Lost, The OC, Family Guy, Greys Anatomy, Nip/Tuck... ETC

Some people may not realize it but the shows on today's tv are not only for your entertainment value but also to promote secret messages. Through advertising for a company's product, by teaching people's decision making skills, or basically showing the audience how to live the life, the media has the power to turn switches on in your brain. "Giving the audience what they want to see", isn't a good excuse for having certain content in tv shows. The writers didn't have knowledge of knowing that the viewers would like what they wrote until after they saw the show. In just about every tv show or movie in today's society, Tv Tokenism is a large factor. White people have more screen time than any person of any other race. If the show is taken seriously or is screened as a "drama", the supporting characters are usually the "token" minority and aren't shown like the main characters are. What the media needs is a turning point, to prove that society is changing for the better and becoming more accepting of different races everywhere. Could this one ground-breaking show change the media from now until a new change? Or will it only take a news anchor?

Chris McCandless

Chris McCandless is adventurous and brave; Chris is a young individual who wants to prove happiness without “things”. Chris has a very self-motivated personality with a strong attitude with great determination. He believes that everyone has a purpose in life and it’s up to you to prove it. Chris’s adventure proves that he is finally free. He has needed to escape his challenges and obstacles at home by creating new goals for himself without another person breathing down his back and telling him what he needs to do with his life. In Chris’s letter to Wayne he says, “Things that escape most people. As for me, I’ve decided that I’m going to live this life for some time to come. The freedom and simple beauty of it is just too good to pass up.” (33). This quote illustrates the simplicity that Chris desires for his own life and it shows what he’s looking for. I see Chris as a pilgrim like Krakauer claims, because he is person starting over in a new world. By definition, a pilgrim is someone who journeys, a long distance, to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion. Some may say with that definition, one must be religious, and Chris does relate by that sort because when Chris writes to Ron, he says, “I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover.” (57). With this implication of God, Chris is stating that God has placed us here with a motive, and to discover what He has created, which is exactly what Chris is trying to pursue in life.

INTO THE WILD

The farther I read into the book Into the Wild, the more I realized how much respect I had for Chris McCandless. His purpose for traveling into the wilderness was to escape the materialistic real world. His destination was Alaska, and burned all his evidence that he ever exhisted. Why would he do that? Leo Tolstoy states, "I wanted movement and not a calm course of exhistance. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life." (15). Chris could only find happiness away from the haustle and bustle of the world. He wanted to escape all of his problems and I think it takes a lot of courage to leave everything you know to find your true destiny.