English 102 so far...

Class has been busy, and with the completing of our last major presentation assignment, and just before the beginning of our magazine project, it seemed like a good point to look back and see how this class has shaped up so far.

English 102 started out as a class of decent size, it soon started shrinking, and after our first essay assignment, past October 9th which was our last day to drop, the class had equalized its self with only a core of upper class men remaining. Being a freshmen, I cannot deny that this was quite intimidating for me, I was often left feeling like I’m not ready to handle such a speaking and presentation oriented course at this point of my education. Although I've always enjoyed debate, and consider myself somebody that is very much in touch with today’s global issues, the individual part to this course, like preparing effective high level presentations had me struggling. My first essay left me very disappointed, as even though I worked considerably long on writing it, it still never came together and felt incoherent to me. This was also very apparent in my confidence when presenting my LRRH comparison. After this project, I was confused and frustrated to an extent, as I felt that I just was not able to produce quality work on this topic even though I worked much longer on this presentation than usual. This left me motivated to do better next time on one hand, but also intimidated, as the overall quality of presentations given in class was very high from what I could tell, and presenters like Joseph, Gwyn and Matt left me questioning myself in whether I would ever be able to produce something with that level of quality and thoughtfulness. Luckily I was not facing this trouble in my participation in group discussion, the generally high level of education and understanding that our whole class often displayed during our discussions was impressive and had me very eager to join in on any topic at hand. This was my favorite part to this class, the fact that we would be able to reach a very high level of analytical and interpretational understanding of any given discussion, and always left us short for time in our detailed perspectives of the topic. My greatest achievements so far would have to be my gaining in confidence when it comes to presentation skills, I feel that although I am far from perfect, I managed to improve and now feel as though I can connect with an audience better than before. I also feel that our rigorous attempts to uncover what lies beneath any given subtlety has allowed me to be generally much more analytical when it comes to televised and other forms of media, I constantly find myself interpreting even the most undertone commercials and clips, something I really didn’t do before taking this course.

With that said, although the course has not ended, and my grade is probably far from what I would like it to be, I still feel a good sense of accomplishment, and it’s easy for me to say that English 102 was by no means a waste of my time, teaching me many new analytical and presentation concepts.

Presentations in Summary

After our last day of presentations on tuesday, november 24, we were all done presenting our topics and a few trends were recognizable. Alot of us chose to work with the topic on gender shaping in young children, and this included myself.

Although the other topics seemed thoughtful and possible to research, it seems that the many discussions on disney movies and their role throughout the years in shaping young childrens imaginations led most of us to work with this topic. Although disney has changed their image alot over the last decade and has shown through movies like "Enchanted" that they are well aware of the stereotypes their movies used to make, the childrens movies we grew up with, such as cinderella, beauty and the beast and snow white all appear more and more controversial when we look at the imagery and plot today. Its clear that society has grown not just alot more tolerant towards all races and genders, but we have also uncovered and dealt with alot of stereotypes that have been around for a long time and have previously remained untouched. Through our accepting and dealing with these issues, it is obvious that our perceptions of racial and gender equality have not been so clear and recognized in the past, and have led previous generations to overlook these controversial aspects of disney movies, deeming them as appropriate for children. Would this be the same case today? Although these movies would most probably still make it through a ratings review without much of a problem, I would imagine that issues like unrealistic portrayal of female characters in movies such as Cinderella would be a topic that would be mentioned in a review or critique of the film.

Thus although we may not have become more dismissing and restrictive in what we watch, and choose to let children watch today, It seems that we have just grown to accept these stereotypes in entertainment media of the past, and have learned to appreciate these materials the way the were supposed to be appreciated at the time of their release, and not through the eyes of current media standarts regarding what we deem as good or bad. If this wasnt the case, many great works of art, like the classical disney movies would be discarded simply because of their inability to stay current with societies values as they shape and adjust in constant flux.

