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Article from the course outline: "For the Love of Culture" by Lawrence Lessig
Media Artifact Examined: Article 13, EU's new copyright plan*

The article uses the issues in (restoring) documentaries and the legal loopholes one has to jump through to get all the copyrights in getting a doc-film made. The author further compares the copyright issues plaguing documentary filmmaking to how the copyright issues have affected the written, published word. I would like to shift the focus to something more recent, which is original content published on platforms such as youtube and how it could be affected by the EU's proposed article 11 and 13.

Youtube relies on user-generated content, such as critical essays critiquing movies, games, music, edutainment (Shoutout Contrapoints and Lindsay Ellis) etc. or sometimes just reaction videos of people with some original content from other publishers pasted 'picture-in-picture'. Such content requires that the creators use snippets of some other media. Additionally, Youtube offers a platform where creators are mostly free from the boundaries that would have been placed on them had they been working for media companies such as NBC to the effect where it has captured the imagination of gen Z'ers and is a large portion of their media consumption.

As of now, there is still a cost associated with pursuing a copyright takedown. The onus of pursuing a copyright claim, which has always been a tedious thing to do, still rests with original publishers, who sometimes choose to ignore small miscreants simply due to infeasible logistics. However, recent developments in AI have effectively zeroed these costs. AI can search through huge databases of content to look for copyright culprits, and some services automate the creation of legal documents which makes it feasible to hand out numerous copyright claims to content creators. Youtube already has 'Content ID' in place that informs original content publishers if their work appears in any newly uploaded video but still leaves it to the publisher's discretion whether to follow through with a takedown or not. Article 11 & 13 seek to shift this responsibility to the platform hosting the content. If this becomes law, Youtube will be expected to have an algorithm in place that nips in the bud any content deemed questionable due to copyrights.

*Not exactly a media artifact but in the context of this topic, the right artifact to be examined is likely taken down due to copyright claims.

Write-up by Mukul Saini
2017PGP209

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Mob Lynching Videos (Weapons of Mass Instruction)

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Mob Lynching Videos (Weapons of Mass Instruction)

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By Md Samir Alam
(2017PGP196)

The lynching videos are made usually by the perpetrators themselves. The videos are a form of propaganda that the perpetrators are trying to promote but as Sean argue in his article that there is a difference between authoritarian intent and Reader reception. The authoritarian intent here is to promote fear that if you take a certain action the consequences can be bad but this propaganda is received by different stakeholders in different ways. Most of the media who are criticizing the government use this video to promote that marginalization of minorities is happening in this country. The country's who are against India use this video's at international level to show that Human Rights Violation are happening in the country and use terms as “Lynchistaan” to demonize a country because of the actions of few citizens. The anti-Indian terror outfits use this to recruit and provoke people to justify terrorist activities against India. Now there are people who are right leaning but sensible citizens and it becomes difficult for them to defend these actions. They are shameful and not terrified by what is happening in the country. This is in sync with the arguments given by Heuston about interpretation of propaganda.

The second factor is the remediation of propaganda in form of WhatsApp forwards as well as from the media coverage that it gets. So even who don't watch these videos knows that it exists and this leads to an enhanced impact of the propaganda. What is interesting is that government usually doesn’t react to such incidents as they don’t want to be in a difficult position in front of their voters.  These videos and the behaviors shown by people clearly show how media can be used as a weapon of Mass Instruction.

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Road Rage Or Cow Vigilantism? In Hapur Lynching, Glaring Anomalies

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Review on the song Love Dose by Honey Singh Most of Honey Singh songs have been sexist and have talked about women as sex objects and he has been quite infamous for his derogatory lyrics right from the beginning. The song Love Dose is no different. Although it does not use offensive words directly, it draws certain inferences which are as offensive as direct words. In the video of this song, Honey Singh randomly starts stalking a girl while she comes out of a mall just because she is pretty. In layman terms what he does would be called eve teasing. He checks out the girls and praises her figure by dancing around the girl and tries to convince her to go along with him by bragging about his wealth. He calls the girl’s father and flaunts his money, car and bungalow to impress him as if these are the only criteria a parent would see to marry off his daughter. It is a depiction of the male supremacist mentality prevailing in this pop/ rap culture where these singers objectify women by portraying them as someone who thrives on their boyfriend’s/ husband’s money. He goes to the extent of saying that his fuel consumption for a week is equivalent to what the shopaholic girl in the lead spends in a month thereby trying to prove than he can easily sustain her whims and fancies. It sort of demeans the entire female community by this generalisation of showing that a women only thrive on shopping without having any other ambition in life and all she needs in life is a man to fulfill that. This is exactly what is being talked about by Sut Jhally in terms of the prejudice that prevails in this society against women and their ambitions. It’s time that this realisation sinks in us and we understand that the songs we hum everyday so unconsciously are actually so objectifying. 

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Review on the song Love Dose by Honey Singh Most of Honey Singh songs have been sexist and have talked about women as sex objects and he has been quite infamous for his derogatory lyrics right from the beginning. The song Love Dose is no different. Although it does not use offensive words directly, it draws certain inferences which are as offensive as direct words. In the video of this song, Honey Singh randomly starts stalking a girl while she comes out of a mall just because she is pretty. In layman terms what he does would be called eve teasing. He checks out the girls and praises her figure by dancing around the girl and tries to convince her to go along with him by bragging about his wealth. He calls the girl’s father and flaunts his money, car and bungalow to impress him as if these are the only criteria a parent would see to marry off his daughter. It is a depiction of the male supremacist mentality prevailing in this pop/ rap culture where these singers objectify women by portraying them as someone who thrives on their boyfriend’s/ husband’s money. He goes to the extent of saying that his fuel consumption for a week is equivalent to what the shopaholic girl in the lead spends in a month thereby trying to prove than he can easily sustain her whims and fancies. It sort of demeans the entire female community by this generalisation of showing that a women only thrive on shopping without having any other ambition in life and all she needs in life is a man to fulfill that. This is exactly what is being talked about by Sut Jhally in terms of the prejudice that prevails in this society against women and their ambitions. It’s time that this realisation sinks in us and we understand that the songs we hum everyday so unconsciously are actually so objectifying. 

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Submitted By:
Mridul Jhunjhunwala
2017PGP205

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Anjali Kumari
Roll no. 2017pgp043
Bollywood's India

According to the article bollywood cinema is the most reliable guide to modern India which we will study with the help of ZNMD as it shows how life should be or could be. Bollywood often seems to cater to mid strata of the society but this film gave a glimpse into life of upper class society. For films such as this making money shows that modern India has toned down a bit when it comes to drama and is ready to accept films which shows life as it is. Although the film does have a spain tour which gives the film an aspirational touch but rise in indian population  taking spain tour post the release of the film shows that modern india doesn't just aspire but is ready to make their aspirations a reality. The article says that it is tough to estimate in determining how massively influential it is and how key it is to determining India's public culture as we cannot say how accepting indian will be if their child turns out to be an artist like Farhan. Mostly bollywood films are seen to be having content which is based on whims and fancies which are not possible to be imitated and audiences understand this and this film still gives 70% of indians (rural population) an aspirational side to what life could be. Emotions in the film are realistic which are in contrast with most of the indian films which give it a melodramatic touch. Cinema's major audiences is found among the youth which is 540 million in india and films like ZNMD doing decent in the times chennai express tells a lot about the dynamic shift. Even the shayari from the film were widely accepted. This also showed that struggle for modern india is with their emotions rather than a villain.

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MMM Submission-2 Sreeram Maganti IPM2014094

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MMM Submission-2 Sreeram Maganti IPM2014094

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"eBay - Things don't judge (TVC)" in the perspective of Maitrayee Chaudhuri's "Indian media and its transformed public"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZOW6W4DK-M

A man proposingto another man, a salwar clad lady driving a muscle bike, a homemaker lounging in a recliner with a book: All of these scenes are new and are still in the phase of gaining acceptance in contemporary India. At a time when advertisers are under pressure to retain the attention span in these restless times, this television commercial is successful in achieveing that, while representing the paradigm shift in Indian media that shifted the focus from the pre-liberalised perspectives wherein the focus was on nationalism, the struggling lower classes and pursuit for sustenance, to highlight the upcoming middle class that is no longer immersed in plain sustenance, but can afford & desire for excesses, crave for the fulfillment of their emotional and self-actualization needs, which began to breach the existing traditional norms, which were too powerful in the past.
This heralds the beginning of an era wherein hitherto culturally repressive Indians began to aspire for better acceptance both in terms of materialistic comforts and psychological safety as well. Indeed, the glowing comments on the YouTube version of this commercial are a welcome change, as the topics dealt in this commercial have proved to be too explosive for the conservative psyche, in the past.  Also, given that the producer of this ad is an Amerkcan MNC, Maitrayee's argument about the changing definitions of nationalism and the ongoing class & gender reconfigurations in India Inc.

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Fake News related to the Pulwama Attack and 'Manufacturing Consent in India'

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Fake News related to the Pulwama Attack and 'Manufacturing Consent in India'

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by Nithya Thomas
2017PGP230

The recent attack in Pulwama was a tragedy involving the deaths of 44 Indian personnel. Among the news of the attack and the subsequent reports related to it that began coming out, there was also an increase in the circulation of various Whatsapp forwards and Facebook posts. These forwards, while fake, have managed to be shared among many. The Twitter thread by BOOM FactCheck contains many of these debunked fake images and videos.

One of these forwards was a group of photographs which were claimed to be of the bodies of the men who were killed. These photos were circulated on Whatsapp and Facebook, along with messages that said claimed that these were the bodies of the ‘martyrs’. Looking at this through the lens of Chomsky’s theory on the manufacturing of consent, these photos can be seen as a way of creating fear and unrest among those in the country who are already wary or distrustful of Kashmiris, and embolden them to cause harm to them, either through their words or even actions. This also extends to the way Indians view Pakistan, which is also affected by such fake content. The opposite end of this fake news exists as well. Videos and images have also been shared and become viral that are supposed to be of Kashmiri people getting assaulted and harmed by others in various parts of the country. Other doctored photos and videos show leaders of the opposition behaving disrespectfully with regards to the attack, including a photograph of Rahul Gandhi with the perpetrator of the attack, presenting him as his ‘close aide’. At a time when the political climate of the country is tense and elections are right around the corner, such content can serve to benefit the ruling party by framing the opposition as fraternizing with the ‘enemy’.

Whereas Chomsky’s theory is supposed to include mainly mass media channels and media houses that have considerable power over the kind of content they share and display, today the power of the individual has been magnified through the ease of social media, making it easier for propaganda to spread without even having to have a media outlet. In a post truth era such as this, it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the truth from ‘alternative facts’. Hence verifying any kind of information we receive which is not from a trusted news source should become a norm, lest we contribute to the peddling of false propaganda without even being aware of it.

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Post the deadly suicide bombing at #Pulwama in Jammu & Kashmir, where 40 #CRPF personnel lost their lives, there are several images, videos and messages that have been posted on social media. BOOM’s reporters have fact checked several of them. See the thread below

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Post the deadly suicide bombing at #Pulwama in Jammu & Kashmir, where 40 #CRPF personnel lost their lives, there are several images, videos and messages that have been posted on social media. BOOM’s reporters have fact checked several of them. See the thread below

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Post the deadly suicide bombing at #Pulwama in Jammu & Kashmir, where 40 #CRPF personnel lost their lives, there are several images, videos and messages that have been posted on social media. BOOM’s reporters have fact checked several of them. See the thread below
— BOOM Live (@boomlive_in) February 16, 2019

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Post the deadly suicide bombing at #Pulwama in Jammu & Kashmir, where 40 #CRPF personnel lost their lives, there are several images, videos and messages that have been posted on social media. BOOM’s reporters have fact checked several of them. See the thread below

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Post the deadly suicide bombing at #Pulwama in Jammu & Kashmir, where 40 #CRPF personnel lost their lives, there are several images, videos and messages that have been posted on social media. BOOM’s reporters have fact checked several of them. See the thread below

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Post the deadly suicide bombing at #Pulwama in Jammu & Kashmir, where 40 #CRPF personnel lost their lives, there are several images, videos and messages that have been posted on social media. BOOM’s reporters have fact checked several of them. See the thread below

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The recent very disturbing and brutal attack in Kashmir has not only stirred anger, rage, sadness but a need to tweet & share opinion on what Army should really do. The above picture summarises the entirety of the recent current on Social Network. The social media is like the rose colored spectacles, that funnily empowers everyone to raise an opinion. But do we need it? Social media has started to blur the lines of Sensitivity & Sensibilities. Virat Kohli faced flak for not voicing his views as the captain of the Indian cricket team whereas Navjot Singh Siddhu was asked to leave Comedy Nights for voicing his opinion. The net is like a black Hole, where more is less and, in the end, it could be blinding at the end of the day. What would a solution to this mess look like, a solution that would not bury the entire idea of social media in a morass of legal and technical code? Are we talking of a need of Panopticon or a system of control where we talk of censorship? But where do we stop? But then we argue, that we cannot rely upon special favours granted by companies or quasi companies to define our access to content and so called “opinion”

The problem that we are confronting is the result of a law that has been rendered hopelessly out of date by our ways of coming around every single time. When we talk of issues like politics and gender, it gets brutal. Political sensitivity & Gender sensitivity on social media should be spectated closely. When a person sitting in an AC classroom, surrounded by academically elite; I argue how much can he/she imagine the condition in the Siachen. Till where can we imagine? This idea of sitting behind a black mirror and voicing views like we own it simply unfair.

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The recent very disturbing and brutal attack in Kashmir has not only stirred anger, rage, sadness but a need to tweet & share opinion on what Army should really do. The above picture summarises the entirety of the recent current on Social Network. The social media is like the rose colored spectacles, that funnily empowers everyone to raise an opinion. But do we need it? Social media has started to blur the lines of Sensitivity & Sensibilities. Virat Kohli faced flak for not voicing his views as the captain of the Indian cricket team whereas Navjot Singh Siddhu was asked to leave Comedy Nights for voicing his opinion. The net is like a black Hole, where more is less and, in the end, it could be blinding at the end of the day. What would a solution to this mess look like, a solution that would not bury the entire idea of social media in a morass of legal and technical code? Are we talking of a need of Panopticon or a system of control where we talk of censorship? But where do we stop? But then we argue, that we cannot rely upon special favours granted by companies or quasi companies to define our access to content and so called “opinion”

The problem that we are confronting is the result of a law that has been rendered hopelessly out of date by our ways of coming around every single time. When we talk of issues like politics and gender, it gets brutal. Political sensitivity & Gender sensitivity on social media should be spectated closely. When a person sitting in an AC classroom, surrounded by academically elite; I argue how much can he/she imagine the condition in the Siachen. Till where can we imagine? This idea of sitting behind a black mirror and voicing views like we own it simply unfair.

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2017PGP023
Artifact: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/narendra-modi-and-amit-shah-are-terrorists-they-are-spreading-fear-uttar-pradesh-minister/story-T7JWyh8AFIMW7cmJmxdenN.html

https://www.livemint.com/industry/manufacturing/-make-in-india-has-not-eased-manufacturing-woes-1550415878174.html

https://www.hindustantimes.com/budget/rising-uncertainties-ahead-of-lok-sabha-polls-keep-investors-wary-of-buying-bonds/story-0FYaksveHjnj4o9ATB3cBI.html

Critical Response: This article aims at spreading anti-government propaganda and is seemingly biased against the ruling party and the Prime Minister. This is not surprising since Hindustan Times is headed by Shobhana Bhartia, who is its chairwoman and editorial director and who is closely associated with the Congress which is currently the opposition party. Shobhana inherited this newspaper from her father KK Birla, who is an influential industrialist and a Congress party member. This echoes the article ‘Manufacturing of Consent’ which talks about ownership of majority of media houses by politicians or corporates interested in furthering their own agendas under the garb of journalism. This is a perfect example of how media shapes and colours the public’s views.

In another article by media channel “livemint” (owned by HT Media), we see the publishing house taking a shot at the Make-In-India Campaign. Even though, many foreign investors have been attracted by the current government under this scheme, it seems that the bias they have against NDA, proliferates its articles as well. Taking a jibe at the brainchild of Mr. Narendra Modi, Livemint goes on to bring out faults and the drawbacks of the campaign and how it has failed and duped the rural economy. This spreads fear and dissent against the current political regime among people. A clear example of publishing biased opinions rather than facts.

Another example that aligns with the “Manufacturing of Consent” article. On 30th January this year, during the period when India was in turmoil of an unstable government, a lot of companies began adjusting their bonds and mutual funds accordingly. Many cut rates, removed guarantees from the ir fixed contracts and even the stock prices fluctuated on a daily basis. Yet throughout this period, Hindustan times published an article which clearly outlined the “major” steps that Aditya Birla Sun Life had taken to counter RBI’s decision to reduce rates. This also outlines how media houses publish articles preserving the recognition of their own promoters.

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Critical Response 2 (Isha Agnihotri, 2017PGP137

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Critical Response 2 (Isha Agnihotri, 2017PGP137

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Readings: 1. Weapons of Mass Instruction: Terrorism, Propaganda

Film, Politics, and Us: New

Media, New Meanings.

Studies in Popular

Culture
2.  Manufacturing Consent in India: Mass Media and the Political Elites.

Media  Artifact-

SAMACHAR ft. The Indian Media Circus

The video talks about the present media topics that are being focused in the news channels and how they brainwash the general public. There is a particular comment made in the video which says that now you don't need facts to justify what are saying, you just have to put a flag in the frame and hide behind it. There have many examples given in the video to show how the government not only sets a propaganda but also twist the media to ignore the more important events that should require more concern of the citizens. It shows how the news channels reporting style has shifted- from reporting what matters to what will sell in the public. Money and Profits have strong-armed the media which has led to a depletion in the quality of news reporting. The media itself has diluted the power what they are capable of. It is all due to the fact they don’t want to be on the bad side of the government because the fearless journalism is no more rewarded. The assassination of fearless journalist like Gauri Lankesh has somewhat made the media a submissive partner to the government instead of being the opposition to them.

This TRP motivated media, who instead of focusing on the bigger issues are using their power to showcase actors and actresses performing entertainment. They have slowly become a daily-soap channel instead of the one that should have enlightened the audience with what they cannot see. There can be reason to that that the almost all the media houses are owned by the families who have prominent political connections in the leading parties. All this has led to a biased approach and presentation of the facts. The need of the hour is that the citizens of the nation should be able to realize the difference between the fabricated news and the actual events that require our time and attention.

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Media artifact:  Sanju

Reading: Weapons of Mass Instruction: Terrorism, Propaganda Film, Politics and Us: New Media, New Meanings

According to me, recent Bollywood film Sanju-a biopic on film actor can be called a propaganda film or a PR exercise to change Sanjay Dutt's image sullen with numerous allegations and a conviction by the court of law.

The protagonist was played by Ranbir Kapoor, who enjoys a huge fan following in India and the film was directed by one of the best directors in the country Raju Hirani. Though, the film was successful at the box-office and proved to be entertaining for Indian audience, it’s objective was to show the “real” Sanjay Dutt, and develop sympathy for him in the hindsight. As an audience, I felt there were many critical aspects of Dutt’s life which had not been touched by the makers. Be it his estranged relation with first wife Richa Dutt – a chapter completely omitted in the biopic – or the influence of Shiv-Sena supreme Bal Thackeray in his release from jail after Mumbai bomb blasts, director Rajkumar Hirani stayed away from exploring these incidents. In fact, it mentioned a disclimer that some characters and incidents are purely fictional and he has taken a cinematic liberty.

I found the movie not just an attempt at correcting Dutt’s image as a terrorist but something much beyond that. Here are some of my observations:

Firstly, the movie does not blame him for his drug addiction. Instead, it completely puts the blame on his drug-peddler friend named Zubin Mistry (played by Jim Sarbh) who happens to be a fictional character.

Secondly, the movie also conveniently excuses him for having sex with his best friend’s fiancée. Dutt wasn’t given a share in the blame, the woman was labelled ‘characterless’ instead. He is also glorified for having sex with 300+ women.

Thirdly, the movie also gave him a free pass for illegally possessing assault rifles and shifted the blame onto some Hindu radicals for their death threats. The threats, they said, ‘forced’ him into possessing illegal firearms.

Fourthly, the makers went on to blame the media alone for damaging Dutt’s reputation in the society when he, in reality had strong ties with Mumbai’s underworld! His confession to the police about knowing Abu Salem is available on the internet.

How easily did the makers successfully put their point forward(& in many cases convinced people) that the world conspired against Dutt for absolutely no fault of his!

