Fake Identity Versus Real Society

According to sociology, societies are shaped depending on people beliefs and values within a society. In Qatar and the gulf (GCC) in general, sociological beliefs and acts are hidden within the society itself, or people interacting with Qatari society/ Gulf society, as in order to know about a certain culture or society, people need to interact with it. In the Gulf, culture and believes are not widely interacted with the whole world, except through media. There comes the fake identity.

Mass media are creating a new picture for the Gulf daily life and general attitudes and issues. Some of the issues pictured in the T.V shows can be based on true story such as problems within families; however, T.V shows picturing younger generations behaviors in the gulf are getting out of hand. For instance, high school people, especially females, within the gulf society wouldn't for example jump off the walls of a school and run away in the breaks than come back through the same process. Such an act was pictured in a T.V show "Banat El-Thanwya", literally translated as "High school girls". In the Gulf in general, females and males have different expectations from a society. Females are expected to pay more attention to rules, can break some, but not to the extent of breaking through the walls of a school and running away. In fact, they aren't expected to leave a place without permission or accompanied with an elder unless they got the permission from an elder person, their parents. As for the males, it's expected through the society that males creates more of a wild attitudes than females, but that doesn't reach to the extent of destroying something or harming another. In the mass media, males' roles in a gulf society are pictured in the right way more than the females' roles. The interacting of both females and males in a Gulf society through the picturing of T.V shows can also be debated. As some of the interacting can actually happen in the gulf society, but some wouldn't, such a female from the gulf having a boyfriend that picks her up from her parents house, also pictured in the T.V show "BanatEl-Thanwya". In the gulf, a boyfriend wouldn't dare to come to his girlfriend's parent's house, as having a boyfriend is actually not allowed, which than creates a social issue within the family. Other facts in the Gulf T.V shows, is that they picture females with nearly full make-up, fully dressed in the house as soon as they wake up out of bed, which is a wrong picture to the Gulf society daily life as well as an issue in T.V programs production for not picturing reality, but creating a new fake world that shouldn't be believed.

What Do Children Learn From Cartoons?

A few weeks ago, my mom’s friend cameover with her little son for breakfast. At first, the little boy was very shy and he didn’t say a word, butafter a while he started talking. What was shocking to me is that he wasspeaking in formal Arabic, which is barely used in casual life nowadays. Iasked his mom how did that happen, and she told me that she was worried abouther son not speaking at the proper age and she felt he didn’t understand herand her husband when they talked to him. But once, she said, her son was veryangry trying to tell his mom to give him a certain toy, and she was acting asif she didn’t know which toy he wanted to encourage him to speak. Luckily hesaid something. He screamed: (la oreed hatheh), which means no I want that onein formal Arabic. The mom was shocked to hear him speak in formal Arabic. Fromthat point, whenever she wanted to communicate with her son she used formalArabic. She told me her son was very happy to finally be able to understand andcommunicate with them.

According to her, her son learnedformal Arabic from Cartoons on TV, which are dubbed in formal Arabic most ofthe time. It is said that the family is the most important agent of socialization, but this case made me think whether this statement is true ornot. The kid learned the language from television instead of his family! May bethis happened because of the new common family structure; the mother and thefather are working for most of the day, whereas the son or the daughter, beforethey’re eligible to go to school, spend most of their time in front of TV withthe nanny who doesn’t speak Arabic. Moreover, I’ve heard many stories aboutlittle children learning the language of the nanny, which made them more ableto communicate better with her that with their own parents.

Other than language, cartoons canteach children a lot of things, like role taking. Children learn a lot abouthow to be a boy or a girl in the society from cartoons. For example, in Disneymovies most females are portrayed with longeyelashes, pink cheeks, red lips, and a very tiny waist. On the other hand,males are portrayed as tall, with wide shoulders, and big biceps.

Thisportrayal reflects the perfect shape of females and males expected in thesociety. Girls wear make up and want to be skinny, and boys want to go to thegym to build muscles. Moreover, females are associated with cleaning andsewing, whereas males are associated with jobs like mining, and competitionwith other males for either status or a possible mate.

Furthermore, somecartoons like Tom & Jerry, and Bugs Bunny, include a lot of violent material, which might affect the way children play with each other.

This suggests the need for parentsto supervise and try to control what their young children watch, becausewithout this supervision and interference of the parents, children mightinternalize the behaviors and values they watch in these cartoons, and this canbe very problematic, especially if parent consider these behaviors and valuesas inappropriate.

Reading books: is it still a popular cultural activity?

Considering the fact that the interests of a person may differ from another person, some people enjoy watching movies and/or listening to music regularly, while some people enjoy reading books to enjoy and fulfill their free-time.

Although reading may be considered as an old-fashioned habit to many people (especially to youth) in this century, it’s still enjoyed and practiced by other people. But how do we know that reading is still considered as a popular cultural activity when knowing that the rate of “reading a book” in the world is decreasing massively over time? Let’s elaborate this by supporting it with real-life examples.

The first shining example is Oprah’s Book Club. But first of all, let me define what a book club is in my own words. A book club is an ongoing group activity that involves individuals of similar book choices together to read certain books, discuss them, share emotions and opinions, etc. Going back to Oprah’s Book Club example, who of us would usually read anything about any product—or even buy it—just because a well-known TV personality had once recommended it? Almost every fan of this personality does so. But how did all this happen? Let’s refer to Oprah’s Book Club example again. Oprah has always been entertaining us and attracting us with the variety of topics and stories she presents in her show. She interviews celebrities, talented kids, people with emotional stories of crime or suffering, etc. She made the public more attached to these kinds of stories. The result? The more fanbase she would have. This amazing love that she gains makes it easier for her to say or promote stuff for people to attach to or to do. Furthermore, by forming her own book club and recommending books, Oprah makes more and more people open books and actually read.

The second example is the clever idea of making movie sequels based on books. How is that clever? Almost everyone has watched and loved the first Harry Potter movie before reading the book. What was J.K Rowling’s next step? Her next step was writing the next books of the sequel before making the movies based on them. As some people got attached strongly to Harry Potter stories, of course they couldn’t wait for the next movies to come out to know the rest of the story. As a result, they had only one option: to buy and read the rest of Harry Potter novels to know how the story will come to at the end.