Does Media and Music Affect Our Lives

Critical Response The argument of whether or not music and media affect or influence our lives is a very complicated argument that divides people in their viewpoints. I personally believe that music and media will influence you only if you let it. Everything in life becomes only what you make of it and I think that some people in life hold music artists on a pedestal and go so far as to live their lives according to what they hear in their idols music. A song that truly depicts this concept in a disturbing, but yet believable way is the song “Stan”, by Eminem.
This songs tells the story of a young man named Stan, that believes himself to be Eminem’s biggest fan that he goes so far as to live his life in away that imitates what he believes is how Eminem lives his. He confesses his devotion to Eminem through letters and by going to concerts and standing outside in the cold for hours just to get an autograph, but things go really bad when Stan doesn’t get a reply from Eminem in a time p that he believes he should have.
So Stan makes one last message for Eminem, which involves him being drunk, locking his girlfriend in the trunk and driving the car off a bridge. In the end Eminem writes Stan back with his concern of him trying to imitate his life, but then realizes what has happened. This song illustrates a perfect example of a crazed fan going to far. This guy is named Stan, which is Eminem’s “code” name, and in the music video he even dresses like him and goes so far as to make sure he has the same hairstyle and color.

Everything else also is an attempt to imitate Eminem, from the pregnant girlfriend that he eventually ends up locking in the trunk and killing to have an absent father. But the thing is though is that everything he is trying to imitate in this song are not the real characteristics of Eminem, they are only based on songs Eminem has written, including one song where Eminem kills the mother of his baby and locks her in a trunk.
I think that this song is a great example of how influential people can be, but I don’t think that all people are this influenced by music. I think that you are your own person and what you allow to influence you and affect you is your choice. This not only applies to music, but also to the media and news. Last week I had a very eye opening experience as a result to one of readings on the media and how much of the truth it tells and what it chooses to leave out. It made me ealize that sitting around and waiting for the truth to come to you, isn’t a logical approach and if you chose to live like that they you shouldn’t expect to receive the whole truth. The news and media also is very biased and can influence viewers to be the same. This has been very evident at least to me since 9/11, with how the media is so biased against Muslims and Arabs, and how they portray them all to be “the bad guys” and the ones to blame for the problems that we are enduring now.
But what us even more upsetting is that some Americans are letting the media influence them into believing this biased view point and instead of getting the whole story by going and getting other news sources, people just go along with what the media tells them. Even though a lot of people believe that the media and music is responsible for influencing the way people live their lives and the choices they make, I believe that how it influences you and to what extent is your choice.
If you hear a song on the radio that talks about killing someone, doesn’t mean that you should go out and do it, but you ultimately are the one that makes that decision, not the song. The same thing applies with the news, if you hear on the news that the Muslims are the ones to blame for all of our problems, it is your choice to agree or disagree with that statement and it is your responsibility to go and look at other sources if you want to get a real stance on the problem that is not biased.