Warning: Possible Crazy/Confusing Product Explained Below

All right a night of posting about whatever we want – sweet deal.

I’m really excited to be working on this rhetoric advertising assignment because rather than writing another paper, we can fully put what we have learned so far into use. I’m not sure what my group, Derek, Mallory, Kendal, and myself, are going to do yet but I’m sure it’ll be awesome. I think it would be interesting to do something involving Apple products like an ipod or the iphone, calculators, and gum together. It would be like a mega little device. I mean think about it, they would fit for our target audience, the class, because we all use them.

I guess I envision a wild device that is a couple inches longer than the iphone, and is a bit like the new Verizon Voyager. It’s hard to explain without drawing it out. But think about – one side could be your regular iphone (with a 30 or 60 GB of course because we all listen to a ton of music and 8 GB is not nearly enough) and then on the other side could be your touch screen TI-84 calculator. Coming out the end of the iphone, where you plug into the charger, would be you gum slot thing-a-ma-jig where when you press a button on the screen, out pops a stick of gum.

Oh and other additional ad ons would be a video camera, so we could record the crazy conversations we have, a mirror, and a foldable mechanical pencil that could pop out the top.

It sounds wacky, but I think it would be pretty tight.

Yeah Kilbourne

I feel like I am the only one who really agrees with Kibourne's argument. I thought she presented her point of sex/violence in advertisements well and backed up most of with sources. The fact that in some instances she went a little over board, like with the shaving ad, didn’t change my opinion that most women are dehumanized and made into objects in advertisements.

Edit: Thinking about this now though, maybe I was a bit wrapped up how women are seen as objects because I was frustrated with my brother and wanted to think that all males thought about is sex when it comes to women and these ads. Who knows?

In Kilbourne’s article she mentioned how it is typically the women’s fault if she gets raped or something bad happens otherwise because she was wearing the wrong clothes, was in a dark alley, or had been drinking. And it’s totally true. I suppose the only instance you don’t see that is in bromance movies when the guy gets drunk and sleeps with what he thinks is a really attractive women, but when he wakes up… she’s definitely not. Then it is blamed on him.

She also points out the ads in which men are encouraged to not listen when a woman says no. I’ve never seen those ads before and it really bothered me because it’s most likely men made those. It just kind of makes me sick to see what people come up with in their heads when it comes to sex and how much money they can make off of explicitness.

I think Kilbourne has some really interesting and dead on things to say about sex in the media and how women are targeted. Although yes, she did over anyalize some things, I feel that if say a person had been in one of those situations we saw in the ads, like with the man over the women and she laughing but over her head it says no, then they would be thinking like Kilbourne too.

Oh and P.S. I totally read this article before our debate I just didn't have time to blog about it afterwards.

Commercial Watching

This assignment reminded me of one we had during my Mass Media class except we had to write down what every commercial was for and then see if it was directed towards the same audience as our show. So it’s kind of fun to have all of this come back and do a similar assignment – minus all the writing.

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I actually found the commercial that aired during an MTV show was really ironic. For starters, I was watching True Life – “I like being overweight” (or something of the sort). It was, surprise, about people who liked the shape that they were, even though doctors advised against it, and their lives.

So then, right after the show cut to a commercial came Jenny Craig! It was a newer one though, not the typical one where that woman calls Jenny and talks about all the weight she lost. It was Queen Latifah appearing at the very beginning of the commercial and she said that was going to be taking the first step to improving her health with Jenny Craig. It then showed others cheering her on and telling her that they’ve done it too.

The whole thing kind of made me laugh at first because it seemed as though it was aligned right after True Life on purpose, but once I started to think about it some more, it was a pretty wise decision. I mean really, the audience for True Life is teens/young adults and they might be any size, but are still watching an episode based around over-weight people. And so to put a commercial on afterwards that points in the direction of losing weight and being healthy is pretty smart! I also liked that Jenny Craig focused on having a spokeswoman that just at the beginning stage. It made it seem like you could work on losing weight along side her, which will connect more to their intended audience than say someone who has already reached their goal.

Friday Night Plays

The plays on Friday were really well written and I thought they were great! Elise Lockwood is incredibly talented to write all of these plays and have them flow, make sense, and be funny. My favorite would have to be Playing the Pronoun Game and/or Being or Not Being.

I thought the title, Playing the Pronoun Game, itself was just so creative and I loved David, played by Daniel Hellman, and Isaac, played by Ian Ketcham, as the Dads of Elise Vreede. I wasn’t so sure about the end of play though, not because Maggie and Kristen got together, but because it ended so quickly – course it was a one-act play.

Being or Not Being, written by Henry Johnston, was hilarious. Lucious, played by Ian, telling Brad Pitt, played by R.J. Connors, off was classic. And Jim Ray just made it for me!

The only play I didn’t understand was If Books Could Kill. Joshua, J.P. Mershon, went crazy because he couldn’t figure out the narrator of a book Rory, Elise Lockwood, wrote and eventually it killed him. I feel like there was something deeper to the play, but I don’t know what it is. I also wish I knew the significance of the quote he wanted Rory to figure out which book it was from.

Great Job!