blog about today`s class discussion

Today’s class period yet again involved another interesting discussion. The topic of today’s class discussion was about last night’s reading titled “Two Ways a Woman can Get Hurt” by Jean Kilbourne. I understood the various points of my classmates’ decisions on whether or not they agree or disagree with Kilbourne’s argument. I could also tell that many of my classmates’ were getting frustrated with not being able to get their points out as clearly as they were meaning and also with the fact that there was always someone strongly disagreeing with someone else. Of course debates do involve opposing opinions (duh, that is the point), but I could sort of tell that many of my classmates’ wanted to say certain things to my other classmates’ that would possibly not have been appropriate for the class, based on their opinions.

I truly did understand some of the boys’ points they were making about Kilbourne. I understood that Kilbourne did put so much emphasis on the boys being against girls in the commercial ads, however, it is not necessary to go against Kilbourne’s argument because of this. I do not necessarily think that Kilbourne was intending to go about the male gender, however, she was just using the examples that she usually views on her television. I believe we see way more advertisements of the women being the target versus the men being the target.

I am actually glad that we read this particular passage and had a debate about it in class today. It gives me a better understanding of the type of people in our class and more of their way of thinking. I was not what so ever mad at anyone for expressing their arguments and respective opinions in class today even if I was one of those strong individuals opposing their explanations.

kilbourne's argument

After reading Kilbourne’s passage titled “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”, I think more deeply into commercials. A lot of the images Kilbourne uses to support her argument really offended me and made me mad. I feel this way because many of these commercials images were really degrading the female gender and being a female myself, I did not like any of them. Although I have always tried to understand the exact meaning and place close attention to commercials, Kilbourne’s passage makes me wonder more about the intended purpose of the commercial. I have came to the conclusion that many commercials now-a-days usually do have a lot of sexual intent in them and sometimes the advertising part has nothing to do with the item being sold. I clearly understand Kilbourne’s purpose for her writing and I agree with her point of how women can get hurt by the advertisements and how ads can sometimes "unpurposely" offend gender and sometimes race. I agree with Kilbourne for meaning reasons.

I agree that with many commercials women are being judged and it is putting pressure and influence on teenage girls to become this character in the advertisements that men are amused to. I think it is the same thing as watching a model show. Many teens are sometimes women of other ages put so much pressure on themselves to be this idealistic model and be the one that men are most appealing to. Also, we see more of women being treated aggressively in commercials, however, there are also men being treated aggressively and sort o on the watch out for the aggressive women.

In the end, I think that sometimes it depends on how you interpret the advertisements. I truly think that commercial companies are not intending to degrade another race or gender, but it seems like this is what the world is more into and it is sadly a way to catch the eye of the people. For example, since many people think that sex is the cool thing to do and that when you are having sex you are more mature, commercial companies would rather air something possibly sexual just to catch the attention of the people. I honestly think that it is more of the advertising companies adjusting to what catches the people’s eye than people adjusting to the influence of commercials.

rhetorical appeal of television ads

I watched television for thirty minutes with my mom last night. The show we watched was "Mystery Diagnosis" on Discovery Channel. While watching this specific show, when it came to commercial time, I came across two commercials that were pretty appealing. The commercials were Bank of America and Liberty Mutual.

The first commercial was for the Bank of America. I believe that Bank of America is wanting to influence mainly the adult audience to save up anything they have, such as quarters. They made it so the quarter was so powerful and that the quarter could do anything it wanted. They also made the perception that with saving these quarters, you can start a savings account at Bank of America. I figured this commercial was going more towards the adult audience because it was specifically a bank and more adults use banks than any other age. Also, more adults would be watching the “Mystery Diagnosis” show than any other age.

The second commercial was a Liberty Mutual commercial. The point of the commercial was to tell viewers that with Liberty Mutual insurance everything is fine and really nice. In the commercial, there were people doing really nice things for other people and no violence around at all. I had two sides to understanding the commercial. The first side was that with Liberty Mutual insurance, everything is nice and fine and the other side was that people with Liberty Mutual insurance are really nice and you could be one of those nice people if you got Liberty Mutual insurance. I thought this commercial was mainly for the adult audience too, being that many adults are the ones looking into insurance. And then again, the fact that I was watching “Mystery Diagnosis”, more adults would watch the show, which it would make since to have commercials that attack the adult audience.

student directed plays 01/11/08

So I went to the plays Friday and of course I have my different views about each of the plays. There were four plays. The name of the plays were Heaven, Being or Not Being, If Books Could Kill, and Playing the Pronoun Game. I thought Playing the Pronoun Game, the first play performed was a lot more reality like. It just seemed more everyday life than the other plays. I think this because now-a-days you do see a lot more homosexual couples with children and more teenagers falling in love with their own genders. I felt more engaged in this particular play because I was curious to see what was going to happen each day. I think just in general I feel more engaged in plays that have different days and different events happening in the play. I liked this play the best and I would have like to see more towards the end, like how the girls relationship went. The second play was Being or Not Being. I thought it was pretty good as far as having some sense of humor. I was not so deep thought into this one because it was not like everyday life like the first one. Heaven was the third play. The beginning lines of the play totally threw me off. I was confused from the jump. I did not really enjoy the fact that there were only two characters in the play. It was not easy for me to understand what exactly had been “crashed”(?) or what was messed up and what they were scared about happening. I think the whole idea of the play or what I perceived for the meaning of the play to be was not about the whole messing up the computer deal, but it was more about trying to solve what could happen for the problem to be solved, I think. I was totally confused about that play from the beginning to the end of it. The last play, If Book Could Kill, was REALLY confusing for me. The only part that I really understood was that the bookstore owner did not want to give back the story to the girl because he was pretty interested in it. I understood that he wanted to get down to the gist of the girl’s writing and he wanted to understand why she was writing what she wrote. I personally did not understand the girl’s writing either. But one thing that I thought about towards the ending of the play is that the bookstore keeper in the girl’s writing was about the actual man in the bookstore all along. However, I did not understand if all the writing was about his life or was it just that part? I look forward to talking to Lamags about the plays to get a better understanding of the ones I did not understand and to just have a general discussion about the first two. I am glad I went though because discussions with Lamags are fun and interesting.