Music as a More Influential Form of Media

After lecture on Tuesday and then watching “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes”, I really began to think about if and how the media affects me. Media is a huge part of my life because I am constantly surrounded by television, music, movies, and the internet. Even though I am immersed in media practically all day every day, I would still say that the media does not affect me. In lecture we talked about how most people would say the media doesn’t influence them, but yet they do believe it influences other people. In reality, the media does influence everyone in one way or another. I agree with the Hypodermic Model, in that the media injects views and ideologies into the defenseless public unknowingly. However, I believe that some forms of media are more effective at changing people’s beliefs and views.
In the video “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” a point is made in defense of hip-hop that the music videos are forms of entertainment just like movies are forms of entertainment. However, I believe that the music industry has a bigger influence on people’s views and beliefs than the movie industry does. While both industries are in the entertainment business, there is a huge difference between the two that makes the music industry a more effective and sometimes more harmful form of media. When people watch movies or television, they know that what they are watching is not real and that the characters are not real people, rather just actors. I will admit that I have watched shows and movies where I have wished I were more like one of the characters, but then I always realize that they are just that, a character. On the other hand, when someone watches a music video, and they see their favorite artist dressing and behaving a certain way they believe that what they see is who those people are. Even though the musician may just be playing a part the same way an actor in a movie does, the difference is that the audience does not always know that it is just an act. It seemed to me from the video, that most of the hip-hop artists didn’t see anything wrong with their lyrics and videos because they say that its just part of an image. I think that the artists are being just as ignorant as the audience to believe that their behavior is only part of an image and that it doesn’t influence anyone. The two major issues brought up in the video that have been a major influence on our culture are violence and exploitation of women. As anyone can see violence and the exploitation of women are all over the media, not only in the music industry. However, like I have been saying these images in the music industry can be more harmful to our culture because people do not always separate what they see from reality. So when people see famous musicians rapping about shooting people or half naked women grinding all over the rappers, they think that in order to be cool or successful they have to act the same way. I think that hip-hop music videos are a good example of how images can be polysemic because even though white people may listen to more hip-hop black people are most influenced by the violence and exploitation of women portrayed in the videos which is evident in the higher rates of violence and sexual assaults. So there is obviously a difference between the way most white people perceive the images they see in the music videos and the way most black people perceive the images. I think that before any of these issues in our culture can improve, it is important for the artists to recognize that their behavior does influence the people who listen to their music and watch their videos.

Perpetuating Stereotypes In The Media

“’What Makes football or basketball players more inclined to abuse women?’ Equal numbers of hockey and baseball players are accused of domestic violence, yet I have never been asked this question about them.” (Sport in America: The New Racial Stereotypes) This is an interesting point, when I read it I immediately was brought back to an idea we learned at the beginning of the semester, the ultimate attribution error. It seems to me that the general public’s stereotypes of African Americans as being violent, and dangerous are just being “proven true” by all the news stories about black athletes committing crimes. On the other hand, those white athletes that abuse women, and commit other crimes seem to be somewhat brushed aside. In the most part these crimes are ignored, or at least don’t make as big of an impact, since the average white American believes that basketball and football (sports mostly dominated by African Americans) players are more prone to violence than other sports players.

It seems to me that this idea of the ultimate attribution error was also expressed in the hip-hop video we watched in class. One guy in the video mentioned that by acting tough and violent in the mainstream ghetto rap scene, rappers are perpetuating horrible black stereotypes. They are just making the white suburban people believe that they are right about inner city black people being criminals. These negative actions are seen as proof that black stereotypes are true.

On the flip side, if you watch movies or television shows, there are loads of overly buff white guys shooting people left and right, without thinking twice about it. Look at any James Bond movie, Indiana Jones, The terminator, Kill Bill, Face Off, and the list goes on and on. Somehow the American public doesn’t see this as suggesting that white people are just as violent and criminal as black people. When you consider it further, many of the white criminals in movies have more calculated, violent, farther reaching, and sinister murders than the ones suggested in rap music. Some example of this can be seen in the Saw movies, The Silence of the Lambs series, Perfume, and again the list goes on and on. Why is the violence in rap music more shocking and criminal to white society than these gory images we’ve been presented with for years?

The idea that symbols are polysemic also ties into the hip-hop video we watched in class. The consumers who listen to hip-hop may see the hypermasculine messages as good music, and as something they can relate to. Contrastingly, the outsiders, the upper/middle class white people look at the hip-hop lyrics and overly masculine messages of manhood being about conquering and violence as, like I stated earlier, proving their stereotypes of inner-city blacks. The sad thing is that the up and coming rappers that rapped for the camera said that they didn’t believe the stuff that they were saying, they were just saying it because that’s what sells. Why do violent and criminal messages sell?

