David Hernandez
English 102
Professor Chris Rabe
The Media We Don’t Need
In the 21st century one of the biggest sources of information is the media. Without the use of
media, big part of the population wouldn’t have access to important and necessary information
about topics as the global economic situation, world conflicts, different cultures and traditions,
sports, entertainment, travel, food, health etc. On the other hand, these companies have more
power over the information than the audience and even more control in the way the information
is transmitted. The responsibility of the media is to teach and keep people informed about the
reality; however companies have also been using the media as a way to promote politics,
violence, inequality and a bunch of inappropriate contents. Media should and should have been
more controlled and regulated so that companies can’t control people’s minds and can’t incite
them to be more consumerists, violent and ignorant.
For Anne Marie Cusac, an investigative reporter graduated from Roosevelt University and also
author of the article “Watching Torture in Prime Time”, media uses some TV shows to impart
fear to the viewers. They are able to do that relating the “fictional” situations in the shows with
real social and political problematic. After analyzing the TV show 24 and the way it shows
torture and violence as good and necessary in order to protect a nation, Cusac establishes “Rarely
in my days has fictional television seemed so entwined with our national political life” (Cusac
139) If a program is very close to the reality, it will attract more audience because people would
feel more related with the situations and characters.
Nevertheless, the situations presented in the show 24, (which involve an American agent who is
able to torture people without getting any punishment for it) suggest only violence and
aggressive behaviors. That is unnecessary and doesn’t have a clear purpose besides scare people.
Cusac sets “We are already a society that tortures--Evidently we became that long ago. What is
left to us now as a public is a decision we can make or avoid” (Cusac 141) Anne Marie Cusac
believes that is the audience’s decision whether to absorb or to ignore the violent and even
sanguinary content that the show 24 transmits, notwithstanding the fact that youth and children
are part of the audience is more than enough to require to the owners and producers of the show
to control more the information that is being presented to the viewers. Our society doesn’t need
to have torture and violence one hour every night in their TV, where all the family is watching.
It won’t help our society to stop being scared and to succeed in the fight against violence and
terrorism.
Violence is not the only subject media should have more control over. Genre misrepresentations
along with the abuse of sexual content and stereotypes are also part of the list. Ariel Levy is a
former journalist and writer for the New York Times and The New Yorker. Throughout her
article “Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture” Ariel explains how media have changed the
real meaning of “gender-equity, feminist politics and the pursuit of civil rights”(Levy 143). The
feminist movement started in the 18th century due all kinds of injustice and social oppressions
towards women. Some of the things women were fighting for were for the access to higher
education, for equal pay for women workers, for respect of their rights and several other
violations against women. Those were meaningful causes to fight for; the idea of empowering
other women was exiting and had important purposes of liberation and recognition.
Unfortunately that was different to what it became in the 20th and 21st century. “I would turn on
the television and find strippers in pasties explaining how best to lap dance a man to orgasm. I
would flip the channel and see babes tight, tiny uniforms bouncing up and down in
trampolines”(Levy 143) It’s hard to believe that what started as a serious movement by people
with great ideas and strong social purposes became misinterpreted and finally seen as a raunch
movement because of the media. If there were regulations from the beginning, before all these
programs with obscene situations and vocabulary started, maybe the things would be different.
The problem was that some of the women who were able to approach to a big part of the
population due their social position as the Charlie’s Angels actresses, were talking about “strong
women and empowerment”(Levy 143) while they were dressing with “soft-porn styles--as
massage parlor geishas, dominatrixes, yodeling Heidis in alpine bustiers”(Levy 143) That image
wasn’t the right one to show if they wanted to talk about empowering. Where were the movies
where women were dressed as lawyers, painters, carpenters, politician, cops, taking a serious
position in the society, solving problematic, helping to develop ideas that benefit everybody,
giving a serious and motivational message to the rest of the women. Movie roles where women
could really show what they really were capable of.
The media introduced the raunch culture with playboy magazines and programs as “The Man
Show and Girls Gone Wild”(Levy 144) and made women think that “Going to strip clubs or
talking about porn stars was a way of showing themselves and the men around them that they
weren’t ‘prissy little woman’ or ‘girly-girls’”(Levy 144-145) The impact of media in the feminist
movement and women recognition wasn’t good although it could have started different. The lack
of control, regulations and the wrong management of information by the companies in charge of
the mass media generated a wrong view of the feminist movement and women in general.
In conclusion, media was managed in the wrong way from the beginning. It needed regulations
in the 20th century and it still needs regulations today. If every company that controlled mass
media had showed more responsibility with the information and content they were giving to the
audience, we could have possibly seen different results in the way people act and think. As Anne
Marie Cusac and Ariel Levy argument through “Torture in Prime Time” and “Women and the
Rise of Raunch Culture”, media generated a big change in our society. How did it do it? Creating
stereotypes, promoting consumerism, building fears in the audience and distracting people from
the reality. That’s clearly the media we don’t need. In order to have a better society it’s necessary
to improve the way people think. People’s way to think depends on the information they know
and receive. The information that is given to people should reflect the reality. The media we need
must develop good principles in the audience along with rational and critical thinking.
Work Cited
Cusac, Anne Marie. “Torture in Prime Time”. August 2005. Progressive
Levy, Ariel. “Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture”, 2005 Female Chauvinist Pigs