Isabel McClain

Julie Frechette

Media Criticism

24 September 2019

The Silent Killer

Utilizing media as a tool in every day life is like being in a manipulative relationship.

Apps, mobile devices, computer systems, and advertisements make our life easier and provide us

with products or materials which generally make the world happier, but over time it

psychologically weakens our society. Media has become such a big part in our everyday lives,

that it becomes difficult for people to live without apps such as Instagram or Snapchat and

platform sites such as Facebook or Twitter. In addition, due to the advancing of these platforms,

many people in our society take advantage and use them in negative ways. The book, Media in

Society by Richard Campbell, Joli Jenson, Douglas Gomey, Bettina Fabos, and Julie Frechette,

teaches us about how our media can be a blessing, but mostly a curse. As we look deeper into

how social media has impacted us, and reflect on it, we begin to analyze and critique ways in

which we understand the media to be a large problem in society.

Social Media has a way of falsely representing the real world, the largest way to get

people to buy something has always been through advertisement. It truly is a blessing if one

women in the world can look up at an ad without feeling anything, but for a majority of women,

it is a source of conflict. One major problem with the advertising agencies are the photos they put

on the advertisement. The first advertisements displayed photos of a women without fixing any

flaws on her face or her body. Nowadays, due to advanced technology such as Adobe Photoshop,

agencies are able to take a photo of a model and reconstruct the shape of her body in order to
make her look more skinny and they have the ability to erase the flaws on her face to the point

where by the end she looks dehumanized. This is one of major problems that continues to re-

surface and corrupt the minds of women by constantly sending them a message saying they have

to live up to this “perfection”. According to Advertising Toxic Effect On Eating and Body Image

by Jean Kilbourne, advertisements have the ability to make women think negatively about

themselves. Kilbourne states:

Women and girls compare themselves to these images everyday. And failure to

live up to them is inevitable because they are based on a flawlessness that doesn’t exist.

The ideal American ideal of beauty has become so pervasive that 50 percent of three to

six year old girls worry about their weight. Alongside the chocolate ads are others that

shame women for having an appetite for food, such as one that showed a pair of

cinnamon buns hanging off a slim model’s hips. These images normalize disordered

behaviors around food such as bingeing and guilt” (1).

Another major issue regarding advertising agencies is advertisements tend to send out

harmful messages. Messages written on advertisements have been creating issues worldwide.

Some are can be inappropriate, overly sexual or degrading to a specific group of people, and can

condition the minds of our society to think about women in that manner, when in reality, women

are not as they are portrayed in these commercials. Furthermore, the self esteem of women has

dropped over time as well as their confidence. The real idea of beauty comes from the inside, but

to the media, the definition is what is on the outside. This issue doesn’t just involve

advertisements, but other forms of media too. Media in Society states, “This charge is most often

leveled at television (especially news and advertising), but it also applies to music, video games,

and other media forms” (p 12).

 Past television shows such as I Love Lucy have depicted a sexist view on women. This

show in particular portrayed Lucy as a stay at home wife who dresses nicely, wears a lot of

makeup, cleans the house, and cooks every night for her husband. This stereotype that women

cook and clean while men go to work everyday to earn money has gone on for a long time, due

to the media putting subconscious thoughts and ideas out in the world. In addition to this,

networks and television show writers are still portraying women as weak sex toys, as violent

shows often show women and young teens getting into trouble with boys or not having the

ability to get out of a dangerous situation, without the help of a male.

