The Media

Photo

Page 474, Item 8.3 Car with Political Bumper Stickers

At first glance, the car with various bumper stickers looks like a dorm wall cluttered with posters and I can't help but to sit here and read each individual bumper sticker and try to derive what statement is being declared or what idea is being proposed. You can tell that this person is obviously an anti-violence, left-wing, pro-adoption, environmentalist judging on the content contained on the bumper stickers. The car in itself is a mobile advertisement for the individual's belief, however the picture as a whole is of this beaten down car covered with personal beliefs. The picture, when taken as a whole, gives me a sense of that this is an old car and an old cause, however one that is still relevant. And it's just the one car meaning that the portion of the population that may be behind this cause is just a fraction of the whole population.

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Page 361, Item 6.15 Movie Posters for Frankenstein, Blade Runner: The Final Cut, and Gattaca

Movies have always interested me as an art, which is why I picked this Item. Movies interest me because usually movies (good ones) have some sort of reflection on what the thoughts and feelings of people as a whole at a specific time were. For instance, all 3 posters, although produced in various years (1931,1982,1997, respectively) reflect our societies interest in technological advances in biological engineering. (Frankenstein, was given life by a mad scientist; Blade Runner, deals with clones; and Gattaca, is set in a society which has been genetically engineered to be superior.) This interest has persisted to drive us since probably before the 30s, and we can see this in the way these movies are advertised, by a mysterious/monstrous face (using our curiousness to sell the movie) or guns and people in futuristic clothing surrounded by futuristic symbols (selling us the action/adventure). You can see other types of general interest in movies as well; some common themes are the End of the World/Armageddon, Afterlife/Supernatural, and Aliens/Space Travel.

Web Site

Page 271, Item 5.9 Human Rights Watch Web Site

To me, this website is an example of how mass communication and shared human interests can come together in order to create a continually evolving community of those involved with Human Rights from across the world. This is a positive example of how the ease of spreading information is actually helping us come together as a people with a common goal. Many of the links suggest various ways to obtain information based on subgroups such as Arms, Business, Social and Cultural Rights, HIV/AIDS, etc; allow you to upload Audio/Video/Text that a member may think is important or urgent for the cause; and a "Take Action" link which allows for all these ideas to formulate into an actual social movement, click by click.

Merchandise

Page 268, Item 5.6 Personality Identification Playing Cards, U.S. Army

My Uncle, who served overseas in the Iraq war, actually brought me back these exact playing cards. They contain pictures of various "wanted" Iraqi political figures. This is a genius tactic employed by the army to instill a sense of who to look out for and who is on the list of high priority targets into the soldiers. They handed these cards out to soldiers to play with, knowing that these faces would eventually be imprinted, even subconsciously, in their minds. I do not think this was 100 percent morally and ethically right, however it is a simple form of the medias ability to propagandize and manipulate the thoughts of their audience.