My eyes have been stripped of their innocence.

What a revealing semester this has been. My baby virgin eyes have been revealed to the world of spotting fallacies and seeing beneath the skin of advertising. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch television, go grocery shopping, attend a music festival, etc with the same innocent, uncritical eyes that I inadvertently had. I imagine that I'll share a smirk with a fellow critical-thinking alumni whenever we happen to pass by a faulty or obvious marketing strategy ad that deserves disparaging or praise. Hypothetically, this class has built me the holographic computer that Iron Man uses while doing some mad thinking, but specially designed to spot and identify market strategies while walking through ad populated world.

 Now I think that is some pretty cool stuff. I'm appreciative that I've been opened up to this world of understanding; it makes me a more well-rounded, smarter person. Unfortunately and inevitably, much of this semester's learning will fall into the deep abyss called the forgotten. But knowing the names of every fallacy and rationalization isn't necessarily imperative. So long the gest of being aware and tentative to the media world around us upheld, the semester counts as a payoff. I don't see this being a problem in my future.
Furthermore, the constant, and rather weary, practice of media blogs has demonstrated a new meaning of media to me. As this is the conclusion blog, I needed to revisit my introduction blog. In it, I limited media to social media, newspapers, commercials, advertisements. In it, I failed to recognize the essential image of a brand as media. Who knew a Kid Cuisine box could count as media with an intent to persuade. However, my overall understanding of media's intent was pretty solid, and has been reinforced through these assignments.
I mentioned early that media and I are acquaintances. We still remain acquaintances, except I'm just a little more aware of the bs that it throws me. Nonetheless, I'll continue to supply McDonald's money so long they keep the coupons flowing.

The Advertising at a Reggae Music Festival

Last weekend, I attended the California Roots Music Festival, a massive gathering for reggae admirers and people alike. While I was there for 2 days, I made sure to pay attention to the use of advertising around me while jamming out to some bomb artists.

If it's not too hard to believe, the content that was highly touted was rather stoney. By this, I mean that the marijuana industry was a big presence at the festival. This should be no big surprise, as for marijuana is iconically associated with the roots of reggae. Anyhow, let's take a look at some of the things I saw.

 Behind the dread-locked, beanie wearing man is one of the main stages at the festival. The screen graphic seen in the photo is what everyone sees while waiting for the artist to preform. Take note at who "presents" the Cali Roots Stage. Yup, the main stage of the festival is sponsored by "weedmaps", a website that beholds a marijuana community and features marijuana dispensaries. They also had their logo at every water filling station at the festival. They got the most exposure out of any company/brand that I saw.

You know those booths at events where you can get free stuff if you listen to the person there trying to sell you things; they were at this festival too. However, these booths purveyed smoking apparatus and similar type products. One of the booths was advertising a marijuana e-cigarrette. They had a line of people going on for 15 feet out of their booth. Did all these people, including me and my buddies, want the e-cigarrete? No, I was in line waiting for the free cotton candy they were giving out. But inevitably, their groovy looking sales people tried to get people in line to check out their product, and some did. I thought this was great; get a bunch people to wait at your booth and sell them things.

Of course, all the vendors, sponsors, and advertisements out at the festival weren't marijuana related, but the majority was. This "high" presence of weed related products at the reggae festival was no accident. What happened here was bringing the right stuff to the right market. While marijuana is part of the culture of reggae, you can expect a bunch of weed-loving people to attend a reggae festival. So,  the marijuana industry takes advantage of the opportunity and presents things/products that a lot of people want to see. It's genius.

The act of marketers advertising to people that they would most appeal to is a phenomenon that we explored earlier in class this semester. It's just like broadcasting a Bernie Sanders ad campaign to a liberal leaning city; except this festival broadcasted marijuana products to reggae listening, herb smokers.

Follow up on "Miss Representation"

I've known that women have been plagued by injustices and have the problem of being objectified, but MissRepresentation truly proved how extensive and true this stark reality is. The documentary makes an effective argument that media demoralizes women with the mentality that their self-worth lies within their beauty, and makes men superior. They explain how this dilemma creates an absence of women in positions of power. Their assertions were well accepted by including many statistical facts to support, and by employing both men and female to explain the situation. These two tactics made the argument undeniably applicable to our society. However, I can't help but wonder what a person who doesn't recognize women injustice would think if they watched this documentary. Perhaps including this other perspective in the documentary would make their argument more effective.

Of course, I, in addition to the rest of the class, received the film's message well, having came from similar mentalities and being educated upon media's tainting affects. Thus being, the issues raised in the film should get better in the future, as we are the future. However, many kids don't come from backgrounds like us HISPers and remain ignorant to societal problems like this. Their childhood conditioning to objectify women, done by disney movies and social media, lays sneakily present in their minds. Unfortunately, some of these people are unchangeable. That's why the film points importance on teaching kids when their young not to be "emotionally illiterate," which ultimately will help hamper out the prejudice on women that is done by media.

In this day and age, I think better circumstance for women are finally being recognized, and a brighter future lays ahead. Other prejudices in our society, like against sexual orientation or skin color, have been seen to take improved matters through time. Women's rights and representation is not much different from other injustices our society has battled through. While this dilemma has been raised out of social media, which is a domineering force in our lives and the effects are currently immense, the path to eradicating the negative mindset might take a while; but it is inevitable in my eyes.