Lies My TV Told Me

Media tends to play tricks on us, especially with how we view ourselves. It's a mind game that we fall for whether or not we want to, just as long as we are listening. Society and how it's run, is all represented through your television screen, depicting what you see, think, and feel, and even how you react. 

- Rambo

Two documentaries, based on gender, evaluate how strong the broadcasting force protrudes on the viewer. You can see in Tough Guise, the only way in life for boys to become men in their community is to grow some courage, pick a fight, and lead the invincible leadership role. In this film, the speaker tells us how guys are taught to "pick themselves up, and dust themselves off," even at an early age. Viewing movie clips of The Terminator or Rambo, presents how boys have to be this rough and tough, gun shooting, arm-wrestling, greasy animal. Apart from women, men are on more lenient terms when it comes to behavior, as in the motto "boys will be boys." They can only be presented in masculine ways, if there was any touch of femininity, for example wearing skinny jeans or shedding a tear, they are called homosexual or sissies for that matter.

-Calvin Klein

As for girls being played in public, you can see in magazine article spreads or billboards, how vulnerable, sexual and innocent we are, and that's how it should be (as viewed from the media). From the movie, Killing Us Softly, women are set up to be nothing but skin and bones to be seen as any kind of pretty. We have dropped our scale of weight from a Marlin Monroe to a Nicole Richie mindset. In films, females are the submissive role, laying scared and helpless. Killing Us Softly displays Calvin Klein advertising, little girls in nothing but denim, as a central "correct" way of thinking and how we should view ourselves.


In all accounts, I believe that the media and broadcasting world holds way to much power of how society is portrayed, yet then again it is our decision to follow these lies. But how are we to escape them, if they surround us each and every day in everything we do. Media is the creeping big brother hovering over us, what are we to do about it?