Standing Ovation: Jared's Video text analysis

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Jared's Video text analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

The video I posted is a commercial that was only aired once during the 1984 Super bowl. In this ad the image of “big brother” is immediately obvious. The video text depicts people in a drone like state, all marching to a screen with a face on it. Big brother, spewing out a script that all of the people are forced to listen to. “Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!” says the monitor. While this is going on an independent women runs through the halls, evading security guards, towards the giant screen with a hammer. The non drone swirls the hammer and releases it. The hammer is hurled into the screen and big brother is destroyed. An announcer then says “On January 24^th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’ “

Now it’s 2010 and we don’t have big brother and we aren’t all drones. Well, at least in the way the novel 1984 makes it out to be. This ad plays on the ideology of independence and individuality. And for computers back then, that was very innovative. After all the computer giant back then, IBM. Which stands for international business machine. Not exactly your personal computer. This also plays on the very foundation on which our country was founded. Once under the strong hold of Great Britain, we came up with our own ideology and revolted. Gained our independence. Ragged against the machine. The commercial gives the idea that buy purchasing the Macintosh you are being more of an individual. You’re breaking away from the norm. All of these things appeal to the American way of thinking. Since then I think its safe to say the Apple has kept the that image. Macs have become the standard in personal computer. With witty and creative advertisement and sleek, futuristic design. Apple has become the hip, independent, American software giant of our generation.

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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!