"Arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.”

Being an international student from Panama city I have seen and felt the effects of globalization in my country. The good thing about it is that coming to America wasn’t such a big deal since Panama has adopted much of the American culture, specially in terms of media.

Globalization is an ongoing process in which flow of goods, services, money, and ideas are integrated across national borders through a global network of communication, transportation, and trade.

One of the globalization concepts is hybridization that is when you take and formula that was successful in one place and adopted it somewhere else. The new reality show “Latin American Idol” is an excellent example of hybridization. It is basically the same concept of “American idol”, only that with latin people. So if one day you feel like watching some sexy bootylicious latinas singing and dancing, this is definitely your show to watch. Ps. Panama won the first season, say whaaat!!! :)

Isnt globalization beautiful?

Xoxo

-MK

Fear Appeal in ADS

For some people advertising is a business. It is one more tool that is part of a bigger marketing plan to SELL MORE STUFF. For me as  advertising can be resumed in one word: ART. Advertising is known to use different appeals to deliver a certain message, the ad I chose uses the fear appeal.

CLICK HERE!

The ad starts as a typical cleaning product,  happy bubbles singing and dancing to a happy jingle. But later it takes a creepy turn and shows the residues of the cleaning product who basically say that they (cleaning products) trick you to think your bathroom is clean but its really not. I think it’s gets your attention because it is so funny, and it uses fear appeals to persuade people and im sure many people can relate to the commercial and that makes it even more powerful.

Fear appeals in advertising have been used for decades; listerine basically created bad breath by using this appeal in its ads. Fear appeals in ads are very persuasive mostly because consumers can relate to the message and want to buy the product to prevent anything bad from happening. For example, most deodorant commercials appeal to the social fear of fitting in, making good impressions and not being ridiculed. Fear appeals are a common theme in PSAS.

As I said before, this ad uses fear appeal by basically tell you that you are being tricked by your cleaning product, they just make your bathroom LOOK clean but it doesn’t mean it IS clean. It appeals to the fear of wanting your bathroom to be clean, germ free and I think it does creatively delivers that message in a funny way.

"One Man Wolfpack"

Introduction: The first act introduces the characters getting ready to go to Vegas to for their best friend Doug bachelor party. They are all excited to get away from their boring day to day life and have some fun in Vegas. Some funny stuff happens at the hotel they are at, they are having fun, and at night they all took a shot in the rooftop of the hotel before leaving for what was supposed to be the “best night of their lives” (one man wolfpack, anyone?)

The complication happens in the second act when they wake up the next day, the hotel suite is completely upside down, one of the friends is missing a tooth, theres a tiger in the bathroom and a baby (Carlos) on the closet and nobody remembers a thing. Later they realized their “wolfpack” is missing one wolf: DOUG. They trace their steps back with help of people they met that night, in order to find Doug and go back home on time for the wedding.

Resolution: After tons and tons of weird stuff, they finally find Doug in the rooftop of the hotel. The climax happens when they find him and have few minutes to get back home to be in time for the wedding. Of course they make it back just in time, Doug gets married, Stu leaves his wife for a stripper, and they end up realizing they took some pretty crazy pictures of that night.

Ill Be There For You

Were all different, therefore we all have different tastes about the food we eat, the music we hear, and the shows we watch.

I truly believe there is a sitcom for everyone. Sitcoms are our time to chill, time to laugh, time to forget about everything and just watch what out favorite characters have to deal with this time.

One of the characteristics of a sitcom is the three act structure.

This means that the sitcom 1) starts with a setup of the location and characters, 2) the characters o a character is faced by an obstacle that he/she/them have to resolve and it 3) ends with a resolution.

 

My favorite sitcom of all times is F.R.I.E.N.D.S. The story unfolds typically the same way every time. It starts with all of them (or atleast most of them) at Central Perk Café just hanging and talking when suddenly one of the FRIENDS starts to talk about a problem they might have and the rest of the episode revolves around that FRIENDs journey to fix the problem and how his friends are there to back him/her up getting them into more trouble than normal.

"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it"

What a director most important role? While some may say getting along with the actors, others may say controlling a films artistic and dramatic aspects, and others will even say post production. Nobody can argue a director has a lot of responsibilities in the making of a film, but what makes a director's film stand out from the rest? Along with many other things, the SHOTS he uses to film different scenes have a huge impact in how the story is told to audiences.


I will be discussing one of the scenes in my all time favorite  movie 'The Little Rascals". In one of the first scenes where Alfalfa and Darla are having a date on a boat the director applies what its called "Reverse Order" and starts with a Extreme Close Up (ECU) and ends with a Long Shot (LS).




First shot:  Extreme Close Up Shot (ECU). 
We yet don't know who is singing, all we see is this strand of hair (Alfalfas Trademark). The Director wants us to pay attention to that detail.

Second Shot: Close Up shot (CU) 

We now see Alfalfas Face while he is singing to Darla.

