Priya Critically Thinking

Ever since I have learned about the sheer number of advertisements that a teen is exposed to in a day, I have been much more conscious about how many/how much media I consume. It's an extremely high number. A bunch of apps have advertisements, television has a lot of advertisements, and there are so many other subtle forms of advertisements (like stickers and cups). If I am being entirely honest, I have not really changed how much I interact with media. I still use the apps that I used before, that hasn't changed. But I have noticed that I am more aware of what I am consuming. I've always known that things are not as they seem (the one thing I remember my grandfather telling me is that advertisements are all lies), so that has always been there, but now I understand why/how. I used to know that something is happening, but now I specifically know more what is happening. I do notice that I look at advertisements a bit longer and pick them apart, look at the music playing, th...

I listen to a wide variety of music, but I have found that the music I mainly listen to is rap or R&B. I listen to this music not for the lyrics, but mainly for the beat of the music. For this blog, I decided to listen closely to some of these lyrics. Results varied. The song Love by Dean (feat. Syd) is very nice. Listen to the song here : Say you want to take it slow When you’re ready let me know I know somewhere we can go to unwind Leave your troubles in the past And give love another chance You got questions, I got answers tonight I got intentions baby But, I’m gettin’ restless babe I need your blessing, baby I’ll love you if you let me baby These lyrics are pretty nice and poetic, not degrading women at all. However, one of my favorite songs, Cabaret by Aziz Gibson is not so pure. Listen here : Baby you and I should Honey we should chill sometime Baby you and I should Baby we should chill sometime Everything that I do I do with you on my mind Babyg...

Article for the accusation is linked here . Article for the response is linked here . My mother is a huge fan of Aziz Ansari. He gave a beautiful speech at the Golden Globes about speaking out about sexual assault and standing up, to not be afraid anymore. But... he has been accused of sexual misconduct himself. On the Babe  article, a twenty-three-year-old Brooklyn based photographer named Grace, then aged 22 speaks out about the night. The hit it off, flirted for a bit, snapped a few photos. They ran into each other while Grace was leaving, and at Ansari's suggestion, she put her phone number in his phone. After she flew back to New York, they planned to go out on a date. The date did not go as planned. He told her to dress up to the dress code "cocktail chic", so she settled on "a tank-top dress and jeans". After she arrived at his apartment in Manhattan, they talked over white wine. He chose white wine, although Grace preferred red wine. They then went t...

Over the Spring Break, I watched the film Miss Representation. It is a documentary about the misrepresentation of women in the media. It shows how women are degraded, oversexualized, and have trivial depictions in common media. It shows the negative impact of the media's messages on women's attempts to get high political and business power. They cover points such as "53 percent of 13-year-old girls say they are unhappy with their bodies. When those girls reach age 17, 78 percent are unhappy with them", self-objectification, how only sixteen percent of main characters in movies are female (and most of these roles are stories about men's lives; the woman is seeking a male, the woman is taken down a peg or humiliated in some way), how powerful women are called "bitchy" or has sacrificed love and family for her career (and a male has to come and knock her down a peg). What I find really appalling is that women in news have to extremely sexualized. They wear...

In the Frontline episode "Making Cents out of Teens: Merchants of Cool" they talk about how some programs are just really long commercials. They make the plot specifically to advertise the product. I personally have not encountered any movies or programs that I have been able to tell that they are just made to advertise the product, but I have seen many products placed in these movies or programs. A good movie that shows this (as a joke) is the Truman Show. It's a movie about a guy who has his entire life on a live television show, and you can see the producers placing the products, and Truman has to endorse them. I watch Korean dramas, and I notice that while food is a product placement (like it mostly is in America), they also have a lot of makeup and skin care products as product placement. And it is super obvious, while I see American food placement a bit more subtle. The drama will show the main female lead washing her face, then sit in her chair and complete the f...

In a desperate attempt to come up with content for another media blog, I came up with the idea of comparing commercials of America to other countries. I wondered what I could find. The American advertisement that I reference is linked here . The Japanese commercial that I reference is linked here . The Arabic commercial that I reference is linked  here . The Indian commercial that I reference is linked here . The African commercial that I reference is linked here . The Latin American commercial that I reference is linked here . If you do not have the time to watch those six commercials, I'll summarize them briefly. The American commercial is about a tired looking white father who is trying to order a sandwich and a coffee without waking up his child, so he whispers into the place where you order in the drive-thru and then he eventually gets his order. The Japanese commercial is an animation that shows a teen who starts working at a McDonald's because a female worker outside sa...

I was talking with my dad about social media (because he was complaining that I was on my phone too much, as all parents do), and he mentioned the effects of the like button. How when you get likes, some endorphins are released, but also how it can be detrimental because you could compare yourself to someone who has more likes than you (I go more in-depth in a previous blog post). My father was extremely proud of himself when he stated that the creator of the Facebook like button now regrets it, and has supposedly removed the app from his phone because of addiction. I decided to complete some more research on the guy. Here is a link to the article I reference. According to the article, Justin Rosenstein, the creator of the Facebook like button in 2007, has decided to remove harmful apps from his phone, including Facebook, Reddit, and Snapchat. He is now fearful of the phycological effects of the social media apps. Rosenstein's assistant has made it so he can not access certain ...