The Misrepresentation of the Media

 The subject of my final project is a misrepresentation of minorities in the media and in advertisements. For my project original project, I planned on actually acting out these commercials that I have created but due to my ring light breaking and my camera person flaking, I had to resort to something that would be just as interesting and powerful. In the first part of this process, I had to think about what topic interested me the most in class and which one could I make come to life. With me being very indecisive, the process took longer than I thought. I had to think about what message really resonated with me and what would be the theme. After choosing the topic that I wanted to do my project on, then it was time to come up with the way I wanted to display this topic. I knew that drawing and painting were not my strong suit so I decided to take the visual performance/video route because I am a very visual thinker and I see everything with movement. The artist that inspired my project was Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald, and Yoko Uno however the concept of this project was inspired by Guy Debord's The Spectacle Theory.

My project conveys the idea that media and advertisement do have an effect on each and every one of us that is positive for some but negative for many of us. As children, we aspire to be like the people we see on the big screen because they project the idea of what a perfect person should be and when we notice that the perfect person does not look like us, it takes a toll on society. We start to create hierarchies and the people who do not match the ones seen in the media are usually put at the bottom. The media has been destroying the dreams of many people for as long as it's been around and yet many still do not see its downfalls. It has caused people to be insecure, depressed, and unsure about their future. Children should be able to see themselves in a positive light. People who contribute to the media do not think about society, they just think about money which is why they say money is the root of all evil. The difference between my first self-portrait and this project is that, it contains more thought and more effort. I really tried to create something that was simple, meaningful, and interesting to watch. I think my work has improved because there were a variety of inspirations that I could choose from and I was able to focus on something that interested me a lot more. I definitely learned a lot more about these artists by watching short documentaries and looking at interviews that they have done just to get a sense of the mindset and their creative processes.

The media has so much power over us if we allow it. It starts with children because they are sponges of the things that they see. They see repeated images throughout their lifetime that becomes normal and without even thinking. Personally, media has been a huge part of my life, especially because I grew up during a time where technology has become more advance than ever and media is now at our fingertips. Social media was definitely my main source and has become addicting to the new generation. Although times have changed and norms that were put in place many years ago are shifting, there is still a lot to be done so that we can all be equal. It starts with inclusiveness, and as a society, we have to make sure that everyone is able to see themselves in a positive light. "The spectacle is able to subject human beings to itself because the economy has already totally subjugated them" (Debord 16). This quote is so powerful because it is true, we see the things on media and we align our lifestyles according to spectacle and it's almost a natural instinct." The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective." (Debord 5) Media and advertisements have made us materialistic because we strive to be the image that we constantly see. In this generation, trends spread like wildfire and everyone aspires to be "cool" and whatever we see getting the most attention is what we tend to gravitate to. "The spectacle was born from the world’s loss of unity, and the immense expansion of the modern spectacle reveals the enormity of this loss." (Debord 29). It has definitely caused the divide in society to expand and cause people to think that someone is better than another by the way they look or by what they have. In conclusion, I really enjoyed creating the project and I love how it made me think about how I may have been affected by the media.

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, 2016.