Culture and Health

Many things can affect someone’s health status. In class we have learned that socioeconomic status, lifestyle choices, access to care, and trust within the healthcare system can all play a role. I also believe that one’s culture can play a very large role. In nursing school, we focus a lot on community health. In this course we look at how many different determinants can affect one’s health and one very important thing that we focus on is culture. For example, we worked with rural Latino families. This group suffers greatly from chronic diabetes. When we talked more in depth with this group we found that food plays a large role in their culture. Many people explained that often people gather to celebrate and meet and food is a central part of this. They often feel that they can’t turn down food that someone else has prepared for them because it would be rude, even though they know it is not good for their diabetes or other health conditions. It is not that they don’t understand their own condition; it is just that other things, such as culture, can play a greater role on one’s health. From a healthcare perspective, it would be important to know these things about the Latino culture in order to put a plan in place that would be more specific and beneficial to a Latino diabetes patient. Of course we must also look at access and SES, but without understanding the social importance of food in this culture, any education or treatments would probably not be very beneficial.
In nursing school we are taught to be culturally competent nurses and I think that this is a very important concept. According to one of my nursing textbooks, Fundamentals of Nursing, culturally competent care is “the ability of a nurse to bridge culture gaps in caring, work with cultural differences, and enable clients and families to achieve meaningful and supportive caring.”
Each culture looks at health and illness in very different ways. Everyone approaches healthcare differently. These differences can range from causes of disease, methods of diagnosis, treatment, healers, practitioners, and caring patterns. In order to completely understand a patient and their illness, I believe that it is important to first look at the culture that they take part in. As we talked about in lecture, it would be important to look at their habitus, but more importantly, we need to talk to the person in an open and understanding manner so that we can understand more about the culture that they come from. We cannot just make assumptions based off of what we see. These concepts have become very important to me and the nurse that I will be.

Culture and Health

Many things can affect someone’s health status. In class we have learned that socioeconomic status, lifestyle choices, access to care, and trust within the healthcare system can all play a role. I also believe that one’s culture can play a very large role. In nursing school, we focus a lot on community health. In this course we look at how many different determinants can affect one’s health and one very important thing that we focus on is culture. For example, we worked with rural Latino families. This group suffers greatly from chronic diabetes. When we talked more in depth with this group we found that food plays a large role in their culture. Many people explained that often people gather to celebrate and meet and food is a central part of this. They often feel that they can’t turn down food that someone else has prepared for them because it would be rude, even though they know it is not good for their diabetes or other health conditions. It is not that they don’t understand their own condition; it is just that other things, such as culture, can play a greater role on one’s health. From a healthcare perspective, it would be important to know these things about the Latino culture in order to put a plan in place that would be more specific and beneficial to a Latino diabetes patient. Of course we must also look at access and SES, but without understanding the social importance of food in this culture, any education or treatments would probably not be very beneficial.
In nursing school we are taught to be culturally competent nurses and I think that this is a very important concept. According to one of my nursing textbooks, Fundamentals of Nursing, culturally competent care is “the ability of a nurse to bridge culture gaps in caring, work with cultural differences, and enable clients and families to achieve meaningful and supportive caring.”
Each culture looks at health and illness in very different ways. Everyone approaches healthcare differently. These differences can range from causes of disease, methods of diagnosis, treatment, healers, practitioners, and caring patterns. In order to completely understand a patient and their illness, I believe that it is important to first look at the culture that they take part in. As we talked about in lecture, it would be important to look at their habitus, but more importantly, we need to talk to the person in an open and understanding manner so that we can understand more about the culture that they come from. We cannot just make assumptions based off of what we see. These concepts have become very important to me and the nurse that I will be.

Shopping for a Partner and Interracial Relationships

In class we talked about how dating is a method of shopping for a mate. The popularization of dating websites has in a way created a marketplace for shoppers to find exactly what they are looking for. People can choose partners based on race, religion, and personal interests. So it would seem that dating is more like shopping because people go on dating websites to find that right person the same way they go to the mall to find that perfect outfit. As we saw from the statistics from one dating website, I feel that this method of dating only perpetuates racism. Because dating websites allow a person to meet many more people than one would in daily life, I think that people become pickier and use stricter standards for finding a partner. For example, as the statistics from lecture showed white women were most likely to respond white men than any other group of males. The dating websites make it easier for people to completely exclude certain people based on their race and religion. Therefore, I think that this method for dating is only hurting our society because it encourages people of the same race and religion to be together, when interracial relationships have proven to benefit society by lessening distinctions between groups, reducing prejudice, and spurring economic and political change as well. Interracial relationships are good because they can teach family members and friends to be accepting of other races. If blacks only ever married blacks and whites only ever married whites it would only perpetuate racism. I’m not saying that dating websites completely eliminate the possibility for interracial relationships because there still are people who are open to interracial relationships or even prefer interracial relationships. I just believe that websites allow for people to be more selective. I think that if I went on a dating website I would put my preferences for a white catholic male. Not because I am racist or closed minded, but because when given the option out of hundreds of men it is what I would prefer based on my own race and religion. However, in my daily life I do not go around judging men on this premise because I am more open to different races and religions when I am meeting someone in person.

