What I've Learned in Media Crit

I know I have learned a lot in this media class because I can't watch a television show, movie, commercial, music video, anything without analyzing the underlying themes, representations, or meanings. Although the terms were confusing and overlapping at times, I felt that they helped me distinguish between the different aspects in media criticism. I especially liked learning about queer theory, and realized that it is a central part of much our mainstream culture. Now I can find any hint of queerness in so many texts that I would have never noticed otherwise. I also really liked how we used examples from current media texts to examine the topics we would discuss such as the picture of Mark Wahlberg in a suggestive underwear advertisement. Without reading the Doty and Jagose I never would have noticed the ad's queerness. 

The biggest thing I learned in this class is how great of an influence the media is on our society. Media substantially fosters the creation of ideologies, especially stereotypes. Studying stereotypes also allowed me to see how different groups are marginalized, especially minority groups and women. I can now recognize different racial stereotypes and the repeated patterns media uses to portray them. Even the amount of gender stereotypes in the media surprised me, I had never realized how many depictions of female characters were stereotyped, and as a result, has deep effects as it creates our society's ideological perspective.