Ambers Presentation on Gender Roles:

I thought Amber’s presentation on gender roles was interesting, and it was nice to see a different topic being presented as well. I thought her presentation was well researched and I liked the use of a handout to get our attention using a cartoon on an interesting gender role stereotype. While her argument was well organized and the presentation went by smoothly and with good support by the presenter, I felt that her thoughts on the male role in gender relations today seemed a bit off. I don’t personally feel as though men are negatively influenced by the prince charming ideal, today more than ever. While I’m not arguing that today’s men aren’t kind and respecting of women, it seems the idea that men are noticeably influenced in a negative way by fairy tale ideals in their every day lives and how they treat women seems far fetched to me. To me, the idea of incorporating a prince charming attitude into the way I treat and behave around women seems like a good idea, and is something I currently do. While its true that men should not be led to believe that they need to aid their woman in every step she takes to the point that she is left without much influence on her own life. I still think its good to have ones own interpretation of these values so that we can help our better half as much as we can in dealing with today’s stressful society. It’s about finding and interpreting the moral that the often vague prince charming character makes, lessons on a natural sort of kindness that men should have towards women, being generally helpful when we can, and understanding that we should put our woman first in our decision making. 

Gwenn and her Comparison:

I found Gwenn’s presentation very well researched and executed. She seemed very confident in her information and timing, and it was easily noticed how much effort went into her work. I especially liked her thoughtful ending, and the examples she gave on our modern-day prince charming. When we look at the powerful figures she presented us with, such as Donald trump and Hugh Heffner, its apparent just how powerful money is in today’s world. These men have such might in their respective industries that it seems quite normal to see them in the company of such polarizing and attractive company as Ivana or Melania Knauss-Trump. Is this only valid for men of such power though? It would seem that this is true for people with money and might in general, no matter what their gender may be. With that said I have to say that Gwenn seems exemplary in her presentation skills, I hope that I will gain that kind of dedication throughout my college experience.

My presentation on Gender Shaping:

I presented my research topic on Thursday, the 19th of November, and although a few people had already done my topic as well, I felt that I managed to add a few interesting facts as well. I started my presentation with a long and thorough introduction, so that I would have the rest of my time to present the various images of toys, costumes and decorations available for each gender. In doing so I managed to save a good bit of time to really cover my pictures and see what the class thought. It was nice to see that my presentation went a lot smoother than my LRRH comparison, that had me stuck in my notes and feeling very unprepared. Although I sacrificed eye contact this time, which is something I need to work on, I managed to organize my thoughts more efficiently and with the help of my 7 note cards was able to present a much more organized topic that left me feeling confident in my analysis. Although I wasn’t sure if the layout of my presentation would really work as I intended, with such a large chunk of information in the beginning. 

 After completing my first draft however, it looked as though it would suit the given time slot of 10-15 minutes well when I reviewed it, and so I took a bit of a risk and went with the format. I really wanted to mention my thoughts on the idea that so many of the toys, costumes, decoration and other merchandise is available simply due to advances in globalized production and the increased efficiency in large scale manufacturing, such as injection-molding and things like hydro forming for the plastic and metal industry respectively. This in my mind is largely the reason we see such intricate and complex toys and costumes as we saw in the presentations being sold for tolerable prices. This in no way means to say that this merchandise is cheap, I find it quite over-priced still actually… but I’m sure that these same toys and costumes would have been much more expensive to produce not too long ago. Although I skipped this thought in the concluding thoughts, I felt it would still make a fair addition to my journal. 

With that i have our next presentation day to relax and watch the remainder of the class present on what I hope will be a day as interesting as the first few days have been. Over all I have to say that these presentations seemed generally better than the last ones we had, its nice to see all of us grow throughout the class, and hopefully it will leave us well prepared for our next assignment.

Racism and The World of Disney:

With watching “Mickey Mouse Monopoly,” it became very clear to me just how many people have been negatively influenced by the racist portrayals many Disney movies seem to make. Tales like Peter Pan seem quite obvious in these notions, portraying the Native Americans extremely stereotypically as the “red man,” where as other movies like Tarzan have a more subtle message, that, while the viewer might not recognize as easily, is still quite obvious when analyzed in further detail and one notices that the white Tarzan seems to know the jungle better than its inhabitant dark natives. Indeed, one finds many stereotypes on Blacks, Latinos and Asians in characters from the Hainas in the Lion King to the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp. 

