When a person hears the word prejudice, he or she might think it only refers to the racial prejudice often found between those with light skin and those with dark skin. However, prejudice runs much deeper than a person’s color. Prejudice is found between gender, religion, cultural and geographical background, and race. People have discriminated against others based upon these attributes from the beginning of time. Prejudice has become a complex problem in our society today and much of our world’s history is based upon such hatred.
In the 1600’s, white men used Africans as slaves and treated them as if they were not human. “Colored” people were not even allowed to use the same drinking fountains as white people until the mid-1900’s. Hitler and his men killed over five million people because they were Jewish or were not their definition of “normal. ” The Ku Klux Klan exists today and openly professes its hatred towards Jews and colored people. Our society is riddled with such hatred based upon peoples’ beliefs and origins and it seems millions are fighting each other for no relevant reason at all.
I do believe that we can greatly reduce the amount of prejudice in our world today, yet I do not think that it will ever completely go away. Society has seemingly come to except all races, religions, and genders, and supposedly has achieved “political correctness,” yet there will forever be individuals who discriminate based upon these issues. These individuals often form large groups that recruit new members to enforce their hatred of those with a certain religion or skin tone. Obviously, no one can tell these people that they cannot have their own opinions or beliefs, for they have the right to hate whomever they like.
However, I believe we need to raise our children to accept all people, no matter what god they do or do not believe in or what color skin they may have. If children are raised around people who are not the same as they are, then they will most likely not think anything different of people who do not look the same as them or believe what they believe. If we raise our children to believe all people are equal from the start, then prejudice will slowly disintegrate over time. We, as the human race, need to focus on not judging people before we know them for who they are.
Today, there are so many different people in this world that stereotypes are almost always incorrect, as many people choose not to be followers, but to be individuals. I know many white people who, if they see a young black male standing on the corner, wearing a certain type of clothing, will discern that he is in a gang and has intentions of hurting others. How could someone say such a thing when all they have seen is one’s appearance? The boy standing there could be a great student in school who helps others and plans to become someone important in the future.
Asians, African-Americans, Hispanics, Caucasians, and all other ethnic groups need to look past each other’s physical attributes and start looking inside a person to see who they truly are. After all, personalities do not lie on the outside of one’s body, but in one’s mind. I believe people need to stop “following the crowd” and form their own opinions. I am very sure that few members of the Ku Klux Klan originally felt as if whites are superior to all other races. They simply felt as if they would fit in better and would be more popular or on a higher level if they believed such ideas.
As the Klan gained members, it became more powerful and an increasing number of people felt as if their lives would be improved if they joined the group. Parents and schools need to teach children that people need to have courtesy and kindness towards others, no matter what. People join these racist and religiously biased groups because they feel it will make their lives better, not caring about the others who will be affected by their hatred. Parents need to instill in their children the value of one treating others as they, themselves, would like to be treated truly are.
If everyone in this world had respect for one another, we would live in peace and be able to let others believe in what they wish and accept that everyone is different. I believe it all comes down to parents teaching their children right from wrong in our world and raising them in an environment that is centered around acceptance of different ways of life and cultures of people. If we all teach our children and change our ways, sometime in our future we will be closer to accepting that a man’s character is based upon the content of his soul, not his religion, gender, ethnicity, or the color of his skin.
Essay submitted by Unknown *mailto:* A young woman stands in front of the mirror and is disgusted by the reflection that only she can see. Thunder thighs, flabby arms, and a pot belly obstruct her view of the beautiful, smart, and loving woman who stares back at her. This is exactly the type of person the advertisement agencies and the media prey upon, someone who is self-conscious and ashamed of her body, someone who is willing to go to any length or pay any price to have the “perfect” body. In her essay, “Narcissism as Liberation”, Susan Douglas wrote about the power and influence that the advertisement industry has in America.
The advertisement agencies and the media do not just prey upon self-hating persons, they help to create them. “When an image is presented… , the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions. Assumptions concerning: Beauty, Truth, Status, Taste, etc. (Berger 53). ” We learn from a very early age all about assumptions concerning body image. Television commercials and magazine advertisements teach us that we must look like model and surround ourselves with beautiful things in order to live a worth while life.
We are constantly bombarded with images of beauty” every time we turn on the television set or flip through the pages of magazines. Day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, our minds are being filled with images of “beautiful people” endorsing products that they claim will make us beautiful as well. We believe what these advertisements claim, and we buy the products. After using the product, we begin to compare ourselves to the so called “beautiful people” in the advertisement and soon realize that we do not measure up.
