Movies and Television Shows Should Include Better Role Models for Their Audiences Essay Example for Free

Movies and Television Shows Should Include Better Role Models for Their Audiences Essay I’m sure it has happened plenty of times. When you finish watching a movie and afterwards feel so inspired. This is often when the movie hero was presented as someone we would like to be or has a personality that we admire. Sometimes it can be other characters that are shown to be â€Å"cool†, attractive, and popular that also inspires us to mimic their personality traits. Movies can also prompt us to try certain activities. Of course this can be seen as the beneficial side of media; the fact that there could be that one movie that has the power to influence someone to become a better person. But like almost everything, there’s a downside to it too. The fact that media can be convincing in positive ways suggests that it can equally convey negative messages as well. The way that movies or television shows portray their characters is something that definitely needs to be paid attention to. The rebellious heroes, senseless social statuses, and unhealthy activities characters engage in are all factors that will influence the audience. Therefore it is important to consider whether it is worth presenting the characters in this way. A large majority of movies are presenting their characters as bad people, yet the people that anyone would find themselves wanting to be. I believe that is wrong, thus movies and TV shows should include better role models for their audiences. Current movies portray violence without consequence, inaccurate representations of social statuses and social interaction, and encourage characters to engage in activities with more harm than good. Many of the heroes in movies happen to be quite rebellious and are often involved in violence. It’s usually the fact that they’re so involved in violence that helps them obtain their cool, heroic status. The characters we see as role models are always showing that violence can be used as a quick fix for conflicts to avoid negative consequences. K. A. Earles states, â€Å"This depiction of violence increases the probability that violence will be one of the first strategies chosen by a child. † Bandura, a professor in psychology at Stanford University demonstrated that preschoolers learn aggressive behavior by watching television. Three groups of children were shown a film n which a man commands a human-sized doll to move, and when it did not he hit the doll with his fists, a mallet, and then rubber balls. In other words, he used violence as an immediate strategy. Group one saw the man rewarded. Group two saw the episode end without reward or punishment. Group three saw the actor receive a verbal lecture. After watching the film, the children in groups one a nd two were seen to behave more aggressively than the ones in group three. This proves that the consequences characters find themselves facing has quite a strong impact on how the audience will act. What encourages violence even more is that it is often carried out by the hero in the story line who is then rewarded for his/her endorsement in violence. â€Å"Such constant exposure to portrayals of physical violence, some of which viewers do not even recognize as violent, may dull a child’s aversion to this behavior. † says K. A. Earles. Reenactments of national worldwide disasters such as terrorism scenes or brutal wars are one thing. But for a fictional superhero to battle and beat his â€Å"enemies† with realistic and bloody dramatizations is not a good way to entertain kids. There aren’t many positive or useful characteristics of the role model heroes for the children to gain besides their â€Å"charismatic† and â€Å"brave† personalities but they express these lovely character traits through violence. They care for the ones who are in danger so they save them with violence. As they stand up to their enemy and begin to battle them they show out their bravery. These heroes are showing young boys that if you are not strong enough, not brave enough to endorse in a physical fight then you are not capable to be someone as amazing and powerful as they are. Physical strength is spotlighted while intellectual strength is forgotten. Sharon Lamb, a professor of mental health at University of Massachusetts-Boston surveyed 674 boys aged 4 to 18 to analyze marketing trends for action figures and movies. This resulted in violence, emotional aloofness, and general hyper-masculinity being the main messages directors of these movies are promoting to young boys. This shows us that there aren’t many useful or healthy things these movies are promoting to their audiences. This only leads me to conclude that directors need to think over the way they are presenting their heroes. Violence is not the only existing strategy. As well as action movies, there are the modern teenage soap operas. I’ve noticed that these programs have a distorted portrayal of the theoretically existing teenage social statuses. There are always the good people and the bad people, the â€Å"cool† people and the â€Å"lame† ones. Although most television programs are to entertain, having a message or lesson for the audience to gain is also important. As mentioned earlier, the way the characters are portrayed is very significant to the audience since they are what influence the