A different take on a younger character.

In today's class we talked more about GLBT characters and how they're portrayed on television. As they first began to appear on television they were portrayed mostly negatively. Now years later they've been portrayed more positively. Television series have begun to show more GLBT characters and one series has decided to scramble up the gender norms completely.

The new series House of Lies has introduced a rare character. His name is Roscoe Kaan. He is young boy on the brink of puberty and he is very sure of who he is. He doesn't follow the regular gender norms at all. In many episodes he can be seen wearing what would be considered girls clothes, and rocking a unique style of accessories better than some women. While being very out going Roscoe begins to question his sexuality. He even asks his dad if it's okay that he likes girls and boys in one episode. The show takes an interesting look at what life could be like for a young boy who doesn't follow the generic "young boy" stereotype. In one episode his school charges him with sexual harassment after a little boy tells them that Roscoe kissed him. This doesn't phase Roscoe's sexuality at all, because he knows the boy was the one to initiate the kiss. It's very interesting how such a young character is portrayed as having so much confidence in himself. In the first episode Roscoe tries out for the roll of Sandy in the musical Grease. While the series has only been on for 10 episodes, they have done a great job establishing a very interesting and entertaining GLBT character. While he is used to show the more soft side of his extremely heterosexual father, if given the chance I'm sure the series will take it's audience on a roller coaster of an adventure with Roscoe's gender.

KONY 2012.

So the past couple of days you must have noticed the KONY craze that has been going all over our social media. Now in today's culture I feel like once something this big goes viral, it takes seconds for people to get annoyed with it purely because it is everywhere, but KONY is different from the mysterious brooms that stand up or anything that has taken an "arrow to the knee". For the past 8 years a few guys with a camera have been trying to show the US what's been happening to the children in Uganda. If you haven't seen Invisible Children,  I suggest you do. It's a good documentary and it tells the tragic tale of these poor children. If you have 30 minutes check out this video which has gone viral this week:

I find it amazing how much social media is changing our world. In class we discussed how only a handful of major companies own every possible media outlet in the US, except for one. Social networking sites have really opened up the opportunity for normal everyday people to release their ideas, believes, and even weekly video blogs and podcasts , most of which can be accessed by anybody who finds them interesting enough to watch. Now the big companies are still a major factor in today's world, but this rising social media gives people the option to personalize their media intake. They don't have to sit in front of a TV  and wait for their favorite program to come on. They can simply get on a computer and find it through a plethora of ways. They can also spread their favorite media to everybody they know.

Which is what allowed KONY 2012 to become so popular. It wasn't broadcast over every television station. It wasn't brought up by Oprah or any big company. Three friends went to Africa, saw what was happening, shot a documentary, and showed everybody who would watch. This year they launched their social media campaign. That video was put on the internet 3 days ago. as of now 40,781,302  people have watched it.  

Social media is as powerful as those big companies, and is growing in power each day. 

How the internet watches the Oscars.

This past Sunday Hollywood gathered to one of the most prestigious rewards ceremonies, The Academy Awards. It was good to see Gary Oldman finally nominated for an Oscar, and great to see Jim Rash win for writing, but unfortunately it seems the only two people who won the spotlight this year were Angelina Jolie and Sacha Baron Cohen.



Who to start with first?
Let's go for Sacha Baron Cohen. First of all let me start by saying this man is a marketing genius when it comes to promoting any of his films. The normal way of marketing for any actor is of course doing an interview run across the country to promote the film close to it's release date, maybe setting up some viral websites, and maybe a couple of online puzzles for the hardcore fans (if it's a popular franchise). So what does Sacha Baron Cohen do differently? He makes his character as real as possible. Before the success of Borat, Cohen would interview always as one of his characters, never himself. So when he was invited to the 2012 Academy Awards, the Academy decided to hold Cohen's tickets if he decided to show up as his new character featured in his upcoming movie "The Dictator". Once press got a hold of this Cohen's genius marketing skills kicked in, and he released this video.

Of course this had to worry the Academy a little bit, and of course Paramount and Cohen couldn't resist keeping the hype up just to sell a few more tickets for his movie.

So Cohen of course... well you'll see:

The most impressive part of this video? Cohen doesn't break character once, even when security is carting him away. For Cohen's fans, this was pretty awesome. Although it's been getting mixed reactions all over the web, the purpose of this stunt was to create as much buzz as possible, and I believe he was rather successful at that.

While Cohen was purposefully creating a giant buzz for his new movie, Angelina Jolie created a large internet buzz for her... right leg?
That's right. Angelina decided to show a little leg at this years Oscars, and that little leg became an internet meme in less than 24 hours. It even got it's own twitter account. While Cohen purposefully played on the red carpet to create buzz, Angelina unknowingly caused the internet to explode because she showed a little leg.

Welcome to Transfiguration. 

Although I must admit I'm not always sure how the internet is going to react to certain things, I am aware that the smallest action a celebrity does can become popular over night.



Here's a link to some of the popular Jolie Leg memes floating around.

http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/photos/best-angelina-jolies-oscar-leg-memes