Standing Ovation: Harmony's Scholes reading response

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Harmony's Scholes reading response

In this article, Robert Scholes claims the ideas of the power of visual text. According to Scholes, “ a kind of power through the enhancement is our vision.” This statement suggest that when a video is being given, it gives the viewers more of an experience to understand the text more. To have the ability to see a story, instead of reading a story, makes the people who read it more attached to the context. Scholes argues that to be able to see something, it confirms peoples beliefs and understanding to an opinion. Robert Scholes investigated an ad from 1892 to prove that the makers of commercials assume many aspects when it comes to creating an ad. In this advertisement, it shows a black man and women making it big in America by having the man be an umpire and making good calls and at the end having him be rewarded by a Budweiser beer. The producers must assume that most Americans are familiar with the game of baseball because it is known as Americans pastime. This ad also shows an example of the American dream which is shown by the stereo type of a black person, someone who has came out of slavery or a hard time, a wife who is ever so proud of her husband, and a reward of a classic American beer. Scholes emphasizes in his essay that as humans we find success in understanding a situation because we all strive off out our intellectual abilities. This whole scenario of the American dream is trying to sell the viewers beer to show that the Budweiser is a way to express that if you work hard you will get what you deserve. Scholes article overall describes the myths that commercials try to sell to America.
The video I posted was a music video called “ Cath” by Death Cab for Cutie. This video shows an American tale of a person becoming wed and getting cold feet. Even without hearing the words of the song, a person watching it could obviously understand what was going on because in today culture this is known to be common. The expressions on the peoples faces and the movements they make prove this example even without the noise in the back ground. I chose this video to compare to Scholes article about the ad because it is an easy to understand visual. Both of these videos show easy to comprehend American stories which can sometimes be myths. This makes the spectator have a sense of success by understanding what is going on in the videos. This issue is important because it shows how the power of visual context in both examples share cultural myths and assumptions producers make today. The assumptions they make is that ever American can relate to these situations even though most of them can not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY1ahFCYT5k

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Welcome!

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Standing Ovation”! The title of this blog refers to the audience of active readers we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), we encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?

As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike).We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…J).

Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! We are really excited see how far we can take this together!