12 Angry Men is a look of how society works and has worked for the longest time. The movie starts when a Puerto Rican kid is charged with the killing of his father. Most of the evidence seems to point to his guilt, and several witnesses testified to having seen or heard the boy commit the murder. A guilty verdict carries an automatic death sentence.the foreman Juror 1 tries to organize the jury, and most of the jurors appear eager to quickly confirm a guilty verdict and get on with their lives. But Juror 8 is the sole hold out. He believes the defense lawyer was poor, leaving many questions unanswered, and he demands the jury members fulfil their duty by delving into the various aspects of the case in more detail to examine whether or not there is reasonable doubt.
The quickness at which the jury want to get to a verdict is very resemblance of how many African Americans have felt with how the courts have treated them not caring about evidence and only caring about convictions. This very present when 7 of the men are really mad about not getting past this because they have “better” stuff to do. One wants to get back to watch a sports game… This shows you how much a persons life means to this juror.
The men represent a mosaic of the white men who made up American society of the day, from professionals to ordinary Joes, from the middle-aged to the elderly, from bigots to immigrants, and from the relatively rich to the relatively poor. The film becomes an examination of the jury’s motivation as much as it is a legal drama, the true colors of each juror sequentially emerging as the group delves into the difficult evidence of the case. This eventually leads to the decision which sees that the evidence presented shows that the kid is innocent and shouldn’t be convicted.
We in the United States are renowned for fandom when it comes to sports such as football, basketball and baseball. We root for our hometown teams like we are apart of them. We care about the people involved and we usually hope the best for the team we root for. For me its the Buffalo Bills, even when they were at low parts in their past I’ve loved them through all of it.
For others there’s another different kind fandom that makes people feel the same way as I would at football games. This kind of fandom is on the movie screens that gives people impactful looks at characters and story lines that people fall in love with. One of these include Galaxy Quest a remake of a TV show that was meant to be a comedy and a serious story line that has helped story lines of movies even today. Galaxy Quest was kind of like a parody of Star Trek that had the special effect of involving a lot of people that really loved that movie story line.
Another story line that we have seen take on fandom to a high extent has been Jaws that has personally made me scared of deep waters in the ocean. Both these movies has provided a platform for fandom to become over used or even satirical. People become so invested in a movies story line that it becomes a part of their lives.
Fandom is a very important part of how society works with sports and in movies. There are many different films that have brought about that kind of mainstream fandom. Some of which are Marvel series, Star Trek, Star Wars, and many more. It is a great way to involve ourselves in the films and make them a part of our identity.
Do you think fandom becomes to much at times?
What is something that you are a fan of that you geek over?
The news has been known to be biased based on what side you are looking from. In the U.S we like to be known of news that fits our bias and how we perceive the world around us. This means that news companies are able to bend the truths they broadcast to us based on who the audience is. This brings a question about where have the ethics and morality of news stations have gone. It seems to me that many news stations have sold out for the money instead of telling no bias news. It is also within my understanding that it is very hard to have no bias in the world we all have schemas that we call upon to give us evaluations on everything we do in life.
We saw this in the chapter with a Justin Bieber news where CNN chose to make that emergency news over a U.S representative. News stations are in a stage where they are more liable to fail if they don’t get the newest news out there in the public before others. This means they value quick and easy news coverage versus the things in the public that will actually effect us in our everyday lives.
This has become especially true in the one sector that hurts most of us the most which is death. News coverage usually reports celebrity deaths before even their families know. This happened with Kobe Bryant’s family that had to experience his first hand when the news of his death reached them after it was posted all online. This also involved Kobe’s daughter that would be described as a dark place that the news stations had fallen to when this event happened. The news station carred more about being first rather than the health and well being of the other family members that had to see this on news stations even before they were informed.
This can even be extended to other nations as well, like when Princess Diana of the British Royal Court was chased down by paparazzi that subsequently led to her death when trying to flee a situation.
Do you guys think morality has left news stations?
In week 8 we talked about the effects of social media on our society and how it has fundamentally changed how our society is run. Social media today plays a pivotal part on how we connect with people on a wider scale than ever seen before in history. We can talk to someone on the other side of the world in a literal second of our time. This connection between people has allowed us to feel more understanding of peoples cultures, ideas, and identities. But in the midst of global pandemic with riots and protests beings seen around the world some would say that we have lost touch with our morality and that social media is playing a larger part to divide us rather than connect us as was social media platforms purposes. I believe social media platforms have gotten exposed for their usage of algorithms to predict what people would want to see or the friends the algorithm thinks they should add. When social media platforms do this they polarize and radicalize people to certain beliefs that they themselves do not notice. Therefore I think social media has become a unhelpful source in peoples daily lives unless its used in the right way to create more understanding.
