Commercial Culture

In our class discussion on Friday we discussed the topic of heroes/idols in our culture that are a result of mass media. The mass media allows us to take glimpses into celebrities lives all the time. People come to admire and look up to celebrities for a number of reasons. Sometimes they admire the for their work and others admire them for the lifestyles they have. I think it is interesting to look into how advertisers have used this to their advantage. Their are always commercials in which celebrities are used to help market a product. The idea is to lure people in by actually selling this idea that if you buy their product you will be just like that particular celebrity and have the success that they have. A couple weeks ago I saw a documentary that just came out called September Issue. It is a documentary about the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour. A point that they really emphasized in the documentary is that Anna Wintour was the first person to put celebrities on the cover of a magazine. Now most popular magazines feature celebrities on their covers, in this way people are encouraged to by these magazines that are filled with hegemonic ideologies about how to be the "ideal person".

One commercial I have seen aired a lot recently is a cover girl commercial with Drew Barrymore. The commercial is flashy and glamorous and Drew Barrymore is a familiar face with a household name. In the commercial Drew Barrymore says, "When it comes to lashes, I say the bigger the better." So, not only is the commercial suggesting in order to look pretty you need our mascara to make your lashes longer, but also Drew Barrymore is personally suggesting it. In our society girls are encouraged to wear make up in order to look like better versions of themselves and in order to cover up any possible flaws. The advertisers want girls to think, "if I want to look like Drew Barrymore and lead the kind of life she does then I should buy this mascara".

In Gitlin's Prime Time Ideology: The Hegemonic Process in Television Entertainment, he does make the important distinction that this commercial culture does not create ideologies, but instead it reproduces and concentrates on certain ideologies that have come from popular social movements. In this sense though, advertisers view the masses as consumers that are trying to achieve an ideal life and be an ideal person. Gtilin also points out that, "Time and attention are not one's own." When we are sitting back and watching our favorite TV show it inevitable that it will be interrupted by commercials trying to sell us another product we probably don't really need, but we sit there and watch it anyways. And weather we listen to it on a conscious or subconscious level some part of it is bound to stick with us.

Me and the Media

I think that it is painfully obvious that as a part of this society, and especially with as much privelage as we have, it is almost impossible to escape mass media. It is definitely a part of my life that I would not willingly give up anytime soon. Although, a lot of times the way I consume the media is a waste of time, especially when it comes to spending hours in front of the computer, a lot of times times mass media is keeping me informed and connected with people. I also won't deny some of the incredible entertainment value in the mass media. However, one of the main reasons I wanted to take a class on Mass Media and society is that in the past I have often found myself wondering what I were to find if I was to look under the surface of what was actually being presented to me. Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

Even in the short few weeks since I've been here at BC it's interesting to see how some of my habits have changed concerning mass media. Living in Egypt I never watched much TV. We didn't get any of the channels I would really want to watch and my family just didn't watch all that much TV. So, I would only watch some of my favorite shows that I happened to have on DVD or that I could borrow from friends. At the time most of the news I got was from listening to NPR every morning on the internet. My mom, who is an avid NPR fan, would play for all of us. Now, being back in the States I prefer to actually watch the news on TV or read it from my subcriptions to the Economist and the New Yorker, which have been having trouble finding their way to my mailbox at BC. Also, I have been going a little TV crazy. There is a TV actually in my room that is easily accessible and there is always something on and in my dorm room we have it playing in the background. Sometimes when I'm bored I find myself watching something I might not even enjoy just because it's on. I think the novelty of it will wear off soon. I hope.

Besides the internet another part of mass media that is a huge part of my life is recorded music. However, I don't really follow much mainstream music so I don't really listen to the radio or watch MTV, if they even have music on MTV anymore. But, I don't know what I would do without my ipod or if I somehow lost all the music I have on their.

I'm really hoping this class will help me open eyes a little more to the actual role mass media plays in society.

I always had this idea in my head that blogging meant posting all the intimate details of your life on the internet for anyone who cared enough to look at it. Being a private person this of course had no appeal to me whatsoever. Besides I honestly did not think anyone would care. So now, I guess I'm going to try and break the stereotype I had in my own mind about blogging. While looking further into what people have to say on their blogs I realized a lot of it is more an unafilliated way of reporting. So in my blog I am going to attempt to report how mass media influences my life personally as well as the influence I believe it has on society as a whole, but I'm still not sure anyone is going to care.