Gender Blog Post #7

One should define gender on the basis of how that individual knows themselves to be, whether or not they act as the stereotypical boy or girl. Having a gender, means having a sense of identity and with that we can start to find our place in the world, whether it's by our choice or someone's choice.

I think that gender starts out natural, but becomes socially constructed as time moves on. When we are infants, we do not know who we should be or how we should act, we just do what we feel and that is good enough for us. When we get older and start recognizing the roles that the genders play, we start to find ourselves going in the direction that we see our gender go in, such as women playing the role of the princess and the boy being the brave one. With that being said, I think the gender can be anything someone wants it to be. If someone wants women to have power, then they can start socially constructing other women's views and have them feel that it is in their gender to be strong and have power and that it is completely okay to do so. We also can say the same for when parents either let their young sons willing play with dolls, while others will take it away and let them know how bad it is for playing with dolls and how a doll is a girls toy and not a boy's.

By knowing this, we need to be careful. The media is powerful and so are the people that we interact with everyday, such as our teachers and our friends. These people and things shape up how we feel we think we need to be, but in reality, we just need to be ourselves and make gender not so stereotypical, but something that we don't have to put signals with.

Straigh to the Point of Psychoanalysis

From just this past week, I learned a handful of new information of psychoanalysis. For starters, psychoanalysis does not figuring out a psychotic person, but rather it is the synergy the conscious and uncosnious processes that go on within one's self. With psychonalaysis, we can configure what we are doing and why we are doing it one step at time.

With psychoanalysis, one must look at the pyramid, or iceberg, of the different levels of consciousness. The first level starts off with your conscious level, which is where your thoughts and perceptions are store. Then you down to the precociousness level, where you will find your memories and stored knowledge. Last, you will go to your unconscious level where there are many subjects stores, such as your fears, irrational wishes, immoral urges and unacceptable sexual desires lay. Within these layers, we have Sigmund Freud's, idea of the ID, Ego, and Superego. Fruedis often referred to as the father of psychanalayisi. With the ID, you will only want to fulfill the urges of your pleasure principal, which is everything in your unconscious. The Ego is where your rationality and logic remains, which would be found somewhere by the precocious. Lastly, we have the superego, which is where we make our moral judgements, even in light of social pressures. The superego stands alone. Below, I have provided an image to make it a bit easier to visualize.

From this knowledge of looking through the ice ball of self, we can now go on to sexuality. All this ego and unconsciousness can all lead to how one copes in society in a sexual manner. Take for instance, when they say that a child had a deprivation from breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is an oral activity and because of the child's lack of feeding oraly when they were younger can lead to them getting into more oral activities, such as smoking. A more common example is when people see a girl crying out for attention with men through their body language, they can most likely infer that they have daddy issues of some sort. When we go through this and figure out someone's sexuality, we have to look into their preconscious and find out what happened to them. Then we look to see what category of either, id, ego, or super ego that they go into. The image below would be a perfect example of how all this comes together.

Media through the Marxist Point-of-View Post #4

 Marxism is the hierarchical and materialistic approach in figuring out who in society and in general groups has more power and who plays what role. When looking into media through a marxist point-of-view, you want to really focus on the characters, rather than the background, which would be under semiotics. You want to study how each individual acts in their role and how they inteeract with other characters. When looking into marxism, you want to catagorize every indivual character into their own elemnt in the story.

Their are four main categpries to put each person in,  Heirachal elitist, egalitarian, competitive individualist and fatalist. In an example, there is always a hierarchical elitist in any TV show group, such as Cory from Boy Meets World. After the hierarchical elitist, you start going down the, as you might want to visualize it, a pyramid of roles the just keeps going down to the bottom of the food chain. After the hierarchical elitist, you have your egalitarian person/people, which are the ones who are the ones who are the in-betweeners and the peace keeps. Next, you have your competitive individualist, who is the one, or maybe even two people in the group who always butt heads and/or the person who is trying to do better than the other. Lastly, you have your fatalist, who basically feel that everything is going to end up in disaster. On the side, you can always have various other categories, such as who is the individualist and who is the voice of reasoning.

All-in-all, analyzing the media with a Marxist point of view is just studying the individual and how the group functions through those individual's characteristics. You can also try to justify this through studying real-life groups and compare and contrast between reality and TV.

