Final

Cultivation Theory

No Cultivation Theory in Degrassi





             I watched an episode of Degrassi season 8. There are a lot of characters in it, but this episode was mainly about Mia. She's a junior in high school. In this episode she is offered a chance to model. This brings her new friends and boys that she didn't have before. Mia thinks the only way to get to the top is to sleep with one of the guys who is having tryouts for his product campaigns. She thought her new friends would go away if she didn't land a modeling job soon so, she goes through with it. Some of them lose respect for her once they find out how she got the job.

Mia wasn't really in power here, she wanted it but not in the right way. She's about 17; I'm guessing she's suppossed to be Italian. This episode doesn’t really support Gerbner’s theory. Gerbner stated “men outnumber women in prime time television two to one, young people are underrepresented, older people are one-fifth of their actual proportion of the population, and poor people are virtually absent.” Degrassi is all about young people from high school to college. Mia could be considered somewhat poor because she needs the modeling job to help support her mother and her daughter (she is a teen mom).

Mia

This show sort of proved the Cultivation Theory wrong. Although, Mia wasn't a strong role here, she is getting a strong career as a model. In other episodes she is a very strong female role and so are others, just not in this particular episode. There was a male black boy in it. He played Mia's love interest until he found out what she did. There was an Asian girl that was Mia's friend too until she found out. The rest were basically white. There aren't really any signs of the Cultivation Theory in this episode of Degrassi.

What Makes A Movie Franchise Successful

Although, Red Tails was not a successful franchise, it had the potential to be. The only reason it wasn't is because they had basically no marketing; nobody had heard of the movie when it came out to theaters. That was their only downfall.

The plot of the movie was good because it was all based on a true event. There was plenty of star power from Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard to Method Man and Ne-Yo. Red Tails should have had a lot of fans of these men coming to see the film but that's not what happened. George Lucas, the man who is responsible for creating Star Wars, is the executive producer of Red Tails; the movie should have been a big hit like the Star Wars series. Lucas said in an interview on the Daily Show with host Jon Stewart that it was so hard to get the movie green lit was because the movie is an all-black cast. Just because he didn't stick to a safe plot the film was not a successful franchise. According to the documentary The Monster That Ate Hollywood, you need to spend a lot on marketing. That was not the case here. I don't know anybody who heard of the movie from a marketing campaign. They had used a budget of $58 million. The movie still has not even broke even with a total of $49,643,578 and it came out monthes ago on January 20th. Jon Ogg from 24/7 Wall St. says in his article "the current threshold to be a top-ten movie franchise is effectively about $2.5 billion in global box office ticket sales". Red Tails is not even close to that! As a franchise this movie failed terribly, which is sad because it's about true war heroes, the Tuskegee Airmen.

This movie should have been a big success with sequels to follow, unfortunately, that's not how it turned out.

Digital Nation and Article

Technology is becoming more and more accessible at more and more places, making it easier and easier to multitask. The documentary Digital Nation talked about how multitasking can be making us dumber or just more ready for a fast paced world. The interview from Frontline with Clifford Nass, Life on the Virtual Frontier talks all about multitasking and how it is not really effective.

In colleges people are using their laptops instead of notebooks nowadays; even some of the teachers are becoming more tech savvy.  Digital nation said this could be a way of adapting to this fast paced world we all live in.  Nass says in his interview that the students who are not multitasking would be the ones who are good at it. They’re the ones who are ready for the world we live in.

In both the documentary and interview it talked about how multitasking can possibly be making the world dumber. Nass even clearly states, “we could be essentially dumbing down the world.” He did an experiment on multitasking. Everyone failed it. They couldn’t ignore irrelevant information like Nass and his colleagues had hypothesized. They were also bad at keeping information organized in their heads. From this experiment we can understand that multitasking is not a good way to get things accomplished the correct way; it may get them done but not efficiently.

We can all learn a little something from watching this documentary and reading this interview. Although, multitasking could perhaps be preparing us for the fast paced world, more data shows that it is only making us dumber. The digital world we are living in is causing us to multitask making us do our work not to the full potential we could if we were doing only one task at a time. We need to stop multitasking but technology is making it harder to do this. There has to be a way…

Media Diet

As I sit here typing this and listening to the television in the background, I am realizing how much media takes place in my life. Whether it's watching a T.V. show, listening to my iPod, or watching a movie I am basically always surrounded by media in one form or another.

I noticed how much time I am actually wasting watching T.V. almost every day when I get home from school. I'll watch shows that don't even interest me just to pass the time. I know I waste at least two hours from watching shows that I do like, such as Life Changers with Dr. Drew, Roseanne, Family Feud, and The Nanny. Those are my must watch T.V. shows. Some days I wouldn't watch them though because I wouldn't go home after school. That's the only time I didn't watch those shows. Even once my shows have ended I usually continue watching something else for another hour or so. I could be doing something much more productive with my time like doing homework/studying, working out, or cleaning, but instead I choose not to. This bothers me but it's not very likely that I will change my routines of watching T.V. when I come home; it's what I'm used to.

Whenever I am in the car I always plug my iPod in. To and from school is about 20 minutes all together. When I go somewhere throughout the week like the mall, my boyfriends, or dropping Gena off or picking her up from soccer or what not, I am listening to the radio or my iPod. Music is relaxing to me. It helps take my mind off things. While I get ready for school or work I listen to my iPod; It's just too quiet if I don't. I don't like the silence, it creeps me out.

I love movies, so if I find a good one I can watch it over and over again. My friend and I exchange movies sometimes. He'll recommend one to me and I'll tell him about another. I go to sleep watching movies so that could count as a lot of time but if I'm super tired I fall asleep even if I like the movie a lot.

Going into this I pretty much knew what my media diet would be like. I know I have a routine of watching T.V. when I get home, listening to the radio/iPod while driving, and watching movies while going to sleep. I was a little surprised though that I had no reading/writing time and little time on the internet. Going on the internet for me depends on how busy I am or if somebody else in my family is already on it. So, that sort of makes sense actually. I think this could be a good thing to learn from. I want to change the way media is in my life. I should be doing more productive things with my time; I hope to do so sooner or later.

Where I'm From

http://portal.sliderocket.com/BLTDK/Copy-of-demographic-(2)-olivia