#week 5 post

[imladybbq]

Too Hot to Handle Relationships??? 

I am so excited to talk about this week’s topic because I am going to talk about one of my favourite reality TV shows called Too Hot to Handle. In a gist, this show is a dating show where a group of super attractive single people stayed together on a tropical island isolated from the outside world. The goal is to help the contestants form proper and meaningful relationships, which then they could win $100,000.  

These people are chosen through their Instagram profiles based on their good looks and lifestyle. In the first episode, some of them were bragging about their love for hook-up culture, parties, mingling with attractive people and hoping to find “love” on the island (Walker 2020).

Upon watching this, I genuinely thought this show was stupid and filled with people who mistook love for lust and that everyone was only in need for the money. But I was wrong because this show exceeded my expectations!  

Yes to Self-Improvement and Building Positive Relationships  

The show stands out among other typical dating shows because the host is an artificial intelligence bot called Lana, responsible for observing and guiding the contestants in building spiritual and emotional journeys to improve their personal and romantic relationships through various workshops (Walker 2020). So, it is almost like a social experiment on a person’s growth overcoming their temptation between lust, money, and self-growth. Although there is a factor of the ultimate cash prize, I could definitely see each contestant's improvement towards the end. Some of them managed to be vulnerable with their partner and talked about their past, some have learnt of their self-worth, and some have become more considerate of others.   

I think this show is excellent at capturing and educating the audience on the importance of building positive relationships with ourselves and others. The key point is that relationship is more than just physical attraction, and love is more than just a feeling but a continuous effort of improving ourselves. In each episode, you can uncover the various attachment style we possess, the values we carry, and what we look for in others, including the power of vulnerability.   

A psychotherapist, Sana Powell, did an interesting review of this reality show from a therapist’s perspective. She said these people might have an avoidant attachment style because they run away from genuine relationships (Powell 2020), which may explain their love for the hook-up culture that revolves around temporary meaningless connections.

In support of this, many Gen Zs are becoming more aware of their attachment style, which they discuss with their potential life partners. This shows that current generations care more about being with someone who blends with them well rather than how attractive they look (Klein 2022). However, the downside of this reality show is that it might show unrealistic expectations of relationships.   

Didn’t I say that this show teaches our attachment style and the importance of vulnerability, and now I am saying it’s unrealistic? Okay, hear me out.   

Sure, those are awesome things we should apply in every type of relationship, but this show was filmed around a month. You can’t possibly fit everything in just 8 to 10 episodes. People don’t improve over a short period, and there must be consistent effort. That is a lot of work, and it can be exhausting!   

Julia Arbit, the senior vice president of Insights, researched that only 1 in 10 Gen Zs are willing to commit to being committed (Klein 2022). Most of us don’t want to be in a relationship because some are still finding their identity. Some don’t look for one person but think different people fulfil different needs, be it sexual or romantic or whatever else (Klein 2022). I have no say that hook-up culture is wrong or good, but it no doubt create confusion and heartbreak.   

Nowadays, dates don’t necessarily mean you are interested in the person. There are people in a situationship with no need for labelling because they don’t want any responsibilities or expectations. Plus, sex is not as sacred as it used to be because people can jump onto it despite knowing each other for only 3 hours (Iris 2023). On top of that, reality TV in the 21st century normalizes superficiality and disloyalty, and those with these traits are rewarded. The combination format of selected fly-on-the-wall scenes and 1-to-1 interviews with the producers boost the “real” effect of reality TV, despite it being strategically coordinated to create a cohesive narrative (Berman 2022).   

So, reality TV isn’t really the reality. The end goal of reality TV is our attention, and they are conquering it. I believe it is up to us what we want to take away from the shows. Most importantly, we are responsible to differentiate the good and the bad that comes with them. Nevertheless, if you are wondering what show to watch next, do give Too Hot To Handle a chance and maybe you can let me know what you think of it.   

References

Berman, J 2022, Reality TV Has Reshaped Our World, Whether We Like It or Not, Time, Time, viewed 21 April 2023, <https://time.com/collection/reality-tv-most-influential-seasons/6199108/reality-tv-influence-on-world/>. 

Iris, A 2023, The Most WTF Things About Today’s Hookup Culture, Hype MY, Hype MY, viewed 21 April 2023, <https://hype.my/2023/312855/the-most-wtf-things-about-todays-hookup-culture/>. 

Klein, J 2022, Are Gen Z more pragmatic about love and sex?, Bbc.com, BBC, viewed 21 April 2023, <https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220104-are-gen-z-more-pragmatic-about-love-and-sex>. 

Powell, S. I 2020, ‘Too Hot to Handle’: A Therapist’s Netflix Review, Curly Therapist, Curly Therapist, viewed 21 April 2023, <https://sanapowell.com/2020/04/30/too-hot-to-handle-a-therapists-netflix-review/>. 

Walker, M. M 2020, Why I Love Netflix’s ‘Too Hot To Handle’ - VOX ATL, VOX ATL, viewed 21 April 2023, <https://voxatl.org/why-i-love-netflixs-too-hot-to-handle/>. 

