Sociology discussion

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“Stray Bullet” was sung by In Organized Konfusion, and there’s heavy metal instruments being played in the song with strong sense of dynamics, impulse, and also violence, so as to demonstrate the concept of “Tough Guise.” “Tough Guise” refers to that males, especially young men and boys are taught by the society that to be a “real” man is to show the tough and strong side to others, and the most obvious way of such “strong and tough” is through violence. In fact, such widely spread idea of being a real man has misled males in a way by considering that being man means being violent, which not only increases the male crime rate in the society, but also causes a certain degree of damages on those males who conduct violence to others, especially on their mental and psychical health. This is not beneficial for them to be a decent man with kindness and gentleness.

However, among the factors leading to the crisis in masculinity, the negative impacts of media as a powerful and convincing tool on males are most prominent. For example, at the beginning of the song, there’s sound of gun, and such sound appears in the whole song to increase the so-called “dynamics”. Besides, there are also uncivilized words like “shit” are continuously repeated in the lyrics. All of these indicate violence and incivility contained in such kind of masculinity of males with prominent sense of violence and impulse of crime, and this song can be regarded as one of the typical examples showing the “short- term, unintended consequences” of media on the society (Conley 120). After young men and boys listen to the music with strong sense of violence, they would be likely to imitate such behavior and consider it as “being a man,” which usually leads to crime. Hence, while media helps to spread lots of information for people every day, it’s important to keep critical thinking about the message presented on it so as to possibly avoid the occurrence of bad phenomena.

Conley, Dalton. You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like A Sociologist. W. W. Norton & Company. 2015.

“Tough Guise: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity.” Cabrillo. N.d., https://cabrillo.instructure.com/courses/8536/pages/gender-and-media?module_item_id=251438. Accessed 8 Dec. 2017.

Link to the music video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxnjdXOxLCU