Rap or Country

Rap or country? That was our main focus this week in Popular Cultures class where we discuss how very different those two genres of music are. After reading Chuck Klosterman's Toby Over Moby and Brent Staples' short article on How Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way and Betrayed Its Fans, I thought about how those two genres are so different from one another. Let's start with rap music. First off, and in my point of view, I personally don't like rap music and only have heard bits and pieces of it while changing the radio station in my car. I don't understand what the rappers are trying to say in that music and I know that I don't know much about Eminem or who is who in the whole rapping music community. Much of the time when I do find that I'm listening to it, willfully or not, I find that it gives me a headache because I'm trying to catch what is being said. To me, rap music is not music at all. To me, it's just someone screaming about drugs, racing, or who is killing off who. In How Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way and Betrayed Its Fans, Brent Staples writes that much of the rap music today is encouraging rappers to say something in their music which will provoke rappers and/or real world gangs to do drugs or take part in an all out gang war that will end in one or more deaths. Whether this is true or not, I don't know. I don't care for rap music or listen to it but know people who do and do enjoy it. I am unsure if it causes violence among rappers or anyone else so if you enjoy it, that's fine. Music is music and rap music is just that.

Now country on the other hand, I do enjoy. I can't say that I'm a huge fan of Taylor Swift, Toby Keith, or Reba, but I know that I do enjoy Blake Shelton, Carrie Underwood, and Brad Paisley. I have been enjoy county music probably ever since my mom first turn on the car radio. It was probably the only thing we ever listen to while in the car and I later find that I got a bit tired of it whenever I was with her and wanted to listen to something else but I soon discover the use of old personal hand held CD players and had a wonderful little collection of pop CDs like the Backstreet Boys, a few Now CDs, and Britney Spears' very first CD (when she was still a levelheaded kind of girl and not the airhead that she is today). Of course, my little collection of CDs grow over the years. I enjoyed the stories that are being told in country music. Country music almost always has some kind of story, sad or happy, silly or serious, love or hate. So between rap or country music, I think I would pick country music over rap.

Music and Games

Who doesn't like music or games? Who listens to music while playing games? I know that I do. Maybe it is because music helps me focus or come up with new ideas and games just give me something to focus on or work at overcoming a new challenge. Some games help on improving certain skills like driving a car or figuring out a certain problem. Games can basicly teach us new and developing skills that we could use in later life. I look forward to nearly every Sunday to play a card game called Hand and Foot with my parents and husband. I know that Hand and Foot isn't a very common game like War or some kind of video game but for some reason we end up enjoying ourselves, even if we are not winning. Video games are something that I know very little about. I do enjoy the Wii games that involve movement like Just Dance or the Wii Sports. Those are the only ones that I really take the time to play.

Games like the Sims or Farmville are very popular. Sims allow you to create a lifestyle that you wanted and live it out while Farmville shows what it is like to live on a farm and go about taking care of animals or crops by allowing them time to grow on the game. Many games, either online, video, board game, or a game of cards will allow us to enact with other people. People can get together for a board, card, or Video game just for fun while online gamers can chat with friends and other players while playing a favorite game.

Music seems to add something to video games by playing dark music when the game takes a turn in the dark direction or playing happy music when you beat a certain level and move on to the next challenge. Music in real life has an impact on everything and everyone. People are always listening to it on their way to work or school in their car or listening to it on their Ipod while at the gym or taking a walk. There are so many videos on Youtube where people go and mash up different types of music or videos, making them very interesting to watch. A lot of these type of videos are illegal to do.

Many are deleted off of Youtube due to copyright or some other reason. Other times, the mash up videos are seen as few advertisment that makes viewers go onto Itunes and download a very similiar piece of music because they heard it on Youtube first. Both games and music have a long history of keeping people entertained for many reasons. We are seen as a Bootleg Culture when it comes to music or TV. We like to mix together new ideas like putting a popular pop song to a favorite show. We will take a certain show and change the audio to it, making a mash up. Again, those are illegal but people still do them and for some reason it is helping the music and movie industries.

Violence and Masculinity

As I sit here and watch my husband play his new video game 'Batman: Arkham City, I can't help but notice all of the violence that is taking place in it. I have to laugh some about how much of it can related to what we are learning in Popular Cultures about how men are taught to be seen as those tough guys. In a way, I'm marching it up against my hubby, the game, and how every time he can't beat a super villian like Mr. Freeze or the Joker, he just keeps on trying kind of like how men should 'never give up'. Now I really don't see my hubby as a tough guy, more like a big soft teddy bear, but he may say differently.

