Neal Gabler defines entertainment in his book Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality as a damaging power which is able to “ruin” society (Gabler, 1998). However, according to Longman Dictionary, entertainment refers to “things such as films, television, performances etc that are intended to amuse or interest people”; to be more objective, it “entails communication via external stimuli, which reaches a generally passive audience and gives some portion of that audience pleasure” (Bates & Ferri, 2010). The contradiction of these definitions shows that entertainment makes both negative and positive influences on society, so it is not entertainment itself, but the way how it is used by human beings has the capacity to “ruin” or improve …show more content…
Television distresses the audience from judging the candidates’ policies to scrutinizing their images such as their clothes and body language. Take the 2016 American televised presidential debates for example. Ms. Clinton wore a red trouser suit on the first debate and a white jacket on the last one, and her clothing styles are considered that “not only referenced the first round of the feminist movement in history”, but also as “a symbol of the new wave of feminism today” (Suh, 2016). American tweeter users even followed this “fashion” (Suh, 2016), so to some degree it became a fashion show. In fact, Ms. Clinton’s clothes were intended designed and matched in order to make her “stand out” on the stage (Suh, 2016) and therefore caught more attention from the audience. In this way, she could guide people to believe that she was reliable and qualified to be the president through her amiable and presidential outlook. This example shows that entertainment can be taken advantage of by politicians to create an invisible association between their images and personal abilities to achieve success. While it is well for politicians to be aware of the importance of entertainment, yet it should not be used to harm the seriousness of …show more content…
For example, on one of China’s most popular dating reality show, If You Are the One, a girl said to the boy that “I'd rather be sitting inside a BMW and crying than sitting on a bicycle and smiling” (Zhao, 2010). Similarly, on another dating show called Go for Love, a girl said that “Do not talk to me, unless you are rich” (Zhao, 2010). Since the two girls’ worship-money mentality was contradictory to Chinese traditional marriage values, audience were attracted by the shows. However, according to Kefan Cao, a Chinese television presenter, the girls were actresses and they were arranged by the directors of the dating shows. This shows that the dating shows were designed to strike the audience with controversial moral values such as “materialism, narcissism and discrimination against the poor among China’s younger generations” (Wang, 2016), so that they can make profits from commercial sponsors. Since the television shows make influences on people, their values conveyed in the programs also impact social morality. If the directors of television shows only focus on the entertaining functions of television programs to make profits, the public’s morality will have danger to be lowered
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Show MoreIn the book, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism by Susan Douglas, gives insight and knowledge that digs deep into pop culture explaining how the media portrays the appearances of women that are in powerful positions in our culture. The appetencies tent undermines the actual progress of women. Douglas is interested in what these pop culture ideals shows about our culture. The way we react to women in our culture with powerful influence. What do these shows do to the female imagine in our culture?
The “brief shining moment” that Kennedy was remembered for, was actually only mediocre. During Kennedy’s presidency, Kennedy had high hopes, but died before many could be authorized. However, not all of that was his fault. Many times Kennedy had pushed for reforms, but as he barely made it into office, Congress was not as accepting, pushing back on his ideas, leading to many impasses. Kennedy was may have been successful in foreign affairs, but they were also a disaster at times.
As seen in Greenhalgh’s and Winckler’s book, the one-child policy resulted in many single daughters, who received all the attention from their parents and while it may have been a blessing to some, many of the “hottest and best paying jobs… are open exclusively to young women with good looks and sex appeal,” (Doc D). This statement portrays that women are thought of as objects, with prospective employers only looking at their physical appearance, not caring for their education of inner self. However, this also portrays the gender inequality exhibited by China, and shows that women in China only receive jobs because of how they look. This compares to Fitzpatrick’s article, as the practice of female infanticide, killing female infants, also became common practice in some area’s after the one-child policy was put into use (Doc E). It had long been known in China, that boys were more valuable than girls, and this practice further goes to show the chasm, between boys and girls in Chinese society.
The Braindead Megaphone written by George Saunders analyzes the many negative effects that nowaday news media has on society. He begins by illustrating a scene in which a man disrupts a party and drowns out all voices with a megaphone. Now this imagery is a metaphor in which the megaphone represents the news media such as newspaper, television, radio, and of course the internet. As Saunders narration continues the people at the party soon begin to respond to whatever the man with the megaphone says and even starts to mimic things he does and say. In fact it does not matter what he says as long as the megaphone is in his hand.
