Superhero Successes

NOTE: This article contains NO spoilers for Avnegers: Infinity War, or any other movie or show discussed in this article. 

     A big trend today in the entertainment business is the use of superheroes. It seems like every other month, they release a new superhero movie and that the amount of superhero movies being released is quickly increasing each year. But this is not just a trend in the movies, it has also impacted television, but to a much lesser extent. This is great for somebody like me, who just absolutely loves these kinds of movies and shows. I can’t get enough of them. When talking about the movies, I’d have to say that Marvel and Disney have the best movies right now, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (this includes the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy). But for  TV, the best shows come from DC Comics and The CW (my favorites are The Flash and Arrow). But why are these the best? Why am I drawn to Marvel movies more than DC ones? Or DC shows more than the Marvel ones? Most superhero movies or shows are adapted from comics. Both companies have built up expansive multiverses that allow many characters to show up together and interact with each other. Even though I have never read a comic, I like this idea very much. I like just how interconnected these worlds are and how much crossover they allow. I have noticed that most of my favorite superhero movies are the ones with many characters who can cross over with each other. A really good example of this is the recently released Avengers: Infinity War (no need to worry if you haven’t had the chance to see it yet— no spoilers here!). It takes many well-established characters that the audience cares very deeply about from many different successful franchises and has them all come together against a common threat. The people who make the Marvel movies understand the importance of their characters and their interactions with others and their growth over the years. They started off by doing individual movies for most of their main cast before they did the first Avenegrs movie in 2012. In contrast, DC movies tried to do too much too quickly in an effort to catch up to their competition. Their second movie was Batman v Superman, and they had to spend half of the movie focusing on establishing characters and trying to set up the sequels. The movie suffered for this, because due to the sheer amount that they wanted to introduce, they didn’t leave sufficient time to do it well and still focus on the movie. In a roughly 2.5 hour movie, Batman and Superman only spent about eight minutes fighting. The movie (and the franchise) lacked the character development, care, and precision that was clearly evident in all of the Marvel movies. Luckily, TV lends itself a little more towards having lots of character interactions and development, because they have a lot more time to fill than movies do. Strangely enough though, this is where the MCU fails. Marvel and Disney are adamant that their TV shows take place in the same universe as their movie do, but they hardly ever reference each other and the crossover is almost nonexistent. Even when ignoring the movies, there is a lot less crossover between different TV shows when comparing Marvel to DC. DC’s movies are not connected to their shows, so there is no crossover expected. But they will have various characters from one TV show cross over to another every once in a while. It feels more like an actual breathing world than the Marvel shows do. So in conclusion, I like the shows and movies that I do because they create a world that is larger than just that one movie or show. They create entire universes to explore with believable and lovable characters.

Marketing

     Recently, in class, I was watching a video about the role of advertising in our world today. It was called “The Persuaders.” I thought it was pretty shocking to see the methods used by the companies and the amount of thought that went into crafting advertisements and presenting various companies. It was even surprising to learn things that I had been aware of subconsciously, but never fully thought about. An example of this would be that most companies, rather than trying to give you all of the facts and benefits about their product or service, will focus and getting you to feel a certain way by watching the advertisements for their product. The focus on how good it will make you feel, or tell you how much it will improve your life by making it easier, or making you look cooler or smarter by simply using their product, even if it doesn’t really make sense. They want to create a cult-like devotion in consumers towards their product so that they are the only company that pops into people’s minds whenever there is a chance. Advertisers actually go to study cults to see how they can more effectively market their products to get a similar response. A good example of this devotion is Apple. People who own Apple products, usually their iPhones, typically are unwilling to switch to any other company, even though there is no real reason to feel so strongly about sticking with Apple. Most people have iPhones, so that is what they want. This apples to me, too. I can’t exactly explain why I feel such loyalty to Apple, but I would much rather own one of their products than something from a rival company like Samsung. People who work in marketing departments and in advertising all know that the heart can always beat the head. That is to say, emotion can always win out over logic. So they need to appeal to this emotion more than they need to appeal to logic.

     When looking anywhere on the internet today, you are more than likely to come across the phrase "fake news." But lately, this phrase has lost its true meaning. It has evolved into a phrase that people use to dismiss pieces of information that they do not agree with, regardless of its validity or whether or not they even know anything about its validity. The most prominent examples the phrase "fake news" being thrown around come from our current President, accusing various media outlets of conveying less than factual information. His common targets ore CNN and the New York Times, while he seems to have a very strong preference for Fox News. Interestingly enough, Fox News itself has a reputation of not conveying news accurately/impartially. This difference in opinion got me thinking: what is the actual difference in articles between CNN and Fox News?
     Earlier today, there was a shooting at a Waffle House in Tennessee. One of the most prominent things that stuck out to me about the differences in these articles was the tone. CNN mostly stayed factual and professional, not letting the author's opinion get in the way of their reporting. Fox News on the other hand, had a very clear opinion that it was not afraid to display. Fox News tried to evoke an emotional response in the reader. They tried to make the reader feel sad and like these people had so much more life to live before it was taken from them. They wanted their reader to feel true sorrow at the deaths of these people. This is admittedly a very safe stance to take, as almost nobody would object to it, but a stance nonetheless. While in this case, I did agree with Fox News's stance on the event, I prefer CNN's more factual approach to reporting the news. Opinions and stances are important and they do have a place, but just not mixed in with news reporting. That kind of writing is more for social media or a blog, like this one.
Here are the articles:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/22/waffle-house-shooting-victims-include-brilliant-college-student-aspiring-rapper.html
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/22/us/waffle-house-shooting-what-we-know/index.html

My Relationship with Media

            As a teenager in this generation, media and electronics are a very large and essential part of my life. I am almost always interacting with them in some form or another. I honestly cannot think of anybody I know, from my eight-year-old little sister to my great-grandfather, who does not use any form of media or electronics daily. The two main social media sites I use are Instagram and Snapchat. I use Snapchat more often because it is less time consuming. Everything on the app is designed to be used very quickly. This makes it perfect for people with busy schedules or people with short attention spans. However, I prefer Instagram over Snapchat because Instagram gives off more of a sense of permanence and it also seems a lot more official. Pretty much anything that is posted there stays until the owner makes a conscious decision to take it down, but things on Snapchat only stay for a day. There is also a lot more to do on Instagram. It is very useful for when I need to kill time. But that is also its weakness. I always feel obligated to look at every post that pops up in my feed, but I very rarely have time to do that. As a result, I only scroll through my homepage once every week or two.

I don't really use Twitter for the same reason. It takes too long. But I feel that there is less to do on Twitter than there is on Instagram. I see social media as a way to keep in touch with everybody you want. From relatives you don't see often to friends you see every day, there is a really good chance that they have some sort of social media account that you can use to contact them.