Crickets and Culture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv1RaCVmls8&feature=related

Cultural reinforcement is something that every member of a society desires. Robert Scholes, the author of "On Reading a Video Text" defines cultural reinforcement as "the process through which video texts confirm views in their ideological positions and reassure them as to their membership in a collective cultural body." It is with careful knowledge of a culture that a video text will affirm their relationship to this culture while building a ground for the observer to stand on so that they may also solidify this relationship. Scholes, in his essay, takes the example of a Budweiser commercial as a source of relation to a video text. With the commercial taking us through the life of an umpire going through to the majors, it leads us through America's favorite pastime- baseball. For us as a society, to be able to relate to this commercial, we must, as Scholes states, have "a significant amount of cultural knowledge". Without this knowledge, while watching the commercial, we would not know how important it was for the umpire to make to right call, or to stay calm as the manager disputes the call, or why they are linking baseball to America and to Budweiser. Without an understanding of who we are as a society, how could we possibly feel like we belong?
A Career Builder commercial begins with the classic office. You know- lined with papers, file cabinets, and of course, the small window that really has no use. As our star begins to express how he wishes he loved his job, the classic Jiminy Cricket look alike begins to break out into song, and our star joins in. A beautiful broadway duet begins to climax into a chorus of hope and pleading. All is a song of imaginative lust for something greater until a giant spider attacks our dream-catcher. This commercial, without the knowledge of the dredded nine-to-five job, the classic 1940's Pinocchio Disney film or the pop culture musicals that break out into song, this commercial would seem abstract and messy. We live in a culture where things are known. We love to know, whether it is to praise it or to passionately despise it. As Scholl puts it, critics are "bewailing our ignorance of culture, it is important to realize that many American are not without culture; they simply have a different culture". I believe that to be very true. It may not be as elaborate or as metaphorical as many are, but we know our identity and our place in the world. Seeing things like this not only help us to relate to one another, but we can relate on a very innocent level because Disney is such a youth orientated icon. Not many other cultures can look at a singing cricket and know exactly where that fits in. Each diverse group of people must "draw upon a storehouse of cultural information that extends from fairy tales and other basic narrative structures". It is within this vast vault of information that we pull out our true identity and relate, hand in hand, with our neighbors.