Jeri Radford (12): 3RD Installment Final Post

Link to 1^st post: http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2015/11/12-1st-installment-jeri-radford.html

Link to 2^nd post: http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2015/11/12-2nd-installment-jeri-radford.html

To sum up my topic of Shonda Rhimes, as you can see by watching her show Scandal, you can really get a good picture of her philosophy. She uses the television show to portray some big controversial issues in our society today. The show usually plays out, and there is normally an underlying message that she wants to get across.

            In the first episode I explained, Rhimes used Scandal to shed light on the ever-growing issue of “Black Lives Matter”. In the episode, Olivia Pope, the main character, goes through a struggle within herself to figure out which side she should be on. A lot of people are one-sided (racist) so they can’t even see the other side of the story because they are so blind to it; in the episode, Pope struggles between her client (the police) and what she believes is right. The show ended with getting justice for who deserved it. I believe Rhimes wanted to portray how situations like this should end up.

            In the second episode I explained, Shonda Rhimes showed the issue of gender inequality. Men are so often thought of as the bigger people in numerous situations in life, but women are actually right there with them. Olivia Pope argues with Fitz, the President and her boyfriend, after feeling like she was being put down and treated like less of a person than he was. Although she is speaking to the leader of the free country, she is the one who got him elected. However not only gender inequality was brought up in the latest episode of Scandal, but also the topic of abortions. Olivia was in a scene where she was clearly getting an abortion, and knowing that Shonda Rhimes uses the show to voice her opinions, pro-choice was voiced loud and clear here. Not many shows mention abortion, non-the-less show someone having one done. This was a very controversial topic after the show first aired a couple Thursdays okay. Viewers commenting whether or not they thought this was right to depict this being done was talked about, as well as just how Shonda Rhimes even put it on her show.