Letter to the FCC

For class we were suppose to write a letter to someone about something we have learned during this term.  I chose to write to the FCC Commissioners about sexually suggestive television commercials.
Here is my letter:

FCC Commissioners,

            As a United States citizen I am hoping my concern regarding the issue of television advertisements will be handled with the seriousness it warrants by those with direct authority to bring about change.

            Lately, I have found myself offended quite often by the suggestive themes present in countless television commercials.  As time has gone on I have watched as advertisers continually push the boundaries on advertising to the point where viewers are seeing sexually explicit content just short of pornography.  I know that the FCC has regulations concerning this very issue, but they are far too vague and seem to be very loosely interpreted.  I know that the FCC encourages consumers to resolve their issues with the company whose advertisements are offensive, but I believe in this case it is the responsibility of the FCC to step up and crack down on companies who run sexually offensive advertisements.  If these companies are not getting punished for this kind of unacceptable activity then they are not going to listen to consumers who complain about the offensiveness of their advertisements. 

            These ads are being seen by children and adolescents who developmentally do not know how to process such offensive material.  These ads have the potential to negatively affect the way children view sexuality which can lead to countless other social issues.  No one wants their children viewing the blatantly sexual Carl’s Jr. commercials, but they are on numerous television channels readily accessible to anyone.

            I was particularly appalled the other day when I came across a commercial for GoDaddy.com, which featured essentially naked women.  What is most ridiculous about these commercials is that they are promoting an Internet domain registrar which has not the slightest to do with scantily clad women.

 It has gotten to the put where sex is being shamelessly used by advertisers to sell their product and it will continue to get worse unless more severe consequences are enforced.  I hope as public servants you will take your responsibility of promoting the public good seriously, and that you can see what needs to be done about blatantly sexual material in television commercials.

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Sarah Burkinshaw

Memes

Lately, I have noticed that there are a lot of memes going around on facebook.  I don't even know when they started or where they came from but it seems like they just started becoming a big deal in the last year or two.  Some of them can be pretty funny but a lot of them are kind of stupid and don't really make any sense.  Anyways, I wanted to find out the definition of a meme so I looked it up on dictionary.com and it says a meme is "a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes." This makes sense to me because the memes that are going around on facebook are pictures, usually of something well-known in popular culture, with a little phrase that people of our culture would find funny.  I don't know if I still fully get the concept of memes, but I just thought I'd share my thoughts on them with you.

This is currently my favorite meme:

The Netflix Curse

This week I started watching the TV show Friday Night Lights on Netflix because I have had about a billion people tell me how good it is.  I don't know if it's because I was bored or if it really was that good but I ended up watching 4 episodes in a row before I finally decided to actually do something productive. This is why I have a love hate relationship with Netflix.  There are so many shows that are so readily accessible  and once you watch one episode you just want to keep going so you know what happens next.   At least when the show is in season they limit you to one episode a week.  I NEED boundaries and Netflix just doesn't get that.  So I finally realize after watching 4 episodes that I have lost 4 hours of precious time and I have nothing to show for it.  Oh well.  At least it was entertaining, right?

Snow White

This past Friday I went and saw Snow White and the Huntsman.  It was a pretty good movie and I think it tied in well with what we talked about on Wednesday in class, about beauty and how much value people put on it.  Everyone knows the story of Snow White and how the evil queen is so obsessed with being the most beautiful person in the land.  In the movie even when the queen is the fairest in all the land she is never happy.  She still continually worries that someone will take away her beauty.  On the other hand in the film Snow White's mother stresses to her before she dies that it is Snow White's heart that makes her beautiful, even more than her looks.  Outward beauty is subjective and fleeting but true beauty is deeper, and the movie did a decent job of making that point.  

Be One Ad

I went to California this weekend for Memorial day and yesterday we went and walked down Hollywood Boulevard and saw all the stars names on the sidewalk and such.  We also went to Roscoe's and had fried chicken and waffles which was amazing, but that's a totally different story. Anyways, while we were walking down Hollywood Boulevard I saw a Gap billboard like the one I have pictured at the right.  It was obviously a promotion for gay rights as well and I thought it was interesting that I had not seen anything about this in the news because I am sure it has caused some controversy.  So, when I was trying to look up the picture I found numerous articles about the ad and those who were for and against it.  I was more interested, however, in whether it was done more for marketing purposes, since Obama recently said that he supported gay marriage, or whether it was more for the promotion of gay rights.  I figure it is probably a combination of the two but I wonder if it will hurt sales more than help.  Being in Utah I know that Gap would probably never put up an advertisement like that around here so it seems that though they support gay rights, they are not necessarily willing to advertise that everywhere.  They would probably not advertise it in Oklahoma, where I am from, either because there are definitely less supporters of gay rights there as well.  So I was wondering what others thoughts were.  Was it done more to promote Gap, gay rights, or a combination of both?

