The Unscreen (and my mini life epiphany)

With all of the final papers, presentations, and exams that I have coming up in these next few weeks,  staring at a blank screen for twenty minutes seemed like such a waste of time. But, like with every odd thing I've ever been asked to do for a college course, I figured that there was some greater point to it. I chose to stare at my laptop screen because I knew that if I tried this with my phone, I wouldn't be able to keep it a blank screen. And the TV in my house is in the living room, the hub of my family's activity, so I would be way too prone to distraction there. So I shut myself in my bedroom, sat at my desk, set a timer, and stared at my blank laptop screen.

Within the first three minutes, I was itching to turn it on and work on one of the four papers that I have due by next week. I was like "Why do I have to do this?" And then two minutes later my overdramatic subconscious was in full meltdown mode like "whywhywhyWHYWHYWHY." I was trying really hard to stay focused on the blank screen, but it's hard to focus on nothing.

And that's when I got it.

Most of the time when I'm staring at a screen in my day-to-day life, whether I'm watching FRIENDS reruns or scrolling aimlessly through Instagram... I'm focused on nothing. None of it is actually necessary or important. I was sitting here going "Why am I staring at this screen when I have so many other things that I should be doing?" And that's kind of hypocritical, since without this assignment, I would probably have been staring at the screen anyway. It just would have had something mindlessly entertaining on it.

This assignment really made me think about how we all spend our time. While we might get a few laughs or a sometimes much needed distraction from our screens-- TVs, computers, phones-- much of what we're doing on them means nothing at all. It's as useful as staring at a blank screen.

Not get all deep and philosophical here (but I'm gonna): as humans we don't get a lot of time. We are all limited edition, limited time only. The only time we have is the time that we're lucky enough to be given-- by God, by the universe, by whatever you believe has the power to give you anything in this life. It seems such a shame to waste it on something that won't make any difference in the end.

Coming away from this (even though I only lasted 18 minutes), I'll be thinking about how to budget my time better. I won't be giving up Instagram (or my Bachelor Monday tradition), because everyone needs a mindless distraction from time to time. But we have so many available to us, so I think it's important to choose your distractions wisely and moderately. Because at the end of your life, it really, really won't matter how many times you Netflix-binged yourself into a coma, or how many likes you accumulated on your selfies, or how many levels you beat in your favorite video game. There are a lot of things that will matter.

Most of them don't involve a screen.

Stop Criticizing Taylor Swift's Squad

Go to any newsstand in any city and pick up any fashion magazine. You’re almost guaranteed to come across a picture of Taylor Swift and her now almost infamous ‘squad.’ Last summer, it might have been an article about how Taylor Swift and her group of friends are empowering women. But these days, Taylor Swift’s squad is under fire. It seems to be rubbing people the wrong way… a group of tall, thin, and beautiful women uniting in a group that seems so exclusive and unattainable that it actually turns people off. What was once seen as a powerful challenge to a patriarchal industry is now being viewed in a highly negative light and being deemed detrimental to the ideology of feminism. 

So why is that?

At this point, everyone and their mother knows that I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan. While my natural instinct is to defend her, I pride myself in never having blindly followed what she does. I’m an educated twenty year old who is perfectly capable of forming my own opinions. (That said, I won’t be buying Kanye’s new album.) So I know that Taylor Swift, a 26 year old woman, is not faultless. In the ten year span of her career, from ages 16 to 26 she has surely made mistakes. She has surely misspoken or misstepped or crossed a line. Maybe all of the above. She is not faultless. But attacking Taylor Swift because her feminism isn’t enough? To me, that seems to be crossing a line all on its own.

Feminism is a complex set of beliefs, but at its most simplistic, it is the belief that women should be given the same rights and privileges that men have. But beyond that, it extends to the idea that in a culture where the entire world is tearing women down, women should be working to empower each other and build each other up instead of joining in the takedown. 

That’s what Taylor Swift’s “squad” is. A group of talented, powerful, hardworking women who support and uplift each other. This article details the hypocrisy of feminists who criticize Taylor Swift and her squad for "not being feminist enough." The author puts it best, "Tearing down a woman once she's reached a pinnacle of success (or ever, really), for striving too hard and wanting too much — that flies in the face of feminist values. To celebrate feminism is to allow women to make different choices. It's about allowing for more — and allowing for the idea that women can face different and multi-layered oppression. But it doesn't suggest that one experience trumps another. Or that someone with a more rudimentary understanding of the concept can't participate in the conversation.” That last point, about understanding, seems to be the root of many people’s problems with Taylor Swift’s brand of feminism. They claim that she doesn’t fully understand it, and therefore she shouldn’t participate in the conversation.

And that’s bullshit. Because if she wasn’t participating in the conversation at all, she would be criticized for that, too. And since when does not having full knowledge of a subject invalidate your views on it? No one fully understands politics (you’re lying to yourself if you think you do), but everyone wants to join in that conversation.

