Stereotyping October 29, 2007

People seem to think that there is a huge amount of stereotyping on television and in mass media in general that is having a bad impact on today’s youth. I believe that stereotyping has its place however. Stereotypes are used for humor and to shorten time needed to develop a character. You can’t blame stereotypes for the lack of positive ethnic role models for children.

Stereotyping can not be blamed for racism or ignorance. If children are only learning about other ethnities and cultures through sitcoms and other noneducational programming, then there’s something wrong. Tolerance and togetherness needs to be taugh by parents and in school. Maybe a child is not racist because he saw an African American working as a janitor on TV but because his parents have raised him to accept that. If parents encourage racism and teach their children to look down on minorities then the stereotypes on TV are only a reinforcement, not a starting point.

Everyone may complain about the negative stereotypes, but what about the positive images shown on TV? There are plenty of programs that show minorities in a postive light. Children can see that minorites can hold high political and corporate positions. There are entire stations devoted to the positive image of minorites such as BET and the Spanish Channel.

People also seem to be forgetting that caucasians are not always shown positively either. There are many sitcoms and comedy shows that portray “whites” as redneck, hick, or just plain stupid. Minorites are not the only ones that are stereotyped. Everyone is generalized on TV, for entertainment sake.

A night at the opera October 16, 2007

Budweiser has always been creative when it comes to marketing. Just about everyone in my generation can recall the Budweiser frogs.  They got to be so overdone however that they had to retire them. Budweiser is constantly advertisting for their Bud Light product. Past commercials include alien fish using Bud Light to fish for humans and men using “rock, paper, scissors” to decide who gets the last Bud Light (the man throws an actual rock to win).

The most recent commercial however has been refered to repeatedly at the dinner table with my guy friends. The most commercial shows two men at the opera obviosuly against their will, with their wives or girlfriends. To lessen the pain of the opera, one man has packed his suit jacket with Bud Lights. When the opera singer sings, the bottles begin to break, bursting open, foaming everywhere. The commercial ends with the man in front of them calling them beginners and shaking a can at them. This commercial not only shows the two ways to “enjoy” a Bud Light (bottle or can) but is quite humorous and relatable to alot of men.

Bud Light has always been successful with encorporating humor into their advertisements and it seems to be working since they keep doing it. Not only that, but it is shown on almost every channel, over and over. Bud Light will basically be engraved in every man’s mind when it comes time to buy beer for the football game.

Trip Hop October 8, 2007

You wouldn’t believe all the interesting music out there that no one has heard of. The major record labels only market a small amount of the actual genres available. Most people have heard of rap and hip hop or rock and jazz, but how about trip hop?

Trip Hop, a.k.a. Bristol acid rock, is a combination of hiphop, downtempo, house, breakbeat, acid jazz, rock, and psychedelic. It has a moody and dark sound, yet is lyrical. Trip Hop started in the UK with the first single being DJ Shadow’s 1993 “Influx.” Trip Hop gets its name because the music makes the listener feel like he or she in “on a trip.” The melodies, bizarre noises, phat bass, and slow beats creat a high. Not many Trip Hop artists are famous today. The most well-known would probably be Gorillaz. The Gorillaz hit the main stream with “Feel Good Inc.” 2006. The animated band had been around since 1998, but unheard of because of the different genre.

Other groups include Lamb, Ruby, Zero 7, Bonobo, Howie B, and Sneaker Pimps. I’m sure that you have not heard of any of them.

It’s a shame that these groups have not and will probably never reach the status of most musicians in more common genres. Trip Hop has yet to hit a big wave due to lack of promotion and signing by major companies. Gorillaz entering the mainstream in the United States and winning albumn of the year in Germany has been a big step for Trip Hop however. Who knows what the future holds? Trip Hop could easily become the new Hip Hop.

Free music? October 8, 2007

Everyone knows about the constant battle going on in the media industry…illegal dowloading. A couple years ago, there were plently of sites online that anyone could download basically any song for free. The music industry saw this as a HUGE problem and a breach of copyrights. The big producers went after the online sites and have made an improvement. Lawsuits were filed against major dowloading comanpies and they were forced to convert to paid downloads. Supposedly the amount of legal downloads now matches illegal. They still have a way to go.

It is still possible today to get free music online-you just need to look. And it isn’t illegal to download music as long as it isn’t rewritable. Most colleges and other servers however do not allow any downloading sites besides the paid ones.

Personally, I don’t think that this “illegal downloading” should be illegal. It’s been proven that the industry is in fact losing almost nothing through illegal downloading. If anything, wouldn’t it make the artist more popular because more people have access to it? It is easier for people to share songs with friends online- it’s good word of mouth. If the artists cared about their fans and their musics as much as they say, they wouldn’t care about the downloading. The people in the industry today are so money hungry though that every penny counts. Instead of wasting time looking to get the people who are dowloading, they should be embracing the publicity. No matter how hard they try, people are going to get free music, whether through buring CD’s or transferring songs to each other over the internet. Free music is inevitable.