I've snow choice - I'm stuck here

The great British freeze has returned to Birmingham today and has once again foiled my plans to do anything more than sit at home whinging about the snow. During it's four week rein earlier in the year I was forced by my Firefighter father to keep out of my car and stay in the house - and today appears to be no different.
As a firefighter, he seems to do nothing but cut poor souls out of car wrecks during these icy times - and this is possibly what makes him so adamant that his daughter will not be his next call out. I'm completely aware that I am not going to die in a horrific crash merely because there is a few millimetres of snow on the ground, but Mien Papa is slightly tainted by his experiences with the cold weather and won't budge an inch. So I guess I'm grounded until the sun comes out...you might see me out and about in mid June then?
So on that note, here's a few desolate pictures of my poor car Betsy and my failed attempts to get her off my drive. Enjoy!

My culture as a media text

I would consider “More” magazine to be a media text that represents my personal culture, as it contains articles on high street fashion, celebrity culture and real life stories. These subjects feature heavily in my daily life, as the shops that are publicised in the magazine I shop in on a weekly basis and I enjoy being able to “window shop” from the comfort of my sofa. I am not majorly obsessed with celebrity culture, but I am interested in certain celebrity’s and what they wear. I am also fond of the real life stories in “More” as I love to gossip and enjoy hearing about people’s lives. I chose to read magazines like “More” and “Look” over others (such as “Vogue” or “Cosmopolitan”) as the subjects covered in these magazines actually relate directly to my life – unlike higher end fashion magazines, which are more of an aspirational read for me, being that I don’t buy designer clothes or follow certain celebrities. I base my culture around the interests and past times that make up the activities I undertake in my life, and I think my description of my culture through “More” magazine shows that the majority of my culture is based around consumerism and popular culture. I do think my culture is relatively mainstream, and believe that there are probably a large number of female students in their late-teens/early twenties who would describe their culture as being very similar to my own.

A culture for only the elite

“Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture” by F.R.Leavis

F.R. Leavis states that culture is often thought as being only accessible to a minority in society, saying “it is...only a few who are capable of unprompted, first-hand judgement”. He states that to enjoy are be able to respond to cultural works, a person must be able to connect with the deeper levels of human capability and intelligence:

“it implies responsiveness to theory as well as to art, to science and philosophy in so far as these affect the sense of human situation and the nature of life.”

Leavis then goes on to argue that the minority who have the potential to access the culture of the world are the ones who set the standards in society, and devise the norms and values which are required to be understood and followed in order for culture to be appreciated:

“Upon them depend the implicit standards that order the finer living of an age...”

He then states that it has become well known to this minority that “culture is at a crisis”, which he partly seems to blame on “the machine” – otherwise known as technology. Leavis states that “The machine...has bought about change in habit and the circumstances of life at a rate for which we have no parallel.”
Leavis begins to introduce the idea of mass-production and standardisation having a negative effect on the media world – a criticism made by many modern day theorists –, and he suggests that the worst result of this falls with the “levelling-down” of culture in society. Leavis talks about the different forms of media which are falling into the trap of becoming dummed-down and losing their intellectual grasp on their subject matter. He states that films, with all their influence, are causing their audiences to surrender to “hypnotic receptivity” and “the cheapest emotional appeals” – which are made all the more sinister by the “compellingly vivid illusion of actual life” that they portray. He also refers to the idea that “broadcasting...is in prcatice mainly a means of passive diversion”, meaning that this form of media has also sucumbed to the levelling-down of culture.
Leavis describes society’s constant struggle to wade through the sea of media, literature, art and cultural works which have emerged, and he claims that people are now finding it difficult to determine what makes good culture:

“The landmarks have shifted, multiplied and crowded upon one another”

Leavis goes on to say that the factors described above are what makes the idea that culture is only for the educated minority more solid, and this is what continues to re-enforce the minority’s abiltity to be the only ones who have access to our culture.