Week 9: Cinema & Television

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

Television shows and films are both powerful in order to shape a person’s identity. My favorite television show when I was a child is Tom & Jerry.

Everyone knows that in this television show, it shows that the cat and the mouse are always fighting. In almost all of the episodes of Tom & Jerry, there would be violence happening.

Figure 1

In figure 1, it shows the violence part of the cartoon in Tom & Jerry. In the photo, it shows that Tom is holding a fork while Jerry is holding a knife. As a child, they will be interested to watch this type of television shows as it has the power to attract the audience with the actions in the television show. Rubin (2008), states that children watch cartoon not just because of the colorfulness and action. Thus, they will tend to learn from television. My 5 year old sister as an example, she loves to watch Oggy & the Cockroaches show, she tend to love the violence part of the cartoon and sometimes she tends to follow the violence in the scene in the television show.

My favorite film is the confession of a shopaholic.

From this film, the way I see it, it shows the attitude of a woman who is really addicted to shop, and she pays almost everything that she bought using a credit card which makes her life full with debt. So, the purpose of the film is to make the shopaholics realize that not all the stuffs in the stores are original. For example, when Rebecca went to the store, she fought with a woman for Gucci Boots and she finally bought the boots. However, when she reaches home, she just realized that even the branded things that are on sale, does not mean that they are good in quality. Sometimes it just makes you regret buying those things.

By watching this film, it influenced me about myself. When I went to the stores, I tend to buy things that I don’t really need. Sometimes, those things are just a waste of money because I don’t necessarily need it. It makes me realize that not everything in the stores is necessarily needed. Therefore, every time when i go to the stores, I will ask myself "do I really need this?" before buying things.

In conclusion, television shows and films can affect the audience’s feelings and it can shape the identity of a person. According to Hartley (1999), TV is the institutional of knowledge. This means that people is learning from television and it can shape the person’s identity. Calvert (2004) stated that watching TV may help to form a person’s identity.

References

Calvert, C., (2004), Voyeur Nation : Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture, Westview Press, USA.

Hartley, J. (1999), Knowledge, television and the “textual tradition”. Uses of Television (pp. 55-70). London and New York: Routledge, Retrieved on November 18^th, 2012, from UBD E-brary Website.

Rubin, L. C., (2008), Popular Culture in Counselling, Psychotheraphy, and Play-based Intervention, Springer Publishing Company, LLC, New York, USA.