SOC 525 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Mind Control, Masculinity, Heteronormativity
Document Summary
Media shapes our sense of self, class, race, ethnicity, how we see others, and divide the world into the us and them by showing who holds power vs who does not. It shapes what we consider to be morally good and bad. Our common culture is shaped based on the symbols, myths and stories exerted through the media. Most importantly, media creates, advertises and teaches us the consumer/producer ways of society which we identify with. We must resist the seductions of the cultural environment. These ideologies make inequalities appear the norm and thus cause domination to further. These ideologies create oppression: in reaction to these ideologies, cultural studies promotes multiculturalism and wants to bring awareness to how relations of power and dominations are encoded in cultural text. As awareness is brought to manipulation, it allows people to become empowered. !1: the cultural studies approach assists people to dissect the artifacts of media culture and control their own cultural environment.
