Secondary Source Annotations
Source 1 MLA Citation:
Bolls, Paul, Chien-fei Chen, and Wayne Popeski. “Sex and Violence Makes Me Yawn: Autonomic Desensitization to Music Videos.”(2003): 1-4. Communication and Mass Media Complete. Web. 17 Apr. 2011.
Source 2 MLA Citation:
“Lupe Fiasco Lyrics – Little Weapon.” azlyrics.com.azlyrics.com, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2011.
Summary Source 1:
This article discusses the vast growth of the music industry through music videos and even the lyrics themselves. The authors make the claim that the more people view violent or sexual material, the less they are bothered by it, and sometimes they can even block it out to the point that they don't notice it was even part of the video. They believe that the video had zero sexual or violent content because they are so desensitized to it that less and less seems offensive. The authors also assert that certain genres, including rap, are more likely to contain violence and sexual content than others.
Paul Bolls, the apparent leader of this article was the director of the Laboratory for the Study of Communication, Emotion and Cognition at Washington State University in Pullman. He has been published in many fields of study, but in particular: Electronic Media. To look at this text you must assume that a child is not in total control of themselves, and that as the accessibility of media increases, so does the children's desire to view it. You must also believe that you can be desensitized to things by viewing them repeatedly.
Summary Source 2:
The lyrics to this song are about three different children, one presumably middle class child, presumably lower class child, and one child from a foreign country, maybe somewhere in Africa or the middle east. Lupe raps about the Foreign child, and his life living as a soldier since he was 6 or 7, and the other two have been trained my sources of media to use violence as their way of dealing with problems. He also raps about the middle class children. One sneaks his dad's gun into school and to shoot the bully that has been bugging him, and the other buys a gun with money he made doing chores and robs a candy store. Later on in the song he talks about how there are a lot of violent games and media that teach kids to be violent, and desensitizes them to seeing death. Lupe seems to be using this song to warn of the dangers of media and the potential for your children to pick up bad things from it, and tries to create the awareness in an attempt to stop it.
Lupe Fiasco is a hip hop artist who is known for bringing to light the issues plaguing the lower class community, and writing songs that might encourage and inspire them not to fall into the “norms” of their area, but rather get away from them and live their life in a good way. As a rap artist, I believe that he is a good person to use lyrics from to develop my analysis of Eminem's “Like Toy Soldiers” Music Video. The lyrics require you to assume the belief that video games and media can cause kids to become more violent. You must also assume the view that no other things could impact a child's decision of how to react to a given situation other than the media's portrayal of violence as acceptable.
Additional paragraph
The little weapon lyrics benefit my primary source by showing that Eminem isn’t the only rapper concerned with how easily children use violence now. Lupe raps about kids, presumably from the U.S., and how they are starting to use violence as a way to solve problems more readily. Even the song’s title; Little Weapon, leads the reader/listener to think of very young people using weapons or even being the weapon/soldiers. Kids, due to current media (in Lupe’s case it was video games, and in Eminem’s video it was music videos) are becoming overly desensitized to killing and violence. Lupe ties in how some kids in foreign countries are forced to be soldiers at 6 or 7 years old, and our media is somewhat causing the same thing.
2 Additional Sources
- Interview with Eminem about his song and who it is about.
- Study about rap songs and videos, and who their target audience is.
Sources in conversation with each other
One source is a scholarly article that talks about desensitization, and the other is rap song by another artist named, Lupe Fiasco. Lupe’s song shows that Eminem is not alone in his views about today’s youth, but rather that it is a very prevalent problem and it needs to be brought to light. The Scholarly article ties everything together by showing that rap music in general tends to have more violent and sexually explicit undertones than many other genres, and that over stimulation by these forms of media is causing a general desensitization of viewers.
No comments:
Post a Comment