Competition and Money - our main focus

In our world, and specifically America, competition has been becoming more and more important everyday. Looking through the channels on my t.v. trying to find something to watch, i couldn't help but notice how many shows were about competition. Shows like "cupcake wars" "top chef" and "next great baker" all have a prize the contestants are trying to win; and it's usually money. Reading an article about when all these shows became popular, i learned that it began around 2000, when the shows "survivor" and "big brother" premiered. These shows were a huge success, seeing as one of the main focuses in our country is both competition and wealth. In fact, by 2003 the Emmys had created an award for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program.

In our world where these two ideas are very prominent, many shows like these become popular because we are interested in these topics. Even with a topic like "Paris Hilton's My New BFF," they still have more than one season of the show, meaning there must have been a fair amount of viewers in order to last longer than one season.

While reading another article dating back to 2001, it stated "Reality TV allows Americans to fantasize about gaining status through automatic fame. Ordinary people can watch the shows, see people like themselves and imagine that they too could become celebrities by being on television. It does not matter as much that the contestants often are shown in an unfavorable light; the fact that millions of Americans are paying attention means that the contestants are important." This is saying that another reason us Americans are hooked on reality shows, is because the contestants, though they are shown in bad light sometimes, whether they have an embarrassing fall in "Wipeout" or make a huge mistake on a cooking show, the t.v. exposure is all they care about.

This idea of competition for money is very exposed in our world today, and it is reflected through the many t.v. shows we have about this topic.

American Obesity

Walking through the streets of Singapore, something that caught my attention was how nearly no one was overweight. Walking in the busy subway stations and in shopping malls, seeing someone overweight was pretty rare. It was surprising compared to in the US where many people are struggling with obesity.

America is generally known as being overweight and lazy. I always knew that, but never before this had actually payed attention to other countries in comparison. I thought about it more and more every day we were out walking around, and then last night we were out at a restaurant best known for their crab. During the meal, we all commented saying the crab was good, but it was a lot of work just to eat it. None of us really enjoyed breaking up the crab, because it took quite some time. However, my uncle told us that Asian people actually enjoy doing that. They like taking the time to pick out the edible pieces. This helped me realize how lazy we really are. Us Americans don't even like to pick out some crab meat because it takes an extra 3 minutes? 

What's Next?

A few days ago, my mom bought a kindle. I had never been a huge fan of them, because I liked the idea of holding on to the actual book while reading it. This brought me to thinking about where technology was headed in the future. The crowd of Kindle and Nook users seem to becoming younger and younger. Do that mean in the future our kids going to first learn to read on an e-reader? To me, it's a weird thought. Remembering my childhood and learning how to read, I remember looking closely at the pictures on the page, and the books that i especially liked were those that you would flip open a picture to discover another picture. The Kindle and Nook would never have the same effect, though.


But looking at this topic on a broader level, something else i have always wondered, was if we would ever take it too far. Technology is a way of making our lives easier and more simple. But in the long run, it has a very negative effect on our society; the main problem being energy and pollution. With more and more gadgets being released, it seems we become much lazier. Everything has to be done automatically for us. This triggers many people to think of robots. Could they take over our jobs, so people are left doing nothing?


With every new item coming out, it makes us wonder is there really more to come, and is this really good in the long run.

Ignorance Is Bliss

Yesterday for American Studies class, we went downtown to see the play "Clybourne Park." In the first act of the play, a white family was selling their house to an African American family, and the community did not want them to. One of the characters was a deaf woman, and I think she was the most interesting character portrayed in the play. What I found so fascinating, was how the other characters could say something to her, but she would, obviously, have no idea what they were saying, so it meant absolutely nothing to her. What they said had absolutely no meaning. In reality, I think that we do a similar thing often. If we don't want to hear something, we just cover our ears, and act like nothing was said at all, and so it has no meaning to us, either.

This reminded me of the saying "ignorance is bliss." When I looked up the exact definition of the phrase, it said "Not knowing something is often more comfortable than knowing it." This is exactly what was happening in the play, and also occurs in real life. We think that if you don't know something, it's as if it never happened at all, which we all wish were true sometimes, but of course, is not. After discussing this in class and thinking about it after the play, I kept thinking about how words have absolutely no meaning to some people (like the deaf woman), but also have absolutely no meaning at all sometimes, and that is sometimes the best for us. 

This saying "ignorance is bliss" contrasts another part in the play, where after the African American family left the house, the white man started talking poorly about them. The African American man, having just left the house, could hear them talking and came back inside very angry. If he had not heard them talk about it, it would not been a big deal at all, because he didn't know and it meant nothing to him. This ignorance probably would have been better than him hearing what they said. In this situation it was probably better to be ignorant about what they were saying, rather than hearing them.