Consumerism, Capitalism, and Commission

Media is supposed to be the provider of valid information and knowledge to the public. However for the United States’ society, media has become mostly just a way to push consumerism in order to fuel capitalism and those who profit from it. Capitalism, as discussed in Das Kapital by Karl Marx, will always exploit resources and or people. The media assists in the exploitation of individuals by pushing consumerism. For many people that participate heavily in consumerism in their daily lives do not see the same side of capitalism as the wealthy 2% of our nation. Consumerism, in the United States, has people wanting and believing they can afford past what they actual need and can afford. Individuals’ have been “logical” reasons for why they need to purchase certain things. An example that I like but hate the idea of is that people need to have a credit card. Credit cards cause many to go into debt and can dramatically effect individuals’ lives for the worst. But people today feel as though individuals must start “building good credit” at a young age so that later they can obtain loans, usually with high interest rates from large companies such as banks and car dealerships. I find the idea if having to prove that you are financially responsible requires you to prove you can spend and pay for things, especially large purchases. Over consuming is sold to both men and women, but I feel the ways in which the concept is sold to women is much more absurd and reinforces the stereotypical portrayal of women. The TLC show, Extreme Couponing, tries to justify and praise these women’s over consumption as being financially suave and being a good mother being able to provide above and beyond for her family.

The media is exploiting the public with the major errors of omission. When the TSA started to be discussed and criticized in the mainstream media last fall the only thing that was presented to the public was how it was slightly a violation of their privacy, but it was for security. On an episode of Democracy Now! new information was presented to me that I did not hear anywhere else. In the segment discussing what and why people saw the TSA’s actions as violating citizens’ rights, a councilmen mentioned that Michael Chertoff, who is the former director of homeland security, was promoting these machines, usually leaving out the fact that he was a lobbyist for the companies who produced the machines. So those companies obtaining a $350 million contract with the government seems in the benefit of the companies but this government official insisting on the machines being needed for safety as well.

The media does not like to display information to the public that they might disagree with or be hostile towards. Instead of providing the true facts that might bring about opposition or just discussion, the only things that are used for debating are purely based on emotional appeals. A democracy should be for all people, not just for those with the money, power, and status. Many major decisions that affect all citizens are usually beneficial to the rich and detrimental to the poor. This will be very difficult to change in a capitalist society where the rich are valued more than any other lower social economic class. The little omissions that the mainstream media continually produce will build up and foster more of our citizenry to be complacent, unquestioning, and misinformed. Any citizen needs to understand that you should never 100% trust big businesses, politicians, government, and news sources because they will not always be looking out for their best interests. I hope in the near future for more objective news and real journalism. But with the power of media conglomerates and the federal cuts to public broadcasting this future may not be as close as I would hope. So I will look to the public’s desire for truth and knowledge to demand and find the information they deserve if the mainstream media wants them to have it or not.

Sex and Power

As a woman, I find it very difficult to have an opinion on the porn industry and sex work. I am very much for selling of sex if it is done in a way that is in good and fair treatment of all the participants. However, I feel like there is a lot of room to improve. I am very against the unequal representation in the upper ranks of the industry and the pay. I feel like there are ways to change and address the issues within the porn and sex work industry, but it would have to involve those within.

I saw a documentary, Live Nude Girls Unite!, filmed back in the late 90s about a peep show theater in San Francisco, CA. I found the peep show theater to be much less degrading because of their being no physical contact with the customers and that the theater was run mainly by other women. The workers all liked what they did but the pay system was unfair and discriminatory, especially to minorities. The women were not able to call out sick without risk of unemployment; the women could have other employees cover for them but they would have to have similar skin, hair, and breasts. The African American and women with darker features were scheduled less hence getting paid less and were never scheduled for the higher paying “private pleasures” section of the theater. The women had enough and started to strike and work towards creating a union. This is found to be something that is truly empowering in the sex industry. In the end, the women did form the union and gained some of their demands but were unable to achieve them all.

Here is the beginning of the film. The film is only a little over an hour and I believe you can watch the entire film on YouTube in parts, if anyone is interested.

Get them while their Young

The popularity of the lifestyle of “pimps” and hoes” is because of the false glamorization that has occurred in the mainstream media through music and movies. I think if people do recognize the negative side of this lifestyle, they tend to view the victims, the women, negatively and blame them because of their bad life choices, usually referring to the men they were involved with and drug addiction. I find this view very ignorant and making a quick justification of why these women shouldn’t be given sympathy and outreach. At the beginning of my sophomore year of college, I saw a documentary called Very Young Girls. From the title and the time that it was on cable, I was under the assumption that it was going to be something of resemblance of soft-core porn. However to my surprise, it was about young women who currently or in the past were a prostitute in Queens, NY.

I attempted to upload the Very Young Girls Trailer but kept getting an error. Till I figure it out, here is the link to the trailer.