audience. There are the more obvious heroes which are the supermen in action movies but the less spotlighted ones in calmer, closer-to-reality programs. In these kinds of films, the â€Å"hero† would be a character the audience finds themselves admiring and looking up to. This depends on the way the characters in the film are presented. A person who our society would admire and want to be has very precise but general character traits; a confident, rich, bossy girl who has an attractive appearance and good leadership skills. It’s practically the same for boys. Society’s image of a picture perfect female or male is neglecting the many other personality traits of a human being that makes them a good and interesting person. Movies present the â€Å"popular guy† typically as someone who is necessarily good at sports for instance, and send the message to younger boys that if they are not good at sports they can’t expect to be at the top of the theoretical social scale regardless of other good qualities they can have. The same goes for girls. These films portray the â€Å"popular† girls as girls who are very narrowed down in their interests. Female adolescents are portrayed as being obsessed with their appearance. † Smart people are shown to be socially unaccepted. â€Å"Intellects are frequently viewed as social misfits. † These movies are encouraging and strengthening society’s distorted image of who the â€Å"popular† kids should be and contribute to a very inaccurate picture of what social interaction and social status is built on in reality. Young girls or boys may start to think that if they are not what the â€Å"cool kids† are presented as in movies, then they will not be successful or liked. This is definitely not the kind of message that should be sent to the younger generations. Lastly, quite a few of the activities characters in movies or TV shows engage in are not healthy and do not set good examples for young teens. The usage of alcohol and drugs is always by the cool, popular kids who will then convince the kids and teens a part of their audience to try them at one point. â€Å"Social Learning Theory suggests that children learn by watching, imitating, and assimilating. † This only proves that the majority of the children that are exposed to media that is practically encouraging alcohol and drug usage will most likely try it in attempt to imitate their role models. Movies propel the idea of these bad habits being â€Å"cool†. With teenagers picking up their first cigarette as early as 14 years of age, evidently there’s a problem. As many parents and adults may have noticed, kids/teens are beginning to have a distorted idea of what sex is all about and media may be the main cause for their way of thinking. Many movies and shows portray it as a normal thing to indulge in, therefore teens are enacting what they see from the media and often end up being pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease. A study was done on 75 girls in which half were pregnant. It was found that the pregnant girls watched more soap operas than the non-pregnant girls and were found more surprised when told that their favorite soap opera characters used any sex protection. According to the National Survey of Children, males who watched more television were found to be more sexually active than the ones who watched less television. â€Å"Television may be a significant contributor to the sexual practices and attitudes of young people. † All of these things may be a part of a movie to show what it’s like out there but there must be some sort of proof of it being a bad thing to no give out the wrong message. Having characters in movies continuously smoking cigarettes and never even considering the consequences of having sex may influence kids in a completely wrong way. All of these reasons strongly suggest that the role models portrayed in movies and television shows can influence the younger audiences in negative ways. If teenagers are continuously exposed to such behaviors their minds will adjust to thinking in a certain way and no matter how hard their loved ones will afterwards try to convince them that these activities are wrong, that these behaviors are wrong, they will not be capable of changing their minds. Dear parents, are you okay with your 14 year old daughter already indulging in sexual activity, and your 15 year old son reacting violently and aggressively to any confrontations? Dear world, do you believe it’s acceptable for young girls to stress about their appearance and feel bad about themselves simply because of the way they look? For boys to believe that sports are what they are bound to engage in to be liked? Directors of movies should start to think how to get society to think differently, rather than encourage its shallow beliefs. Fighting scenes should not be the only entertaining scenes for kids. More creative ways of how to entertain children in a positive way could be thought of. The modern teenage popular kids should all have different interests and be liked for who they are and not what they look like. Pathetic assumptions and senseless social statuses in general should be presented in a brighter way in programs. Unhealthy activities should be portrayed as the bad things to do rather than the â€Å"cool† things. Kids will follow their role models, and if they’re role models are doing good things, it’s likely they will too.

