Blog 3: Learning Outcome

            In today’s society, the average woman is bombarded with countless streams of advertisements concerning thousands of beauty products, diet fads, and of course also presented with the glaring perfection of stick thin models every day.  With the spotlight constantly being focused on physical appearance, women, more specifically young girls or teenagers, are consumed with the unfeasible goal of shaping themselves into becoming just like the touched-up and unrealistic models they see on the television screen and fashion magazines.  To avoid being consumed by the standards of society and the media, one has to understand the true goal of mass media.  Mass media’s primary goal is to make a profit; so naturally, by selling their audiences a goal that’s nearly impossible to successfully achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet industries reap the benefits of billions of dollars a year as girls scramble for their wallets in the hopes to buy their “beauty”.  Raking in that much money, the media would be crazy to lessen their standards of beauty with the risk of a decrease in profit. This only means that with time the standards will be raised.  For example, twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8% less than the average woman, nut now the percentage has raised to 23%.  The standards of the mass media on women and girls in America are constantly becoming harder and harder to attain, and will continue to do so as long as the fashion, diet, and beauty industries are benefitting. 

                After studying mass media throughout second semester, I conclude that by analyzing the Medias influence on society’s perception of beauty, it shows the way mass media uses language and image to persuade their targeted audience; young girls and teens.  By editing models and celebrities to erase blemishes or imperfections and altering their bodies to make them appear even thinner, the media uses their layout and use of images to deliberately manipulate the audience into believing that the edited images they’re seeing are normal and what one has to imitate to be attractive. 

Blog 2: Machine Stops Claim

           In Bob Mondello’s Our Media, Ourselves: Are We Headed for a Matrix?, he addresses the negative effects that advances in technology are having on the quality of human life.  Throughout the article, Mondello states that by moving further and further into the world of modern technology, where “everything streams”, we are abandoning all of what makes us human.  To Mondello, the lost of humanity all comes down to the loss of all of our clutter and the objects surrounding us that “establish that one person is different from another”. He goes on to make the claim that, “Once you’ve felt the comfort of society, you worry about losing it. So to remind yourself of how you’re connected, you gather things around. And you cling to them, not so you won’t lose them, or lose what makes you you, but so you won’t lose the connections they represent.  The fear is of emptiness- but of emptiness inside us, not of empty rooms.”  Although it may be true that modern technology has lead to an increased sense of isolation among people as they become wrapped up in their own little worlds of iPods, e-books, Skype, etc., I disagree with the statement that the loss of tangible objects and clutter results in the loss of humanity, and I also disagree with the reasoning he gives as to why people collect and keep physical things around them in the first place. 

Yes, having a bunch of personal objects around us does make a room more comfortable and homier, but will a loss of these cold, inanimate objects really make us lose ourselves as well?

Second Semester Final: Image Analysis

            In the PSA image addressing diamond mines in Africa, there is a completely blank, white background with the only thing in the picture being what looks to be a black man’s severed hand with a diamond ring on the ring finger. Since the background is white, the colors that stand out are the dark skin of the man’s hand and the red blood that’s shown where it was cut off.  The big, expensive diamond ring on the ring finger seems completely out of place in the image and is in stark contrast with the bloodied, cut off hand.  The diamond ring looks out of place because diamonds are usually associated with wealth or marriage, and makes the difference between that and the violence and pain portrayed by the hand is very noticeable.  Analyzing the colors found in the PSA image, the red blood on the wrist represents murder and violence, the and the brown color of the man’s skin, as opposed to being a white man’s hand, leads the audience to interpret that the problem or that the race effected is either directly concerning the black community or centered in Africa.   

Looking further into the picture, you notice that there is a fancy incursive text towards the top left, above the detached hand that states, “For every hand taken in marriage, another hand is taken away”.  I feel the text was written in italics for the purpose of imitating the fancy text one might see on a wedding invitation, used to further stress the connection in the image between diamond wedding rings and the dire consequences selling these diamonds have on the ones who actually mine them.  The use of a fancy text to convey such a strong message as opposed to writing it in all caps or in a stronger, more noticeable font also indicates that the issue concerning the cut off hand falls to the way side when it comes to marriage and the demand for beautiful diamonds, most commonly used for wedding rings. Although the text is written in a breezy font, when one reads the statement, it is at first shocking, capturing one’s attention and making the audience question how such a strong statement could be true.  The connotation of the words is not particularly strong either negatively or positively, but when paired with the gruesome and shocking picture of a black man’s severed hand it leads the reader to question how the two are related.  Then, in the bottom right hand corner, there is a message in smaller text that is not incursive but instead in a normal, bold font and therefore seems to be of more significance and importance.  The text says, “To secure that their enslaved workers wouldn’t steal them, conflict diamond Guerilla’s would often cut off one of their hands. Beauty isn’t worth death”. The connotation of the words chosen in this statement is stronger than the other text, especially in the words “Beauty isn’t worth death” because even though the men have their hands cut off, it doesn’t indicate that they actually die. Through this stylistic choice to use the word “death”, the PSA exaggerates the fate of the workers to stress the amount of violence and loss suffered by the workers. Next to this statement is a black silhouette of Africa with a red diamond inside of it, indicating that this abuse towards the enslaved diamond workers does in fact take place in Africa.

After reading this, the purpose and true meaning of the PSA image becomes clearer to the audience. When combining the connotation of the text with the shocking image of the dismembered hand wearing the diamond, the purpose of this PSA is to raise awareness of the fact that the diamond mining business in Africa is far from humane and that the diamond you may be wearing might have cost someone their hand.  Although this image does aim to raise awareness of the situation occurring in Africa, I cannot say that the goal of this ad is to raise money or support for the cause due to the fact that there is no phone number, address, or even the name of whoever/whatever organization published it anywhere on the PSA so that the audience could learn more or find ways to stop the violence.  The targeted audience of the PSA seems to be aimed towards people who have perhaps purchased diamonds or just towards the general public worldwide in order to raise awareness of the problem.