Leave Taylor Swift alone. She's not perfect. Expecting her to be perfect and criticizing her when she doesn't meet your expectations makes you a participant in the takedown culture. Appreciate the fact that the women in your lives—your daughters and your sisters and your wives and your friends—have someone in the spotlight who takes every opportunity to tell them that they are strong and important and valuable and capable. You should be doing that. We should all be doing that.

Active Audiences (Question 1)

Reading up on Active Audiences was really eye-opening for me, and actually made Chapter 8 my favorite chapter to read so far. I read the prompt for this blog post before I read the chapter and I was like “…I definitely don’t consider myself active when I’m watching television,” because I was picturing those people who like get up and lift weights during commercial breaks and stuff. Honestly, more power to you if you do that. The only action involved when I’m watching TV is usually my hand lifting Doritos to my mouth. But then I read the chapter and realized that you don’t actually have to sweat (or even, like, move at all) to be considered an “active” audience member.

We all engage in interpretive audience activity (textbook definition: part of the process whereby media messages come to mean something to us… how we derive pleasure, comfort, excitement, or a wide range of intellectual or emotional stimulation) with every form of media that we consume, usually without realizing it. You watch TV and you laugh to your favorite sitcom, you play a video game and get really stoked when you make it to the next level, you listen to the radio when you’re stuck in a traffic jam on I-85 and when “7 Years” by Lukas Graham comes on you end up crying in your car and the guy on the motorcycle next to you stops to make sure you’re okay. (Just me? Oh.) Point is, we have some sort of emotional or psychological reaction to every piece of media we consume, which makes us “active” audience members. No gym membership necessary.

Another point I wanted to make in this post was in reference to audiences that are collectively active (textbook definition: when [audiences] organize collectively to make formal demands on media producers or regulators). I’ve been seeing a great (and ongoing) example of this all over my social media lately in regards to the show The 100. I have never seen this show. I haven’t even the slightest idea what it’s about. But the people that I follow in social media have been up in arms over the death of an LGBT character on the show, calling out the writers and producers for isolating and cutting off their LGBT viewers. The fact that I know so much about it and had never even heard of the show prior to the episode in question says enough about how intense the audience reaction was. I’ve never seen anything like it. The closest thing I can remember is the general outcry of despair over the death of a main character on the last season of Grey’s Anatomy, and that was nowhere near as politically charged as this. This article goes more into detail about the intense fan reaction and backlash, and also touches on the stigma surrounding LGBT deaths on daytime television (but beware of spoilers before you click it). It’s an interesting read, and it made me think that while media does have an effect on us, as active audiences, we can also have quite a profound effect on media.

LGBT Representation in Media

What stood out to me the most while watching The Celluloid Closet was the idea that as humans, we have this inherent need to see ourselves represented in the media we consume. Namely movies and TV shows, but we all listen to certain music for certain reasons that usually have to do with how we are feeling at a certain time in our lives, or read books where we can directly identify with a character or two.

Going to a movie and seeing a character who is just like you has a way of making you feel a lot less alone. It is for this reason that movies like How to Be Single usually come out on Valentine's Day weekend alongside the newest Nicholas Sparks adaptation. The sappy Valentine's Day couples will go see The Notebook 2.0, the best friend group of single girls will go see How to Be Single. (So what does that leave single guys? Deadpool.) And that's not to say there aren't plenty of exceptions. It's just a marketing strategy, but it's one that I'll totally admit to buying into. Me and my equally-single best friend went to see How to Be Single Valentine's Day weekend, not that either of us actually needed a lesson on how to be single. Do something long enough and you kind of become an expert on your own but it's whatever I don't care I'm not bitter. ANYWAY, the movie was good, better than I thought it would be, and it's because I could identify with more than one of the characters. I left the movie feeling like someone out there understood me, understood exactly how it feels to be me. I know that if I'd gone to see the Sparks movie, I wouldn't have left with that feeling. I can't identify with it because I'm not in a relationship right now (I've also never rowed a canoe through a pond of white swans, but I guess that’s life).

But it got me thinking, in relation to The Celluloid Closet, what it must be like to never see yourself represented on screen that way. I can see how damaging it could be, at a time when the “LGBT” label didn’t even exist, at a time when you were already plagued with thoughts of how broken you were, how wrong you were. If the movies depicted what was normal, and they never depicted you, how could you ever see yourself as normal? Since the documentary was made, we as a society have made leaps and bounds in our cultural acceptance of various sexualities. TV shows like Modern Family depict an actual "modern family" (almost to an extreme), and movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower show characters who are able to unapologetically embrace their own sexuality. This website shows the 2015 stats for LGBT representation on TV and it’s more extensive than ever, so maybe today's LGBT youth have it better. A website like this displays how far we have come as a society in one aspect, but it’s important to remember that we will always have a little farther to go.