intro

Media has changed drastically over the years. In pop culture television and movies, we’re seeing a lot more diversity, more risqué topics, and more equal camera time for women. We want as many college readers who love to watch all sorts of TV shows and movies. We analyze the TV shows Scrubs, The Soup, and Family Guy, and the movie Clerks 2. Each one of these pieces illustrates to us what’s wrong with our culture and the kinds of people contributing to the problem.
Clerks 2 is a film that was directed and produced by Kevin Smith, and was supposedly filmed because his friend Jason Mewes had gone to rehab to get his cocaine addiction under control. Almost every single actor that shows up in the film is a friend of Smith, and every single character has an "issue" that they try to deal with as the film progresses. The issues they face are those that are often seen in modern society.
Scrubs is a show that we will take an inside look upon and analyze how it deals with social matters such as race, class, and gender. The target audience is anyone who has a general care about these matters and at least occasionally tunes into network television, specifically Scrubs. Our central message about this show is that although it is a program showcasing off the wall humor and visuals, it carries an underlying tone that satirizes the social generalizations we carry in the world today, such as ditzy blondes or emotionless men. We will go about this by posting Scrubs clips off of Youtube and analyze them while at the same time leaving room for viewer interpretation so that they may look at it and formulate their own opinions. In this thread we believe that self interpretation of issues allows for better self improvement.
There’s so many bad TV shows on right now, it’s ridiculous. 90% of the bad shows tend to be bad “reality” shows where people are competing for on air camera time. It embarrasses me to say this is what American television is like here in the U.S. It’s impossible to watch all the bad TV shows on; it’s nice to have someone else watch it for you, like the Soup. What makes the Soup so great is that the people in the show watches bad TV for you and shows clips of the most outrageous stuff that happened in those shows. In the recent years, women on TV, especially reality television, have been gaining more on screen time, but has this increased time been a positive change? The Soup shows that most girls of reality TV are portrayed negatively and they are only valued for their looks and are expected to at a certain way. I take a few clips from the Soup and analyze the messages the shows are portraying.
Family Guy deals with racism and is famous for "crossing the line" in many ways whether it be racism, bashing religions, making light of tragedies too soon, or even making jokes about those who are mentally challenged. The writers use the characters to represent what is wrong in our society. There are many who believe that racism is a thing of the past, but unfortunately it still pops its head out daily. Some may not know what they are doing is racist, or what they are saying is racist...but it's these instances that need changed. I think Family Guy does a good job pointing these situations out. Knowing that they are jokes I am able to laugh at many of them. Some of them remind me of things I've heard in public or from friends, and it reminds me of just how sad it is that people still can't get over color. Ignorance is not always bliss.
After looking over the four different media pieces, we have realized that there are many things that are problematic with media. But is the media just portraying how our society is or are they just making it seem worse than what it already is? Overall, media may portray things negatively in our world, but it also makes us aware of the issues going on and that we need to do something about it to fix it.