Media-savvy morality: Vatican spreads the good word

In this modern age where secularization appears to have gained the upper hand, how can Christianity affirm its moral ascendancy?

The higher ground can be accessed by means of social media. Or so believes the Vatican as it goes about reaching a wider audience beyond the pulpit to convey its message. Indeed, it's proof-positive of the Papacy's openness to debunk the doubtful perception that the Catholic is wary of change, especially the blessings of new technology. Recently, the Pope made news as he revealed its new crusade for the church to achieve "an unprecedented level of interaction with Catholics all over the globe."

Now that the Pope is taking and sending messages via Twitter, aside from availing himself both to his flock of devotees and non-believers alike through Vatican's Facebook page, one upside over this attitude is the opportunity to open more widely the possibility for engaging dialogue across a variety of religious faiths, thus extending the chances for ecumenism and world peace in a time when there's nothing more alienating than detachment and exclusivity: fundamentalism and such narrow-minded notions borne out of parochial nationalism.

With more openness, perhaps the Vatican can get more sunlight and dispel the darkness over controversies it tends to hide from the public, such as sexual abuse perpetrated by priests. There's hope, too, that this sense of transparency could stretch the elbow room for discussion on such taboo topics as women finally finding a place under the Vatican sun and becoming priests.

Let there be light, indeed.

Italian media and its image of women

Perception is reality, according to a popular adage. As far as Italian media is concerned, how does its view on reality--or, the real experiences of women--impacts public perception?

Not too long ago, pornographic performer Ilona Staller, more famous as Cicciolina, hogged global headlines as she flaunted her sexuality en route to a position of power in the Italian legislature. As much as it offered an opportunity for the marginalized in society--such as women and commercial sex workers, etc.--to make their voices heard in the hierarchy of Italian governance, it remains debatable if Cicciolina's fame and influence has dignified the social status of Eve’s daughters since Adam.

In the Italian context, women still have a lot to complain and commiserate with their counterparts elsewhere in the world long woeful with its age-old constraints in enlightenment and equality. This reality, purveyed by popular media, still looms with shadows—largely distorted or lamentable with disproportion that whittles down the dimension of female experience to the level of fiction.

In fact, as feminist scholars argue with theories on “gendered mediation” and “symbolic annihilation,” Cicciolina’s antics may only impede the process of progress toward fairness in media representation. Last the Italians looked, Cicciolina seemed to have spawned an electoral peculiarity that fuses pornography with politics.

Invisibility still defines the issues of women, and their concerns/viewpoints remain characterized with a lack of layered and more nuanced news coverage. Formidable, indeed, is the male-dominated beast of bias. In the 2002 elections, for instance, Italy’s six television channels spent less than 80 hours (7.5%) of focus on female candidates compared to 999 hours (92.5%) on male contenders. Another Italian report in 2004 indicated the extent of imbalance that tips the favor for the preservation of gender stereotypes in infotainment talk shows: “Female presence had primarily a representative value of at least five or six men versus one woman in a talk show… Women were both underrepresented (quantitative analysis) and marginalized (qualitative analysis) compared with men in the category of “potenti” [the powerful] that included politicians and political and spiritual leaders…”

Hardly surprising, therefore, that Italy ended up with the worst ranking (84th out of 128 countries) within Europe in the 2007 Global Gender Gap drafted by the World Economic Forum. In the face of inequality, some Italian women decided to stand their ground against the sexist image in Italian media as they amplify their protest against the "commercialization of Italian women...and a model that damages female identity."

One of the most vocal advocate among these women is Lorella Zanardo, a management consultant on equal opportunity and diversity, who came up with a documentary called "Il Corpe delle Donne" (Women's Body) to show there's more to women than their obscurity and their onus of shame under the status quo or in the framework of patriarchal chauvinism.

Beyond the North and the South, Or How Telenovelas Become the Tie That Binds the Two Americas

“We are committed to localized content becoming global and global content becoming localized," declared one of the top executives at Disney-ABC as she explained the company’s objective to extend and expand the relationship that Disney Channel has fostered with families and their children.

From the magazine article on Disney’s marketing strategy of “embracing telenovelas,” the executive’s explanation is easily one of the salient points in our class, especially in relation to our discussion on telenovelas and how this particular genre has been propped up by media giants and prodded by the impulse of globalization.

Clarifying the notion of counterflow, the seepage of telenovela as a Latin American or Hispanic product into the U.S. market definitely washes away the idea of geography as a cut-and-dried entity. In a world rendered borderless by digital technology, geographical mindsets are up for a repositioning or reorientation to the inexorable tide of cultural crosscurrents.

Indeed, as conveyed by Telemundo and Univision—the major Hispanic networks that encompass the culturally constructed regions of South America and the United States—McLuhan’s message is loud and clear with a Hispanic accent that is never lost in translation. Yes, the world is a global village. And this is where the viewers of Betty La Fea and Ugly Betty find themselves comfortably close even if CNN is recurrent about its reports about alienation, inequality, and antipathy as the constants of the human condition.

No longer defined in the rhetoric of conflict or divergence, the North-South dynamic evident in the convenient and mutually beneficial circulation of telenovelas is proof-positive of the emergent trend in the media—the medium of television, specifically—toward convergence.

Indeed, this phenomenon of distributing media products internationally from the periphery to the core of America defines the interconnected complexity of cultural identity even as it defies the customary notion of cultural imperialism. For me, this reality undoubtedly widens the elbow room for raising the stakes of democratic ideals and global economy. It exceeds the usual expectation when we talk about such topics as dominance and diversity.

This development also offers a possibility for America to swallow or internalize further its image as a “salad bowl” of cultures. Considering that Hispanics in America have exponentially made their presence felt as they reached at least 50 million to mark a new census milestone, it makes a swell business sense to cash in on the demand of the Hispanic consumer, as recommended by the YouTube video below. Nothing is more practical than to accept the convenience of continually adapting and integrating itself to the realities of a world where the center is getting changeable and ever shifting.