Post one-Cultural Criticism

There are numerous ways in which my media influences shape my view of the world. One of the first things that comes to mind is music. I tend to listen to country and folk music, mostly because of its relatively simple view of the world, happy or sad. Although I might not agree with some of the messages the artist is passing along, I do find comfort in corny love songs, songs about work and “country living”. Another thing that comes to mind is video games. Especially the Witcher series. This game may come across as high fantasy, but it is very much a comment on racism and class. Through out the games they are often eluding to the difference between “humans” and “non-humans” and the power struggle between the two. Lastly, books are a huge influence on the lens through which I view the world. I have often thought that whatever you invest your time doing, whether that is playing video games, watching tv, or reading that you take the creators ideas and they mix with your own. There is some selection that takes place, but even when you read a book looking at a section of history, that information effects your view of that time frame.

When looking at my media influences through the different theories on the Perdue Owl website it is difficult to match up with one view entirely. For the sake of this exercise I found the Reader-Response Criticism to work well for my views of some video games. Based on whoever is playing the game they may have different feelings or views about what takes place. On the Perdue Owl website there is a quotation from Tyson that discusses the two main beliefs of Reader-Response Criticism. One being that the reader plays an important role in the meaning of the media, and that readers don’t always see the message being presented to them but instead might make their own meaning. In the typical questions section of the Reader-Response Criticism explanation on the Perdue Owl website the first question is “How does the interaction of text and the reader create meaning?”. You can make this question work for other media types by changing the word “text” to whatever media type, and “reader” to a consumer or audience. Someone could play the same video game or listen to the same song as you and have a very different feeling.

I have mixed feelings about the Peleton ad, and the Ryan Reynolds ad. I can see both sides of the views towards this ad. In the Peleton ad the wife is given a very expensive exercise bike and some of her comments in her vlog like recordings make her sound hesitant or resistant to the experience, but she also sounds motivated and even excited at some points. I have spent the last few minutes thinking about how this would feel if my partner had given me the same thing for Christmas. I have recently gotten into exercise again and I’d probably be through the moon to have access to this bike even though it is way outside of our price range. I think without any context to conversations that may have taken place prior, the ad can be taken either way. If it was with ill intention, or the husband gave it as a motivation to lose weight, it is a very sexist ad. I do think that this ad is out of touch in a lot of ways. That house screamed wealth to me, and so does spending thousands of dollars on exercise equipment. Considering that I had never seen the ad prior to this, I would be interested to see what a large group of people felt about this in blind survey. I think that the gin ad on the other hand was a somewhat successful way to profit from a major error from Peleton’s marketing team.