[audiencestudies2020]

Audience Studies (3P18) Week #5 – Media Ratings: How Can Something be so Good and So bad

Covid-19 has had an inevitable impact on the television and movie industry. Due to the fact that the vast majority of the western population was under quarantine/self-isolation from early March until this very day, though specifically in Ontario we are still under a form of lock-down and quarantine. With the nature of quarantine, individuals have been spending extended periods of time in self-isolation and the comfort of their own homes, looking for things to do to keep pre-occupied. It should come as no surprise that many people turned to television and streaming services to fill their time with movies and Television shows. In this week’s lecture, we discussed the concept of media ratings and target marketing. In this discussion, we posed a series of five key questions relating to audiences, media ratings, target markets, and audiences as institutionalized constructions. The question that stuck out to me the most was question three – What if ratings and marketing have turned us into data? In the subsequent slides, we looked at the fact that as marketing efforts and media ratings have risen so has the need to understand consumers and “collect” them as data. Sullivan states, “This corporate desire to penetrate the home made it necessary to develop sophisticated measurement practices to try to understand, quantify, and monitor the behaviors of the audience” (Sullivan). Corporations aim to better understand their audiences in a bid to create more effective products and marketing to ensure future business success.

              So really, why do businesses care about our reviews and ratings for their products? Buzzard claims this is because, [Ratings] “were really but an extension of this system of audits to provide feedback and greater control of the selling process” [Such audits allowed] “manufacturers to decide on products to be produced, to select saleable package sizes and types, to price products advantageously, to use more effective channels of distribution, to avoid overproduction, to determine advertising budgets, and To reduce business recession by tying production to consumer sales.” (Buzzard, 2015, p. 511-512). To simplify this down, when a company knows exactly how their audience feels about a specific product (both positive and negative) they can capitalize on their ability to swap out those negative aspects and enhance the positive ones. So, what does this all have to do with Covid-19 and television/streaming habits? Easy, the more people who watch television and stream content the more people there are to provide feedback and ratings on said content. You would think that any time a series or product is able to gain large amounts of viewership and overall high ratings, they would have the tools to understand and produce products to their target markets’ needs, yet that is not always the case. A prime example and the audience experience example I will be discussing is the creation of the live-action Avatar the Last Airbender movie (also known by the acronym ATLA).

              In 2005 Nickelodeon launch the cartoon television series Avatar the Last Airbender, which successfully ran till 2008 having three seasons. The show was well-received having a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes for all three of its seasons. After the shows end media producers aided with the high praise reviews a stellar rating set out to make a follow-up product to the series – a live-action movie. By all accounts this movie should have been a phenomenal hit. The creators had access to all this wonderful information provided by the series ecstatic fans. The movie was released in 2010 and was directed and co-produced by M. Night Shyamalan (who has directed movies such as The Sixth Senses – 1999 and Unbreakable -2000), the movie had the foundations to be something truly fantastic. Upon the movies release though fans were extremely disappointed. The movie garner’s horrible reviews compared to its carton TV predecessor the Avatar the Last Air Bender movie has a whopping score of 5% (out of 100%) on Rotten Tomatoes and is regarded as one of the worst movies from the 2010s. In recent months the Avatar the Last Airbender cartoon has made its way onto Netflix and rose to be one the most-watched television shows on the platform. Due to the increased level in which individuals began to watch streaming services and television due to COVID-19, it should come as no surprise that those who were brand new to the series would mistakably be excited upon finding out that Netflix also hosts a live-action movie of there new favourite series, unaware at the monstrosity the movie is. As more individuals watched both the television series and movie it only further cemented their drastic media rating differences. The differences between the acclaimed television series and disgraced movie are a vividly clear example of how despite having all of the necessary media tools and data relating to a specific audience, companies and producers are still able to wildly misinterpret said information and create something for their audience that misses the mark completely.

REFERENCE LIST:

Barasch, A., Nussbaum, E., & Jackson, L. (n.d.). The Stunning Second Life of "Avatar: The Last Airbender". Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-stunning-second-life-of-avatar-the-last-airbender

Sonde, K. (2020, August 07). How 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' became one of the summer's most popular shows - 15 years after its debut. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/how-avatar-the-last-airbender-became-one-of-the-summers-most-popular-shows--15-years-after-its-debut/2020/08/06/e368e740-d803-11ea-aff6-220dd3a14741_story.html

List of films considered the worst. (2020, October 25). Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_considered_the_worst

Buzzard, K. S. (2015). The Rise of Market Information Regimes and the Historical Development of Audience Ratings. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35(3), 511-517. doi:10.1080/01439685.2015.1052219

Sullivan, J. L. (2020). Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power. Los Angeles: SAGE.

[grproductions22-blog]

Halloween Trailer #2 (2018) | Movieclips Trailers

Check out the official Halloween trailer starring Jamie Lee Curtis! Let us know what you think in the comments below. ► Buy Tickets to Halloween: https://www...

For my week 5 post talking about light, I will discuss the trailer for the latest installment in the Halloween series of films, Halloween 2018.

With all of the scenes featuring the serial killer Michael Myers, the scenes use very dim lighting, to keep Michael a mysterious figure, and contribute to the fear that one would face when confronting a deranged killer. 