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MMM Critical Response 2 Submitted by: Ishee Vatsala (2017PGP140) Media Artifact: Child influencer Zooey Miyoshi's Instagram feed Link: https://www.instagram.com/zooeyinthecity/  Critical Response: Zooey Miyoshi is a Los Angeles based 7-year old influencer with 143,000 followers on Instagram. Her account is managed by her mother and is filled with a plethora of images, of Zooey wearing the latest GAP socks or her mom debunking regressive Japanese traditions related to Valentine's Day. Instagram in its entirety, is a classic example of what Jhally calls the commodity image-system. Every image is designed to evoke desire, aspiration or an undiscovered need by the power of the hashtag. While most influencers on Instagram follow the predictable template of visually stunning pictures coupled with short 'personal' descriptions and dozens of hashtags, successful influencers can be easily distinguished by the conversational nature of their posts designed to draw in followers and convince them that they are or can be a part of their world. Zooey's feed is no different, the most unique aspect being the fact that she is a child who leads a normal life complete with school while being an influencer. It can be argued that Zooey's account is an extension of what Jhally talked about when saying that commodity image-systems fundamentally alter the childhood experience. The Instagram feed here is highly ritualized with every post having specific descriptors like "Shoes:" with the fashion label or business tagged and feature a snippet of her daily life to generate user comments. The impact of such a ritualized existence is less visible since the medium doesn't permit candour of that sort. After a brief scroll through the feed, it can be argued that the posts constitute a sort of reverse infantilisation. The fashion and grooming choices are immaculate and outmatch any adult fashion influencer's account. They promote an unviable idea of adult perfection and show that even new age media platforms with novel advertising dynamics like child influencers end up replicating conventional advertising imagery. This isn't surprising since the major audience for these Instagram posts are adults in the form of kids' mothers. The interplay of the same old biases and conventions in new media platforms like Instagram is very intriguing and goes to show that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

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MMM Critical Response 2 Submitted by: Ishee Vatsala (2017PGP140) Media Artifact: Child influencer Zooey Miyoshi's Instagram feed Link: https://www.instagram.com/zooeyinthecity/  Critical Response: Zooey Miyoshi is a Los Angeles based 7-year old influencer with 143,000 followers on Instagram. Her account is managed by her mother and is filled with a plethora of images, of Zooey wearing the latest GAP socks or her mom debunking regressive Japanese traditions related to Valentine's Day. Instagram in its entirety, is a classic example of what Jhally calls the commodity image-system. Every image is designed to evoke desire, aspiration or an undiscovered need by the power of the hashtag. While most influencers on Instagram follow the predictable template of visually stunning pictures coupled with short 'personal' descriptions and dozens of hashtags, successful influencers can be easily distinguished by the conversational nature of their posts designed to draw in followers and convince them that they are or can be a part of their world. Zooey's feed is no different, the most unique aspect being the fact that she is a child who leads a normal life complete with school while being an influencer. It can be argued that Zooey's account is an extension of what Jhally talked about when saying that commodity image-systems fundamentally alter the childhood experience. The Instagram feed here is highly ritualized with every post having specific descriptors like "Shoes:" with the fashion label or business tagged and feature a snippet of her daily life to generate user comments. The impact of such a ritualized existence is less visible since the medium doesn't permit candour of that sort. After a brief scroll through the feed, it can be argued that the posts constitute a sort of reverse infantilisation. The fashion and grooming choices are immaculate and outmatch any adult fashion influencer's account. They promote an unviable idea of adult perfection and show that even new age media platforms with novel advertising dynamics like child influencers end up replicating conventional advertising imagery. This isn't surprising since the major audience for these Instagram posts are adults in the form of kids' mothers. The interplay of the same old biases and conventions in new media platforms like Instagram is very intriguing and goes to show that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

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Theorist: Sean HeustonThe use of propaganda to forward one's case is not new and has been beautifully captured in spirit in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. The cartoonist Sandy Plunkett has subtly captured the current ongoings in USA by referencing it to the book. Sean Heuston in his article "weapons of mass destruction" shows by means of similar examples how propaganda can be used to sway the public in your side. Even in the novel,  

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Theorist: Sean HeustonThe use of propaganda to forward one's case is not new and has been beautifully captured in spirit in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. The cartoonist Sandy Plunkett has subtly captured the current ongoings in USA by referencing it to the book. Sean Heuston in his article "weapons of mass destruction" shows by means of similar examples how propaganda can be used to sway the public in your side. Even in the novel,  

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Leesha Guwalani 2017PGP

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CRITICAL RESPONSE

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Article: Hegemonic masculinity in media contentsMedia Artifact: Surf Excel – Puddle War

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Article: Hegemonic masculinity in media contentsMedia Artifact: Surf Excel – Puddle War

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The article talks about hegemonic masculinity which generally defines what is being a man or what are natural male traits? This term is used to refer to the reified and institutionalised forms of male behaviours which are dominant and come to determine the expectations laid upon all men within societies. Media contents are largely comprised with so called male attributes like toughness, aggressiveness, excessive risk-taking, emotional illiteracy, strength, protectiveness, courage, decisiveness and tell how should be ideal man be like. The media artifact showing same type of scenario is one of the Surf Excel ads -Puddle war. In the ad, there were two kids (brother-sister) who are going school. The boy was shown as acting some stunts while girl was shown as counting some things and then fell in the puddle and started crying and ask help of her brother. The boy beats up the puddle for his little sister. Advertisement portray masculinity as a normal expression and as a social dominant character. Why the brother helped his sister? why didn't she fight with puddle or why didn't advertisers show two sisters who helped each other. The portrayals and acceptance of men by media as socially powerful and physically violent serve to reinforce assumptions about how men and boys should act in society and how should they treat each other. These portrayals are of particular concern when it comes to young boys, who may be more influenced by this type of advertisement than girls.

This is not only advertisement by surf excel, there are so many ads in this series in which boys are shown as stars who cause explosions and stuff and the same time are helping females (grandmother, brother, sister etc.)  in any way. In fact, females are shown as one who do household chores (washing clothes, hanging clothes etc). Women's unpaid domestic labour have been exhalated in advertisements for long time.

Submitted by:

Name: Meghna Bhati

Roll Number: 2017PGP198

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Submitted by: Aboli Wanjari (2017PGP014)Media Artifact: Boundaries by Allaire Bartel (Photo series) This powerful photo series project by Allaire shows what sexual harassment can feel like for women on a regular basis. “Boundaries” as a word itself has different connotations to it. The pictures showcase a woman going through her daily routine which look innocuous and normal at the first glance but when we look closer we can see male hands on her body to illustrate how male entitlement and rape culture can permeate every sphere of a woman’s life. The article “What’s wrong with a little objectification?” by Sut Jhally mentions repeatedly that most images don’t look strange to us when in essence they are disturbing. This is because as audience certain ideas of gender relations and objectification are drilled into us by the means of advertising which are said to be following the resonance theory of communication. Here, the pictures look disturbing because they bear some resemblance to ritualized gender relations and ground reality. She tries to portray how the society has come to “normalize” sexual harassment and how sexism has seeped into a woman’s life and society. In every picture, the subject maintains a blank expression depicting how conditioned we have become to these behaviors from men and have accepted this atmosphere as excusable or normal. We constantly re-create the meaning which only exists in the space and when we come across such images, we tend to mediate and participate in the construction of meaning for it. Thus, we can say that these images stir up emotions because of the fact that they show women as objects which justifies the occurrence of violent behavior. The images show “everyday sexism” in the way we see it in our daily lives and makes us think of the bigger question of where do the “boundaries” lie.

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Submitted by: Aboli Wanjari (2017PGP014)Media Artifact: Boundaries by Allaire Bartel (Photo series) This powerful photo series project by Allaire shows what sexual harassment can feel like for women on a regular basis. “Boundaries” as a word itself has different connotations to it. The pictures showcase a woman going through her daily routine which look innocuous and normal at the first glance but when we look closer we can see male hands on her body to illustrate how male entitlement and rape culture can permeate every sphere of a woman’s life. The article “What’s wrong with a little objectification?” by Sut Jhally mentions repeatedly that most images don’t look strange to us when in essence they are disturbing. This is because as audience certain ideas of gender relations and objectification are drilled into us by the means of advertising which are said to be following the resonance theory of communication. Here, the pictures look disturbing because they bear some resemblance to ritualized gender relations and ground reality. She tries to portray how the society has come to “normalize” sexual harassment and how sexism has seeped into a woman’s life and society. In every picture, the subject maintains a blank expression depicting how conditioned we have become to these behaviors from men and have accepted this atmosphere as excusable or normal. We constantly re-create the meaning which only exists in the space and when we come across such images, we tend to mediate and participate in the construction of meaning for it. Thus, we can say that these images stir up emotions because of the fact that they show women as objects which justifies the occurrence of violent behavior. The images show “everyday sexism” in the way we see it in our daily lives and makes us think of the bigger question of where do the “boundaries” lie.

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This series consists of three images of a man, clearly portrayed as Donald Trump, making unwanted sexual advances towards three different women. Each scene was inspired by behaviors that made frequent appearances in the 22 accusations of sexual misconduct leveled against Trump: non-consensual kissing, breast grabbing, and touching of genitals by reaching up a woman's skirt.

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Critical Response-2
Submitted By: Sonali Lodha (2017PGPM062)

Artefact: Avril Lavigne's Song "Dumb Blonde"

One of the highly misogynistic notions that runs in modern day America and has been a product of decades of misguided culture is the idea that blondes are dumb. Dumb blonde jokes are highly popularised and the image often adapted in various forms in different artefacts of the international culture ranging from videos, movies, books etc. To cite a few, there is hyper-ritualised video of the song Barbie girl or the character of Karen in the movie Mean Girls, who is shown to be so impossibly stupid that the only good thing about her would be her ability to put her fist in her mouth. Avril with her song tries to retaliate with very straightforward lyrics that go like “Well, there you go again telling me where I belong
You put me on the bench, don't think that I can play strong
So quick to condescend well, you think I'm empty, I'm not
You won't be so confident when I'm crushing you from the top”. She attempts to demystify the blonde ideology with lines like “I'm a babe, I'm a boss and I'm making this money” meaning that she can be a babe and a boss at the same time, which can obviously be backed by her achievements. The question lies whether such debunking forms of media are necessary? While such perceptions (dumb blonde) are often trivialized, they sometimes transcend to have larger implications and manifest in various forms that aren’t just demeaning but alienating and constricting to women.  As to whether Avril’s song does it for the blondes, the song may not hold a firm disposition in terms of the earnestness that it commands, but it definitely creates a space of its own and blonde stands as a synecdoche for the collective, women of all hair colours ultimately. Her critique argues against the presuppositions that are in fact born out of aggravated extractions from depictions of blondes (or women in general) in pop-culture. Being an icon herself and a highly stylised one at that, she isn’t questioning beautification as an element but rather the narrative that is implanted by sucking out the subjectivity and the subsequent subjugation of women.

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Avril Lavigne feat. Nicki Minaj - Dumb Blonde (Lyric Video)

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Janmenjoy Das Article: Indian Media and its transformed public Media Artifact: Fair & Lovely Ads 

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Janmenjoy Das Article: Indian Media and its transformed public Media Artifact: Fair & Lovely Ads 

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Critical Response:

The reading talks about the various changes in the Indian Media Network over the past two decades and how this has been complemented with the growth in the public sentiments and beliefs. I will like to confine my critical response on Part II of the article which looks at the transformations that the public has undergone. For the assignment, I will like to critically analyze the changes in the advertisements of Fair & Lovely over the past couple of decades. Firstly, if we look at the ads in the 90s and early 2000s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OUm3SazRk) , it is mostly about a talented girl who is deprived of acceptance because of her skin color. For instance, to get a job as a dancer, model, air hostess, etc. Even to get married, the girl stands at a high chance of acceptance in an arranged marriage if she has a fairer skin. In the words of Brinda Karat, Former General Secretary of a Women Association, such ads are “discriminatory on the basis of the color of skin,” and “an affront to a woman’s dignity,” because it shows fairer women having greater job success based on their sexuality. But this was a reflection of the society and the general public’s mentality those days. This can be verified by all the matrimonial ads. Today, it we look at the latest ad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXqcEeImXJc) , it features Bollywood actress Yami Gautam who talks about the product quality and features and its credibility as a fairness cream. There is no more a mention about how a fairness cream is a tool for a successful woman. This change has been brought about with the shift in the way the public thinks. It is indeed true that racial biasness still exists but a lot of the public are against the discrimination of women based on skin color which pushed fairness companies to change their ad.

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Media artifact: Jaane Tu Ya Jaane NaArticle “Hegemonic masculinity in media contents”In the entire movie the male protagonist is shown to be really compassionate, generous and kind. But he’s not the violent type. He tries to solve even the most difficult situations with a discussion. But all these facts about him are not really appreciated because he does not fit into the image of the traditional male. The male is supposed to be violent and masculine. This is the message that the movie tries to spread. The movie somewhat again tries to spread the idea that masculinity is incomplete without being violent. It spreads the cliché idea of the superiority of ‘manly man’ over ‘not so manly man’. The male protagonist avoids violence throughout the movie but as soon as he starts showing violence both his mother and his female friend start seeing him as a man. True masculinity is connected with being just masculine and nothing else. While there is nothing wrong about being violent in situations of demand, there is absolutely nothing wrong in trying to solve problems without getting violent. These movies try to make insecure the man who do not wish to engage in violence.PRIYA SAHNI2017PGP270

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Media artifact: Jaane Tu Ya Jaane NaArticle “Hegemonic masculinity in media contents”In the entire movie the male protagonist is shown to be really compassionate, generous and kind. But he’s not the violent type. He tries to solve even the most difficult situations with a discussion. But all these facts about him are not really appreciated because he does not fit into the image of the traditional male. The male is supposed to be violent and masculine. This is the message that the movie tries to spread. The movie somewhat again tries to spread the idea that masculinity is incomplete without being violent. It spreads the cliché idea of the superiority of ‘manly man’ over ‘not so manly man’. The male protagonist avoids violence throughout the movie but as soon as he starts showing violence both his mother and his female friend start seeing him as a man. True masculinity is connected with being just masculine and nothing else. While there is nothing wrong about being violent in situations of demand, there is absolutely nothing wrong in trying to solve problems without getting violent. These movies try to make insecure the man who do not wish to engage in violence.PRIYA SAHNI2017PGP270

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Managing Media Matters - Critical Response - submitted by Yazhini D(2017pgp433)Article: Beer, D. (2017). The social power of algorithm.Artifact: https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/03/netflix-algorithm-lumps-black-films-togetherAlgorithms at the back end play an important role in shaping our social and every day life without being noticed. Algorithms take in vast amount past data, analyze them  to identify pattern, draw correlations to make future predictions. But the data fed in contains biases with respect to gender, race, culture, physical abilities and disabilities and so on. These algorithmic systems in turn shape our decisions and become integrated into the choices that are made.The artifact chosen is a blog that sheds light on how Netflix’s recommendation has a racial bias and that if one relies solely on recommendation from Netflix then it limits his/her movie experience. If 12 years a slave is paired with A Birth of a Nation then its reasonable as both the movies are about slave trade and black history. But the article sites that there was a pairing of Fruitvale station, a drama about a black man killed by police and Cosby show, an american sitcom starring a predominantly african-american cast both of extremely different genres. If many people have watched those two movies then its normal to get such recommendation but if you’re flooded with afro-american led movies then it speaks otherwise. It may mean the algorithm not only takes in peoples watch list but might also their gender, race of interest etc.  As racial and gender politics is prevalent in western film industry lately it must have rubbed of on movie streaming sites as well. The algorithms are programmed to identify social pattern but they tend to extrapolate the pattern to a greater extent that one gets racially and culturally stereotyped recommendations rather than that based on genres and interests and that needs to be fixed. 

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Managing Media Matters - Critical Response - submitted by Yazhini D(2017pgp433)Article: Beer, D. (2017). The social power of algorithm.Artifact: https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/03/netflix-algorithm-lumps-black-films-togetherAlgorithms at the back end play an important role in shaping our social and every day life without being noticed. Algorithms take in vast amount past data, analyze them  to identify pattern, draw correlations to make future predictions. But the data fed in contains biases with respect to gender, race, culture, physical abilities and disabilities and so on. These algorithmic systems in turn shape our decisions and become integrated into the choices that are made.The artifact chosen is a blog that sheds light on how Netflix’s recommendation has a racial bias and that if one relies solely on recommendation from Netflix then it limits his/her movie experience. If 12 years a slave is paired with A Birth of a Nation then its reasonable as both the movies are about slave trade and black history. But the article sites that there was a pairing of Fruitvale station, a drama about a black man killed by police and Cosby show, an american sitcom starring a predominantly african-american cast both of extremely different genres. If many people have watched those two movies then its normal to get such recommendation but if you’re flooded with afro-american led movies then it speaks otherwise. It may mean the algorithm not only takes in peoples watch list but might also their gender, race of interest etc.  As racial and gender politics is prevalent in western film industry lately it must have rubbed of on movie streaming sites as well. The algorithms are programmed to identify social pattern but they tend to extrapolate the pattern to a greater extent that one gets racially and culturally stereotyped recommendations rather than that based on genres and interests and that needs to be fixed. 

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'What makes mainstream media mainstream' article talks about how elite media set a framework within which others operate. The real mass media re basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us. Let them get interested in professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. This is what exactly happened in the case of movie ‘Padmavaat’ starring Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh as the lead actors.

The movie was given unnecessary importance because of the riots and protests from the political parties and local regional parties because they felt it was demeaning to the community of Rajput without actually watching the movie. The other media gave these parties importance and they fed on it to continue the protests.

Have we ever seen Karni Sena members, when rapes and other atrocities with women happen in their home state of Rajasthan or neighbouring state of Haryana. Why don’t they protest for justice to the needy? The ideal thing would be to let everyone use their right to freedom of speech and expression and let them decide whether the movie is distorting the history or demeaning the reputations of Rajput. No one has the right to decide or put a verdict on behalf of everyone else.

There are many real issues that needs significant attention, but no one is interested in them.

Even the media is a corporation and it sells a product. Had the lead actors been different in the movie, no one would have taken care.

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The controversial Bollywood epic, Padmaavat, has prompted months of protests across India.

The film tells the story of a 14th Century Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler. The BBC explains why Hindu right-wing and caste groups believe it distorts history.

What is the dispute about?

Bollywood stars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh play the lead roles.

The film tells the story of 14th Century Muslim emperor Alauddin Khilji's attack on a kingdom after he was smitten by the beauty of its queen, Padmavati, who belonged to the Hindu Rajput caste.

Hindu groups and a Rajput caste organisation allege that the movie includes an intimate scene in which the Muslim king dreams of becoming intimate with the Hindu queen.

Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali has said the film does not feature such a "dream sequence" at all.

But rumours of such a scene were enough to enrage right-wing Hindu groups who called for the film to be banned.

Is the film historically accurate?

While Khilji is a historical figure, most historians believe there is very little evidence Padmavati existed in real life. But some historians, largely based in Rajasthan, disagree.

The name of the queen, and the plot of the film, are believed to be based on an epic poem, Padmaavat, by 16th-Century poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi, who himself described the work as fiction.

The poem extols the virtue of Padmavati who committed jauhar to protect her honour from Khilji who had killed her husband, the Rajput king, in a battle.

Jauhar, the mass self-immolation by women to avoid enslavement and rape by foreign invaders, is believed to have originated some 700 years ago among the ruling class or Rajputs in India.

Women in the community burnt themselves after their men were defeated in battles to avoid being taken by the victors. But it came to be seen as a measure of wifely devotion in later years.

Historians point out that Jayasi's ballad was written more than 200 years after the historical record of the invasion by Khilji. They say the folklore around Padmavati has been problematic as they have glorified sati.

But Padmavati is deified and held as a symbol of female honour among Rajputs even today.

How bad have the protests been?

There have been protests over the film in different parts of the country since January 2017 when members of the Karni Sena, a Rajput caste group, vandalised the set and slapped Mr Bhansali.

The protests intensified in November as the movie's original date of release - 1 December - approached.

Rajput community members burnt effigies of Mr Bhansali.

The Karni Sena vandalised cinemas and threatened to chop off Ms Padukone's nose, referring to a story in the epic Ramayana where a character has her nose chopped off as punishment.

The group also held protests against the film in several states, including Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, which are governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje said the film should not be released until "necessary changes are made so that sentiments of any community are not hurt".

A regional leader of the BJP announced a reward of nearly $1.5m (£1.3m) for anyone who beheaded Mr Bhansali and Ms Padukone.

Why a Bollywood memoir has kicked up a storm about being gay in India

Why a Bollywood film has been accused of distorting history

Why is Bollywood film PK controversial?

Some former royals in Rajasthan also called for the film's release to be cancelled. One of them, Mahendra Singh, said it was "an artistic and historic fraud to portray an incorrectly attired courtesan-like painted doll in the song as the very "queen" the film purports to pay obeisance to" - referring to a song in which Padmavati is dancing. Such scenes would lead to "anarchy," he added.

Earlier this week, protesters in India's western state of Gujarat blocked roads, torched buses and vandalised a theatre after the Supreme Court cleared the release of the film.

What did the court say?

On 18 January, the court cleared the film's release and overturned the decision by four states to ban it, citing fears of violence.

The film's producers had approached the Supreme Court to challenge the states' ban.

"Cinemas are an inseparable part of right to free speech and expression," said Chief Justice Dipak Misra. "States... cannot issue notifications prohibiting the screening of a film."

The court added in its ruling that the states should not have banned the film as it had already been cleared by India's censor board.

The board had screened the film to historians, who suggested five modifications. One of them included changing the film's name from Padmavati to Padmaavat, after the 16th Century epic poem of the same name.

Padmaavat controversy - timeline:

Jan 2017: Production is halted after Hindu extremist group Karni Sena vandalises the set in Rajasthan state. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is slapped by a member of the group

March 2017: The crew moves filming to Maharashtra state but protests continue. Mr Bhansali denies claims that the film depicts a "romantic dream sequence" between Padmavati and Allauddin Khilji

Aug 2017: Many Bollywood celebrities voice their support for the film

Sept 2017: Two posters of the film are released, prompting further outrage from Karni Sena and other right-wing groups. Protesters burn the posters

Nov 2017: Karni Sena continues its protests in Rajasthan, demanding a nationwide ban on the film. The group also threatens to chop off the nose of lead actress Deepika Padukone. The film's 1 December release date is delayed

Dec 2017: Indian censors clear the film but suggest changing the name to "Padmaavat"

Jan 2018: The Supreme Court orders the film to be released nationwide and tells four states which banned it - Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh - to ensure law and order is maintained.

Additional reporting by Sudha G Tilak Update 16 May 2018: This article has been amended to clarify that while most Indian historians believe there is very little evidence Padmavati existed in real life, some historians, largely based in Rajasthan, disagree.

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Why a Bollywood epic has sparked protests

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The controversial Bollywood epic, Padmaavat, has prompted months of protests across India. The film tells the story of a 14th Century Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler. The BBC explains why Hindu right-wing and caste groups believe it distorts history. Bollywood stars Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh play the lead roles.

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Critical Response 2- Shubhi Soni (2017PGP362)          Reading: What’s Wrong With a Little Objectification? By Sut Jhally         Artifact: Anaconda by Nicki Minaj (2014)

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Critical Response 2- Shubhi Soni (2017PGP362)          Reading: What’s Wrong With a Little Objectification? By Sut Jhally         Artifact: Anaconda by Nicki Minaj (2014)

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Everybody knows the song "Anaconda" by Nicki Minaj. However, after digging deep into the song's meaning, I've come to realize that it is a reflection of our historical understanding of gender equality and reverses the role of female empowerment in our society.

The song shows that Minaj is comfortable within her own skin, but the way her lyrics are articulated implies that women are meant to be objectified.

