60 Minutes Reaction

Steven Schwarz

English 102

2/28/2012

60 Minutes Reaction.

After watching the video in class I realized that without every single point of view you lose total credibility.  A one sided argument is a bad argument.  Audiences will respond more positively to one side or another when presented with all of the facts.  I found the video in class to be an ignorant response to what really happened.  They were so caught up in making the accused look guilty that they never bothered to consider if they were innocent.  I noticed the majority of the interviewees were women.  You can disagree or agree with me on this, but it isn’t that hard to get a group of women to side with a girl who claimed she was raped.  The preconceived notion would be that if anyone was raped that night it was her and not the other way around, simply because she is a woman.  If one of the basketball players had claimed they were raped, people would simply disregard it.  There is some truth to that no matter how small.  If I want to apply what I learned from this to my own research, I’d better get all sides of the story.  The Bachelor has a lot of people involved in just the production alone.  There are viewers as well as contestants.  I’ve found that the majority of my annotations are about the viewers’ own responses, interviews of the former bachelorettes from the show, and the bachelor himself.  To further explore every aspect of the story it would be best for me to discover what Chris Hansen himself has to say about the matter.  He is the host and is there through all of it.  In bulk, he’s the most important piece of the puzzle.  He is my greatest source for truth. 

            My work so far is actually pretty good.  I’ve covered almost all the sources I can get information from.  I’ve considered the good and the bad effects the show has on its viewers over the years, and I can come to a reasonable argument from both sides.  Gaining knowledge from a working psychologist could also be of great help as well.  With all of the information I have to offer, none of it would be worth anything without someone who is trained to analyze social situations such as this.  They can give the most clear and thought out interpretation of what it all means, thus giving me another source.

Annotated Bibliography 3

Steven Schwarz

English 102

2/23/2012

Annotated Bibliography

Blum, Virginia. "Love Studies: Or, Liberating Love." Oxford Journals 17.2 (2005): 335-348. Oxford Journals. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.

The Oxford Journal has this article in it that describes how there have been spin-off shows of the bachelor and in what ways they have been more or less successful. This will help me develop my basis on what each show brings out in its own unique viewer demographic. Knowing what shows attract certain viewers will help me in understanding what their reactions to these shows would more accurately be.

Cloud, Dana. "The Irony Bribe and Reality Television: Investment and Detachment in The Bachelor ." Critical Studies in Media Communication. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis Group, 2010. 413-437. Print.

This chapter by Dana Cloud introduces the acts of some bachelors to not choose anyone in the final elimination to be their wife. This introduces the concept of true love not always being found on these types of shows. It will help me reinforce the idea that the contestants honestly want to find true love and won't choose unless they are sure of what they feel. It may also prove that some of the failed marriages of previous couples was a result of society's pressure on them to fall in love.

Frank, Katherine. "Primetime Harem Fantasies." Third wave feminism and television. New York, NY: I.B. Tauris and Co., 2007. 91-110. Print.

This chapter by Katherine Frank goes in depth on the viewer experience in great detail.  She explains what types of environments to watch the show in, a step-by-step description of what the climax of the show brings out in each situation, and a detailed explanation of what most people feel during different parts of the show.  This is perfect for my research, because it’s all about the viewer.  The more I know about the viewer’s experience, the more accurately I will be able to describe their deep emotional shifts from before and after the show has concluded.

Brophy-Baermann, Michelle. "True Love on TV." Poroi 4.2 (2005): 17-51.Iowa Research Online. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.

This passage shows the contrast in men and womens’ views of what their role is and how they feel about each element of the show they’re in.  They spell out their confidence in the show’s ability to pick a good demographic for them to choose from, and find them a suitable wife or husband that they will fall in love with in the end.  Getting to hear the main character of the show’s opinion on these matters can make for a more realistic and accurate description of our ignorance or accuracy as viewers.  This will prove what we as viewers understand completely, and don’t know at all.

Steven Schwarz

English 102

2/21/2012

Annotated Bibliography

Galician, Mary-Lou. "Must Marry TV."Critical thinking about Sex, love, and romance in the mass media : media literacy applications . Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007. 261-364. Print.

This book approaches the representation of romantic relationships in mass media. It will help me develop a greater idea of what the viewers find appealing about these reality romance shows, and why anyone would wish to be on the shows themselves.

Dubrofsky, Rachel. Fallen Women in Reality TV. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, 2009. Print.

This book more closely describes the women in the reality TV shows and how their wild emotions are what make the climactic scenes each week. This will help me gather a more close analysis of what makes these shows believable and how they affect the female viewer.

