After analyzing media in the world today I realized that it impacts my life way more than I previously thought. The media which I consume daily on my computer, my TV, and especially my cell phone impacts my values and what I perceive about reality. I realized that I probably don't have one original thought in my head, whether it is about how to achieve greatness, or how to be fashionable, etc...because all companies that market, have monopolized these ideas in pop culture and sell them as a package with their product. Recently I went shopping for a birthday present, and I got two items for my friend. I knew she liked flowy types of cardigans so I got her a kimono. I had trouble pairing a cute item with it, but ended up getting a floppy hat to match it. This look as marketers sell it is called "boho" and is a very fashionable style presently. I started to realize the main reason I think these two items went well together was because of how this "boho" style is advertised on attractive women models who have handsome men around them, and who look like they have a fun carefree life.
My interactions with the media have changed quite a lot. I am definitely more media literate. Whenever I see advertisements I think of the multiple advertisement techniques the company uses with its ads. I see who the target audience is and think of the appeals that might attract the target audience. I can also see now , especially for clothes and shoe brands, what appeals to me and how they make me feel. I realize that it is all just a trick and that buying specific types of clothes won't make me any cooler, because if I want to be fun and social and live life carefree, I have to change my character, not the clothes I buy or the shoes I wear.
I have always been a frugal type of person who like to window shop and look at new products through a window, but now instead of feeling a hopeless desire to attain all these products I don't actually need, I question my intentions on why I want the product so badly. It always leads back to the implicit and explicit messages that the companies send through their product. Sometimes seeing the unrealistic ideals paired with, for example a bracelet or, a shirt, I am able to talk myself out of wanting something, just long enough for me to escape an NOT buy useless items. This example is why its IMPORTANT TO BE AN EDUCATED CONSUMER! In short you wont buy too many useless items.
This blog was really fun and I really learned a lot from scrutinizing media messages to society. I hope that I can continue to use the traits of a critical thinker even after this log is over.
I absolutely love to shop. Yesterday I went to the mall and I was overwhelmed with happy sensations from seeing all these wonderful items of clothing and accessories that I could possibly buy. WAIT a minute...there's something wrong with that. I should be getting warm fuzzies from caring loving people...not clothes and accessories.
Even though I had warm fuzzies I also had a sense of anguish because I realized that there was no way I would be able to get all the things that I liked. This cognitive dissonance really made me feel horrible inside. Usually the way to resolve this type of cognitive dissonance is to buy everything that you want without worrying about money, which is what companies want. Unfortunately for the companies, I have a little more common sense than to waste all my money on clothes when I know I have more important things for that money to go to. Thank goodness for this media blog too!
I think I fall too easily for marketing strategies and I would definitely be in the target audience of most companies. In general, the appeals the attract me the most is the need for attention, the need for affiliation, the need for autonomy, and the need to achieve. I know that's a lot of appeals, but as a teenage girl who wants to fit in, but also wants to stand out, there's no doubt that the list is going to get pretty long.
At first when I was watching this taco bell ad I thought it was a ford commercial, but then I realized that the narrator was being too direct.
In this commercial, a deep voiced man is telling the target audience--males-- that in order to be a man they must drive a big truck, they must have rippling abs and spray cologne on themselves, they must lift big, be surrounded by women, swing hard, wear specific clothes, and shave etc...However at the very end clip three men who are watching this so called commercial, are eating the triple stacked steak stack on flatbread from taco bell. The narrator voice changes to the regular taco bell guy and he says if you need someone to tell you to be a man than you are not the type of guy to be eating this steak sandwich.
It's funny that after watching that whole commercial of how they say you need to be a man, Taco Bell did the exact same thing. They appealed to the desire for masculinity and to achieve because for men, to be manly is winning as media portrays it.
Once again media is sending the incorrect message that men have to be hyper-masculine. They even go on to indirectly insult men that need to be told these things or who don't eat Taco Bell. One of the reality assumptions in this video is that real men like lots of steak. Once again incorrect. This ad preys on men's insecurities about how to be manly. Although I don't think any man will take this commercial to heart, the messages it I sending to society will affect how they and even how young boys will think in the future.
