Standing Ovation: Cora's Video Text Analysis

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Cora's Video Text Analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU
It has been happening for years now, companies claiming in different types of advertising that their product will increase your very own appearance to the opposite sex. Where along the line did we lose the importance of mental attraction towards someone special? We as a culture are so obsessed with the way we are physically portrayed that we now do not care as much about the genuine attraction of personalities between two people. A commercial released in October of 2006 by Axe body spray for men is a good example of this. It starts off with one girl running in her bikini and after about 15 seconds it begins to show more and more girls joining in. After about 40 seconds of watching hundreds of nearly naked women running in nothing more than their string bikinis, it shows what they have all been running miles for; a man continuously spraying Axe body spray on himself. The commercial then goes on the say “Spray more, get more. The Axe effect.” So I am sure we can all understand what this specific commercial is trying to say to us. The more you use our product, the more women you will get.
To be honest, I am pretty sure that men aren’t as ignorant as this ad makes them out to be. I don’t know a single man that would actually go out and buy a can of Axe body spray just so that they can find themselves on a beach with thousands of women in bikinis running towards them. These series of ads from Axe are obviously over exaggerated, yet we all know that Axe is continuing to sell their products at a growing rate. Although these forms of video texts seem to be extremely stupid, they are also very appealing to certain groups of people because of the humor that is portrayed and maybe that is what people thrive for when looking for a new product to use; A company that isn’t afraid to produce a commercial that could turn people away. Maybe it is due to the ads, but it could also be just because of the products themselves. Personally, I would not purchase this product because I am not satisfied by the scents they produce, but I know dozens and dozens of high school boys that use it on a daily basis. So maybe this is the group Axe is actually trying to speak to. All of us that have experienced high school know that the boys there aren’t too interested in having long term relationships as much as being able to get with as many girls as possible. This type of advertising is not good for the future of our youth population because they are seeming to lack the ability to be mentally attracted to the opposite sex. They are being told in many different forms of ads that the way you look and smell, in this case, is more important. You can see the effects of this in our culture today if you are willing to take a minute to analyze all this stuff that is being forced upon us on television daily.

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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!