Sunday, November 13, 2011

Blog 8: 15 Minutes of Fame

For this blog I decided to hit on the idea of “15 minutes of Fame”. Andy Warhol came up with this idea. Its hard to believe that even back in 1966, Warhol knew that fame was something important to people. Something that made them feel special. The 15 minutes of fame is short-lived and often in the media publicity of an individual or phenomenon. The expression was coined by Andy Warhol, who said that, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." The phenomenon is often used in reference to figures in the entertainment industry or other areas of pop culture, such as reality tv and youtube. Pretty much anyone can become famous today. You don’t have to be an amazing singer or football player anymore to be seen in the news, magazines, or internet. Usually, people are the exact opposite of amazing. They go on American Idol, for example, and sing like idiots. All of America laughs at them and the next morning they are on Good Morning American and plastered all over websites home pages. Other times, people become famous for horrible things. For instance, their young child goes missing or someone kills someone else. This is related to violence. Its hard for me to believe that someone has the mind set to harm someone just to become famous and I hope this isnt whats going on. I feel like everyone will become known for something sometime in their life. Maybe you live in a small town and your name is posted on a board for your birthday. Or you go hunting and get the biggest deer in the town and your name is in the paper. It may not be world wide but it still would make that person feel good and maybe like a “star”.
Someone that is really memorable for this is William Hung. He went on American Idol and totally sucked at singing. Because of this, he became so famous! He was everywhere in the media. He couldnt have possibily thought he was a good singer. There is no way! Blows my mind.



Sunday, November 6, 2011

Reality TV

I decided to watch an hour of the Bachelorette. The episode was from the last season which was season 7. I absolutely love this show. I wouldn't miss a single episode of it. It was mine and my boyfriends favorite TV show and we pretty much made it a date to watch it. The bachelorette was Ashley Hebert. She was an attractive girl. There were 25 guys that she was introduced to. These guys were for the most part were all attractive too. Ashley makes dates with these men and has to chose who she wants to keep to the next week. She gives them a rose and they have to accept it. 
This shows a typical girl looking for a fairy tale love. Its like any other dating show or site. You are introduced to complete strangers and are expected to fall in love. You have to think along the lines that one of these men, chosen at random, will be your soul mate. The love of your life. The person you spend forever with. But will this really happen?
If young girls watch this show, they will believe that there will be someone for anyone. This show makes us believe that love is out there for everyone. We feel bad for the people who don't receive roses. We have all been through rejection and heart break. We feel like with this rejection to these people, we know them. We don't though. I believe we do feel worse for them because they are “average joes”. If these were all celebs we wouldn't mind much. We all know they get married and divorced in one week tops. 
I decided to watch episode 3 because this is the episode when Ashley gets rejected. There is one guy that came in, Bentley, who thought Ashley would be someone else. He says he isn't attracted to Ashley at all and basically that he was just going to lead her on. He goes to her and uses his daughter as an excuse. This whole deal with Bentley was a long time coming. The show showed previews of him saying mean things behind her back and I was always so pumped to watch the next episode to know what would happen with him. 
Obviously, a channel is going to air shows that they know will get high viewer ratings. They need to have something that will pull as in and the subject of love usually does this.