We see it all to regularly that people are consumed with how they take information and can be trapped in the same area of the social network not being exposed different ideas and cultures. This is especially true when people feel like they are in the minority and will choose to not speak their minds because of the difference in population that have the ideas in question “Facebook and Twitter users were also less likely to share their opinions in many face-to-face settings. This was especially true if they did not feel that their Facebook friends or Twitter followers agreed with their point of view”(Social Media Spiral of Silence, Keith N. Hampton, Lee Rainie, Weixu Lu, Maria Dwyer, Inyoung Shin,Kristen Purcell, August 26, 2014, Pg. 4) . Not allowing people to have a comfortable place to voice their opinion without fear of being made fun of or brutalized with attacks is something social media platforms have continued to lack.
We can also see how social media platforms try to cater us to certain products that we might like. This can be good in certain situations that we might find objects that we would want. But we can see how using such algorithms to predict products we might like is in fact still a part of our social problem of being trapped in a cycle only things recognizable to us. This can be anything from the color of a T-shirt we want to the sizes of T-shirt to what is said on the T-shirt. It personally perplexes myself when I’m talking about a product out in the open then I see a ad for the same or similar product the next time I’m on a social media site. This goes past trying to help out the individual in situations it is clear how these social media sites are trying to make as much money as possible while taking advantage of the usage of phones and technology in general.
With the social media model that has been shown there’s a dilemma at the core of social media business that counter acts it. A social media platform can either keep advertising the same kind of social groups and products that allows people to find things similar to the person. But doing so it risks radicalizing the person due to only being subject to the same kind of social network. Social media platforms could also let people experience different ideas, people, and products that might be very different to who they are as a person. Doing this would allow for better personal connection with people of different areas of society. The downside to this is that the algorithm does somewhat help with getting people to see products that they might like and potentially become a sale of said products. This is a hard choice for businesses as a whole to make because the point of a capitalist economic system is to make as much value as possible. But doing so could allow for side effects such as the spiral of silence. “We’re the real culprits. When it comes to elevating one perspective above all others and herding people into culturally and ideologically inflexible tribes, nothing that Facebook does to us comes close to what we do to ourselves”(How Facebook Warps Our Worlds, Frank Bruni, May 21, 2016). The crazy about how his system is that we as costumers don’t get to choose how we want it, these companies choose for us using these algorithms trapping us in our local sector of the internet.
It has become apparent that such social media sites are not doing the intended results. Instead of bringing people together and connecting people from around the world it has lost its morality. It has instead chosen to be the benefactor of the capitalist system and be able to profit off the polarization of countries such as the United States.
Bruni, Frank. How Facebook Warps Our Worlds. New York Times. May 21st, 2016.
Dwyer, Maria. Hampton, Kieth. Lu Weixu. Purcell Kristen. Rainie, Lee. Shin, Inyoung. Social Media Spiral of Silence. August 26th, 2014.
We are experiencing a very precious and aggravating time in human history where people seem to be in a more anxious mood than we have seen in a long time. It could be that politics is playing a large part in our lives and that nervousness that we have experienced is becoming a subliminal part of our lives. It can also be the technology that we have developed to be a part of our everyday lives.
We have developed films and TV shows that can make it very convincing that these things are real. The things we are presented on shows give us false narratives on how we as humans are allowed to act and how things are in the actual world. Media has made it hard to distinct which of our memories are from the media or our own. This has effected the way we raise our kids now, we still don’t know how this will effect them in the future. We as a society expect everything to be fast this includes media, although this can be helpful the fastest truth is not always the right truth.
We can see that the media has been corrupted by bias with the very places we get our media from. This extends to the major networks to the major social media platforms. All these platforms can encourage their own views on subjects that allow the truth to be extended or plain wrong.
How do we fix our own paranoias in this era?
How do we fix the major networks from showing bias news?
Ratings have been a thing in our society for all forms of social networks from TV’s, to computer sites, and to movies. We use ratings to make sure the film we are about to watch are within our grasp or age range. Ratings are a way for producers to display the message of the movie to the right audience. You don’t want a bunch of kids seeing 50 Shades of Grey! Therefore this system helps categorize the movies to make them more or less friendly for the set of audiences in society the film makes are trying to target.
In older films kissing was seen as very grotesque and pornographic to movie goers back in the day. But this system has evolved to the acceptance to film audiences of the times. That’s why kissing scenes aren’t as crazy to see in movies now in today’s world. Ratings have been seen as very helpful ways of classifying movies for the audiences pleasure, with changing times still going on I believe that we are heading towards a society that sees sex and other things as an important part of learning and a helpful experience for understanding. This might change the ratings to include other things in society but I guess we will have to wait and see.
Do you think that the movie industry is still evolving to audiences tastes?
Do you think this will cause other things seen as grotesque to become more normal in films?
Films have become a major part of our society in how we pass our free time, how we learn new things, and how we just entertain ourselves in a world that can not do the things characters in film can do. In today’s world films can look like its a capture of our own universe with characters in it. Films can also involve the greatness of animation or CGI, which can include films completely animated like Princess and the Frog or magical CGI based like Avatar. This has led to the popularity of movies to become a huge sector in the American life style and economy with box offices setting continuous records in the billions mark.
