Essays on Society
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2. Fiske cites three videos in Lops Angels which brought issues of race and class to the fore. These three involve different physically violent clashes, those between Rodney King and Stacey Koon, Reginald Denny and Damian Williams, and Latasha Harlins and Soon Ja Du, and Fiske says that these three "are focal events upon which historical forces of race, class, and gender converged and took material form in courtroom arguments, in street battles, and in media struggles over meaning" (Fiske 125). Fiske extends his metaphor and finds racial and class links among prominent or notorious blacks such as O.J. Simpson, Clarence Thomas, Bill Cosby, Willy Horton, and Rodney King. Each of these individuals serves in some form as a representation of all blacks, a burden that they wold not wish to carry but one that is thrust upon them by the media, for good or ill. Cosby takes this most seriously among this group and seeks to be a teacher in his entertainment ventures as in others, and The Cosby Show was a deliberate attempt to counter the usual image of blacks on television and to create a middle-class image toward which inner city blacks might work as a goal. The Cosby Show would do the same thing white shows did in a different direction, showing a middle-class family that was superior in lifestyle and values in a way that was not realistic to the American experience, black or white. It is the image rather than the reality that is important, and yet image is also the problem for
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crete even greater fragmentation into groups; and neighborhoods have become balkanized along racial and ethnic lines, further separating people from any central idea of America. The key to our values lies in the relationship that exists between our private and our public lives, and the life-style enclaves that seem to have developed place more emphasis on the private life and see public life within a specific life-style sphere that is separate from any central public life with a broader scope. Differences have been magnified across class lines--life style is definitely related to income level and social distinctions in spite of the emphasis on individualism. Society has been fragmented by political and social upheavals into groupings around certain income levels, ideas, even locations. The 1960s in particular helped in this fragmentation, and subsequent emphasis on ethnic and cultural issues also contributed to the separation of society into different groupings than existed before, with a new emphasis on differences that set groups apart rather than on similarities drawing them together.
This fragmentation of the television audience in particular has produced numerous cracks in the dominant ideology, in this case cracks del
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1593
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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