5 Minutes Of What The Media Actually Does To Women

Cindy Crawford said “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.”
The media produces an impossible ideal. The images produced are false projections of reality. The objectification of women through the media is harmful. I also think that social media sites such as Facebook and Tinder can be just as damaging, especially for the adolescence user. I believe it is creating an increasingly narcissistic society.

http://mailathomas.wix.com/derrida

On Tuesday 21st January, after much deliberation and one final practice my Derrida group plucked up the courage to give our presentation to the our Study Skills class first.

Overall I am happy with how it went, and feel that our ideas and research were understood by the group. Initially we had hoped to produce a presentation in a less structured, Post-Modern style. However, we found the work of Derrida to be a little confusing and decided that the only way we could understand it was to create a framework within which to work. We divided his work into what we considered to be the main topics, Deconstruction, politics, language, identity and art, with each group member focusing on a certain area. This helped us to widen our research, and enabled us to work at home separately rather than finding time to meet up as a whole for long periods of time.

I think the idea of using a website worked well, it enabled us to demonstrate how technology is a vital part of society and it allowed us to show some of our visual research. It also meant that we could each individually upload our sections to the communal platform and no one person had control over it.

I was disappointed with my section of the presentation as I was very nervous and and did not speak as clearly as I would have liked. The preparation for the presentation went really well and the sharing of the work load meant that we used the time as best we could. In future I will try to practice speaking a bit more prior to a presentation and will try not to use my note cards as much.

I did find the work of Derrida a little confusing and contradictory at times, but found that most of his critics had felt similar things. When looking at his work alongside that of the other Post Modernists I found the themes easier to understand the common themes and that it was Derrida’s written work that was difficult to understand. I found the ideas of repeated symbols such a signatures and photos being used for identity interesting. I also really enjoyed researching the influence Postmodernity had on visual culture, with the idea of an anti-hero and questioning of stereotypical roles in comic books. The Watchmen is one of my favourite books and I enjoyed reading about it’s significance within popular culture at the time of its release.