Every magazine she graces, every new song released, it's no doubt that Beyoncé can do no wrong. I have never seen an article or entertainment news video, shaming her body, her fashion, or her choices. And it hit me, when did Beyoncé become this embodiment of perfect? I have never dislike Beyoncé and I think she's a talented artist, and a beautiful woman with a seemingly perfect life. But I realized that this OPINION of Beyoncé started becoming a fact and I questioned how the role of media played a part in making Beyoncé this 'perfect' being. The media portrays Beyoncé as perfect, so undoubtedly the outcome is that majority of society finds her to be perfect too. One of her songs is called "pretty hurts". It's a very empowering song to women and tells of the pain that girls and women go through because of the standards of society. This connects with the documentary Missrepresentation because women who suffer from objectification are most commonly women celebrities. Beyoncé, although found favorable in mainstream media's eyes, has not escaped the common objectification of women.
Beyoncé who has many young girls as a part of her fan base was the perfect singer to send the message on how hard it is to be girl. It teaches an important message that not every girl is perfect and that its impossibly hard to try and live up to a perfect that we can never reach.
Being in critical thinking has really opened my eyes to the world of advertisement and how companies like to mess with our psyche to make us think we need their product. Advertising has become something very underhanded. Marketers prey on our fears and our desires and I wholly believe that it is advertisers that control society today.
Just today I was talking with my Dad about getting him a new phone since his malfunctions a lot. It never seems to work when we need it to. He wanted to get something like the Samsung galaxy note 4 phone and when I asked him why, he came up with the reasons behind his wants.
His main reason was because he wanted to be able to write things down with his stylus, which I found to be an absolutely ridiculous reason. I told him that he could write things down in his phone by typing it into the memo or reminders, or his calendar, but he really felt the need to use a stylus and quote on quote "notepad"--the phone itself.
I know that my Dad is forgetful and having a phone with a stylus and notepad is not going to make him any better at remembering to do things. However, the company has sold this idea so well that a person who has this phone will be organized, that my Dad has fallen into the consumer trap.
We will see what new phone he ends up getting by JUNE.
I found this hilarious jab done by Huffington Post at Abercrombie and Fitch, the infamous teen retailer. After the CEO made a remark about how he didn't want fat people shopping at his store in 2013, the sales at the store dropped, not surprisingly. I was a huge fan of Abercrombie in 7th and 8th grade. Still to this day I would buy clothes there, but usually I find it either too expensive or not unique enough. Abercrombie, who features topless men, and scantily clad women, on the cover of their bags and on most of their window/online advertisements, has always done a great job in making the clothes seem attractive. It uses transfer association because consumers would feel that they too could be just as sexy and attractive as the models, or they could also snag a handsome man if they wore the clothes.
Abercrombie did a great job in making me feel like less of a person because I wasn't skinny enough to fit a size zero or I was too short and the pants could never fit properly. Abercrombie is one of the many media influences on young girls and how they perceive their bodies. By excluding sizes such as XL they set up a barrier for what was "cool" or socially acceptable, since Abercrombie was a big deal (at least for me in middle school).
I would have to admit though, that the way Abercrombie advertised to teens was very effective since everyone wants to be apart of the "in" group-the "cool kids".
With new retailers, and also less customers, who have been off put by the CEO and the message that Abercrombie sends to young girls and teens, Huffington took the opportunity to display a tangible representation of the store. This old store is not the newest coolest thing anymore.
So recently I have been thinking about buying some new clothes since its summer and it's been ingrained in my mind that a new season equals buying new clothes. As a critical thinker now, I have been very cautious with my urges to buy things in general. I can now see the appeals and the ad techniques that advertisers use. However, no matter how much I can identify the messages and techniques used, I realize I still have the desire to buy new things.
