The roles of Gender

This week, we watched a documentary about the how women and men are represented in advertisements. Usually, men are the symbol of power and assertiveness, whereas women are defenseless and innocent. These ads are actually the result of the perception of the society and culture. For example, in my point of view it is hard to imagine a man who poses as feminine behaviour. Maybe, this is acceptable for homosexuals.
I think, the obvious difference between men and women in advertisements can be seen in perfume ads.
Below you can see some examples of this sort of ads.
http://www.magazine-ads.com/per.html

On the other hand, there are considerable differences between male and female in sports. During a football game when a male player do not play well, fans say for him "he plays like a girl" which implies women are not as tough as men.
Women whose occupation is professional sports like tennis, athleticism and football need to emerge their feminity by showing themselves in ads. As a big motorsports fan, I follow Indy Car series and its only female driver Danica Patrick. Several years ago, I read an article about her and I was really surprised. Because in motorsports where male domination is doubtless, a female driver try to overtake her masculine counterparts. She has done so well so far. Like I wrote in some websites and magazines I saw Danica Patrick's ads which shows feminity and of course sexuality. On the otherside, during the race, you can not see her feminity under the helmet and race clothes.

Women Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros

In the story, a Mexican woman called Cleofilas marries Juan Pedro after her father's permission. She leaves behind her father and brothers and moves to a town in Texas. As time passes, she understands that her marriage is not like those in soap operas. Juan Pedro abuses her and converts from an ideal husband into rude one. By the way, they have a child and Cleofilas is pregnant for second one.
In the end of the story, Cleofilas runs away from this life because of missing her past.
In my point of view, this story is a clear example of marriages worldwide. First months of marriages are usually pinnacle of love, romanticism and respect. However, after problems such as debts, children, jobs raises, the bond between wife and husband gets weaker. Sometimes man may behave rudely to his wife and she tries to endure this as much as she can do.

The short-movie we watched on Monday

I can not remember its name but I am sure that if I watch that movie again, I am shocked in the same way. It was really impressive despite lasting only a couple of minutes. In terms of morality, the movie was quite questionable.
Question is that if you were a photographer during a war, would you involve in the battle and save someone who is almost going to be killed?
The answer that is given us in the movie is no. Photographer sees a girl who is pointed gun by terrorist. However, she could not do something, she hesitates for a while, looks into girl's eyes.
At the end of the movie, we learn that photographer takes photo of the corpse of girl. This photo wins "the best photo award" and photographer starts crying because of remorse. The movie concludes with this scene.
Obviously, what could she have done? If she had done something risky, probably she would have been killed because she was disarmed. I believe that this is part of her job and she has to accept its difficulties whatever it takes from her.

And of Clay are we Created, Isabelle Allende

This was maybe one of the most interesting readings I have read in English so far. Actually, I was expecting a heroic story when I read the first part. It turns out it did not finish with a happy end.
Even though this is a fiction. We always see people like Rolf Carle in real life. After terrible catastrophes like hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, there is a person or a group of people who hopefully try to save lives as many as possible. Maybe this is because of the past that they experienced likewise Rolf Carle. In the story, Rolf is confined in his past while trying to rescue Azucena. In his past, there were times that he was trapped and his life was in jeopardy. Isabelle Allende creates a perfect combination between Rolf's past and Azucena's situation.
I could not remember any of Turkish news reporters who involved in this kind of situation. Probably after the earthquake in 1999 some of them were featured but I was too young (five years younger than Azucena) to recall what did went on at that time.

TV as a drug and mind-altering substance

As I read  from Jason Mittel's article, many other writers and anti-television campaigns associate the excessive television watching with using drugs as an addicted. They can be right in some ways. Drugs, whether they are  illicit or legal make its consumers stimulated or calm. Actually, television does the same thing too. After the couple of hours non-stop looking to the screen, it starts gaining the control over us. It changes our emotions, feelings and even behaviors just like drugs. In particular, soap operas, thrillers, science fictions may have an impact on us that we can not get easily rid of it. As a result, heavy watchers may lose their cognition and the ability of thinking logically. It is probably what television producers want. Viewers are forced to think in one way which producers prefer and indeed that makes viewers idiot.

The impact of TV on children

As Marie Winn reported on her article, no writers and scholars could foresee the future impacts of TV when it was first introduced to public. According to them the aim of  TV was simply to bring families together in one common place at home. However we have now a different situation here. Due to the technological developments, TV shifted from a luxury stuff to vital, necessary one. Today we can see every home at least 2 or 3 sets of TV. And families are getting isolated from each other because they watch their favourite shows on their own TV set. For instance, men enjoy watching football match while women are more interested in watching TV series. Naturally, it is a real damage to the development of children who live in a TV addicted family. Only watching TV every evening in a family kills the interaction among  children and parents. As a result, children find unintentionally new way which is TV(cartoons, special kid programmes etc.) to interact. They try to learn the real life from TV shows and actually TV is not the real life. After that, they can not know how to deal with real life problems. The worse is that, I saw on TV years ago. A kid jumped from window and died after watching "Pokemon". According to witnesses he identified himself with a pokemon and tried to fly like it. It is quite horrible story but unfortunely real.

Reality TV in Turkey

Since 2000  different kinds of reality TV shows were featured in our country. Some of them was successful and some of them were cancelled after a few episodes due to the lack of ratings. As I remember from my childhood, Turkish version of Big Brother attracted many audiences from different ages. Some TV channels were featuring it live and our curiosity about a couple of people's lives encouraged us to watch them all day long. Additionally there were special programmes which includes harsh debates among audiences in studio. 
Apart from that, pop star and talent shows became quite successful and they are still being watched by many. For years, I have seen many talents who can sing, dance etc. from these shows. However, almost all of them shared the same story and were forgotten
Despite of forgetting these shows and contestants, its impacts on audiences are getting worse day by day. I think people lose their "talent" of understanding political and global issues because of watching these shows. They do never care about the outside world unless they stop watching these silly shows.