lsbrown

Lights! Camera! Gender binary?  This summer I plunged into the depths of the entertainment industry of Los Angeles by interning at a production company and a talent agency.  While any normal, sane company would appreciate the free labor of a bright, charismatic, humble college student like myself, good internships were hard to find. While I alternately considered working all summer to earn money to invest (read: buy shoes), my mother gently tried to coax me into vying for an internship as I might ‘learn something’. (She’d tricked me with that one before. Jewish camp? Not my idea.)  Then, one day, it struck me–my major has a focus on “Gender and the Media.” Was the production of television shows and movies not this so-called media? Was selecting the very people who will represent and transfer cultural ideals and norms through the screen, both big and small, not this ‘media’ thing as well? And these same people must identify with some part of the gender spectrum. Gender? Check. Media? Check. Academically relevant? Check. Proud mother? I think so!

In my internship, I got to sit in the writers’ room for the SyFy show “Haven,” watch pilots from every channel for this Fall season, and meet (more like ogle) celebrities on the set of the film “Sexy Evil Genius.”  I was so caught up in reading spec scripts, meeting industry professionals and screening dailies (the uncut, unedited film from a day of shooting) that I had to step back and recognize that I was living the gender dynamic.  Being inside this frame of reference was skewing my ability to analyze the genderfication in these spec scripts, the people working in my office, and the very television shows I was “helping” produce. With this realization, I was able to analyze and reflect upon its significance. My bosses generously allowed me to interview them, and with supplemental research I came to the conclusion that gender discrimination pertaining to the production aspects of the industry are largely based on subconscious association rather than conscious consideration of gender. This insight has aided my further study in my academic concentration, “Gender and the Media.”

I returned back to Wes this year feeling as if I truly had had an academically-enriching experience this summer.

I spent my summer interning at the New York University Infant Cognition and Communication Laboratory (NICCL).  The first two weeks I was terrified of making a single typing error as I was warned any incorrect data would completely ruin any scientific findings and all the work the lab had done so far.  As the weeks went on, I realized that this was not exactly the case.  However, I did begin to understand the urgency of being unbelievable mindful of every move.  In our weekly meetings, during which we often discussed the reasoning behind the studies, I realized that the foundational research done with infants at NICCL is necessary in understanding any cognitive abnormalities that are diagnosed later in development, such as Autism.

The other four interns and I spent each day preparing the schedule of the infants coming in to be run in the studies, the study rooms, and paperwork, such as parental permission and general information.  We were also able to act in studies using the “violation of expectation” method, which examines the subject’s ability to understand cause and effect.  For example, a scene would be acted out in which the obvious outcome would not occur, and the subject’s reaction is recorded.  We also transferred and processed video, coded data, and scheduled infants to come into the lab for the following weeks.  Interning at NICCL was extremely hands-on and an eye-opening experience into the way that every published study we read in our psychology courses comes to fruition.  As I continue to explore the psychology major at Wesleyan, the two months I spent at NICCL are already proving to be an invaluable experience.