The main theme of Chapter 1 is what the media is and how it works in conjunction with laws, businesses and consumers. As for Chapter 2, the view point shifts to the viewers and it discusses how the media, especially TV, is closely related to and has influence on American history and cultures.
It is surprising that the United States has been criticized as being culturally imperialistic. It seems logical that the U.S. needs to regulate excessive pornography, discrimination, and violent scenes to some extent; however, these characteristics may appeal to a diverse people on an international level. For example, “Sex and the City” has been popular among women in Japan although many of them don’t know much about other American dramas. The movie version has not been released in Japan, and it is currently under debate if it should have age restrictions to watch it in theaters. Japan is more conservative to sexual scenes than the U.S, but “Sex and the City” is popular because it includes entertaining, explicit, and unfamiliar scenes that we rarely expect in Japanese movies. In recent years, the US seems to import more media from the other countries, like anime, so cultural imperialism seems to have become more balanced.
What struck me in Chapter 2 is the media might be a subject which is difficult to define and categorize since it has different contexts and arguments depending on what data is used and who you focus on. I think that the “modeling” and “social learning theory” at times share the same meaning. The only differences are the former only targets viewers who are interested in imitating behavior from the media; however, the latter deals with behavior by observing people, and it does not necessarily include imitating others. But, more often than not, we rarely imitate people who we know or who we find on the street because they want to maintain individuality. American is founded on individualism rather than collectivism. Even if you observe someone’s behavior other than the media, he/she may have learned that kind of behavior from the mass media; behavior is, in most cases, associated with the media. Another theory that contradicts this idea is “catharsis theory”, which means “viewing violence actually reduces behavior.” This idea possibly means that “modeling” and “catharsis theory” does not exist concurrently.
