From this class and from Professor Kanagawa’s insight, I’ve learned so much about how to look at media from a different perspective. Because pop culture and media envelope us everyday consciously and subconsciously, it’s very easy to just be a bystander, or just to solely enjoy it like I had been doing prior to this to my awareness from this class. I will come home at the end of a long day of work and school, and just enjoy my television show, but that fact is that I’ve learned that I need to be more critical when I’m even watching my usual programming and it’s amazing when observing the commercials, to the race of the actors on every show, to examining the thematics and premise of each show can do. If we all became more aware and conscious of even what we’re doing when we are relaxing, and doing for hobbies, that as women we could grow to be even more conscious.
I realize that now, I can never go back and be passive, even when I am trying to and just relaxing, from my knowledge of how to analyze a scene, or an advertisement, or any piece of text in pop culture and have many things to say about it, other than the obvious of what is right there. This class, and writing these blogs from looking at my favorite shows, has helped me understand pop culture on a much deeper level. A class that really stood out to me, was after reading an article about Sex and the City, and Professor Kanagawa guided the class through “queering” the show and the four protagonists of the show. I would never have thought to have done that, and gave me a brand new perspective and potential for what television is and what messages are being conveyed without me even realizing.
Also I’ve learned that the term “Feminist” doesn’t have such a negative connotation after all, that it just means I’m aware as a woman about the current dilemmas we face, and acknowledge that past and how far we have come, and want to continue moving forward with women’s rights. It doesn’t have to mean, like I did in a way think before, that to be a feminist I had to be an outrageous, stereotypical hippy. Quite frankly, I didn’t really consider myself a feminist before this class, because I think I was afraid of that label. Now that I’ve studied what being a feminist truly means, and the progression of it, and what it means to actively engage in my fun television watching and music listening and culture, as well as in my clear cut learning, I can proudly now call myself a feminist. I recognize the women that came before use, and am proud to be part of third wave, which is continuing to recognize the men that have helped us get here, to embrace our femininity. We still have to keep plowing forward and get to the point where we still aren’t on average receiving seventy cents to every dollar that a man earns, and hopefully maybe sooner rather than later, more women will be in certain fields rather than men, which is actually starting to occur. It’s just amazing that something that was the woman’s place historically, the kitchen, men have now taken over now that it has become a business. On the food network, the majority of cooking stars are men. In my field of Jewish music, men and of the majority, and in really any field men outnumber women. However, I was watching Entertainment Tonight, and they showed an event in Palm Springs that brought 100 most powerful women of the year. Among them, president of Disney-ABC Television Group, Anne Sweeney, and the Chair of Sony Pictures, Amy Pascal, who were both women, which was surprising to me (they were in the company of many other entrepreneurs, actresses, presidents, and CEO’s, though these two stood out to me the most). Times are changing, and taking this class and writing these blogs has made me realize this and proud to be living in an era where the possibility of such rapid change can occur.
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