Wrap Up!

  This semester I did a lot of things that I never thought that I would do in collage class.  I watched pornography, and followed it up with a research paper about how people would react to pornography based on their sexual orientation.  We also studied video games and the effects that they can have on people.  I also did the unthinkable, and told my coming-out story to the entire class.  This was hard for me to do as my brother was also in this this class.  It meant a lot to me that he came to this class to show me support on this day.  I think that the concept of this class that I will remember the most is that of hegemony.

  Hegemony was term that we learned at the beginning of the semester, and it was used throughout the rest of the semester and applied to many different topics that we covered.  According to our textbook, hegemony is “…the power or dominance that one social group holds over others” (Dines & Humez, p. 33).  Usually in media will show men in as the dominant social group in hegemony, but there are some cases where that is not the case. There are sometimes cases where women are the dominant social group, which I covered in my video game paper about the Legend of Zelda series.  However, it appears as if men are the social group that the media would prefer to be portrayed in this dominant position. I know notice that so many shows on television show have a father that keeps the family in order, and controls everything that happens in his families lives.  It is interesting that there so few shows in which a female is in the head of the household role, but I never really noticed it until taking this class.

  I think that I will never look at television, or media the same way again, having taken this class.  I will now always notice the pornographic images that are in nearly all forms of media today.  Hegemony is defiantly the concept that I will remember the most, and I will try to incorporate it in as many studies that may wish to do in the future. I worked very hard in this class; I hope that I did well.  I hope that everyone has safe and Happy Holidays!

Dines, G., & Humez, J. M. (2011). Gender, Race, and Class in Media Edition 3. In J. Lull, Media,    Communications and Culture: A Global Approach (p. 33). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc.