The Critical Eye

I really enjoyed reading The Critical Eye. I especially liked the fact that it didn't assume the reader had any background on the subject. I'll admit, at times I wish it did assume. There were times when I didn't think three paragraphs were really necessary to explain a close-up.

Some areas that were of specific interest to me: how quickly media can influence society, and the effect that camara angles can have on viewers.

In the first chapter of the book, the authors write how only 38 months after the people of Fiji are introduced to American television programs, 74% of the teenage girls said they were too fat, 62% began dieting, and 15% found the answer to their dieting dilemmas in induced vomiting. How sad is that. This concept is definitely not anything new to me. I mean, everybody talks about how self-image is thwarted by the media. What I didn't realize was how quickly those effects would make themselves noticed. Along the same lines, when refering to how media affects its viewers, the writers state, "No one actually has to belong to any of the modeled groups. One only needs to want to belong and to want to be like the figures in the ads, to identify with them." Again, this isn't anything new. But what struck me was the-matter-of-fact way the writers present the material. I mean, I don't like to admit that I fall into the kind of audience the writers are talking about. Surely, I should be smarter than to fall prey to such tactics.

I also found the writer's discussion of the effect of camaran angles on audience percetion in chapter three particularly revealing. I have never paid ay attention to thechnical aspects of film like camara angle. The only time I remember making any notice of the technicalities of filming was when seeing Romeo + Juliet for the first and last time. But the fact that something like camara angle can affect real life--that's just scary.

This book has made me realize how important it is to view films critically. There is a whole level of understanding I've been missing out on.

Black Like You

I’ll start off by saying that, now that I’ve read it, I’m exhausted. There are so many issues that are brought up in the text. And, I can’t help but feel a bit disillusioned by it all. I understand, of course, that this is probably not the point. Maybe my reading of the text is far too shallow. But if we’re going to talk about reactions, here’s mine. What’s the point of discussing this if there just doesn’t seem to be a way of getting it right, of finding some answer, some solution? Of course, according to Strausbaugh, the solution lies in the discussion of the issues. I certainly hope he’s right. To make my case, however, take for example, Strausbaugh’s discussion on negro-dialect literature in chapter five. Of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s writing Strausbaugh states:

“There’s life in Dunbar’s best dialect verses, music, humor, vivacity. If he can be accused of literary blackface, can’t a reverse critique be made of his and Johnson’s formal verse—that it was a kind of phony whiteface poesy? And shouldn’t it be noted that, whether writing in dialect or with grave formality, they were doing whatever they thought was needed to reach White readers and audiences? They wore the mask. They were slumming, like Will Marion Cook and Bert Williams and countless others, and they knew it. It beat waiting tables or digging ditches.” (182)

And he’s right, isn’t he? I mean, what strikes me most of all is what seems to me to be a never-ending cycle of criticism. If you do it this way you’re an Uncle Tom. If you do it that way, you’re “wearing the mask.” And this is only one example. He gives plenty more. So what can one do?

I feel my cultural background, something that I have always believed to be a privilege—to experience, first hand, two completely different cultures—may, in this particular case, be a real disadvantage. I was born in Mexico to a Mexican father and an Anglo mother. I see myself as being fully Mexican as well as being fully White. My life has been marked by trying to accommodate this duality in my identity. So, when it comes to reading texts like Black Like You, there is a part of me that becomes so incredibly frustrated. I feel like I’m supposed to choose a side. I just don’t know which side that is.

Strausbaugh calls America a “mutt” culture several times throughout the text. I know this idea is something that some of my closest friends are fiercely against. And, though I will admit that there is something unsettling about describing an entire culture in this particular manner, something about it gives me comfort. The melting pot—“an industrial crucible, a smelting pot where the ‘metals’ of various races and ethnicities [are] hot-forged and hammered into a newer, stronger national identity, the American alloy,” (134)—it just sounds right to me. Maybe it has something to do with my own cultural background, something to do with my feeling that the only place where someone like me can belong would have to be a “melting pot.” I know that I will be criticized for feeling this way. There will be plenty of people that will call me ignorant. But if we’re going to talk about reactions, here’s mine.