What the BLEEP do you know?

What the BLEEP do we know is one those films that make you think out of the box. It insists on analyzing the self and creating one's own future, through the perception that we have of ourselves. The film really goes into dept with the concept of staying true to yourself, as well as believing in yourself, in order to make your dreams come true. If you go through life in a positive manner, then you will have positive outcomes in life, contrary to living negatively.

What I loved most about the movie is that for the first time I experienced scientists bringing science and God together. For me, the film really brought out my beliefs that God is always with us and he gives us choices in life, whatever chose to do is the route he’ll take us through; our life not only relies on the big boss upstairs but also in ourselves what we choose in life and how we see it. This movie, is definitely an eye opener.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl & Wii Play

Super Smash Brothers Brawl is a fun game, and when looking at it artistically, it has awesome graphics. The staging is ridiculous too. The game is pretty violent, even though they are our favorite cartoons, like Mario and Luigi, we don't see the violence to be very serious, since it is comical. Yet the game is violent, the point of the game is to see how many people you can fight off the stage, "killing" them. nevertheless, it is fun to fight people off and win the battle.

When it comes to the Wii Play games, the ones we played in class at least, is soooooo much fun... I really like the bowling game, its as is if you were actually bowling but harder. You have to hold the controller a certain way and keep a steady hand, if you want the ball to go straight. On Wii Play, we also played tennis, which was fun too. Its not like actual tennis, it feels like there's a but of a delay when you swing the ball. The duck hunt game, was absolutely insane, its nothing like the original, on the contrary its so much more fun. Wii Play is definitely entertaining.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, in my opinion is one of the most disgraceful videogames of all time. Can anyone say stereotypical!? What’s wrong with the picture, when every female is a prostitute, the people in Little Haiti are thugs and drug dealers, the Spanish people in Little Havana are drug dealers with tacky flowery shirts and heavy accents that kill people over drugs, and the white males were all cops, common now seriously. It’s a horrific game and the only thing positive I have to say about it is that the prostitutes would fight back when others would try to steal their money. Oh and I can’t forget the fact that when a player would kill a prostitute they get extra points, for real people, females are human beings not animals. How can someone possibly get rewarded for killing, and not only are they killing, but they’re killing women, which the biggest stereotype for women is not being able to defend themselves fully against men. It’s repulsing.

Going to another aspect of the game, and forgetting how stereotypical it is for one second. Vice City is boring! All you do in the game is run around Miami, kill people, and buy and sell drugs. It’s kind of grotesque if you think about it. The game praises all the negatives of a metropolitan city, such as Miami; at the end of the day, such violence exists in most if not all urban cities. However, a game should not take a stand with the negativities and stereotypes of ethnic cultures.

Violence and Pop Culture

The two articles on violence took opposing views on the subject matter, where Fair Play blamed violence in children on video games, and the article on Violence and Pop Culture took the stand of what are parents allowing children to do with the media. For the first time someone took a step back to analyze media in general, not just video games, and say ok what are children actually doing with the information available to them, instead of jumping to the conclusion that it is the fault of a game or film. At the end of the day, violence has always existed.
There are two different types of violence, comic and serious violence. Comic violence normally displays little harm to the affected and is typically accompanied by upbeat music and silly sound effects. Serious violence is portrayed with severe damage to the person it is done too. The attacker normally uses guns, knives, and etcetera to assault his victims.
My game of choice, if you have noticed yet is Paper Super Mario. Violence in this game is comical. The music is very cheerful and every time you stomp on an enemy, you here the boing sound the Fair Play article talks about. Also, you don’t see any blood in this game, and every time an enemy is defeated, they don’t actually die, the harm is minimal, and they usually reappear.
Such cartoonish games are more children friendly, in a sense, because they don’t see people gushing blood and someone dying in the corner. It’s the parents’ responsibility to keep track of what their kids are playing, and noticing whether or not it’s affecting their behavior; since it is proven to heighten the violent acts that are innate to all people alike.

Fair Play: Gender

This section of Fair Play describes the male species as superior, and even proves that non-human characters are more popular in video games than women. The majority of the times women are just bystanders, and often are portrayed extremely voluptuous, in ways that are not realistic. In addition, to taking a very stereotypical view of what a women is and should be. For instance, being a size 0 and dressing like hookers and wearing pink at all times. Realistically most females are not a size 0, or hookers, nor do we all like pink. So this says a lot about society and how women are essentially still looked down upon in 2009.