TV without Guilt by David Finkel focuses on the Delmar family’s relationship with TV. What I enjoyed about this article is how the family kept an open-mindedness about television. For example, “I mean without TV, who would exist? Just these middle-class people I see every day. I wouldn’t know anything else that goes on” (83).
There are many ways to define success and there are also many ways people view success in different ways. Individuals can achieve success while venturing down many different paths in life and (conversely) people can also fail in while following a single path to success. Cathy Davidson discusses the positives of the impact that technology has on the classroom in, her writing, “Project Classroom Makeover.” Davidson also discusses how society has been moving towards a standardized way of learning for the past few decades. The knowledge that the public needed to know throughout the past was not as intense as what they need to can comprehend now.
Entertainment Controls Them All Huxley has a theory of entertainment as control and we can see it throughout his book Brave New World. The fact that his vision was made years ago, makes this vision even more interesting, because knowing that entertainment has a big impact into our society for the book reveals similar forms of entertainment to control it’s people. The ways that the book was created has brought to conclusion that our society is controlled by entertainment. Our society has become a trivial culture preoccupied with entertainment.
Uses & Gratifications and the Reality Television context. Blumler and Katz’s ‘Uses and Gratification theory’ (1974) suggests that media users play an active role in choosing and using the media. This theory shifted the focus from what media do to the people to what people do with the media, thus it’s an audience centric theory. It examines the nature of audience involvement and gratification obtained from viewing the television.
Reality TV has proven to be popular and influential amongst the populations of several nations but the reasoning behind it has yet to be concurred by sociologists. By utilizing symbolic interactionist perspective, functional analysis and conflict theory individuals can create reasoning behind why reality TV receives such positive response despite the deplorable deeds being presented. Symbolic interactionist perspective is the social process where people create symbols amongst each other. Reality TV gives a false image of typical social life for the majority of societies by taking select groups of individuals and recording their interactions.
The television gives people an important lesson of life and people find the examples of what’s right in TV. This one of many illustrations how the television and films influence humans’
Entertainment is seen everywhere whether it 's reading a book or seeing a movie with friends. Entertainment can shape a society and many individuals include time for entertainment on a daily basis. Many people love entertainment and find it as mode of relaxation. The truth is that entertainment has the capacity to “ruin” society. The concept of entertainment in society has been growing and has the capacity to ruin the state of society while negatively influencing individuals.
Media affect teenagers the most because they spend a lot of time exploring things on it and this could harm them in a negative way. For example: when teenagers watch romantic movies, they could act differently to their love life because they got influenced by the things that they watched. Teenagers could change their behavior due to the things they watch on TV shows, movies, and videos. The young people of today appear to be excessively fascinated in viewing their most loved shows on TV or utilizing web-based social networking
The representation of gender in mass communications has been a hugely debated topic for years and will continue to be one for many more years to come. The media plays a big role in how they want to portray a gender to the public. They create certain stereotypes through the role of a gender in order to attract a large audience and interest to sell a product, brand or image. Media is so important in today’s society, people spend hours and hours each day watching TV, browsing the Internet and reading magazines. There are so many images of men and women in the media today that it certainly has an impact on the viewer’s thoughts and sense of identity.
I agree that entertainment has the capacity to ruin society. Entertainment is everywhere, and there are millions of people around the world every day who are influenced by entertainment. There are commercials and shows on TV, lots of music, radio commercials, comedians and actors, and video games, as well as many more forms of entertainment that reach millions of people daily. Wherever you look, there are bound to be people immersed in some form on entertainment, whether that be games on their cell phone, radio, or music. Since we are so reliant on entertainment to distract and captivate us, it is a reasonable statement to say that entertainment could run, and possibly ruin, society.
Introduction In our current society, the media is a very powerful medium which cultivates the way the society thinks and behaves. At this stage of the political economy, the intellectual mode of production is largely made through the media industry. Aspects such as Hollywood, television and movies, they frame and direct our thinkings and values towards the direction as they desire.