Hernandez, Virginia Rose. ""I'm sorry this hasn't been a fairy tale" : examining romance reality TV through The bachelor." Institutional Repositories | Texas Digital Library. Version 1. University of Texas at Austin, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. <http://repositories.tdl.org/tdl-ir/handle/2152/ETD-UT-2011-05-3277>.

The site goes into detail about what type of social structure these shows hold. It will help me describe the type of lifestyle that the show promotes for its viewers.

Steven Schwarz

English 102 AB

2/16/2012

Annotated Bibliography

Dr. Caudle, Melissa. The Reality of Reality TV: Reality Show Business Plan. On the Lot Productions 2011.  This book features information and details on every aspect of a reality show business plan including the executive summary, logline and synopsis, episode breakdowns, marketing, distribution and budgeting.

Waters, Harry. "Shows That Love Too Much." Newsweek 10 June 1991: 54-54. Print. This article goes into detail about TV's latest obsession in real-life romance when the shows were just starting.

Papacharissi, Zizi, and Andrew Mendelson. "An Exploratory Study of Reality Appeal: Uses and Gratifications of Reality TV Shows."Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 1 June 2007: 355-370. Print. This is a survey administered to reality TV viewers revealed that the most salient motives for watching reality TV were habitual pass time and reality entertainment.

Assignment 5 part 3

Steven Schwarz          

English 102 5c

2/14/2012

Assignment 5 part 3

            From what we went over in class it appeared to me that my subject questions weren’t compelling enough, or open enough for debate.  I came to the solution to my problem by coming up with an entirely new topic using the topic page in our pamphlet.  I came up with this, “How do shows like The Bachelor affect their viewers’ outlook on love?” This seemed like a good topic to me because it brings about 2 highly interesting subjects.  True love has fascinated people for centuries. Why else would there be so many movies about it if this weren’t true.  Reality shows are interesting as well to society, and are also much debated.  With that, there are many ways to approach the question.

            I used a few good words to help me in search of good articles online so far.  I used “reality shows” “love” and “viewers” as my key words in the search. They brought me to a few alright articles and one good one.  The one that most helped me is titled “Reality Romance”.  The author reports on the lives of various women who have appeared on television reality programs in hopes of finding true love.  The article has interviews with people who were actually on the bachelor itself, which increases its credibility significantly enough for me to make it one of my main sources.

Steven Schwarz

English 102

2/8/2012

Assignment 4b

So what I’m hoping to go about in my research paper is to explore the very beginning of music and how it came about.  The development from sound into music fascinates me because the human race had discovered that a certain series of tones makes a chord, and a certain progression of chords could make a pleasing little tune.  This phenomenon has clearly manifested into the monster that we know the music business to be today. 

            The majority of what I researched was music history, and sound in society.  I emailed the music librarian who promptly responded with this to say, “There are a lot of books in the Music Library about the history of music that go back as far as we can know. There's no way to really know the answer to your question about the origins of music because there is 
no systematic written record until about 1,000 years ago, 2,000 at the 
most, but music existed long before that. So anything you find would be 
largely speculation, not definitive description. I'd recommend starting with the New Grove Dictionary of Music.” Therefore I did start there. I do understand there are no definitive answers to my question, but that makes me all the more ambitious about find out what people have to say about the matter.

Bryson

Steven Schwarz

English 102

Assignment 3

The House

I found the introduction to Bryson's piece very interesting because the origin of the paper is contemporary Europe writing about a 1600's house in Europe.  Europe is of course always a good topic because that's where politics for a lot of us began in history.  With that simple context, comes so many expectations of what society was like for the people who lived in the house prior.  He talks a lot about his discussion with the seller.  They bring up how the ground has risen in relation to the house foundation, and the settlements that took place during the house's existence.  The writer wishes to make his own history in this place, much like famous figures of the past.  He states, "Even Einstein will have spent large parts of his life thinking about his holiday or new hammock or how dainty was the ankle on the young lady alighting from the tram across the street." This leads me to assume that he knows his life in this house isn't a spectacle that will reflect his greater purpose, but will act as a catalyst for his future endeavors. 

I don't feel as though there is much to say about inquiry in this chapter.  He really just explains the house and doesn't bring up conflict within himself or anything for that matter.  He lays out plenty of facts and interesting things about the house itself, and for that he would fit a portion of our class model, but without capturing the true purpose of the essay (bringing a question to the table without picking a side).  I don't find any instances of inquiry at all to the end of the piece.  He goes on plenty about the history of the world since 1600 but doesn't really bring forward one big question that you can keep on your mind throughout the chapter.