Marxism Post #3

Since this class, I have noticed that the way shows portray characters and the way everything is designed and how everything looks is completely not coincidental. Knowing this, makes me wonder what these shows are really trying to tell us and why do they usually have the same kind of elements in them? From what I have inferred from the two different shows we have watched, who have come out at two different decades. The elements in the newer show, Sherlock, are a little more dynamic than those in the older show, Freaks and Geeks. I also think that this is why, because they are two types of shows, Sherlock being mystery and Freaks and Geeks being comedy. Even though one is a little more complex than the other, they both generally have the same elements, which leads me to my next topic. I feel that no matter what type of show is on the air, you will still have indexes put out and icons. There will always be two characters that are paradynamic and always fighting against each other. There will also always be some kind of hierarchy status between the characters. I feel that these things will never change, because no matter what show you watch from any timeline, there will always be these things in them.
I feel like I can pick and pull things out of any show now and that these things pop out to me more. I think that knowing these different elements is good, so that you know the show just a little more in depth.

Sherlock Holmes Analysis Post

The episode of Sherlock, was an episode filled with various signs and symbols of every kind. There was so much to take in and to notice, that it made me want to know other things that I might've missed that I could have taken in as clues. From analyzing and taking thought out notes, I came to some conclusions from that of which I witnessed.

For one, the most obvious thing that stood out to me was the synecdoche was Watson's cane. In the part where Holmes and Watson are investigating the scene of the main crime and Holmes has an epiphany and runs out, Watson is stumbling behind with his cane. The cane prevents him from keeping up with Sherlock, thus giving away his lack of confidence in himself. The cane could also be  a symbol for weakness, because with his cane, Watson doesn't do much. When Watson decides to join Holme's in the investigation, we can see him growing in strength and in confidence. In the end Watson can be seen without his cane and walking, without any implication of injury, next to Sherlock.

Another scene that keeps playing in my head is the first time Watson and Holmes are talking in the cab. We can definitely tell the paradigmatic between Watson and Holmes. Watson is the more cautious, likes to stay in the lines and do what he needs to do, type of guy, while Holmes is the show off, will do any dare you ask him, kind of guy. Right after Holmes shows Watson just how smart he is, Watson looks puzzled and Holmes looks out the window with a smirk. The scene quickly changes to multiple pictures of London to transition the story. In that transition, the first thing I notice right after Holmes looks out the window, is that the first picture that pops up are manikins inside a store. I'm not sure if the director or editors did this on purpose, but I felt that it was a quick symbol for just how closed minded the people of the world really are and how we can act like manikins in a glass window that we can't see, but Sherlock can.

One last note that I feel should be noted, is near the end of the story, where Holmes is deciding which pill to take, reminds me of the The Dark Knight. In the movie, Batman had to make a choice on whether to set off a bomb for his friend or his love interest, the trick was that the bombs were going to set off on both of them no matter what he chose. Joker was also kind of crazy. Though Sherlock Holmes isn't batman, I could see the same thing applied here. Sherlock was going to die no matter what he chose and he was dealing with someone that wasn't quite all there. I could also see the pills as a symbol for the choice between life or death.

In the end, the first episode of Sherlock was an enjoyable one and I feel that it could possibly make you more aware of your surroundings, thus making your mind a little bit sharper.

Innocence Blog post #1

Here is an ad that I find completely grotesque. At first glance, this ad seems to be gearing the message that the younger you are, the more attractive you are. To me, I felt that this was ad for pedophiles. Almost immediately I found the symbolisms in this ad. This model may be older in real life, but the pink blush of her cheeks and her short curls say she is not. The background is usually for a more intimate setting. The red lipstick indicates the passionate part of the girl. The way her lips are portrayed and her eyes, you get a strong sense that she is ready to become more than just a child. even her eyebrows are shaped perfectly, something that you just do not see in a little girl. The white bear and the white of her clothing represents the innocence of the girl. Her blue eyes are also an indication of how unique she is. 

Not only does the picture say a lot, but the simple text itself, "Because innocence is sexier than you think." That can potentially make children  feel that this is what society wants to think of them. They might even feel the need to grow up faster than they should.

The other thing about this ad is that it is not even a product for young children. The cosmetics and perfumes are meant for young adult women. The ad is trying sell you the product by informing you that you will look younger and feel soft as a baby, but I think this way of advertising has gone way too far.