The Contemporary Reader
Christine Mandagi
Professor Barksdale
English 126
5 July 2010
2nd essay
Over Rated I remember when I was thirteen I used to think that high school life would be the best time in my life. Well, that was an assumption that I came up with after watching all the movies and reading those teen novels. However, the fact turned out to be quite a bummer to me. All of my expectations fell right on my face after I spent about a week in high school. Nothing was really new there, I’ve seen those people before: the mean girls, the geeks, the quarterbacks. It was fun, but not as fun as I thought it would be. It was not like in the movies or novels. It was rather ordinary and kind of boring I would say. Right at that moment, I realized that high school life was way over rated, and those stories that I’ve seen or read are some kind of fiction stories that some middle aged folks wrote. Even if it was a true story, that story must be extraordinarily beautiful and the chance for it to happen in real life is like one out of a thousand. The more I think about it, the more I realize how beautiful, and at the same time, how unreachable life is on TV. Everything seems fun to watch. It’s fun to watch all those things that we don’t get to see in our real life. One thing that we must keep in our mind is the fact that not all things we see in the media are true. We saw Lindsay Lohan as a wealthy student with a great fashion sense in the movie titled Get A Clue, but what is truly happening in her life is a total contrast; alcohol and drug addiction. Superstars, movies, or what we call media in general is over rated; they are neither bad nor good, they are us, and what we see are the reflection of what is actually happening in the current society. Watching those people in TV made us want to imitate them, to look like them, to be like them; rich and famous. The fact speaks for itself, “American society in the twenty-first century, received opinion has it, values only two
Professor Barksdale
English 126
5 July 2010
2nd essay
Over Rated I remember when I was thirteen I used to think that high school life would be the best time in my life. Well, that was an assumption that I came up with after watching all the movies and reading those teen novels. However, the fact turned out to be quite a bummer to me. All of my expectations fell right on my face after I spent about a week in high school. Nothing was really new there, I’ve seen those people before: the mean girls, the geeks, the quarterbacks. It was fun, but not as fun as I thought it would be. It was not like in the movies or novels. It was rather ordinary and kind of boring I would say. Right at that moment, I realized that high school life was way over rated, and those stories that I’ve seen or read are some kind of fiction stories that some middle aged folks wrote. Even if it was a true story, that story must be extraordinarily beautiful and the chance for it to happen in real life is like one out of a thousand. The more I think about it, the more I realize how beautiful, and at the same time, how unreachable life is on TV. Everything seems fun to watch. It’s fun to watch all those things that we don’t get to see in our real life. One thing that we must keep in our mind is the fact that not all things we see in the media are true. We saw Lindsay Lohan as a wealthy student with a great fashion sense in the movie titled Get A Clue, but what is truly happening in her life is a total contrast; alcohol and drug addiction. Superstars, movies, or what we call media in general is over rated; they are neither bad nor good, they are us, and what we see are the reflection of what is actually happening in the current society. Watching those people in TV made us want to imitate them, to look like them, to be like them; rich and famous. The fact speaks for itself, “American society in the twenty-first century, received opinion has it, values only two
Cited: Chaudry, Lakshmi, “Mirror, Mirror, on the Web.” The Contemporary Reader. Ed. Gray Goshgarian. 10th ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. Print. Epstein, Joseph, “The Culture of Celebrity.” The Contemporary Reader. Ed. Gray Goshgarian. 10th ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. Print. Traister, Rebecca, “Return of the Brainless Hussies.” The Contemporary Reader. Ed. Gray Goshgarian. 10th ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. Print. Wolpert, Stuart, “Crafting Your Image for Your 1,000 Friends on Facebook.” The Contemporary Reader. Ed. Gray Goshgarian. 10th ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. Print.