I read the play 12 Angry Men in high school and I remembered a lot from it. We actually read it out lot and did a little play of it, I was the foremen. We also watched this exact same movie after reading it. I think the story is very compelling and honestly still very relevant.

Humans do tend to just follow the group and not want to stick out and the play really highlights this. Juror 8 really stands up for himself and what he believes in which is hard to do in that kind of setting. It would have been easy for him to just go along with it move on with his life but he doesn’t he sits and fights for what he believes in.

I thought the class was a lot of fun! Going through all the media outputs and how they effect us is pretty interesting. This semester I was also taking an alternative marketing class which focused a lot of different types of media in marketing and I was able to pull a lot of similarities between the two classes. I do think we could have spent more time on music. It is such huge part of who we are as humans more so than any other form of media and it was sad to just brush pass it.

I think Henry Jenkins in Fandom Force makes some interesting points. I never thought about fandoms playing a role in politics but as Jenkins points out it is a way of people coming together and sharing ideas. There are a lot of parallels in literature and the real world which could open up the readers eyes. I know there were a lot of parallels going around when the Black Lives Matter movement started and the hunger games when District 11 revolted. When situations are taken out of the real world and into fiction it’s a lot easier for people to see the other side and drop their preconceived ideas.

With that being said I think people can get too attached to their fandom. That’s what I felt like with the Jaws WeMake. Of course there is nothing harmful about people being obsessed with something but sometimes when it takes up the persons whole identity it’s a lot. I find the Harry Potter fandom takes things very far, they have memberships that you can pay for and never-ending merchandise. Being a business major I can see why companies are attracted to this though. Having a set group of people with such an evoke set is the best costumer relationship a business can have. This also calls into question the business practices of these companies, they know people are so invested into the fandom that they could make cheap products or out source a lot of their work and still make a huge profit. That is what scares me about fandoms.

Entering into the modern age of films a lot have changed from classic Hollywood. More topics have become more acceptable to talk about as well as independent film makers to get their art out there. I think a great genre to look at is horror to see the change ( it’s also close to . It started with “The House of the Devil” ( in the US known as The Haunted Castle) created in 1896. It was a three minute film about the devil toying with a victim. (It’s on YouTube incase anyone is interested)

There were a lot of good horror movies between The House of the Devil and Psycho, including all of the great creature features, but the next and seen as the all time best horror movie Psycho. To start tying in “This Film is Not Yet Rated” Psycho is rated ‘R’ now for us Psycho wouldn’t even be close to a rated R film and I was actually a little confused why it was so I looked into it. Turns out Psycho was originally given the R rating but when it was re released in 1968 it was given a ‘M’ rating which is about the same as a PG rating now.

The switch in tone from older horror movies and Psycho is huge, which is why it is considered the start of modern horror movies. The next movie they changed the genre was “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” from 1974. It was considered the first slasher and started the movement that we saw in the 80’s and is having a resurgence now. I personally love the Texas Chainsaw Massacre it’s my favorite horror film there so many levels to that movie I could write a whole blog post about it.

There’s tons of classic horror movies in the 80’s 90’s and 00’s but the last movie I want to talk about it “Get Out”. I assume most people have heard about it and probably know what it’s about but it say now started this movement of political horror. Followed by “Us” and “The Hunt” that touch on the politics and just how scary each side can be.

This shift over the years hasn’t just been in horror. Hollywood has become edger and touched on subjects that before were too taboo. I love this change, being able to see real life on the screen instead of just stories is powerful. People can connect more or even learn about other ways of life through movies. Being connected to movies through my brother wanted to direct has shown me a new way of looking at movies and excited about where they are going.

My question for the class: where do you think movies are going? What is going to change due to COVID?

I have an interesting relationship with movies, sitting down and watching them I am terrible at – I usually fall asleep. I stopped going to the movies because I didn’t want to pay 12 bucks to take a nap. That being said my older brother was a film major at Ithaca College, which is in the top 5 film schools in the country with a lot of famous alumni and professors, so I have a lot of knowledge of them. ( which is how I knew the Jaws question in class). Most of my knowledge in horror movies as that is what my brothers focus is in.

Even though my relationship with movies isn’t the best I have seen those early films including a trip to the moon. I know the film used to be on Netflix but I’m not sure if it’s still on. I know we talked a bit on it in class but made in 1902 and being just under 20 minutes it was revolutionary. It’s amazing to watch and thinking about watching this as the first real film ever must have been a wild experience.