While these characteristics stand out once one analyzes the supposed racist undertone some of these movies have, one has to wonder if we as viewers are just over-analyzing this media, and how we can basically find these undertones in almost anything we watch on TV or DVD these days. When one looks at this picture from a flipped perspective, one can find many stereotypes on the white race in these movies too, like the lost boys in Peter Pan appearing as overweight, rather helpless and possibly even genetically incapable, hinting at the overweight American youth. It may seem then, that no matter how Disney portrays race, we will find something racist or stereotypical in it, no matter what the tale might be.

In this area, Disney movies will always seem controversial, and its up to the viewer to decide whether some of these movies are indeed suppose to portray a racist or stereotypical image at the time they were made, or if some of these Disney films were simply created at a time when what we perceive as offensive in them today was not seen as biased or judgmental back then. At the core of this question one has to wonder If the Disney Institution is as visionary and revolutionary in their portrayal of race and culture as in their animation and ability to entertain young and old alike.

Disney Comics, Where are they Popular?

Throughout our class and dealing with many Disney stories and aspects of the corporation, I kept having to think back to what I used to read as a child, one thing that always had me filled with anticipation as a child growing up in Germany was the magazine “Mickey Mouse,” this was a fun filled little magazine that came out every week and included a few stories with popular characters like Mickey mouse, Pluto and Donald duck, but also had a little explorer section and came with a little toy every week, sometimes relying on a few previous issues to complete a more complex toy. There was also a comic book that came out every month or so, with about a hundred pages of fresh Mickey Mouse and related character material. 

While these were things I grew up with, I never really saw ether of these here in the US. Now that we have dealt with Disney so much throughout our course, and the many influences it has on American society, it left me curious as to how Disney represents its self differently in other countries. Through doing some research on the topic and wanting to find out who is responsible for the comics and magazines I had as a child in Europe I found a few publishers and media companies that are independent from the Disney we know in the US, and are primarily working to publish material In certain European countries. The Danish publisher “Egmont” is responsible for one of the largest Disney comic productions in the world. This company publishes magazines every week in many Nordic Countries, and exports much of its material to other countries as well. These independent publications first started appearing during the 1960’s, and clearly shows how Scandinavian countries actually much prefer Donald Duck over Mickey Mouse, with many tales centering around Donald as protagonist, and Mickey only making an appearance once in a while. In Germany, Mickey Mouse has been popular since the 1920’s, and although during WWII and while the Nazi government was in charge there were no comic books being published, after WWII this changed. Now a subsidiary company of the Danish publisher Egmont started producing the magazine I mentioned, Mickey Mouse. This magazine is still published today and is thus Germany’s longest running comic magazine. Ironically, although the magazine is called Mickey Mouse, it follows the same format of Danish magazines, as Like in Scandinavian countries, Donald Duck Is much more popular than Mickey Mouse in Germany, and most stories are based around his adventures. 

In Conclusion, it is interesting to see how comic magazines and books based on Disney characters managed to flourish and become so popular in Europe, while the Nazi government imposed a great handicap to the German comic industry, it still did not keep Mickey Mouse from becoming Germany’s longest lasting comic publication.

Mickey Mouse Monopoly Review:

Walt Disney and his company created what can only be considered as a media empire, with huge amounts of influence on some of the most crucial aspects of modern society, the development of our children and how they perceive the world and its ever growing complexities. The documentary “Mickey Mouse Monopoly” takes a close look at the  Disney phenomenon and what are supposed to be  images of innocence magic and fun, yet seem to bare many great underlying messages on today’s society and how Disney potentially wants children to perceive it. 

The documentary, based on the thoughts of great minds like Dr. Henry Giroux of the Pennsylvania State University deals with how Disney movies tell stories on race, gender and class under the disguise of innocence, that seems to disguise some of the often alarming messages one can take from the movies when seen in a more analytical point of view. 