Darla enjoying her lover's serenade her. We know who is there and what they are doing and feeling, but we yet don't know about anything that surrounds them.

Third Shot: Middle Shot (MS)

Here we can see both Darla and Alfalfa in the screen, sitting on a boat in a river having a date.

Fourth Shot: Long Shot (LS)

With this shot we understand that Spanky and his friends caught Alfalfa on his date and are not very happy about it.

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul" - Marilyn Monroe

What does Michelle Rodriguez, Anna Faris, Jennifer Aniston, Bruce Willis and Michael Cera have in common? Aside from being movie stars is the fact that no matter what movie they are in, they ALWAYS play the same role. From being a badass- I-can-and-will-kick-your-butt type of girl (Michelle R) to being a Ditzy blonde, even though she isn’t really blonde (Anna Faris), some stars cant seem to be able to play different roles.

Not so long ago, during the 'Classical Hollywood era' this used to be the case for ALL STARS. Big studios would discover promising actors, sent them to dancing, singing, acting classes and then made them sign a contract that would made the stars literally belong to the studio for the next few years of their lives.

Sounds fun? Not really.  Not only did the actors not get paid enough, but they would have to play the roles the studio demanded them too. They would always play the same roles, no matter what movie they were in. The studio created an image for each of their stars and obliged them to live up to that image, especially in front of the media. Their image was more important than their acting.

So whenever someone went to see a movie, they just had to look who stars in it to know what to expect the movie to be about. How boring right? Nowadays you wouldn’t know what to expect from a movie just by knowing who is going to star in it, if that was the case I would have been more than excited to watch Valentines Day which had an all A LIST cast, but a pretty boring script. If this movie had come out in old Hollywood people would have known what to expect from each character.

Placed among the 10 greatest female artist of all time by the American Film institute, Judy Garland, who’s real first name was Frances Ethel Gumm, would be an excellent example of the star system in Old Hollywood. Discovered by MGM for who she worked for from 1935 to 1950, her typical roles were drama and musicals. She had a hard time battling with insecurity since film executives would tell her she was unattractive and manipulated her on screen appearance. When people went to see a Judy Garland movie, they knew she would burst into a song in no time and im sure they would have been surprised if she didn’t. 

"I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot"- Judy Garland 

ALL IN THE FAMILY VS WEEDS

The shows I will compare are ‘All in the Family’ and ‘Weeds’. What both show have in common is obviously that they try to portray families in different eras. They are both funny in different ways, and deal with family related issues and how the deal with stuff that happens day to day.

In the “all in the family” episode we saw, Archie discovers one of his good friend is gay. In this episode the characters keep making gay stereotype references and jokes that honestly don’t even make sense to me. One example was when the bartender tells Mike “I don’t want my place to become no hangout, if you know what I mean” clearly referring to the fact that he doesn’t want his bar to become a “gay bar”.  Or when they do the “chair” experiment where only the girls and STEVE could lift up the chair while no other male could and Mike concluded that because of that Steve was gay, reinforcing a fake stereotype.

Nowadays shows try to portray in the best way they can this kind of issues, instead of just talking about them. Sometimes they even make jokes about them. But the big difference between both of this shows is the kind of humor that is used, and I am sure that if all In The Family was still on today people wouldn’t be laughing as much as they did back then.

"It's not true that I had nothing on... I had the radio on" -Marilyn Monroe "

In the passing of years most technology has evolved in a way that 80 years ago not even the biggest crackhead could have imagined, and if he did, people would make him check into a mental facility.

OLD

NEW

I think the biggest force that influenced the shaping of the radio, since the beginning of times until today, is government regulation and intervention.

Today the government has regulations for most media, and the radio is certainly not an exception. By regulating the radio, the government (aka the illuminati) can shape and control what is transmitted and show what they want you to see.

The US Navy took control and standardized the technology, using it for the war and later opposing foreign control of it. Therefore American radio companies had a great advantage compared to foreign competitors after the war. If it weren’t for the government intervention, American broadcasting companies probably wouldn’t be as big and powerful they are today.

After the Titanic incident, people started realizing the potentials in the radio and how to use it in new different ways. And by setting up the RCA, American companies developed the radio into something that would revolutionize the world.

CLICK HERE: I LOVE AMERICA!!

You are what you see

Aaaahh friendship! Such a wonderful thing. I love my friends, I would do anything for them and if I ask nicely, they would do anything for me.  What I love the most about my friends is that they are pretty easy to convince. I like making them my own 'guinea pigs’, you know, give them a bite of my pizza that I accidentally dropped in the floor in the middle of 6^th street (of course, he was too drunk to notice) and after waiting a couple of minutes  making sure that my friend shows no sign of intoxication before I finally decide to eat it. Or telling them that its totally cool to dance on the tables in Malaia nightclub, and when I see no bouncers are coming to kick hem out I hope on the table and dance the night away. AAhhh sometimes I wonder how can they trust me so much?

