We are... influenced by the media

Our Theme was: the influence of TV and the media on society. There was truly a rise of TV shows and different cultural aspects that influenced how people lived out their lives. We wanted to use our boxes to show that different people were influenced by different shows and aspects of TV.

Finding items was difficult--many people did not have many items that they had kept from the 1970s-90 so we decided to use different items symbolically.

1. You might have noticed that the boxes themselves were an item for us. We got out the middle of each of our 4 boxes and stacked them 2x2. This represented TVs as well as the Brady Bunch because in the beginning of the show, the 9 people came on the screen all in separate TVs. The Brady Bunch portrayed issues such as divorce and remarriage that were not usually discussed on TV. It had an impact in making divorce more "acceptable" to society and such.

2. We also had inside of our boxes an elmo, grover, scooby-doo and zoe doll. These dolls represented popular TV shows such as Scooby-Doo and Seasame Street, which were not only entertainment but in the case of Seasame Street, educational as well.

3. The Mickey Mouse Clock represented 60 minutes (the TV show) because it was an influential news program that was very popular during this time period. Many people watched it to get their daily news.

4. The remote we used was from the 70s, and we used it to contrast how different the TV remotes use to be.

5. The mini wheel of fortune was used to represent the popular game show "Wheel of Fortune."

6. We used the TV antennae because that's how people got different show on their TV.

In addition to these items, we also had clothes to represent how TV influenced society. We used them as the backdrop because clothes were an important aspect of the media and people were influenced by what the stars were wearing, but this influence wasn't "in your face" or too obvious. We also had 2 quotes. The quote from Bill Cosby represented how much change was sparked from TV. People talked about more issues such as race, gender, and etc. more openly, and TV rose to new heights, ignoring all previous limits.

For next year's class, I highly recommend doing LOTS of research about different themes and then settling for what you want to do. Items are hard to find, and if you pick a topic/theme that you can't find many items in, it might be better to do something else. I would also advise them NOT to wait until the last minute to get the items because it takes a lot of effort and time to find something meaningful to put on the box.

By Alee