"Happiest Place On Earth"

As we discussed in class, Disney World is considered the happiest place on earth, and yes I do mean the whole wide world. Many people from around the world take the time to come and visit this magical place. Personally I have been there three times and I would go back to if I had the chance, you can never be too old to go to Disney. One place that I believe that is a place you must visit before you die is Time Square in New York City. Time square is filled with bright lights and huge buildings with great stores. A lot of people go to watch Broadway shows like Wicked or Lion King which are very popular. Between all of the shopping and fine dinning, a visit to times square can be pricy but definitely worth it. Like Disney World, people make out big plans to take a visit to the big beautiful city. In 2009, Macy's Day Parade changed their route to where it would end in the gorgeous Time Square, but in 2012 they changed it again sadly avoiding it. All of the bright lights, music, food, and shopping, Time Square it a great place that everyone should visit before they die because it's un-American to not.

Intertextuality

In this picture we have a book bag with the theme of the popular book and movie series, Twilight. Twilight carries a lot of obsessive fans. Most are separated by which character they believe is hotter than the other. A lot of people carry book bags around with them on a daily basis, so by combining something you use daily with a movie that is very successful, you get a popular item.

I believe in the picture above is a great example of intertextuality because it does a nice job of combining two popular things. Monopoly is a board game that has been played for years. Everyone you would ask would know how to play this entertaining game. The Walking Dead is a extremely popular TV series that everyone I know, besides me, watches. My social media sites are normal blown up with information about this hit show.

"Cool"

In the advertisement for Trix cereal, they showed how kids should be in the "cool group" so they aren't constantly chasing things. In class we discussed how important it is to us to be cool and fit in with the crowd. Quart believes that teens today will do anything to be cool and start new trends. A lot of advertising focuses on teens and are also developed by teens. If we see a lot of people wearing a new type of shoes, most of us are going to want to get a pair. For example, Nike and Uggs are very popular within our age group where everyone owns a pair. But Klosterman believes that today we try to be cool by not being cool if that makes sense. Kids just don't want to be uncool and feel out of place. He mentions that if a lot of people had more of one thing then it wouldn't be so cool anymore since the fact that everyone had it. But I believe that  teens do try hard to be cool. If they see something starting to trend, they almost immediately want to get it too. Sometimes the things that trend aren't very cheap either witch shows how much some people want to be cool.

Violence

In class this week we discussed the topic of media violence and how it effects children. In the article, Violent Television Programming and It's Impact On Children, it talked about how there should not be laws to help regulate TV violence because they don't see a problem. The FBI has also but out a  statistic stating that violence in children has actually decreased within the past couple years. Violence on TV has become so normal and popular that kids are now desensitized to it. But in the video, "Mean World Syndrome" Gerbner talks about how media violence doesn't make us more violent humans, but it makes us more scared of violence acts happening to ourselves. Gun buying rates in the past couple years have increased because a lot of people want to feel more safe. I understand how crime rates have gone down, but there are some things that children should not be accessible to. Todays televisions have it set up to where you can block certain TV stations, so parents can control, at least at home, how much violence their children sees.