The only scenes that have bright lights are the ones where Michael is not present, and instead is focused on Jamie Lee Curtis’ character where she is hopeful and wants to take down Michael. By using the brighter lighting, it shows that she still has the resolve to want to take on Michael, and that the sparks still glow even over 40 years later.

[fall2017comm2311]

week 5 blog post

I'm not very active on any other website other than tumblr and honestly I don't consider myself to be part of a community group or blog like this class. In fact, I like to keep to myself although I am part of various fandoms that are part of tumblr. The difference that I see with that and Facebook groups is that “member” feeling one would get from being part of a Facebook group. Being part of a fandom on tumblr doesn't get you like a membership feeling or anything of that sorts. You are just part of the fandom and whether you contribute to it or not in the forms of fan art, fan fiction, or song covers depends on you.

Another group that I would use as an example for this post is my PS4 game group. There is agame that my friends and I have been playing lately, maybe some have heard of it, it's called Friday the 13th Game. Yeah like the movies. When we first started playing the game we were a group of 4. As we continued playing the game and talking with people via the game chat, we started to add more and more people. At the end we are a total of 10 people that play the game together. Sometimes we don't even play that game, at other times we play other games and give each suggestions on what to play next. I do see this group as a community even if it is a private one. The reason being that we all communicate with one another and give each other tips or suggestions which is something that you would find in a community. 

-Erika Chavez

[third-table]

"Ideology’s ultimate trick has always been to present itself as objective truth, to present historical conditions as eternal, and to present political formations as natural. Because image operations function on an invisible plane and are not dependent on a human seeing-subject (and are therefore not as obviously ideological as giant paintings of Napoleon) they are harder to recognize for what they are: immensely powerful levers of social regulation that serve specific race and class interests while presenting themselves as objective."

[third-table]

Facial recognition technology is everywhere. It may not be legal.

Privacy advocates and representatives from companies like Facebook and Google will meet in the District to try to set rules for how companies should use this powerful technology.

Although Paglen article defined face recognition as a flawed technology, this article says technology like Google’s FaceNet has a 99.63% accuracy. The article introduces Biometric Laws that “restrict how commercial entities can collect, store, trade in biometric data”. Face recognition as a way to provide public safety has now turned into a commodity, that is hard to ignore and intrusive. The Sekula article talks about photography and its authentic meaning and an imposed aesthetic ruling over how photographs are captured. Now photography is a powerful technology that obtains a lot of the public's transformation, constructing a difficulty way for the public to remain anonymous.   

[soundsofanerd-blog]

Week 5

Your reflections on the reading

The reading had a lot of information. I’ve never known much about painting, I have used acrylic quite often in art classes and enjoy painting when I have the ambition. I’ve never known about the history of paint though. It is quite amazing how much paint has changed throughout time. I think it would be fun to try using the different types of paint and see how they compare. Before acrylic and other paints primarily used today, there were a lot of steps and restrictions with using paint. Now, all a person has to do is dump some acrylic paint out of the tube and use it. Before, people had to use the paint quickly, because it either had to be hot or it would dry too quickly. People also had to put a protective layer over the painting once they were finished.

Your reflections on the videos/media

I liked Julie Mehretu’s art. She has a very defined style of sharp, overlapping lines. She either uses vibrant colors that look aesthetically pleasing together, or black and white. I wasn’t sure what the meaning behind her paintings was, just that the paintings were aesthetically pleasing. Most of her paintings could be put in a room together and work as a series. Mehretu’s paintings are very large scale, a lot of them were over 20 feet. The size and time that she puts into her paintings is amazing. She puts a lot of effort into her paintings in order to create the three-dimensional look.

Connections/comparisons you find between the two

The reading adds an extra layer of understanding to Mehretu’s art and the process behind it. Many people do not see the process, only the finished product. The final product may be phenomenal, but it is even more so when you know that the work took years to create. Previous types of paints had to be used quickly, with no mistakes made. However, Mehretu has the ability to take as much time as she needs to create her art. She is able to add multiple layers and ensure that her work comes out exactly how she wants it.

Connections to another artist's work from the "Relevant Artists" section of the course content

I chose Tauba Auerbach as my relevant artist. Sidenote: her website confused me, it was hard to read the text. Auerbach uses many different mediums on her art pieces, including acrylic paint. Her work is similar to Mehretu’s in a few ways. They both have a defined style or type of art that they  prefer to make. Auerbach has many pieces that look similar to one and other, like a series. She has multiple different series. However, while Mehretu has one main style, Auerbach has many different styles. She has created many pieces using the same style, though. It is obvious both artists work takes a lot of time to create, but does not seem to have a lot of meaning behind the pieces, aside from being pleasing to the eye.

How does this relate to your life and interests?

My family is very painting oriented. My great-grandmother painted for a living and had a shop downtown where she gave painting lessons. In turn, my grandmother started painting as well. She primarily painted on items, such as vases. My older sister is also talented with a brush. She primarily uses acrylic on canvas. This reading on paint has, in turn, taught me a little more about my family history.

One of my sisters paintings from last year