The first show we will explore is the MTV show Jersey Shore. The show follows 8 people who are placed in a house together for the summer at the Jersey Shore. On the show each episode consists of the cast going out, partying, drinking excessively coming home and getting into drama. MTV itself has a target demographic of people ages 12-34 (Lankford 35). With other shows on the channel targeted mainly to teenagers, that is the demographic that was viewing Jersey Shore. One of the biggest problems with Jersey Shore aside from the glorification of excessive partying and binge drinking is the fact this it promotes this with no consequences. It shows young viewers that this is okay, by allowing the show to air for six seasons, it promotes this lifestyle as a way of making a living when it the real world its not. When the last season aired in 2012, the average salary was $100,000 per episode, per cast member with some of the cast making over $2 million dollars over the entire season (Salsano). …show more content…
The show sends a message to its young target audience that being drunk and doing outrageous things for attention will make you famous.
Even if your goal isn’t to be famous, it gives the idea that this much partying and drinking is normal. Normalizing this lifestyle and behavior has horrible effects on children. Along with normalizing overindulgent drinking, the show normalized and promotes sex with multiple random partners. This effects young girls in two ways. First, it lowers their self esteem. In the show, we see the male cast members scoping out young women (degrading along the way) for one night stands just to kick them out once they’ve had their way with them. When young girls see this it manifests that their worth is as simple as that. It shows girls that they are worth one night stands, not real
relationships. Secondly, this sexual promiscuity has many potential health effects. The show promotes having sex with multiple partners whenever, but it does not teach safe sex. The show doesn’t discuss the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases or even pregnancy. Jersey Shore as a whole promotes irresponsibility and reckless behavior. By encouraging its viewers to binge drink and have sex with new people every night without showing the negative consequences it has on your health and your mental state, this negatively effects you girls who see this as a normal lifestyle. The next show to be assessed on how in influences you girls is the show Bad Girls Club. Their target age is 16-25. In this “reality” TV show, young women aged 20 to about 26 (occasionally there are older women) are placed into a house to “work on themselves”. The women are on an unsaid quest to prove themselves as the “real bad girls”. The way in which these women generally do prove themselves are through violence. Violence in the form of verbal abuse and just as commonly through physical violence. When they fight, the most common punishment is a sit down with the producers telling them they’re wrong, but that has no effect. Occasionally, if the fight is serious enough, they will be sent home. After being sent home, replacement girls are sent in – something that happens every season - at this point we see an influx in bullying and violence. When the new girls arrive they are subject to intense hazing. Their beds or personal belongings are thrown in the pool and they are harassed sometimes to the point of tears. When young girls watch shows this that celebrate these activities, you girls view it as okay. They portray this life style as entertaining and amusing, causing young girls, who are often easily influenced, to model this behavior. Even the title of “bad girl” is troubling, it produces a polarity between good, safe behavior and bad, reckless behavior, and encourages women to mimic the bad, reckless behavior. Bullying can come in two forms, both of which we see in the show Bad Girls Club. Overt violence, which comes in the form of physical violence or verbal attacks are ever present in the show. Covert violence however can be just as detrimental and these acts are just as common within the show and have more effect on young girls if anything. Covert violence deals with spreading rumors, teasing, and gossiping about a particular person – making them a target. Name calling and excluding people from social settings has an equal effect on young girls as overt violence and it is also more common. Research has shown that “in the short term our own concepts of aggression are activated in the brain when we watch these shows, and we are primed to behave aggressively” (CNN ARTICLE 1). Viewers imitate what they watch. When your target demographic is teenage girls, this will in turn effect the way they act towards their friends, family, and even strangers.
