Thursday, March 24, 2011

My research topic/Roberts

     For my research topic, I was planning to write about gender inequality.  Specifically, How are men and women portrayed in the media and advertising?  Plus, what other changes have their been in how the roles of men and women have changed?  I would discuss Divorce rates and how they have reached an all time high of 51 percent.  Also, I would write about other aspects of marriage and the social life within a family.  For example: Nowadays, some couples decide to hyphenate their last names instead of change them to the man's last name when getting married.  In terms of a male and female's portrayal in the media, my main supporting piece of evidence would be the 2008 presidential election with both Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton involved. 

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Gladwell

     In Gladwell's piece, he talks about plagiarism and how it's present in plays, books, and music.  He gives the example of the play Frozen.  The play takes many sayings and themes from Lewis' book Guilty by Reason of Insanity.  Lewis faxed Bryony Lavery a letter saying that had he asked to use material from her book, she would have said yes.  Lewis was upset that she wasn't asked.  The rest of this piece talks about how plagiarism is used in almost everything and many times when we plagiarize, we don't even know it.  Music was a big topic as many of today's musicians use samples from older songs.  This is not necessarily a bad thing as this "tweaking is part of the creative process" (pg. 70).  Gladwell also talks about how not only is plagiarising bad, but the original source of the piece of work could become upset over how it is portrayed in the new work.
     Gladwell did throw out a lot of questions that were not all answered, as you mentioned about this piece.  I really liked reading about music being plagiarized.  I agree with the idea that one shouldn't be upset over this because sometimes the new song with the sample from the old one is really good.  To me, it really does add to the creative process.  I agree the plagiarism is in everyday life and that it is impossible to avoid.  But being able to give credit to the original source should be enforced because of the hard work the original source put in to producing it.