Marriage is a concept that has been losing its significance in today’s modernising world (Borneman, 1996: 217). The unification of a male and a female is traditionally considered to be a main goal in life. The media, however, has been putting less emphasis on marriage and more emphasis on the emotions surrounding marriage; the emotion of love. Due to the rapid advancement of telecommunications in modern day society, the media is now prevalent in almost every geographic region in the world. Before technology became so widespread, the two main sources of knowledge that a child received was from school and from one’s household (Callanan, 2008: 148). With TV and the internet being available in all four corners of the Earth, the media is taking over as a major source of knowledge to children; it moulds the minds of the present generation (Ward, 2005: 64). The reason why not just children, but all humans follow the media is because the humans shown in the media always have an aesthetic beauty that is far above average (Ward, 2005: 65) and in the end there is almost always the happiness of love. Most forms of media, including movies, television shows and music, focus on the concept of love. Although in western culture, love is the proper reason for marriage (Hendrix: 1), the media addresses love in context with sex. Since the introduction of a concept of love in the late eleventh century, media has manipulated the emotion of love in a way that would best suit society. The concept of “courtly love” came around a time when disease was plaguing Europe and the three ways a disease spread at the time were through the three basic human needs, food, water and sex (Qur’an 2:183). It focused on love being completely non-sexual until m...
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The first chapter begins with an exploration of love and marriage in many ancient and current cultures. Surprisingly many cultures either avoid the discussion of love in marriage or spit on the idea completely. China and other societies believed that love was simply a product of marriage and shouldn’t get too out of hand, while a few Greek and Roman philosophers shunned excessive
Have you ever met someone who acted just as teens are stereotyped? Not many people have because they do not exist. Real teens are poorly portrayed in the media and are the complete opposite of their stereotypes. Books and TV shows make teens out to be wild or crazy, irresponsible and out of control. One hardly ever hears about teen-heroes. Instead, newspapers and magazines are plastered with stories of teens and crime. And while looking at commercial billboards and other related media, the regular teen seems to be sex-crazed and image-obsessed.
In a modern age where the media retains a strong influence on the general population, many youths across the globe are feeling the effects of being misrepresented by media. The characteristics often forwarded by media frequently links youths with that of criminals and gangs. Similarly, depictions of teenagers being ignorant and haughty is now a widespread stereotype. These inaccurate depictions, which are sometimes taken for granted, are causing detrimental damages to the lives of youths and their futures as members of society. Despite the media’s likelihood to portray modern youths negatively, evidence suggests the opposite; that modern youths are in fact responsible,
In the article “The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love” the author, Stephanie Coontz, talks about how love has rarely been the motivating reason for marriage, and how in many cultures it still isn’t. She also informs readers of the reasons why people got married in ancient cultures, different types of motivations for marriage in modern cultures, how the union between spouses often isn’t the most important relationship in other countries, and how marriage is often not monogamous.
Marriage was instituted in the Garden of Eden thousands of years ago. It is an institution and people have different perspective on what is marriage and dating. In this essay, I will attempt to define the concept of 'marriage and dating' from my perspective. Furthermore, similarities and differences of the two concepts will be examined and how it relates to the film on 'arranged marriage' will be explored.
This essay will look at the different ways in which young people are portrayed in the media. It will focus on how the idea of childhood innocence has been challenged by the media and rather than ‘little angels’ children are now seen as ‘little devils’ in the public eye. By looking at ‘The Bulger Case of 1993’ we can see where the idea of ‘little devils’ and children as evil beings began. It will examine why media stories of young people are focused much more on negative aspects such as crime and gang culture rather than positive ones. It will also look at how television programmes such as ‘Teen Mom’ and ‘Skins’ portray the youth of today and whether these programmes come across as a positive or negative portrayal of teenagers. The idea of a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ will also be examined and whether the way the media portrays children can be harmful to the construction of their identities and possibly lead to alienation.
