Anneke's Media Studies Blog

2010-05-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

If our government is not supporting upward mobility than who is? What, if anything, makes America conducive to upward mobility? Is America's economy enough to advance socioeconomic advancement.

source: Blog by Nose Cone

If a person is rewarded with a promotion because they suck up to the boss, what does that say about the equality of upward mobility? How does money help a person suck up to the boss? Does being able to wine and dine the boss support the facts, that the most likely group to move upwards in socioeconomic class is the upper-middle or upper class.

Source: Cartoon Stock

2010-05-26T06:19:00.000-07:00

Upward mobility is an essential part of the American dream. Its promise attracts people from far and wide, encourages Americans to work hard and long, and ultimately is not achievable for many of its seekers. Why does upward mobility so often lurk out of grasp of people who work for it harder and with more determination than many of us can imagine? What are the social consequences of this myth circulating in our country, being passed from generation to generation?

Discrimination in the workplace acts as a force against upward mobility. Even if a person works towards a goal, fulfills requirements, treats colleagues, managers, and employers with respect, prejudices still plague America’s workplaces and can hold them back. Walmart is currently involved in a lawsuit in which they are being sued for consistently paying women less and providing them with fewer opportunities than men. More than one million women are involved in the case, as Walmart has employed millions over its lifetime, and although 65% of the employees at Walmart are female, just 33 percent of the managers at Walmart are women (1). Women at Walmart are sustaining discrimination, preventing them from advancing in socioeconomic status, and moving upward.

Many racial minorities experience discrimination in the workplace as well, as do homosexuals. The Boston mbta was accused in February of paying Hispanic employees less money than white employees. An article for Boston magazine discusses the reasons behind the lawsuit saying, “Several minority employees who spoke at the meeting are carpenters and laborers who work part time at the T and said they were denied permanent jobs that were instead given to white workers with less experience and qualifications (2).” Discrimination in the workplace is an evil that is deserved by no one, but when it is directed towards working class Americans, it can severely impair their ability to move into the middle class and achieve upward mobility.

While women, racial minorities, and homosexuals are experiencing discrimination that hinders their advancement in the workplace, economic forces also acts against working-class Americans, preventing advancement further. Matt Miller, a writer for Fortune magazine, wrote of a potential eye opening experience for the public, in which Barack Obama tells us all the truth, saying, “… here’s what no one wants to tell you. Structural changes in our economy, and new competition from countries like China and India, mean that we’re in a different world now. That pattern we once took for granted, in which our incomes basically kept rising across the board, turns out to be something we can’t sustain. Many of you are earning less than your parents did, and the truth is, many of your children will earn less than you do (5).” While an admission of this by a politician is not soon to be heard, Miller reveals that our economy is not always in support of upward mobility. Our economy is at a terrible low and it doesn’t look to be improving. Parents might believe that upward mobility is achievable for their children, if not for them, but in reality, it is far from guaranteed. We seem to believe that America will inevitably provide us with advancement in socioeconomic class. As Joel Kotkin of the New York Times writes, “The implicit American contract has always been that with education and hard work, anyone can get ahead (4).” Kotkin’s statement has been proven inaccurate, as he goes on discuss further and as an increasing amount of columnists, writers, and curious students of American life have discovered.

In many ways American culture is based upon the American dream, of which upward mobility is a crucial aspect. If our cultural and social lives are built upon these dreams, which often play out as myths, what are the social consequences of their circulation? American is viewed as a place where anyone can advance with hard work, intelligence, and perseverance, but at this point, upward mobility is higher in a lot of European countries than in America (5). Our country was built from Europeans fleeing aristocratic, hierarchical societies in which they worked and toiled with no hope for themselves or their children to gain economic advantage or freedom of any sorts. As Michael Kinsley of the Los Angeles Times explains, “Where you are is the best predictor of where your children will be. And immobility over generations is what congeals financial differences into old-fashioned, European-style social class (3). These days in America a parent’s socioeconomic class will likely be passed to their child, forming a paradigm that goes against the American idea that personal achievement and gains will advance one’s status and provide the foothold for one’s child to lead a better life.