I dedicate this post to one of my favorite forms of  
media -- Mormon Messages!  Whenever I am feeling
spiritually spent during the week I can always count on
a good Mormon Message to help restore my spiritual
bank account.  They are always so uplifting and they
ALWAYS make me tear up.  I don't know quite what
it is  about them but they provide fantastic incite and
leave me feeling hopeful.  This one is my absolute
favorite!  Every time I watch it I have to take a step
back and evaluate what things are most important in my
life.

Basketball and the Media

I am an avid Oklahoma City Thunder fan, being from Oklahoma and all.  For those who don't know they are currently playing the L.A. Lakers in the playoffs.  Lately I have been getting upset about the media coverage surrounding this series.  The Lakers have usually been a great basketball team and they have won many championships and make it to the playoffs nearly every year.  OKC is a pretty young team but they are still a great team.  However, every article I read and every postgame discussion I hear about the games, which OKC has won 3 of 4, is about how the Lakers are just not playing their best and if they were then OKC wouldn't have a chance.  To me this is so disrespectful to a team who has been WINNING because they are obviously the BETTER team.  I'm sick of hearing the various media outlets discredit their skill by saying it's not that OKC is playing great, it's that the Lakers are playing poorly.  It just makes me realize, yet again, how biased the most media sources are.  Just because a team has been good in the past does not mean that they have what it takes to be a championship team every year.  This year is the OKC Thunder's year and I hope the every one who has been ragging on them feel real stupid when they win it all!  THUNDER UP!!!!

Merlin

Lately my husband and I have really been into watching a TV series called Merlin that's free on Netflix.  His parents introduced us to the series when we went there for Thanksgiving but we just now got into since we have more time to watch during the summer.  It follows the most famous wizard before Harry Potter, Merlin, as a teenager before his magical abilities have been revealed.  He works as Prince Arthur's servant and has to hide his abilities because Arthur's father, King Uther, despises magic and puts to death anyone who uses it.  I'm pretty sure it is one of the cleanest shows out there these days and we really enjoy it.  It can be kind of cheesy sometimes because the special effects are pretty medieval (pun intended!), but we it's a fun show to watch.  So, if you don't have anything to watch because all of your favorite shows are done until the fall, I would recommend checking out Merlin if dragons and magic is your kind of thing.

Goofy's Big Race

For class we were asked to write about one of our favorite books as a child or adolescent.  I didn't hesitate to write about Goofy's Big Race which is a book my dad read to me all the time when I was little. Here's the synopsis:

Goofy’s Big Race is a Walt Disney children’s book that is similar to the tortoise and the hare.  Donald Duck has just purchased a brand new fancy sports car and challenges Goofy and his old beat up car Bessy to a race to Horner’s Corner.  The loser has to buy the winner ice cream.  Throughout the book Donald is takes frequent stops to take a nap, wash his car, and buys some lemonade because he believes he is so far ahead of Goofy that he can easily afford to take a few breaks.  Goofy all the while is saying, “Slow and steady, steady and slow. That’s the way we always go and it always seems to work.”  In the end Goofy wins and Donald learns a valuable lesson.

I think I remember this book and love it so much because it reminds me of my dad.  He always read it with funny voices for the different characters and I loved the time we spent reading it together.  I definitely plan on reading it to my children.

What Mature Means

The other day I was sitting at work looking at various articles on Yahoo news when I came across an article about Justin Bieber's new music video.  I watched the video and then read the article and was a little disturbed by the way maturity is perceived through the eyes of the media.  In the article it talked about how Justin is getting older and how this is his first post teen music video.  It also said how this video showed how much he was growing and showed more maturity than his other music videos.  After watching the video all I saw that was different from his other videos was that it was more suggestive and sensual.  I find it a little disappointing that the media is constantly labeling maturity as being more openly immoral.  It is no wonder that teenagers who want to appear more mature become sexually active.  To me this shows more immaturity than anything if you think sex is what makes you mature.  It's discouraging seeing this kind warped definition of maturity becoming more and more prevalent in our society.

The Avengers!

So I saw the Avengers and it was beyond awesome!  I highly recommend that you go see it.  Not only was it awesome but it was pretty funny too.  Probably the most well done comic book movie I have ever seen.  We also walked away with free movie tickets because they started playing the wrong movie at first and then we couldn't read any of the subtitles because the picture was too big for the screen.  I didn't mind though because now I get to see a free movie!  Anyways, I was noticing after the movie, which was very high action, that a lot of people were saying how pumped they were and how they wanted to go fight bad guys and what not.  It reminded me of what we talked about in my media class about how people previously believed that watching violence was cathartic but now research shows that it actually has the exact opposite effect.  I saw this demonstrated as I watched people leaving the theater.  I don't believe in that particular situation that there were any negative consequences that came from people watching the movie, but it was interesting to see how media in the form of a movie has the potential to affect our mood.