In this century there has been a lot of attention toward the media and how its affects young people. Joyce Garity, author of “Is Sex All That Matters,” and Steve Lopez, “A Scary Time to Raise a Daughter,” write about how media such as magazines, the internet, and television affects teenagers. Both authors talk about how the media is using sex and violence to sell products, thus leading teenagers to commit wrongful deeds, including lack of using birth control leading to unwanted pregnancy, imitating girls on the magazines, and cannot distinct between fantasy and reality. Both Garity and Lopez explains how the teenagers do not have individuality and lose their virginity at a young age; Garity uses personal experience to state the point about media pounding messages about sex and violence directly at young people.
“The Radical Idea of Marrying for love” by Coontz, talked about different definitions of marriage according to different cultures. She also talked about love, marriage, and the relationship between them. Coontz focused on the definitions of “Happily Ever after” and how different people view it. Problems are common between all couples, and Coontz talked about the different problems couples used to go through in ancient ages. The article began by defining marriage as “an institution that brings together two people”, according to George Bernard shaw, and “rarely in history has love been seen as the main reason for getting married”(4).
History of the debate Since the late nineteenth century the media has been a cornerstone of our society. It has, for long periods of time provided the public with a variety of debates. In social policy the amount of influence the media has on the public has been at the forefront of intellectual minds. One of the main groups who have gained the attention of the media since the outset of the 1950’s is youth in their various different forms. These considerations lead to three questions:- * What pressures are present in the production of media material and how do these pressures affect what eventually reaches the public via newspaper reports and other media sources such as television?
The media is often blamed for having a negative influence on adolescent life. Whether it is presented by means of television shows, magazines, advertisements, news, radio or any other means in which people communicate, the media displays an identity to these adolescents that society deems as sexual appeal and is characterized by sex, quality or state of being sexual. Media portrayals add to confusion on personal image, and can affect ones outlook on competition and violence (Federman, 1998). The media influences adolescents’ psychological and physical development during their cognitive development stage when it’s exposed to them (Schmidt, 2008). This is the stage when the adolescent is most vulnerable and sensitive to the surrounding in which they are growing and willingly absorbing information. If explicit behaviors arise often it can be influenced by explicit media exposure.
The Mass Media is a unique feature of modern society; its development has accompanied an increase in the magnitude and complexity of societal actions and engagements, rapid social change, technological innovation, rising personal income and standard of living and the decline of some traditional forms of control and authority.
The adolescent stage must be the subject of the research, in that preliminary research suggests that in the adolescent stage of life, important social aspects are being noticed and formed, especially by way of media, while looking to family for social information or influence diminishes (Arnett, 1995). In researching the effects of media on adolescent views of relationships, one must first research if scholars have yet studied and answered if the media has any relationship or effect on adolescents at all. In the research conversation of media influence on adolescents, it has been found that there are five uses of media by adolescents, including entertainment, high sensation, coping, identity formation and youth culture identification (the two latter uses will be highlighted later in this paper) (Arnett, 1995). With this, adolescent’s use of media for a number of purposes is evident and has been established for some time. Moreover, research suggests that U.S. adolescents spend six to seven hours per day using media, with half of that time devoted to television/film (L’Engle, Brown, & Kenneavy, 2006). Furthermore, many studies have found that heavy television/film viewing does positively correlate with effects on an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions (Shrum, Wyer, & O 'Guinn, 2009). Professor and Researcher Dr. George Gerbner coined and introduced cultivation theory into this communicative conversation. The cultivation theory is defined as the “independent contributions television /film viewing makes to viewer conceptions of social reality (Gerbner, 1998). The cultivation theory describes and has both constructed a platform research in this area as well as prove that me...
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“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses” (Thinkexist, 2010). The mass media, including news, movies, magazines, music, or other entertainment source has become a part of daily life for many people. As the quote mentions mass media and its power are capable of influencing people’s mind and behavior. Contents in the media introduced to young people make it difficult for them to distinguish between what is real and what is not, as a result stimulating confusion and blind imitation. The mass media plays an important role in the increase of violence, sexual activity, and risky behaviors among teenagers.