There are a few positive outcomes of our belief in upward mobility, especially an emphasis placed on hard work and individual intelligence and ingenuity. People who are able to create new things often find themselves advancing in economic and social standing. While many Americans might be working harder with the hope that they will achieve upward mobility of some kind socioeconomic advancement is often not achieved, so where does that leave our society? One of the negative outlooks could be found on a small scale, in the way family dynamics are shaped by this myth. If a family has two working parents who work say 12 hours a day at a minimum wage job, they might not have the time or energy to be with their kids. They might be depressed by their inability to give their children everything they want, and family life might be negatively affected. This is just one negative aspect of this durable myth being eternalized in our society.

The term downward mobility is gaining more and more meaning as of late. Kinsley writes of this phenomenon, “The national myth imagines the ascent from poverty to the middle class as a ratchet. But sliding out of middle-class prosperity is getting easier every day (3).” Not only is the achievement of upward mobility not smooth, steady, and machinelike, it actually can easily reverse and move in the opposite direction. While upward mobility is still advocated, downward mobility in our country is being produced by many of the same forces that we fought against to achieve upward mobility in the past. Some Americans really do achieve upward mobility, but now it seems as though more and more are moving down in social class, and the consequences of this movement on our country’s social and economic web are unknown. If studies show that downward mobility is occurring at a pace rivaling that of upward mobility what will that mean for the American identity and culture? Will Americans ever come to terms with the fact that hard work and perseverance might not lift them from poverty or from the working class? What would be the political, economic, and social consequences of such a mass realization or acceptance? What would Americans demand of the American government post this realization? How would the identities of American men and women shift and change?

Is the true myth of upward mobility that it is not attainable for many people or is the true myth that upward mobility ever existed? Miller discusses another aspect of the upward mobility myth, equal opportunity, and links this to the idea that the phenomenon of a specifically virulent American upward mobility has always been a myth. He discusses early America and the advancement of the lower class into the middle class as a result of hard work and equal opportunity, “Yet all this individual opportunity might have meant little had America’s early years not coincided with the kickoff of the Industrial Revolution. The made the idea of economic progress something that applied on the grand scale, not just to particular people with moxie and drive (5).” There are many other coincidences between successes in America’s economy and the inflation of the myth of upward mobility. Miller also cites that the post World War 2 flourish could have been made to look specific to America, when in reality, America was the only country to emerge from the war with a functioning economy (5). Have Americans immortalized and mythologized times of increased economic status for all as something greater, something inherent to American politics, culture, and life?

Many trends point to a future situation in which upward mobility is becoming less attainable, but has the American upward mobility myth always been just a myth? Kinsley writes, “The problem, in short, may not be that reality is receding from the national myth. The problem may be the myth (3).” Was the myth of upward mobility ever a reality for Americans or has it always been something we have used to convince ourselves that the futures of our families will be better than the reality of our lives and that with the power of our hands and determination we will be able to transcend our current socioeconomic level.

Bibliography:

1. Greenhouse, Steven. “Wal-Mart Gender Case Divides Court.” Nytimes.com. NY Times Co., April 2010. Web. 25 May 2010.

2. Noah, Bierman. “New workplace complaint against T.” Boston.com. NY Times Co., February 2010. Web. 24 May 2010.

3. Kinsley, Michael. “The Upward Mobility Myth.” Articles.latimes.com. Los Angeles Times, June 2005. Web. 23 May 2010.

4. Kotkin, Joel. “The End of Upward Mobility?” Newsweek.com. Newsweek, Inc., January 2009. Web. 20 May 2010.

5. Miller, Matt. “The upside of downward mobility.” CNNMoney.com. Cable News Network, A Time Warner Company, December 2008. Web. 22 May 2010.