The problem with this is that teenage boys will see this in, not only video games but in all media, and think that all girls have to look a certain way. For teenage girls, it makes them think they all have to be anorexic looking instead of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Also, by the portrayal of raunchy women, games are targeting males, and not women. This brings about issues to the gaming industry as well, because guys are not the only ones interested in video games, and there are almost no games for young women.

An example of women inferiority is Princess Peach in the game Paper Super Mario. Here the Princess is only able to glide through sky, while Mario can flip through dimensions, Luigi has a super jump, and Bowser can breathe fire; which the men and the non human have powers to ultimately destroy enemies, while the Princess isn’t capable of doing so. The most she can do is stomp on the enemy, but in that way her character can die quicker, so you wouldn’t really use her in a fight. This just goes to show the stereotypical view, that women can defend themselves against an enemy, without the help of a “stronger” figure.

Fair Play: Race

In this section of Fair Play, we discuss the racial diversity within video games. Male or female, the preference is always white. In addition, characters take stereotypical roles. While non-whites seem to take inferior roles to the white character controlled male, the sad part is that we have all become desensitized to this fact. We’ve become accustomed to seeing a white male as the superior being, while remaining indifferent to Hispanics, African Americans, even Asians taking not only stereotypical roles, but an exaggerated aspect of characteristics of these individuals –unrealistically taking place, since we all have differences even within our own culture.

Like previously said in a prior blog, why is that every other race other than white is displayed has violent characters, whether its verbal or physical aggression, and a when a white character is being violent its typically in self defense, and God forbid females show any aggression, this rare act in women even takes a stereotypical view as well.

What I don’t understand is that violence does not have any race or gender, than why is that these games still take an ethnicity and completely defame them, because of a false stereotype. You can be white, black, yellow or red and be violent, because violence is innate within every person, it’s the way we display the aggression that is wrong.





You will never see a game that targets the Black Italian community, like Super Mario targets the general Italian community and still its stereotypical by assuming that all Italians are plumbers. They are an approximate 755,000 Black Italians residing in Italy (Wikipedia.com), so why does the media not target this community -- if they do, they will take this sad stereotype of a thug.

The Cycle of Oppression

The cycle of oppression theory states that during our childhood we learn misinformation, bias history, as well as stereotypes, and we perceive them as true facts. Through socialization misinformation is reinforced by people that we trust, such as, family, friends, the education systems, media, government, and our places of worship. The influences are so strong that whatever is not part of your belief system is seen as abnormal and wrong. We then pass the misinformation to others, and the cycle begins again. Although there is no one that is naturally oppressive or oppressed, however, its a mistreatment based on membership in your various groups.

This cycle can be seen in the smallest of groups. For example, in families that are multicultural, many times one of the cultures will be looked down upon and so parents tell their children to say that they're simply American. Then children slowly begin to think that their actual culture is a disgrace, and they begin to have self image issues as well as complexes with their culture.

Cycle of Oppression

Ways to break the Cycle

Connections: Life, Knowledge, and Media

According to Dictionary.com, one of the many meanings of the word connection is as follows:

"Usually, connections. associates, relations, acquaintances, or friends, esp. representing or having some influence or power."

From the time we're born, we learn to have some sort of connections with other people, mainly parents and older siblings, at first. These relationships influence us to form the person we become in the future. As we grow up, we observe and learn different things from family, friends, school, media and etc, which are all ways we become socialized.

The article on connections: life, knowledge and media explains just that. In addition to breaking down the patterns of learning and socialization, while give us different theories of how we learn to be social and unlearn information that has been given to us through the various means of communications, as we come to notice that not everything that has been taught to us is always correct.

The article begins with the story of Christmas and how every means of communication, also including relatives and friends, promote the Christian holiday in grandness, but what about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa? The media barely promotes these holidays. How do you think they feel in December when everything is revolved around Christmas and the Christian faith. This really makes one realize that there are so many other cultures and belief systems out there, and that the majority doesn't always rule, yet the whole human race should come together and take a stand, particularly the media, there's not one culture that's more important than other. They are all important in there own way, especially to the individual culture.

A theory that I found interesting was the Liberation Theory. It basically states that not everything we have learned is correct information, rather its misinformation that can be unlearned. For example we can go most of our lives thinking that certain other cultures are bad, and we are influenced by these ideas not necessarily through our own experiences, but through the experiences of our family and peers, and through the portrayal the media gives other cultures that is not the predominate. Till one day we meet someone within that culture and we come to realize that they are not bad people at all. This process is getting the information that we once thought to be truthful and unlearned/altered our understandings and beliefs of other people.