Extra Credit blog

I was having a hard time thinking of something to critique, so I decided to analyze a fairly recent song by the Lonely Island called "We Like Sportz". Although this music video is a parody, it still points out certain messages about gender. First off, the whole video is about 2 guys who like sports, which is a leisure/spectator activity stereotypically enjoyed by males. They are shown to be intimidating egomaniacs which can be seen by hard looks, face paint, and sports jerseys. Just as men are so often portrayed to do, the two males in the video eat junk food, drink, smoke, and don't enjoy watching sports with women, claiming that the females "don't know all the rules". Aside from not letting women watch sports with them, they don't like to watch with their friend Steve, whom they claim talks too much, which is stereotypical of women. They constantly claim that they are real men and talk about getting into fights, shooting guns, and challenging other people on the court with overstated bravado. Although the video is meant to be funny, which I believe it is, there are several statements about gender which the video pokes fun at which are at least partially true today.

makeup blog for week 11

I decided to critique an episode of South Park that aired for the first time last week. The episode compares the act of men farting with the act of women queefing. Through most of the episode, all males vehemently opposed women queefing, claiming that it was gross and that "That's where babies come from!". The women honestly didn't see what the big deal was about because the men farted all the time and it was funny, and to the women, this was their equivalent. The women were annoyed with the men farting all of the time and didn't understand why farting was funny. So to retaliate, the women started queefing frequently, including on Butters' face, sending him to the hospital for trauma. Even on the Canadian television station, once dominated by Terrance and Phillip, known for their numerous fart jokes, queefs overtook farts as funny material as the Queef Sisters soon replaced Terrance and Phillip. The fact that the "sisters" dominated the television and the women in this episode took such widespread actions presents two statements about women. The executive producer of the station told Terrance and Phillip that the "sisters" took over the airwaves because they appealed more to the station's audience. Since all of the men found the queefs unbearably disgusting, it is safe to assume that the intended audience was women, showing that the woman's place is in the home as traditionally believed. However, the act of the women queefing shows women empowerment and a way of getting back at the men. About halfway through the episode, the men make it illegal for the women to queef, and they are all very sad and claimed that they "just wanted to have a little fun for once". Feeling remorse, the men allowed the women to queef, as shown in the above clip, establishing a kind of equality in the realm of gaseous expulsions. The clip shows a lot of heroic women and states that women went through a lot of hardship. Although the clip shows equality between the men and women, it still stands true that the men gave this equality to the women, illustrating the patriarchy that remains.

Extra, Extra! Read All About It!

This week I critiqued the Raisin Bran Extra commercial. The ad depicts several men camping out in front of a grocery store eagerly waiting for the new cereal to arrive. Once the cereal is forklifted in, a random woman casually walks inside the store, wondering what the men are doing outside of the store. Finally, the men realize that the store they are camped out in front of is always open, and they rush inside. The ways the men are dressed and all of the accessories accompanying them while camped out in front of the store are indicative of the oversized male ego, and is similar to how men dress on days which major sporting events are taking place, which is a male stereotype in itself. The act of the woman plainly walking into the store while the men are camped out front shows the woman as strong and intelligent, and even though the men were there first, their stupidity caused them to miss out on what they wanted most: to be the first to enjoy the delicious new cereal. The single man whining and banging on the glass shows him as a sore loser and emphasizes the need of the male to always be first, especially when it comes to women. Finally the men rushing inside the store regardless of the fact of their loss shows the men as gluttonous, as they stereotypically enjoy food much more than women and don't care nearly as much about their weight as women do. This can also be seen in the size of the men in the commercial.