Generation Like Recap

In language and literature the other day, we watched a documentary called Generation Like which was about how social media plays a huge role in advertainment. Social media today is ever getting so popular and nowadays people are using social media to get through with their identity and basically they are using social media as if it were their passport or their ID card where it displays every single little thing about them from birth place to favourite music to places they have visited.

I don't feel that social media can really empower people, social media is just used to stay in contact with friends, family etc (the only reason why I have facebook and skype accounts). Making friends of facebook or getting retweeted on twitter doesn't really empower you or change your life, sure it can make one feel better in a way but the use of the word "empower" is just overstated in the documentary. Feeling empowered would generally come when you make an impact in this world or achieve some of the highest honours in whichever field you decided to go into, social media just makes people addicted and drifts their life into a completely new world and changes their mindset and basically changes their thinking and who they really are. Social media over the years is consistently dragging along young teenagers into their own planet named Facebook or Instagram etc.
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Teenagers feeling empowerment are basically just feeling happy and rewarded by social media from earning likes or followers and getting followers and likes will surely make you happy but it does not make a living for you in life and empowerment can possibly come through facebook or twitter because some people may have low self esteem so likes or followers can make them feel better overall and make them happier. I feel that teenagers are addicted to social media and are really basing their life around social media and the apparent love and passion of just using social media just make the people themselves feel empowered and has their self esteem boosted.

Reflecting on the FOA

My Further Oral Activity was about how African-Americans are being stereotyped in the media through the use of advertisements. I showed how the languages of the advertisements are able to stereotype them as well as other key things such as images, facial expressions and colour.

I analyzed 3 advertisements, the first one being an ad from Maxwell House (famous coffee brand) produced in the 1950s, the second a Nivea ad produced in 2011 and the third being an ad from Elliots paint and tarnish promoting white paint which was produced in the 1930s.

In my presentation I feel like I did well in the criteria B which was analyzing how the language is used. As I was preparing for this presentation, I was always focused on this criteria and read the language of the ads word by word as I wanted to take away as much as possible from this criteria and score well in this category. Although overall aside from this criteria I feel pretty disappointed in my FOA performance as I feel like I did not do very well as I hoped for in criteria C and criteria D as I could have spoken with better usage of language and I could have definitely organized my work more, something which I should have done all this time preparing as I didn't structure my FOA much. I felt like my presentation was kind of rushed and I was a little bit nervous, I need to slow down my presentations a little bit more and just take it in easy overall.

I chose my 3 ads because I felt that all of the 3 ads enhanced the stereotyping of African-Americans effectively and they had a lot of little things which could be analyzed and that was something I felt that I did overall a good job in. I feel like I did my best and put in my full effort to analyze the language, advertising techniques, ethos pathos logos, colour, characters looks etc.

What I can take away from this FOA is that I need to spend more time rehearsing this presentation, focusing more on how to structure the presentation and use better quality words in order to improve my grades the next time I do an FOA or IOC. I have learned how to overall be a much better speaker and presenter to this class after this FOA experience.

Changes by Tupac Shakur

Tupac's song Changes really comes out with a very powerful but yet a truthful message to all of the rapper's fellow members in his black community. This song was released in 1998 and the lyrics of the song refer to how African-Americans are constantly harassed and treated badly by the police (even been sent to jail for crimes they have not ever committed) and also all of the negative things that has been occurring in the black community from drugs to murders to poverty.

The song's music video opens up with several different pictures of Tupac himself and then plays to a black man being arrested and harrassed by a white police officer showing how blacks in the United States are treated badly by the police. As the video continues, we continue to see several glimpses of Tupac, just his face alone. We see the man greet his fellow black friends and also see him deliver a quote in an interview from a news reporter. This is the look at the quote. The only way I've been practicing my whole life, to live my life is to be responsible for what I do. I don't know how to be responsible for what every black male did, I don't know. And yes, I am gonna say that I'm a thug, that's because I came from the gutter and I'm still here. Tupac here is showing how proud he is to be a black american and represent a very corrupt, dangerous environment and community and a thug is considered among the media to be one of the worst kinds of people to come across due to the fact that thugs consistently are involved in drugs, violence, gangs etc and Tupac is proud to call himself one despite being one of the biggest music stars in the world. As the music video continues, we constantly see glimpses of black people being thrown into a jail, sitting in a cell which are two stereotypes as it is always assumed in the media that black Americans are always the ones to be criminals and put into jail. We also see the black Americans being targeted by the police and pictures of Tupac growing up. Recapping the music video we see the negative side of black Americans all through the eyes of one man, Tupac Shakur. African Americans are just portrayed in a negative way as thugs and criminals and people always having involvement in violence and Tupac is trying to show the reality in his song on how his community is consistently undermined and how the media will always portray African-Americans in a negative away and times are never going to change.

Looking at the lyrics of the song and parts of the song such as "I see no changes. All I see is racist faces", "The penititiary is packed, and its filled with blacks" are two lines trying to show how whites the opposite ethnic group are continuing to be racist towards African-Americans and that jails are always going to be full of black people even for crimes they did not even commit. Sellin' crack to the kids. "I gotta get paid," is showing how Tupac is not proud of his community and the only way they can make a living is by selling drugs to younger aged people in his community.I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.
My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.
Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.
Here are even more lines referring to how his people are poor and they are all criminals, you can see how in the last line he's referring to how cops continue to harass African Americans.

Overall what we see is how African-Americans are consistently portrayed in the media as poor criminals as we see in the music video that it a lot of the time consistently takes us to a moment where we see a black man being thrown into a jail or be chased or harassed by a cop. The story of his music video is to show us how this is never going to change and forever we will be seeing more and more blacks being thrown into jail and continue to be criminals and always be undermined by the media and be stereotyped by whites. They continue to be excluded and marginalized.