We learn from a very early age that it seems our bodies are inferior to the rest of the world’s. The advertisement industry and the media have the power to influence our opinion on what we see as being beautiful. Advertisements dictate what we must look like in order to be accepted in a world so obsessed with body image. They tell us that it is no longer sexy to have a normal body with a little fat on your bones. The hour glass figure is out of style, while the stick figure is in style. In order to be considered sexy and beautiful in today’s world women must have the tanned body of a half starved adolescent girl.
The advertisement industry and the media created this bizarre body image, and millions of American women buy into buy. A hand cream advertisement ran in Good Housekeeping, a magazine that is mostly read for middle aged housewives. The advertisement shows the right hand of a young women, probably in her twenty’s, with a freshly done manicure and no wrinkles or veins in sight. This Neutrogena New Hands cream promises to “visibly reduce the sings of aging on your hands. ” This little wonder “reduces the look of age spots” and gives your hands “a more youthful tone and texture.
I can see it now, all the housewives flipping through the pages of Good Housekeeping trying to find new recipes, then they come to this advertisement and compare the youthful hand on the page in the magazine. We all want to have the “perfect” body, but we do not want to have to go to the gym and work out for hours to get it. We want it right away with no work involved. We see an advertisement in our favorite magazine for a new product called Dior Svelte Prefect. This new product is “quick, powerful, and effective in controlling cellulite. ” It promises visible results in only one week.
The advertisement shows one side of a women’s firm buttock and toned thigh. This new product seems to be the answer to everyone’s prayers, it’s a miracle in a bottle. Magazine advertisements are not the only things that help create inferiority complexes in women, the magazines themselves do as well. Cosmopolitan, a popular women’s magazine, plays a major role in making women feel insecure about their bodies. Supermodel, Claudia Schiffer, graced the cover of Cosmopolitan’s July 1997 issue. She was photographed wearing a beautiful, yellow, long dress by Calvin Klein.
Her flawless skin, toned arms, perky breast, and svelte body is thrown in the faces of American women and mock them. Cosmopolitan magazine puts this super model, and others like her, on the cover to show it’s readers what they should look like but never will. Cosmopolitan does not just put Claudia Schiffer on the cover, they also have a small article about her. It is an article meant to show that there is more to Claudia Schiffer than just a pretty face. The writer at Cosmopolitan refers to her as “one superbusy supermodel, restaurant mogul, and soon-to-be movie star.
There goes normal women’s theory that the reason why they themselves do not look like a super model is because they are too busy. Claudia Schiffer is “superbusy” and she still as time to spend to make herself beautiful. There is also a question and answer section with Claudia where she must answer the tough questions that Cosmopolitan asks her, questions that the American public want, and need to know. She answers questions about her diet, her favorite makeup looks, and of course the ever so important question about what she takes to every workout. When asked, “What makes a woman beautiful? , Claudia responded, “Her personality.
You have to be beautiful on the inside in order to be beautiful outside. ” Sure, that is easy for her to say when she looks the way she does, but what about the rest of the women who do not look like her? The non-super model population of American women are “bombarded by the message that approval from others, especially men, means everything, and without it you are nothing, an outcast, unworthy and unloved (Douglas 120). ” Advertisements tell us that in order to get approval and to be loved, we must buy all of the products that they sell, then, and only ten will our lives be worth something.
We, women, try so hard to look like Claudia Schiffer that we spend million of dollars each year buying products that the advertisement industry claim will make look like her. And when those products do not work, some women take this beauty obsession one step further by literally starving themselves to death. One of the articles in this issue of Cosmopolitan is called, “Fat Fears. ” This article is about “how to stop torturing yourself and lose pounds. ” Three “diet experts”-Sarah Ferguson, Dr. Robert Atkins, And nutritionist, Carrie Latt Wiatt-answer dieting questions.
Through out this article there are pictures of a young woman wearing a skimpy black bikini. The magazine shows us this picture to reinforce the idea that if we only would follow these tips that the “diet experts” gave us, then we would look like the woman in the black bikini. Another article in Cosmopolitan called, “Why Thongs Turns A Man’s Mind to Mush”, illustrates to women that a man will only love them if the have a model’s body. In the article,”real” men were asked “Which is hotter: thong or bikini? ” The majority of men said they like women to wear thong underwear.
One of the men said, “Regular bikinis look too old-fashioned to me. ” Another man said, “Thongs are sexy; it’s part of the whole “bad-girl” appeal. ” This puts an added pressure on women to have the perfect body in order to wear the thong underwear. Women will want to please their man and keep them happy so that their man will love them in return. There is something about our body that we all would like to change because we feel that our bodies are not good enough, like our height, our weight, our eye color, etc. We want to change ourselves because of the pressure that advertisements places on us to be one of the “beautiful people”.
