pottery barn .

I was not at all shocked by any of the information presented in the “Pottery Barn Style” article. The story presented in the beginning of the article about Hadley MacLean and her new six-foot-six-inch husband was not surprising to me either. I clearly understand that when middle to upper class people are in search for something they believe they are in need of, they are willing to pay the price no matter what it is. However, the thing about this particular story was that they got addicted to Pottery Barn just after buying one bed. They continued to go back to buy more stuff.

Their addiction allowed me to realize that Pottery Barn is doing what they want to do. Pottery Barn is getting customers to not only buy one item one time, but to have them keep coming back and buying more. I truly believe that these people are shamely more materialistic people. I also think that when you buy one thing so expensive from Pottery Barn, it makes you think that you are more part of the high end versus buying some furniture from Walmart. Another example of this would be buying coffee from Starbuck’s, versus just buying some coffee from the gas station. Many would argue that it just does not taste the same, however, I would have to disagree. I think many people go to Starbuck’s just because it is part of the middle to upper class life and people want to feel like they are part of the higher end of life.

But, I am not going to lie, I would love to see this $24 towel, once I get the chance to go to the mall. I would like to see if it is such a good product to be worth $24 or if I would be better off going to get a towel from target that is about $10.

environment of a store

The store that I love to shop at is Target. Target is like the best store to go to when you need anything, literally. I get most excited about Target’s clothes. Their clothing lines for juniors are the bomb!

Target carries a variety of brands in their stores, as far as their clothes. Not only are the clothes really cute, they are cheap. I think what keeps me going in Target for specifically their clothes are the fact that they always have sale racks not matter when you go in there and most of the time. Also, most of the time, these racks are pretty organized to be so popular. In addition, I usually get these ads in the mail that show these cute outfits being put together with Target’s clothes. The ads make me want to go in Target even more after getting hints to fashionable ideas. Overall, Target mainly gets me to love it so much because it has everything I need. It is bright, clean, has nice workers (from what I know of), and carries pretty darn stylish clothes. Being such a big neat store, sending the ads out every month, and having all the things you basically need in your house, influences me to keep going to target.

Other stores that I usually shop at are Forever 21 and Charlotte Russe. I believe a lot the times they put out these huge sale signs, but in reality it is not usually such a big sale or all the sale clothes are very ugly clothes that no one really wants. I like these stores a lot, but for some reason I fall into their sale signs a lot of the times just to see if they actually had something cute on the rack for one. I like Forever 21 and Charlotte Russe, but I am in love Target!

super bowl commercial ad

Tonight, while watching the Super Bowl, I came across some pretty weird commercials, not going to lie. I think the weirdest one was this Diet Pepsi Max commercial, but at the same time it was interesting. Even though the drink is Diet Pepsi, it has gensing in it, but still supposedly low calories.

The commercial starts out by all of these people in various types of settings not being able to basically function or do their work because they did not have any energy. The different settings were people working in an office, men on farms, men doing valet parking in front of a hotel, famous rappers in singers during an awards show, a guy at a bar, etc. They even had commentators acting like they were announcing news from the Super Bowl game, but could not stay awake. During the different settings in the beginning, no one could stay awake or perform any tasks because they were tired and did not have any energy. But after a lady came pass the office with a bunch of Diet Pepsi Max on a cart, the workers drank one and all started dancing and functioning better. So did all the other people at the other settings.

This commercial appealed to pathos, ethos, and even logos. It appealed to the emotion sense of the rhetorical triangle because it showed how everyone was down and could not function without this simple drink and then how there was happiness and excitement after the drink was drank. The logic was that it featured all the different type of settings and acknowledged that no one could not do anything without this Pepsi drink. The credibility was that it had rappers and famous music stars in the commercial that could not even stay wake at their own music awards, rather find out who the song of the year goes to. These stars included L.L. Cool J, Missy Elliot, Macy Gray, and Busta Rhymes. Everyone was bobble heads in the beginning, until they got the drink.

I also found the commercial online: http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&brand=foxsports&vid=49aca8d6-4dba-485d-9f27-657448f8a47f

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.