One example of a television show that promotes this is 13 Reasons Why. The show is

based on a book about a young high school teenager named Hannah Baker who explains why she

commits suicide on thirteen cassette tapes. In one episode of the series, a scene graphically

shows Hannah being abused both physically and mentally, manipulated, and raped. In the article,

13 Reasons Why Is All About Sexist Commentary, the author Carli Velocci explains why the

show creates some sexist and false statements about women. “The story is mostly an allegory for

the kinds of things that can drive people, especially teenage girls, to kill themselves. Even more

specifically, it’s about the small things that people might not even think about.” Furthermore,

the show also romanticizes self harm. In a different article called 13 Reasons Why 13 Reasons

Why The Show is Problematic, the author Sezin Koheler states, “When one of the main

characters Clay Jensen (Dylan Minette) notices a ladder of cuts up his classmate Skye’s (Sosie

Bacon) forearm, he asks how she is any different from Hannah. Skye says, “Suicide is for

cowards. This is what you do to not commit suicide.” Like suicide, self-harming is a symptom,

not a solution. There is nothing romantic about either. The media has always sent false messages

to the world, which as a result can be very harmful to impressionable young teens. Similar to
sexist remarks against males and females in television shows, a lot of ideas about certain movie

tropes came from the bible and other biblical stories from the past. For example, the book Media

in Society says, “In narratives dominated by epic concerns, ‘the hero is a king, the City is seen as

it is founded.’” Many Disney movies such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White,

tells a story based on one common theme. This theme contributes to the stereotypes aimed at

men and women. Due to this theme, society has made it clear that men play the biggest role in

not just movies, but also in acting. They lead as the hero, and play the role of the female’s knight

and shining armor. Whereas the female plays the role of the princess, who wishes she could seek

help and needs to be rescued.

The media practice of sending false messages to people continues to expand. As we

know, with the constant uses and advances photoshop has to offer, journalists, photo editors, and

reporters have created new ways of reconstructing images. One of the ways people edit an image

they took is called composition. Composition is the creative aspect of editing a photo by which

the editor is able to place certain objects in a frame or remove objects however he or she sees fit.

For website building, being able to do this action is not only creative, but it enables people to

make sure the website looks attractive and is able to catch multiple eyes. Unfortunately, editors

have misused their ability to change photos around in a certain image to mask what the true

meaning of the image was. In the PBS video, What Happens When Photoshop Goes Too Far?

Michael Kamber says, “ National Geographic took a horizontal photo and wanted to put it on a

vertical cover. And they moved the pyramids closer together. That was something that really got

people's attention.” Later on in the story, Kamber gives us another example of photo

manipulation when he states, “ Times photo from 2003, where a photographer took two photos.

They were both quite dramatic. There was a British soldier in the photo and there was an Iraqi
civilian. In one photo he liked the way the soldier looked. And in the other photo he liked the

way the civilian looked. So he decided to just combine the two photos in Photoshop and it was

actually printed all over the world.” As a result, creating photos any way you want can be very

powerful, and the fact that we have this ability and can demonstrate this creative process is mind-

blowing, however, professionals who use their power in that field to shield or alter the truth from

spreading can lead to fatal consequences. It has been recorded that numerous people have lost

their jobs due to this incident.

The media are the number one masterminds behind manipulating the world around us by

creating a series of platforms such as Facebook, Adobe Photoshop, and Twitter. Along with that,

they have used their brilliance to shield society from the truth, by means of creating a false

portrays of images targeting at women. Furthermore, this whole idea has been spreading on

television, Youtube, and other platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. For decades, our

society has been impacted negatively without anyone truly knowing what is happening behind

the scenes. For these reasons and the reasons stated previously, we have all been mislead and the

media has acted like our best friend, while in reality, it has been an enemy all along.

Work Cited

“Advertising's Toxic Effect on Eating and Body Image.” News, 18 Mar. 2015,

www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/advertisings-toxic-effect-on-eating-and-body-image/.
Media in Society by Richard Campbell, Joli Jenson, Douglas Gomey, Bettina Fabos, and Julie

Frechette

NewsHour, PBS. “What Happens When Photoshop Goes Too Far?” PBS, Public Broadcasting

Service, 26 July 2015, www.pbs.org/newshour/show/now-see-exhibit-chronicles-manipulated-

news-photos.

Velocci, Carli. “'13 Reasons Why' Is All About Sexist Microaggressions (Commentary).”

TheWrap, 6 Apr. 2017, www.thewrap.com/13-reasons-why-sexist-microaggressions-gaslight/.