History has repeatedly made it clear that society wants men to remain the breadwinners of every household. It’s proved even in today’s society by the fact that women are paid 77 cents to every dollar a man earns. Minaj seemingly believes that men should be the providers for women, and in turn, women provide sex appeal. Even in the introduction of the song, Minaj talks about how a man is in serious trouble with the law, but it doesn't matter to her, because he still buys her designer clothing. This provokes the perceived trait of masculinity as the provider and the feminine trait of being needy.

Sexual objectification is another problem. The hook of the song is literally the hook of the song “Baby Got Back,” by Sir Mix-a-Lot, which states that he is not interested in women unless they have a big butt ("when a girl walks in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your face, you get sprung").

It is one thing to be comfortable with accepting that females can be sexual, but it is another thing to only let females be defined by their bodies. Minaj goes to insult skinny women in her songs, as the music video was also completely filled with sexual innuendos that were only positive towards women who sought to be sexually objectified and had curves.

The entire music video promotes association of masculinity and femininity with gender rather than personality traits.

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Submitted by: Abhishek Shridhar, IPM2014005Media Artifact: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (Netflix)Article referred: Protocol, or, How Control Exists after Decentralization by Alex Galloway

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Submitted by: Abhishek Shridhar, IPM2014005Media Artifact: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (Netflix)Article referred: Protocol, or, How Control Exists after Decentralization by Alex Galloway

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Bandersnatch, a masterstroke in modern era online video consumption. The choices that the audience make decide the ending, a phenomenon already implemented in several video games but never into a show. Referring to Alex Galloway’s article ‘Protocol, or, How Control Exists after Decentralization’ the concept of periodization and that of imperial control is clearly highlighted in this artifact.  In the earlier times, stage/street plays were the major form of story consumption, with the audience controlling the actors’ performance through their feedback i.e. cheers, tears and rotten eggs. The aristocrats would carefully pick the story that is put out. The performing team had to keep a balance between both the forces eventually operating within a given sphere of control. Then came the era of cinema. Public spaces within which stories can be consumed without the chaos of an open street play. Woven with bureaucratic leashes like censorship, national interest and propaganda, the stories of the modern disciplinary era were dynamic but not uncontrolled. Then came the modern era of online video consumption topped off by a viewer-centric decentralized story-line. But alas, it is nothing but an illusion. New users unaware of the algorithm are caught in a vicious circle of trying to avoid going against their will. Nobody wanted Stefan to murder his dad but the loop forces you to. The following choices are pivoted around the fact that the viewer has an inner murderer. There are moments when the 4th wall is breached making the users aware of their ‘control’. Netflix has put out that out of the million choice combinations, only 10 main endings are possible. The imperial control is laid upon the unaware viewer who is so immersed in the process of getting out that he goes deeper and deeper into the swamp of control.

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Media artifact: Fair & Lovely ad  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXO2Wu9equsArticle "What's wrong with a little objectification? By Sut  JhallyThe ad shows a father trying to convince her daughter to get married as the guy earns well, has a dream house and a dream job. The girl looks submissive and under confident in the beginning and is not able to make a clear choice. She starts using fair and lovely and instantly gains the confidence to earn well, get a dream job and a dream house. There is nothing else that changes in the life of the female protagonist apart from the fact that she starts using fair and lovely. Just a cream that makes her fair changes her life and her ideologies. The fairness cream helps her to take important decisions in life which she otherwise was not capable of taking. The ad hints that her skin color is above her talents in life. It stops women from being comfortable in their own skin. The ad propagates the myth of women’s beauty as just being one kind of beauty, i.e fair skin. They spread the message of rejection as a cause of dark skin which is dangerous. They spread an image of women who looks beautiful only in fair skin. It seems as if it’s imperative to have fair skin to achieve anything in life. The name of the product itself hints at women objectification. It portrays that you need to be fair in order to look lovely. The ad is accepted as normal in the Indian society which is already patriarchal. Many young girls actually believe that they are meant to look good in order to achieve anything in life. PRIYA SAHNI2017PGP270

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Media artifact: Fair & Lovely ad  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXO2Wu9equsArticle "What's wrong with a little objectification? By Sut  JhallyThe ad shows a father trying to convince her daughter to get married as the guy earns well, has a dream house and a dream job. The girl looks submissive and under confident in the beginning and is not able to make a clear choice. She starts using fair and lovely and instantly gains the confidence to earn well, get a dream job and a dream house. There is nothing else that changes in the life of the female protagonist apart from the fact that she starts using fair and lovely. Just a cream that makes her fair changes her life and her ideologies. The fairness cream helps her to take important decisions in life which she otherwise was not capable of taking. The ad hints that her skin color is above her talents in life. It stops women from being comfortable in their own skin. The ad propagates the myth of women’s beauty as just being one kind of beauty, i.e fair skin. They spread the message of rejection as a cause of dark skin which is dangerous. They spread an image of women who looks beautiful only in fair skin. It seems as if it’s imperative to have fair skin to achieve anything in life. The name of the product itself hints at women objectification. It portrays that you need to be fair in order to look lovely. The ad is accepted as normal in the Indian society which is already patriarchal. Many young girls actually believe that they are meant to look good in order to achieve anything in life. PRIYA SAHNI2017PGP270

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A comment on the piece "hegemonice masculinity in media contents" by Kareithi. Submitted by: Virginia Miriam Kamala. S (2014IPM109)He mainly argues that hegemonic masculinity is a representation of society's ideal of how male behavior should be. I'd like to pick up the song "Gaston" from a very popular Disney movie called " beauty and beast". Before I start to point out the "not so subtle" cues about masculinity, it's funny that this movie was aimed at kids and kids who specially tend to idealise the characters that they see on TV. This song is about a well built handsome, tall and strong male who has just been rejected by Belle (the female protagonist). His Friends are appalled as to why any female would reject Gaston's proposal. "No one fights like Gaston, no one hits like Gaston" he is shown hitting and throwing away all the men around him. He's shown to be the most preferred male in town, even the men want to be on his team "for there's no man in town who is half manly". We are led to believe that men who can fight, with huge muscles and brute strength is who all the girls would like. All the other men in the pub are lean, lanky, fat, short or just generally weak and ugly, they are the ones who are beaten up and bullied by Gaston. So young boys who watch the movie affix the representation of society's ideal male as Gaston and all the other body types as inferior and not ideal.Kareithi also argues that at a time when machine has replaced muscle, the pursuit of musclarity has become one of the few ways left for men to exhibit their masculine selves. So men develop muscles not for their usefulness but for their representation of masculinity.For men who do not have the ideal body type, advertisements exploit this feeling of inferiority by promising to provide them with the products that will enhance these qualities. Hence media and advertisements are filled with content that encourage this ideal body type. This further aggravates the representation of the ideal man. Sut jhully in his article "what's wrong with a little objectification" calls this phenomenon as "hyper ritualization" where ads and media only ritualize our rituals and conventionalize our conventions.

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A comment on the piece "hegemonice masculinity in media contents" by Kareithi. Submitted by: Virginia Miriam Kamala. S (2014IPM109)He mainly argues that hegemonic masculinity is a representation of society's ideal of how male behavior should be. I'd like to pick up the song "Gaston" from a very popular Disney movie called " beauty and beast". Before I start to point out the "not so subtle" cues about masculinity, it's funny that this movie was aimed at kids and kids who specially tend to idealise the characters that they see on TV. This song is about a well built handsome, tall and strong male who has just been rejected by Belle (the female protagonist). His Friends are appalled as to why any female would reject Gaston's proposal. "No one fights like Gaston, no one hits like Gaston" he is shown hitting and throwing away all the men around him. He's shown to be the most preferred male in town, even the men want to be on his team "for there's no man in town who is half manly". We are led to believe that men who can fight, with huge muscles and brute strength is who all the girls would like. All the other men in the pub are lean, lanky, fat, short or just generally weak and ugly, they are the ones who are beaten up and bullied by Gaston. So young boys who watch the movie affix the representation of society's ideal male as Gaston and all the other body types as inferior and not ideal.Kareithi also argues that at a time when machine has replaced muscle, the pursuit of musclarity has become one of the few ways left for men to exhibit their masculine selves. So men develop muscles not for their usefulness but for their representation of masculinity.For men who do not have the ideal body type, advertisements exploit this feeling of inferiority by promising to provide them with the products that will enhance these qualities. Hence media and advertisements are filled with content that encourage this ideal body type. This further aggravates the representation of the ideal man. Sut jhully in his article "what's wrong with a little objectification" calls this phenomenon as "hyper ritualization" where ads and media only ritualize our rituals and conventionalize our conventions.

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https://youtu.be/VuJTqmpBnI0

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Name: Pradosh Ranjan Jena,  Roll No. 2017PGP255, Article: Manufacturing of Consent, Media Artifact: “Margin Call” Movie

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Name: Pradosh Ranjan Jena,  Roll No. 2017PGP255, Article: Manufacturing of Consent, Media Artifact: “Margin Call” Movie

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“Margin Call” Movie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/)

What picture does come to our mind when we think about Wall Street professionals and their ethics? If you also think that they are the dishonest greedy individuals who care only about their organization, who can do anything and everything for profits and don’t have a sense of the public good then perhaps you have been a victim of the propaganda to manage consent against the Wall Street for every other financial crisis.

“Margin Call” is one of those movies who imply the above propaganda. In this movie, they show a financial organization before the 2008 financial crisis and how the employees of this firm dump all the worthless holdings while still advising their clients to buy these. The image that has been shown here is about the ultimate greed which makes sure one doesn’t care even about their business partners to gain profit out of a crisis situation.

I don’t know if that’s what happened behind the walls of JP Morgan Chase or Goldman Sachs, days before the crisis. No one knows except only those individuals involved in it and whatever we are going to watch, will in no matter be the exact truth. But still we believe in the movies, we have been taught by the media to hate capitalist firms, and have faith in our Government which has the authority and responsibility to handle the financial markets.

How much of what we see in movies is true?

Is someone trying to bend your opinion towards one stakeholder?

Who can gain by making you believe that is the truth?

Ask these questions to yourself before you watch the next movie and form your opinion based on that.

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The ad in question is from the government of India regarding aadhar. Usually most of the aadhar ads show how bureaucracy can be reduced in various day to day activities. How about this ad takes a different route. It uses fear. This is a soft power that the government is trying to use.

This ad is aired on news channels, national channels and entertainment channels. I believe it aims to resonate with the masses in terms of a worst case scenario and successfully achieves the aim of manufacturing the consent of getting an aadhar card issued.

The use of aadhar can also be seen as the use of bio power by the government surveil  on people without letting them know that they are being surveiled on.

The whole ad is presented in a low and depressing tone. While submit argue that having bio-metric data is a way of surveillance; the ad portrays one of the advantages of the fingerprint. To me it made me wonder how many cases such as the ones portrayed in that have been solved because of Aadhar.

On doing secondary research it turns out that around 500 missing children have been traced through Aadhar.

It sets a protocol using this bio-power. As the article on protocol says that protocol is more democratic than a panopticon, London and structure is still command and control.

- Pranav Chaudhari (2017PGP258)

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Aadhaar Reunites: बिछड़ों को अपनों से मिलवाए आधार

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Bollywood's India by Rachel Dwyer. Submitted by Shubham Kushwaha 2013IPM126

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Bollywood's India by Rachel Dwyer. Submitted by Shubham Kushwaha 2013IPM126

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This publishing by Rachel Dwyer gives a perspective of how Bollywood has shaped the Indian scenario and in return how Indian society has shaped Bollywood. The Indian film industry has been a part of the Indian common man’s everyday lives for over a hundred years now and continue to effect in more ways to come. Dwyer’s article focusses on how Bollywood delivers a sense of escapism for the mundane life and gives dreams and hopes for better things to come. I would like to draw your attention to the film that is most relevant right now- Gully Boy. After having watched the film (and personally giving it 5 stars), I realised that this film is exactly what is being talked about in the article. It shows life in Mumbai slums, how a small time slum dweller realizes his dream of becoming a rapper, has to go through hardships and finally achieves his dreams. The film is complete with songs that you can sing along to, an outstanding story and brilliant acting. The youth in India right now is going crazy over this film because it delivers everything an ideal Bollywood film should. It even shows foreigners coming into the Dharavi slums to observe how people live in the tiniest of spaces and how first world countries see India as. Bollywood creates an image of India in the minds of not just Indian people but also people abroad. It studies the youth’s fantasies, gives a sense of life to people outside of Bombay, everyday struggles- there is something for each and every one of us to relate to. Alas though this is only a small fad that will die in the coming months and the Indian audience must wait for another movie like this that helps them forget the hardships of everyday life and gives them a sense of escapism.

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Name: Debrup Ray, Roll No.: 2017PGP101, Article: Manufacturing of Consent, Artifact: Arnab Goswami on Yogi Adityanath – Then & Now

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Name: Debrup Ray, Roll No.: 2017PGP101, Article: Manufacturing of Consent, Artifact: Arnab Goswami on Yogi Adityanath – Then & Now

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“The times they are a-changin” – what pops into my mind inadvertently when I see Arnab Goswami on Republic TV! There was a time when Arnab’s debates seemed logical and hard hitting (though he never really let anyone speak on the Newshour debate). As a part of the Times Now group I have witnessed him grill Congress and BJP alike – be it that historic one-on-one interview with Rahul Gandhi or the blatant bashing of beef ban. To be honest I quite admired his immaculate articulation and speaking prowess.

Size, ownership and profit orientation is perhaps the most influential filter of editorial basis. “Mass media outlets operate largely for profit. For this, they must be able to satisfy financial interests of the company owners.” Times Now of the Bennet Coleman and Company Ltd, being the largest media house and therefore very flashy, has the largest English news channel viewership in India. It has strategic investments to support its huge size and technological infrastructure.

Later, he quit Times Now and founded Republic TV. “Multiple individuals from Indian politics and various business companies have made investments in the media firms. Due to these facts, many news outlets are biased toward political parties and views.” Republic TV is primarily funded by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a BJP MP in the Rajya Sabha. Due to this switch in his career, and Republic TV owing allegiance to BJP, there has been a stark change in Arnab’s style of journalism. He is seen as a voracious pro-BJP speaker, with a tremendous change in his outlook toward the same people whom he had once despised.

This video is a small but hilarious example of how his attitude towards the controversial UP Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, has transformed over time. At Times Now, he demonstrates sheer aggression and his typical on-screen flamboyant anger, whereas at Republic TV, he is so polite that he is almost leading Adityanath to political correctness. The amount of mush displayed is over the top!

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Arnab Goswami on Yogi Adityanath - Then & Now

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Critical Response 2 – Managing Media Matters

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Critical Response 2 – Managing Media Matters

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Submitted by: Rashmeet Kaur Bhatia (2017PGP292)

Media Artifact:
Blogs on the Best Valentine’s Day Gifts

https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/best-valentines-day-gifts-for-her-2019/?fbclid=IwAR1fn72uQPV0war9b5FegJNTL47atLlv7Xzc8vWlOY06Rj1FrIUhUH_SvOA

http://blogs.lijodecor.com/special-occasions/romantic-gift-ideas-to-make-your-valentines-week-special/

Article from the course:

Jhally, Sut (1990). “Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture.”

Coming across several number of blogs informing people about the best gifts to buy for the Valentine week reminds me of the point made in the article by Sut Jhally stating that, living in the consumer culture, it is difficult to locate the origins of our most cherished values and assumptions, they simply appear to be part of our natural world. Valentine’s celebration seems to be one of the prime examples exemplifying that.

It all started at the end of the 5 th century when Pope Zelicius declared February 14 as the St. Valentine’s Day, out of appreciation for him. From then onwards, it spread across various parts of the world. In recent times, it has been extended to a week-long celebration that is termed as the Valentine week (from 7 th Feb to 14 th Feb). The Valentine week is now assumed to be the best time of the year to start, boost, or fix a relationship. Those in relationships expect to receive pleasant surprises and gifts during this time, and here starts the search for the best gift to be given to the beloved partner.

The media artifacts attached clearly highlight how advertisers leverage the emotions of the consumer culture and reinforce the attitude, values and rituals related to the Valentine celebration. They clearly present the solution for all the questions of the consumer by giving relevant gift suggestions in the form of direct links, for each day of the Valentine week.

This drift in the consumer culture from having a single-day celebration to a week-long festival is attributable to the commercial communications made by the advertisers. That day is not far when these advertisers will be selling the commodities stating, “Best Valentine Gifts for your Top 5 Valentines”

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The season of love is right around the corner and love is already in the air!!!

A year-long wait for all the lovebirds will come to rest with the arrival of Valentine's week. Each and every day of this week starting from Rose day on Feb 7 th is an opportunity to celebrate and cherish love and togetherness with your partner. Love has several folds and it is always overwhelming to take it slowly while experiencing all its feelings and emotions.

Valentine's celebration can put you in a state of excitement as well as confusion. The feeling of loving someone or being loved by someone is more than any word can express; well think of a whole week of the same feeling. Now, that's exciting right!!! The confusion pops up when it comes to picking out gifts for your beloved. So, allow us to cover up this part...

Here are some romantic gift ideas to make your Valentine's week special....

1. Rose Day, 7th Feb

The Valentine's week kick starts with the arrival of Rose day. When it's Rose day you are clear about what you need to gift your sweetheart. A red rose is the symbol of love and passion and is a perfect gift you can opt to start your Valentine's week. Find a huge bouquet of red roses to make you're other better half special and loved.

If you are planning something exotic for this day and your budget allows this, you can try something like a chocolate rose bouquet or a crystal rose.

2. Propose Day, 8th Feb

The proposed day that comes right after Rose day is the perfect day to confess your hearty feelings of love to your partner. When it comes to confessing your love to someone, you might need more than trusting your gut. It is always important to wait for the right moment. You can give her hints through gifts which quotes " I love you" and other gifts.

If you are ready to run an extra mile for expressing your love we would suggest taking him/her to a romantic candlelight dinner or some romantic late night movies. Set the mood and make sure your partner is enjoying and living in the moment just as you. Well, if you are still stammering around what gift you need to buy for her; Heart balloons will be a great pick.

3. Chocolate Day, 9th Feb

A beautiful box of heart-shaped chocolates is more than enough to steal the spotlight for this day. Chocolates trigger the love which is already present in the air. Other than buying chocolates, trying to bake a heart-shaped chocolate cake or making some homemade chocolate will make the one whom you are trying to impress feel special.

You can also add some small and cute along with the cake to live in the moment.

4. Teddy Day, 10th Feb

This might be the most anticipated and most awaited day of Valentine's week. A plush teddy bear is a perfect gift to cuddle with when you miss your sweetheart. Teddy bears are one of the cutest gifts you can get for your girl to show your love and affection. This 15" plush teddy bear might be the perfect gift your partner might have been longing for.

This day also is a second chance for confessing your love if you have missed your chance on propose day. A cute letter along with the teddy might do the trick in stealing her heart away!!!

5. Promise Day, 11th Feb

A promise...a vow!!! If you are pretty sure you found the right one to spend rest of your life with, then it's time to get serious. What are words if you really don't mean them when you say them ...the song by Chris Medina drags us deep in thoughts. Promise day is the right time to promise your partner for an endless journey filled with love and passion.

A solvar ring, bracelet or a chain would go great with the day to spice up things. Pick the time and place for making this an unforgettable memory.

6. Hug Day, 12th Feb

A hug is a gesture of complex emotions and feelings. Nothing can convey your emotions as effectively as a hug. Start your hug day with a tight hug with your partner. Planning a picnic to the park or a trip to the beach might be the most suitable options you can try on this day. As for gifts, you can get cute figurines of hugging teddy bears.

Keep the day entertaining and refreshing by playing games or eating out. Walk her back to her home and end the day with an affectionate hug.

7. Kiss Day, 13th Feb

It isn't necessary to have a bulky wallet to enjoy your Valentine's week. Keep the kiss day simple by celebrating with your beloved at home. Kiss her to welcome at the door followed with a glass of red wine. Come up with a fun and exotic dish to try cooking it with your partner. The forehead is the place you should leap for...Don't rush yourself into anything. Kiss him or her on the forehead to show your affection and love. If your partner is comfortable and ready to dig in deeper, then go on with the moment.

Conclusion

Valentine's day is all about expressing your love. Respect your partner and their needs. Keep the day interesting and entertaining. Shower him/her with gifts and kisses.

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Romantic Gift Ideas to Make Your Valentine's Week Special

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The season of love is right around the corner and love is already in the air!!! A year-long wait for all the lovebirds will come to rest with the arrival of Valentine's week. Each and every day of this week starting from Rose day on Feb 7 th is an opportunity to celebrate and cherish love and togetherness with your partner.

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By Ravjot Sachdeva, 2017PGP215

There has been a shift towards convergence culture in media for quite some time now as explicated by Jenkins and Deuze in their Editorial on Convergence Culture. A relatively new form of this convergence was witnessed in the popular Netflix series: Black Mirror- Bandersnatch. The episode released by Netflix in December 2018 is the largest production of the “choose-your-own-adventure” format. Bandersnatch allows viewers to make decisions at various junctures – these choices then determine the story path down which the episode proceeds. These series provide the illusion of control to the users assuring them at the beginning of the episode itself that the reins of the story reside in their hands. Users found themselves making decisions related to the kind of music the protagonist listens to or the kind of cereal he eats in the morning- they ended up a believing they have a say in the turn the story takes when there were really just five possible endings. Regardless, users lapped it up as is clearly indicated by the more than warm response the series received. However, a new article has recently surfaced- revealing how Netflix has stored all our responses and has so far not given a clear explanation as to why it did so. This brings us to the uncertainty surrounding the “terms of our participation” as highlighted in Jenkins and Deuze’s editorial. The news article hereby attached clearly shows the backlash of consumers on realising that consent was manufactured while performing the contract between them and the channel. This provokes us to think how media houses like Netflix should approach dishing out more such content in the future, given that the users do want more of it. It calls for channels like Netflix to come clean on how the user data recorded is going to be used and remain open to the possibility of educating consumers about the extent of their participation in such content formats in the future.

