John Storey discusses about how “whiteness” is known as a privileged race in the chapter 8. Richard Dyer ‘s article “matter of whiteness” is a good example to dissect this issue. Dyer discusses about the racial portrayal of white people in the media and popular culture. In popular culture, the term “race” is mostly related to the non-white people and whiteness is portrayed as a human norm therefore white people are not racially seen. As Dyer states: “ as long as race is something only applied to non-white people, as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human as a human norm. Other people are raced, we are just people”(1). We can see so many examples of these racist comments in old style comedian shows where the comedian associates each characters with their races like Japanese, black or Indian, however, there is no recognition of the white character as being white. Dyer strongly suggests that it’s important to recognize whiteness as a race and avoid acknowledging it as a normativity. One of the most problematic issues related to recognizing whiteness as a human norm is that it gives power and authority to the white people and makes them the dominant race while the other races suffer from inequality. As Dyer’s puts it: “ white people need to learn to see themselves as white, to see their particularity. In other words, whiteness needs to be made strange” (13). I believe once we stop identifying “whiteness” as “the normal human race”, we can start criticizing against racism and discriminations.

•Dyer, Richard. “ The matter of whiteness” in white privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism. Ed: Paula Rothenberg 2005.p1-14. Print.

•Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. 6th ed. Harlow, England; New York: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2012. 183-184. Print.

In “ gender and sexuality” reading by John storey what interested me the most is the identification of the four repertoire described by Hermes based on the consumption of women magazines (which were collected through interviews).
The first repertoire is described in the reading as “ easily put down” which is Basically describing that women’s magazines are created in a way that reading them could be part of everyday life (159). The second repertoire recognizes women’s magazines as a form of “relaxation”. In other words, it helps women to get away from reality for a short amount of time. The third repertoire is the repertoire of “ practical knowledge” which I personally find really interesting. This practical knowledge is consisting of useful tips and instructions, which can range from cooking recipes to the love life. The last repertoire is called “ emotional learning and connected knowing” which is similar to the “practical knowledge” repertoire. However, in this case the learning process depends on oneself and their problems. For example, the person who explains his/her problem is usually given tips for overcoming their troubles by the magazine. Hermes believes that these 4 repertoires in women’s magazine gives authority and empowerment to women, however, she also argues that this empowerment is temporarily.
Reading about this subject made me think about the women magazines that are in stores or online nowadays. I realized that there are still traces of these four repertoires in women’s magazine. Here are few headlines from different women’s magazine: “It’s good to be you! Feel better and look younger with the best workout routines, easy eating plans” (www.womenshealthmag.com), “women’s magazine that Targets contemporary women, featuring beauty, fashion, career and sex advice” (www.cosmopolitan.com).

•Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. 6th ed. Harlow, England; New York: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2012. 158-160. Print.

Reading and watching about abortion in the course module made me think of abortion law in my home country. I came from a country that abortion is still illegal and doing it considered being a great sin, and the punishments for providing or receiving an illegal abortion can be strict. Under current law, physicians can be sentenced to months of imprisonment, and women who get abortions at least fined blood money. And that’s why most of the abortion in Iran happens in unsafe environments by some nurses/unqualified people, because they cannot be performed in legal hospitals by specialist doctors, which results in life threatening risks. Abortion is just a choice and I do not believe in doing it is “killing a human being”.
I found Meredith’s Grey conversation with Dr. Hunt as one of the most influential dialogs about abortion in all the pop culture representation that we have seen in the module. Here is the quote from the “Grey’s Anatomy” scene: “Owen, she didn’t have the abortion. She wants to, but she can’t do it, because of you, because she loves you. And instead of loving her, you’re punishing her. For what? For being the woman that you fell in love with? Okay, do you know what will happen to Cristina if she has a kid that she doesn’t want? It will almost kill her. To try to pretend that she loves a kid as much as she loves surgery will almost kill her, and it’ll almost kill your kid. Do you know what it’s like to be raised by someone who didn’t want you? I do. To know you stood in the way of your mother’s career? I do. I was raised by a Cristina, my mother was a Cristina. And as the child she didn’t want, I am telling you, don’t do this to her. Because she’s kind, and she cares, and she won’t make it. The guilt of resenting her own kid will eat her alive.”
Also, the story of different women having abortion was really interesting to me since you never get to hear abortion stories and its not something that people talk about it freely/proudly, because of judgmental opinions and the controversy about it. You get to hear their side of stories, experiences, reasons and challenges for making their decisions and it makes us to get to know them on a personal level(because there are images of each person).
In “children of Men” movie the hopelessness of society is stressed by the fact that no babies have been born for the last eighteen years. Children are absent throughout the world, While Kee and her baby (who is a black female from marginalized refugee group) symbolize hope. The interesting point is the fact that you do not get to see the father of the baby the whole time and no one questions it, because in this specific condition being a single pregnant woman is miraculous and not frown upon. Although, Kee is blessed to get pregnant and is the main female character, she has to be accompanied by Leo ( the white hero) the whole time to be protected and saved.