From drunken arguments/ fights to nearly everyone hating each other in the house at some point, Jersey Shore seems to have it all. There’s something about watching drunken guys or girls fight that is both humorous and entertaining. Drama seems to drive this fast pace show leading to no dull moments throughout. Every episode seems to take another turn leaving the viewer to want more. I believe the reason why people enjoy the drama infused during the show because it almost makes them feel better about themselves. People seem to enjoy watching a train wreck of idiotic drama because like the cast everyone has their own struggles in life and by seeing their problems on national television it reiterates that no one is
The show I chose, for my target audience analysis, is called Law and Order SVU. Law and Order appears every Wednesday at nine o’clock on NBC. Law and Order: SVU has been around for 19 seasons, it is produced by Dick Wolf. The show takes place in New York City, and it is about a unit of police officers that investigate sexually-based offenses.
The shows portrays a melting pot of each character lives with money, sex, social media, and relationships unfiltered and toxic, yet irrelevant to the real –world. Another key point is the exploitation of the television world and the millions of viewers, that it’s okay sociably to exemplify deviant behaviors in real –life. Also, culturally and sociably, the reality show creates a bigger problem as the platform provided for the cast is characterized in a negative state. On the negative side, this creates the illusion to act in like manner, from the deviant behavior portrayed on
Sipple, L. (2011). The appeal of reality television for teen and pre-teen audiences. Journal of
...he realization of having sex to young and getting pregnant. Even though these shows reveal some struggle that these young girls have being pregnant and having to raise a child at a young age, I also believe it shows the fascination of it, young girls are impressionable and they only see the families helping these girls, the fun to play dress up and buy nice things for a baby. To a girl that may just want to feel loved or have something to love these shows may give the wrong impression of the way to receive it. I do not believe any show of this nature can help the generation of the girls today. I believe any television show or music that exploits sex, nudity, or body image should be banned or never published to save this generation. Social media needs to have stricter bans with signing up to their sites to try and eliminate under age children to experience it.
How much of television is comprised of real life? By examining one show within its context, one can find the answer. Reality is reflected in the themes; rhetorical strategies; and audience, importance, and popularity. By examining the situational comedy series: Drake and Josh, a popular teen show from 2004, it is possible to see how reality shapes television. Drake and Josh is centered around two brothers in San Diego, California: Drake and Josh. Drake is portrayed as the suave, charming, bad boy in a band. He gets all the girls, leaving Josh in the dust. Josh is a nerdy brainiac, who has an unhealthy infatuation with Oprah Winfrey. They also have a meteorologist father and a kooky mother. Plus, a younger sister who painfully pranks them in
middle of paper ... ... This makes teenagers and other young adults do unruly things to try and gain their own spot in the limelight. Even though reality television is supposed to be this great source of entertainment and may make us happy at the moment, if not watched carefully and really thought about it could ruin someone’s life with its negative values. Works Cited Ann, Oldenburg.
She even belittles Maureen McCormick from The Brady Bunch for a harrowing drug addiction that she thinks is a bad influence on young girls, likewise with Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry, not for their cultural appropriation or racism, but because Miley Cyrus danced on a pole at the Teen Choice Awards and Katy Perry wears revealing outfits and sings about wearing daisy dukes. Being a self-respecting woman or a good role model does not mean you have to give up your confidence and femininity. Telling girls that they should not indulge in “girlygirl” behavior and be proud of their bodies only erases the real issue of corrupt media ideals and outdated patriarchal expectations of women and girls alike. Combe does not pay attention to the importance of subjectivity (in relation to mass media theory); that many girls have their own ideas of what makes them beautiful, and that it’s completely okay to want to be a “rock diva” or “reality star” instead of someone in a science or math-related career. This article has continually asserted young women as the ones at fault for sexualising themselves, stating that they should understand the kind of “messages” that they send out when they wear makeup and tight skirts, and that they should be prepared to handle the type of “reactions” they elicit.
I made a survey in English class asking my classmates about what they think when they hear the word, “Italians.” Most of my classmates answered: pizza, Italian food, Jersey Shore, slicked back hair, and that Italians are fat (Reyes Survey). These stereotypes come from the portrayal of Italians in the media. The Italians are usually found in gangster-related, family or reality shows, for example, Jersey Shore and The Sopranos. Italians in these shows are shown as being in contact with the mafia, having olive skin and dark black hair, are uneducated and flaunt their money around and that they love their pasta and pizza. The portrayals of the Italians are negative since not all Italians are the same.
The first effect of reality shows is the image it gives viewers. Reality shows give misconceptions of everyday life; the Real World and Jersey Shore show young adults relaxing, having a good time, and partying every day. The...
Have you ever looked through a magazine and found it to be really interesting? That is because you are part of its target audience. You are part of a group of people that the magazine is trying to appeal to. There is a reason Sports Illustrated is more of a man’s magazine and Family Circle is more of a woman’s magazine. The people that run that magazine put certain things in those magazines to attract their audience. More commonly, men are interested in sports and anything to do with sports. In Sports Illustrated, the reader would find sports, and that is it. The reader would not find an article titled “How working women balance their careers and home lives.” An article such as that would be found in a magazine like Family Circle, as it is targeted more towards women who have a family. For the purpose of this audience visual analysis, I will be discussing the October 8th, 2012 issue of People magazine. Looking at this issue and reading through the magazine, it is evident that the publishers do have a target audience in mind. This visual analysis will discuss who its target audience is and how the reader can tell. Also, the essay will discuss how the magazine makes the advertisements relevant to its audience.
"Children are influenced by media–they learn by observing, imitating, and making behaviors their own" (APA, 2001, p.1224). Girl’s as young as 4-years sees Britney Spears music clip “Baby One More Time”, who at the time was a 17-year old girl/world pop icon at the time wearing a school uniform showing off her midriff, wearing a lot of makeup and a short skirt. Disney teen icons such as Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana taking personal photos of herself in “sexy” poses and sending it to her ‘older’ boyfriend and then having it all published all over the internet for the entire world to see. Boys also face sexualization too, as has been seen in Calvin Klein ads, where pubescent-looking boys pose provocatively with perfectly sculpted six-pack abs hawking teen fashion These pop culture celebrities both female and male are always in the media, for inappropriate actions and they’re meant to be role models for children. In fact most of these sexualized celebrities are still children themselves. The sad part is it’s not just sexualization being encouraged in the media other negative things such as violence, drug and alcohol use ...
A statistic from the same research shows that in the typical television show there are more than three sexual related scenes per hour. As it is said in the introduction of the report the average teenager is spending more than twenty hours per week in watching television (Nielsen, 1998), so this is why television programs are influencing mostly on younger viewers.
I can recall a time when the media was influencing my life and actions. The week after I graduated high school, my girlfriends and I took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, where the MTV beach house was located that summer. As I look back on the week of drunken partying and sexy guys, I can only wonder how I made it home alive. How could any young woman find this behavior acceptable? Every young woman there was flaunting their bodies to the young men around them. They were proud to be sexual objects. Where did they learn such debauchery? This is the kind of woman that is portrayed throughout MTV and various other aspects of the media. They have even coined the term “midriff”—the highly sexual character pitched at teenage girls that increasingly populates today’s television shows—in order to hook the teen customer. Teenage women increasingly look to the media to provide them with a ready-made identity predicated on today’s version of what’s “cool.” The media is always telling us that we are not thin enough, we’re not pretty enough, we don’t have the right friends, or we have the wrong friends… we’re losers unless we’re cool. We must follow their example and show as much skin as possible. The type of imagery depicted by MTV-- as well as people like Howard Stern, the famous “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and various Hip Hop songs—glorifies sex and the provocative woman.
Profanity and violence are mostly what is involved in reality tv. One advantage of having regulations would be that it would limit violence that can be a bad influence on younger viewers. “After being read arguments on both sides of the issue nearly two-thirds of parents (63%) say they favor new regulations to limit the amount of sex and violence in TV shows during the early evening hours, when children are most likely to be watching (35% are opposed).” (Facts and TV Statistics 2). By watching this kind of program, it encourages people to do what they do because they think that since those people are getting attention by doing that, they will get it too. With that being said, Shannon Kelly writes, “Some worry that if young people look to reality stars as role models, they might imitate the violence committed by the stars.” (Reali...