"Eternal glory! That's what awaits the student who wins The Triwizard Tournament, but to do this, that student must survive three tasks. Three extremely dangerous tasks."
- Albus Dumbledore
While doing the reading response homework the related media that I thought of was the tri-wizard cup in the Harry Potter series. During the tri-wizard cup a wizard is picked at random to represent their school in a tournament against the other wizarding schools. The tournament is designed to test magical ability, intelligence, and courage. The tri-wizard cup’s playing field reminds me of a maze and it is different for each competitor. Each player faces their biggest fears while trying to reach the cup. It is possible for students to die while playing this game, but it is played each year anyway and everyone gets really excited for it – just like in the Hunger Games. I think the quote by Dumbledore really relates to the things that occur in the Hunger Games. The participants in both events will receive eternal glory if they win, but they also run the risk of not coming out alive. Harry Potter has some of the same characteristics as Katniss does, both of them are genuine people and I think that may be why we feel such a connection to them.
I was also really interested in the idea of everyone getting their 15 minutes of fame. It is possible for anyone of us to become famous in today’s world. For example, Laguna Beach simply filmed the everyday lives of a group of friends. The only difference between them and myself was that they are rich and live in California and I’m not so rich and I live in Pennsylvania. Now that I think about it I’m not so sure why I watched the show every week. However, I did watch it and now these people are even more rich than they were to begin with because of me. It is unfortunate that we never see any intelligent people, or people with exceptional talent on TV; most of the time all we see are people that know how to act like idiots. What kind of message is that sending to us as viewers? It seems that it is telling us that the best way to become famous is by binge drinking, partying, cheating on your significant other, or having some type of problem that majorly interferes with your life.
The cast of Laguna Beach are more wealthy than they were when the show first aired because of viewers. I never thought of it that way. It's our fault that these reality shows become popular and make it big. You're right, what does that say about us as a society?
ReplyDelete" It seems that it is telling us that the best way to become famous is by binge drinking, partying, cheating on your significant other, or having some type of problem that majorly interferes with your life." This quote from your blog is so true. It's sad to think of how messed up our society is. I used to watch Laguna too and I never knew what was so fascinating about that show? I guess just because they were pretty and everyone wanted to imitate them.
ReplyDeleteI can see the connection your trying to make with the Dumbledore quote to the Hunger Games. The pros and cons of each competition are similar. I also agree that it's unfortunate there aren't more intelligent people in reality TV. But I also understand it's a business and the producers realize drunken craziness sells more then intelligence.
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