Standing Ovation: Smell like a man,man

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Smell like a man,man

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

A commercials main objective is to get you, the consumer to purchase something that you may or may not need. They do this is many ways, making you laugh, proving to you how much better it is then the other brands, and simply making you feel accepted in your ideology. Making you feel as if you are part of something bigger and not alone in your beliefs. In Robert Schole’s words it as known as cultural reinforcement, “I mean the process through which video texts confirm viewers in their ideological positions and reassure them as to their membership in a collective cultural body”. Making them feel part of a collective whole, and nothing would sell a product more then by making you feel part of it.

The commercial begins with a man in a towel by a shower addressing the “ladies”, telling them to look at their man and then back to him, then says “Sadly he isn’t me but if he stopped using lady scented body wash and switched to Old Spice he could smell like me”. Almost claiming that Old Spice will more you more of a man and a better one, just by the way you smell. He then informs the ladies to look down and then back up, it then shows him on a boat walking towards the middle still shirtless but no longer in a towel but in a nice pair of pants and sweater, immediately causing you to assume that he is rich. He has a boat , nice clothes, and much more. The Old Spice character then asks the woman to look in their hand and see what they have but wait I have it. “ Its an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love , look again the tickets are now diamonds, anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady”. The commercial has a lot of things going on, it caught my attention, it was funny and I could relate to it not just in the way of the style of comedy but that I also use Old Spice. The myth that is portrayed through this commercial is the generic assumption of what men are supposed to be like and what woman care about in a man. Wealth , Power, and even a romantic side. These are expressed through out the commercial in a way that is easily understood and hilarious. He has not only a boat and smells good, but he has tickets for the show that she wanted to go see and they turn into diamonds, subliminally stating that women really care about these things. The ad’s obvious goal is to get you to purchase Old Spice, so that you can “smell like a man, man”. These style of commercials seem to pop up a lot more in society almost mocking their own product to get consumers on board. This commercial says a lot just about the social standards that we have set for men and women, I know it is a joke but it has a ring of truth in it. Men and women both are expected to look, act, and even smell a certain socially acceptable way. The commercial is for men, but it is directed at woman, trying to talk the woman into wanting your man to smell like Old Spice. Well they definitely got me I do “smell like a man, man”.

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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!