Post Class, Andrew Wells

In class on Monday we were ask the question on why music top 100 is so popular. My only guess would be that people are inclined to enjoy a certain style to a song. Once enough people enjoy that style, others will mostly tend to enjoy the song just because they want to be apart of the style liking. I think that even at times people force themselves to like a song because others are listening to it. If you're the one that doesn't like the song, you're considered to be an outsider and a "different" person. Just imagine yourself at a club with everyone dancing to a top 100 song that you don't like. You would either not dance and stand by on the side by yourself and wait to the next song or you would force your self to like the song and dance with everyone else.

For thursday assignment we were instructed to read Pierre Bourdiu on page 328. The essay "On Television" was a analysis of the tv and its effects it has on culture. It criticizes the networks for their failure of presenting the public with "stimulating, broad based programming." Better yet he says that the tv is " a threat to political life and to democracy itself". According to Bourdiu the media attention is towards spectacle, disasters, and human interest stories. The expression of "invisible censorship" is exercised on the news both directly and indirectly by the market. All the ways that the journalists impose limits on the publics vision on what is considered real life and what is not. Furthermore he argues that the television provides nothing more than the illusion of freedom. The desire to strike a larger audience has not turned into a method of attracting the short attention minded. This would include segments with shorter information and intense camera use and audio. Todays news media has turned in to a virtual Peoples magazine, filled with scandalous pop-star images and pictures of world devastation.