Tuesday, April 28, 2009

GreenField: Fast Forward

Lauren Greenfield started out this project as a local one and it turned out into a worldwide project ranging from California to Shanghai. Greenfield photographed youth in various different settings and found one thing in common, a phenomenon of "getting older younger" which she talks about in her artist statement. Fast forward was the book of photographs she produced.

She immediately caught my attention with the first photo of a young girl at her graduation playing a hand held video game. That reminded me so much of myself sitting at my graduation on my phone that I had to laugh. As I went on though the photos were not as humorous. There is a picture of a little girl looking in the mirror poking her butt out posing in a bathing suit. The girl looks no more than seven and she already is trying to pose sexy, yet there are Winnie the pooh characters on her tub. That was a great example of getting older younger.

Her photos also delt with race and class. She showed pictures of youth in different settings both upper class suburban youth and also poorer urban youth. The difference was very clear to me in the pictures but the common theme of "getting older younger" still stood out to me.

What I didnt understand from her artist statement was why she set out to take these pictures. How did her project begin?

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Listen Up.... Part 2

So after taking another look at the site here are some more thoughts....

Question 1
On this site there are many many videos that are all produced by teens. It is very empowering to have a site were youth can respond to mainstream media. One of the things that stood out to me was how many Public Service Announcements (PSA) there were on the site. It is as if teens felt the need to produce there own PSA from their point of view. I think it is much more powerful to watch a PSA related to teenagers which is produced by a teenager. Many of the videos on the site were positive. They touched on all kinds of subjects from relationships, family, abuse (of all kinds), sex, drugs, alcohol abuse, LGBTQ issues, racism ect.


Question 2
Mission of the site:

Listen Up! is a youth media network that connects young video producers and their allies to resources, support, and projects in order to develop the field and achieve an authentic youth voice in the mass media.

Question 5
This site reminds me of Youtube which is another site on the internet which allows anyone to post their own video. Teenagers can also "Talk back" on sites like youtube which allow people to freely express themselves through video.



Listen Up!

Listen Up is a Youth Media Networking site that empowers youth through video production. I found this site to be very interesting because not only was it youth in the media but it was youth producing their own media. Everything is from their perspective and they tell the story, not someone telling a story about them.

I watched several videos on the site, they were all quite interesting.

Under 21: Is a video produced by a female teenager. In this video she interviews her friends and they tell a story about how alcohol has personally affected them and their relationship. This video gave a very realistic outlook on teenage drink and it came from actually teenagers. Two girls within the group were hospitalized from over drinking.

I was confused though because at the end of the video they all sort of laughed it off and continued to talk about partying and smoking pot now.

Equal Opportunity: This film was produced by a teenager and was interviewing an adult who told a story of a gay man who was hospitalized with a terminal illness and the fight his partner had to go through to visit him in his last dying hours.

Rated R: Is a video on violence on the Internet. This video shows many teens being interviewed on Internet violence and why they find it so entertaining. I think this video is a great representation of how obsessed our society is with violence

I found it very disturbing how people found these brutal fights to be funny and entertaining.

Girls and the media: This video is from the 2007 Young intern Program and was produced by three young women. These girls looked into the effect that media had on women. This video was very interesting, one older women talked about how the media when she was growing up gave her very few options.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Teens in the news....

Article #1

This article is about Rhode Island teenagers who went on a spree of stealing cars all throughout RI and ended up stranded in New York.

Article #2

This article is about a 16 year old boy in New York city who confessed to murdering a 47 year old ABC Newsman. The two meet on craiglist and agreed to meet up and the teen would get paid 60 bucks for choking and performing oral sex on the 47 year old News Man.

Article #3

This article is about two teenage boys who allegedy tortured a cat and set the cat on fire. The boys face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

This assignment was very interesting. I searched for teenagers in the news march 2009 and most of the articles i found painted a very scary picture of teenagers. These three articles talking about auto theft, murder, and animal crulty. From this selection of articles teenagers are deemed scary criminals. It is no wonder they are misunderstood.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Media Literacy

The Center for Media Literacy (CML) defines media literacy as...
"Media Literacy is a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy."

What I understand Media literacy to be is an educational skill that allows one to acess and analyze media and the message it conveys. Media literacy is a form of education, it teaches us how think about media and then what to do with it.

What I dont understand is why media literacy isnt being taught as early as elementary school. Children are especially vulnerable to the media so that would be the perfect age to introduce such education.

Some sites that helped me to better understand media literacy were:
Center for Media Literacy
An Into to Media Literacy
Media Awareness Network: This site offered games that taught media literacy. I played one game that is geared for children ages 8-10... check it out

Hip Hop Wordles

A wordle from "A Song for Assata" and a wordle from the song "Bitches aint shit" by Dr. Dre & Snoop dog. Just interesting to compare the two hip hop songs and the image they portray.

Wordle: Song to Assata


&
'Wordle:

Monday, February 23, 2009

NY Times Offensive Cartoon

This cartoon was posted in the New York Times and I was interested to see what people thought about it. This cartoon could be interpreted many different ways and the author claims that there was no racist intention. When I look at this cartoon i see blatant racism. There is a clear connection to President Barack Obama, historical racist references to African Americans and monkeys, and of course the stimulus bill. I think it was so distasteful and disrespectful.