They make us feel worthless because we do not look like a super model. If the advertisers and the media stopped focusing so much attention on physical beauty and perfection and focused a little more on inner beauty and strengths, then maybe when we would look in the mirror, we would not just see what we look like on the outside, we would be able to see the person we really are. Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing”. D. Bartholomae & A. Petrosky. Boston: Bedford Books, 1996. 46-72 Susan, Douglas. “Narcissism as Liberation” Bartholomae & A. Petrosky.
Boston: Bedford Books, 1996. 117-133 Fabian, Allison. “Fat Fears” Cosmopolitan, July 1997. 190-195 Golin, Mark. “Why Thongs Turn a Man’s Mind to Mush” Cosmopolitan, July 1997. 32 Violence In Entertainment And Its Effect On Society Essay submitted by Unknown *mailto:* Does entertainment influence society’s attitude towards violent behavior? In order to fully answer this question we must first understand what violence is. Violence is the use of one’s powers to inflict mental or physical injury upon another, examples of this would be rape or murder.
Violence in entertainment reaches the public by way of television, movies, plays, and novels. Through the course of this essay it will be proven that violence in entertainment is a major factor in the escalation of violence in society, once this is proven we will take all of the evidence that has been shown throughout this paper and come to a conclusion as to whether or not violence in entertainment is justified and whether or not it should be censored. Television with its far reaching influence spreads across the globe.
Its most important role is that of reporting the news and maintaining communication between people around the world. Television’s most influential, yet most serious aspect is its shows for entertainment. Violent children’s shows like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and adult shows like NYPD Blue and Homicide almost always fail to show human beings being able to resolve their differences in a non-violent manner, instead they show a reckless attitude that promotes violent action first with reflection on the consequences later. In one episode of NYPD Blue three people were murdered in the span of an hour.
Contemporary television creates a seemingly insatiable appetite for amusement of all kinds without regard for social or moral benefits” (Schultze 41). Findings over the past twenty years by three Surgeon Generals, the Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence, the American Medical Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other medical authorities indicate that televised violence is harmful to all of us, but particularly to the mental health of children (Medved 70-71).
In 1989 the results of a five year study by the American Psychological Association indicated that the average child has witnessed 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television by the time he or she has completed sixth grade. In further studies it was determined that by the time that same child graduates from high school he or she will have spent 22,000 hours watching television, twice as many hours as he or she has spent in school (Bruno 124).
In a study by the Centers for Disease Control, published by the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), it was shown that homicide rates had doubled between the introduction of television in the 1950’s and the end of the study in 1994. In that same study other possible causes for the vast increases in violence were studied, “the ‘baby boom’ effect, trends in urbanization, economic trends, trends in alcohol abuse, the role of capital punishment, civil unrest, the availability of guns, and exposure to television”(Lamson 32).
Each of these purported causes was tested in a variety of ways to see whether it could be eliminated as a credible contributor to doubling the crime rate in the United States, and one by each of them was invalidated, except for television. Children average four hours of television per day, and in the inner city that increases to as much as eleven hours a day, with an average of eight to twelve violent incidents per hour. It is also interesting to note that violence occurs some fifty-five times more often on television than it does in the real world (Medved 156).
FBI and census data show the homicide arrest rate for seventeen-year-olds more than doubled between 1985 and 1991, and the rates for fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds increased even faster. Movies also add their fair share to the problem of violence in society. “Researchers have established that copycat events are not an anomaly. Statistically-speaking, they are rare, but predictable, occurences. Television shows, novels, but especially movies-all can trigger copycat violence” (Medved 72).
As recently as November of 1995, New York City officials believed that the burning of a toll-booth clerk was a result of copycat violence, resulting from a similar scene in the movie Money Train. In 1994, Nathan Martinez shot and killed his stepmother and half sister after watching the movie Natural Born Killers at least six times. “Later, Martinez, who had shaved his head and wore granny sun glasses like Natural Born Killer’s main character Mickey Knox, reportedly told a friend, “It’s nothing like the movies”(Purtell 57).
In a 1993 film, The Program, there was a scene showing college football players lying in the center of a highway in an attempt to show their courage and dedication to their sport. This movie was later blamed for inspiring real-life imitators; (one of whom died). In numorous experiments based at pre-schools, researchers have observed children playing before and after seeing violent movies and television shows. “Following the violent program the children’s play is invaribly more aggressive. They are much more likely to hit, punch, kick, and grab to get their way.
