In the tenth grade I read a book called 1984 by George Orwell. It was interesting to me to see that “Big Brother” would watch over people in the country and later brainwash them. Also they would have media praising Big Brother and not much else. I could not imagine a world like this but little by little this is occurring without us acknowledging it through our media infringing on our natural born human rights.
Main stream media is a medium designed to reach a large group of people by using television, internet, radio and much more. Their mission is to inform the citizens of this country and be objective without infringing on the rights of humans. The rights of human beings are listed in the Declaration of Independence as article one, two and three. Without these rights we would have prejudice, racism and a lot more consequences.
Article one of the Declaration of Independence says all people should treat one another the way we would like to be treated and not be enslaved. That is, we shouldn’t be forced to do labor against our will without reimbursement. Second article says that everyone has the right to be in this country and accepted despite their age, race, sex, language, political views, and religion. And this is something very prevalent in our everyday life now; we see it in fine print on job applications and tests. And finally the third article says people have the right to live; freedom
to have protection and comfort. So for example we have the right to buy what we need to survive and what we want.
Even though we are given these rights from birth, they aren’t always upheld. There have been so many taboos that now we don’t categorize as taboo that have been being expressed. Some examples of this is when Lou Dobbs talks about deporting every Mexican in the country (even though his wife is Mexican), or when Carlos Mencia makes stereotypes of each ethnicity in this country and calls them derogatory names such as wetbacks, and coons. But aside from this extreme expression of “freedom of speech,” we have the news media.
News media is supposed to be impartial but actually isn’t, according to Global Issues. Media is supposed to help inform people, but underdeveloped and undeveloped countries have various problems. International news is decreasing which is not giving it the attention it deserves. This can be a problem because they aren’t being given the exposure they need and so they aren’t receiving the resources and help they need from other countries.
Another issue of mass media is that journalists’ are threatened to censor their writings and reporting so the news isn’t always accurate. The problem of freer countries such as US is the lack of objective reporting which is because those papers are controlled by elites, or more wealthy people, which they in turn use to how it will ultimately advance them (Shah, 1).
When the news isn’t conveyed properly to the public we don’t get to see the truth. For example, if we didn’t see the effects the war we are in now on television, since it is not directly affecting us we don’t see what is going on. Therefore we won’t be directly affected by it. On the other side of it, when hurricane Katrina hit and we saw how high the water was and how dead bodies were floating on top of the water we were directly bothered by it. Also when Haiti was hit by the earthquake and we saw the devastation that was caused by that we were directly bothered by it.
Ultimately mass media has a lot of influence on how we view certain things. Even when the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 happened the media indirectly showed us pictures of Muslims in their garb and after being shown that a couple hundred times we began to internalize what a terrorist looked like. Mass media is to blame for this. They show only scary images from the Middle East like the Osama Bin Laden’s videos.
Its almost like we are allowing Big Brother to brainwash us. Mass media is like Big Brother and we are in the country where, even though we sometimes point out flaws in our government, we still censor our comments as well. Too bad we don’t do that where it matters.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Viva Cuba through Literature
In the wake of the Arizona Law recently passed to give authorities the right to racially profile Hispanics, I thought it would be interesting to highlight a couple Cubans who have contributed to the literary world. Two people who have contributed to the United States and the world are Jose Yglesias and Severo Sarduy; both were Cuban immigrants who arrived at this country for a new life and prospered. Not only did they get fame and fortune (the fortune you obtain when you accomplish self fulfilling goals), but they gave us great literary pieces to reference for years, decades, centuries to come.
Jose Yglesias was a Cuban writer born and raised in Ybor City, Florida a section of Tampa where most Cuban immigrants migrate to. In 1937 he served the United States navy during World War two. He studied at Black Mountain College and was the film critic for The Daily Worker. For more than 10 years he was an executive for the pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme.
Jose Yglesias wrote seven novels and four works of non-fiction. Jose Yglesias was known throughout the country for writing A Wake in Ybor City (1973), about Cubans who immigrated to Florida and The Franco Years (1975), a series of interviews, with people who lived in Spain under Francisco Franco's dictatorship.
Yglesias died at the age of seventy five at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan of cancer November 1995 of cancer. He was one of the greats of this country’s foreign literature like Ernest Hemmingway and Emily Dickinson. Another great writer, novelist, playwright, and critic was Severo Sarduy.
Severo Sarduy was born in Camaguey, Cuba in February 25, 1937. He went to elementary and high school in Cuba and earned a degree in Bachelors of Arts and Sciences in 1955 at the Institute of Higher Learning. After that he went to Havana to study medicine but was only able to complete a year in school because the dictator at the time Fulgencio Batista closed down the school.
Sarduy was an author and critic. His collection of essays on other Latinoamerican writers is published in his “Esrito sobre un cuerpo.” He also wrote “De donde son los cantantes" in 1967 in mexico which put him on the map as a leading novelist because he was published in the same printing company as Joaquin Mortiz. Sarduy also wrote playwrights like “La playa” and published a poetry book entitled “Big Bang.”
Unfortunately Sarduy died at the age of fifty six of AIDS in a hospital in Paris where he moved in 1959 to study at The School of Louvre. In Paris he wrote for the journal "Tel Quel", where he was influenced by Structuralist and Poststructuralist movements, and formed literary relationships with Francois Wahl and Roland Barthes.
These two literary greats inspired many writers and have inspired me very much as well. They arrived here in the United States for a different opportunity and to make a new life for themselves and contributed much more than just words on a page. They contributed a passion for words on a page and made many people feel that passion as well.
Jose Yglesias was a Cuban writer born and raised in Ybor City, Florida a section of Tampa where most Cuban immigrants migrate to. In 1937 he served the United States navy during World War two. He studied at Black Mountain College and was the film critic for The Daily Worker. For more than 10 years he was an executive for the pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme.
Jose Yglesias wrote seven novels and four works of non-fiction. Jose Yglesias was known throughout the country for writing A Wake in Ybor City (1973), about Cubans who immigrated to Florida and The Franco Years (1975), a series of interviews, with people who lived in Spain under Francisco Franco's dictatorship.
Yglesias died at the age of seventy five at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan of cancer November 1995 of cancer. He was one of the greats of this country’s foreign literature like Ernest Hemmingway and Emily Dickinson. Another great writer, novelist, playwright, and critic was Severo Sarduy.
Severo Sarduy was born in Camaguey, Cuba in February 25, 1937. He went to elementary and high school in Cuba and earned a degree in Bachelors of Arts and Sciences in 1955 at the Institute of Higher Learning. After that he went to Havana to study medicine but was only able to complete a year in school because the dictator at the time Fulgencio Batista closed down the school.
Sarduy was an author and critic. His collection of essays on other Latinoamerican writers is published in his “Esrito sobre un cuerpo.” He also wrote “De donde son los cantantes" in 1967 in mexico which put him on the map as a leading novelist because he was published in the same printing company as Joaquin Mortiz. Sarduy also wrote playwrights like “La playa” and published a poetry book entitled “Big Bang.”
Unfortunately Sarduy died at the age of fifty six of AIDS in a hospital in Paris where he moved in 1959 to study at The School of Louvre. In Paris he wrote for the journal "Tel Quel", where he was influenced by Structuralist and Poststructuralist movements, and formed literary relationships with Francois Wahl and Roland Barthes.
These two literary greats inspired many writers and have inspired me very much as well. They arrived here in the United States for a different opportunity and to make a new life for themselves and contributed much more than just words on a page. They contributed a passion for words on a page and made many people feel that passion as well.
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