Fast Forward by Lauren Greenfield

Fast Forward is about the Photographs that Lauren Greenfield took of L.A kids. She wanted to know these kid’s stories and what was going on in their life. She wanted to know their goals and dreams, and how where they are living influences them.

 

            In Los Angeles, media is a huge impact on most teenagers and kids. The whole ideal of living in Hollywood and making it big is was might kids/teens wish for.  In L.A, kids/teens want to show off how much money they have. They want to have a lot of materialistic things. L.A. is very diverse city, and many of the kids and teens want to make it big, and be well known in different ways. Some of the ways they want to become famous is kind of disturbing too. 

In Lauren Greenfield’s article she said,” a striking commonality throughout was the importance of image and celebrity. As innocuously as throwing the most extravagant party or creating an individual style, as gravely as killing a member of another gang, L.A.'s kids are engaged in the age-old Hollywood pursuit of making a name for themselves. The quest for notoriety has become a rite of passage. At a time of life when young people struggle to form their identities, that struggle is raised to new heights in the context of Los Angeles and Hollywood. Whether it is the desire to be an adult when one is a child, to be a gangster when one is privileged, to be famous when one is unknown, or to look like a model when one does not, young people are preoccupied with becoming other than they are. Los Angeles, in her traditional role as the city of dreams has bequeathed the quest for the dream to her children. The self-consciousness that underlies their aspirations inevitably costs them their innocence.”

What she is saying in this quote is that kids/teens are trying to grow up too fast.

 

            I think Greenfield would agree with Raby’s five discourses. They both discuss how the media influences kids/teens and how it’s making them grow up too fast, and not enjoy being a kid.

            I think McMillian and Morrison would respond to Lauren Greenfields book in a positive way. Greenfield is seeing the real teens, and they are letting her know how the media influences them.

 

            In Greenfield’s book, it’s a lot of young people. The oldest in the book is 20 years old, and the youngest is 3 years old. The people that are absent in her book are 21 and over. I think the reason for that is so she can see how young we are influenced by our media, and how it truly effects us.

           

          

Glee

This is one of my favorite t.v. shows, and when I watched the pilot episode again, I really tried to see what was the message in this show. When I was watching Glee, it's about a group of kids, who aren't very popular, and they are all different. The kids are always the odd kids out in school, and they want to make a change for themselves. When they see the signup sheet for Glee Club, it gives them hope. The teacher who runs the Glee Club, Mr. Schuester, fights to allow the Glee Club, because the kids feel invisible around the popular people, and just in the whole school, even to some of the teachers. There was nothing that I didn't understand.

Some of the kids didn't even want to do Glee Club, because they thought that they were going to get made fun of. These are the kids who already feel out of place in their own school, and because of what everyone thinks, they are afraid to do something that they love. The character Rachel has always been picked on. She would always put videos of herself on her myspace singing, and people would make fun of her. When she went to sign up for Glee Club, she always put a gold star sticker next to her name, because she knows that she's going to make it big someday.

The character Finn, is a jock, but when Mr. Schuester hears Finn singing in the boys locker room, it gives him hope that there's more like him that have talent, and are afraid to show it. Finn is pressured by his football team to not do Glee Club. They said to him that it's either Glee Club or the team. Finn does both, because he wants to do both, and he doesn't see the problem.

When you first watch this episode, you realize how unsupportive Mr. Schuester's wife is about Glee Club, right when he brings it up to her. His wife even thinks don't bother with the kids. She is also "pregnant" and she wants him to get a better job. Mr. Schuester decides to quit teaching and doing Glee Club, when he all of a sudden hears the kids singing " Don't Stop Believing". I think this song has a huge influence with this episode, because its a message for the kids singing it to not give up, and also to Mr. Schuester to not give up on something that they all love and have a huge passion for.

I found this interesting video. It has a good message, and it relates to this show really well.

I think this show represents teenagers in many different ways, because all of the teenagers in this show are all different. They are all hiding something. They are all afraid to show who they truly are, because of what their peers might think, and also their teachers. I think the main message in this show is showing that you shouldn't be afraid to show who you are and not care what others think. Even though it's hard for these kids to not care what their peers think, they become stronger doing something that's different instead of trying to follow the crowd.

Hip-Hop in Media by Jared A. Ball Ph.D.

I understood what Jared A. Ball was discussing in his two articles about Hip-Hop in media. In the first article, it was saying how it can be good, but sometimes bad. Africa Americans created Hip-Hop, and it's been popular now for over thirty years. I found this quote in Jared's first article"Hip-hop’s popularity has done nothing to improve Black America’s overall wealth, education, health-care, or certainly rates of imprisonment. In fact, the popularity of hip-hop is used to deny these conditions or explain them as natural to the conditions of African America. It is not to the people that these conditions are natural but, instead, to the condition of being colonized. Popular media and, therefore, hip-hop cannot be changed prior to a societal shift (revolution) in who holds power and how that power is to be wielded." I think what he is saying here, that it's the condition, that we live in, and what the media is trying to tell us. It's not the peoples fault.

In the second article, Jared talks about censorship in Hip-Hop music. He discussed how some songs  that have the wrong messages, like "Fuck the police" should be censored. How in even some music videos it is censored. But it's not just Hip-Hop music, its all kinds of music. Jared said,"Corporate lockdown of popular media is a political necessity and scientific inevitability requiring further description of this process, along with suggested avenues of resistance, which will be the focus of subsequent columns. Our approach to the study of and response to media must be akin to that of Huey P. Newton who said he “studied law to become a better burglar.”

Hip-Hop music can have some bad messages in them. But it might also have some good messages too.I feel that any type of music can have a positive or negative affect on our society.

This is a Hip-Hop dance from the TV show from "So You think you can Dance?"

Hip-Hop is huge in dance, and there is a lot of different kinds of Hip-Hop around.

Heres a video about Hip-Hop Music:

This video explains a lot about Hip-Hop from the past to Hip-Hop now.