Spiritual Meme Question Fifteen
15--While embracing criticism and critical analysis, as well as optimism, describe how media has impacted your life. What benefits have you and do you take from media, and how does media hurt you? Focusing specifically on few different categories (treat each category as if I asked the question about it individually): a. journalism/written news (including your favorite news sources and something like Fox News written stories) b. TV/radio entertainment (music, shows, commentary on "news" channels); c. Art, social and mass communication media (films, music, email, LJ, Facebook)
I don't know what my TV choices say about me: I watch Jeopardy, Criminal Minds, and Grimm. I watch NBC news. My favorite shows were Longmire, The Bridge (autistic hero!), Murder:Life in the Streets, and The Wire. I also watch RT. Al-Jazzira, and Free Speach TV/. Again, i control what i watch to minimize TVs influence. Criminal Minds and The Bridge are "guilty pleasures."
It seems like i have always listened to radio, music, kid shows ("The Lone Ranger", etc,) drama, and suspense ("Inner Sanctum," etc.) and, in my 20s Talk radio (Vida Blue?) At age 8. i saw my first Disney propaganda cartoons (Bluto and Peg-Leg Pete were converted to Naziism) Started reading the local newspapers and going to a few movies beginning at age ll. I saw my first television show (George Goebel) at 24 and bought my first set at 28. I started using a computer at about age 45 and got a .edu email address. At 75 i encountered Live Journal and started my own journal a few months later. I have never had a facebook or twitter account.
I saw my first newspaper at age 10 when i became a "hawker" and have always relied on the print media as my major source of news. Before Hiroshima, i mostly trusted whatever i read. After Hiroshima i mostly mistrusted and disbelieved whatever i read in the mainstreem and right wing press. I first chose Socialist and Communist publications, but later more "center-left" publications: The Progressive, The Nation, etc. My parents and the parents of everyone i know were quite conservative (Yes, Sarah Palin certainly found her rightful place). Dad was annoyed, but did not try to control what i read. My friends couldn't care less what or if i read. Now i mostly read and only subscribe to the local newspaper and "The Catholic Worker" (where i agree with almost everthing except their theology). I control my media intake fairly carefully because shit and lies are not good for my soul or serenity even when i know that's what they are. Newspaper and radio reports on the HUAC pretty much erased any residual patriotism i might have retained after Hiroshima, and left me open to the anarchism that i eventually accepted as my basic "political philosophy"
I have already mentioned my "taste" in art. Most of my favorite artists are social commentators. They emphasize the violence, pain, and conformity produced by the social institutions we have created for ourselves Eichelberg's Catholic Worker woodcuts and Hopper's stark portrayals of bureaucracy and isolation are especially compelling to me -- and, of course, "Guernica."
I have mostly been able to choose among the media influences that might have influenced me so as to minimize the one's i did not want while acknowledging that i wanted to be influenced by most of the ones that did.
Writing prompts: only ones that would be hard for you to answer please! {FULL!} - the eclectic ecstasy of an ecphorizing eccentric
I don't know what my TV choices say about me: I watch Jeopardy, Criminal Minds, and Grimm. I watch NBC news. My favorite shows were Longmire, The Bridge (autistic hero!), Murder:Life in the Streets, and The Wire. I also watch RT. Al-Jazzira, and Free Speach TV/. Again, i control what i watch to minimize TVs influence. Criminal Minds and The Bridge are "guilty pleasures."
It seems like i have always listened to radio, music, kid shows ("The Lone Ranger", etc,) drama, and suspense ("Inner Sanctum," etc.) and, in my 20s Talk radio (Vida Blue?) At age 8. i saw my first Disney propaganda cartoons (Bluto and Peg-Leg Pete were converted to Naziism) Started reading the local newspapers and going to a few movies beginning at age ll. I saw my first television show (George Goebel) at 24 and bought my first set at 28. I started using a computer at about age 45 and got a .edu email address. At 75 i encountered Live Journal and started my own journal a few months later. I have never had a facebook or twitter account.
I saw my first newspaper at age 10 when i became a "hawker" and have always relied on the print media as my major source of news. Before Hiroshima, i mostly trusted whatever i read. After Hiroshima i mostly mistrusted and disbelieved whatever i read in the mainstreem and right wing press. I first chose Socialist and Communist publications, but later more "center-left" publications: The Progressive, The Nation, etc. My parents and the parents of everyone i know were quite conservative (Yes, Sarah Palin certainly found her rightful place). Dad was annoyed, but did not try to control what i read. My friends couldn't care less what or if i read. Now i mostly read and only subscribe to the local newspaper and "The Catholic Worker" (where i agree with almost everthing except their theology). I control my media intake fairly carefully because shit and lies are not good for my soul or serenity even when i know that's what they are. Newspaper and radio reports on the HUAC pretty much erased any residual patriotism i might have retained after Hiroshima, and left me open to the anarchism that i eventually accepted as my basic "political philosophy"
I have already mentioned my "taste" in art. Most of my favorite artists are social commentators. They emphasize the violence, pain, and conformity produced by the social institutions we have created for ourselves Eichelberg's Catholic Worker woodcuts and Hopper's stark portrayals of bureaucracy and isolation are especially compelling to me -- and, of course, "Guernica."
I have mostly been able to choose among the media influences that might have influenced me so as to minimize the one's i did not want while acknowledging that i wanted to be influenced by most of the ones that did.
Writing prompts: only ones that would be hard for you to answer please! {FULL!} - the eclectic ecstasy of an ecphorizing eccentric