The Celluloid Closet mainly focused on gays and lesbians and completely excluded transsexuals and bisexuals. It doesn’t make sense as to why the documentary wouldn’t include those other groups. It’s understandable how asexuals, pansexuals, and demisexuals would not be included because those are relatively new terms: however, the Stonewall riots occurred in 1969. That’s a good twenty-six years before this documentary was created. Were they not mentioned because they were led by POC? I would also like to pose the question as to why the entire movie was focused on Caucasian people? I guess people of color who were homosexual didn’t exist. On Tumblr, there are many different blogs that serve to bring awareness about transsexuals and bisexuals to the mainstream media. There also awareness day for all members of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. During these days, posts about the different groups in the spectrums explain who they are and how they fall on the spectrum and people who fall into the different parts of the spectrum upload selfies and transformation. Some Tumblr users include their pronouns in their bios. The Netflix series Orange is the New Black also showed representation for a good portion of the LGBTQ+ community. Not only was it ethnically diverse, but there were lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual women. That’s probably why the series did so well. Everyone could relate to someone.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/glaad-studio-responsibility-index_n_3786064.html

http://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/media-issues/diversity-media/queer-representation/queer-representation-film-television

 

It’s already known that I’m an avid Tumblr user. For the most part, if I’m not breaking my thumb scrolling through tumblr, it is highly likely that I’m on the booksite Wattpad. Wattpad is a site where people can upload stories and get feedback through likes and votes.If a story has a lot of likes and votes there is a strong possibility that it will actually get published. I’ve seen quite a few books I read on Wattpad on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, while others have become e-books sold on Amazon. Some even gain the momentum, after publishing to become movies. All though I love Wattpad, I’ve recently noticed that the majority of the stories I’ve read have had an all-white cast. Majority of the stories start off with a Caucasian heroine with blonde hair and blue eyes, or there is a switch up and she’s a brunette with hazel eyes. Rarely have I read a story with a black, Asian, or Indian main character. Almost every LGBTQ+ book is about a Caucasian couple. The occasional person of color is mentioned and even then that character is just the perpetuation of a stereotype. I’ve read stories where the Indian kid was the top of the class and only cared about grades, the Chinese girl was the best at math and science, the black girls were braid-wearing loud mouths, and the Hispanic guys within the story only referred to girls as mamacita and were in gangs. If I do find a story with a black main character she is mixed or there is an emphasis on her curvy shape, “full lips”, caramel skin and straight hair. People have become aware of the lack of diversity on Wattpad and stories can be found with POC casts; however, these stories are less popular and therefore hard to find.

http://www.cbcdiversity.com/post/131694482968/the-importance-of-role-models-and-being

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0506/Lack-of-diversity-in-book-world-continues-to-stir-debate-video

I've been on tumblr for the last three hours. (._.) What am I doing with my life?

Ideologically, the things that fit into genres and categories are not realistic by any means. Nothing fits perfectly in the boxes the media and other conventions try to force them into. There are more than fifty shades of gray. Not everything is black or white. I’ll use my previous example of action movies. Action in everyday life is not something blowing up every three seconds, cars transforming into big ass robots, or even Vin Diesel stealing and street racing cars in your neighborhood. Action in everyday life is a car accident that blocks up the road in the morning, a fight at school that gets reenacted for the rest of the day, or even the birth of a child. These are realistic and are what can be expected during everyday life. I guess people watch action movies because even though they know it’s unrealistic, it’s nice to ponder what it would be like in reality. Cars blowing up, shoot outs, and drag racing are all cool in retrospect, but the actuality of it is when these things actually happen in real life they are terrifying. Nobody actually walks away from these things unscathed. Have you seen Fast and Furious 7? I would love to know how the hell Vin Diesel walked through flames and only had a handful of cuts and bruises. How the hell did he have a fist fight with another man, where they were actively punching each other in the face and slamming each other into walls, and not walk out limping? How Sway, how?!

http://public.wsu.edu/~hughesc/film_and_ideology.htm
 

The media loves to categorize people and things and I think that is the reason it clings to genre conformity; it is the easiest thing to do. Everything is placed into a nice little box and has parameters to guide why it was placed in that box. When you categorize things, it’s easy to appeal to people who like those things and make money off of it. It is also easy to critique something when you put it in a genre. When you watch an action movie, you know it is an action movie because things blow up, there are gun fights, the Rock is in it, or there are racing scenes. An ad for this movie will push the scenes with the most action and people who love action movies will run to the theaters. After watching the movie, people will compare it to other action movies out and to other movies within the genre. In most movie reviews, there is usually comparisons to other movie franchises or to movies from the past. When movie companies review box office numbers, they will look at what movies made the most money, and they’ll see that this particular action movie made more money than another, because it had these kinds of scenes and this particular actor. The next time a movie studio makes an action movie, they’ll include more scenes like the other movie and they might hire the same actor or another actor who is often seen in action movies. This is all an example to say that the media compartmentalizes to further profit. If you apply this concept to other things, it also rings true.

 

For the most part, some politicians are using the media to its full capacity. Hillary Clinton is dabbing on Ellen, Bernie Sanders is meeting with Black Lives Matter Activists, Donald Trump is still spewing nonsense, and Marco Rubio is exposing Ted Cruz for being a flip-flopper. Republicans seem to hate the media because of the questions they are asked during debates. The media is more liberal oriented and Republicans don’t even get a chance. During Republican debates, the candidates are asked questions that pertain mostly to gossip and rumors instead of the actual issues. The questions are made to catch the candidates off guard or make them look idiotic. Donald Trump is the perfect example of this. He is brazen and completely filter-less and the media emphasizes this. His campaign has been criticized at every step. For every criticism that has been thrown at him, he’s lashed out. He has lashed out at NBC, CNN, and FOX. He has also taken to utilizing social media as a part of his armory. Recently he took to twitter to ask his followers what he should do in regards to the debate on Fox News. He was he later publicly announced that he was not going to a Fox News debate because Megyn Kelly would be in attendance. Megyn Kelly had asked him a hard question about his treatment of females during an earlier debate and then replayed his own words to him. He didn’t like having his words thrown back in his face.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/28/politics/republican-debate-media/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/01/26/donald-trump-fox-news-and-the-implosion-of-the-conservative-media-critique/

If the media I consumed was to be rated, it would definitely be rated NC-17. As a Tumblr junkie, I can assuredly say that Tumblr has mature content. Depending on who you follow and the content you are interested in you can stumble upon porn blogs, pro-Nazi blogs, blood and gore blogs, or any other range of things. Tumblr even warns you to be careful about the content that people you follow post. I don’t think I will ever forget the time I was on Tumblr with my mom sitting a few feet away from me and I scrolled down to see gay porn. I almost had a heart attack. I remember praying my mom wouldn’t ask what I was looking at. Tumblr doesn’t actually have a rating, because it is on the internet. People are free to post whatever the hell they want. If you are a courteous human being, some people flag their NSFW (not safe for work) posts and they include the fact that their blog is NSFW. Others don’t care.  I know for the other media I consume that there are certain restrictions. Instagram does not allow nudity and vine usually covers mature content with a warning. Rihanna was banned from Instagram for a year, for a picture she posted where her breasts were exposed. What’s interesting is there was a phenomenon on Instagram where people where posting nudes of “thots” and exposing them. These pages were created and named by people in different counties. It became big enough that the news covered it and was trending on twitter.

https://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/nsfw