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Black Mirror took a step up in its meta aesthetic in the last gasp of 2018 with the release of Bandersnatch on Netflix, a ' choose your own adventure'-style streaming event where you controlled the choices of its main protagonist, aspiring computer programmer Stefan Butler. At one point, viewers were even given the opportunity to tell Stefan that he was being watched on Netflix - and it would be an understatement to say that doing so freaked the poor kid out.

But was there another level at play during the Bandersnatch experiment, one where Netflix was watching us watching Stefan? Yes, indeed. The future is complicated like that. Not only was Netflix observing us and recording our choices (the streaming service has previously dished out fascinating nuggets of information about which choices were more popular in certain scenarios) but it is also storing them against our accounts long after we've turned the telly off, to "help [Netflix] determine how to improve this model of storytelling in the context of a show or movie."

Yes, just like Stefan, we are lab rats, which isn't entirely surprising in this day and age, but it concerned Michael Veale, who is currently a technology policy researcher over at University College London. He used the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) service to request the Bandersnatch data mining info from Netflix, asking why "it's collecting data, the categories they're sorting data into, third parties it's sharing the data with, and other information."

The answers were complex, and you can (and should) read more about them over at Motherboard:

"They claim they're doing the processing as it's 'necessary' for performing the contract between me and Netflix." Veale told the site. "Is storing that data against my account really 'necessary'? They clearly haven't delinked it or anonymised it, as I've got access to it long after I watched the show. If you asked me, they should really be using consent (which you should be able to refuse) or legitimate interests (meaning you can object to it) instead."

"I'm hoping it inspires people to reach to their rights in situations like these, and to normalise them," Veale explained to Motherboard. "When companies get more and more requests, they'll have to streamline them for the sake of economising, and that in turn will benefit all users."

What do you reckon your Bandersnatch choices say about you, and do you care if Netflix stores them for later use?

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Black Mirror: Netflix collected and stored all your Bandersnatch choices

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Black Mirror took a step up in its meta aesthetic in the last gasp of 2018 with the release of Bandersnatch on Netflix, a ' choose your own adventure'-style streaming event where you controlled the choices of its main protagonist, aspiring computer programmer Stefan Butler.

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Submitted by: Meghna Chauhan (2017PGPM037)

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- Tanya Jakhar (2014IPM102)

“Welcome to the age of Blurred Lines”, this is what this Vogue October 2018 cover is trying to proclaim, showcasing a fluidly handsome Ranveer Singh alongside the exotic Sara Sampaio.

In this post-modernist era, identity is multi-faceted, developed through a multitude of constructs, questions facing us at every turn and that which is oft overlooked- privilege & the access to opportunities. Let us look at Ranveer Singh, for example. He is a tall good-looking brown male, a rich man, a famous Bollywood actor, a husband to a famous and successful woman, a north Indian Hindu portraying an embrace of both, the masculine and feminine sides of your base self. In juxtaposition, we have Sara Sampaio, who is a famous Victoria’s Secret Angel, a rich woman, a Christian, a tall good-looking European dressed in similar flowery aesthetics as Ranveer (Point: this role has not been portrayed by an Indian; nor are similar pretty, albeit ‘revealing’, clothes worn by Indian models on Indian magazine covers).

Ranveer is known for his funky fashion style. But in order to achieve this ‘luxury’ of being able to express his real identity, Ranveer first got mass accepted (from cute boy-next-door to strong emperor) through conventional identity constructs and then slipped out of it for ‘authenticity’ (open for contestation). You have to first be ‘someone’, in order to actually be able to be ‘someone’.

The blurriness this cover is aiming at, is heavily prejudiced by underlying privilege, with the Bollywood and Indian Fashion industry emerging as a hegemonic class (Point: Anaita Shroff Adajania, the creative director for this particular cover, is friends with all of Bollywood’s who’s who). Vogue, quite simply, is another elitist media vehicle hypocritically trying to champion the ‘rights’ of the masses.

Note: The author does not intend to impose / influence any ideology (either explicit or implicit) upon the reader(s). This work is purely her opinion and is represented as such.

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Analysing objectification of women in Bollywood song “Fevicol Se”, in light of the article “What’s wrong with a little objectification”:

As Sat Jhally states in his article, our culture is more obsessed with sex and gender so much so that other constructs of human individuality become defined through gender. Now the definition of gender and sexual identities is a difficult activity and in modern times, the difficulty is compounded by individuals being bombarded by extremely concentrated images of what gender is all about. Today in India, women are undervalued by their male counterparts and media plays a large role in development of this perspective.

The movie “Dabangg 2” which came out in 2016, is an example of how Bollywood media provides us a false way of looking at ourselves and a false fulfilment of our needs and desires. The song, “Chipkale Saiyan Fevicol se,” translated “Hey Love! You Can Glue Me On,” sung by Mamta Sharma and others, perfectly depicts the corruption of male culture in India and dangerously objectifies women. Along with the video, the song’s lyrics also depict a woman compulsively adhering to the expectations a male dominated culture by giving way to seductive charm. Going below all the standards of objectification, the woman became a “Tanduri murgi”, “Namkin Butter” and “Angur ki daughter”; i.e. chicken, butter etc. The lyrics demonstrate the ultimate saleable existence of women. By comparing herself to meat and alcohol, she makes herself something consumable and disposable! While “Dabangg 2” and “Fevicol Se” are set in Bihar, a hub of prostitution, the fundamental problem is much more widespread. And the reason that probably most of the public easily accepts these songs is that this is not new or disturbing for our patriarchal biased society and it’s thoughts about women. Women are defined primarily in sexual terms. As Wendy Chapkis says, “there is something impossibly earnest about the demand that we feel sexual attraction only in a non-objectified, ungendered fashion, It may be impossible not to objectify an attractive stranger”.

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Fevicol Se Full Video Song Dabangg 2 (Official) ★ Kareena Kapoor ★ Salman Khan

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Based on The Social power of algorithms

Artefact – Tweets of Donald Trump accusing Google of promoting Obama’s speeches over his in the 2016 election.

David beer mentions in his article “The social power of algorithms” that world is slowly moving to a stage where algorithms are making most of the decisions for us instead of we doing it for ourselves. He says as Tarleton Gillespie’s illustration shows clearly that “how responding to algorithmic processes can facilitate bending of outcomes to particular agendas”. Thus we can easily understand that algorithms can be easily manipulated and make some results less viable.

Google’s search results have been long debated of whether it can be manipulated to turn the tides in some close elections. With Google being the primary source of information as well as news hunting for all of us, it is a quite a big possibility that Google could in fact affect election results. In the tweets Trump mentions that any search on “trump news” shows only fake news and left-wing media articles. A study by “The Guardian” shows that a search of “Trump news” clearly has eight of the top nine results are from center-left media agencies with only one being right. With most of us reading only a handful of the top results to make our opinion about any issue this presents a huge problem. The PageRank algorithm was once a transparent algorithm and was for everyone to know. However, with many individuals trying to take undue advantage of this transparency to find malicious ways to push their content in the top half of the search results, Google has developed secret changes to the algorithm which has again made it a black box for us. Thus Trump’s claim is impossible prove as the working of the algorithm is known only to the people closely working with the algorithm only.

Thus although Trump’s allegation might seem just a desperate attempt to appease sentiments in his favour but there is definitely a greater problem lying within which the world needs to address.

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Trump accuses Google of promoting Obama's speeches over his

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President continues attack on internet giant and says Google has chosen to ignore his two addresses to Congress

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I have chosen a cartoon character , Johnny Bravo, to show how physical attributes are prominent for male ego. Johnny Bravo is a youngsters' animation, widely popular in the 90s, that produces explicit necessities with respect to how ladies and men ought to be in the minds of its audience. This show creates important images in the children’s head about how they are physically intended to be. The message is straightforward: Men care just about your looks. Johnny chooses his objectives since they are physically attractive. This causes the young ladies who watch this show to constrain themselves in giving careful consideration to appearance as opposed to abilities or learning.  Johnny himself is hypermasculine with this excessively strong body that he doesn't hesitate to display, particularly while endeavouring to impress ladies. This backs the idea that being strong and clever (however in a decent or awful way does not make a difference) is adequate for men while being physically frail yet wise isn't. Johnny obviously has multiple failures in his life, but his sense of narcissistic machoism is enough to boost his confidence the next day.

There is always this sense of physical, mental and worldly accomplishment that is hard to fulfil together. Manual labourers work for others at the low end of the spectrum while management sits at desk. Consequently, while the insecurities generated by these contradictions are personally dissatisfying to men, these insecurities impel them to cling all more tightly to sources of masculine identity validation offered by image system. This validates the argument of Harry Brod where he says that physical body and its potential for violence provides a concrete means of achieving manhood. In general, all men like to see themselves as one who fit into the normal yet recognized scheme of a masculinity. And this pervasive image of masculinity hold that ‘real men are physically strong’. This becomes a necessary as well as sufficient condition for men to hold on to their ego.

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What’s wrong with a little objectification? – “Got Milk” print advertisementBy Ankitha Acharya2017PGP040

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What’s wrong with a little objectification? – “Got Milk” print advertisementBy Ankitha Acharya2017PGP040

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“While there is nothing wrong with a little objectification, there is a great deal wrong and dangerous with a lot of objectification – that is when one is viewed as nothing other than an object.”
The representation of the woman in the “Got Milk” commercial in question here is undoubtedly what Sut Jhally refers to as “treated as an object to be used”. A woman (with a sensuous expression and apparently naked) has milk splashed on her face, evidently a sexual innuendo to male ejaculation that gives out a message louder and clearer than the intended purpose of advertising the brand – women are sex toys, present only to satisfy men’s sexual desires.
This advertisement is wrong on multiple levels – Women are inferior to men and must submit to them. Men have the right to use women the way they wish to. Women must be prepared to please men. There will always exist patriarchal power.
Since advertising borrows so heavily from our existing customs, rituals and conventions, it is not hard to understand the kind of impact such an advertisement will have on both men and women in the society. Young women will grow up thinking that they will be told what to do by the more authoritative sex and they must be prepared to do it. Men on the other hand will grow up even more authoritative, believing it is their right to get what they want how they want it.
Thus, in a progressive society, where the fight for gender equality is ever so prominent, this commercial takes us several steps back. Thus in the context of contemporary culture, it is necessary to paint an accurate picture of the society so as to recognise the thin line between a “little” and a “lot” of objectification.

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'What's wrong with a little objectification'
By
K. Uthra 2017PGP153
Artifact: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/sep/24/times-india-bollywood-deepika-padukone-cleavage

A few years back, the Twitter account of Times of India’s entertainment section, tweeted a video of Deepika Padukone with the caption ‘Deepika Padukone’s cleavage show’. When Deepika gave a befitting reply to the first tweet, they went ahead to post ‘it’s a compliment’.

At a time when there is effort by many to tackle objectification of women, TOI went ahead and reinforced the role played by media in objectifying women and using their bodies to drive up sales. In fact, some articles have stated that the actress is the one being a hypocrite here for having ‘flaunted her body off screen’ at multiple enand still having a problem with the tweet. This goes ahead to show the hypocrisy associated with mainstream media wherein they talk about women empowerment but end up objectifying women anyway.

As Sut Jhally also states, women are defined primarily in sexual terms. Viewing women from this narrow perspective can result in treating women as less than truly human. As per a recent study, sexually objectifying girls and women, leads to aggression towards them. Women today are physically assaulted or sexually abused and this is directly related to the way media houses portray women- objectification of women. Women become defined as objects for others: as an object to be viewed, as an object to be used. The media has desensitized us to using women as sexual objects in our ads/ movies - hyper ritualization. As a result, the society starts internalizing these traits. It is considered normal to show cleavage in newspapers and magazines but not okay for women to breastfeed in public.

As Jhally states in his article, our culture is more obsessed with sex and gender so much so that other constructs of human individuality become defined through gender.

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Submitted by: Sneha Kavishwar (2017PGP372)Artifact : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QefprURGzzI(Ellen’s Response to Trump when he tweets about Oprah being insecureOverview:At the Golden Globes 2018, Oprah Winfrey made a moving speech empowering women and urging action against increasing sexual harassment, sending applause roaring throughout the audience. When US President Donald Trump tweeted about Oprah, calling her insecure and challenging her to run for President, saying “it will be fun to see her lose”, Ellen Degeneres came to Oprah’s rescue, responding with this video.Critical Response:Let’s begin by addressing celebrities like Ellen and Oprah for their contribution not just to Hollywood, but to the society at large. Oprah’s speech does justice to the responsibility entrusted, through a series of well strung words and courage to stand by a cause. However, my analysis of this particular video has little to do with my celebrity or political inclination. Although Ellen includes praise for George Washington, and uses other paraphernalia,  this video occurs to me as clear propaganda. Sean Heuston makes a fair point in his work- Weapons of Mass Instruction, Ellen here contends why nobody should mess with her friend. It isn’t new news that during the 2016 US Presidential elections, most of Hollywood was rooting for Hilary, and were visibly dismayed when Donald Trump took charge. Since then, Trump has repeatedly amazed everyone with his antics, and one could definitely argue that he keeps getting better (or worse)! When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump made insensitive statements comparing the death toll to that of the earlier Hurricane Katrina, and Ellen’s video does include an actual snippet of Trump distributing paper napkins in a chapel there. Ellen chose to contrast Trump’s move to a particular, infrequent occasion when Oprah premiered her talk show’s 19th season by distributing 276 Pontiacs! Juxtaposed, the two videos create an emotional uproar in the viewer, that according to Sean Heuston, is perfectly intentional. This video definitely does not qualify as the more rampant cheap tricks of malapropism but a more microscopic view would tell us that Oprah’s giveaway was a massive promotional activity, backed by sponsors, whereas Trump’s distribution of paper napkin, although extremely inane, could have been symbolic to flood relief. Placing such a critical lens on media content is thus vital to understanding how the masses could be mobilized. What started off as Ellen’s funny take on the generous Oprah versus the not-so-generous Trump now seems to be the amalgamation of two completely unrelated incidents forced together in one context, to prove a point; wonderfully highlighting the difference that Heuston calls authorial intent versus reader reception.

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Submitted by: Sneha Kavishwar (2017PGP372)Artifact : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QefprURGzzI(Ellen’s Response to Trump when he tweets about Oprah being insecureOverview:At the Golden Globes 2018, Oprah Winfrey made a moving speech empowering women and urging action against increasing sexual harassment, sending applause roaring throughout the audience. When US President Donald Trump tweeted about Oprah, calling her insecure and challenging her to run for President, saying “it will be fun to see her lose”, Ellen Degeneres came to Oprah’s rescue, responding with this video.Critical Response:Let’s begin by addressing celebrities like Ellen and Oprah for their contribution not just to Hollywood, but to the society at large. Oprah’s speech does justice to the responsibility entrusted, through a series of well strung words and courage to stand by a cause. However, my analysis of this particular video has little to do with my celebrity or political inclination. Although Ellen includes praise for George Washington, and uses other paraphernalia,  this video occurs to me as clear propaganda. Sean Heuston makes a fair point in his work- Weapons of Mass Instruction, Ellen here contends why nobody should mess with her friend. It isn’t new news that during the 2016 US Presidential elections, most of Hollywood was rooting for Hilary, and were visibly dismayed when Donald Trump took charge. Since then, Trump has repeatedly amazed everyone with his antics, and one could definitely argue that he keeps getting better (or worse)! When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump made insensitive statements comparing the death toll to that of the earlier Hurricane Katrina, and Ellen’s video does include an actual snippet of Trump distributing paper napkins in a chapel there. Ellen chose to contrast Trump’s move to a particular, infrequent occasion when Oprah premiered her talk show’s 19th season by distributing 276 Pontiacs! Juxtaposed, the two videos create an emotional uproar in the viewer, that according to Sean Heuston, is perfectly intentional. This video definitely does not qualify as the more rampant cheap tricks of malapropism but a more microscopic view would tell us that Oprah’s giveaway was a massive promotional activity, backed by sponsors, whereas Trump’s distribution of paper napkin, although extremely inane, could have been symbolic to flood relief. Placing such a critical lens on media content is thus vital to understanding how the masses could be mobilized. What started off as Ellen’s funny take on the generous Oprah versus the not-so-generous Trump now seems to be the amalgamation of two completely unrelated incidents forced together in one context, to prove a point; wonderfully highlighting the difference that Heuston calls authorial intent versus reader reception.

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Ellen Defends Oprah Against the President

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Frogs in the internet well: Filter Bubbles by Subrat Pruseth (2017PGP263

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Frogs in the internet well: Filter Bubbles by Subrat Pruseth (2017PGP263

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With the proliferation of internet, everyone thought that the internet would connect people in unprecedented ways. Today, those same people find it quite unsettling to watch as the tools that were designed to bring people together are used by people to magnify divisions and undermine social solidarity.

Filter bubbles aren’t unique to just social media. Filter bubble can be found on cable news, a newspaper or magazines. But those filter bubbles are tuned by editorial opinion. The internet was supposed to free us from the shackles of content gatekeepers like these. Today the gate keeper has moved from a human to a set of algorithms. These algorithms are what drives the sky high engagement that makes Facebook one of the two best places to advertise on the internet the other being google. Trying to keep users engaged by personalizing post, Facebook has created filter bubbles that divides the users into like-minded people will only create a community of frogs in the internet well.

Impacts of filter bubbles:-

1.       Information blinkering – the algorithm reduces the visibility of information in your streams. Digital tags are generated for every users there by restricting the field of view to only what the algorithm decides is right for the users.

2.       Entrenching biases- personalised feeds are filled with post that the users generally agrees or believes. Eventually users will end up only receiving material that conforms with there sensibilities, locking them in a echo chamber and entrenching their existing biases.

3.       Rationalising fears: The filter shock when users step out of there bubble can be disorienting. This disorientation can make opinions and views seemingly different than one’s own seem alien and alarming, thereby feeding into the fear psychosis of all that is outside the bubble.

4.       Opinion entitlement: with post after post featuring similar opinions and views helps solidify feelings into “facts”, thereby making it easier to waive off any alternating views that might occasionally crop up in users feeds. The more extreme views get normalized due to continuous affirmation from the similar thinking post.

5.       Discourse divide: The final and the most critical impact that derives from all of the above is building chasm in public discourse, as the algorithms drive diverging views into their own sealed off bubbles.

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As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there’s a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a “filter bubble” and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

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Shyam Dhanuka 2017PGP364 Critical Response on Indian article based to censorship of OTT platforms(link attached below) referred reading “Chaudhuri, M. (2010). Indian media and its transformed public"

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Shyam Dhanuka 2017PGP364 Critical Response on Indian article based to censorship of OTT platforms(link attached below) referred reading “Chaudhuri, M. (2010). Indian media and its transformed public"

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If media is the mirror to society, is it justified to veil this mirror to selectively showcase the rosy picture ? Recently the government has been considering censoring content on OTT platforms and inviting angst from the audience- majorly urban youth. While the debate on censorship is age old, the case of OTTs is interesting. Projected to grow into a $5 billion industry by 2023, these platforms have been hailed for their original and crude content- a welcome relief from mainstream Bollywood and melodramatic soaps. But they also come with expletives, violence and graphic sex, which activists believe is against Indian culture and ethos. This raises several questions. Our ancient architecture and scriptures bear witness that the India of the past has been more experimental than its present. Even in the case that it wasn’t, isn’t culture more akin to a flowing river rather than a stagnant pond that keeps altering its course every few miles? And finally, by such filtering, are we not choosing to escape from and hide the dark side of society rather than facing it? If the youth today believe using certain profanity is fashionable and cool, rather than demeaning to women, it’s a grater failure of our educational system and parents rather than certain content creators. So unless there are gross externalities in this system, the government really has no job of interfering. Instances of crackdown on online child pornography, for example, have been rightly taken up. As for others, in a free market, we can let the viewers decide on the demand and quality of the content. One indicator of this could be the number of pirated downloads of such shows which remains high.

Link- https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/ott-will-lose-edge-if-censored-5382169/

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Masculinity inside Metalhead Jacob

Submitted By: Lucksya Pratick Tudu (2017PGP184)

Artefact Links: “My First Hardcore Song by 8 year old Juliet” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU6U-8LP1DY&t=56s)

“My First Hardcore response by 6 year old Jacob” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeosb5k2yXI&t=91s)

The era of Metal Music started around late 1970s and early 1980s with rise of bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Metal is characterized by heavier music, vocals and dominant guitars and drums. The artefacts of My First Hardcore Song depict how metal, in general, can be perceived as masculine in nature.

My First Hardcore Song by Juliet takes a slighter feministic stand, where Juliet talks, or rather sings, about loving pets and fishes, etc. Girls from the very childhood are taught to be loving and caring and having a motherly figure, which also gets reflect in Juliet’s version. Juliet’s version also shows that metal is not only for men. Even women can listen, and can perform, metal songs.

Jacob starts his version by stating that Juliet cannot scream good enough. This brings a gender biasness according which states that Metal is not a girl thing. Also, Jacob’s lyrics depict how a man sees himself, or try to become. Generally, men want to be looked as strong and tough. They want to show things as they were easy.

Jacob’s lyrics brings a picture of tough boy, who is rebellious whereas Juliet’s version brings out picture of a girl who is loving and wants to have fun. The male figure depicted in Jacob’s lyrics are also brought forward by many other artefacts which are seen by children. As a result, children, specially boys want to grow tough and rebellious, because in their eyes, a tough and rebellious kid is an ideal kid. But in reality, parents tend to shape their kids more suited to society, which is different from the way kids and boys are presented in media artefacts and by Jacob’s lyrics.

Personally, I feel that the guy depicted by Jacob’s lyrics is what kids aspire to be at some point of time, as I had been through that same stage. However, the claim made that Metal is not for girls in his opener “You scream like a sissy girl” is not true. Its difficult to get proper technique for screaming and growling and a lot of men cannot do it too. Also, I’ve heard to a number of female vocalists who are great at metal vocals.

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The "Meme ban " and its effect on internet culture -Aditi Sawant(2017PGP323

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The "Meme ban " and its effect on internet culture -Aditi Sawant(2017PGP323

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EU Copyright Directive, Article 11 and Article 13 threaten to remove and reduce internet’s user generated content. It places responsibility of preventing copyright infringement in the sole hands of social media channels like google and Facebook.

