Romanticize the stalking

Facebook is one of the most popular social networks we use every day because it could help us to know what our friends are doing and feeling. It is also famous for the understanding of customers when keep improving and adding many functions for users to optimize their benefit when using it. One of the special functions of Facebook is the Close friend list, which helps you to keep track of what those in the list are doing on other Facebook pages, from a "like" to any comment of them to public posts. This act of keeping track may be considered as a kind of showing care to your beloved people when you do it with a good purpose, but let imagine if whatever you do on Facebook now is known by your haters or anyone with bad purposes, you might fell annoyed, hostile or scary of what could hapen to you, right? In this case, Facebook is helping people to do such things called “Stalking” which is a pattern of repeated and unwanted attention, harassment, contact or any other course of conduct directed at a specific person.

Actually pop music has used the troupe of stalking in a long time and marked this action as “romance”. But there is a fact that pople who are “followed” by stalkers do not see that action as sweet and feeling good about it at all. Recently,  Robin Thicke has been criticized for his new video as a kind of stalking to his ex-wife (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/25/robin_thicke_s_get_her_back_video_why_the_blurred_lines_singer_looks_like.html). However, the action of stalking is still considered not a dangerous thing in many movies and such actions even usually are "romanticized" in films. One of the typical example is “Wall-E” cartoon of Pixar Animation.

From the first time Wall-e and Eve met each other, audience could see Wall-e fell in love with Eve, and what he does after the first-met is exactly “stalking”. Let’s take a look at the script of the film:

LOUIS ARMSTRONG'S "LA VIE EN ROSE" PLAYS

         

          Eve scans through the market.

          Wall-E follows from a safe distance.

          A stray puppy-dog.

          (…)           

         

          EXT. BNL REFINERY - NIGHT

         

          Wall-E perched on the roof.

          Patiently watches Eve fly.

          She scans the ground below her, like a searchlight.

         

          Eve comes in for a landing below.

          Shuts down for the night.

          Wall-E waits.

          Quietly sneaks down the refinery fire escape.

          Accidentally trips. Tumbles to the ground.

          Eve doesn't wake.

          Wall-E creeps up to her.

          Opens his arms wide...

          ...and measures her.

(…)

                                                              

         

          EXT. BNL REFINERY - NEXT MORNING

         

          Eve powers up again.

          Does a double take.

          A TRASH SCULPTURE OF EVE stands in front of her.

          She hovers away, unimpressed.

          Doesn't notice Wall-E hiding behind a PILE OF PIPES.

          (….)

         

Pixar Animation has created the scenes of Wall- E’s stalking as a romantic one when using the “Lavie en rose” songs and make the audience see how embarrassed Wall E is when he does not dare to approach Eve. The problem here is that by “romanticizing ” the stalking action, Pixar Animation are now reinforcing the norms that people engaging this behaviors are admirable, desirable, romantic, persistent or excusing for that action as just falling in love. Additionally, this male the seduction and abuse become indistinguishable. With the accumulation of acceptance of "stalking"through films overtime, the action might become acceptable in some ways in real life. When making a cartoon film, Pixar Animation of course know that a main part of their audiences is children in general and girl in particular, which are still naïve and know little about the world. However, in real life, seduction and abuse is really popular and could become a danger to any girl, and the action of promoting such kind of conduct implicitly like that is not really good at all. 
What if any abuse or seduction happened to any girl who is the watcher of the film because she does not notice that the action of anyone following her in real life is dangerous, due to what she has seen in cartoon movies like “Wall- E” ? If that happens, will Pixar Animation and their fame be “safe” when parents realize the negative impact of the film to their kids? While parents suppose the producer to make a movie with meaningful and good lessons of life for their kids, what Pixar Animation did here is in an opposite way: they portrayed a dangerous action in real life as a sweet expression of love in their movie. This could makes parents dissatisfied with that film in particular and many Pixar Animation in general so that Pixar Animation sales could be reduced by losing their current customers when parents do not want to let their children to watch Pixar Animation films. 

Now Pixar could do nothing to change the “Wall E” film, but they could take action to avoid “Stalking” in next cartoons. This sounds difficult because love is always the best theme for films and the image of a man try to approach his girl is really popular which seems to be unavoidable. The suggestion for Pixar now is that they could change the scene of “stalking” to other ways of showing love such as the image of the men thinking about his crush, or coming to talk to her. The point here is to promote the idea that love could still be sweet when emotion is expressed and people all know about it. True love is not just when "being- in- silence". The  long-term solution to Walt Disney is that they should make a good balance between what is in reality and what should be “romanticized” to be used in any product. Once again, the problem of portraying the truth in media should be carefully taken into account.

The Hufflington Post and social responsibility

As a Vietnamese girl, I was really surprised when I was asked about top 5 most popular topics covered on the news. The answer from American friends and mine is likely to be the same: Politics, War, Education, Tax and Poverty. However, when I look at American mainstream newspapers such as New York Times or USA today, things is much different. On the column of Hufflpost’s big news pages, we could find Politics, Media, Entertainment, Business, etc, but poverty even is not in this list of The Huffington Post.

Poverty, which is known as a severe social problem, is not reflected in the media as accurately as we think. The percentage of poor people in reality is much larger than what is portrayed on The Hufflington Post. What did you think of when reading a post mentioned “the poor”? Is it the image of a group of thin people living in houses in bad condition? Or are they the black? There is a fact that when you enter the Poverty part of The Hufflington Post, you could find nearly a half of posts using the image of the black, especially black kids. By selecting some images of the reality of the black poor family and making them more noticeable to the audience, the reporters make us pay more attention to that image rather than others. This explains why when we talk about the poor, people have tendency to think about black family with many children. Poverty is also portrayed as a threat or suffering of the whole society on the media. Here are titles of some typical posts on The Hufflington Post: “Low Poverty Rates Mask Deeper Despair In Many States”, “More Cities Are BasicallyMaking It Illegal To Be Homeless”, “45 Million Americans Still Stuck Below Poverty Line”, etc. Such words as “despair”, “illegal”, “stuck” partly frames what the audience think about the poor. By framing, I mean when the media focuses attention of audience on some events provided with certain meanings.

