My Opinion on Tough Guise

Tonight in class we watched the documentary called "Tough Guise," and it addressed an issue that I was made aware of a few years ago, and still often think about. The issue was violence in men, the masculinity complex that is forced on them through social norms, media, and direct and indirect learned behaviors, and finally the negative effects that we are seeing from this throughout all of society. When I learned about this issue, believe it or not, I was in a psychology of women course. We often compared women's issues to men's issues, because lets face it, for every action there is an opposite reaction. Every time a woman is being unfairly treated by a man, and facing trauma, the man is experiencing an abuse of power and a need for power, and that caused emotional trauma too, and a sort of PTSD or addiction to that feeling that may make them need to feel that power again. The violence issue in America does not only affect women, who are the victims, but it clearly affects men more, or they wouldn't be the ones committing the crimes almost all of the time. I was introduced to this concept through watching this Ted Talk class with Jackson Katz in that psych class, and I loved it so I have included it here.



The Ted Talk stuck with me so much that during the next semester, in a psychological adjustment course, I wrote a paper about sexual harassment being a man's issue, and pulled a lot of my ideas from it. I basically said that sexual harassment is all about men needing to feel some sort of power over women, and that adult males are teaching younger males this cycle of having to be masculine and in control. Through the media boys see what women are supposed to be like, and feel threatened by any woman who doesn't fit the media norm, so they learn to sexualize and objectify women. The children grow up and teach their children too, and the boys who suffer mental illness or cant control these urges for whatever reason, usually end up doing some sort of violent act, often times against women or weaker men. I attached the paper in a pages document on this blog. you can see it on the right sidebar!

Tonight in the video we watched pointed out how nearly all violence committed is by men. I knew that sexual harassment and sex crimes were committed mostly by men, and considered this in my paper, but I had not considered how mostly all violence in general is committed by men. Tough Guise threw some interesting statistics out tonight, and I found the infographic online:

(ME)ME

Project 1 & Finishing Season One of "How To Get Away With Murder"

As I introduced in a paper that I wrote for Project 1 (please refer to the Project 1 page on this blog, on the sidebar to the right) ...

"How to Get Away With Murder first aired on ABC in 2014 and received instant praise from viewers and critics for not only having a suspenseful and interesting plot, but for simultaneously pushing racial and sexual boundaries in a fearless and unapologetic way. Since its time on television HTGAWM has won several awards like: A Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, An AFI Award for TV Program of the Year, GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series, and Image Awards for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series, and Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award, BET Award, Critics Choice Television Award, Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association (GALECA), People’s Choice Award, TV Guide Award, and a Television Critics Association Award."

I went on to dissect the pilot episode of the show and analyze, basically, if I thought that it indeed expressed progressive racial and sexual themes that we aren't used to considering in modern media.  Instead of forcing you to read the entire essay, I have outlined what I found that supported the claims that HTGAWM is the most progressive show on television right now. 

"Who Is Wall Street's Queen B.?" PART 2 - Vanity Fair Comparison

In an article I read called "Network News: The Role of Race in Source Selection and Story Topic" by Lynn C. Owens, she talked about race being a factor in media and news, and studied news sources to prove that different races got more coverage pertaining to certain stories, like Whites were pretty much everywhere all over the news, but African Americans were used as sources in crime/ or human interest news. She came up with the theory of incognizant racism - basically saying that journalists cover the White community much differently than they do any other minority community.

So how does this relate to "Who Is Wall Street's Queen B.?" and my PART 1 Analysis? Well, I want to consider the idea of incognizant sexism. In my last post, I complained about how journalists objectify, belittle, stereotype, and sexually harass women in the media. I also made the claim that journalists portray women differently than they do men, especially in written articles.

To explore these claims further, I compared and contrasted four other Vanity Fair documents to the "Who Is Wall Street's Queen B.?" article that I analyzed in my last post. I picked articles that, in my opinion, have a wide sexual range. I read and analyzed them, and came up with some key take away points pertaining to incognizant sexism. I reaaaaally like being right, and proving it (my grandma thinks I should be an attorney), so I was interested myself to see if the articles I chose would actually support these claims.

The articles I chose to analyze are:

"Who Is Wall Street's Queen B.?" PART 1 - Analysis

In the Vanity Fair article "Who is Wall Streets Queen B.?" by Suzanna Andrews (Nov. 2008), two of the most successful female wall-street journalists, in a rivalry that the media wont stop buzzing about, are compared throughout a several page spread.

The article explores both of their career histories, credentials, current positions, social and media influence, and pulls quotes from interviews with the stars and their colleges. The awesome content and background helps paint a picture of the successful careers that two hard-working, wall-street slaying women built for themselves, and their growing competition with each other.

While it does give good information, it does something else too. The article points out the constant sexualization of, and made-up rivalries between, successful women in the media. It takes bold stances against the way women are portrayed and talked about, and points out legitimate examples in media for credibility. I am thankful that Suzanna Andrews went this direction with her article, and took a stand for women in a magazine as influential as Vanity Fair, but I still see flaws in it.

I loved the article, and the writer and the two women are fabulous, but media in general still has a long way to go. This article is a good example of media trying to close the gender gap, but still needing a little help. Here is what I still see wrong with the article, and media in general:

Artist Responsibility: Rap Culture is not Black Culture

In class, a student talked about rap music and culture, and the role the media plays in it. The discussion centered around the idea that modern day rap lyrics based on sex, drugs, alcohol, parties, girls, and money is considered Black culture instead of rap culture. He said this is because the media portrays the entire African American community in this negative way, even subtly and unintentionally. He used an example of White video producers making music videos for Black artists, and how they portray the artists and their culture in the same negative way that they always do.

My argument is that while the media does absolutely skew its content in favor of White culture, the media is not responsible for the content that well known artists are putting out. When a new song comes out by your favorite rapper, and the entire song is about a huge party and strippers, you aren't going to see a music video without a scene of a half-naked dancing girl on a table with four liquor bottles, no matter if the video producer is White or Black.

Here is an example of what I mean: