Though many pop culture phenomenon's caught my eye this week, I'd like to focus on something that's a bit more serious.
A trans-gender woman was attacked in a McDonald's restaurant in Baltimore last week by two women and suffered severe injuries. The attack was filmed by a McDonald's employee and then posted to the internet, where it quickly became viral.
The employee who filmed the attack was encouraging the attack and made no effort to contain the two women who were assaulting the victim, a woman named Crissy Lee Polis. The other employees, who can be seen in the video, also made little to no effort to stop the assault.
According to a filmed statement released by Polis, the women began their assault after Polis left the woman's restroom in the restaurant. They began to hit, spit and kick at her despite her several attempts to shove them off and leave.
At one point in the video, the two women attempt to drag Polis out of the restaurant by her hair. Polis is then seen going into a seizure near the entrance of the McDonald's, where finally the two suspects leave.
According to speculation on the internet, the employee filming the attack decided to load the video onto YouTube in an attempt to gain internet fame.
The video quickly became viral, and instead of serving as a form of entertainment, it launched a pretty big activism effort on the behalf of Polis as well as the trans-gender population of America.
Does this video serve as pop culture? Can pop culture act as activism?
Filming events/actions via cellphone and then loading these videos to popular sites like YouTube has become a pop culture phenomenon of our generation. There have been a few notable times when an attack has been filmed and it has spurred activism.
The internet is buzzing with feedback and responses to the brutal assault of Polis. Blogs and news websites are alive with updates and follow ups of Polis' story as well as the fate of the McDonald's employees.
The victim herself released a video statement, that has become viral on YouTube, about the attack she experienced.
All these things would make this event a part of pop culture news. It utilizes pop culture tools, it is viral on the internet and, for a change, it has encouraged and engaged activism instead of entertainment.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
S is for Snooki
As the popularity of the MTV Reality Show "Jersey Shore" grows, many of us are wondering what the big deal is. Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi is plastered all over pop culture and entertainment news and she is constantly in the spotlight.
Snooki's popularity isn't only national but local as well. During Fall Term OSU students participated in a Comcast University contest that would bring the "Jersey Shore" cast here to Corvallis to party at local dive bar, the Peacock.
OSU had the most amount of students participate in this contest and therefore "Jersey Shore" cast members made a trip to Corvallis. Facebook was a buzz with gossip and "Jersey Shore" scandal.
I expected to find that people, like myself, would be disgusted that OSU's claim to fame was now that we could bring "Jersey Shore" to our town. However, I was surprised when Facebook status' popped up all over my news feed, claiming: "I can't wait to meet Snooki!", "Gonna Party with Snooki tonight", etc.
Why is our society obsessed with Snooki?
In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, who put the "lovable" "Jersey Shore" girl on their cover, Snooki claims her popularity came about because "I say what's on my mind and I'm real. And I'm tan."
Snooki's statement may seem absolutely ridiculous (really? We like her because she's tan?) but let's look at the evidence. She is featured on the March Issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. A quick Google search brings up thousands and thousands of features on Snooki.
People follow her every move whether she is fighting with some one, sleeping with someone or losing weight for the summer.
Snooki, though her media coverage started out as a joke, has morphed into a role model for women. She is no longer receiving cynical media coverage (though a lot of her media coverage still has hints at this sarcasm). She is landing roles in magazines like Rolling Stone, a rather prestigious magazine with a reputation for solid reporting.
This is dangerous. Snooki is an overly sexualized, objectified and ridiculed woman. She is concerned with her looks and her body image. She has contributed little to society and still has been put on a pedestal. She is a role model for woman, she is a message that women get attention when they act bad, ridiculous or outlandish.
Where are our women scientists? Our potential Nobel Peace Prize Laureates? Why are the women who are getting attention in the media women who are doing nothing positive for our society? We've seen this again and again with Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and now Snooki.
Let's give our youth something else to aspire to.
Snooki's popularity isn't only national but local as well. During Fall Term OSU students participated in a Comcast University contest that would bring the "Jersey Shore" cast here to Corvallis to party at local dive bar, the Peacock.
OSU had the most amount of students participate in this contest and therefore "Jersey Shore" cast members made a trip to Corvallis. Facebook was a buzz with gossip and "Jersey Shore" scandal.
I expected to find that people, like myself, would be disgusted that OSU's claim to fame was now that we could bring "Jersey Shore" to our town. However, I was surprised when Facebook status' popped up all over my news feed, claiming: "I can't wait to meet Snooki!", "Gonna Party with Snooki tonight", etc.
Why is our society obsessed with Snooki?
In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, who put the "lovable" "Jersey Shore" girl on their cover, Snooki claims her popularity came about because "I say what's on my mind and I'm real. And I'm tan."
Snooki's statement may seem absolutely ridiculous (really? We like her because she's tan?) but let's look at the evidence. She is featured on the March Issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. A quick Google search brings up thousands and thousands of features on Snooki.
People follow her every move whether she is fighting with some one, sleeping with someone or losing weight for the summer.
