Does media control us, or do we control media? "Sex, Lies and Advertising," was an essay written by the founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem, explaining the difficulties in interesting advertisers for a women's magazine like hers. She talks about the advertising world seeing women's magazines as only "cash cows" and all the articles are surrounding hair, makeup, nails, or some other superficial thing that relates to Cover Girl, Revlon, Clairol, or Olay. According to Ms. Steinem, what we pick up from the newsstand or have delivered in our mail every month is all "fluff" because of such advertisers. "Oh, women's magazines... everyone knows they're just catalogs" (Steinam 275). In the movie, "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days" a woman journalist, Andie Anderson, who worked for such an advertiser's dream magazine, and wanted to have the freedom to write about politics and current events and things that were intellectually stimulating and not about hair, nails and makeup. At the end of the story, she quit because she could not have that freedom because her editor would not allow her to write about anything but their set topics, and now, I see why. In "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days" we see how such companies are really controlled by the advertisers and the editors of those magazines make sure they stay that way to ensure the life of their magazine.
The article "Censorship and Homosexuality in the Media" also deals with advertisers control of magazines, and to the censorship of television, movies, even plays. It comes from the opposite direction though, rather than it being the magazine, or the conservatives screaming for something that wont offend their delicate sensitivities or possible maim Junior for life, it's co...
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McGrath, Charles. "Giving Saturday Morning Some Slack." The Blair Reader. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall. 266-271.
National Vanguard Magazine. "Who Rules America?" Jul 2001. 13 Oct 2003. Http://www.stormfront.org/jewish/whorules.html
Steinem, Gloria. "Sex, Lies, and Advertising" The Blair Reader. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall. 274-290.
Tuttle, Katie. "Television and African Americans." The Blair Reader. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall. 297-303.
Wynn, Marie. "Television, the Plug-in Drug." The Blair Reader. Eds. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall. 257-266.
Since its start, the television industry has been criticized for perpetuating myths and stereotypes about African-Americans through characterizations, story lines, and plots. The situation comedy has been the area that has seemed to draw the most criticism, analysis, and disapproval for stereotyping. From Sanford and Son and The Jefferson’s in the 1970s to The Cosby Show (1984) and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the 1990s, sitcoms featuring black casts and characters have always been controversial. However, their significance upon our American culture cannot be disregarded. During the 1950s and 1960s, 97% of the families were Caucasian. In the first five years of the 1990s, nearly 14% of the television families were African-American (Bryant 2001). These statistics obviously show the substantial impact our American culture has had on African-American television families.
Marlon T. Riggs’ video, Color Adjustment, offers the viewer an exciting trip though the history of television, focusing on the representation, or lack thereof, of African-Americans. A perfectly chosen combination of television producers, actors, sociologists, and cultural critics join forces to offer insight and professional opinion about the status of African-Americans in television since the inception of television itself. As Color Adjustment traces the history of television shows from Amos n’ Andy and Julia to "ghetto sitcoms" and The Cosby Show, the cast of television professionals and cultural critics discuss the impacts those representations have on both the African-American community and our society as a whole. Color Adjustment continually asks the question: "Are these images positive?" This video raises the viewer’s awareness about issues of positive images for African-Americans on television.
In “Still Killing Us Softly,” Jean Kilbourne points out that advertising and media are partly responsible for the behaviors and attitudes expected of women.
of racial minorities on prime time television: A replication of the Mastro and Greenberg study a decade later. Retrieved March 11, 2014, from http://pcasacas.org/SiPC/32.2/Monk-Turner_Heiserman_Johnson_Cotton_Jackson.pdf.
Paul S. Boyer. "Television." The Oxford Companion to United States History. 2001. Retrieved November 24, 2011 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-Television.html
In an article ' The Plug-In Drug ' the author Marie Winn discusses the bad influence of television on today's society. Television is a ' drug ' that interfere with family ritual, destroys human relationships and undermines the family.
One of the largest “booms” that this country has witnessed is in the area of the ultimate “entertainment” source, the television. The growth in popularity of the use of the television is harming Americans in every aspect of their lives,
Although the early years of television in 1950’s saw some diversity and visibility of African Americans, they were always portrayed and subservient roles to white Anglo-Saxons. Most of this racial diversity stemmed from the legacy of radio where numerous ethnicities were portrayed in accents and dialects, many radio shows were transferred to television. Not only were black Americans portrayed in subservient roles, they also performed very stereotypical acts like the submissive Uncle Tom character, or the overweight black maid. “For most fictional programs of the 1950’s, black characters functioned to support white characters, offer comic relief at their own expense, and passively justify a segregated American society.” (Television and American Culture, Jason Mittel, pg 317) One example of this would be the television show Amos ‘n’ andy where the producers hired and all-black cast to portray the minstrel acts that the radio show had been known for. In the show, the characters were highly stereotypical in their antics; usually every character was either a crook or an out of work lazy man. It’s no surprise that many African American viewers took great offens...
Zinkhan, G., Qualls, W., & Biswas A., (1990). The use of Blacks in magazine and television
Jean Kilbourne . (2002). Killing Us Softly 3: Advertsing's Image of Women . Available: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/killing-us-softly-3/. Last accessed 5 December 2009.
Dines, Gail, and Jean McMahon Humez. Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Print.
McKibben, Bill. “TV, Freedom, and the Loss of Community.” Colombo, Cullen and Lisle, ed. Rereading America. Boston: Bedford Books, 1995: 712-23.
Presently 98% of the households in the United States have one or more televisions in them. What once was regarded as a luxury item has become a staple appliance of the American household. Gone are the days of the three channel black and white programming of the early years; that has been replaced by digital flat screen televisions connected to satellite programming capable of receiving thousands of channels from around the world. Although televisions and television programming today differ from those of the telescreens in Orwell’s 1984, we are beginning to realize that the effects of television viewing may be the same as those of the telescreens.
4) Kilbourne, Jean. Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women. Dir. Sut Jhally. DVD. Media Education Foundation, 2000.
An article by Christina N Baker, Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A content Analysis of Black And White Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazine emphasizes on how women’s are portrayed in media such as advertisements and Magazine. The author analyzes how media has a huge impact in our society today; as a result, it has an influence on race and gender role between men and women.