Hip-Hop

The essay “ The Miseducation of Hip- Hop- Discrimination in Education” is about how this genre of music is affecting the youth of today and how many college faculty stereotypes any student they see dressing or acting like this music. What the professor’s aren’t seeing is how, though there are some bad sides to this music as with any genre, most students listen and follow the lighter more positive side of Hip-hop. Jason Hinmon, for example, just because he dresses in baggy jeans and shirts or wears gold chains, it does not mean that he will be a bad student, just that he prefers different music to what others listen to. He should not be stereotyped just because of the way he dresses, professors need to look at his past and present academics and let that speak for them. Though they should clean themselves up when going to a job interview, most students view the classroom as a place where they can dress as they please and not be viewed as trouble just by wearing baggy clothes.

Source
Evelyn, Jamilah. "The Miseducation Of Hip-Hop." Pop perspectives: readings to critique contemporary culture. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 599-565. Print.

Pictures and Language

The essay by Neil Postman and Steve Powers explains how important language and pictures is to the modern media world and how it is used to capture the attention of its viewers. It aptly describes how they all work together to make a news show what it needs to be in order to deliver its news to the world. “A newspaper, for example, can easily afford to print an item of conceivable interest to only a fraction of its readers. A television news program must be put together with the assumption that each item will be of some interest to everyone that watches.” (Rosendale, 2008) The writers claim that the difference between pictures and language is the emotion that is heard when a reporter is telling of an event and the absence of it when it is just seen as a picture. This is important to have them together because if a person just sees a picture of a ship in the ocean, they don’t know that it is a marine ship in the Indian Ocean, just that it is a military, possibly not even American.

Source:

Rosendale, L. (2008). Understanding Lives and Jobs. Pop perspectives; readings to critique contemporary culture (p. 161). Boston, MA; McGraw-Hill.

Darth Vader

The video for the Volkswagen commercial for the new 2012 Passat is aptly named “The Force” because it shows a young child running around his home wearing a Darth Vader costume. The Star Wars franchise is one that seems to be able to rise in each generation and never get old, as it is passed down from parent to child. In the commercial a picture is painted of a normal middle class family living in the suburbs of America today. You have the stay at home mom of at least two children (boy and girl from the looks of it), and the white collar father. Volkswagen has made it so the commercial will be appealing to not just the parents, who will be paying for the car, but also to their children, who though one wouldn’t think it but have a very big voice in what kind of vehicle the family chooses to purchase. By using a very well known and loved villain they tie both the generations together in the hopes that more will buy this car.

Justin Bieber

The gender representations shown in the Justin Beiber music video “Baby” are really quite evident; they are of the young pre- teen type boys and girls. The interaction between Justin and the main female in this video show that there is a young puppy love attraction between them, but the girl is trying to play hard to get and making Justin Beiber work for it. It is obvious that she likes him just as much as he likes her.  The video shows how much younger teens are being introduced more fully in the having a crush and dating area than what many of the country’s adults were at the same age. The fact that it is shown in a bowling alley instead of a club or something similar is a miss portrayal of where the youth of today hang out. Having a rapper in a purely pop video shows how much today’s contemporary music is really combining and seems like it may start trying to be a genre all on its own.