As I have said before, interracial relationships can be beneficial to society for multiple reasons, yet there still seems to be a bit of a taboo surrounding interracial relationships, particularly relationships between white men and black women. In lecture we saw that the statistics from the dating website showed black women getting the lowest response rate out of all groups of men, especially white males, and this is not the first time I have heard of this. One of my white female friends has always been known to date black men. Many of her friends are black males, yet she does not have any black female friends. She said to me once that it was “nasty” for a black girl and a white guy to date. I think she even preferred to see black men with white women over black women. So if she thought it wasn’t acceptable for black women to date white men or black men, then where does this leave black females? One girl in class mentioned how the reason for this could date back to when blacks were enslaved. I think that this is one logical theory, but I believe a better explanation is the exchange hypothesis. I completely agree with the exchange hypothesis in that people are more likely to overlook someone’s race if they have a higher economic status. White women are more likely to marry a black man if he has a higher education and economic status. I think one of the reasons we don’t see relationships between white men and black women that much is because white men are usually more educated and don’t have the need to use the exchange hypothesis, whereas it may be easier for a less educated white woman to marry an educated black man than an educated white man. Also less black females have higher education so the exchange hypothesis does not even work if they do not have a higher economic status that would lead a white male to overlook race. Therefore, this whole hypothesis comes down the importance of education. An education gives people a better chance of marrying outside of their own race, and because fewer black women have a higher education, it is more of a taboo for a white man and black woman to be together.

Cultural Differences and Movement

Reading “American’s Have a Different Attitude” really opened my eyes to how different ethnicities/cultures see the American culture. The problem I have is that every culture has its own beliefs and customs and one culture should not judge the other for how they do things if they aren’t causing any hurt to others. One thing I did find interesting is that the Filipinos associated the promiscuous American culture with predominantly white women rather than whites, blacks, and others. Looking back, with slavery, and segregation, and even the Tuskegee experiment, it was always the White Americans who looked at the African Americans and other minority races as promiscuous, dirty, etc.

I’m not exactly sure what the numbers are but is it true that white women are more promiscuous, and less family oriented than other cultures/races? If so, it seems that contradicts what it is that White Americans tried to fix with the minority races long ago. One thing that does worry me is that some of these assumptions that other cultures such as the Filipinos have on Americans just aren’t feasible, and they’re way too generalized. Just because some members of one culture do something doesn’t mean that every single person in that culture follows suit. I think the fact that this happens is tied in with prejudice. Prejudices are usually generalized to one culture or race and that can lead to discrimination of that culture and things of that sort. Looking at the Filipino culture presented in the article the beliefs pressured upon them I think may be too strict. I remember talking to my grandparents and parents one time about beliefs and customs and how at times they need to evolve with the time because what they were applied to in the past isn’t the same as what they are being applied to now. There is more technology, more knowledge, and more social advancement in today’s society and in order for children of now to keep up with the advancements and society of now, some things may need to change. I remember reading how one of the Filipino girls did believe that the culture of her people was too strict when it came to dating and having a social life and this caused her to rebel and do what she thought was right.

Another thing that I wanted to touch on was the double standard of gender roles in the cultures like the Filipino culture. Women in these cultures are so restricted that in my opinion they really aren’t allowed to have a life until they get married. I remember reading one of the passages where a young Filipina asked the question “But my question is, if you are not allowed to date, how are you supposed to find your husband?”, I agreed with this question. Why is it that the women are not even allowed to have a male touch their shoulders before they are married, but a male is not even mildly restricted in this area? There is a male privilege in cultures like these, just as there is a white privilege in our American culture. Also, it seems that both of these privileges are somewhat invisible, it’s just a part of the culture and that’s the way that it is. There was an example in a previous lecture dealing with oppositional culture, when white kids do something it’s just kids being kids, but when black or other minority kids do something it suddenly has the title or race on it. I see a connection with that example and what’s going on in cultures such as the Filipino culture. It’s like if a guy were to do something against the culture it’s just boys will be boys but if a girl were to do something slightly against the culture she’s suddenly a disgrace to the culture and women should not be doing what she is doing. It is a new era now and I believe that these cultures need to evolve to fit with the present time. I’m not saying that the American culture is perfect, we do have our faults, especially with promiscuity, but that’s not to say that we don’t have morals. I’m saying, move with the time, but don’t leave the basis of your culture behind.