Walt Disney has long been a corporation that to me, stands solely for the clever entertainment of kids, giving them an entertaining piece of animation, filled with basic life lessons for children on one hand, but also intelligent often humorous undertones for the entertainment of the adults accompanying the children. Yet after watching “Mickey Mouse Monopoly,” I was left with a whole new image of Disney, one in which a sole emphasis on peaceful child entertainment takes a backseat to incredible levels of corporate influence and marketing. Indeed over the last century, the Disney company has established an empire far beyond the regular scopes of media influence. With the purchase of the ABC network and expanding into many other fields of marketing and production. The Disney company has gained unprecedented amounts of leverage and power, that really leaves them in a certain sense “too big to fail.” 

This phenomenon can be seen in Disney’s complex copywriting system and the way they protect the Disney name. This results in many authors having great trouble publishing anything dealing with Disney and its movies. Thus often times, authors are left unable to use the word “Disney” in a title and many times won’t be able to publish certain pictures or other visual material. This often presents writers with great difficulties in properly documenting and analyzing the many aspects of Disney tales and movies and has led to numerous dilemmas in the past. The great power of Disney also shows with how they make a profit through there many projects. While a lot titles like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King turned out to be a huge success for Disney, other movies like Hercules could not solely rely on being a box office hit. This is where Disney shows how entangled it is with other forms of media and production, as they often end up drawing a huge profit from marketing strategies, like including Hercules figures in happy meals, releasing a film based video game, or designing a line of costumes for kids. In this way the Disney Company manages to spin and twist any project to allow it to become profitable to the extent they had envisioned. 

In conclusion we see that just with the few aspects touched on in this blog, Disney moves from being a genuinely peaceful source of family entertainment to a more corporate like phenomenon, where things are often far more capitalistic than one wants to believe.

Fables – Legends in Exile, Part 2: In Class discussion:

Our in class discussion of fables was very interesting, and started with Joseph giving a well interpreted presentation on the subject. We went right into one of the most important topics regarding this comic, one that was also discussed in close detail in our E-Reserves article on Corporealizing fairy tales. The idea of the originally vague fairy tale characters coming to life with detailed personalities and desires, giving them a whole new level of depth and individualism. Fables puts characters like Snow White into a whole new perspective, and especially in her case we are left with a completely new interpretation of the character, once the singing, cheerful beauty in charge of keeping things tidy for the seven dwarfs in only the most un-sexual of ways, we now see her as a very active character, with a definitely present sexuality about her and in charge of Fabletown as deputy mayor. We move away from her innocent fairy tale character and find her adapted to a new complex environment. As a class we argued that these transformations where necessary to allow for a more realistic and detailed flow of events in Fabletown. The original fairy tale characters were used as templates, to set them up with a certain background in the tale, without having to introduce them individually in terms of where they came from originally.

Many times when reading through this volume of fables, this offers a way of recognizing the characters, as Snow White is presented to us as a very pale figure, with strikingly red lips and raven black hair, just the way she was initially portrayed in the tale by the Grimm brothers. Essentially we saw what a commonly known fairytale character would be like if they were placed in this New York City setting, and how their characters would have to differ to deal with the complexities of such a vast environment. This is where we saw the idea of a properly rigid “happily ever after” fade away in the story. Where the original tales left its characters vague and open to interpretation so that one would not get distracted from the clear cut plot and easily recognizable moral of the tale, Fables presents us with a very complex setting, with its characters facing real life financial and personal problems, and making their individual situations much to intricate to resolve in a clean happily ever after way with all good prevailing and all evil being eliminated by the end of the tale.

In Conclusion, Fables is a noteworthy piece of entertainment, specifically aimed at introducing adults to the world of comics, through a relatable and intelligent way of bringing recognizable fairytale characters together in a new setting, and focusing on how each one of them would prevail in a dark society like the one portrayed in Fables.

Fables – Legends in Exile, Part 1:

Fables presents us with a comic book unlike anything before, when I first got my envelope from the unc bookstore and pulled this book out from it, I thought it was sent to me by accident. Indeed the idea of something looking so comical to be used as academic material seemed a little strange to me, and although I knew I was still missing the book, and remembered the title to be Fables, I had to double-check the syllabus just to make sure it was the right thing. The idea of a comic book to me has always been a bit of an alternative in entertainment, something that strongly appeals to a certain group of people, but is generally disregarded by most as a major form of entertainment. But who are these people that read comics, and why is it the ultimate form of entertainment for some, while it leaves other people uninterested and rejecting its values.

