Analysis 5 Assignment 1-3-6

Analysis 5 Assignment 1-3-6

Jamie Hunter

Franklin University

ECON210 - H1FF

Professor Omar Alomari

February 7, 2011

Analysis 5 Assignment 1-3-6

Popular Beliefs, Myths, and Popular Icons best relates to my popular culture topic because people picture many different images when they hear “The Walking Dead.” They may think of something scary, something not believable. The Walking Dead fans may visualize the fictional zombies as something supernatural. The dead walking the earth is a little revelation of a parable of how people feel as they proceed with the daily ins and outs of their own lives. Zombies are popular icons because they are the bad guys that the heroes can easily kill without sending a vivid message that actual people are being slew.

In research of the show “The Walking Dead,” I found that it has a large following of viewers. People like scary stuff with a message. Although it is frightening, the show also has heroes, villains, and damsels in distress. It has morals, lessons, and strategy plans. The show can show an extensive range of commercials because the audience is broad as in; it is watched by the old, the young, males, and females. Every age group and gender can visualize them self as one of the characters, because the show has survivors that fit in all age groups and gender groups. It also has the law abiding and the lawless, the miracles, love and heartbreak.

I look at the show “Walking Dead” as a consumer product now that I have completed the Pop Cultural class. The writers are very clever. The writers realize that people are programmed by what they watch. For example, the characters on the show often have to acquisition vehicles, weapons, long shelf life foods, etc... People watch this and subconsciously get the notion they need these certain basic things in order to survive. A SUV truck commercial is plugged in alongside bottled water commercial. Not only does the show sell by its commercial, it sells by the contents of the show.

Journal Article Paper – Assignment 1-2-2

 Journal Article Paper – Assignment 1-2-2

Jamie Hunter

Franklin University

Professor Omar Alomari

HUM240-E1FF

February 1, 2012

Journal Article Paper – Assignment 1-2-2

Monsters entertain people because it relates to their culture. Monsters offer close scenarios into people’s everyday struggles, doubts, worries, discriminations, and worst problems. The appeal for monsters in movies says a lot about a person. (Combe, K., 2010) Kirk Combe’s term ‘‘postmodern monsters’’ puts together two approaches and theorizes what fictional beasts are interpreted as. Combe believes them to be “anti-Truth, that is, as the opposite of whatever illusion of modern stability we are trying to tell ourselves or sell ourselves at the moment.” (Combe, K. 2010 p. 934)

            Combe talks about how people convince themselves that they are enlightened until a monster or threat comes along in their world. People are then not so accepting to the truth of their lives. Combe points out that Americans are compared to the Martians invaders in the movie War of the Worlds. Other countries like Iran view Americans as, in an extorted way as invaders. (Combe, K., 2010) Combe wants to know if Americans want change. Combe also in his article compares two sides of American people, those that have, and those that have not. 

The article suggests that the working middle class is the backbone of the country, because they are willing to fight for what they believe in not in what they can buy as insinuated of the upper-middleclass group in the article. If all Americans are their own champions against unjust they may be more compassionate to others. (Combe, K., 2010)

            The article speaks about how a working class father was the hero in the end and that his children gained his respect because he saved them from the invading chaotic slaughter. He showed them that you do not have to have all the money and all the things to be a good person (a hero).

I agree that people should be more aware that all the things they have not are what makes them good. Monsters do not have to exist to make people realize family and values make them human. 

         I also agree with the author Kirk Combe that children should be taught the value of family. Parents should not have to buy them things to make them feel wanted or loved. Combe sends an important message. Americans are greedily consuming all there is to consume. They buy, buy, and then buy more. Americans teach their children that it is okay to have everything, when they should be teaching them to make do with less. When people have everything they want, they do not have anything to work for when they grow up and leave on their own. 

For example, children use to get a part-time job working after school and save up for when they can buy a car. Now-a-days children are given cars to drive to school even if their grades are bad, just because they ask and their parents obliged. Children do not move out on their own, they live with their parents and pay do not bills. Parents allow them to do it because they want to give them everything they feel they (parents) should have. Children have no drive to go out and work for what they want or even need. 

            If American’s eyes were truly opened to what other nations faced, not enough water, not enough food, not enough shelter…etc., they may be a little more grateful for what they do have. Every American should be required to see real poverty. Then maybe the American people may be looked upon as the heroes by the standards of Combe’s article about Spielberg’s movie War of the Worlds and not as the invading Martins. Combe puts it best, “In the end, Spielberg’s sci-fi epic confronts domestic audiences with a hard choice. What kind of America do we want to be?” (Combe, K. 2010 p. 938)

References

Combe, K. (2011). The journal of popular culture: Spielberg's Tale of Two Americas:

Postmodern Monsters in War of the Worlds (Vol. 44, issue 5) Retrieved from http://0-

journals.ohiolink.edu.olinkserver.franklin.edu

Formulas - Assignment 1-3-5

 Formulas - Assignment 1-3-5

Jamie Hunter

Professor Omar Alomari

HUMN240-E1FF

February 01, 2012

 

 

 

Formulas - Assignment 1-3-5

 

The time and place of the hit television show, The Walking Dead is present day after massive amounts of people die from a mysterious illness then come back to life. The dead have no other instincts except to walk the earth in search of flesh to eat. Some people survived the illness and they now must find a way to fight the dead, find safety, and restart the human existence.

The hero of the series is Sherriff Ricky Grimes. Each week he comes up against flesh eating zombies and must find a way for him and the surviving group to outlast the walking dead. He also must keep his family together. His wife is his love interest and his son is what keeps him going. His wife and he have the same marital problems as before the zombie holocaust. Each week they work on an issue to get closer in their marriage that seems to be drifting apart. His wife has another love interest (the Sherriff’s best friend Shane) that makes competition between her husband and Shane in the show.

The wife of the Sherriff finds out that she is pregnant adding a twist to the show; she is not sure who the father of the baby is, nor if she wants to bring a baby into a nightmare of a world. She is forced to reveal her affair with his best friend Shane. After it is revealed she has had an affair, it is also revealed that she thought he was dead. Shane stepped in to take care of his wife and son when everyone thought the Sherriff was dead; therefore, The Sherriff forgives the affair. Shane agrees to bow out of the love triangle to spare his childhood friend any more pain. Shane reappears later because wants to know if he is the father of the baby. He wants to interact with the child in the possible future. The possibility that the baby may be Shane’s sets the plot for the next show.