Finals!

The time has come for this class to come to an end. This year has been quite a struggle for me, but I can defiantly say that this was one of my favorite classes. I have learned so much about the society I leave in a the difference in gender and sex. Now when I am watching TV or a movie I pay close attention to the audience they are trying to get to. I love to watch cartoons and when it comes time for commercials they always have toys and movies for younger kids. This class was such a great experience to further my knowledge on everything since you can't go anywhere without recognizing race, class and gender!

Thank you for everything I had a great time in your class.

What I missed

I unfortunately could not make it to class last week, but one of my class mates filled me in on what we went over. She told me that we watched the movie Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. This movie is about getting high and what happens on their high. I would like to just express how I feel about Marijuana. It is a naturally grown substance that I think should be legal. If it were legal I do not think people would make as much of a deal about it. They would also put a tax on it which would make it expensive like tobacco now. I personally do not agree with "getting high" or smoking this substance, but I know people that feel like it calms their nerves when they smoke. Just make it legal so everyone can stop making a big deal about it. People now get jail time if they are caught with it. There are robbers getting away and other criminals getting out of jail time. I feel that they are making a bigger deal out of having this drug than breaking into peoples houses.

Bamboozled

This movie is a big eye opener. At first I did not know what to think of the film, but once I figured out the message that the director was trying to prove to the audience I understood it a lot better. The follow up question helped me give my opinion a little better, but I will still say what I think. The audience of this film was not only the white culture, but the black culture as well. I will start with the black culture. African-American culture, like white, and even Hispanic culture, have stereotypes. Some African- Americans took this film offensively, which I do not blame them, but I think it also opened the eyes to the African-Americans who do follow along with the stereotypes. No one says that the black culture has to be bullies like the gangsters we saw in the movie, and no body says that the African-American culture has to sit on the porch and play music with shackles on. These are some of the stereotypes that I think Spike Lee was trying to give to the audience. Spike Lee wanted to inspire the African-American culture to step out of there comfort zone and be who they can be.
As for the white audience, I think it did the same for them. They got to see that the black culture has many stereotypes by exaggerating many points during the film. An example of this exaggeration would be the make-up the actors were during the minstrel show.

Soul Plane

This is the first time I have ever heard of the movie Soul Plane. I can grantee that over my Thanksgiving break I will be renting this movie and watching it. It is like the prefect movie for this race, class and gender class. Race in the movie is represented by all of the characters. On the new updated plane you do not see one white person in the Class 1 area. The white people that are in the low class are scared and confused about what is going on because it is like a new atmosphere for them. The classes are divided on how much money each person paid to get on the plane. Even though the white family seemed very high maintenance, they were placed in the low class flight area. I saw gender being represented by the flight attendants. There was one guy and two girls that we were introduced to once they started the scenes on the plane. They all had the gender performance of girls. The guy in the group acted more feminine than masculine even though his appearance was masculine.

Masculinity in Media

I will start this blog by saying Bruce Willis protrays masculine in every movie that he is in. When I think of actors and masculinity, Bruce is the word that pops into my head. I have never seen the Live Free or Die Hard movies, but from the clips that I did see he is the "it" factor for masculinity in media. I was watching a movie this weekend called Transportor. I believe it was the second transport, but if you have seen this movie you know that it is a 100% movie that protrays masuclinity. The guy has a job that involves transporting people or things to certain places. He has no clue why he is doing this and most of the time he does not find the job, but it just kind of finds him. In this secong Transportor movie his job is to transport a woman to a certain spot. The woman appears to be feminine, but when she sees the guy fighting bad guys she does not scream or act like a female would in that situation. I know in class we kind of talked about partners that are different sex but both have the same authority rights and gender performance, in Law & Order SUV case would be the "badass" performance.

Midterm

For our midterm we watched the pilot of Leverage. This is the first time I have seen and even heard of this show. In the episode I did see examples of gender performance and a difference in classes. The girl Parker had actions that resembled a man. She was sitting bombs, being sneaky, and stealing useful information. All of those characteristics we would normally place on a male. It seemed like she wanted to get back at the bad guy. Parker appears to be a beautiful woman, but she is a hard ass. Elloit is the opposite. He has long hair, like what a woman would have, but he is masculine about his job. Even though he has triat about him that make him appear on the feminine side, his actions make him appear very masculine.

Ms. Marz

I must say that Veronica is probably one of my idols now that I was introduced to the show. She may look like the sterotype of a "blond" but she is way opposite. She is so strong, smart, and demanding. The way no one stood up to her when she was cutting the guy off the flag pole really said that she was "bad ass". When I got home from class i got right on the internet to look up more episodes of Veronica Marz to learn more about the show. I week later I am still looking up to her as a role model and wishing that I could have been more like her in my high school.