Assignment #3

It is said that the movie ‘Heathers’ is reflecting the uncontrolled youths of the time. The movie itself was quite a shock to me when I watched it, but I think it is reflecting the uncontrolled wild personalities of the generation. It is kind of a movie for generation X which is a generation born after the WW2 and nobody really knew their path. It is described that generation X as ‘sleep together before they are married, were not taught to believe in God as 'much', dislike the Queen, and don't respect parents’ which is the situation of the characters in the movie. The main character Veronica, consistently calls her dad an idiot which shows that she doesn’t have respect for her parents. Also much of those socially not adjusted people; high-schoolers are depicted in the movie. Also it is said that this film changed the type of character girls are depicted in the movies as more dimensional character rather than boring old same concept. I think the media sets up the criteria for the people to follow. For instance, if they want to be popular girls should be pretty, and mean. Also it depicts the reality of the people living daily lives in a way sometimes that is shown but sometimes it is hidden and one cannot find it easily.

Assignment #2

I think that the state of media is as really as bleak as it is portrayed in the movie. Nowadays I think the mass media is controlled by big corporation behind the scene and also the government. Sometimes things that should be the headline are pulled down by such some “unknown” forces. There was once news about Samsung which was pulled down from the main. It was about Samsung workers getting cancers from the materials they worked with. And it was pulled down from the headline. I think this kind of bleak media existed since the big corporation and Korean government appeared. I personally think that Korean mass media was controlled ever since after the Korean War. It was controlled by the dictator Park Jung Hee, and Jun Doo Hwan. They restricted the freedom of speech which obviously led to the fact that the media would have been bleak. Writers who tried to write the truth would not be safe and even if it was written it would be bleached. Governments would not like people to know about everything they do would they? It is not like that everyone likes to tell their top secret out and they probably would do anything to stop their secrets from getting out. Also the big companies would not like their stories getting published in the front cover of newspapers if it is something that can attack their companies financially and damage their image. Such as the case of Samsung I had shown above. They had removed it from the headline and made the news become a small article. I think this occurred as people got greedy and as it became to modern times. People wasn’t used to believe everything they saw, but as people got used to more information they got used to believing everything they read. Also as people got greedier since the society became a free economy, they started to want more profit and in order to earn money they had to do ‘dirty things’. Companies did immoral things in order to make more profit and news paper or broadcasting companies got money from these companies so they will not broadcast it. So it is not just society’s fault but faults of people. I think that everyone is responsible for the media becoming like that. If people weren’t greedy these kinds of thing would not have happened.

In order to achieve true democracy in mass media, I think people need to not think about the profit they will earn but the good things will do to society. People need to feel the importance of the truth without getting censored or being bleached by some corporation or government. This can only be started from changing the thinking of people who have only thought about themselves.

First Writing Assigment

The mass media was appearing in the 19^th century when the mass newspaper started to get circulated in cities. This mass communication allowed people to get information more Easley than before and mass media at this time served the purpose of getting more information around people I think. Before the newspapers were printed out in massive quantities there was almost no new news or information going around people. Due to the circulation of the newspapers people started to get new information and other things, such as advertisement etc. After the inventions of newspapers there a=came the radio and other technologies that helped mass media get developed in incredible speed. The mass media helped information go around people in the inception of the United States History.

The media in the film takes a big part of it. The main character’s job is a lobbyist. However, he is not only a lobbyist he is also a speaker for the research of tobacco. As the movie goes on, we see how well this character uses the mass media. He goes out on talk show and convinces people that tobaccos are not harmful. In this part, the mass media plays role of persuading people to do something, or to think in a particular way. Mass media able people to persuade or spread out their opinion faster and quickly than any other sources. In the movie his opinion gets spread out among people very quickly and since it is media that he is on, it gives more persuasiveness to his speech. If he weren’t on television and just talking to a person by person it would not be that persuasive. But since he is on television I think that it gives him more persuasiveness and makes people accept his ideas. Another thing is that mass media is the source that creates big issues out of small ones. As the movie goes to its climax, the main character’s plans and his secrets are written by a journalist. It creates a BIG issue with his life. Like this, media is an issue-maker. We can see this in our own lives too. If some famous star is getting married to someone it is on television and internet that creates big issues. Or very big issues such as elections are the big chunks of pieces that will make a big issue in society by the media.

In manufacturing consent, Noam Chomsky argues that corporate owned media like the radio, television or print are subject to commercial competition for revenue and profit. In the beginning of the mass media the books were printed in massive quantities so everyone can share new information and get more knowledge than they have. It started from a very genuine reason. However, as time passes the mass media changed into some profit making machine. Even in the movie, the more issue the headlines create the more profit journalists get. The more response you get from the public and positive view you get end up in money in the end. Every media is related to one thing. Money. For instance, I heard that every time some words that are the most searched for that day is say a corporation. By creating this issue of being searched the most for the day, the corporation gets some kind of profit. This is just an example of organizations getting blinded by money that they forgot the real reason for the existence of mass media. I think that Noam Chomsky is right about the fact that news businesses favor profit over public interest. As time passes public interests are lost and instead the corporations’ interests are what people think nowadays. People are so obsessed with things the media show that they just fall for it instead of thinking if it is any help to the society and eventually if it is helping the public interest.