A blanket ban means that cultural artefacts generated by users like meme’s, mashups, parodies, covers, reviews, discussions, gameplays, free information’s citing from news agencies on site’s like Wikipedia have threat of complete removal from European Union’s Social media. Article’s like 11 of the directives would prevent people from uploading photos within a sport’s event and can even prevent people from uploading picture’s with copyrighted architecture.

The meme is analysed using article “For the love of culture” which focuses on how increase in complexities in copyrights from books to documentaries to E-book’s due to technology has negatively affected culture and affected creative content generation. It also focuses on how content use has moved from “One-time payment or almost free use in case of books” to “Copyright requirement which could be metered down to individual pages”

If we look at above meme, with increase in copyright complexities and technologies which could create Blackbox algorithms to simply weed out content, Article 13 would simply remove such meme’s and user generated content which may have even a minute snippet of copyrighted item’s

On one hand such laws are beneficial to artists, creators, scientists, punishing for minute uses in user generated content will affect free speech and creative liberties. Despite being beneficial for small artists and creator’s many them get famous due to virality, linking and use of their material to create artefacts in the community. For example, the meme would not have earned recognition had it been copyrighted as it would have had very limited use and audience reach. Such laws have been tried and tested in Spain and Germany and have failed spectacularly.

This example  gives us the other extreme of copyright ban were smallest of content would be inaccessible to masses.

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Name: Ankit Hiralal Babde

Roll no. 2017PGP044

Media artifact:  Wild stone talc for men ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yLXHQ6_T2Q

Article: Hegemonic masculinity in media content:

The article talks about hegemonic masculinity being a representation of society’s ideal of how male behavior should be. In this ad guidelines are given about how male behavior should be and should not be. According to this ad male behavior should not be where man cannot have long hairs, can’t be ticklish and cannot cry as well when sad. Finally, it also makes an appeal to customers, that, buy this product in the “interest of mankind” While saying these things, ad implies that women have long hairs, are ticklish and often cry, thus the ideology of ad tries to legitimize the subordination of women to men.

In this ad the power of men is defined in terms their physical ability to be not ticklish and not cry and to smell not like women, which confers to Trujillo’s definition of hegemonic masculinity. With such ads young men find themselves at receiving end. They are obliged to confer to these ideologies of male representations. It creates a divide where it should not be between men and women and makes men to behave in certain way and look at women in certain way.

Though the ad does not have any violent connotations defining male behaviour so explicitly and implying women behavior to be subordinate to men makes idea of masculinity hegemonic.

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Name: Prakhar Yadav Roll No.: 2017PGP428 Reference Article: Weapons of Mass Induction: Terrorism, Propaganda Film, Politics and Us by Sean Heuston

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Name: Prakhar Yadav Roll No.: 2017PGP428 Reference Article: Weapons of Mass Induction: Terrorism, Propaganda Film, Politics and Us by Sean Heuston

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Movie – Blackhawk Down

The opinion about the particular movie ‘Blackhawk Down’ I am going to write about is a similar phenomenon found in many of the contemporary and 21st century movies out there

This 2001 film about US Army rangers under blockade is extra-ordinarily violent and to the casual observer would showcase a horrific portrayal of war

Instead it attracts many from the youth audiences towards combat

It romanticizes high-intensity combat wherein soldiers are shown in love with the guns and the depiction of very advanced artillery and Arms & ammunitions with the soldiers and that the soldiers feel so good to kill the enemies and that the war is just about winning

The movie fails to portray (Subtly hides) the mortal effects of war, which brings about huge destruction for the enemy as well as self and becomes a nightmare for the subjects undergoing such critical situations

It hides the true sentiments of soldiers and the trauma they succumb under during and Post-war

It prescribes a very utopic image of war with musicals in intense bloodshed scenes, glorifying the fraternity amongst soldiers as brothers at times of war, showing off of unrealistic scenes being cinematographed just to give the audiences a rush of patriotism / forged nationalism

The movie also tries to portray how cool it is working for the defense forces and attaches a subtle shot of patriotism by showing the American flag sway in glory

Another Movie is “Top Gun’ which made similar propaganda this time for he US Navy which was actually a very good marketing propaganda for the Recruitment of US Navy Seals

This we must be very particular, not so much about consuming media, but about the sense we make out of the content being thrown at us and we should also try to read about the subject based upon which the content is made to actually get a sense of what the reality is

Thank You

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Name: Prashant Jhakarwar, Roll No.: 2017PGPM047, Reference Article: Weapons of Mass Induction: Terrorism, Propaganda Film, Politics and Us by Sean Heuston, Media Artifact: 1. “Our Prime Minister” film by Yash Choudhary (1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aNEnrR_Ago 2. “We Have Promises to Keep” film by S.N.S Sastry (1975)My Opinion: In the First video, the propaganda behind that film was to show Late Mrs. Indira Gandhi as a lady of modesty, down to earth, people’s leader with loads of responsibilities. It begins with a shot and description of Number 1 Safdarjung Road,” the modest residence of prime minister Indira Gandhi”, and goes on to relate any number of similar mistruths. This film projects her as an Ideal Prime Minister, but reality was way different. The final decision to impose an emergency was proposed by Indira Gandhi, agreed upon by the president of India, and thereafter ratified by the cabinet and the parliament (from July to August 1975), based on the rationale that there were imminent internal and external threats to the Indian state.  It was the time of emergency which was in effect from 25 June 1975 until its withdrawal on 21 March 1977; most of Gandhi's political opponents were imprisoned and the press was censored. Several other human rights violations were reported from the time, including a forced mass-sterilization campaign spearheaded by Sanjay Gandhi, the Prime Minister's son. In the other video “We Have Promises to Keep” film directed by S.N.S Sastry, also propagates the similar Idea of what positives brought by Congress. This film collects reactions of cross-section of people about changes brought about by the Emergency for their benefit. The film also includes an interview with the Prime Minister, showing her as a determined, powerful woman.During 1974, the oil prices were on the rise, there was a lot of issues related to pricing of wheat which was imported in India and the Inflation was at its all-time high at 35% in 1974 and we were facing balance of payments problem in India. More than 6 Million men were coerced into sterilization, most of them were unmarried or having no child at all. The government instigated fear in the minds of people. The situation was horrible as an Indian during that time.

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Name: Prashant Jhakarwar, Roll No.: 2017PGPM047, Reference Article: Weapons of Mass Induction: Terrorism, Propaganda Film, Politics and Us by Sean Heuston, Media Artifact: 1. “Our Prime Minister” film by Yash Choudhary (1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aNEnrR_Ago 2. “We Have Promises to Keep” film by S.N.S Sastry (1975)My Opinion: In the First video, the propaganda behind that film was to show Late Mrs. Indira Gandhi as a lady of modesty, down to earth, people’s leader with loads of responsibilities. It begins with a shot and description of Number 1 Safdarjung Road,” the modest residence of prime minister Indira Gandhi”, and goes on to relate any number of similar mistruths. This film projects her as an Ideal Prime Minister, but reality was way different. The final decision to impose an emergency was proposed by Indira Gandhi, agreed upon by the president of India, and thereafter ratified by the cabinet and the parliament (from July to August 1975), based on the rationale that there were imminent internal and external threats to the Indian state.  It was the time of emergency which was in effect from 25 June 1975 until its withdrawal on 21 March 1977; most of Gandhi's political opponents were imprisoned and the press was censored. Several other human rights violations were reported from the time, including a forced mass-sterilization campaign spearheaded by Sanjay Gandhi, the Prime Minister's son. In the other video “We Have Promises to Keep” film directed by S.N.S Sastry, also propagates the similar Idea of what positives brought by Congress. This film collects reactions of cross-section of people about changes brought about by the Emergency for their benefit. The film also includes an interview with the Prime Minister, showing her as a determined, powerful woman.During 1974, the oil prices were on the rise, there was a lot of issues related to pricing of wheat which was imported in India and the Inflation was at its all-time high at 35% in 1974 and we were facing balance of payments problem in India. More than 6 Million men were coerced into sterilization, most of them were unmarried or having no child at all. The government instigated fear in the minds of people. The situation was horrible as an Indian during that time.

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Madhur Deshmukh (2017PGP105). Based on article: Social Power of Algorithms. Medial Artifact:What Did Cambridge Analytica Really Do for Trump's Campaign? https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-really-do-for-trumps-campaign/

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Madhur Deshmukh (2017PGP105). Based on article: Social Power of Algorithms. Medial Artifact:What Did Cambridge Analytica Really Do for Trump's Campaign? https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-really-do-for-trumps-campaign/

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Cambridge analytica (CA) is a perfect example of how algorithms are manipulated to drive social power. Here, algorithm has played an important role in social ordering process in terms of how the algorithm is used to promote campaign of Mr. Donald Trump. CA collected the personal details such as sexual orientation, race and gender by integrating survey with facebook profile to understand person’s personality and preferences. Based on the algorithm, CA targeted individuals with personalized content which shaped people’s view. It was a biased algorithm to favor Mr. Trump as it isolated facebook users from his negatives and it became the source of political concern.

Artifact shows that we shouldn’t treat algorithm just as an object, it has major role in social processes. Algorithm modelled on Hidden vision, and outcomes in mind were influenced by political agenda to promote Mr. Trump. It clearly reflects social power operating through the algorithm. Most of the users weren’t aware of how the information provided by them helped CA to shape choice. The algorithm is used to perpetuate truths about Mr.Trump and it was cultivated through targeted content.

CA gained access to personal information in a legitimate way and through proper channels, but didn’t abide facebook rule of passing information onto third parties. The predictability of individual attributes from digital records of behaviour may have considerable negative implications, because it can easily be applied to large numbers of people without their individual consent and without them noticing and the same thing has happened in the case of CA.  Algorithm influenced and convinced peopled towards its hidden agenda. Article helped to understand how algorithm holds social power to shape thinking of people and how users can be easily trapped by individual targeting.

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News that Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix approached Wikileaks founder Julian Assange last year to exploit Hillary Clinton's private emails has amplified questions about Cambridge's role in President Trump's 2016 campaign.

Shortly after The Daily Beast reported Nix's contact with Assange Wednesday, the Trump campaign's executive director sought to downplay Cambridge's role. Michael Glassner said in a statement that the Republican National Committee was the campaign's primary source of voter data. "Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false," Michael Glassner wrote. The statement did not respond to reporting in WIRED and elsewhere revealing a close relationship between the Trump campaign and Cambridge staffers. Cambridge did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.

So, what gives? Such he-said-she-said battles are usually better left to Beltway happy hours. But as Congress and special investigator Robert Mueller turn their spotlights on Cambridge Analytica in their probes into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, it's essential to get the facts straight about what the firm did-and didn't-do for the Trump campaign.

Here's what we know.

Cambridge worked both for the Trump campaign and a Trump-aligned Super PAC. In June 2016, Cambridge sent three staffers, led by chief product officer Matt Oczkowski, to the campaign's San Antonio office. Oczkowski's team eventually grew to 13 people, working under Trump digital director Brad Parscale and alongside his staff and outside consultants. According to Parscale, the Cambridge staff provided useful analysis of data about the American electorate. They did not, however, provide the raw data-things like demographic information, contact information, and data about how voters feel about different issues-on which that analysis was done.

That may sound like a small distinction, but it's a crucial one. Ever since it burst onto the scene of American politics in 2015, Cambridge has trumpeted its massive data trove, boasting 5,000 data points on every American. Cambridge claims to have built extensive personality profiles on every American, which it uses for so-called "psychographic targeting," based on people's personality types. It is feared by some, including Hillary Clinton, for conducting a kind of psychological warfare against the American people and dismissed by others as snake oil. Both Parscale and Oczkowski have said repeatedly that the Trump campaign did not use psychographic targeting. Questions also have swirled about how Cambridge accumulated the data. Liberal voters in particular worried that their data had been harvested without their knowledge and used to elect Trump. But according to both Parscale and Oczkowski, the campaign didn't use Cambridge's trove of data, opting instead for the RNC's data file.

"The RNC was the voter file of record for the campaign, but we were the intelligence on top of the voter file," Oczkowski says. "Sometimes the sales pitch can be a bit inflated, and I think people can misconstrue that."

Parscale describes the firm's work this way: "As I've said multiple times over prior statements, Matt Oczkowski and his team created a daily tracker of polling, so that I could see how Trump was doing in key swing states. They provided that to me daily." Parscale says Cambridge also helped the campaign with what he calls "persuasion online media buying. They also helped us identify potential donors. And they created a visualization tool that showed in each state which areas were most persuadable and what those voters care about."

Cambridge Analytica was paid $5.9 million by the Trump campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings, $5 million of which went toward buying television ads, with the remainder going to pay Oczkowski and his team. But that wasn't the only work Cambridge did for the campaign. Parscale says Cambridge's head of digital, Molly Schweikert, managed an advertising budget of roughly $12 million on behalf of Parscale's firm, Giles-Parscale. It's a sizable, but still small slice of the $94 million Giles-Parscale was paid in total to purchase the campaign's ads.

The Cambridge staff helped the campaign identify which voters in the RNC's data file were most likely to be persuadable, meaning they were undecided but looked likely to swing toward Trump. They also created lists of voters who were most likely to become donors. In August 2016, a Trump aide told me Cambridge was critical to helping the campaign raise $80 million in the prior month, after a primary race that had been largely self-funded by Trump. This was the only period during which Oczkowski's staff relied on Cambridge's data, because the RNC was just beginning to share its data with the Trump team.

Cambridge went on to conduct hundreds of thousands of voter surveys for the Trump campaign to better understand the likely Trump voter and sent a full-time staffer to the New York headquarters, who could relay these findings to senior staff, including Parscale. Based on these surveys, RNC data, data the Trump team collected itself, and commercially available information from data brokers, Oczkowski's team developed a heat map of the country to pinpoint where Trump should visit to maximize his impact on potentially persuadable voters.

Oczkowski views this as a collaborative effort between his team, the RNC, the campaign, and other vendors, including Deep Root Analytics, which helped the campaign target television ads. "At the end of the day, when candidates win elections, it's a big team effort," he says.

The RNC played a very important role in that team. Gary Coby, director of advertising at the RNC, managed the bulk of the campaign's advertising purchases on Facebook. The campaign famously ran 175,000 variations of the same ad on Facebook the day of the third presidential debate in October 2016, a tactic Coby refers to as "A/B testing on steroids." The RNC also ran the campaign's field operations and worked with Parscale to plan get-out-the-vote advertising campaigns on television and online.

What's also clear, however, is that the Trump campaign seems to have ample motivation to distance itself from Cambridge, a firm whose tactics have sometimes raised questions. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that shadowy billionaire and Trump supporter Robert Mercer is Cambridge's main financial backer. Former Trump campaign manager and chief strategist to President Trump, Steve Bannon, also held a position on Cambridge's board. The company itself is an offshoot of the British firm, SCL, which has roots in government and military operations.

Now, Assange's confirmation that Cambridge's CEO wanted to join forces against Clinton has renewed suspicions about the company's business tactics, suspicions that the Trump team would very much like to avoid in the face of ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the election.

"I had absolutely no understanding any of this was going on, and I was surprised as everybody else when I saw the story" about Nix's approach to Assange, Oczkowski says. During the campaign, he says his team was walled off from the rest of Cambridge, because the company was also working with a Trump Super PAC. Federal regulations prevent campaigns from coordinating with Super PACs. Of the 13 Cambridge staffers who worked in Trump's San Antonio office, only four remain at the company.

Still, for some in Congress, the web of connections among Nix, the campaign, and now, Assange, seems too close for comfort. The House Intelligence Committee has acquired Cambridge staffers' email records, which it is currently analyzing for clues of inappropriate contact with foreign actors trying to meddle in the election. Next week, representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google will testify before both the House and Senate intelligence committees and will likely face questions about their interactions with Trump's digital team and members of Cambridge's staff.

And investigators will, no doubt, continue to question members of team Trump about Nix's communication with Assange. The panels will be seeking answers. But, as is often the case when it comes to Cambridge, each answer will likely only lead to more questions.

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What Did Cambridge Analytica Really Do for Trump's Campaign?

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News that Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix approached Wikileaks founder Julian Assange last year to exploit Hillary Clinton's private emails has amplified questions about Cambridge's role in President Trump's 2016 campaign. Shortly after The Daily Beast reported Nix's contact with Assange Wednesday, the Trump campaign's executive director sought to downplay Cambridge's role.

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Critical Response 2:

Submitted by: Nainy Jarodia

Based on Article: The social power of algorithms

Media Artifact under evaluation:  Google Algorithm

News link: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/04/google-image-search-results-for-ceos-and-most-jobs-dominated-by-men/

Description of the issue: 2015 study showed that in a Google images search for “CEO”, just 11 per cent of the people it displayed were women, even though 27 per cent of the chief executives in the US are female. A few months later, a separate study found that Google’s online advertising system showed high-income jobs to men much more often than to women.

Men dominate Google image searches for most jobs — even for bartender, probation officer and medical scientist, roles in which women outnumber men. In 57 percent of occupations, image searches indicate the jobs are more male-dominated than they actually are.

Critical Responses: The survey shows us how women are underrepresented at a platform such as Google. Evidences like this discourage millions of aspiring women and is not fair to the present working women. Further it defy women perception in the society where they actual stand equally competent with men. Such denotations will soon be seen as normal and in the long run will affect behavior.

In the case of Google, the company does allow its clients to target their adverts based on gender. But later idea was floated that the Google’s algorithm could have determined that men are more suited to executive positions on its own, having learned from the behaviour of its users: if the only people seeing and clicking on adverts for high-paying jobs are men, the algorithm will learn to show those adverts only to men.

Further as per latest research, it is evident that skewed representation can shape whether the next generation can see themselves doing a particular job. As how young people perceive their career depends on the current normalized behaviour.

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MMM Critical Response 2- Advika Jalan, 2017PGP022

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MMM Critical Response 2- Advika Jalan, 2017PGP022

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Media Artifact: Screenshot of the Google Search results for "Best toilet paper in the world"

“The power of the algorithm here is in their ability to make choices, to classify, to sort, to order, and to rank. That is, to decide what matters and to decide what should be most visible.”

If you type “best toilet paper in the world” in Google, the first and most dominant image results are Pakistan’s National Flag. After the Pulwama terrorist attack, there has been a wave of outrage against Pakistan, which has manifested itself on social media with messages that express hate and contempt towards Pakistan. “Rieder reminds us that these algorithmic systems and, as he puts it, ‘algorithmic techniques’, do not come from nowhere, but are built upon existing classification means, ideas and categories.” Picking up cues from social media shares, the Google algorithm classified the Pakistani flag as toilet paper. Not only that, the “existing classification means, ideas and categories” are reinforced- people shared screenshots of the Google search results on Twitter with #besttoiletpaperintheworld, and soon after the Google search results started showing screenshots of the Google search page that had shown the Pakistani flag as toilet paper.

Regardless of how one feels about Pakistan, the desacralisation of an important metonymic link to national pride of any country is problematic because it fuels more anger and hate (imagine how you would feel if you googled toilet paper and the Indian flag showed up), and threatening the identity and pride of a collective entity by desacralizing flags has historically catalyzed revolutions and wars (think of the desacralization of the French tricolour during the French revolution). While it seems far-fetched to suggest that a Google search results page could trigger war, the ideas of Indo-Pak enmity would be even more firmly embedded into the collective psyche- as D.Beer said, “algorithmic output cements, maintains or produces certain truths.”

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Article from the course outline: "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture" by Sut Jhally

Media Artifact examined: Jameela Jamil’s (from The Good Place tv show) ‘I Weigh’ Movement

IG page of the movement: https://www.instagram.com/i_weigh/

Her blog entry on the topic: http://jameelajamil.co.uk/post/171287759245/i-weigh

It all started when Jamela came across an Instagram story which showed  a "group shot of grown women (the Kardashians) with their respective weights posted across each of their bodies, and the post asking what the page’s followers think of their weights and then asking them, “What do you weigh?”

As a retort, she posted an unedited photo of herself (with the #i_wiegh) in which instead of her weight, she listed several things of substance that she had achieved in her life. This inspired many others to post similar photos with the #i_weigh. Soon the powerful message of the post transformed into a movement that gained enough clout to call out brands when they use toxic messaging. In some cases, brands admitted to the problematic aspects of their ads and movedtowards a messaging that is more body positive.

In the article, Sut Jhally argues that since, in Advertisement, the goods (substance) being advertised are not the locus of perceived happiness then they need to be connected with images (surface) of what the audience conceives of as the good life. To paraphrase Stuart Ewen, the system posits that the substance is unimportant unless validated by the world of style (or surface). Therefore, Ewen says, it is important that this dominance of surface over substance be overcome, reconciled and a politics of substance be reinvigorated.

However, Sut is unsure of the dichotomy that Ewen presupposes and states that it is through appearance that a substance reveals itself. And since we are stuck in this situation, ignoring or deriding the style (as Ewen does) "surrenders the very terrain on which most effective battles can be fought", which right now happens to be the image system.

The i_weigh movement does exactly this. It not only questions the style of the messaging in adverts aimed at women in order to shut down the toxic stuff but also realizes that images are "how the modern world understands itself" and therefore seeks to redefine the 'surface which validates the substance'. This both democratizes the image system by moving it away from unrealistic and exclusionary ideals  and brings in the "politics of substance."

