video responce

Have a happy sandwich
By: balloon shop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHD6gA4FIgI

In Robert Scholes article “On Reading a Video Text” he goes into deep detail describing a commercial that he analyzed advertizing Budweiser. He summarizes the commercial by explaining the story of a minor league baseball player trying to make his way to the top, by being a good team player and having good sportsmanship. In the end he is successful and the manager rewards him with a Budweiser. Then Scholes explains his views on ideological criticism and how it is necessary in our thinking and understanding. He states that the viewers’ knowledge about their culture and history fill in the missing information in the video and the commercial uses their thinking to make the product seem more appealing. In his article, Scholes maintains that criticism, positive and negative, are very helpful in fully understanding. And as the theorist puts it, we need to analyze deeply to grasp the concept. Basically, Scholes is saying that without ideological criticism the bigger things, places and people in history would not be as important because they would lose a lot of their value. And In making this comment, he argues that “Plato's work can better be kept alive in our time by such irreverent critiques as that of Jacques Derrida, who takes Plato seriously as an opponent, which is to say, takes him dialectically. In this age of massive manipulation and disinformation, criticism is the only way we have of taking something seriously.”

For my commercial I chose “balloon shop: happy sandwich”. I think this is a fantastic add and it is very good at directing towards an audience. They start off with Olan (character 1) making a sandwich and then his friend comes in and asks if he can have one. Then Olan throws one into his face and he starts screaming, it finishes of with Olan clearly enjoying himself eating a grilled cheese sandwich. The point they are trying to get across is that a Kraft grilled cheese sandwich can make you happy and they do this in 15 seconds. The fact that they can do that in such a short time is because of the video technology and the cultural understanding the viewers have. They know that the guy asking for a sandwich is probably a friend and that Olan is most likely happy with the outcome of his sandwiches.

Katelyn Gordon.