Blogging Reflection

            I feel that my best work on the blogs was done when we were doing the rhetorical analysis unit on advertisements. Although I feel that I did well on most of the ones done during that time, my best I feel was the one titled “Propaganda.” I wrote about the commercials with poor African children’s faces in them and how I disagreed with the propaganda being used on us today. I think I did my best on this because I felt strongly about it. I think that my worst blog was when we reflected on our first discussion forum. I know that this is my worst work with blogging because I did not participate in the forum as much as I should have; therefore, I did not have much helpful feedback and opinions that I could give.

            Even though we did a lot of blogging through the course of this semester, I still do not think it something I would be interested in continuing. I am not big on keeping journals or publishing my opinions on things. I would easily give my opinions if asked; however, I don’t like publishing it for no reason. I also do not think that the blog experience that I have had in this class is much like the blog I would choose to do on my own if I wanted to. If I was going to post a blog, for whatever reason, I would want to post it where more people would view it, like on Facebook or something similar to that. If I had a strong reason to post my opinions I would make sure it was seen. I also do not think that my relationship with writing publicly has changed with this class for the same reasons and because, although I do know that anyone could possibly read what I post, I do not think that anyone really outside our classroom reads what I have to say.

Disney

                Although I am not completely sure at this point what essay I am going to write about, I am more leaning towards responding to Racism in Disney’s Animated Films by Cristina Maldonado. This essay initially caught my attention because i personally do not believe that Disney is trying to ruin the way children think about White people being the dominant race and African Americans as people with a lesser value of life. I do agree that Disney could have defiantly been a lot more culturally sensitive to our growing society, I do not feel that the extremes that poeple bring Disney into are completely correct.

            Three points that I plan to bring in my paper I believe will counter what was said in Christina’s paper. The first will be that the Disney company is not set out to brain wash children into believing that White people are the dominan trace. The second point that I plan to counter act is that Asains in Disney’s films are either cats or  squinty eyed figures that have strong asian accents. Did anyone ever watch Mulan? She was a young Chinese woman who went to war and saved her country. I do not exactly see how that could be called racist. The third point that I want to make is an overall view of Disney’s movies that are not focused on White poeple. Although there are more movies that do center around White culture there are a lot more that have a broad cultural setting; and when I do bring up This specific point I plan to focus more on the movies that were released as I was growing up, not the ones that were just released like the Princess and the Frog.

            I’m not sure that This is exactly what I want to write about because I hate attacking other peoples papers. Also, I have not yet done the proper research to support the arguments I plan to make and that could change a lot of things in my paper. If I fail to find informaition from interviews and more well respected sources I will most likely pick another topic to write about.

**Sorry if my spelling is really bad and random words are capitalized. My Word is set to spanish for spell check and I don’t know why!

Disney and Women in Advertising

After watching this video I felt, for the most part, like it was completely ridiculous. Although I understood some of the points that the people being interviewed made about Disney, that does not mean that I agree with the fact that they were trying to make the Disney corporation look like a greedy company that is only mindful of the profit that they make.

            A lot of things about Disney have changed since it looks like this video was made. The biggest thing to me is the racism part about Disney. They recently have added a movie with a black princess. This helped Disney put out a lot of flame about them being racists. Although these things have changed, I do understand where the people being interviewed are coming from. When evaluated as a whole, all of Disney’s movies at the time were made up of predominantly white characters. I find this fact extremely interesting because, for myself, growing up as a white female, I never noticed anything out of place until I was older and could understand. These people are claiming that Disney is trying to shape children’s imaginations based on what they think is right. I do not find this statement right because although Disney did not prove to be diverse until the past 10 years, I do not believe that they could be trying to corrupt young children at such a high level as the people in the video seem to think.

            I do not believe that Disney is only a greedy company out to make money. They may have showed those in quotes at the end a person viewing it may never know if the statement is legitimate or not.

            After watching Disney I watched a second video on women in advertising and how degrading and sexist it can be. The video proved to have a lot of good points in it; however, I feel that some of the speaker’s arguments were too strong. I agree with all of her facts and thoughts on how the image of tiny models and skinny women have corrupted the minds of young girls into thinking that they need to be more like this. Once this image has been noticed by girls, it is hard to make them understand that that image is not the only form of beautiful, and that most men do not find that attractive anyway. All girls can understand the feeling she is talking about. We all still feel that way at every age.

            I feel that the speaker took the arguments too far when she began to compare all of this to violence and dehumanizing.  I feel that violence is really one of the last things modeling is when looked at as a whole. If she was specifically talking about eating disorders I would be able to understand more; however, she seemed to be discussing modeling as a whole and made it all sound violent, which I do not agree with. Also, after seeing the fake pictures that this speaker tried to use, I feel that she is no different than the people promoting these photos because she edited them herself anyways. The speaker seems to be taking some of the things to extreme levels because she seems to be trying to connect with women and young girls on a deeper level that she can only seem to do by making matters in the media seem worse than they actually are in some cases.

            I think that these two videos have a lot in common based on the fact that they are trying to make things in the media look a lot worse than they are in reality. Although both of these large corporations have some issues to sort out, they should not be defamed on such extrme levels. We pay for the Disney movies and watch them, and we also pay for the magazines that carry these ads. So how much worse are we than the people that produce them? We, as the audience, control what is put out for us to view because if we don’t like it, we will not buy it. So I feel that instead of all of these people complaining about how children’s imaginations and the appropriate image a woman is being destroyed, they need to find a way to do something about it for themselves.

Drug Testing at Work

I recently read a blog post about drug testing in places where people work. Following this blog post I saw another one posting against it and why everyone had the right to their own privacy. Although I could find reasons to not agree with both, I have more of a personal reason to say that every place has a right to make sure their employees are not doing anything they are not supposed to be doing. If a person is chosen for a specific job and they are serious about what he or she does, he or she should have no reason to not cooperate with drug testing. I understand that everyone has the right to privacy; however, certain substances are illegal for a reason. Therefore, there should be no trouble when an employer wants to know if his or her employees are obeying those rules. If an employee is on drugs then that would make them more prone to absences in work and it could make them less efficient in the work that they do for that company. The employer should always have the right to find out if there is a reason that they should keep an employee or hire someone based on these tests. If there is another applicant that is clean then they would obviously rather choose him or her then someone who might have a problem. If a person is clean at the time when they are hired and find that they cannot handle the stress of the job that they have and turn to drugs to help them cope, this is another reason for more drug testing. If an employee cannot handle it then they should not have the right to have the job. Being stressed is one thing, but dealing with that stress by using drugs is another. One example of a job that would be high stress like that is being a doctor. I have a personal event that took place involving a doctor that abused drugs, and it ended up taking a life.

A very close family friend of mine was expecting her first child when she found out that the baby was having some issues that I am unsure of. They told her that surgery would have to be done while she was pregnancy. The surgery did not end up going well and baby did not live. Soon after this my friend found out that during the operation on her and her baby the doctor was drunk and high on pills and he was the reason for the death of the baby. It was horrible event in all of our lives, especially her life, because it could have been easily avoided and she could have that little girl with her today.

This event has made me strongly agree with drug testing in the working environment, especially hospitals. Anyone with the power to do what doctors do should always be clean of any substance. Anyone who is a professional should have no reason to feel that they need to turn to drugs. Life can get stressful, but that’s life. Employers should always have the right to make sure that their employees are not doing anything illegal. It is illegal for a reason.