Now that I have already established that I want to buy summer clothes--swimsuits, shorts, tanktops etc...It's important to talk about why I feel the need to buy such new clothes, when my closet is stuffed with clothes that still fit me perfectly (since I stopped growing about three years ago.) The media sends messages to me everyday advertising the new coolest things and as more and more people get this new, cool thing, I feel more pressure to buy it as well. The pressure from the media to buy new things is a heavy load, but the pressure I put on myself is even harder. I made a revelation after watching Missrepresentation, in my last post. Put shortly I realized that girls feel pressure to look good all the time. In order to look good we feel that we need the coolest stuff to wear, and look the prettiest, and follow the latest trends. In the documentary, Merchants of Cool, advertisers said that it was the teens, the consumers who "invent" what is cool, but that is not the case.
To a certain extent it is the teens who are dictating what is cool and what is not cool, but as long as advertisers keep making the same types of clothes and advertising them with pretty models who are surrounded by friends and boys, It seems that advertisers actually have the power.
Scrolling through the endless wonders of online shopping websites, I saw many repeated styles. For example crop tops, or kimonos, or another one of my favorites, flowy shorts. As of right now I find those styles to be trendy, but these styles have been blown up by the media so much already. And STILL people are buying these trends. The minute that advertisers bring out the next new style, girls will jump on the chance to buy it. As a consumer who wants to buy new clothes, unless the advertiser comes up with a new trendy style and starts selling, no one will be able to buy it, so doesn't that make the advertisers the dictators of cool or no?
If you managed to read this whole thing great job!
I absolutely love gossip magazines, but I rarely get the chance to read them. So in my most recent visit to the orthodontist, who has and endless supply of magazines from People to Us to Star, I got to read up on some juicy gossip. One of my favorite segments in the magazines is called who wore it better? I always scrutinized the women who appeared on the page, and decided who looked prettier. Then later checked if my opinion matched with the polls. After watching the documentary Missrepresentation in my critical thinking class, I realized how horribly the media affected, not only the way I looked but how most of society looks at women
Scrolling through pictures on google and based on my experience of reading magazines with this specific segment, I noticed that only women are featured. In other words, only women are scrutinized, objectified, judged by their outward appearance and ranked by the ever growing standards of beauty. The women in the pictures are being put on display, not taking into account that they have feelings too. Realizing this, I understood why girls are so hard on themselves regarding appearance. It also one of the reasons why we see each other as competition rather than someone we can be friends with. If I were placed in a situation where someone I knew or didn't know was ranked "better" in this case, looks, I would feel absolutely degraded and not only grow to jealous of that person, but also start to hate myself.
In the picture above both, Gage Golightly and Jenna Dewan Tatutm, look stunning. There is no need to degrade a person by their looks. The magazine company only asked 100 people, which I feel is a small number. Only 100 people judged these women by their looks, but the whole world will see the unfair results of Gage Golightly's 27%.
Influenced by media, who's teaching us to judge each other by appearance, It s no wonder that us girls and women feel so much pressure to look good all the time.
"In a world full of dictates and conventions, could there be another way?
According to Lancôme there is another way--buy perfume.
In this commercial, the first scene shows the city lighting up, looking like a river of diamonds covering the streets. Then Julia Roberts appears in a sparkly white dress underneath an equally sparkly chandelier. She's in a white dress, while everyone else is wearing black. Julia is illuminated by white light and she walks to a mirror, where she notices that everyone, even herself, are being controlled by diamond strings, like they are marionettes. There is an obvious theme going on here--sparkles and diamonds. Still, I don't know what is being advertised.
The message that this ad is trying to send is that wearing Lancôme perfume will make one feel like the most beautiful, unique woman in the room, who is completely individual, and uncontrolled by the diktats of the world.
Violins play in the background, which gives the ad a more aristocratic air. It makes Julia seem more prominent. This ties in with the ad appeal of need for prominence. This technique is use to the fullest, with all the sparkly diamonds, and glowing jewels/lights emitting from Julia's dress. The need for autonomy is also used because Julia Roberts singles herself out by wearing white and breaking off her diamond chains, and walking up to the balcony, while everyone stares at her in amazement.