So what is the deal with men and violence? Why do men like things that go boom at the end of every movie? Here is a simple and yet a somewhat stupid answer, they just do. Men want to be seen as tough people and not as 'girls'. Men like to walk around, appearing tough and like to be in control of things. What we really need to think about is how women can be violent as well but it doesn't cause a reaction as much as it would with men.

I'll use another example towards my thoughts on that. A few years ago, I work at a local HyVee in the not so great part of town, when two young black women had an all out catfight over some guy in the parking lot in my line. That being my second week of just starting there, I was a little shock about how those two women behaved and was a little rattled by it all. I have never seen anything like that before, having come from a small town and never really knowing what life in the big city was like. Since then, I have quit that job after two years of working there and not really happy with it, I ended up getting married and moving. 

Anyway, men and violence. They are taught to behave like tough guys and even see women as the 'weaker sex' though beating women down, either though words or hitting them. I believe that this is both true and untrue. At a young age, boys are taught to act like tough guys. This could lead to violence in schools and school shootings like the most recent one in Ohio. Many of the shootings always had a male student or at times, there were male teachers who would cause the violence.

The Importance of Sports in America

So just how important are sports in America? I believe that sports are very important. Sports allow children and adults to get outside or inside, depending on the sport. Sports have a great impact on how we live our lives. The focus of sports on children can help with their self-confidence and they can learn to work as a team that will later on help them in the workforce. Sports have an impact on everyone from celebrities to the government.

In movies, (a lot of the time, it's war and crime movies), sports are use to discuss and plan what is going to happen next. The impact is mostly made on boys and how men are shown in the movie. Boys are made to believe that they can't act like 'girls', can't cry, or act hurt. The same thing is seen in sports where, like football, the players will keep playing even if they are hurt. This way, it seems that boys are being taught that they have to grow up to act like the hero of the story, either in movies or in sports. Boys are made to believe that only boys can be seen as the leader or the hero of the story. Boys who are seen as 'girls' would always get in the way.  With movies and TV shows, they always seem to be referring to some kind of sport like football or baseball.

Romance

Who doesn't love Valentine's Day? Okay. Other then Chuck Klosterman and I'm not saying that he doesn't at least enjoy it at some point but who knows since this is coming from someone who has work in a floral store during one of the most craziest times to be a florist? I can't say that I agree with Klosterman but I'm not totally disagreeing with what he has to say. He had a lot of interesting things to say and everyone is entitled to their own opinion right? So the big Heart Day come and went and I enjoyed not having to work in a floral store since returning to school. I enjoyed it but sometimes I think that some people just love the drama of working in a floral store during Valentine's Day or another busy time for them, either a wedding or several are taking place or it's Mother's Day. I'm saying that I don't like Valentine's Day, I'm saying that sometimes it can get on my nerves if I'm not working in a place that I am comfortable with.

Right. So Klosterman had good points about what he was saying in his book about love and romance. He makes good points about several things like how people want love to be like that from a movie or some book. Personally, I don't think I would like having a vampire as a boyfriend, but that is my opinion and I just happen to hate anything to do with Twilight and it's getting off subject just a little. I can say that I agree with Klosterman's idea on fake love because in a way, I use to think like that until I decided that if I do find love then I was just going to let that happen and look at that, now I'm married and very glad that I let go of that little hope of mine about getting love from like that in movies or books.

To Klosterman, it seems that the media is getting a little bit carried away. It is nearly impossible to fall in love because most of the time, it is fake love. It is normal to have people measure relationship up against people in movies or in books. Looking back at that now, I think 'thank god that I don't do that anymore'. Even if the book I'm reading has something to do with vampires or werewolves (I'm always looking for a good werewolf book and sometimes vampires are in it but I don't like the Twilight characters. They seem too fake) or something like that, I'm glad that I really don't think like that anymore. 

I totally support Heart Day because it is one of the busiest times of the year for florists, places like Olive Garden, and other places for several reasons. One, I enjoy the holiday and making Valentine cookies with my mom and sister and two, spending time with my husband. And three, hearing news about who among my friends are now engage and knowing that it is not fake love but very true romance and love.