To understand this, we have to look at what a comic essentially is; traditionally, we commonly find two kinds of people, ones who like to read, and ones who like to watch movies. While these two kinds of personality have become more and more intertwined, and many people accept and use both forms of media more equally today, it used to be a bit more split up traditionally. So a comic book then seems to mix both of these together. It follows the concept of a book, with clear pages and binding, yet it also relies on images to convey the scene the text is currently dealing with. One could argue then that the reader gets the best of both then, with a quality comic presenting the reader with a thoughtful piece of text along with an intelligent and often artistic representation of material. But is this what the reader wants?

Many people argue that to read gives one the chance to utilize their imagination, to read a passage and use one’s own mind and experience to form the adequate picture the book is trying to portray. Yet many people have accepted movies and TV as a more common form of entertainment and storytelling, as one doesn’t need to sit down and read for hours and hours under a reading lamp, but can simply hit a button and let the information flow into the mind through sound and visual stymulus. Someone who reads comics then would have to be somewhere in-between, willing to read a plot but also interested to see how this plot would look visually the way the author intended it. It follows more the idea of a script, and many movies utilize comic like plots to first draft individual movie scenes, especially when dealing with fantasy based movies, or ones that rely heavily on portraying certain aspects visually. So are comics then mostly read by people that think in a director sort of way? The audience for comic books is interesting, and it would be fun to see what kinds of personalities one would find in searching for the ultimate fan and supporter of comic based entertainment.

Gender Shaping and Fairy tales:

For our research based presentation I chose to go with the topic choice of how gender is shaped in young children through the fairy tales they are exposed too. I found this topic particularly interesting as I see it as something very dynamic, and influential. In my mind, ever since the successful Disney interpretations of Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, which for the first time presented children with relatable characters in often mesmerizing and magical outfits, that, for those who were familiar with the original tales put protagonists like Belle, Snow White and Cinderella into a depicted form that often leaves little girls dreaming of being a princess dressed in beautiful outfits like those we see in Disney Films. While movies like Cinderella have been around since the 1950s, a major change in the industries related to the designing, producing and marketing have flourished over the last 20 years, exploiting yet another consumer niche through the magic of globalization, exports, and rapid development processes we have established in today’s society. 

It’s evident that children make up a good part of today’s consumers, and it’s not hard to see why; on one hand children are generally exposed to very similar forms of media as they grow up, watching Disney movies, and possibly being read some of the fairy tales we have deemed as acceptable over the years. On the other hand most parents today are very concerned with their child’s well being and happiness, and although most parents don’t want their kids to end up spoiled, when compared to standards of forty years ago, most children would probably appear to be. This is largely due to the fact that society has grown so materialistic, which doesn’t just say something about our changing habits and values, but is largely due to our advancements in production techniques and ever growing globalization. It used to be a tedious and costly process to create a dress that would look as fancy as that worn Disney’s Cinderella, nowadays however it has become an intelligent, cost effective process, that has evolved from great powers like the textile industry. Synthetic fabrics like nylon, polyester and spandex are to thank here. These fabrics have become immensely cheap and easy to manufacture all over the world. And with today’s impressive import-export systems these dresses can be manufactured for close to nothing in certain countries like Egypt, where I was personally able to observe this at a wal-mart sewing plant. Along with the latest technologies in computer aided design, a dress could go from concept to production in no time, and with minimal development costs. 

We can observe these changes in any clothing store today, shirts with detailed print designs and several different types of fabric can be purchased for five dollars or less at times, something that would simply have been impossible through sheer production costs just ten years ago. So we really have expanded in both ways, and it’s hard to say who is more responsible for this growth in gender shaping today, on one hand we as consumers seem much more willing to give our children whatever they desire, on the other hand it has become much easier faster and cheaper to manufacture and develop all these toys and clothes for children, giving parents a whole new array of products to choose from.