True Love … is it predestined?

Haven’t we all heard that we have one true love and one day that person will come to us and we will just KNOW?

Dr. Galician number one love myth in her text, Love Sex & Romance in the Media is known other than:

“Your perfect partner is cosmically predestined, so nothing/nobody can ultimately separate you.”

Sure it seems surreal, but there are many who truly believe this love myth. In fact, according to Dr. Galician’s text, a “Rutgers University National Marriage Project study of 1,0003 young adults ages 20 to 29 showed a shocking majority (94%) of the never-married singles had a romantic, unrealistic view of marriage that included staying single until they found a ‘perfect’ mate.”

It has also been known that media critics suggest television is partly responsible for these irrational viewpoints since the majority of TV writers are young and single. Love is one of the oldest and widely praised emotion that is constantly exploited on TV such as the reality dating shows. Media critics have more than once calls these shows, “fruitless searches for the perfect mates.”

One blogger posted up a snapshot of her journal doodled with a checklist of what a perfect mate has to have. (39 points to be exact)

Another blogger had doubts, but after a month worth of lame eharmony.com advertisements on TV did she sub scumming to filling out of those dating surveys anyway. Realized after that 200th question of compatibility including, “Would you like her to respect your views?” After a grueling process of answer idiotic questions when honestly some should be left unanswered, she finally said, ‘There’s never a Perfect match.’

Below is a short list of what forms of medium are illustrating this love myth.

Movies -Bridget Jones’s Diary, Brigadoon, Cinderella, Fools Rush In, Grosse Pointe Blank, Only You, Sleepless in Seattle, Sliding Doors, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, What Dreams May Come, When Harry Met Sally, Women on Top

Music – You Are My Destiny, You Were Meant for Me

Television – Dharma and Greg, Friends, Sex and the City

A YouTube video below shows several women describing their “perfect” mate.

Love at First Sight … is it really?

Oh media … how I love thee. *sighs*

It is the oldest love myth we’ve all come to love and question.

Is there such a thing as “love at first sight?”

I’ve come to love Dr. Galician’s research and once again, she nails it on the head. The media in all forms likes to convey this myth to the popular culture. Why? Sex sells. Emotion sells. Excitement sells. Plus they’re far easier to portray and for the audience to follow then the slow progression of love.

A university survey towards men and women asked if there is such a thing as “love at first sight.” Half agreed and the other didn’t. The point is HALF did believe in the myth. On Bizjournal.com, they took an excerpt from the book “100% AMERICAN” by Daniel Evan Weiss and published by Poseidon Press. From that book there was a question of “love at first sight” and the statistic showed 57% women believed in the love myth.

Dr. Galician mentions how the media would convey this myth by camera angles, panning in and out on the character slowly making the scene dramatic with emotion. Course we can’t forget the multiple books, movies, music and shows on TV that has helped society underestimate what love is.

Here are some examples of “love at first sight” courtesy of the text “Love, Sex, & Romance in the Media.”

Books – Gone with the Wind, Romeo & Juliet

Movies – Red of Roses; Cinderella; Snow White … Bambie…etc; City of Angels; Coming to America; Footloose; The French Lieutenant’s Woman; Moulin Rouge; Notting Hill; Out of Sight; Romeo & Juliet; South Pacific; Serendipity; Titanic; Wayne’s World; The Wedding Planner; West Side Story

Recorded Music – Bewitched, Bothered, & Bewildered; I Love You; I Saw Her Standing There; Just One Look (That’s All It Took); Lady in Red; Love at First Sight; Love in the Library

Television – 90210; Dharma & Greg; Family Matters; Full House; Mad About You; Melrose Place; Saved by the Bell; Sex and the City; Passions; Grey’s Anatomy

Here’s a blogger who as absolute faith in “love at first sight.” This blogger has been hearing “lust at first sight more often but won’t deny that she still has faith, in fact she says, “I don’t see why you can’t fall in love at first sight. I guess I’ve always been a believer in it and no one has been able to change my mind about it.”

There is one blogger who absolutely thinks “love at first sight” is a “crock of poop” in fact she says, “love at first sight is a shallow statement and should honestly be erased from the world’s vocabulary.” Gotta love that.

Male superiority is reinforced in the media…

 

 

To reflect on our society’s couple relationship is to see the new modern era of equality, open mindedness and communication. But with the new will always come with at least some of the old.

Dr. Mary-Lou Galician at Arizona State University also stated another common stereotype in her textbook, “Sex, Love & Romance in the Media,” that said:

“The man should NOT be shorter, weaker, younger, poorer, or less successful than the woman.”

A quote Galician pulled from Late Nite with David Letterman:

“Well, I can wear heels now.”