Write-up by Mukul Saini
2017PGP209

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The views expressed in the "What's wrong with a little objectification" can be enlightened through the popular music video and hit song "I'm a Barbie girl" by AquaWhy do I (a South Indian who lived for 17 years in a small town called Pondicherry) remember the song's lyrics by heart and the music video etched in my memory like I viewed it a day before? Why did my parents not stop me from watching a slim, white, pretty, young woman who seems to be both physically/emotionally owned and instructed by a powerful Male dancing to the lyric "you can brush my hair, undress me everywhere". I too, wanted to look like her and be flirted with by a strong male figure who owned a car and wanted to party all the time. Like the author says, it was hyper ritualization at its best. The society told me that I should look pretty and be subservient at the same time in order for a man to like me. The society also told me it was okay for the male to tease or hurt me as long as he's your husband. (You can touch, you can play, if you say, I'm always yours) I grew up around families where mothers would not dare speak a word against their husbands even in extreme cases of mental or physical abuse. So it seemed normal to many of us when the Barbie sings "life is plastic, it's fantastic" meaning she has no feelings of her own, she just needs to look as beautiful as possible for the husband to like her. This was where I grew up, but the video did not receive any severe backlash/criticism even in the west. Many women want to look their best, if that is the best way to please your partner, so be it, as long as he says "I'm always yours"

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The views expressed in the "What's wrong with a little objectification" can be enlightened through the popular music video and hit song "I'm a Barbie girl" by AquaWhy do I (a South Indian who lived for 17 years in a small town called Pondicherry) remember the song's lyrics by heart and the music video etched in my memory like I viewed it a day before? Why did my parents not stop me from watching a slim, white, pretty, young woman who seems to be both physically/emotionally owned and instructed by a powerful Male dancing to the lyric "you can brush my hair, undress me everywhere". I too, wanted to look like her and be flirted with by a strong male figure who owned a car and wanted to party all the time. Like the author says, it was hyper ritualization at its best. The society told me that I should look pretty and be subservient at the same time in order for a man to like me. The society also told me it was okay for the male to tease or hurt me as long as he's your husband. (You can touch, you can play, if you say, I'm always yours) I grew up around families where mothers would not dare speak a word against their husbands even in extreme cases of mental or physical abuse. So it seemed normal to many of us when the Barbie sings "life is plastic, it's fantastic" meaning she has no feelings of her own, she just needs to look as beautiful as possible for the husband to like her. This was where I grew up, but the video did not receive any severe backlash/criticism even in the west. Many women want to look their best, if that is the best way to please your partner, so be it, as long as he says "I'm always yours"

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VIRGINIA MIRIAM KAMALA
2014IPM109

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Aqua - Barbie Girl (Official Music Video)

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“Bullying, the MeToo movement against sexual harassment, toxic masculinity, is this the best a man can get?” Gillette's latest campaign takes a digressive tone from it's usual "the best a man can get" to a new "The best a man can be." The advertisement which was released a few weeks ago shows a montage of what being a man means to people and surfaces the atrocities committed by men. The cascade of videos shows things like boys fighting, women being catcalled and no one standing up against it, online and offline bullying and the problems caused by age-old excuses like boys will be boys. By generalizing violent behavior and augmenting it to behavioral attributes of all men, we create ideas like, "It's ok for boys to fight it out." Men will tease and bully and harass and the onus lies on the victim to save themselves. With it's new campaign Gillette has tried to make us rethink our position on what being a man means. It is no more about fighting it out but about standing up against the wrong. It's trying to create a new idea of man. The new man stops bullying, he stops boys when they fight, he teaches girls to be strong and not be scared, he stops harassment. Because the boys watching now, will be the men of tomorrow.
Divyansh Bhatt

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We Believe: The Best Men Can Be | Gillette (Short Film)

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The above ad is about axe worldwide. They are already known for their sexist ads over 15 years in India. The example above is from axe world wide. The normative symbolism that the picture depicts shows that men, however good they are with you, they are inherently bad. The verbatim on the bottom right also tries to justify the imagery in the image. The ad is in many ways, unsettling and sexist. This can also be classified into the global hegemonic Masculinity.

The ad also attempts to objectify women. As stated in the article, the ad actually shows what the people are dreaming. It is because of these people and their dreamed up ads that Sut Jhally website says that many women walk through public spaces fearing the gazes , guestures, and words directed at them. The gender relation in the ad is skewed and should look strange to masses. But axe has gone away with it and has been since 15 years. Perhaps the main issue is the perception of target market in the minds of the ad designers. And even today axe is 2nd most successful deodorant in India.
- Pranav Chaudhari (2017PGP258

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Anjali Kumari_2017pgp043

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https://youtu.be/ztMATGqD_Bhttps://youtu.be/ztMATGqD_B ttps://youtu.be/ztMATGqD_B  tps://youtu.be/ztMATGqD_B   ps://youtu.be/ztMATGqD_B     https://youtu.be/ztMATGqD_Bc

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‘Managing Media Matters’ Critical Response 1: Chitra Zutshi (2017PGP100)

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‘Managing Media Matters’ Critical Response 1: Chitra Zutshi (2017PGP100)

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Akshay Kumar-Dollar Vest Advertisment (Link- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw0Vyqk54uw)

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How Consent was manufactured in the 2016 US Presidential Elections

- A Chomskian critique of the usage of memes & advertisements posted on the social media by sources with Russian ties (Sreeram Maganti IPM2014094)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-election-facebook.html

The 2016 presidential elections of the USA witnessed a surprising electoral upset, the gorunds of which were set forth over months of rather uncharacteristic campaign by one of the top contenders.
As the allegations of a possible Russian influence into the campaign swarm around, the five pillars of media were used to tilt the public opinion in favor of the GOP candidate and here’s how:

1. Media Ownership: As the next-gen media platforms are not subjected to the traditional filings for the campaign expenditures by the candidates, campaigners employed social media to manufacture opinions, while not inviting any scrutiny.

2. Advertising: With the advent of the Data-Industrial complex that allowed near-precise targeting of advertisements, foreign powers had allegedly purchased several advertisement spaces that were released with psychological targeting upon to the users, to gently nudge their political opinions by a few basis points

3. Media Elite: The self-monitoring capabilities of the media were thrown off the balance as the most of the media took sides in the race, thus being incapable of objective appraisal of the content

4. Flack: The traditional media platforms that are more judicious & vigilant in their content were discredited as ‘fake news’ thus removing them from the equation of the coverage of the elections. Also, the GOP candidate’s aggressive posture towards the conventional media shifted the locus of discussion to be social media, which is more susceptible to manipulation

5. The Common Enemy: To consolidate the potential voters, the prevailing discourse was more focused on fear-mongering by mentions of Islamic terrorists, Hispanic Immigrants etc, away from policy-specific discussions.

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MMM Critical ResponseSubmitted by: Aboli Wanjari (2017PGP014)Media Artifact: Music video by Arjun Kanugo- Fursat Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMfvbKBvOtIResponse: The music video by Arjun Kanugo depicts the story of a conventional young couple with an unconventional twist in the tale towards the end which comes as a pleasant surprise because it breaks the stereotypes by portraying gender role reversal if we may put it in simple words. The story starts with the male protagonist receiving a “letter of leave termination” and due to the mainstream conditioning our psyche we directly jump to the conclusion that it is addressed to the male. Erving Groffman says that we understand the aspects of gender relations through the media artifacts that are fed to us. We completely rule out the possibility of an unfamiliar scenario. Sut Jhally argues that our perceptions about gender are shaped majorly by advertisements which are obsessed with gender and which go on to mold our ideologies.The video tries to take a different stance when in the climax the views find out that the main protagonist is the female and she is the one serving in the forces. It tries to combat dominant masculinity and challenge the concept of hegemonic masculinity by negating the long-term use of masculinity as the underlying basis for eligibility for military services. It challenges the concept in several ways when he takes on the daily chores which is not a representation society’s ideal male behavior. As stated by Brown and Knight, the video tries to de-emphasize the use of established masculine imagery and brings in a fresh perspective. One important aspect to ponder in is that although, the video might convey the idea of women empowerment and feminism in the semblance but is it reality or just embedded feminism? Of the entire 5 minute video, the initial 4 minutes the audience live under the false impression of male being the main character but only in the last 1 minute the role of female comes into the light. 

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MMM Critical ResponseSubmitted by: Aboli Wanjari (2017PGP014)Media Artifact: Music video by Arjun Kanugo- Fursat Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMfvbKBvOtIResponse: The music video by Arjun Kanugo depicts the story of a conventional young couple with an unconventional twist in the tale towards the end which comes as a pleasant surprise because it breaks the stereotypes by portraying gender role reversal if we may put it in simple words. The story starts with the male protagonist receiving a “letter of leave termination” and due to the mainstream conditioning our psyche we directly jump to the conclusion that it is addressed to the male. Erving Groffman says that we understand the aspects of gender relations through the media artifacts that are fed to us. We completely rule out the possibility of an unfamiliar scenario. Sut Jhally argues that our perceptions about gender are shaped majorly by advertisements which are obsessed with gender and which go on to mold our ideologies.The video tries to take a different stance when in the climax the views find out that the main protagonist is the female and she is the one serving in the forces. It tries to combat dominant masculinity and challenge the concept of hegemonic masculinity by negating the long-term use of masculinity as the underlying basis for eligibility for military services. It challenges the concept in several ways when he takes on the daily chores which is not a representation society’s ideal male behavior. As stated by Brown and Knight, the video tries to de-emphasize the use of established masculine imagery and brings in a fresh perspective. One important aspect to ponder in is that although, the video might convey the idea of women empowerment and feminism in the semblance but is it reality or just embedded feminism? Of the entire 5 minute video, the initial 4 minutes the audience live under the false impression of male being the main character but only in the last 1 minute the role of female comes into the light. 

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Hegemonic masculinity in media content: Gillette Ad (The best a Man Can be) The focus of my write up is mainly on the outrage over the Gillette ad which is the result of inherent hegemonic masculinity that has been already been propagated by Mass Media. As peter argues in the article that Men has been shown to be some characters which are muscularity, aggression, violence etc. This has been challenged by the Gillette Ad which shows that we can be better by shunning those aggressive and violent stances and become an example for the future generations to follow. The widespread criticism that it received is mostly by people who feel that they have launched a war against ‘masculinity’ and are teaching boys to be ‘sissy’. Also, the fact that they have a male audience and attacking them directly to earn virtue points might alienate there TG. This shows that how ingrained is the concept of masculinity in our brains. Gillette as a brand has mostly used male sportspersons as their brand ambassadors which shows that they are the media who were once promoting hegemonic masculinity has now gone against it and hence it’s not a surprise that a lot of their TG is offended.This also gives us a signal that maybe the media is changing for now based on how the society is changing. The ad might be a direct reflection of the me too movement that swept the world. This can also be seen in the Nike Ad which featured Colin Kaepernick. They stood by their brand message even after the outrage and it proved a great selling point for them. Gillette also stood by their Ad and actually allocated funds so that the men of future can become better than what they are at present.

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Hegemonic masculinity in media content: Gillette Ad (The best a Man Can be) The focus of my write up is mainly on the outrage over the Gillette ad which is the result of inherent hegemonic masculinity that has been already been propagated by Mass Media. As peter argues in the article that Men has been shown to be some characters which are muscularity, aggression, violence etc. This has been challenged by the Gillette Ad which shows that we can be better by shunning those aggressive and violent stances and become an example for the future generations to follow. The widespread criticism that it received is mostly by people who feel that they have launched a war against ‘masculinity’ and are teaching boys to be ‘sissy’. Also, the fact that they have a male audience and attacking them directly to earn virtue points might alienate there TG. This shows that how ingrained is the concept of masculinity in our brains. Gillette as a brand has mostly used male sportspersons as their brand ambassadors which shows that they are the media who were once promoting hegemonic masculinity has now gone against it and hence it’s not a surprise that a lot of their TG is offended.This also gives us a signal that maybe the media is changing for now based on how the society is changing. The ad might be a direct reflection of the me too movement that swept the world. This can also be seen in the Nike Ad which featured Colin Kaepernick. They stood by their brand message even after the outrage and it proved a great selling point for them. Gillette also stood by their Ad and actually allocated funds so that the men of future can become better than what they are at present.

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-Md Samir Alam (2017PGP196)

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Critical Response by Sakshi Upadhyay_2017PGP448 | Artifact: Jack and Jones Ad | Readings: What’s wrong with a little objectification?Spotlight Tedx talk: the dangerous ways ads see women, Hagemonic Masculinity in media contents| A youth-focused, Jack and Jones is a Danish fashion brand.  The billboards were put up in several cities across the country in 2016 to promote brand’s formal range of shirts. The creative featured bollywood actor Ranveer Singh dressed in formal attire carrying a woman on his shoulders about to enter an elevator. The woman, also dressed in Western formals, is shown smiling while the elevator boy, smirking, is shown opening the door.The advertisement bravely exhorts its primarily cis-hetero male clientele— “Don’t hold back. Take your work home.” Ranveer, in keeping with this carefully cultivated “stud” persona, looks dapper in rugged jeans, a slick shirt and smart suspenders. And of course he has a female co-worker slung rather effortlessly on his broad, brawny shoulders. The woman’s sartorial identity is nothing more than a very short skirt.This ad is extremely disturbing as it not only objectifies woman, but also normalizes sexual harassment at the workplace, and yet with self-congratulatory, nonchalant display of misogyny. When I first saw the ad, I found it really terrible. The ad also seems to glorify Hegemonic masculinity by giving a message- that because the man is wearing Jack & Jones clothes, he has got the liberty to take his colleague/secretary home.Though, the ad later received a lot of backlash on various social media platforms, the brand Jack&Jones apologised for a sexist ad and even recalled the ad, reportedly taking down the 12 billboards that had been put up, but this ad being made in the first place when there could have been better ways of being edgy and catchy and then being passed by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) speaks volume about the objectification of women on one hand and  glorifying hegemonic masculinity on the other.

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Critical Response by Sakshi Upadhyay_2017PGP448 | Artifact: Jack and Jones Ad | Readings: What’s wrong with a little objectification?Spotlight Tedx talk: the dangerous ways ads see women, Hagemonic Masculinity in media contents| A youth-focused, Jack and Jones is a Danish fashion brand.  The billboards were put up in several cities across the country in 2016 to promote brand’s formal range of shirts. The creative featured bollywood actor Ranveer Singh dressed in formal attire carrying a woman on his shoulders about to enter an elevator. The woman, also dressed in Western formals, is shown smiling while the elevator boy, smirking, is shown opening the door.The advertisement bravely exhorts its primarily cis-hetero male clientele— “Don’t hold back. Take your work home.” Ranveer, in keeping with this carefully cultivated “stud” persona, looks dapper in rugged jeans, a slick shirt and smart suspenders. And of course he has a female co-worker slung rather effortlessly on his broad, brawny shoulders. The woman’s sartorial identity is nothing more than a very short skirt.This ad is extremely disturbing as it not only objectifies woman, but also normalizes sexual harassment at the workplace, and yet with self-congratulatory, nonchalant display of misogyny. When I first saw the ad, I found it really terrible. The ad also seems to glorify Hegemonic masculinity by giving a message- that because the man is wearing Jack & Jones clothes, he has got the liberty to take his colleague/secretary home.Though, the ad later received a lot of backlash on various social media platforms, the brand Jack&Jones apologised for a sexist ad and even recalled the ad, reportedly taking down the 12 billboards that had been put up, but this ad being made in the first place when there could have been better ways of being edgy and catchy and then being passed by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) speaks volume about the objectification of women on one hand and  glorifying hegemonic masculinity on the other.

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Critical response by VaisakhSS_2017PGP412- Analysis on hegemonic masculinity as seen in movies- '300' 

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Critical response by VaisakhSS_2017PGP412- Analysis on hegemonic masculinity as seen in movies- '300' 

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https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/300

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Critical Response by Priya Modi_2017PGP201

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Critical Response by Priya Modi_2017PGP201

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Sprite has always promoted its product as the one that quenches thirst. Be it the first-ever tagline “Bujhaaye only pyaas, Baaki sab bakwaas” to its recent one “Obey your thirst”. Most of the carbonated drinks in this category sell as a replacement to water or as a remedy for thirst. My argument is – Most of the advertisers accurately identify consumer needs, but sell the product- tangible or intangible- that they need to and want to, which in most cases do not satisfy consumer needs in real sense. We talk about consumer empowerment in the modern age, is it real or just a facade?

Sprite here, is a consumer good; but this theory can be validated for all kinds of good- media, ideology, service etc. Each time one tunes into a news channel, we are sold propaganda of a particular wing; each time we see a commercial, we are sold a product that best suits our needs in the company’s eyes. Nobody actually analyses the real benefit of a particular product to the consumer. Studies have shown that CSDs have so much sugar-content that they actually dehydrate a person. It’s the fizz and chilled drink that gives this temporary satisfaction of fulfilment and energy; the consumer needs still remain unattained. In the words of theorist Judith Williamson, advertising may appropriate, real needs and desires in people, which are given a false fulfilment. We certainly need a way of looking at ourselves: which ads give us falsely; we need to make sense of the world: which ads make us feel we are doing in making sense of them. There is no consumer empowerment per se when we are merely being manipulated by advertisements.

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Mirzapur – An Amazon Prime Web Series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNeGF-PvRHYBy Ankitha Acharya (2017PGP040)

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Mirzapur – An Amazon Prime Web Series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNeGF-PvRHYBy Ankitha Acharya (2017PGP040)

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One Mafia. Two brothers. Many gunshots. Limitless power.

The story of Mirzapur, aptly set in Uttar Pradesh, builds a world of local hegemonic masculinity as explained by Theorist, Raewyn Connell in the article “Hegemonic masculinity in media contents” by Peter J. Kareithi.

The dramatic gangster series, show multiple characters that portray many of the five features as identified by Trujillo:

Power defined in terms of physical force and control – Almost all male characters in the series have excessive control and physical power be it in relation to women or otherwise. Take for instance the scenes when a female servant is repeatedly sent to Munna’s room for him to vent his anger and frustration out through violent sexual acts.

Power defined through occupational achievement in an industrial, capitalistic society – Guddu, the elder of the two brothers, with a passion for body building, is in his true essence, representative of the youthful rebel masculinity that Kareithi talks about. The use of a guns, gives him a sense of power and domination like nothing else before. The use of steroids to build his muscles is in sync with his mental state of the representation of strength and aggression through a physically strong body.  The series shows us the consequence of when this image of ‘Ideal Masculanity’ is broken, when Guddu loses the first place in a body building competition, and subsequently loses his mind as he goes on to kill the winner on account of his anger and frustration.

Power represented in terms of familial patriarchy – Satyanand Tripathi and his son, embody the roles of typical male dominant characters in society. The scene in which Satyanand catches his daughter in law having a physical affair with the mail servant of the house, and as a punishment has her comply with him, almost mechanically, to indulge him in intercourse, is a clear example of this patriarchal power.

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Mirzapur - Prime Original 2018 | Official Trailer (UNCUT) | Rated 18+ | Amazon Prime Video

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Submitted by: Aishwarya Barjatya (2017PGP023)

Artifact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

Overview: This Always (sanitary pad brand) ad shows an audition taking place wherein candidates are asked to "run like a girl".

Critical Response: In Sut Jhally's essay titled "What's Wrong With A Little Objectification?", we read about Goffman writing about women being portrayed as the weak, submissive, meek gender in advertisements since time immemorial, holding cups lightly or snuggling into men, implicitly asking for their protection and being child-like in their behaviour, whereas men are portrayed as the strong, aggressive and ambitious gender. In this ad, candidates above the age of 12 run frivolously, comically, slowly, caring more about their hair than actually running and flailing about their hands as if they don't know what to do with them. In the first viewing, most people find nothing wrong with the first 30 seconds of the ad, thereby re-enforcing what Goffman talks about when he says that today's gender-biased ads don't look strange to us anymore since they resonate with our social reality. Post that, little girls are asked to "run like a girl" and they are shown to run fast, and more importantly, normally.

Later on in the ad, the candidates are questioned about what they thought the phrase meant. The candidates above 12 thought of it as an insult and the young girls aged 10 and below thought it meant "run as fast as you can". This displays how girls’ gender perceptions get skewed as they grow, they learn to act like they’re “supposed” to, and start seeing themselves differently to fit into the role society crafted for them, giving weight to Judith Williamson’s words, “ads give us a false way to look at ourselves”. The ad later goes on to tell us how girls thought it was a humiliating phrase and how girls' confidence plummets at the onset of puberty, and therefore why our societal perceptions (from where advertisements take birth) regarding gender roles need to change to prevent this, and uproot the cultural convention of women being the weaker sex.

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Managing Media Matters - Critical Response - submitted by Yazhini D(2017pgp433)Article: Jhally, S. (n.d). What’s wrong with a little objectification? Sut Jhally Website.Artifact: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/serena-williams-us-open-osaka-sexism/Some of the statements the article makes are that mostly advertisements don’t impose new ideas in our mind but they just borrow our perceptions and emotions, wrap them up and sell it back to us. And the way women are portrayed to be weak and childish in advertisements is also one such effect as such gender parity is deeply rooted in our cultures to establish social norms. This is why most people don’t find it strange and conventionalized sexual imagery makes an ad attractive. The society is inturn influenced by these ads and expects women to act, speak and be a certain way. Even women tend to accept and abide by these conventions. The artifact chosen is a blog about Serena Williams when she was penalized for calling the umpire a ‘thief’. It has a collection of artifacts in the form of posts and tweets from players who admits that they got away with similar situations in the past. It shows how aggression from men is accepted to a certain extent but when a women exhibits the same, it is seen as bizarrely. “ Media outlets called her refusal to back down as a “meltdown” and described the champion as “hysterical,” whereas male athletes are rarely described in such terms after similar game disputes. “. Not to mention the cartoon by Australian artist Mark Knight in which he portrayed Serena Williams as if she’s throwing a tantrum with her features exaggerated to show her ugly and Naomi Osaka as a white blonde woman which is a popular beauty standard in certain societies to show her as the prettier counterpart. This is an example that people still expect women to carry beauty and so called ‘elegance’ which is said to have lost relevance in the 21st century.

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Managing Media Matters - Critical Response - submitted by Yazhini D(2017pgp433)Article: Jhally, S. (n.d). What’s wrong with a little objectification? Sut Jhally Website.Artifact: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/serena-williams-us-open-osaka-sexism/Some of the statements the article makes are that mostly advertisements don’t impose new ideas in our mind but they just borrow our perceptions and emotions, wrap them up and sell it back to us. And the way women are portrayed to be weak and childish in advertisements is also one such effect as such gender parity is deeply rooted in our cultures to establish social norms. This is why most people don’t find it strange and conventionalized sexual imagery makes an ad attractive. The society is inturn influenced by these ads and expects women to act, speak and be a certain way. Even women tend to accept and abide by these conventions. The artifact chosen is a blog about Serena Williams when she was penalized for calling the umpire a ‘thief’. It has a collection of artifacts in the form of posts and tweets from players who admits that they got away with similar situations in the past. It shows how aggression from men is accepted to a certain extent but when a women exhibits the same, it is seen as bizarrely. “ Media outlets called her refusal to back down as a “meltdown” and described the champion as “hysterical,” whereas male athletes are rarely described in such terms after similar game disputes. “. Not to mention the cartoon by Australian artist Mark Knight in which he portrayed Serena Williams as if she’s throwing a tantrum with her features exaggerated to show her ugly and Naomi Osaka as a white blonde woman which is a popular beauty standard in certain societies to show her as the prettier counterpart. This is an example that people still expect women to carry beauty and so called ‘elegance’ which is said to have lost relevance in the 21st century.

