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.