The Mayor Of Casterbridge Essay -- essays research papers

Literature: The Mayor of Casterbridge   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Can it be said that Henchard's downfall is all due to 'some great error?' Some may believe that it is a penance for selling Susan, but this would be to take Newson out of the equation, who, it must be said, is just as guilty of this act as Henchard. I believe that Henchard is totally blameless for his downfall, to use a bad pun that will become apparent later, it is in his nature. It is my belief that Henchard is a personification of nature. It is obvious that his life has completed a revolution but when you look closely, you can see that Henchard's life resembles the seasons.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Our first image of Henchard is one of winter, his clothing is described as '…a short jacket of brown corduroy…white horn buttons…and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas.'; Black, brown and white conjure images of the countryside in the heart of winter for me. Hechard's life is in a rather bad point but things start looking up when he sells Susan, it is at this point that he moves into spring. We are told little of what happens between Susan's sale and when she comes looking for him but I would say that during this period Henchard passes through spring as he gives up liquor and moves into summer when he becomes mayor. When we next see Henchard he is on the brink of autumn, his progression down through the social strata is very autumnal as his creeps, inch by inch, t...

Making Children Hate Reading Essay

Making children hate reading is a book by John Halt. It shows the way he teached and his opinion of others and the method he used to help the children with their literacy skills. In John Halt’s book there are some methods he used that I don’t agree with and some that I do agree with. I will give detailed accounts of both teaching methods I agree with and one’s I don’t agree with the I will let you decide whether you agree with his teaching or not. In the beginning John Halt tells us that he never gave one of his students the opportunity to say what they really thought about a book or magazine. The children persuaded him to tell him what he wants to hear, so that when he asks them a question they can answer it and receive approval. He also gives the students tests about the books and vocabulary lists which they have to learn, also that if they came across a word they didn’t know to look it up in the dictionary and not to bother him. His nephew was given a book to read which in john halts opinion was bad book. Then the teacher proceeded to make sure they children under stood every single word and the meaning of sed words. John agreed with this method and used it on his own students. John halt began to question some of the teaching methods. With regards to looking up words you do not know in the dictionary, he was beginning to think twice. He had never looked up a word that he didn’t know in the dictionary he merely continued reading hard books and eventually gathered the meanings of the words he did not understand. As John taught a verity of age groups in the same mental area he started to develop theories about why students reading and writing suffer. His theory, Teachers. Or specifically English teachers. When a student is forced to read aloud it makes them nervous. They then stumble when reading and sometimes forget how to pronounce a word. Then the students start to laugh and the teacher makes them feel embarrassed. If this happens a few times then that person is put of reading and will sometimes refuse altogether to read out loud. For example when I was five years old I started school, and I was really happy, I couldn’t wait. When I got to English I was put in an advanced class because my vocabulary was extremely good for my age. I was told to read and I read well, until I came across a word that I didn’t know how to say it and all the other kids in the classroom started laughing at me. That made me feel really bad and at such a vulnerable age having that humiliation changed everything about school life for me. Ever since then I do not like reading aloud it makes me nervous. I can read aloud when im on my own but when it comes to speaking in front of people it really puts be back. Even now I steel have difficulty with speaking aloud an example of this is this year in English. We were told to talk about a character from the play Macbeth. To explain what their role in the play was. We were to sit in front of the class. I had planned out a really good piece of work but everyone else did something different and I’m used to being told of if I do something different so I jumped the notes and tried to make it up as I went along. Alas this did not work my nerves got the better of me and I got a lousy grade. This story show that it can happen only one time and it can change everything to do with speaking. John Halt realized this and tried to change it. He tried having the students that were nervous read aloud more often but sadly this did not work either. He was stumped. Then BAM. It hit him. If he lets the students read books that they want to read then maybe this will help then and guess what. It did. The holidays were coming up and John decided to try something new. Something that no other English teacher has done before. He told his students to read as many books as they wanted and he would not be testing them on it. So just enjoy reading books. He also said that if you don’t like a book red the first forty pages to give the writer a chance to get his story going and then If you don’t like the characters and you don’t care what happens to them put the book down and find a book you do want to read. He had found a way to help students come over their fear of reading aloud but the students still suffered from writing. Not being able to write what they were thinking down. John Halt devised a way to deal with this too. He had a new class and decided now was the right time to try out his theory. He split his class into groups and told them to write about anything they wanted as long as it wasn’t just the same word over and over again for the whole page. This worked very well. All the students including the not so bright students to come up with incredible stories. Their favorite stories were written by one of their class mates who had been writing a lot of his stories about things that happened to John Halt, they all found them very amazing and humorous stories. One day he decided to give them a topic to write about instead, and of course they all wined until they found out what they were going to write about. They were all enthusiastic that they would be writing about the day the school burnt down. John then heard about a professor had come up with another idea, which he decided to bring to hi classroom. He told his students that they were to write about anything non stop for twenty minuets, and if they got stuck keep writing the sentence before until an idea comes to you. This of course was a genus idea and it did indeed help students with their writing and although John Halt did not know it at the time, all the students handwriting and their spelling had improved just by helping them think for themselves. If you agree with the harsh way of teaching with all the x-raying books and what not and telling them to look it up in the dictionary so that they don’t bother you then I have a piece of advice for you. DON’T BECOME A TEACHER!!! If you agree with the kind helpful way of teaching good on you. Its people like you that make are country great. You picked the right side to be on, because all you old folk who still believe in the harsh stuff, be warned we are coming to get you. It’s your chouse of course, just letting you know what will happen if you pick the dark side. MWA HA HA HA HA.