Snooki, though her media coverage started out as a joke, has morphed into a role model for women. She is no longer receiving cynical media coverage (though a lot of her media coverage still has hints at this sarcasm). She is landing roles in magazines like Rolling Stone, a rather prestigious magazine with a reputation for solid reporting.
This is dangerous. Snooki is an overly sexualized, objectified and ridiculed woman. She is concerned with her looks and her body image. She has contributed little to society and still has been put on a pedestal. She is a role model for woman, she is a message that women get attention when they act bad, ridiculous or outlandish.
Where are our women scientists? Our potential Nobel Peace Prize Laureates? Why are the women who are getting attention in the media women who are doing nothing positive for our society? We've seen this again and again with Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and now Snooki.
Let's give our youth something else to aspire to.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
B is for Beauty Ideal
Yawn. Pop culture and entertainment news tends to focus their stories primarily on the lives of actresses and actors. Instead of the talent that these celebrities may or may not have, entertainment news lives to fuel the unachievable beauty and body ideal standards our society has rigidly set in place.
Popular entertainment stories for this week include Jennifer Lawrence, the break through star of the Academy Award Nominated film 'Winter's Bone', who is set to play Mystique in the anticipated film 'X-men: First Class'. Lawrence is featured in the popular men's magazine GQ wearing 60's style bathing suits that leave little to the imagination. The article that accompanies these pictures, which is found on the Huffington Post Entertainment section, focuses very little on Lawrence's strengths as an actress but instead on her 'naked' role in the upcoming 'X-men' film, her appearance in GQ, and the rumors surrounding her love life.
Not only are Lawrence's talents belittled this week, but so are those of host of the popular cooking show, Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi.
However, it is Lakshmi herself who belittles her own talent, by telling Parade Magazine that she's "been a model for 15 years, and I’ve been on Top Chef for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I’ve learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body." Lakshmi, a model, is hardly what anyone would call 'overweight', but she insists on defending an idea about body image (size 0, size 00,) because she has done something outside of the modeling box and is actually part of a show that encourages eating.
Instead of embracing this, Lakshmi scrambles to find a way to denounce her role in the Top Chef world.
This obsession with the beauty ideal, the idea that women can only be beautiful if they obtain the impossible standards set up by the media world, constantly influences the way we consume our entertainment news. It taints many stories, and in fact is the main focus of these stories more often than not.
Is this the only way entertainment news can be entertaining? No way...so let's spice it up and do something a little different.
In other pop culture news this week:
Jennifer Aniston and Bradley Cooper Date
And Joaquin Phoenix comes back on to the acting scene
Popular entertainment stories for this week include Jennifer Lawrence, the break through star of the Academy Award Nominated film 'Winter's Bone', who is set to play Mystique in the anticipated film 'X-men: First Class'. Lawrence is featured in the popular men's magazine GQ wearing 60's style bathing suits that leave little to the imagination. The article that accompanies these pictures, which is found on the Huffington Post Entertainment section, focuses very little on Lawrence's strengths as an actress but instead on her 'naked' role in the upcoming 'X-men' film, her appearance in GQ, and the rumors surrounding her love life.
Not only are Lawrence's talents belittled this week, but so are those of host of the popular cooking show, Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi.
However, it is Lakshmi herself who belittles her own talent, by telling Parade Magazine that she's "been a model for 15 years, and I’ve been on Top Chef for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I’ve learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body." Lakshmi, a model, is hardly what anyone would call 'overweight', but she insists on defending an idea about body image (size 0, size 00,) because she has done something outside of the modeling box and is actually part of a show that encourages eating.
Instead of embracing this, Lakshmi scrambles to find a way to denounce her role in the Top Chef world.
This obsession with the beauty ideal, the idea that women can only be beautiful if they obtain the impossible standards set up by the media world, constantly influences the way we consume our entertainment news. It taints many stories, and in fact is the main focus of these stories more often than not.
Is this the only way entertainment news can be entertaining? No way...so let's spice it up and do something a little different.
In other pop culture news this week:
Jennifer Aniston and Bradley Cooper Date
And Joaquin Phoenix comes back on to the acting scene
W is for Welcome
Hello Readers!
Welcome to F is for Feminist, a blog that will take the top news stories in the entertainment and pop culture scene and spin them with a feminist twist.
Too often we see celebrity women and men splashed across the entertainment section of the newspaper, but the journalism portraying these stories is all the same. Our society is obsessed with beauty ideals and gender roles that are often unachievable and unfair. What if we reported entertainment in a different way, what if we spent more time turning pop culture journalism into something that had more than one dimension.
I plan to write about entertainment in a different way, a refreshing way, a way that focuses on feminism.
Welcome to F is for Feminist, a blog that will take the top news stories in the entertainment and pop culture scene and spin them with a feminist twist.
Too often we see celebrity women and men splashed across the entertainment section of the newspaper, but the journalism portraying these stories is all the same. Our society is obsessed with beauty ideals and gender roles that are often unachievable and unfair. What if we reported entertainment in a different way, what if we spent more time turning pop culture journalism into something that had more than one dimension.
I plan to write about entertainment in a different way, a refreshing way, a way that focuses on feminism.
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