A humorous take about God in popular culture

It is discussed in "Eyes Wide Open" by William D. Romanowski at one point that television and movie producers sometimes go after an audience that is religious because they are the most common people to watch a particular genre of movie or television series. This applies more to movies but something I thought about while surfing youtube the other day was the other side of things. What about Christians on youtube going after those that are not of that faith? Going after on either end sounds a bit harsh, considering I am a Christian it is a bit more harsh sounding for me to say that Christians are going after anybody. What I simply mean is that they target a vast audience with their videos and it has a very positive effect. Most of the videos I found as examples were humorous interpretations of Jesus such as the Vintage 21 Jesus series but sometimes if you can get people's attention with a funny video it can lead to other things like checking out the youth group because they look like they could have a lot of fun. Now I am also not saying that this was their goal but hey it couldn't hurt to use it as a ministry opportunity. So without further ado I present to you a key example of the opposite side of the entertainment spectrum, where Christians take the action. Hopefully this might also inspire you to laugh because it involves none other than talking cats and patty cake. I won't explain any more you'll just have to see for yourself what I mean. Here it is.
http://www.youtube.com/user/JustinCElliott#p/a/u/0/X3iFhLdWjqc

Product Placement

It's rather obnoxious to have different advertisements pop up during your show and they almost always occur during a very suspenseful time in the show, which is most definitely done on purpose. We all know that advertising is necessary for a business and that television is the most effective medium for doing that right now, but what about when it's more of a sneak attack than anything else. I'm talking about those times when you see or hear about a product that an actor is using during the show itself. They brag about it or when using the product they talk about how great it is. We see this most commonly with cars as a fellow classmate of mine in the class Media and Society pointed out in one of her blogs was in the show Bones. After hearing about that I decided to look for an example on my own. I kind of gave up after a while to be honest because I found that it was difficult to find specific episodes where it was blantently present. However, it was when I gave up looking that I stumbled upon an example of product placement in an episode of The Office while watching it on Hulu. This was the most recent of episodes that has been posted and although product placement is in more places than we realize sometimes when they place a product in a show they make it obvious that it is an advertisement. In this clip we will watch an example of product placement with the  Prius hybrid. The thing about this clip is that it's the whole episode because there were no clips for that specific scene but it starts at 13 minutes and 16 seconds and you can end it any time after he says the thing about the prius hybrid being Eco-friendly . Sorry for the inconvenience. Enjoy
http://www.hulu.com/watch/199585/the-office-classy-christmas-part-1

TV Dominating Technology

Television has been a part of my life since I was born as has the Internet and radio. If you were to look at a history of these three means of communication you would see that this has not always been the case. Yes, I know you are probably all shocked that we didn't just wake up one day and have these things in our laps. Throughout the years television has been climbing in popularity as did radio once. Radio was the starting point for all of these things and that is why I consider it an honor to be a part of the radio station team at my college. Anyway, not the point of this post. Radio was television without the pictures it had drama's and music programs, weather and news. When television came along it became very popular very quickly and radio was in jeopardy of losing its spot with the people. So radio changed its format and became primarily music and talk radio. Television continued to be a success and it still is a booming industry today. Following these two things the Internet was born. I am going to make a prediction here and say that it will not be long before the internet takes over cable television as it has already started doing. Ever heard of hulu? As a college student I have the option to pay for cable in my dorm room and I do have a TV but I much prefer to use it for DVD only. I watch hulu to keep up with my favorite television shows because it's more convenient and time efficient. There is one maybe two commercials and it's back to the show. Instead of an hour long it's about 42 to 45 minutes. As I come home on breaks I notice that television does not holy my interest anymore because I watch everything on hulu. The funny part about that is, we have satellite TV! Here's a video explaining where we might be headed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu0ztxdsFis&feature=related

What does God think about our media?