“The hunting community ensures that wildlife populations...

â€Å"The hunting community ensures that wildlife populations of game species are sustainable from one generation to the next† (Gibbons 1). Land can only feed and house so many animals before all life naturally dies off and kills the surrounding area. Once animals are over populated something must be done to restore balance to the ecosystem. Natural selection in the environment is not enough for many animals to keep populations at a manageable rate. This is where hunters come in, hunters help to lower populations in environments to allow other animals and life to thrive in a humane way that costs less than any other method of control. It is common now for ecosystems to become over run with a species of animal that will overtake the area they†¦show more content†¦Each environment can only handle so many animals before the environment crumbles and the over populated animals starve to death and overlap into other animals’ food and kill off many other animals. â₠¬Å"Wildlife levels have been on the rise and are now at a point of overflowing their carrying capacities† (Emmons 3). So the need for controlling animal populations is growing. Thanks to the increase of population of humans, we are taking more and more land which is making many environments become much smaller or disappear. With the shrinking environments it becomes easier to reach the carrying capacity because the carrying capacity shrinks due to the limited environment they can access. â€Å"Hunting is now a necessary mechanism for the population control of many wildlife populations† (Emmons 3). It is safer and easier for people to open hunting in many places then it is for the government to trap and move animals to different locations where they would survive better. Hunting promotes a better ecological balance so that forests and other landscapes can thrive as a whole along with all of the animals that rely on the same land as those that are over populated. Hunters not only help the environment by controlling populations, they work with conservation and ecological groups to build and conserve wildlife and land. Hunters and environmentalists share a common love, that of beautiful forests and landscapes and watching animals even though their intentions areShow MoreRelatedWildlife Tourism : A Positive Or Negative Effect On Society2149 Words   |  9 PagesWildlife Tourism Introduction This portfolio will first of all be discussing the topic wildlife tourism, which can be enjoyable for tourists. 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