The textbook again does a good job of explaining the mechanics behind films and how the technology works. I think the part on silent films is super interesting and I wish there was more on it. It’s something we don’t really see nowadays but is a cool genera. One movie recently that used it was ‘A Quite Place’, it was so successful because it removed the sound of movies that we have gotten used of.

I believe social media over all has been a good thing. I talked about this in my last blog but I think it mostly gets a bad wrap. There of course are down sides but I think the upsides balance it out.

To start with the negatives- the biggest one being an increase in bully. It easy to hide behind a screen and say whatever you want but it’s still words out there in the world for others to read. What I also remember is having to watch the movie “Cyberbully” in health class about the effects of online bullying. It showed what was actually happening when social media was becoming more prevalent in life. The movie goes through what man kids went through in America at the time, of course – spoiler alert- the main career does live through the movie but brings up the important fact that there are kids out there that don’t make it.

Another negative is body image that young kids are being exposed too. There has been a spike in kids and young adults having body dysmorphia because of what they see others looking like online. Our society likes certain body types over others and those are the ones that are most shown over social media.

While those are awful and we should all work on changing social media also provides positives in connecting the world. I think it’s super important to travel outside the bubble you grew up in but traveling is very expensive and outside the realm of possibility for people. With social media one can experience different cultures and learn different ways of life without having to leave their day to day job. They can also connect with people like them no matter where they are in the world. This can give people a sense of comfort especially if where they are isn’t accepting of who they are.

Facebook:

Facebook is in a weird position, they started in the myspace era of social media where there weren’t many rules but now have survived till now which there are lots of restrictions on social media. Facebook has had to adapt but they are still behind compared to other forms of social media. We all know Facebook listens to us and sells the information which is wrong and they should put better regulation on, but at the end of the day it’s on the user. We know Facebook does this and if the user continues to use the site then they can’t be upset when they get targeted ads.

My question to the class: what social medias do you have? Is there a reason you use them? (like for me I only use facebook so my older family can see pictures of me at horse shows and bigger events in my life) What’s your favorite social media and why so?

I think the internet and social media in general is interesting in terms of my generation. Our relationship with the internet but especially with social media is a completely new concept. We grew up and were coming of age while the internet was also hitting it’s prime. I remember life without smartboards in classrooms but by high school all my classrooms had smartboards and full access to the internet.

I liked the part of the textbook that talks about email. At the time and still email is revolutionary, it connected people on a level that wasn’t able to happen before. As a business student, and just a college student , email is my prime source of connecting with people. I liked this quote from the textbook “The speed and relatively inexpensive nature of e-mail makes it a prime competitor of postal services—including FedEx and UPS—that pride themselves on speed.” I never thought about email being a competitor of postal services because I grew up with email being popular. Thinking about it though I guess it would make sense that it cut down their profits. I think I would compare it to nowadays uber and lyft vs taxi’s. I was in high school when uber was coming up and taxi drivers were upset by it, but now it’s so normal that kids growing up will probably not know about the fight taxi and uber went through.

Going on to the social media part of the textbook, I always think it’s funny how the older generation complains how my generation is attached to their phones. Phones make life easier, plain and simple so why would I not want to use it. I would say my phone, and in turn internet and social media are essential to daily life now. Essential because I can check my work schedule and any changes  need to be noted, I can check on my email and school work to stay on top of that, along with staying in contact with my family who don’t live in the area. I have my bank information on my phone and my venmo which I need incase I need to transfer money around. On top of that I also can text my friends and check my social media and have my entertainment.

I probably watched all of Buffy when I was 16 and I loved it. I would say I’m a feminist so I loved when TV shows had strong female leads. Buffy was the first badass female leads in TV and I think a lot of girls related to her and looked up to her. Before on TV even if the lead was female like ‘I Love Lucy’ there were still a strong male lead to support her along with her character itself not being a strong female. While Buffy had love interest during the show she never relied on them for the plot to move forward.