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What’s wrong with a little objectification?

On May 1, 2018 one of the most talked about films Veere Di Wedding’s song “Tareefan” released, not only it became one of my most hummed songs but also for someone who is usually, unapologetically voicing against the boxing of gender & stereotypes deeply engraved in the society it didn’t come as a surprise.

As it has been established that communication in mainstream media and entertainment is the ‘reflection’, it’s neither true nor false. With the current upheaval in the Entertainment Industry with respect to #Metoo movement, conversations about pay parity, conversations about the women’s need to be recognised not just as a Gender but as an individual has been reflected in the song. When the male voice seeks an answer “How much do you need to be praised?” or something like “Dieting pe hai toh kyu khati bhao” is the current conventionalised code of so-called women empowerment and display of Gender. The Imagistic modes of communication have become more important over the years and as we watch the video it’s like women dominion over men, which has been sexualised and glamourized in a way which is pleasing. Pleasing in ways that the lyrics seem to be normal, the Lingo seems correct because it is the articulation of new types of gender relations. It is rejecting standard notions of Sexuality. Although, this might be unpleasant to a lot of people propagating ‘Radical Feminism’, it is not away from the societal representation of a current, millennial, working. Elite woman.

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Tareefan | Veere Di Wedding | QARAN  Ft. Badshah | Kareena Kapoor Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Swara & Shikha

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Critical Response on Endura Mass Ad - Mridul Jhunjhunwala

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Critical Response on Endura Mass Ad - Mridul Jhunjhunwala

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Review of Endura Mass Ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFWftCGezY

Endura Mass is a weight gainer supplement which advertises how having the “right” physique is important in life to be confident and achieve success. But the way in which they personify this right physique and body is something which is truly questionable. The ad starts by showing a man from an Airforce background with a bulked-up body followed by a muscular “dude” doing weight training followed by a “cool” guy surrounded by girls with pumped up confidence and finally ending with a military soldier being able to fulfil his dream. This basically tries to put across an idea of how men should look like in the heads of innocent viewers and attempts to show them what they might stand to gain by consuming Endura Mass besides weight off course. “Sahi wazan pa kar, dublepan ko hara kar”, the consumers of Endura Mass can get personality & confidence which is better than what they had previously. The product promises to enable them to fulfill their dreams which was probably on hold till now because of not having the “perfect” weight and body. This media artefact surpasses the parameters of hegemonic masculinity as talked about by Sir Connell and rightly falls under the category of advertisements which exploit men’s feeling of not being big, strong and violent by promising them with the products that will enhance their qualities as mentioned in the article by Peter J Kareithi.

Not only this, the ad also tries to objectify women by showing women’s success as synonymous to getting married and becoming a beautiful model while comparing that of men to getting into the Airforce or Army. This also stands in line with what Sut Jally talks about as objectifying women in advertisements. It is a very male chauvinistic idea to portray women to be only the ones whose goal in life is to get married.

Therefore, this piece of ad is not only propagating hegemonic masculinity but also showcasing objectification in the most sexist way possible.

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MMM Critical Response by Aditi Sawant (2017PGP323)

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MMM Critical Response by Aditi Sawant (2017PGP323)

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Big Sugar  Campaigns or Propoganda? (Cholestrol cover,Times Magzine
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MMM Critical Response 1 Submitted by: Ishee Vatsala (2017PGP140 )Media Artefact: Kingfishers' Calendar 2019 Link: http://kingfishercalendar.com/2019/ Critical Response: The Kingfishers' Calendar is a well-known annual extravaganza of polished bodies and exotic locations all carefully orchestrated to emphasise the idea of the unattainability of that ideal. While for Kingfisher, this calendar functions as a branding tool, for the consumers of this media, it is an exercise in whetting their appetites for the best of what the world might offer them one day. Looking at the calendar in itself can be construed as an exercise in objectification of the worst sort, where women in skimpy clothing smoothly merge into picturesque scenery to the point that it is hard to delineate what is actually driving the yearning of the viewer. In this context, it is easier to understand it by referring to Sut Jhally who argues that sometimes sexualised advertising has to be contextualised with reference to societal desires and what people wish to aspire to in their lives. The argument that we are inherently sexual beings holds water in the case of Kingfisher Calendar since it is one of the most talked about annual calendars and how it has perfected the art of packaging female sex appeal for mass consumption which includes both men and women. Jhally also points out that sometimes these symbols are nothing more than symbols of identification. A pertinent example can be that of the Shanghai Calendar Girls in the pre-World War II era. While initially these women were painted as models selling products, eventually their images as social ideals of beauty and wealth became so popular that their images started selling independent of product endorsements to all sections of the society. Also, female models aspire to represent the ideal that the Kingfisher Calendar represents and it can be evidenced from the fact that modelling for the Kingfisher calendar is one of the most sought after modelling assignments in the country. It is also noteworthy that several female models were able to successfully leverage the visibility gained and launch successful careers in Bollywood as well as other regional film industries. The most famous example of this is Deepika Padukone who is no longer associated with just her Kingfisher days. The focus as Jhally argues shouldn't just be to react but also try to accept the possibility of actual identification being the underlying cause for the success of these images.

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MMM Critical Response 1 Submitted by: Ishee Vatsala (2017PGP140 )Media Artefact: Kingfishers' Calendar 2019 Link: http://kingfishercalendar.com/2019/ Critical Response: The Kingfishers' Calendar is a well-known annual extravaganza of polished bodies and exotic locations all carefully orchestrated to emphasise the idea of the unattainability of that ideal. While for Kingfisher, this calendar functions as a branding tool, for the consumers of this media, it is an exercise in whetting their appetites for the best of what the world might offer them one day. Looking at the calendar in itself can be construed as an exercise in objectification of the worst sort, where women in skimpy clothing smoothly merge into picturesque scenery to the point that it is hard to delineate what is actually driving the yearning of the viewer. In this context, it is easier to understand it by referring to Sut Jhally who argues that sometimes sexualised advertising has to be contextualised with reference to societal desires and what people wish to aspire to in their lives. The argument that we are inherently sexual beings holds water in the case of Kingfisher Calendar since it is one of the most talked about annual calendars and how it has perfected the art of packaging female sex appeal for mass consumption which includes both men and women. Jhally also points out that sometimes these symbols are nothing more than symbols of identification. A pertinent example can be that of the Shanghai Calendar Girls in the pre-World War II era. While initially these women were painted as models selling products, eventually their images as social ideals of beauty and wealth became so popular that their images started selling independent of product endorsements to all sections of the society. Also, female models aspire to represent the ideal that the Kingfisher Calendar represents and it can be evidenced from the fact that modelling for the Kingfisher calendar is one of the most sought after modelling assignments in the country. It is also noteworthy that several female models were able to successfully leverage the visibility gained and launch successful careers in Bollywood as well as other regional film industries. The most famous example of this is Deepika Padukone who is no longer associated with just her Kingfisher days. The focus as Jhally argues shouldn't just be to react but also try to accept the possibility of actual identification being the underlying cause for the success of these images.

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The hottest thing of 2019 is finally here - check out the glamorous and the prestigious Kingfisher Calendar 2019

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MMM Assignment 1- Pothuraju Kalyani,2017PGP251

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MMM Assignment 1- Pothuraju Kalyani,2017PGP251

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MEDIA ARTIFACT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hv42havE4w

Raymond used to feature ads showing how to love or cheer up a woman and take care of his mother and daughter showing women as sensitive and as someone who requires love, care and attention as mentioned by Erving Goffman in his book of Gender advertisements where in “men take on the roles of parents while women behave as children normally would be expected to. In advertising women are treated largely as children.”

But this advertisement of Raymond promotes the concept of “A Complete Man” by featuring a man who willingly shares responsibilities and considers marriage to be a partnership, not a duty. This man touches the heart of every set of new parents. This comes as a change in the society values that women should be treated as equals to men and the introduction of concept of feminism.

As the author of ‘Advertising, Gender and Sex: What’s wrong with a little objectification’ by Sut Jhally,

“The job of the advertiser is to understand the world of segmented audience, so that the stimuli that is created can evoke the stored information: it has to resonate with information that the listener possesses. However, should not confuse this resonance with reflection. Advertising doesn’t always mirror how people are acting, but how they are dreaming, in a sense what we’re doing is wrapping up your emotions and selling them back to you.”

This advertisement exactly does that. It is promoting themselves as a brand which doesn’t equate masculinity to being a complete man but encouraging the idea of letting the mother do her job while he willing takes care of the baby. This is how the society is dreaming and Raymond is wrapping these emotions and selling them back to us.

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MMM Assignment 1- Advika Jalan, 2017PGP022

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MMM Assignment 1- Advika Jalan, 2017PGP022

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Media artifact: Kylie Jenner's Tweet about Snapchat (see at the bottom)

McLuhan believed that "a medium impacts human experience and society not primarily through the content that it mediates but through its formal, technical properties as a medium." This can be seen with Kylie Jenner's tweet about Snapchat. The message itself seems innocuous, but the repercussions were stunning: Snapchat lost $1.3 billion in market value in the wake of this tweet. Undoubtedly, the medium "shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action," for Twitter allowed Jenner to reach her audience comprised of 25 million followers instantaneously. However, something interesting happened: the tweet was taken seriously by Wall Street analysts, and not just her usual audience of teenagers. Prior to the Jenner tweet, petitions had been signed on Change.org (with 1.2 million signatures) to get Snapchat to change its redesigned features, and a Citibank analyst had downgraded the stock on concerns of lower user engagement (two days prior to the Jenner tweet), and the Citibank report caused shares to tank by 7%. What is even more interesting is that the markets gave more significance to a Jenner tweet than to a Citibank report- Snapchat share prices fell by 8% right after the tweet and closed 6% lower at the end of the day. While the Citibank report and the Jenner Tweet (on a very basic level) suggested the same idea or had the same content, that Snapchat user engagement was falling, the medium made all the difference. Some analysts believe that had the Jenner tweet come in during market hours, the fall in share price would have been even more dramatic. The “message” suggested by the Jenner tweet is “the change of scale or pace or pattern” that Twitter (in the age of social media influencers) has introduced “into human affairs” like the stock markets.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=112&v=Rt1Rhd_sRhg

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Name: Prashant Jhakarwar, Roll No.: 2017PGPM047, Reference Article: Hegemonic Masculinity in Media Contents (Peter J. Kareithi), Media Artifact: Amul Macho Advertisement by Dhiraj Amonkar (2009)My Opinion: In the advertisement the underlined idea which the video propagate is “A man should be Muscular, and Amul Macho (underwear) help them show other best part of their body.” The talent is fine, but he has to be muscular in order to woo the girls. This 9-year-old ad which was one of the earliest advertisements of my childhood reinforces the idea of hegemonic Masculinity, targeting Indian population showcasing normative characteristics of ‘real men’, and he should be muscular. Actually, during that period, Salman khan was famous for removing upper clothes in public, he had muscular physique. He was a dream boy for many girls that time. The advertisement tries to set a normative standard by visual representation of every behavioral aspect that does not conform to ‘society’s ideal of how male behavior should be like’. A man with talent is not enough, he should be muscular, only then he can save his girl from other men, or other difficulties of life. TThere are other examples of this, especially in this under garment segment where protagonist saves girl from goons, or do some impossible tasks. All these ideas are trying to connect with audience and completes the meaning of advertisement using their beliefs, ideologies. 

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Name: Prashant Jhakarwar, Roll No.: 2017PGPM047, Reference Article: Hegemonic Masculinity in Media Contents (Peter J. Kareithi), Media Artifact: Amul Macho Advertisement by Dhiraj Amonkar (2009)My Opinion: In the advertisement the underlined idea which the video propagate is “A man should be Muscular, and Amul Macho (underwear) help them show other best part of their body.” The talent is fine, but he has to be muscular in order to woo the girls. This 9-year-old ad which was one of the earliest advertisements of my childhood reinforces the idea of hegemonic Masculinity, targeting Indian population showcasing normative characteristics of ‘real men’, and he should be muscular. Actually, during that period, Salman khan was famous for removing upper clothes in public, he had muscular physique. He was a dream boy for many girls that time. The advertisement tries to set a normative standard by visual representation of every behavioral aspect that does not conform to ‘society’s ideal of how male behavior should be like’. A man with talent is not enough, he should be muscular, only then he can save his girl from other men, or other difficulties of life. TThere are other examples of this, especially in this under garment segment where protagonist saves girl from goons, or do some impossible tasks. All these ideas are trying to connect with audience and completes the meaning of advertisement using their beliefs, ideologies. 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4lVDL14pLI

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'Holding Hands' - A critique of the Photo Series using 'Hegemonic Masculinity in Media Contents' by Kareithi

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'Holding Hands' - A critique of the Photo Series using 'Hegemonic Masculinity in Media Contents' by Kareithi

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By Nithya Thomas (2017PGP230)

Vincent Dolman’s series of 17 photos called ‘Holding Hands’ captures images of men in Mumbai holding hands with each other. The cultural phenomenon of men platonically holding hands in India is quite widespread, despite the rampant homophobia and hegemonic masculinity in the country. This physical gesture is one of love and affection borne out of friendship. Such gestures, although considered normal in many South Asian countries, would be considered alien and even shocking in Western countries, where physical touch such as holding hands between men is not only considered not masculine, but has homosexual connotations to it. This rule does not apply to women in the West, who can touch, hug and be affectionate with their female friends without any stigma being attached to such actions.

The photo series shows men openly expressing their friendship by holding hands, something which goes (for the most part) unnoticed in the country. However, it must be noted that this gesture is prevalent largely in lower classes and does not find itself practiced in upper or upper middle classes, where hegemonic masculinity has taken a form that resembles Western ideas of masculinity. The globalisation of masculinity has redefined what male friendship means. The rise in homophobia has also contributed to the stigmatisation of affectionate touch between men. Upper class men do not hold each other’s hands, because such kind of touch is - to them – representative only of a romantic or sexual relationship. Movies, TV shows and other forms of pop culture play a huge part in perpetuating this idea, in which men are often alienated from other men on an emotional level and must always look to women (often in the form of a romantic partner) to fulfil their emotional requirements. This in turn associates the notion that affectionate touch can only come from the touch of a woman, hence rigidly defining the role of a woman in a man’s life, and also that it is impossible for men to touch each other merely in the capacity of friendship.

These photos are proof that physical touch between men is not limited to violence or romance but is only considered such thanks to hegemonic masculinity – more specifically, the kind propagated by the upper classes and Western ideas. These ideas however can seep into the lower classes (as they tend to), thereby demonising this innocent display of affection, and creating yet more limitations on men and the expression of masculinity.

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Hegemonic Masculinity in 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood

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Hegemonic Masculinity in 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood

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By K. Uthra (2017PGP153)

The Handmaid’s tale written by Margaret Atwood (also a TV series on Amazon) contains multiple references of women being treated as subjects and slaves by men in the Republic of Gilead. The social system at Gilead is based on hegemony wherein men hold power and control women.

The system at Gilead gives women limited roles and absolutely no chance of freedom while the men are granted all the power and authority. Everything is predetermined by the ‘Commander’ and the men in the community. Men also show control over women by forbidding them from using their names. Women do not feel like individuals because their names sound alike. Men further justify their dominance over women.

In Gilead, the author talks about how there is absolutely no equality between men and women. Both men and women are segregated by clothing. They are classified by the colour of their clothing.

The story also includes a woman who dressed in masculine style clothing is shut up because her behaviour does not conform with the norms set for women in the society. In the Republic of Gilead, women are prevented from reading and the oppressive regime denies women from having a career. The ‘Handmaids’ are merely used as vessels by the men for continuing their legacy. As a result, a ‘Handmaid’s’ role is strictly to reproduce.

Although most men have greater rights over women, not all men have equal rights. Men who engage in homosexuality are declared as gender traitors and are either hanged or sent to the colonies to die a slow death; this further goes on to show the hegemonic masculinity prevalent in the Republic of Gilead wherein only the heterosexual men are ascribed as ‘real men’ and they justify their dominance over women and other men.

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Hegemonic Masculinity in Supernatural (TV show)

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Hegemonic Masculinity in Supernatural (TV show)

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By Ravjot Sachdeva
(2017PGP215)
The article by Peter J. Kareithi (Session-5) is used to understand tones of hegemonic masculinity in the popular TV Show titled “Supernatural”(till season 4). The show traces the adventures of the Winchester bothers- Sam and Dean, as they fight, kill, decapitate demons, witches, ghosts and other supernatural villains. The show is very unabashed about the hyper masculinity of its pivotal characters- they are “good looking”, gun wielding, denim clad men who are devoted to the “family business” of hunting the supernatural. But the hegemonic undertones of the show are highlighted by: a) The invincibility of its central characters, b) the show’s treatment of female characters and c) the maker’s attempt to supress the sexuality of its main characters along with their emotional side. The men in the show are shown to be undefeatable- very rarely exhibiting fear as they set out on their dangerous mission, who don’t even flinch as they are done with their very first “hunt”. The female characters in the show have been pigeon-holed into any of the following roles: damsel-in-distress, seductress, cheerleader to the Winchester boys (happily ready to provide them a kiss at the end of a successful hunt) . Female hunters, even when they are brought in, are apparently so subsumed by their emotions that the Winchester Boys are often needed to rescue them. The apparent bisexual tones exhibited by Dean Winchester’s character in the show were completely supressed by the makers of the show by convenient plot changes. Every time he also comes closer to getting committed to a woman, the character is killed off or eventually turns out to be corrupt- further highlighting the show’s snobbishness towards things like commitment which are depicted to be secondary in front of the larger mission.

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MMM Critical Response

Submitted By: Lucksya Pratick Tudu (2017PGP184)

Movies have been a major medium of propagation of ideology for years. With the changing times, movies have also changed to adapt to or to propagate the changing ideologies in the society.

Alita: Battle Angle is a recently launched movie, released on 8th Feb in Indian Cinemas. Produced by James Cameron, the movie revolves around a female lead, Alita, who is a android/cyborg. The movie is an adaptation of a manga and anime series Battle Angel Alita, also known as Gunnm in Japan, which was released in the 1990s.

Alita has been portrayed as a strong character at times, who is willing to take her own decisions and is ready to bend and break rules if needed to achieve her goal, which seems to support the feminist ideology, where feminist talk about women having independence to take their own decisions. However, there are two male characters, Dr. Dyson Ido and Hugo, to whom Alita is attached to in the movie.

As Alita woke up from a state of amnesia in the movie, she is dependent on Ido and Hugo to gain knowledge of the world around her. This clearly illustrates that even though Alita took few independent decisions in the movie, she is not always free to take her own independent decisions. Some of her decisions are depended on Ido and Hugo, which shows that there is still presence of male dominance in the society.

With having Alita, a female lead, the movie propagates the ideology of women empowerment. Alita is one of the most powerful android before her memory loss. Her technology is alien and far more superior than any android present on earth. This clearly shows that makers of Alita believed that women are no less than men. They wanted women to get inspired the manga and anime series and take up leading roles in various organizations.

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MMM Critical response – 1
By – Anshul Dhiman
2017PGP055

The Media Artifact I have chosen is the movie trailer

“Narendra Modi( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TKPUhIjBzI)”, which is a film about to be released on the life of Narender Modi. Even the trailer shows that clearly its’s a propaganda film aimed at improving the image of a certain individual or propagating their ideas or praising their popular faces. Such kind of media artifacts are becoming increasing common these days. Films like Uri, Sanju, Thackrey aims specifically about preaching certain ideologies and about people associated with them.
In the Articles Titled “Weapons of mass instruction” the author argues that he propaganda films and media artifacts are here to stay and they are becoming more and more relevant with new meanings and platforms. In the recent times new ways for propagating the ideologies have come up like raps, meme, humor etc. This has only increased their reach and power.
Further the author argues that the response of the government is very critical in these situations. Even getting cautious about the film and editing it to large extent before release shows that the government itself is fearful of the impact it may have on the viewers.
This can be seen here as well, with opposition political parties protesting against the same and in response bringing a film based on their own leader. This clearly shows that even the government is aware of the power propaganda films hold and they are here to stay in one form or another.

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- Tanya Jakhar (2014IPM102)

“flight passengers

swarm around

the conveyor belt

ah! the freedom to walk away

without baggage”

- Kala Ramesh

Some could say they have heard of Haiku (a pop poetry movement in its own right), but how many could say that they know of ‘Tanka’, an ancient form of Japanese poetry, at least 1300 years old, older than Haiku even; somehow more musical, more complete in nature?[1]

Kala Ramesh is a world-renowned poet and classical Indian musician, who not only writes in several poetic forms, Haiku, Tanka and Haibun (prose embedded with Haiku) being some of them but also teaches them.

If Mass Media is deemed to be Capitalist in nature, then what would Tanka, in the Indian context (intuitively, being the opposite of mass media in conventional terms) qualify for? Leninism does not seem to be the right fit, seeing as Tanka would need the reader to think for themselves, individual interpretation being the key to unlocking its beauty and understanding. Could this also, perhaps be the reason it is not a popular poetry movement in India- We are so used to somebody else doing the thinking for us and telling us how we feel (via the vehicles of mass media), that abstraction and open-endedness is an incomprehensible notion for us, one which we reject, whilst simultaneously sharing tabloid gossip, soap opera opinions and political scandals?

Could Tanka be so foreign a concept, that it becomes ‘elite media’ in itself? How is ideology communicated through a media artefact which is meant for you to examine your own?

Several question arise and it could be possible that the Tanka written above holds answers (?!).

Note: The author does not intend to impose / influence any ideology (either explicit or implicit) upon the reader(s). This work is purely her opinion and is represented as such.