One of the most successful businesses in the film making industry would be Walt Disney. Disney was originally founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio; it also operated under the names The Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before officially changing its name to The Walt Disney Company in 1986. Unlike most film making companies that started locally Disney was one of the only ones to not be bought up by other corporations.
Instead of being bought Disney is now most likely the largest company in the United States; this being because they have diversified their owned companies to many sectors of the new social media age. This has created a lot of backlash over their apparent monopolizing nature. But they have stayed true to the aspect of making magical movies that change the game of film making. This includes such films such as the Star Wars Franchise, the mickey mouse franchise, and many other films that were staples of their company such as Chicken Little their first ever 3D movie.
What I ask you guys is do you think its getting to a dangerous area where large companies like Disney own almost all content related businesses?
Do you think there will be other companies to subvert Disney as the top dog?
When the first developers of the internet created the baseline for what we now know I don’t think they expected it to grow and evolve into what it has today. Social media is one part of the internet that has created its own sort of style and realm to it. Social media has been bent to be this place where people with similar ideas and ideologies go to radicalize those feelings and become something I don’t think they expected to become.
When Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were first created it was first created they were meant as a way to share different ideas, as a way to share our experiences to the world. This was a way to involve more people in what we perceived as our own world. This allowed us to create new friends, reconnect with old ones, or even reconcile with people. But social media has become a place for people to argue and twisted in their own ways even to become radicalized in their thought process. This is what one of the problems that is held within Facebook that has been scrutinized by government officials in the way it uses algorithms to trap people in their own radicalized thinking that even furthers their radicalized process. This is talked about in Facebook Dilemmas Part one that speaks on how Facebook answers questions about this process but never truly changes what they are doing because its good for business.
Machine outrage speaks on the subject of how social media can be used as a weapon of sorts to vents one anger out to the public. This anger can then be used as a news outlet whether true or not it doesn’t matter people can now use material on there to prove there point of view. People then can spend hours arguing with others on how something is right or wrong.
People get trapped in this cocoon of lies or truth that involves heavy arguing. This then makes people prone to silence if they are in the minority on a subject. I can take this from my own life in how I used to try and convince people from my home that is very conservatively isolated from the rest of the world that how people act and speak can be perceived as racist. This would lead to arguing that would last for hours. This led me to stop speaking out because its hard trying to convince a majority of people something that is easy for them to deny while on a phone. So I ask you guys this how can we as a society change our ways on social media? Is there any silver lining to how social media has made us very angry in this covid-19 world?
The internet has become a place where we as humans can post anything we want. There are huge barriers stopping anyone from doing what people want to do on the internet. You as a person can decide in what direction you want your content to go in weather positive or negative. This can effect more than just how the world looks at you, it can also effect how the world looks at the people look around you. Sense the internet became a huge thing that almost everyone uses everyday it has allowed people to connect in ways that we couldn’t image not being connected to now. This can now effect your job prospects, who you become friends with, or who you can date.
Digital Nation talked about how we as humans are now connected to our screens and how this affects our lives on a scale never thought of. The movie discussed how we are never on the same kind of plane of existence when we are on our technology device. We are now in a age of multi tasking everything that we do and never fully putting our time into the work we do now.
We are a society now that depends on short and quick information. We want to get as much information as quickly as we can so we are not wasting our own time. This can even be more seen on sites such as YouTube that have prioritized shorter films so people can get their fill rather than long informative videos that allow you deep dives into the information of the video. I have see how this has effected my own life from me being succumb to this as well preferring short videos more often than longer ones so I can watch even more. I believe this trend needs to end so people can get more time into what they care about rather small bits of information that they can get. This is something we need to work on as a society as we become ever more ingrained into our phones and other technology devices.
Television is one of the most important and evolutionary devices ever invented in sense humans have walked the earth. Maybe that last statement is a little exaggerated, but television is still a very important tool we use as humans. It has helped us received more knowledge than ever before in human history. We can know something that happens on the other side of the planet in our own home while looking at the images. Say a volcano was erupting in California we could know about it immediately and be able to phone our family that lives in the area to know if they are okay. This is why it is a very crucial part of our every day lives.
First created in 1925 by John Baird, the modern computer has come a long ways away from the original design that only allowed for silhouettes on a screen that you weren’t able to hear. These first creations needed subtitles and were meant for the richest people that could afford them. This slowly changed to having audio that wasn’t to indulging with black and white pictures. This all changed when TV companies started to target the middle class that were able to afford things better than the working class. This eventually lead to a growing need for color that was adapted into the screenings. At first this only included a few colors such as blue, red, yellow, but quickly evolved to so much more.
TV has evolved to become a staple of our society such as when we watch football and other sports, to how we can watch shows. But TV usage is becoming a sort of outdated source with the usage of computers and smart phones. This is because it has become easier to create content and develop it on computers than it would to TV’s. People can now watch their favorite shows in the palm of their hands.
Do you guys think that TV’s will become outdated? What can replace the norm of TV’s that we have now?
Mass Media and American Life 