Blog #8

I believe our society will never be fully entertained. There are always new shows coming out that grab people's interests and some older shows start to die. It also seems that we start to get bored of things after a long period of time. People seem to never enough of what they want so the demand for new entertainment is high. I think one of the reasons Americans crave violence so much is because it's human nature. We find it entertaining and exciting since it is something we usually don't see in everyday real life. Also, when people see violence on TV and video games, they know they are in no danger. I  thought it was interesting that Suzanne Collins said part of her inspiration for the book was the mythology of a minotaur. It was a little surprising to me. I think the reason our society wants to have their fifteen minutes of fame is because of curiosity. We wonder what it would be like to be known by millions of people. Plus, everybody likes money and most famous people usually have a nice amount of it. I think in the Hunger Games, Katniss is playing the Gamemakers. In reality TV I think the characters and the audience are playing each other. The people on the show are getting played by acting a certain way to gain more fans. The audience is getting played by the characters because they're making money off the fans.

Blog #7

I think the role we play as viewers is to just stay tuned in so the show and their network make all the money they can. Although it's "reality" TV, the network can edit the show anyway they want to keep the audience intrigued. We influence what happens by reacting to the content of certain episodes. If an episode of reality TV got a good response, the network is likely to have more episodes feature whatever caused the good reaction. I watched the episode of Jersey Shore where Snooki' embarrasses her boyfriend and causes him to leave the club. I didn't find this episode very enjoyable since it mainly since it featured Snooki's problem with her boyfriend. It wasn't fun watching a drunk girl cry over her boyfriend, not to mention the fact that her cry voice is the most annoying thing I've ever heard. I think people tune in to watch this because it's entertaining that people act this way. Our role as the viewer of this stuff is to continue to watch and stay interested. If people don't do this the series would crash and that would be the end. It works this way for every reality TV series.

I couldn't find a clip of what I watched, but here are one of the many noises this girl makes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za5j43wXXNM