Moving on the ‘Hush’ I think it is a good mirror to what is going on in today’s world. At the start of everyone’s voices being gone we see the liquor store still open and busy. Just like how even though New York had a full shut down liquor stores were demined essential and were still high traffic areas. We then pan over to see a man selling whiteboards already trying to profit off of a change in time, just like how we saw a bunch of people making masks and trying to sell them. Them losing their voices is a lot like having to wear masks now, and very much of what our current world is like for deaf people. This just goes to show how realist tv shows can be and how Buffy really connected with people because it understood how humans think.

I shortly wanted to bring up how Buffy influenced the LGBTQ+ community. When 16 year old me first started watching Buffy I didn’t know it defined a lot of lesbians coming of age. So when I told my friends that’s what I was watching I got asked if I was a lesbian because of the stigma Buffy has. Buffy is a badass and seeing that on a screen I’m sure could show someone coming to age what they are attractive too and it was really the first show that was know for that.

The idea of having an episode with very little talking and the plot based around no talking is quite interesting. I’m not sure if Buffy was the first one but since Buffy a lot of drama and thriller tv shows tend to have an episode that takes away that comfort of talking. Us as humans rely so much on our voice to communicate with each other that when it is taken away it is terrifying. I mean a universal nightmare humans have is not being able to scream loud enough.

As a TV show Buffy the Vampire Slay was the first of many things for a tv show. They showed that a strong female lead can be interesting and stay on the air for many seasons. It help open the eyes for a lot of lgbtq+ kids coming of age. It also started a a genre of tv shows with a coming of age horror show.

Tv is a very different form of entertainment in my mind. While one can argue tv came from radio, which it was an evolution on radio, Tv really stands only. Having a general access to television has been available for less than a century and it has evolved into a completely new form.

The textbook does a good job explaining how tv’s work without making it confusing. I also didn’t know that there were two different types in mechanical and electronic. This just adds to the fact the tv has changed rapidly even from the start of the technology in the 1800’s

The textbook then goes into the golden age of television and I think I would argue that this wasn’t the best time in tv.

The chart from the textbook talks about the number of tv’s per household and how it jump drastically. While this was probably the golden age for the companies that sell tv’s I think the art behind tv hadn’t hit it’s stride yet.

These restriction in the art of tv was talked about with the Twilight Zone. On the side note growing up I loved watching the Twilight Zone, the twists at the end and the thought you had to put into always intrigued me. This thought into the show wasn’t something you saw back then, which they talked about in the interview. TV back then was supposed to be family friendly and only show good Christian values where now artist have more liberty with what they create. A good example now is Black Mirror, it follows Twilight Zone to a tee. Different actors and plots in each episode, has the use of black and white when needed, Metalhead, and the use of technology and the unknown as a driving force of most plots.

In these two promo pictures of the show it’s clear to see the parallels between the two.

The Twilight Zone paved the for shows that question more things like black mirror does. The struggle that the Twilight Zone had getting on the air and staying back then shows how tv has changed since then. I would say we are living in the golden age of tv now. Many different companies producing shows of all sorts and multiple different platform it has never been easier to find something one connects with.

What do you think was the golden age of tv? What shows were on then that sets that age apart?

The textbook does a good job about talking about the modern era of the radio and music but what I think it fails to mention is how music influence humans before the 19th century. It’s crazy to me that there is only one chapter on music seeing how it was so influential throughout human history. Music brought people together, it connected people and created societies. The lack of that in the textbook I think is a huge oversight. Music celebrated life and festivals and happiness for centuries. Religion and Cultures were built around music and I feel like it deservers more time.

What I like that the textbook did was broke up the times and showed the evolution of music through the 20th century. It starts with the modern technology that emerged in the late 1800s that helps distribute mass music and connect people on a bigger scale. This part also flows into the next chapter about radios and really ties the two together. Music has always been a way for people to express themselves and that reflects what the chapter talks about in the race and gender. Like I said before music is part of culture and has been for a long time.

Downloaded was pretty interesting to watch about how fast the music world can change. It went from only live to having a a radio and record player to downloading music to now which we can listen to to music off an app. This just shows how connected people are to their music and want the easiest access they can.

On to Radio, I really likes the Frazer episode we watched. I thought it was funny how fake a person can be over the radio. As funny as it was it did also point out that radio was a major form of entrainment for a long time. They allowed stories to be reached to wider audiences and voices that before weren’t heard could now be heard. Of course all of that is on top of bosting music consumption.

My question for the class is how did Music influence your life? What kind of music do you listen to and why do you think you listen to it?