Zombies exist in many popular culture mediums such as TV, video games, books and etc. Most of these Zombie movies reflect the common fear of dystopian world caused by nature and humans disasters like terrorism and war. One the most common themes in Zombi movies are the representation of the zombies as the monstrous “other”, which creates fear and terror in human society. Compare to other monsters, Zombies look as the same as humans, but they act different which reflects on post 9-11 Islamophobic representation of the “other”. The “other” is always dehumanized and they can’t be reasoned with since they don’t have any sense of logic. Although the story line moves around Zombie apocalypse, but there are always implication of race and sex as well. “Walking dead” is one of the most recent TV shows about Zombie apocalypse and survival of human race during this period. Although there is a complete chaos and there is no matter of order, the two white men ending up leading two different groups of people (Rick’s prison gang and the Governor’s Woodbury), which indicates white patriarchy. The two main leaders are both presented as masculine, authoritative and dominant characters. They also proven to have some unqualified qualities in terms of leadership, but at the end of the day it does not matter because people follow them anyways. This TV show is one of the recent productions, which tries to challenge the subject of racism by punishing the “redneck” character of the show for his discriminating behavior against the black character, and introduces a black female warrior to the audiences. However, the savior/leader is always described as a white masculine figure that fits into binary opposition again.

In chapter 8 the concept of “orientalism” was discussed based on Edward Said’s view of this concept. He describes this term as a discourse of power and having authority over orient/East by Western culture. The orient also helps Western culture to identify itself as the dominant, powerful and modern based on the binary system; However, represents orients as submissive, weak and primitives. Based on the reading there are two types of stories regarding to colonialism, the first one shows how the white colonizer accepts the alien culture and “goes native”, where as the other one imposes his dominant western culture on aliens. This issue of orientalism exists in popular culture especially in media where there are so many images of exotic women and men in movies and advertisements to represent the “other”. So many pop singers eroticize their characters in their music videos such as Nicki Minaj, lady Gaga and M.I.A. In Nicki Minaj video she is portrayed, as a samurai who decides to change her look to a Geisha that makes reference to “go native” because being the “other” is exotic. Another example is the 1970’s Coca Cola commercial, which is called “I’d like to teach the world to sing”, showing people standing in lines while dressed in different clothing based on their culture and background and singing in English. Although people are dressed in different traditional clothing from all around the world, singing in English as the universal language makes reference to the fact that English is the language of the dominant over “ others”.

In chapter 7 of cultural theory and popular culture, we read a quote from Simone de Beauvoir that “ one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one”(164). She believes that there is a distinction between biological sex and gender, and culture is the factor that distinguishes genders as Masculine and feminine. One of the critics about her work based on Judith Butler is that De Beauvoir assumed there should be only two versions of sexuality in nature as male and female and she neglected the other possibilities. Also, Butler argues that even the natural biology of sex is constructed around culture as well as gender. As she explains, the term gender doesn’t have an identity by itself although it gains its identity through performativity of language in culture. One of the very first examples of this is when a baby is born and certain behavioral expectations raised based on their genders. If it’s a girl, it is assumed to be appropriate to wear pink clothing and plays with dolls and if it’s a boy he has to wear blue and plays with cars. This is what is been dictated to us by the culture and seems natural and whoever doesn’t fit into this binary of male/female would be considered as outsiders and abnormal. Not only the female/male binary opposition encourages the heterosexual relationship in society but also, it disregards other forms of relationships such as homosexuals. One of the simplest examples is how male/females and their gender roles are portrayed in popular culture for kids. Since early ages they learn from Disney movies, that there is a certain way to behave based on their genders and no matter what they always end up with a heterosexual marriages.

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