Summary of Group Ad

• initially looks like a smoking ad, shaped like lungs, rivers/streams look like veins
• forest is cut/burned down like how smoking destroys lungs
• “Before it’s too late” message for stopping smoking, and clearcutting
• comparing the awful, long lasting effects of smoking and damage of deforestation
• comparing human body to ecosystem
• destroying the environment is just as bad as destroying our own bodies

In Class Lab Ads 10/22

1.       Who published these ads?

PETA, Freedom For Animals, Mercy for Animals, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

2.       Who are these texts intended for?

Freedom For Animals ad seems to be intended for women, as their ad parodies a woman’s hair ad. Mostly they seem to be targeted at average consumers. Mercy For Animals specifically wants people to not go to Walmart, so their target audience is probably people who go to Walmart.

3.       How can we tell that?

Freedom for Animals is mirroring what popular hair care ads for women look like. The Mercy for Animals ad specifically targets Walmart, so you can infer that this ad would be for people who go to Walmart.  

4.       What is the purpose of these texts?

They all want to stop animal cruelty. The Freedom for Animals ad specifically targets animal lab testing, PETA ad is against wearing fur, Mercy for Animals wants to stop/improve the farm animal conditions cruelty that Walmart is doing, and American Society’s ad is trying to inform people of domestic “pet” animal cruelty, and trying to get people to adopt a dog in need.

5.       How do they seem to be working towards that purpose?

Most of the ads are focusing on our emotion response to anime cruelty. The Mercy For Animals ad show a pig locked up in bad conditions, asking it’s audience if we support that. PETA’s ad shows a man with what we infer to be his dog. It makes us think of how we love our pets, and uses that emotion to make us not want to wear animal fur. The Freedom for Animals ad shows a woman with “luxurious” hair, but also with a wound on her scalp. The ad tells us that this is what happens to animals that are being tested on. Ethically, we think it’s wrong to hurt people, and they say that this is what happens to 300,000 animals every year. The American Society ad shows a cute dog, and has text that appears to be coming from the dog. The way they phrase the dog’s “speech” makes the dog seem innocent and child-like, so we feel bad about what happened to him. This emotional response makes us want to help dogs that are abused.

6.       What evidence from the texts can you provide?

The phrases and images mentioned in #5.

7.       Can you come up with that would indicate what the ads do as a group?

All kinds of animal cruelty is wrong, and you don’t even know that it’s happening. 

Thinking About the Text, pg 181 + summary

1. What insight does Melissa Rubin offer about the Coca-Cola ad she analyzes, and what evidence does she provide to support her analysis? Has she persuaded you to accept her conclusions?

Rubin explains that the Coca-Cola ad not only reflects the values of that time, they actually influenced the American culture. Her evidence comes from her analysis of the ad, and how she connects specific parts of it to historical facts. She points how the diversity in the ad is not showing multiple races, it shows military and civilians, or middle class and working class together. She then uses information about what historically was taking place to explain why this is important. The way she does this for every part of the ad, and used that information to support her thesis, makes me accept her conclusions.  

2. How does she incorporate  historical content, and what does that information contribute to her analysis?

The historical information that Rubin provides allows us to understand how she came to the conclusions she did. The author gives us history on Coca-Cola, and historical context on what was happening in the world at the time the ad was effective. To analyze an ad from the 1950’s, we needed to understand what was happening in the 1950’s.

3. What other questions might you try to answer by analyzing an ad?

Advertisements give us a look into what appeals to society, or specific parts of society. We can use advertisements to figure out what was valued in a culture; what people wanted, what they saw as socially acceptable. You can also you ads to determine what underlying assumptions about a certain group is in society. For example, the “Stay Sweet As You Are” essay uses ads for women to determine what society thought about women.

4. Can you think of a contemporary ad that projects the values of the era we live in? How do the two ads compare?

Most perfume ads depict beautiful women, and the handsome man they use the perfume to impress. These ads show society’s pressure on women to be beautiful and perfect, and how their goal is to be beautiful and perfect for men. These ads both want to persuade their target audience to buy and use their product, however the way they appeal to their target audience is very different. The way Coke was trying to inspire feelings of togetherness in their ads is very different than the pressuring of women to buy perfume so they can be beautiful for men.

Summary:

Melissa Rubin’s, “Advertisements R Us,” analyzes a Coca-Cola ad from the 1950’s, and discusses how Coke used the cultural environment of the 50’s to make their ad most effective. Coke, thanks to advancements in technology and transportation, quickly became popular across the US. Considering the backdrop of wartime, Rubin states that in the ad, Coke is trying to inspire positive feelings of patriotism in conjunction with their product. The types of people prominently shown in the ad, servicemen and veterans, appealed to the value that was placed on the military at the time. The highlight of economic and wartime related diversity, and the lack of racial diversity i

How "Stay Sweet as You Are" Fits the Criteria of an analysis paper, inclass 10/20/15

In this essay, Doug Lantry analyzes several different ads directed at women, and girls. He begins by establishing what he’s trying to get us to believe about these ads, and then continues on to analyze each of his three examples in detail. He identifies when each ad was used, and what they are for. He then breaks down the verbal and visual elements of each ad, pointing out their underlying themes. Once he has analyzed each ad individually, he explains how they are all connected by their underlying assumptions about women. It’s clear that he has researched these ads, from the extra information he provides about when they appeared, and where.

He not only analyzes each of the ads by themselves, but all of them as a whole, showing us how they affect us.   

Using his analysis, he connects how these assumptions affect us still, connecting it to our world. 

Collaborative Exercise 10/20/15

• Need to know what you’re talking about
• be passionate
• convince your audience to be passionate about your subject
• know your audience
• establish to your audience that you know what you’re talking about

Taking Stock of Your Writing, Paper #1

1.   What was your main point (thesis)?  “The Moral of the Story”?

My main idea was how even when you have to write about something, finding a way to care about your writing is infinitely important. For me, I realized how impossible for me to write well about something I’m not interested in.

2.   Who was your audience?  What did you assume about them?  What “audience needs” did you have to consider in writing the paper?  How did you tailor your writing to them?

My audience was the other members of this class, and my professor. I assume they don’t know very much about me or my life, or what I think about the topic. I tried to explain my position, as well as what happened clearly, including information about circumstances they may not know. For example, I explained that my elementary and middle schools had required district writing tests all the students had to take at the end of every trimester, which probably isn’t standard in every school.

3.   What feedback or reactions did you get at various times while composing this paper, and how was this helpful?  What other kinds of input or support did you get from classmates, teacher, tutors, others?  Were you able to make use of it?  How, or why not?

I had a classmate give me feedback, she said that I needed to clarify my point, which I found very helpful when I went to revise my paper. It was really good for me to see someone else’s breakdown of what my paper was saying, it helped me see my writing from a point of view other than my own.

4.   What did you find interesting about the process you went through in writing this paper, and what did you learn from it?

I found it really hard to find a situation to write about. This is always a problem of mine, I have a hard time choosing a subject. I think it was especially hard this time because I dislike writing about myself. Once I had a subject my writing process was pretty smooth. I actually had a hard time coming up with a title though, and I still don’t like the title I came up with.

5.   What questions do you have for me about the paper?  (What part(s) of the paper would you like me to focus on?  What do you see as the paper’s strengths, and what areas are you unsure of?)

I feel like it took me too long to get to my point, the paper feels a little slow in the begining to me. I think I needed to be more descriptive, but I wasn’t sure what I needed to describe, there wasn’t really one setting I thought was important to show to the readers.