Communication
Communication is one of my weaknesses I would say, I am ok at
communicating in writing and talking to people. However I am tremendously lame
when it comes to public speaking.
This trimester I was given the task of doing just that. It was a presentation on
the male body which in turn
dealt with the writings of Michel
Foucault and Susan Bordo. So I wrote a speech. The presentation, the group
decided, would be on the media and how it influences young boys. Our particular
concentration was on toys and how they are a branch of the media aimed at
controlling what kids like and what they grow up to be like. My role in the
group was to read Susan Bordo’s Gentlemen or Beast?: The Double Bind of
Masculinity and connect it to toys and their role in the influence of young
boys.
My objective for this task was to stay calm and deliver a fairly
understandable view on the problems that arise with toys and
the media as well as the problems they cause with both sexes, male and
female, when they interact. I really understood the connection , it was really
cliché to me. I really wanted to present that clarity and
understanding that I had. All along I had a very different opinion though
and I didn’t know if it would be relevant to our presentation so I kept it
aside.
This assignment really fits into communication, hence the word
communication. My reasoning of why it belongs under this category is because I
know that my involvement in it helped me enhance my capacity to communicate
in a variety of ways. I know that every time I have to write something
like this I am making progress, but that’s the whole point and
the only reason for doing it. So again this helped me see that if I stay
calm I can somewhat deliver an ok idea of my thoughts. It also taught me that I
can limit my ideas but also express some that might not necessarily might be so
obvious.
One of the many paradoxes and contradictions that I found in class and
its discussions was specifically unveiled during my speech, if you want to call
it. That is that the media is not
some hybrid monstrosity or mutation that is separate form us “average” folk.
You know we can sit on our comfortable chairs and
blame the media and talk about it like it is not us. But the reality of
things is that it is us, every single one of us, even children all the way down
to babies. The media is people we know and care about. I don’t doubt it is
someone’s parent, brother and so on, you know the drill. The media is us and
until we become weary of it or realize just that, it will remain us. The way I
see it we are happy with it since we do nothing about it, year after year fads
arise and perish again and against
and every single time within a giving period of a fad people go crazy. They will
do anything to know. Like , and accept the fad. They become the fad, and so who
are they then, well they are the media in a breathing and living form. They are
us and we are them and we are media.
And some might say I am not happy with
the media and I am not the media so your argument is not concrete or completely
accurate. Well the world has not changes media wise, its only gotten stronger
and worst, so obviously those people who say that are not plentiful in this
world. And if they are they have done noting
for the majority rules and until the majority becomes those who truly
care than the media will not hold so much power over “our “lives. But that
can only happen if individuals, those who say they are apposed to it and do
something about it, not just complain. As for me Understand the media and I know
what it is doing and what it does to every new generation. But the truth is I
don’t mind it. Because I accept if I said I didn’t I would be a hypocrite.