[1] http://www.cedargallery.nl/engjapan_poetry.htm (accessed on February 14, 2019)

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Critical response: Patanjali Paridhan Submitted by: Shubham Kushwaha 2013IPM126

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Critical response: Patanjali Paridhan Submitted by: Shubham Kushwaha 2013IPM126

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Patanjali’s latest brand addition Paridhan, the fashion line was introduced to the general public around republic day this year. The video showcases India’s varying and differentiated fashion requirements by different age groups and different types of people. In a way, Patanjali is agreeing to the fact the India has a variety of needs and they are ready to cater it, at least fashion wise. Patanjali started out as an outright desi company with sentiments drawing towards how each of their product was 100% Indian and how we should boycott all foreign products. Failing to realize that with the rise of media and internet more and more people are becoming clear of what they want, Patanjali is now trying to shift its core ideology in an attempt to being accepted by a wider array of people. Drawing learnings from Sut Jhally’s “Image based culture: Advertising and popular culture” this advertisement is a really good example to show how ads define popular sentiment and culture. Comments on the YouTube link show people appreciating this ad for its diversity and openness; mind you these would be the same people shouting out Hindutva slogans and forcing everyone to stop consuming beef. Although beef eating comes nowhere near to what has been portrayed in the ad, it does shed some light on the fact that an extremely anti-Western company is now showing people wearing western clothes, riding on skateboards with sunglasses and caps. Like a proper politician, Patanjali is trying to change its image in front of India in a subtle manner by convincing people that they are only giving people what they want, thereby completely ignoring what their past principals have been. If it comes to gender identity, electoral politics and auditory perception and experience, Patanjali has played it beautifully to alter public perception about the brand riding on the point that they have always been correct and the times are changing.

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Shyam Dhanuka_2017PGP364 Critical Response on New18 article(link attached below) for the movie =–‘Uri- The Surgical Strike’ based on “Manufacturing Consent in India: Mass Media and the Political Elites”

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Shyam Dhanuka_2017PGP364 Critical Response on New18 article(link attached below) for the movie =–‘Uri- The Surgical Strike’ based on “Manufacturing Consent in India: Mass Media and the Political Elites”

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How pervasive does your face have to be to make you win election after election? How widespread and accepted should your stories and ideals be? In this day and age when people are constantly bombarded with real time news and its critical dissection, every political party has a PR cell which maneuver leaders through the media gaze. But is it enough? To become a leader of masses, you have to become a part of their stories, their leisure time. They should inspire the masses, making them believe in a higher cause that the leader is driving, much like Mein Kampf and Hitler. But books seem to be dying and hence cinema. Uri - The surgical strike seeks to depict a country in grave external danger being steered by a decisive leadership (and thus hoping to draw a contrast between themselves and the previous government). “Yeh Hindustan ab chup nai baithega, yeh naya hindustan hai, yeh ghar mein ghusega bhi aur marega bhi”, a dialogue from the movie precisely summed up the message that was to be delivered and if you want such a Hindustan, you know whom to vote for, shows a sign that it a propaganda-based movie. Forgotten is the agenda of “Vikas”, because God knows it is difficult to conquer the enemy within. When every nation is beating its own trumpet and right-wing leaders are on a rise, it is much easier to show an enemy, different from is, one with evil motives whom we have nipped in the bud. And how has the response been? The movie has entered 200 crore club. We’ll have to wait just a little longer for the verdict on elections now.

Artifact: https://www.news18.com/news/movies/prakash-jha-on-uri-the-accidental-prime-minister-propaganda-with-films-will-not-affect-the-outcome-of-the-elections-2005177.html

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Critical Response: AIB feat. Kangana Ranaut - The Bollywood Diva Song submitted by-Isha Agnihotri(2017PGP137)

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Critical Response: AIB feat. Kangana Ranaut - The Bollywood Diva Song submitted by-Isha Agnihotri(2017PGP137)

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Kangana Ranaut’s  video with All India Bakchod ('The Bollywood Diva Song'), is a takedown of everything that's wrong with the Hindi film industry. A satire shot in the style of a typical Bollywood sangeet sequence, the lyrics tackle about sexism, women objectification and much more. Linking it to the reading “What’s wrong with little objectification” by Professor Sut Jhally which mainly talks about in relation to the advertisements. Here are specific instances to how gender bias exist in film industry-

1.      Portrayal of Women in item numbers
Women are objectified in item numbers not only through provocative dressing but also through the lyrics of the song. Often times we give false sense of feminism to actresses but in the end it all comes down to the sexuality, where they are not appreciated for their brain but body.

2.      Roles given to Mature Women

Men are romancing with actresses who are half their age, because sensuality in always linked with a younger female lead, whereas mature women are only good for portrayals as a mother and married women.

3.      The dominance of the male society

Dominance is depicted in various forms- Mansplaining, unequal pay, Control. It gives us the idea that how men and women even though working for same number of hours have unequal pay and men have powerful control in the industry that if they want they can remove them from movies if they raise their voices against the patriarchal dominance.

4.      False sense of feminism

This video beautifully captures the false image of feminism, depicted in the movies. They have grown from giving typical saas-bahu characters, but still show an incomplete image. They have sent the girls to college and given them a career, but in the end all she has to think about is her marriage, her looks and maybe obsessed with boyfriends. We are still miles away from equality between men and women.

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AIB feat. Kangana Ranaut - The Bollywood Diva Song

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The article speaks about the concept of hegemonic masculinity or how a ‘real man’ should be as portrayed in media which not only outcasts many men from the spectrum but also puts men at a position of dominance over women. As huge consumers of media, this definition of Men is also what the society visualizes and accept the male gender to be. So those men who aren’t physically strong, good in sports, aggressive and in control of their work like Sylvester Stallone or Matt Damon in the movies are termed not man enough and mocked as faggots and other demeaning words.

In October, 2014 Vogue India created an advertisement displaying how men has been taught to be tough since a young boy and how that eventually can lead them to be abusive to the other gender. The advertisement shows various instances where young boys were reminded that “Boys don’t cry”, “Are you a girl? Ladke rote nahi hain”. These statements were either used to cheer up or motivate the young boys and stop crying. An interesting fact is that such statements or teaching wasn’t just given by their fathers or male adults or friends but also by their mothers and sisters. The act of crying is shown as a sign of weakness and it is only acceptable for a ‘girl’ to show such vulnerability. The video tries to highlight the issue that when men has been taught their whole life that they have to ‘toughen up’, it may lead them to commit ‘inhuman’ activities like physical abuse to their spouse to prove their manliness. #StartWithTheBoys not to make girls cry was the main idea behind the advertisement but as men since they were young boys had been pressurized to be tough and aggressive, some become a man like the one in the video.

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American History X: Critical Response. Submitted By Pradosh Ranjan Jena (2017PGP255)

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American History X: Critical Response. Submitted By Pradosh Ranjan Jena (2017PGP255)

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Katz, J. (1999). Tough Guise: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity. Based on the above video shared with us, I want to discuss about the movie “American History X”. Apart from getting the nomination for Best Actor in Academy awards, it has received overall positive reviews from movie critics.

The assigned video explained how the violent masculinity propagated from the Italian mafia movies to the poor black neighbourhood and then to black rappers and white suburbs. The critical aspect here is the non-originality of the masculinity, why it is not genetic & is only about playing a role defined by the broader structure of the society.

One similar plot has been portrayed there in the movie. When the white neighbourhood gets populated by the incoming black families, the white boys start getting influenced by the black culture and their way of life. They start getting paranoid and think that the only way to recover the old dominance in the neighbourhood is by intimidation, violence and arms. This leads to the hate-crimes such as robberies in shops run by immigrants, fights in playgrounds and shooting of two black boys.

The protagonist of our movie, who was initially a scholar student and lost his dad in a black neighbourhood shooting incident, starts a gang against black boys. He gets a jail term for murders of black boys and realises how the fear about the future, the paranoia about immigrants had led him to believe that only violence can solve his problems and protect him & his family. He is disillusioned from the perception of “You can gain respect only by demeaning others” and comes back to regular life.

The movie can be seen as an attempt to bring this structured imitation of violence masculinity in our society to pu
blic attention.

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MANAGING MEDIA MATTERSCRITICAL RESPONSE- 1Submitted by: Sneha Kavishwar (2017PGP372)Artifact : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrMvfwVcYYk&t=20s (A Scene from the 2015 Bollywood Blockbuster Bajirao Mastani)Overview:This scene from Bajirao Mastani is shot when Peshwa Bajirao’s household is celebrating the naming ceremony of his second child with Kashi, played by Priyanka Chopra. As she is ebullient, Bajirao’s second wife Mastani, a Muslim princess, walks in. Played by Deepika Padukone, Mastani is determined to offer her blessings to the infant. Just then director Sanjay Leela Bhansali pulls out from his repertoire, power-packed dialogues and infiltrates the scene. As Mastani is censured by multiple characters for gracing the event, she retaliates with her own ideology, attempting to debunk some of theirs. Critical Response:The animosity with which Mastani is received in the courtyard brings me to Kimberle Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality. As a female character in a male dominated world, a Muslim threatening the Hindu pride, and a second wife whose marriage isn’t considered legitimate enough, Mastani clearly is in a position of oppression. The symbolic placement of the green veiled tray in her hand catalyzes the unification of the media, a period film, and the message, an archetypal belief. The crowd makes little attempt to understand where Mastani is coming from and chides her with mockery.With reference to Noam Chomsky’s work ‘What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream’, it is this glorified oneness of religion and cinema that Bhansali, the director, is hoping to culminate. His beautification around the reconciliation of the Hindu Muslim divide is but another antic towards establishing his ideology- that love between two exotic characters overpowers all. In some sense, we can call this ‘agenda-setting’, in that the aesthetics of the scene, the grandeur of the set, the timely use of background beats and potent dialogues arouse in a viewer an acceptance of love beyond religion. I particularly admire the part when Mastani says “…Tab toh rang ka khayaal nahi aaya.” Whichever religion one may practise, one involuntarily moves with Bhansali’s vision. Through Mastani’s dialogue, one finds himself enticed into her narrative. Via grandiose dialogue, one finds her alienation to be more because she is Muslim, and focus is lifted off the fact that she ultimately enchanted a married man. Perhaps the impact conforms to the era that the film is set in. Perhaps religion held a bigger premise for sin than polygamy did. Despite many buoyant forces, this artifact fails to educate. Instead of freeing everyday dealings from the shackles of religion, its magnanimity is deceiving and has the ability to glorify a scenario where such a dialogue may be possible, even desired.

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MANAGING MEDIA MATTERSCRITICAL RESPONSE- 1Submitted by: Sneha Kavishwar (2017PGP372)Artifact : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrMvfwVcYYk&t=20s (A Scene from the 2015 Bollywood Blockbuster Bajirao Mastani)Overview:This scene from Bajirao Mastani is shot when Peshwa Bajirao’s household is celebrating the naming ceremony of his second child with Kashi, played by Priyanka Chopra. As she is ebullient, Bajirao’s second wife Mastani, a Muslim princess, walks in. Played by Deepika Padukone, Mastani is determined to offer her blessings to the infant. Just then director Sanjay Leela Bhansali pulls out from his repertoire, power-packed dialogues and infiltrates the scene. As Mastani is censured by multiple characters for gracing the event, she retaliates with her own ideology, attempting to debunk some of theirs. Critical Response:The animosity with which Mastani is received in the courtyard brings me to Kimberle Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality. As a female character in a male dominated world, a Muslim threatening the Hindu pride, and a second wife whose marriage isn’t considered legitimate enough, Mastani clearly is in a position of oppression. The symbolic placement of the green veiled tray in her hand catalyzes the unification of the media, a period film, and the message, an archetypal belief. The crowd makes little attempt to understand where Mastani is coming from and chides her with mockery.With reference to Noam Chomsky’s work ‘What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream’, it is this glorified oneness of religion and cinema that Bhansali, the director, is hoping to culminate. His beautification around the reconciliation of the Hindu Muslim divide is but another antic towards establishing his ideology- that love between two exotic characters overpowers all. In some sense, we can call this ‘agenda-setting’, in that the aesthetics of the scene, the grandeur of the set, the timely use of background beats and potent dialogues arouse in a viewer an acceptance of love beyond religion. I particularly admire the part when Mastani says “…Tab toh rang ka khayaal nahi aaya.” Whichever religion one may practise, one involuntarily moves with Bhansali’s vision. Through Mastani’s dialogue, one finds himself enticed into her narrative. Via grandiose dialogue, one finds her alienation to be more because she is Muslim, and focus is lifted off the fact that she ultimately enchanted a married man. Perhaps the impact conforms to the era that the film is set in. Perhaps religion held a bigger premise for sin than polygamy did. Despite many buoyant forces, this artifact fails to educate. Instead of freeing everyday dealings from the shackles of religion, its magnanimity is deceiving and has the ability to glorify a scenario where such a dialogue may be possible, even desired.

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Name: Debrup Ray, Roll No.: 2017PGP101, Article: Hegemonic Masculinity in Media Contents (Peter J. Kareithi), Media Artefact: Wild Stone Talc for Men (2011), Producer – Soda Films, Director – Rajesh Krishnan

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Name: Debrup Ray, Roll No.: 2017PGP101, Article: Hegemonic Masculinity in Media Contents (Peter J. Kareithi), Media Artefact: Wild Stone Talc for Men (2011), Producer – Soda Films, Director – Rajesh Krishnan

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My Opinion: I always believed that talcum powder was just an antiperspirant and nothing else (with occasional use as friction-reducer on carom boards!). I also believed that it was always a unisex product. Apparently, my childhood was a lie! Let’s face the fact that hegemonic masculinity sells! This 8-year-old advertisement, which was one of the earliest advertisements on male talc in Indian cosmetic industry, sells on the proposition that there are some normative characteristics of ‘real men’, and smelling like a man is one of them. This advertisement aims to establish the ‘most honoured way of being a man’ and influencing men ‘to position themselves in relation to it’, by taking a dig at few behavioural ‘not-so-manly’ stereotypes typical to women.

The advertisement tries to set a normative benchmark by slapstick visual representation of every behavioural aspect that does not conform to ‘society’s ideal of how male behaviour should be’. A man with long hair resting his head on his girlfriend’s shoulder, a man enjoying a pedicure, a man proposing shyly and then becoming overtly emotional on acceptance of the same – all of these are supposedly unmanly which makes a man less of a man, or more of a woman. To top it all, if you apply a “ladies” talc, you become one for sure. This attempt of Wild Stone to assert some of the basic human behavioural tendencies as downright unmanly, plays with the psyche of the larger male audience. While majority of the Indian male population may not have a ripped torso like the model, but they can certainly not risk smelling like a woman and losing their manhood. The advertisement also ends with the female model sensually wrapping her around the ‘Wild Stone’d’ male, reassuring the potential upside of applying male talc.

This commercial FMCG advertisement, like countless others (such as Isaiah Mustafa Old Spice ads), capitalises on the bodily insecurities of men, which make men to cling all the more tightly to sources of masculine identity validation offered by the image system.

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Objectification of women in advertisements

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Objectification of women in advertisements

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Submitted by: Nainy Jarodia (2017PGPM038)

Based on Article: What’s wrong with little objectification?

Media Artifact under evaluation: Chocolate Man

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK7HS9J46Y

Description of video: Axe Dark Temptation Deodorant is promoted as a fragrance irresistible to women in “Chocolate Man”, a television commercial from Argentina. It’s the kind of advertisement that could either makes you want it or could give you chills.

Critical Responses: The video displays how just by applying Axe Deo, a man can turn into chocolate man which is too desirable for young women that they couldn’t concentrate on any of the activities they are involved in.

Among sexualized commercials, chocolate campaigns are often some of the most egregious, depicting women losing control of their emotions and bodies when faced with the sweet. As explained in the article by Sut Jhalli these ads reinforce patriarchal stereotypes by having men provide chocolate for the women in their lives, show women going through mood swings between rage and ecstasy while eating chocolate, and portray women in sexual, revealing, almost orgasmic positions after consuming the food.

By depicting women in this sexualized way, the commercial exploits the desires of its male customer base, who largely wish to attract women. Were it not for the stereotypes associated with chocolate, such as the response of overpowering desire and sexuality in women, the spray would never have been made. Thus, the deodorant exploits and reinforces the same concerning depictions discussed above, which are crucial for its existence.

The spot also shows the problematic images of race. When the unenthused white man becomes a human chocolate, he immediately gains wide eyes and an exaggerated smile with pearly white teeth common in stereotypical depictions of black people. His gift of a chocolate hand to the woman in the hospital is also troublesome given the history of this confection.

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Objectification of women in Hindi Movies

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Objectification of women in Hindi Movies

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Women are constantly being viewed as objects in Hindi movies and portrays women to have no meaning to the story line of the movie except to please male characters. from old movies to movies now, we have watched that actresses are portrayed as sex objects and sent to seduce villains so that they got distracted. In the epic movie, Sholay, Basanti (Hema Malini) was forced to dance to save Veeru (Dharmendra) but still we say that Jai- Veeru had saved Rampur village from the terror of Gabbar. No credit was given to Hema Malini. There are several examples of Hindi movie in which women are sexualized and seductive. Taking example of Series Movie: Dhoom in which female actresses are viewed in all three movies to only have sexual value. In Dhoom, first movie of the series, it is shown that Sheena (Isha Deol) was send by Kabir (John Abraham), the thief to know about plans of Ali (Uday Chopra) who was helping Jai (Abhishek Bacchan), the Cop. It seems to have no direct connection in the plot even nothing mentioned about female characters in the trailer and the plot (Wikipedia). Also, in the later part of the movie it is showed that female can be cheated easily and they can't be part of the game which need brain and strength. Another female character in the film, Sweety (Rimi Sen) was portrayed as a stupid wife who trusts strangers easily and she was used to make fun of her and no use to the movie.

Even in the Dhoom:2, the same thing followed. Suneheri (Aishwarya Rai) was send by Abhishek Bachann to distract thief and get out information from her about the thief (Hrithik Roshan). She was used as a sexual object which has only aim to seduce thief at the first glance. Another female character in the movie, Sonali (Bipasha Basu) was portrayed as incompetent and helpless cop who let thief go. In fact, another role of her, Monali (Bipasha Basu) was shown so stupid and used as only seducing object (Bikini scene at Rio).  Both characters have valued more by their appearance and not by intellect.

Name: Meghna Bhati

Roll number: 2017PGP198

Media Artifact: Dhoom Movie series

Article: Session 4 – What’s wrong with little objectification

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MMM Critical Response-1 Submitted by: Sonali Lodha (PGPM062)                       Based on the Article: Hegemonic masculinity in media contents  Media Artefact: The movie “Singham”                                 One of the scorecards of how much impact a movie has made is the little boys imitating the do-gooder hero. Singham being the populist movie that it is convincingly moved the masses and successfully propagated the ideals that the protagonist stood for. The apparent angry-young-man image that Bollywood often projects has been highly glorified in the movie replete with high rage and fiery dialogues.      Covering what Peter J. Kareithi mentions, power in terms of physical force (particularly, the representation of body), occupational achievement, and symbolization of the daring, romantic outdoorsman have clearly been exhibited in the film. Clad in many places in a vest with brimming biceps and with god-like strength, Singham stands as the utter epitome of the macho man. The mustache is also something that is a must have to complete the imagery. Add to it the enraged gaze and the haughty gait and we have the complete package. Masculinity like in hegemonic terms has been entwined with power and position, which becomes the crux of the film. The hero and the villain are in the bigger fight just to prove who will end up having the upper hand and that begins a power war with political undertones to it. Violence and action sequences in the movie are in abundance with ample gunshots and kickboxing, even vandalism. One of the highlighted dialogues of the movie “Ata Maji Satakli” is also an exhibition of anger and rage that the film entails. The entire time the actress is always cheering in the background, hardly comes in the forefront and isn’t offered many shades except for the romantic supporter or the damsel in distress ones, further reaffirming the gender differences.     Violence imparts a lot of behaviouristic changes in boys leading to commonly observed aggression. Unachievable standards in terms of physical attributes end up propagating body dysmorphia and discontentment among the adolescents. The larger than life hero of the movie who’ll end up winning any battle fought channelizes delusions about masculinity and gives out false aspirations to the viewers. It is necessary to reassess the gap between this and reality and to also create an environment where women are shown as equals.

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MMM Critical Response-1 Submitted by: Sonali Lodha (PGPM062)                       Based on the Article: Hegemonic masculinity in media contents  Media Artefact: The movie “Singham”                                 One of the scorecards of how much impact a movie has made is the little boys imitating the do-gooder hero. Singham being the populist movie that it is convincingly moved the masses and successfully propagated the ideals that the protagonist stood for. The apparent angry-young-man image that Bollywood often projects has been highly glorified in the movie replete with high rage and fiery dialogues.      Covering what Peter J. Kareithi mentions, power in terms of physical force (particularly, the representation of body), occupational achievement, and symbolization of the daring, romantic outdoorsman have clearly been exhibited in the film. Clad in many places in a vest with brimming biceps and with god-like strength, Singham stands as the utter epitome of the macho man. The mustache is also something that is a must have to complete the imagery. Add to it the enraged gaze and the haughty gait and we have the complete package. Masculinity like in hegemonic terms has been entwined with power and position, which becomes the crux of the film. The hero and the villain are in the bigger fight just to prove who will end up having the upper hand and that begins a power war with political undertones to it. Violence and action sequences in the movie are in abundance with ample gunshots and kickboxing, even vandalism. One of the highlighted dialogues of the movie “Ata Maji Satakli” is also an exhibition of anger and rage that the film entails. The entire time the actress is always cheering in the background, hardly comes in the forefront and isn’t offered many shades except for the romantic supporter or the damsel in distress ones, further reaffirming the gender differences.     Violence imparts a lot of behaviouristic changes in boys leading to commonly observed aggression. Unachievable standards in terms of physical attributes end up propagating body dysmorphia and discontentment among the adolescents. The larger than life hero of the movie who’ll end up winning any battle fought channelizes delusions about masculinity and gives out false aspirations to the viewers. It is necessary to reassess the gap between this and reality and to also create an environment where women are shown as equals.

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Critical Response 1 - Meghna Chauhan (2017PGPM037)

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Critical Response 1 - Meghna Chauhan (2017PGPM037)