Question 13

b

Question 12

b

Question 10

b

Question 11

Both the Radway article "Women Read The Romance: The Interaction of Text and Content" and the Ouellette article "Inventing The Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams" seamlessly fit along with my overall topic for the semester. The articles discuss the use of fantasy in advertising as well as the construction of certain demographics. This Gucci advertisement blatantly displays the elements of female fantasy, being dominant over a man in more ways than one, and a possibly 'typical' Cosmo girl.

Question 9

In the story from The Onion Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail, they are parodying the idea that Obama is a terrible president who is unfit to be running the country. Clearly, everyone has a right to his or her own opinion, but Fox News has always taken their conservative Republican views to the extreme over and over again, such as in the segment Fox News Blames Obama for Jay-Z and Young Jeezy Lyrics. The anchorwoman in this segment acts as though she is appalled that rappers are cussing and, of course, because they are black like Obama, their actions and words are reflected by Obama himself, who actually had nothing to do with the incident. Gatekeeping, the process in which information is filtered before its publication, and agenda setting, the practice of supporting and twisting certain stories in order to adhere to a certain viewpoint, are both blatantly obvious here. Fox News' agenda is against Democrats and Obama, while The Onion article is a critique of this.

Question 8

Both of these documentaries, especially in their first parts, heavily touch on the ideas of cultural studies and political economy. I noticed that Mouse Trapped was a bit more focused on political economy, while Mickey Mouse Monopoly discussed aspects of cultural studies more. In Grossberg’s article, he states that, in the argument over the differences between cultural studies and political economy, “the issue has always been how one thinks about the relationships or links between the different domains (forms and structures of practices) of social life” (627). Cultural studies focuses much more on the actual culture itself, while, to an extent, somewhat ignoring the broader social context. In Mickey Mouse Monopoly, it is discussed how Disney has formed a media monopoly that dictates what news gets out and is heard by the public, an example of political economy.

Question 7

The film How to Make Your Breasts Look Bigger is a critique on how women go about using their breasts to accomplish things, as well as a reference to stereotypical pornography story lines, with the 'I need to call a handyman to fix my radiator and use sexual innuendo while wearing a bra to do it' parody. It is an appropriation because it uses the idea of putting down women in porn, yet reappropriates it by using the porn as a critique of the original idea. Same goes for the appropriation and reappropriation of the sexual signifiers from early pornography; they are use to critique the original idea of women using their bodies to gain what they want.