Advertising & How It Affects Women

Stopping to think about this has always lead me to the same thought, why in the world do we as women look at one ad, either on TV or in some fashion magazine and think that we need to look more like the woman in it who looks more plastic then real? I know that I have try a few of the products but after using them I find that I wasn't truly happy with how they turn out. So anyway, back to the plastic 'beautiful' women in the magazines, on TV, or on some billboard. Nearly all of them are not real to begin with. The pictures for magazines or some billboard had been crop either the same person to make her more beautiful, or several pictures of several different women had been toss together and 'fix' together to make one more beautiful, but very unreal person. It's like taking several different puzzles pieces, throwing them altogether and trying to create a whole new but very different puzzle.

We really don't take the time to think about how advertisement has affected us. In 2008, I took a class that was for those going into retail business. This class involve having to chose two 'bad' commercials or ads, and two 'good' commercials or ads and explain why we decided on those. This lead to taking more noticed of how advertising affected the world and how to get more people's interest. Of course, this wouldn't help me out now since I'm going though a career change but it still has me thinking about it every time that I see a billboard, an ad in a favorite magazine, an ad on Facebook or some other website, and TV. I had not really pay much attention to how advertisement seem to 'cut' us women down and make us seem more like objects then people.

Why do they do it? That seems like a good question. I believe that it targets women to cause them to buy the products and tried to be more like the 'plastic' or 'computerize' women in magazines. And then there are those ads that make women appear as a beer bottle or women doing impossible things that involves some of them bending backwards or appearing as a mermaid. This also affects young girls by making them appear shy, mysterious, or having them believing that they will look like this when they grow up.

While this doesn't appear to affect the male counterparts of our world, it does. Men and boys are also lead to believe that this is how women and girls should look or behave. Many pictures of men in magazines appeared to the 'strong' and silent' type and many magazines I have seen with men in them, has many of them either shirtless and with six pack, or either with some kind of new truck or beer. In this world today, we need to take the time to think about what is real and what is not when it comes to ads as well as do we really need what they are selling to look like this?

Technology & Sexuality

After reading Ten Seconds to Love for Popular Cultures class, we discuss the ideas on how porn, technology, and sex have an impact on our way of life. Talking about it seem a little weird and it wasn't a subject that I'm totally not comfortable with discussing. I had always figure that it what was left behind close doors should stay behind close doors.  So anyway in class, we discuss ideas on how technology has change porn. Porn started out in Ancient Greece, with them creating statues and paintings of nude people. It has been around for ages and ever since the Ancient Greeks and the printing press, it has been going on. Pornography is the depiction of erotic behavior as in pictures or writing, that is intended to cause sexual excitement. In Ancient Greek, it means to write about prostitutes. Again, not a subject that I'm not totally comfortable with. So from the printing press, porn move on to magazines, film, and to the internet. It is really hard not onto the internet and search a random idea like a recipe without having something about porn just pop up there. Very annoying at times, too. I really don't care to see anything like that when I'm looking for a recipe for a taco casserole while online.

Internet seems to play a big part with porn and so do sex tapes. Having never seen a sex tape and have plans to never will, I can't tell you a lot about them, other then coming across them written about in books that I have read and hearing them talk about here and there. In Popular Cultures, we read an article called Ten Seconds to Love. It is about what the author thinks of sex, sex tapes, and technology by discussing and comparing Pam Anderson and Marilyn Monroe. He goes into detail about how different those two women are and how similar they are like who they had married, dated, or divorce. Those two women are very different, having live different lives in Hollywood and time periods.

For some reason, I pictured Marilyn Monroe as more of a down to earth type of person and Pam Anderson more of the nose in the air type but that is only because they live in two very different time periods and since they both act in different firms or TV shows, nothing about their private lives are similar. Pam Anderson is a mom and more carefree while Marilyn Monroe had an early death, but had a great career in film. And I am sure that men from Marilyn Monroe had very creative thoughts when they saw her. The same could probably be said about Pam Anderson.

So anyway, technology has change the way sex and porn is seen. From Ancient Greece to the printing press to the internet, no matter how it is seen online, in a magazine, or in a film, it is going to be around for a long time as annoying as it can be or how much those who view it can get in trouble for it. Whatever the reason, I don't support the idea of porn and stand by what I said, what is behind close doors, should stay behind close doors. I don't need to see that online but now I have a better understanding since reading the articles about it.