Blog Work

I found the passage on page 31 pretty interesting. Cora Daniels quotes one of Missy Elliot’s songs, which I have heard before myself. It says, “ Wake-up”: “I got the Martin Luther King fever/ Ima feed yah what yah teacher need to preach yah/ It’s time to get serious” then goes on to say, “If you don’t got a gun (it’s alright)/ If yah makin’ legal money, (it’s alright…)…” Cora Daniels then goes on to tell readers that this was never released as a single. Meaning that this song was never played on the radio and if it happened to slip through the airways it wasn’t during peak hours of listening time it was most likely on a late night DJ mix. So if the public wanted to hear the message that this CD had to bring they were going to have to purchase the album to find out. But what does this say about our society? To me it says a lot. That little passage represents a lot more than that little part out of a song can ever represent. It shows that good messages in the media are not showcased. That song could have been played throughout television commercials or the radio sending a powerful message to young adults across our country. Instead we have commercials like JCPenney having “eight-year old all-American white kids break-dancing to ‘Baby Got Back’ to sell backpacks” (8) So we are only influencing our society with bad messages, should we expect any different results then the ones we have? I doubt that that one song would have made any difference to anything. But it’s the point that once again we are settling for what sells over what is right or good for the community. Would it hurt for the media to send a positive message through music or television once in awhile instead of showcasing the bad. I think the author is showing that it is our own faults for what our country is turning into. And you can only put so much blame on the children because the adults who are the big CEOs and mangers of these companies are the ones supporting the songs like “Baby Got Back” so that they can make money. They don’t care is their next television show promotes things like sex, drugs, and crime or their star appearance selling Vitamin water promotes that he has been shot nine times (don’t remember the exact page she references 50 cent but it is in there). As long as they are driving home in that 90,000-dollar car to the multi-million dollar house it is no pain inflicting them. This just goes to show that the media has just as much to do with how “ghetto” people act as the ghetto it self does.