Essay 'Seeing And Making Culture: Representing The Poor'

Dear Reader, While writing this synthesis, I felt like I could really connect to each essay. By finding common characteristics within each essay, it helped me write my paper efficiently. Although writing this was not that enjoyable, I found it easy because each topic was interesting and easy to write about. In my synthesis, I am arguing that the media plays a huge role in each essay, portraying either unfeminist character on TV or showing poor people as happy and having a good self-esteem level. I feel as if my essay has good structure to it, and I support my argument with sufficient detail that helps back up my main point. I would like the readers of my draft to provide me with information concerning my examples and if they are proper and accurate.

Thanks.

11/15/13

Synthesis Essay for Siering and hooks Arguments

“Taking a Bite out of twilight”, written by Carmen D. Siering and “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, written by bell Hooks, are both affected negatively by the media. In Siering’s essay, she talks about how Bella, the main character in the Twilight series, is portrayed as an antifeminist character, which sends a bad message to young readers about the characterization of a woman. In Hooks’ essay, she emphasizes how the poor people in our society are looked down upon by our society.
Both authors feel the media negatively influences our society’s views on feminism and the poor.
The Twilight series became extremely popular and appealing for viewers across the country, through commercials and professional comments. Although the media helped with publicity, they also have our essentially brainwashed our society. Readers and viewers do not realize, as Siering stated, “Bella is a prize, not a person, someone to whom things happen, not an active participant in the unfolding story.” (439) By Bella being presented as a “prize”, this is sending a bad message about females to our society, saying how woman are basically a trophy to a man.
The belief in Feminism is important in our society because women have gained rights and power over the years, which should prepare our society to have a different view on women. Siering stated in her essay that “the overriding message is that young women are incapable of understanding or controlling their own sexuality; it takes a man to keep them in check.” (439). Siering believes the public does not pick up on this, which promotes the fact that Bella allowing herself to be controlled by a man.
Meyer, the author of the series, stated on her website, “the foundation of feminism…is being able to choose.” This brings up the point that woman should be able to make their own choices, but Meyer fails to support her comment because Bella lacks the ability to make decisions without Edward, as Siering stated, “but the few decisions she does make are usually shown to be bad ones, and they nearly always lead to Edward having to save her.” (440).
Siering believes that media promotes the idea that woman are dependent on men and lack the ability to make a choice for themselves, which shows the lack of feminism in this
novel.
In Hooks’ essay, she explains how the poor people in our society are all “portrayed through negative stereotypes.” (434) Hooks, being a member of the poor class growing up, faced many difficult challenges that people in the middle and high ranking classes would have never faced. Our media tries to characterize the poor class in movies as contempt with their struggles and the rich as generous and caring people. But that is obviously not the case. In her essay, Hooks talked about “Pretty Women”, which is an example of how the media tries to show how the rich and poor class can work together, through the generosity of the rich. The media made a huge profit off this film because the poor were being viewed as people who were happy and had a “healthy measure of self-contempt” (434), which means they were satisfied on where they were in life. This is completely false because no one wants to be labeled as poor, because that brings the stereotype of being “depravity, lack, and worthlessness” (434). Hooks stated, “If they cannot escape poverty, then they have no choice but to drown in the image that their life is valueless.” (435). This quotes explains how the media views the poor, which eventually runs in the minds of the poor people, resulting in them feeling the same way as the media about themselves.
The rich are not as generous as we make them out to be, and the poor class is not as worthless as we see them as in our society.
Both essays have strong messages, but the media helps to overlook those messages in hopes to “brain wash” our society to mess with our views on certain topics. . Although the media is great for news and sports, it can quickly turn things around with the intention to send an appealing topic out to our society, whether positive or negative. Siering has a strong view on feminism, which she shows thoroughly in her essay, which attracts the readers to think twice about the way Bella is characterized in Meyer’s novel. With Siering being such a strong supporter of feminism, her views are somewhat overlooked by the media because many people care about the overall theme of the book and movie, not so much the details of each character, even though detail is important. Some viewers only watch movies for the actors or the action, not so much the story line. In Hooks’ essay, she has a very powerful perspective on the poor people in our society, since she is considered one of them. The media does not understand the struggle the poor class goes through every day, as many do not, which should not give them the write to characterize them something that they are not, in hopes to receive popular views on a T.V. show. The media should start to realize that sending negative messages out to our society is only hurting us as a whole. While people have the right to express negative views, the fact that the media influences our society to think a certain way needs to be fixed.

Works Cited

Hooks, bell. “Seeing and Making Connections: Representing the Poor” From Inquiry To Academic Writing. Ed. Stuart Greene. Boston, 2012, 431-437 Print. Siering D. Carmen. “Taking a Bite out of Twilight” From Inquiry To Academic Writing. E.d. Stuart Greene. Boston 2012, 438-441. Print.