Midterm

"Beyond Beats and Rhymes" and "Killing us Softly", use persuasive strategies and the basic principles of Media Education to support their arguments that challenge the way media conveys men and women. Both films force the viewer to consider if the media portrays men and women in a negative way and has created stereotypes that have become normalized in our society. 

"Beyond Beats and Rhymes" uses montages of hip-hop videos and music lyrics to illustrate the strong emphasis on masculinity in hip-hop and the degrading elements that it has towards women. In the opening segment it plays hip-hop music and highlights words that support Byron Hurt's thesis, like pimp, manhood, chump, and dominate. One production technique that particularly stuck out to me was when they slowed down the footage while amateur rappers were performing to show the anger in their faces, which proved Hurt's point that hip-hop has been portraying an image of angry black men as the norm. They also use sound bytes of woman screaming while flashing statistics of rape and death. In "Killing us Softly", they also use a montage of images of women in advertising to show that women are objects in media. Another technique that the two films have in common is using statistics while showing evidence of the statistics, like displaying the photo of a woman with a watch on her upper arm and giving viewers the statistic that 1 in 5 women have eating disorders. This technique leads the viewer to believe that eating disorders are a result of the way the media portrays women as having to be skinny, supporting Jean Killbourne's thesis. The films contrast each other because "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" has a much more fast pace feel and it uses many different clips, interviews, footage, and music, while "Killing us Softly", is more straight forward and is pictures paired with a speaker that is giving a presentation. In "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" the value message is that men don't have to be hard to be a part of hip-hop and violence isn't the right way to prove yourself as a man. It also says that women should be respected in hip-hop. "Killing us Softly" has a message that women should be respected in advertising and not objectified. Both focus on the media respecting women, but "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" also focuses on how the media portrays men and how it effects how men behave. Both films discuss how men and women tend to act a certain way to fulfill the image that the media gives them. For reality construction both films are one sided and do not tell the positive effects that the media has on men and women. "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" was produced my Byron Hurt, who consuls young men on respecting women. Showing positive aspects of the media would not support his thesis that hip-hop negatively portrays both men and women. "Killing us Softly" was produced by Jean Killbourne, who wants to improve the image of women in the media. Like the other film, not showing the positives of media would deter from her argument. The emotional transfer in "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" is anger that black men are made to look so violent in the media and maybe desire to defend hip-hop. In "Killing us Softly" the emotional transfer is similar in that women would feel angry seeing the film and seeing how the media shows women. It could also invoke a desire to challenge media. 

Both films use many persuasive techniques to support their ideas. In "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" fear is used by showing images of guns and bullet proof vests along with violent statistics. In "Killing us Softly" we see images of women that are too skinny and shown in sexual ways to invoke fear of how negatively the media effects women and how hard it is to live up to media's standards. Humor is also used. A white man in interviewed in "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" giving wrong information and trying to act "black" to show that most hip-hop music is consumed by white people. "Killing us Softly" uses the ad for women's shampoo and a calvin Klein ad in contrast with one another and witty narration to show how imbalanced men and women are in advertising. Testimonial is used in "Killing us Softly" with the speaker talking about her first hand experience with women in advertising. "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" uses interviews with people in the industry and rappers to show how they feel about the way media portrays hip-hop. Scientific evidence is used to persuade viewers with statistics about violence in "Beyond Beats and Hip-hop, and about eating disorders in "Killing us Softly". "Killing us Softly" seems to rely more on scientific evidence because it does not have flashy production techniques. They have evidence of retouching and information about the average number of advertisements people see daily. Both films use diversion by not pointing out anything that could go against their arguments that the media gives us negative images or men and women. They both fail to show anything positive about either hip-hop or women in advertising. Both movies also have strong narrators that use the persuasive technique of strength. Jean in "killing us Softly" has a commanding presence that catches the viewers attention. In "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" Hurt also shows strength in that he is passionate about exposing the flaws in media and comes across as a strong advocate. 

The two films we saw in class both challenge how media has assigned certain stereotypes of men and women. Media Society says that media can "normalize specific social relations, making certain ways of behaving seem unexceptional" (pg. 163). "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" tries to challenge how the media has created an image of men in hip-hop that has caused men to act certain ways. Men feel the need to act tough and hard to be respected by their peers in the hip-hop world and being sensitive has become unacceptable. Feed shows a similar situation where the characters act a certain way because it has become normal from what the feed tells them, like media. All the characters are ditzy and only concerned with being consumers, because it is what the feed has taught them. In "Killing us Softly" how women are treated by the media is challenged by pointing out how they are objectified and the unrealistic standards the media sets for the average woman. It does so by showing the contrast in advertisements with men in them and women in them. In contrast to one another "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" focuses on many different aspects of how media portrays men and women, while "Killing us Softly" just shows women and how media makes women's beauty seem to be so perfect that it is unreachable to most of us. 

Killbourne in "Killing us Softly" says the media "tells us who we are and what we should be". This makes everyone that doesn't fit into the media's mold of what a woman should look like, the others. The normal are those that can have that perfect body and image,when it should be the other way around. This fits into the concept of hegemony. "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" shows the difference between the elites and the masses by pointing out that its the elites that control what type of music is popular and what kind of images artists should portray, while the masses are who consume the violent rap music and accept the violence as being part of hip-hop. 

"Beyond Beats and Rhymes" was the more convincing film for me. The use of music that illustrated violence and degrading women was a strong persuader. Also, it gave so many interviews that showed the perspective of rappers, women, industry elites, and specialists to help convince me that Byron Hurt has the right point of view. I also felt that "Killing us Softly" had a lot of advertisements presented that were a stretch to say that they were objectifying women. It seemed like the narrator found fault in every ad, even if there wasn't one. The element of fear in "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" was much stronger and helped to make the film persuasive.