-Nicole Kidman, discussing her split from Tom Cruise

Galician speaks of the myth for male superiority in romantic relationships and how in our mass media, the myth is reinforced even in nonfiction entertainment forms like the news: A news anchor “couple” is practically always an older man with a younger woman. They’re hardly ever the same age, much less an older/younger man duo.

Interestingly enough, Galician did a survey with her Love Quiz with male and female university students and by a 4:1 ratio (80% disagree/20% agree) both sexes deny they believe in male-female inequality in relationships.

Typically as the sand in the hourglass fades away and new ideas and thoughts are brought up, old traditional views, such as the male superiority would fade and equality would reign.

Surprisingly, it’s the opposite.

Based on Galician’s survey, she found that the Generation Xers were more likely than the older Baby Boomers to believe in the stereotypical myth. She gives credit to our current forms of music videos, which tend to portray patriarchal couple ship and objectified females.

This picture is just a photo I found. By analyzing the photo, the couple seems happy. To look closer, the male is sitting higher than the female, holding her all while looking straight at the camera. As for the female, she is crossed leg with her arms crossed and looking up at him, almost for approval. It’s just a photo, but these are the types of pictures in our media that displays male superiority instead of the ever searching equality.

This photo is actually from someone’s photo album (who I believe is a photographer) and purposefully posed this couple to show male dominace.

The photographer, Andre, wrote, “This is a great photo of social commentary. Its a classic pose, one that shows male dominance over his woman and that the woman knows her place. The man with eyes looking forward, arms around his property, tells others to back off. The woman, whose head is tilted up and eyes gazing on her man, shows that she is OK with being the subservient one. If nothing else, the artist has suggested his view of Man as King is alive and well in today’s society.”

How Real Is “Reality” TV?

Reality shows are one of the major TV shows Americans run to their TV set for their regular guilty pleasure fix.

But how real is reality TV?

There are so many different types of reality show it’s actually kind of funny. The thing is, the only way these shows are created is if there will be a high rating of viewers.

What’s interesting is that some reality shows are a release for some viewers as a way to escape their daily lives. For some, these reality shows are a way to connect with the outside world and realized that their own lives aren’t as dysfunctional as they thought.

Not to mention the shows that is about self-improvement, such as “What Not to Wear,” or “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” The viewers that watch these shows may want to take the shows advice or change how their house looks from the show, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

However, a lot of the shows undergo tons of editing and in order to make each episode stand out, the editors would have to edit the reel enough to make it dramatic … making the end result manipulative and … not so real.

If you do like reading about the current going-ons in reality television, here’s a blog that is dedicated to just that.

Media Literacy … Disney … now Barbie?

Based on the last post on how Disney has affected our society, there was a few questions on how I would educate the youngin’s on media literacy if I had the chance.

 

Question:

How would you educate all those little girls who want to be Disney princesses? Would you teach media literacy in junior high or high school? Would you try to change how Disney and the media portray females?

My Opinion:

As a young girl, I honestly would not understand any media literacy, or ethics my parents or anyone in society would teach me. I would probably let my child/student/neighbor/etc. roam free with her imagination and just be young.

As for when I would teach media literacy, I would teach it in high school most definitely. Why wouldn’t I teach this particularly valuable subject to the little junior high schoolers? Probably because they would not take the subject seriously and would probably not retain any of the information. As for the high schoolers, they’re older, have an idea of who they are, what they want to be, plus maturity does play a factor. I believe they would take to the subject much better than the younger crowd. Unfortunately, what with the typical low high school budget, I wouldn’t be surprised to NOT see any media literacy class being taught anywhere. (Just like all those “unnecessary” music classes being cut … )

As for the last question, “Would you try to change how Disney and the media portray females?” I would make the audience aware of how the media do affect our society, and Disney would be an obvious example. I would not necessarily try to change how Disney themselves intentionally portrays females … but I would point how the similarity to how real-life situations match coincidently to the Disney stories we have all come to watch and love. Though I would point out how the media as a whole (TV, movies, comics, books etc) does portray females, I would point out the many different categories women play on TV (I haven’t mentioned the different ethnics either yet … ) and how many young females in our real-time world all wish they can be like those fictional characters they see on TV.

Example:

There is an article I read and some show I saw on TV that featured a 40-year-old woman who always looked up to Barbie as her role model … and finally became one. She underwent 31 operations in 14 years to become a living Barbie doll … Read the CBS article titled, “Becoming Barbie: Living Dolls, Real Life Couples Becomes Models of Plastic Perfection.”

After reading that article, ironically back in 1997, Mattel chose to redesign Barbie to better reflect our society. According to Mattel, she underwent the ultimate plastic surgery. Complete with slimmer hips, wider waist and yes … smaller bust.Read the BCC News article titled, “Barbie undergoes plastic surgery.”