The advertising technique it uses is Testimonial because Julia Roberts is advertising the perfume. Julia Roberts is really successful and it adds "credibility" to the product because then people will think they can also be successful with this perfume. It also uses snob appeal because it depicts men and women in fancy dresses and tuxedos.
Its settled, I need Lancôme perfume in order to be original and beautiful--NOT. I didn't think that the commercial was very ineffective for me. I think this commercial was just too much with the whole diamond theme and I had no idea what the product was until the last four seconds. Lancôme Paris perfume won't be getting my business.
Whew this commercial has got me all excited inside. It's honestly really good, so watch it!
This commercial is advertising for the new Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. I honestly had no idea what the "edge" was even after watching the video, so my sister told me that the front screen was curved, therefore the edge wasn't the normal edge--it was also slightly curved. I didn't really see the curved screen in the commercial, nor do I see any importance of having a curved screen. However, this commercial did a great job in getting me engaged and watching the entire commercial.
First off, the music used in the commercial was "I'm Alive" by Johnny Thunder, which is a very upbeat, and happy song. The drumroll in the beginning along with the multiple clips of people getting ready to jump over waterfalls, to start a big football game, to perform in a ballet show, to read the note passed by the girl next to them, to break open a piñata, to open their eyes after being covered for a surprise, and to start the rollercoaster all build up ANTICIPATION. Then when Johnny starts to sing "I'm Alive" at the same moment we see the phone and every event begins to unfold.
The message that Samsung is trying to send is that we no longer need to hold onto our anticipation because the new Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is here. They want us to feel excited, and amazed--or alive--for the new phone that everyone has been waiting for. And it makes us think that we need to go get this new phone as well because it's so exciting. The implicit message from the video is that we can have fun, be young and daring, and not worry about our age if we had the new Samsung phone.
The target audience is pretty general. It touches bases with many ethnicities: Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, and Asian. I would usually think the audience is younger from 20's-40's, but the song from the 1960's indicates it could be appealing to an older audience in their 50's. Many scenes with the little kids passing notes, to the girl riding on rollercoasters, to the couple kissing on a balcony, might be nostalgic to older folks. The scene with the old woman blowing out candles is one scene that depicts anyone old, but the lady is very happy being able to blow out her candles and say she is one year older.
The advertising techniques used in this video are plain folks because it depicts families, kids, younger and older adults all doing fun, yet common activities, such as, a boy hitting a piñata, or men playing football, or a woman being surprised and screaming from happiness. It uses testimonial featuring the singer Rita Ora using their new product. It also uses transfer association by having lots of parties and adventurous activities happening when the phone is first revealed. This makes it seem that if you had the phone you would be fun and adventurous and have lots of parties too.
This ad appealed to the need for affiliation. With every scene each person was with their friends, a crowd of people, or their significant other that would love them, or take videos/pictures of them.
There is a lot going on in this commercial, but mashed all together, it feels fun and desirable to have the new Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. The commercial is very effective, and I would really like to see a Samsung S6 Edge.
Everybody likes to feel in control, that's why Progressive car insurance has the 'name your price' tool.
The message that this video is trying to send is that the customers have the power to choose their price. This sounds very appealing to people who want to save money, which let's face it--is everyone. Actually it targets mostly adults who own cars and houses. This ad appeals to the need to dominate. By giving the customers the 'name your price tool' the company is giving them the power to choose their own price and take control of their life.
This commercial shows that people value options and having the choice to decide for themselves. It makes it seem like you as a consumer have all the power in the world. Flo says "You give us the price you want and we give you a range of options to choose from." Many people only hear the "You give us the price you want," and are sold. However the "range of options to choose from," is a very discreet way of telling us that they already have insurance plans preset.
It uses the advertising technique of wit and humor/sex appeal because the ad is funny, since the guy thinks that the power he got from the name your price tool gives him the power to be able to juggle chainsaws as well. It also uses the plain folk's appeal, since the main characters in this ad are Flo and the average looking couple.
