About Me
My name is Trey Salas. I am 22 years old and a Senior at Towson University. Before coming to Towson, I attended Howard Community College for 2 years. In my first semester here at Towson I decided to join a fraternity (Tau Kappa Epsilon) as a way to better immerse myself in the school as well as develop a network of friends. This would become one of the main facets in life and it provided me with some of my closest friends as well as shape me into a better individual. Although being in a fraternity is great, I had received multiple
My Fraternity/St. Jude's Event
opinions from family and friends. In their eyes (friends and family), they thought that I had joined a frat and was now a stereotypical “frat boy” whose sole objective is to go out with his brothers, get hammered, and life a lifestyle that is filled with all sorts of debauchery. However, this was not the case. They overlooked the positive impact that Greek Life can have on the community (community service, raising thousands of dollars in philanthropy, campus cleanup, etc) and looked at it in the way Hollywood portrays it (see Animal House).
Aside from participating in Greek Life, I enjoy spending time with my wonderful girlfriend, going out with friends, going to movies, and in the summer, I love attending concerts. In my final year here at Towson I hope to finish strong and gain a better understanding of the Communications Studies major.
Media Criticism 101
The one class that I am taking during this minimester is Media Criticism. It is in this class where we will learn to look and the media and critically analyze it. Before I go any further, lets define media criticism.
Media Criticism: A systematic process used to understand media texts as meaningful sociocultural symbolic forms and forces.
Essentially what this means is that it is a way for us to break down a media text and pinpoint the hidden messages and figure out how they impact our culture. We live in a society that is constantly fed messages from the media. This process is known as, “media saturation.” It is through media saturation that we (the general public) are told what is right and what is wrong. They tell us what is pretty and what is not. They are in many ways, the driving force for our culture. The constant bombarding of these messages have been placed in such a central position in our culture, that people have come to rely on it for their basic sense making and determining their roles within society.
Gucci Perfume Ad
One of the ways that we can critically analyze media messages is through the process of semiotics (Study of how social production of meaning is constructed through a system of signs). It is through semiotics that you are able to figure out what the media’s hidden messages are. An example of semiotics would be the Gucci ad for Guilty, one of their new women’s fragrances. In the image it shows a woman who is being caressed by a man while she is staring at the photograph. She is shown wearing a light pink lipstick and her facial expression has a look of desire and “guilt.” What the message is behind the ad, is that it if you buy this perfume it will make you desirable. It will allow you to indulge on those “guilty pleasures” and will ultimately make you feel more attractive to men. By looking at the semiotics of this message, you are no longer looking at a perfume ad, but you have critically analyzed it and looked at it for the deeper meanings associated with it.
Television Shows…A Critical Analysis
As I was writing this show I was thinking of a show that I would be able to critically analyze with ease. As I was thinking about shows, a 
commercial came on for the new season of Jersey Shore which debut’s tonight.
For those of you who have not seen the show or heard about it, I will give a brief break down of what it is about. The premise of the show is a basic reality television show. The producers on MTV have thrown eight different people (although they are essentially the same people) into a house in Seaside Heights, New Jersey for a summer and followed them around with a camera crew. What do you get? Alcohol, no rules, partying, clubs, and sex all combine for a crazy show filled with drama.
When analyzing the show you begin to see who it is geared towards. Through the cultural diamond, you can find who the audience is as well as the cultural paradigm that the producers have tried to portray the characters as.
First let’s talk about the target audience that the show is geared towards.
The show mainly involves a lot of sex, alcohol, partying and fighting between roommates. So naturally it attracts the high school and college crowd. Why? Because both cultures involve partying, drinking, sex and fighting among peers.
The second critical analysis is the cultural paradigm that the cast members have been labeled as. They have been labeled as a set of “stereotypical, Jersey ‘Guidos’ ” who parade around Seaside Heights, New Jersey and wreak havoc. Now what I have come to notice is that when this show first debuted, the general public outside of Jersey began to associate all those from New Jersey to the cast members on the show. Essentially there was a paradigm shift and all those from Jersey were now assumed to be like those on the show. I would often times meet someone who say they are from Jersey which would then be followed with “but I’m nothing like the people on The Jersey Shore.” What the producers of the show were able to do was convince the general public (those outside the confines of New Jersey) that all people from Jersey were like that.
Final Thoughts…
So what does the future hold for me and media criticism? Well considering that this is my first blog I hopefully have been able to convey my particular point of views of how I view the media and I also hope to have demonstrated a basic understanding of media criticism. Throughout this course I hope to gain a better understanding of media criticism and apply the concepts to everyday happenings.
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