Tag Archives: television

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

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I love television. I love it as a source of entertainment and as an outlet for analysis. Besides books, there is nothing I love to analyze more than television shows.

Television gets a bad reputation as being “mindless entertainment,” but I believe that reputation is not totally fair. Like all forms of media, you have to choose to see the positive examples and focus on those instead of the negative ones. Besides, it’s not just television that can be trashy. There are plenty of distasteful, mindless, and just plain awful films and books as well.

For every terrible television show (Sixteen and Pregnant, Bad Girls Club, every dating show ever aired on VH1, etc.) there are great television shows (The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc.). And there are fewer things more enjoyable in the life of a media studies geek than following a great television show through to its conclusion.

Television as a medium is like literature in a lot of ways. Each episode is like a chapter of a book, and each season is like a book in a series. If done correctly, television shows allow for the possibility of deep analysis and thoughtful discussion because of the depth with which stories can be told in this medium. Unlike films, which last two hours (or sometimes more – especially if you’re Peter Jackson or James Cameron), television shows can last for years. This allows for a kind of storytelling which, when done correctly, has the ability to present deeper characters and richer plots with more emotional weight than even a novel can present.

The emotional connection between the audience of a television show and the show itself is often stronger than the connection between other forms of media and their audiences. Viewers let television characters into their homes for an hour (or half-hour) every week for around 22-23 weeks per year (depending on the number of episodes in a season). There’s a sense of familiarity that develops in watching the interactions of characters for season after season of a television show, and that familiarity lends itself to a more emotionally engaging media experience than a standalone book or film. Put in the hands of capable writers and actors, these characters grow and develop over the course of a television show’s run, and viewers are able to watch that growth and personally connect with it.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Bella Swan: A Woman’s Place in the Modern Media

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It’s a confusing time to be a young woman in America.

Whether or not we want to admit it, much of what we believe about ourselves and our place in society comes from the media. And right now, the media is a minefield of mixed messages when it comes to what we as women are supposed to be.

Be strong, but don’t be bossy. Speak your mind, but don’t be a bitch. Act sexy, but don’t act like a whore. Work hard to get a good job, but don’t be a cold, spinster “career woman.” Be proud of your femininity, but don’t be too “girly” or “high-maintenance.” Strive to be skinny, but don’t lose your womanly curves in the process. You are more than your body, but it is your most powerful asset. You don’t need a man to validate you, but every happy ending involves a Prince Charming.

It’s enough to make even the most confident, well-adjusted woman’s head spin.

Young women have more stress, body image issues, and doubts about their self-worth than ever before. They also have more options when it comes to media consumption than ever before. Is that just an unpleasant coincidence?

You would think that more options would lead to a more balanced depiction of women in the media, but it often seems that more channels, advertisements, and social media outlets are in fact leading to the increased reinforcement of damaging ideas about the female gender.

Sometimes it seems like it’s better to become complete hermits, taking the media and its negative stereotypes completely out of our lives. But eventually we reach a frightening conclusion: For as frustrated as we get with the media, we simply can’t live without it.

The key to developing a healthy sense of self as a young woman in this media-driven society is to remember something that we all-too-often forget: We have a choice. We can choose what media we consume, and we can choose to educate ourselves about the impact the media has on our lives.

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