In the film, these young women were interviewed and told their stories to the camera and in a support group setting. Most of these girls were starting to sell themselves around 12-14 years old after they were involved with a pimp. The film shows pimps searching for these girls and the women tell how and why they stay. There are clear social and economic factors that caused these particular girls to be targeted. These girls tend to the ethnic. Most of the young girls were either from households with parents who were drug addicted; they may have been being abused physically and or sexually; their families were poor or they had no family at all. These pimps took the place of their families and became a controlling, abusive, lover instead of the caregiver they promised to be.

These young girls in Queens have an organization called Girls Education and Mentoring Services, GEMS, which aims to help them specifically get out of prostitution and back to a happy production life. The founder of GEMS and the producer of the film is Rachel Lloyd. Rachel Lloyd has done research and has written about this issue and herself was involved in prostitution in her youth.

Rachel Lloyd talking to one of the young girls she works with.

In an article Rachel Lloyd wrote in Encounter titled “Acceptable Victims? Sexually Exploited Youth in the U.S.”, she addresses the media’s influence of creating acceptance of this problem. I found the lyric from 50 cents’ song P.I.M.P that she points out as interesting. The lyric was “I ain’t gotta give ’em much, they happy with Mickey D’s”. 50 cent claims the lyrics are referring to adult women in prostitution, not young girls. Lloyd, of course, made the argument young girls can be appeased with McDonald’s more often than older women. I would have never paid any attention to that lyric before I started to look into this issue because before seeing this film I was only presented and told of youth prostitution and sex trafficking stories from other countries.

I found the topic interesting so I wrote a research paper on it. Just several days after I turned in my paper, there was a news story about a child being sold as a sex slave. Unfortunately, the young girl was found dead. Knowledge and awareness is key to creating any social change. The media makes this very difficult by presenting what is opposite of the reality, which leads many to believe what they have been shown because they see that more than the realities. A story that has came to my attention recently, that I find rather disturbing, is that of a high school girl who was the victim of rape by one of her school’s football players. The young girl is a cheerleader at her high school; after the incident occurred, she was told that she would have to cheer the name of the boy who raped her. She refused to cheer his name and was then kicked off of the cheer leading squad. Her family tried to take the school to court over the actions; the school won the court case and is not trying to make the family of the girl pay their legal fees of $35,000. I find cases like this to show the negative turn in our cultural and society’s moral conscience. I find it very sad that this would be occurring to any individual, but especially at the high school level. It is just increasing the likely hood of the public to demonize and punish the victim when she was doing nothing wrong but just protesting an action and attempting to use her freedom of speech.

Acceptable in Moderation

From discussing LGBT characters and the way they are presented in the media in class, I thought that looking at the character Barney Stinson in the television series How I Met Your Mother could be a good parallel. Barney Stinson is like the man’s man. He gets the ladies at almost any cost and is clearly a womanizer. Here is a video clip of Barney going through a book he has compiled of how he has picked up women.

The actor who plays Barney Stinson is Neil Patrick Harris. In real life Harris is a homosexual male. This is similar to the character Niles on Frasier played by David Hyde Pierce, was a heterosexual man, but in real life was homosexual. I had seen the show before and understand the basic idea of each character. However, when I went onto IMDB and read the character biography of Barney Stinson, I found some interesting details that dealt with his character’s masculinity in the show and his real masculinity outside of the series.

In the show, he was not always a stereotypical male chasing after countless women. Before he was heartbroken by an old girlfriend, he was labeled as a “hippie” and wanted to join the Peace Corps. This would display the various forms of masculinity but of course the dominant masculinity that many think of prevailed. Barney Stinson’s biography also stated that in the show he has “an African American homosexual” brother. I am not sure if this is to in some way connect Harris’ true sexuality with his character’s fictional one or not or if it is an attempt to be “gay winking”. The show does not seem to portray homosexuals in a negative light that I have seen yet (if anyone has, let me know). Yet Barney Stinson is one of the most popular main characters that upholds the stereotypical views of masculinity, rather than challenging them.

Who Makes the Rules?

The first article that I read concerning the Iranian women’s soccer team made me feel empathetic for them and the way the decision was carried out simply because it was not decided till after that the team made it through the qualifying games that they could not be allowed to play because of their hijabs being a “choking hazard”. My empathy for them changed to anger towards the FIFA organization after I read another article and an individual’s opinion about the situation. There is a FIFA rule that prohibits "Players and officials shall not display political, religious, commercial or personal messages or slogans in any language or form on their playing or team kits." This I found at least more of a valid reason besides the “choking hazard” reason. But then I felt as though that then why is it that FIFA teams’ can wear crosses around their neck or have a Nike logo or Adidas on their jersey as a form of sponsorship.

