been able to use Facebook to sort of check up on my little sister and see if she's doing okay since she has been struggling some lately. However, a month or two ago I got two random friend requests from girls I don't know and when I went to see their request, both of them had close to no clothes on in their profile picture. So, Facebook definitely has pros and cons. Facebook is one example of a form of media that can be used for good and evil. It's not inherently good or bad. Its merit depends on its users use of it.