Week 9: Cinema and television: Cultural literacy and the question of “What’s it for?”

1)                  Name your favorite television and film. Explain how the film or television show could shape a person’s identity.

One of my favorite films is Toy Story 3. It is about Andy who is now ready to go to college, leaving his toy-box gang to the attic. However the toys are accidentally donated to the Sunnyside Daycare center. The toys are welcomed by Lotso Bear, they are initially overjoyed to once again be played with, but sooner they discover that the children mistreat them. Further, they are imprisoned in the daycare by Lotso and his gang. Woody later knows the intention of the evil bear and returns to the daycare to help his friends to escape. All of the toys band together in one final, crazy scheme to escape their confines and return home to Andy.

This film for me gives influences and I can say that it shapes my identity. Woody’s character who always loyal to Andy gives me an inspiration to be a loyal person, and his kindness to help his friends whenever they need shapes my identity to be helpful to others. Lotso Bear can also shape a person’s identity in a way that his character as the evil in the film. He becomes like that because he feels devastated when his owner accidentally leave him. This could shape someone’s identity especially when they are brokenhearted.

Nevertheless, I think that identity is something that is constructed over a period of time and can constantly be updated or changed completely. People will be in contact with many different influences ranging from different kind of situations in different kind of time and places. Popular media gives an immense impact on the identity’s construction. As Brown et al (1994, 813) stated that “…individuals actively and creatively sample available cultural symbols, myths, and rituals as they produce their identities. For teens, the mass media are central to this process because they are a convenient source of cultural options.” Grodin and Lindlof (1996) supported “With a simple flip of the television channel or radio station, or a turn of the newspaper or magazine page, we have at our disposal an enormous array of possible identity models.”

References:

Brown, J Cr Dykers, Jr. Steele, Ab White. (1994). Teenage Room Culture: Where Media and Identities Intersect, Communication Research 21: pp813-27.

Grodin, Debra & Lindlof, Thomas R. (Eds.) (1996). Constructing the Self in a Mediated World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.