If the rule was enforced always, the rule could uphold this decision. There have been complaints several years back about the displaying of religious symbolism on nations’ jerseys by a fan, which can be seen here. But what really upset me was the man creating this dilemma for the Iranian women’s soccer team was not long before trying to make it mandatory for the women teams participating in the FIFA tournament to wear “hot pants” to increase the viewership. I do not understand why a man can try to demoralize the validity of the women’s soccer league by trying to make it degrading, instead of empowering. Other women and young girls mainly watch women’s soccer, to go about requiring “hot pants”, is furthering the male dominance over women and how they are portrayed to the world. It is upholding the negative thought of women being good to only watch if they look appealing sexually and not for the sport that they are playing. The women on the soccer teams should decide if they want a league uniform change, not the male president only concerned about his profits and male viewership.

Would this be the appropriate way for women’s soccer to display their bodies and corporate sponsors?

Here is a video where both opinions are presented and debated.

Ideals of Beauty

The idea of femininity is still really much decided among the male dominant power structure still present in almost every field in the United States. I understand in created entertainment, such as video games and comics, the men and the women will be created to an unachievable, physics to the average person. An example I find fitting for discussing male and female standards of “attractiveness” is displayed quite well in the comic “Power Girl” issue 7. In this issue, the most attractive male, Vartox, from the planet Valeron, chooses her to assist him in repopulating his home. At Valeron, Vartox was very attractive but to the standards and male ideals on Earth, Power Girl did not have the same attraction to him as he did her.

Even with a message that beauty is highly dependent on the other person’s opinions and their culture/society, women are still under the impression that plastic surgery can fix them or make them more desirable. These women don’t always do it for attracting men; they can also be doing it for themselves. I would argue that, if done for a man or for self, the main contributor is low self-esteem and misguided sense of beauty. Even with tons of polished and fake celebrities being sold to the public as the most attractive, that is subjective and an industry’s opinion in order to sell magazines, shows, and products. I feel as though most men prefer women that don’t have the “perfect body” because that is nice to look at but may not be someone you want to actually be with.

Here is a video that shows a compilation of people before and after their plastic surgeries.

War Perspectives

Being a pacifist, I have not always liked idea of war-based games that seemingly only display the side of the aggressor or invader, such as Command and Conquer. In this game, the player controls the whole army with the main objective being its name, command and then conquer. Yet, I have found war-based games that express war from the receiving end of the war, one being Red Fraction Guerrilla. The premise of this game is that the player goes to the planet Mars to assist his family living there and while there he sees that the Earth Defense Force, the EDF, is capturing resources that have been depleted on earth; in doing this the EDF is harming the Martian citizens, who are seen as second-class humans.

Game play footage of Command and Conquer.

One of the missions in the game requires the player to attend a peaceful protest; after the EDF opens fire, the player is instructed to retaliate.

I felt like this could be beneficial because of showing resistance and or liberation movements from their perspective. I felt that this could provide an understanding of the people that are usually portrayed as the enemies or terrorists and the negative consequences that occur to the people when their government is pushed around and or have their resources exploited. After thinking about why I thought this counter-informative game could be beneficial, I realized it in actuality is not. I came to this conclusion because regardless of stance, the aggressor or liberator, the male characters have to go about their missions of conquest or expelling the foreign invaders with the use of violence. I, personally, see the instigator, referring to whoever attacked first, of any war as being more morally and ethically accountable, but there is no justification of violent attacks on either end. The game industry and developers have been taking the easy way out by using a proven system of knowing that war and violence sells and only occasionally changing the storyline. The game industry and developers should take a risk; video games are suppose to be entertainment but also innovative and creative and I would like to see more of that creativity and innovation in new game options that don’t limit men to one ideal and game play.

What’s “manly”? Advertisers and the military know.

Certain ideas in western culture for the past several decades have been deemed manly: sports, beer, and the military. One of those three things would usually be a “no brainer” to include in an ad, commercial, and or program that is targeted for a male audience. This tactic has been so successful that advertisers now combine some of those together in one advertisement.

I notice this most when I watch football or basketball with my boyfriend. Television is filled with constant name-dropping that you don’t even need a commercial break to feel bombarded with promotions. The NBA Cares segment, which occurs after the commercial break stops and before the game is started again, demonstrates just one way the sport establishment, promotes the military.

This is a new commercial for Budweiser that has been played very frequently during the NBA playoffs.

This constant praising of men in war creates a lack of critical thinking and discussion of the military's actions through solely emotional appeals. Supporting the troops should be concerning bringing them home, not supporting them in a war zone while sports stars and beer companies can use their image of manliness to support their profits. In a Washington Post article in 2008, $7.7 billion was spent on recruiting; the defense budget faced a 11% cut which equals almost $800 million. More recently in 2010, the military spent $7 million on NASCAR advertisements. These are large sums of money that I feel could be better used for veterans, educational assistance, housing assistance, and the list could go on. The military is a major institution within our government and nation. It is known about by all citizens, so what needs to be advertised is other options for what masculinity is and what men are capable of doing besides sports and war.

I find this pie chart helpful to seeing how much actually goes towards defense and everything else in the federal budget; this is the 2012 federal budget.