Tuesday, February 25. 2020

Today's schedule is CDAB

C Block Criminology - "Why is violence entertaining"? You have time to work on your questions from last week:

1. What is the attraction of violent films and video games?
2. Is there more violent imagery in media now as opposed to the past (think graphic, realistic visceral)? Why / Why not?
3. What kinds of people are drawn to violent imagery and what kind of violent images draw them to that form of entertainment?
4. What is “morbid curiosity”?
5. Are there any equally satisfying substitutions for violent entertainment?
6. What draws our attention to violent media events (news) that are not intended to entertain? 

After that we'll watch some Warner Brothers cartoons with all the glorious violence in them and we'll have a discussion about the acceptance of violence in our modern culture. We'll look at: Bully for Bugs; Rabbit Seasoning; For Scentimental Reasons; Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2^th Century and lastly The Ducksters. Criminal Harassment (Stalking), Sexual Assault, Assault, Attempted Murder, Aggravated Assault (torture), and Unlawful Confinement are just a few of the crimes in these cartoons...all violent crimes.

Is Bugs Bunny bad for kids? Comedy and violence are intermingled into a typical or formulaic narrative story.....Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner, Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny, Sylvester chases Tweety Bird and they inflict carnage on each other. The end is always the same....someone wins, someone loses, the loser is humiliated and we laugh at them (good clean wholesome fun). While we watch the cartoons I want you to think about the implicit and implied messages that each cartoon sends to kids (rather than the explicit and obvious messages) and then we'll talk about what those messages do even if kids understand the difference between cartoon and real violence.

So now compare the violence in the Warner Brothers cartoons (from the 50's and 60's) with that of the Happy Tree Friends. Check out the following video: Happy Tree Friends A to Zoo . Let's be frank here, the cartoon is not meant for children but because of the "cute" characters what would it be like if we just let young children watch that cartoon unsupervised?

Consider the following:
Media Violence: Psychology
Cartoon Violence Project
Gender and Comm. Kids Cartoon Violence


D & A Blocks Legal Studies - Today we'll be back in the learning commons/library to continue research for our Human Rights poster (which is due next Monday - March 2nd, 2020). I will have poster paper for you and I'll give you the paper once I've seen your ideas (a rough sketch). Remember you need to create a visually appealing Human Rights Campaign Poster that addresses the human rights violation by incorporating key information (What is happening? Where is it taking place? What rights are being violated? Who is having their rights violated? Why are their rights being violated?) as well as pictures, symbols, and colours. Your poster should seek to draw the attention of the public through the balanced combination of text and visuals in a creative, yet educational manner!
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Illustrated Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

Online Examples of Human Rights Posters:
"Women's Rights Are Human Rights" poster exhibition in Boston
The City College of New York’s Human Rights Forum
Stand Up 4 Human Rights
Poster For Tomorrow

B Block Human Geography - Today we'll continue examining the key issue "Why Do Countries Face Obstacles to Development"? Developing countries do not have access to the funds necessary to fund development, so they obtain financial support from developed countries. Finance comes from two main sources: direct investment by transnational corporations and loans from banks and international organizations. To promote the international trade development model (for development investment by transnational corporations), countries representing 97 percent of world trade established the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 (there are 164 member countries as of 29 July 2016). Commerce in which products are made and traded according to standards that protect workers and small businesses in developing countries is considered fair trade. The fair-trade movement is an alternative vision of the international trade approach which attempts to increase the prices that are paid to producers in LDCs. Fair trade also tries to eliminate the very low wages and extremely poor working conditions for workers in LDCs (check out the who gets what from the price of a banana website here)

Two UN agencies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, provide loans to LDCs to develop. An alternative source of loans for would-be business owners in developing countries is microfinance. Microfinance is the provision of a small loan to individuals and small businesses that are unable to get a loan from commercial banks

You'll have some questions to finish up the week 4 package for me.