This was a question that was raised in another discussion for, you guessed it, Media and Society class at my University. We had a discussion and although there were quite a few good responses to what he thinks about it I thought I would share with you what I think God thinks about our media. There are two different aspects to my answer. The first is to say that God has a sense of humor (come on you know it's true look at the duck-billed platypus) I think that God is pleased that we are having fun with the things he created and the knowledge he has given. He is proud that directors, producers, and actors are using the talents that he has given them The second aspect is the same reasons that he is displeased with us. I feel like God is also displeased with the way we have twisted humor, and how despite the tremendous talents he has given his people they use them to wicked ends. They also do not use their positions of great influence to practice the great commission. In the Bible in Matthew 28 it says and this is just a small part of it, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all nations"  We do serve a loving God that does want us to be happy but not at the expense of the moral well being of the audience they influence. Twisted humor is just one example of the ways sin has distorted God's gifts to his people. An example of this that I found was the movie Scary Movie. I have never seen it personally and the clips I found were not appropriate to post on here so I thought I would use my discretion and post a picture instead.

Wizard of Oz Syndrome

We were talking in media and society again about something called "Wizard of Oz Syndrome" which is the idea that humanity is basically good and that they only need to look inside themselves for the truth. This is a concept that I talked about earlier in another post about the worldviews that some artists put in their works. This happened in the Wizard of Oz with humanism. Whether or not this was intentional is unknown and also not the point. The point is however, that humanism has been portrayed as basically good in film for a long time and I want to share with you a movie trailer that has this concept that is not the Wizard of Oz, because of course that would be too easy. The movie I found was The Ultimate Gift and as good of a movie as it may be it shows that we are good but out of practice at it therefore we must learn to be good again through many different tests or "gifts".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwXe5eKZr6M

Elements of Film

In my media and society class we were talking about the different elements in film and how religion plays a major part. Whether or not you agree that faith is or should be a part of the film industry is not the point. It does also not change the fact that there are a considerable amount of relious principles in film, and we are not talking about specifically Christian ideals. Every writer director artist and musician bring to their work a certain world view. Although not everyone agrees with each others we tolerate it or ignore it entire. As often is the case it is not even noticeable. Anyway got a little side tracked, but the idea i'm trying to get at here is that there are certain films that portray the existence and role God plays in humanity and nature. An example fo this would be the film Bruce Almighty. In this film as I will show you at the end here we see that God is in human form and trading jobs with a regular human being and it doesn't really work out all that well. We see here that God is not only at work but that his job is a lot harder than people make it out to be. Bruce has to fight against his human desires so as to not use his new God powers for his devices. He does however do this but there is always a consequence. Yes this is a comical interpretation of God and his role in the world for us today, but it does show that God is real and does in fact have a role in our world. Here's the trailer to help clear things up if you haven't seen it or are a visual learner like me :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAK5sJ77J78

Aesthetics

Currently in my media and society class we are discussing the idea of media criticism, which ironically matches up with a different kind of criticism I am learning about in my fine arts class as well. It's the idea of aesthetics. Aesthetics can best be described by telling you how art critics do things. They have this analogy in art that is simply put OOOO. As weird as that may seem look at the OOOO's after I explain this and it will make sense I promise. Ok so the analogy of the OOOO is basically the idea that the artist is only responsible for half of the interpretation of the piece. The viewer is also responsible to meet the artist half way in a sense and together they form the idea of aesthetics, the completed Interpretation. This same idea works with the area of television specifically. As the viewer we are responsible for our own personal interpretation to the content we are viewing. The producer of the content is responsible for the meaning they are to convey. The hardest part about this theory is that it is unpredictable and often can lead to the audience becoming offended. Since we all have different personalities and minds that think in a whole bunch of unique ways interpretation that is intended can be missed and interpreted differently by the person it was intended for. If that was confusing look again at the OOOO model I gave at the beginning again. If you see the fact that there are no spaces in between the letters. That is because it is a cycle. Artist, interpretation, view interpretation. Make sense? I hope so but to help make the point here is a popular art piece that exemplifies this.