Anyways the point is, after they do something and I see they are not getting repercussions for behaving that way, I can chose to either behave the same way or not, and you know what they say…”if you cant beat them, join em!”. This phenomenon is called “social learning theory”

   Social learning theory states that people can learn to do something by just watching other people perform a task. If they see that the “model” gets some kind of reward they may or may not do the same thing the model did so they can get the reward as well. If the “model” gets a negative response from the behavior he just made then the observer may not model that behavior because he or she wont want to get punished as well.

We experience social learning EVERY SINGLE DAY. Think about when you are walking down Guadalupe street and you see a long line coming out of Chipotle with people covered in aluminium foil paper coming out with a burrito in their hands. You had never heard about it but by observing you realize that “if you cover yourself in aluminium foil today you will get a free burrito” if you arent smart enough to figure that out yourself then you should consider transferring to A&M.. just sayin ;)

Just as we imitate behaviors by only observing in real life, we can also apply the social learning theory to the media. By watching all those different violent and sexual shows, it affects our moral and the way we act without us even noticing. Not only that, video games, websites, and many other medias have been a main concern for many many years,

Music videos are big influencers, especially for teens. Ill use Nellys Tip Drill video as an example.

An image says more than a thousand words... This video makes guys think that money will get them any girl and that they can treat girl like a piece of meat. While it teaches girls that by wearing less clothes and grinding on rich guys they will be happy.

Another example of social learning is THIS VIDEO, which is one of my personal favorites. In order to avoid the punishment (feeling left out) the subject tries to fin a way to "fit in". Enjoy!!

The never ending question is DOES MEDIA REFLECT SOCIETY, OR DOES SOCIETY REFLECTS THE MEDIA? Ill leave that to your personal judgement.

See you next sunday!!

A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth. If I have to fall, may it be from a high place - Paulo Coelho

A Tea party......with no tea?

Have you ever noticed that whenever there’s something happening in the world, from Obama’s birth certificate debate, to A-Rod’s steroids problem, to Kim Kardashian’s latest sex scandal, EVERYONE seems to have an opinion about it? Well, if you woke up today and told your roommate how excited you were about seeing Taylor Swift performing a song about Kanye West in tonight’s VMA’S then you were definitely experiencing what we call ‘AGENDA SETTING’ without even realizing it.  Through the utilization of Swine flu and the latest political sideshow, the Tea Party, I will define the use of agenda setting in the mainstream news media.

Agenda setting is the idea that the media decides what stories to show audiences. This is very important since it means the media dictates what stories we should consider as newsworthy and by doing this it creates public opinion. This power has the ability to frame a situation in a positive or negative light. Since we see the same story everywhere and we hear people talking about it we assume it is an important issue. This buzz gives the story a sense of greater importance then those that are not highlighted by the media.

A great example of the media’s ability to create buzz is their constant coverage of the Swine Flu. The sensationalizing of the story created national panic. It was covered by all kinds of media and people started to panic-- Don’t lie, you know you got your flu shot too—Even though it wasn’t a big deal after all.

An example of agenda setting can be the current events taking place today by the Tea Party.  While for most of us the words TEA PARTY bring back painful memories about our grandma's cat D'Artagnian, her stinky but comfortable old couch, and big fancy hats, this 'Tea party' has nothing to do with that...except the fact that your grandma is probably a member.

The Tea Party is an idea example of agenda setting on both sides of the political spectrum. Democratic leaning news outlets like MSNBC have used the antics of the Tea Party to paint all Republicans as out of touch radical activist that base their opposition to the President on unfounded claims. Republican leaning new outlets like Fox News have championed their efforts as an example of brilliant activism against the oppressive regimes of the President. Either way, both sides are sensationalizing their efforts to meet their own agenda, shaping the audiences opinions about both parties.

So next time you watch the news keep in mind there is more to it than meets the eye. 

Arrivederchi my friends! (aka RTF TA)

Check it out!

FOX NEWS

New York Times

CNN.com

--> Now this what I call a TEA PARTAAY





"We have a positive vision of the future founded on the belief that the gap between the promise and reality of America can one day be finally closed. We believe that" 
- Barbara Jordan 

Blogging Is The New Poetry

Hello! My name is Michelle and I am from Panama city, Panama. YES, we do have the canal. NO, i've never been.

With that settled, the reason why i am taking this RTF class is because i've always had a special interest in the media and the impact that it has in our daily life. Whenever I watch a movie I cant help but wonder how do they can make so many different elements work together perfectly and I hope this class will give me an insight into this and answer all of my doubts. Its looking good so far and I cant wait to learn more about the media industry.


After 2 years of being bullied by my american friends who make fun of my accent (they are just jealous :P) I found this 'revenge' video that made them see for themselves how lame they look and sound when they try to speak my language. Enjoy :)


PAYBACK TIME!!  <--- click on this

My favorite blog <--Perez Hilton 

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting" - Paulo Coelho