Flo is an amazing character and everyone associates her with progressive insurance. Through Flo, the company has assumed a humanlike persona. This gives the company ethos because consumers will then associate Flo and her personality as the company itself.
Subaru likes to make very heartwarming commercials. I actually remember them most of the time because their commercials really pull at my heart strings.
The one I saw recently depicts a dad giving up the keys to his daughter to take the car out driving. The first frame had the Dad looking kind of torn because every parent is scared to see their own kid growing up and driving out on their own. Then the frame switches to the daughter who looks about 5-8. Its a little funny to see such a little girl in the drivers seat, but then later on I realized that the daughter was actually in her later teens and she was only a little girl in the Father's eyes.
This commercial appeals to the need to nurture. One giveaway is that a small child appears on the ad. It targets parents, which have strong maternal and paternal instincts. By showing that the Dad was willing to let his precious daughter drive away in the Subaru, the company is letting its consumers know that the car is safe. The message it sends is that parents can feel at ease when their children drive this car because the car will take care of the child in place of them.
Subaru also branded itself with an identity. It uses the ambiguous word: LOVE, which can mean so many different things to different people. Love has a positive connotation and makes me think of a mix of happy emotions. Although I know that Subaru is not what love is, nor can it give me love like parent would, I like their commercials and have a positive view on the brand.
So on Friday, there were some solicitors passing out little newspapers in front of the school. My friend showed me the article and I realized that these people were campaigning pro-life ideals. They were informing us the "truth" behind abortion because many people are ignorant to what it "really" is. The issue of the article was whether abortion should be illegal or not. It gave examples supporting how abortion was wrong. and cleared up any exceptions such as if abortions should be accepted for women who were victims of rape.
The article first established pathos by connecting with the values of the reader. Pro-life obviously values life of human beings over choice. The word life has a very positive connotation, which would automatically pull in readers to agree with their position. The article seemed kind of degrading towards the readers. When I read, it made me feel like I was stupid for either not knowing what abortion really was or not agreeing with the authors position. It attacked my value system, but then gave a solution to fix it. No person wants to feel immoral or ignorant so by attacking our value system it made us want to fix ourselves and also adopt pro-life ideals. The article established logos by giving statistics about how women felt emotional holes, depression, and suicidal thoughts after aborting. The statistics also had an emotional factor, but the numbers behind it give the readers a sense of logic and feel that it is the only sensible thing to stop abortion. The article also established ethos by stating how doctors agree that abortion is murder since lie begins at contraception. Once again this argument relies on pathos, but it is also ethos since doctors are trusted in society.
Although all the facts given were entirely true, I believe that the article was poorly written. It used words such as "crap" to describe the arguments behind pro-choice and it was severely one-sided. The support behind why rape victims should not have an abortion was one real-life account of a woman who felt better to keep her child. I didn't find it supportive enough however because it was only one account and didn't take into consideration that many women have different mentalities. Of course "abortion doesn't unrape a woman" as the article argued, but a women might not want to be reminded everyday of their rape if they were to keep the child.
I have always been pro-choice, but for me there is a very unclear line of when it is okay and when it is not okay. The question I have is why does it have to be conditional? Even I don't understand...
Question: George Orwell argues against the "belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes". Explain why you do or do not agree with Orwell's position.
I agree with George Orwell that language should be an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. The use of language is the way people express themselves. And every person is an individual. There are several different ways that a greeting could be said. For instance, a person might say "hello" or "hi" or "hey". They could even say "what's up?". All four of these greetings mean the same thing however they all have a different tone. In order from left to right each greeting gets more casual. Depending on the personality of the person or how they want other people to perceive them, dictates the difference in their use of language. Language can create an image for oneself. If a person wanted people to know that they were laid back and friendly they might choose to say "what's up?" over other options. This is why language is a instrument--because the words create the sound of music (the tone) that the user wants people to hear.