The Hufflington Post is known as a liberal website, whose audiences are expected to care much about the social situations. When one of the issues of society is framed in such particular way (that might be found in other pages but not expected to be shown on The Hufflington Post), this becomes a problem. On many pages, stories of the poor are often represented without the social context. There are many reasons causes poverty, such as the lack of basic resources, or the consequences of earthquakes, floods, or when poverty is handed over from generations to generations. But these outside factors is barely mentioned on many online newspapers. The poor, in general, is also portrayed as experiencing their own culture instead of having no other options. The Hufflington Post- as one of the mainstream media channels- did a good job in reflecting the social issue with its underlying cause. However, that’s just the case with the context of their posts. By framing through images of black people and the title of the posts, The Hufflington Post implicitly reinforce the stereotype of the poor on their page. By doing that, audience who wants to access the accurate information about poverty and who are willing to take actions to solve the problem could be misled to feel sympathy for the poor instead of taking actions as soon as possible to manage the problem.

As one of the mainstream newspapers, The Hufflington Post should make a change to give the audience the good frame of the reality. It might be really difficult for small and unpopular pages to do that because they did a bad frame for their post, but to The Hufflington Post, the task is much easier. They just need to change their frame in some ways, such as using more suitable images for their posts, or considering the match between posts and images more carefully. Treatment recommendation for the problem or calling for actions is also needed in their posts so that their goal of doing social outreach could be attained. The media plays an important role in shaping public opinion and the media channel hold a part of responsibility to improve the social condition. By representing the real problem with the adequate image and providing the good treatment recommendation, The Hufflington Post could not only keep it position as one of the mainstream media channels but also fulfill their social responsibility.

Columbia Pictures and agenda setting

I am a Vietnamese student and I arrived Fort Collins about 2 months ago. Actually, America is not really like what I have imagined, or at least what I have “known” about it through the media. With the impression that violence might occur anytime and anywhere (as what I saw in many American films with my dad on Star Movies, HBO, etc), I have some fear before coming here. However, I finally realize that what arouses my anxiety is not the USA itself but things called “cultivation”. And one of the most popular American film production and distribution studio I know and wanna send message to today is Columbia Pictures Industries (CPII).

Cultivation is known as the theory about the impact of media on audiences. When we watch entertainment programs repeatedly, we begin to internalize what is portrayed on TV. What I have observed from films especially the products of American films in general and CPII in particular is that brutal scenes take places very often. You could easily find a film with the scene of killing people, fight, hijack, kidnap, etc on the internet, the cinema or on TV. Of course, this has huge impacts on people from all ages. In my opinion, watching violence film could help adults release stress in some ways because we could reveal our hidden emotions inside when stress in our daily life could be accumulated over time However, in daily life, people try to keep calm and avoid the “explosion” as much as possible. Through imitation of films, adults might have the tendency to get into fight and “explode” his stress in many ways including violence when he loses his temper. They might not be aware of that watching violent films on regular basis could cause them to act more aggressively and uncontrollably. Violent films also raising fear of the society on audience. Is there much violence in reality as what is shown in action films? The answer might be “Yes” if we take a look at the online news. The main topics founded from different online news pages are politics, taxes, wars and violence. If the real world is portrayed exactly on the online news channels, we are living in such a dangerous world! Actually, what we see on those media has been affected by the agenda setting theory.

The theory of Agenda setting said that press and media does not reflect the reality. They filter it and shape it. The media concentrates on few issues, make people believe that something is more important than the others. That’s the reason why by the exposure to news about violence on the media, people tend to pay more attention to violence and we may believe what is portrayed in entertainment programs.

But why should CPII show concern about the relationship between cultivation theory and agenda setting? That is because their products are negatively and directly affected by the frequency of news about violence on the media. How many action films of Columbia Pictures Industries are produced each year and on TV every month? What is the number of violence news that a citizen catches in a day? The audience might be getting more and more tired of the “violence-everywhere”. We could easily find many violent movies in the list of Columbia Pictures Industries : Salt, Django Unchained, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Ghost Rider, Total Recall, The Equalizer, etc. As one of the biggest film industry in America, CPII is supposed to offer an escape from the stress of everyday life by their products. They are expected to bring more love, friendship, hope and happiness to their customers instead of too many brutal scenes. The short- term gain could be the increase in sales and revenue from such films, but what might be the long- term lost when people are fed up with the world full of aggressive behaviors and conflicts? What if adults realize negative impacts of Hollywood films on themselves and their children?

The suggestion is that Columbia Picture Industries should try to estimate and control the frequency of their violent products. The simplest solution, of course, is to reduce the number of violent films and scenes in their products. In such films, the cost of violence and punishments should be shown more obviously, the contextualization should be better. What about reviews from the customers? Yes, they also play an important role. The producer should pay more attention to the rating and comments of the audience so that they could know what they should focus on when making their products. We live in a stressful world, you know, and entertainment programs should offer a way out of tough time instead of being stuck in violence and crime. If CPII do realize that our lives are “boomed” by enough violent news, and many other producers are producing the same tons of action films, and if they considers about introducing films with more “peace” and happiness, they might become a leader for a new trend. It does sound good, right?