In other words, violent entertainment teaches children how to use aggression for personal gain” (Medved 75). It is also hard to believe that movies like Rambo III with one hundred and six killings and Terminator 2 which showed countless killings plus a nuclear holocaust have at one time had their own line of children’s action figures even though both movies are rated R. One must seriously consider the idea that the movie studios are targeting a younger and easily influenced main audience. The ancient Greeks believed that violence should never be shown on stage, because people imitated what they saw.
Because of this they would only show the results of violence in order to deter any violent activity. The Greeks slowly but surely moved away from this idea as did other playwrights, and by the late 1500’s a new writer with a new view on violence was beginning to write plays. His name was William Shakespeare. Many critics were bothered by Shakespeare’s failure to follow the rules of the ancient Greeks, especially the rules concerning violence, but they also objected to Shakespeare’s comic sexual passages, which they considered vulgar.
Shakespeare was a writer during what has historically been called the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare’s plays reflect the shift from optimism to pessimism in Elizabethan society. “Elizabethans were keenly aware of death and the brevity of life” (Info Find), but death and violence fascinated the Elizabethans. “They flocked to the beheadings of traitors whose heads were exhibited on poles and watched as criminals were hanged, and they saw the rotting corpses dangle from the gallows for days” (The Student Handbook 2: 591). Elizabethans, literature and lives were very violent.
In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet all the main characters die through murder or suicide, all of which is shown on stage. Those critics who say excessive violence has only become a common occurence in today’s entertainment, should watch Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus with its’ stage direction, “Enter a messenger with two heads and a hand” (Klavan 98), or they should watch as quarts of stage blood are poured all over the “victims” in that same play. Novels, just like television, movies, and plays can cause violence. Throughout history novels have been the cause of violent behavior.
Those who say people can’t be influenced by books, should really look into the influence that a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin had ten years prior to the Civil War. In 1851 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe was published. The novel told of the hardships and cruelties faced by African-American slaves in the south. The novel popularlized the abolitionist movement and is believed to have been a major cause for the Civil War, which even though a noble cause, resulted in over 500,000 deaths (The Student Handbook 2: 592). In 1980 Mark Chapman, a former mental patient, shot and killed John Lennon.
When asked why he did it, he indicated that he got the idea to kill Lennon from J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye (590). He felt that he and the main character in the story, Holden Caufield, were very similar because they were both angry social outcasts, who were recovering from a mental breakdown (590). Violence is prominent in children’s novels too. R. L. Stine’s novel The Babysitter III, tells of decapitating a baby and in Christopher Pike’s novel, Monster, there is a graphic description of the effects of a shotgun being fired at a person’s head at close range.
Roderick McGillis, a professor of English at the University of Calgary and author of a book on children’s literature, has written that, “What disturbs me is that we’re developing in our culture, in our cities, a kind of siege mentality. A lot of thes books reinforce this, make it sort of normal to think that the world is a place in which violence can erupt at any moment” (Gray 54). With all of this evidence it is hard to ignore the fact that violence in entertainment can cause violence in society. This paper has now shown that there are copycat kilers who get the idea for their crimes from entertainment.
It has also been shown that the more violent movies and television children watch the more likely thay are to become aggressive and violent. Violence in entertainment and society is not isolated to the present, it was also very prominent in the writings of Shakespeare. With the evidence showing that violence in entertainment causes real life violence, it is very hard to say that violence in entertainment is justifiable. When little children and adults alike, fall victim to entertainment’s violent influence it is not justifiable and it is especially not justifiable when violent entertainment creates real life victims.
Is censorship the answer to the problem of violent entertainment? Should we tell people what they can or can’t read or watch? The simple answer to this question is no, we can’t censor violent entertainment. The First Amendment clearly states that: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The instinct to censor is the tragic flaw of utopian minds. “Our first job,” said Plato in his classic attack on the democratic system , “is to oversee the work of the story writers, and to accept any good stories they write, but reject the others” (Klavan 96). If the government ever did censor violent entertainment who knows where they would stop, or even if they would. Perhaps they would try to censor violent speech or try to censor the speech of those who disagreed with the actions of the government.
The simple message is don’t promote censorship, because it could easily get out of hand, and as the old saying goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions. ” There are then only two ways to get rid of the violent entertainment in our lives: we could shame those who make the violent movies, television shows, books, and plays, into having a social conscience, making them be less prone to creating violent entertainment; or we could simply solve the problem ourselves, with a push of a button, or the turn of a page.