2010-05-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

As I read the Washington Post this morning, I stumbled upon an article discussing the "new baby boom," present in many American cities. I was interested to know what the article was adressing and where this baby boom was taking place, so I clicked on it. The article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/15/AR2010051503637. html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR) discussed the clash between single adults and parents in cities such as New York, Washington, and Boston, which have experienced an increase in families with children moving into city district neighborhoods. The article started with a story of a man who was walking with his child in a park in Capitol Hill when a dog jumped on his child and was not immediately called off by the owner. The two adults argued over the incident, and Linda, the dog owner, commented to the journalist (Annys Shin) that she found it aggravating that parents did not stay in a closed of play area where dogs can not go. She described parents as "tyrants," who feel entitled to the world because they have children. Apparently, parents whose children get in the way of goings on in neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill are facing forms of discrimination. Businesses are asking parents not to bring strollers into stores and single adults are becoming aggravated with the size of strollers and children oriented contraptions present in neighborhoods where families are moving in. One man quoted in the article said, "People should think about how they're going to get their food once they have a child before they have a child. Maybe have your neighbor watch your kid for an hour or two.... Maybe mover closer to a store so you can walk...Maybe don't have kids." The man was responding to parents whose large strollers take up space on buses and public transportation because parents feel they can not both fold their stroller up and carry groceries at the same time.

As I read the article I looked for trends that Faludi adresses in the Terror Dream. I was wondering whether or not this article would be pro-family or would go against the trends and support the single adults. I knew the journalist would not outright take a side but I thought I'd be able to weed out which side was being victimized and which villainized. Quotes such as the one above make parents seem somewhat entitled, but also make single adults in the area seem whiny and childish for complaining about a stroller and going so far as to say people shouldn't have kids if they don't have a plan for going grocery shopping with a stroller. Some bars in areas of cities that are experiencing an increase in families with children are having "Baby happy hours," to the chagrin of some single adults. Apparently, babies are ruining the mood for adults trying to mix and mingle. One of the bartenders quoted in the article argued that these singles should just come after eight oclock if they wish not to be in the presence of children. Eight oclock is not exactly late, and children characteristically go to bed early, so these people whining in the article about children ruining bar atmosphere makes the singles seem nasty and silly.

A lot of the quotes made parents in these neighborhoods seem to be the innocent victims. Not many parents were quoted in ways that made the reader balk at their self-righteousness or sense of entitlement. The statement made by the dog owner that parents should confine children to a playground area was posed as an injustice to the parents. They were trying to enjoy the outdoors and animals were being allowed to attack their children. The overall mood of the article, while well disguised, was that parents who were trying to move into cities were being met with hostility and grouchy middle aged singles. The article made all adults, single or married without children, in the areas of increased family moving ins, seem incredibly self-righteous and naive. It overgeneralized how people feel about children and parents, and left the parents blameless. If someone repeatedly tripped over a parents' stroller on the subway it would be very annoying and potentially dangerous. Yet, the families are the ones being victimized. The whole article left me feeling as if I should be rooting for the parents, and encouraging them to hang in there. It was a pro-family article, balancing traditional family values of parents spending time with their children with modern trends of families with kids moving back into cities. It definitely followed a few of the trends Faludi discussed as appearing in the media in post-911 America, as it placed an emphasis on the family and parents doing traditional things with children, like taking them to the park. All the families discussed in the article seemed loving and kind, and the single adults seemed bitter and cold. The safety risks and inconveniences posed by parents who feel entitled to the world were hardly addressed. I was driving through Boston last weekend and a woman cut across the street with her child in a stroller even though the walk sign was off and it was a green light. Of course, I was going to stop the car, but the fact that she endangered herself, her child, and the motorists was striking. Parents who feel that kids give them the ability to do whatever they want, because kids are so hard to deal with or because children should be the number one priority of every American, is an issue, one that wasn't addressed in the article even though it easily could have been.

What it means to be an American hippie.

2010-05-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be an American hippie? My friends and peers call students on campus "hippies" sometimes, yet I haven't pinpointed what it means to be a hippie in the United States. I feel as though we Andover students use the terminology to cover anyone who cares about the Earth or who feels slightly different about the college process. These are the two applications of the word that I hear most often. The original hippies were the teenage Civil Rights fighters in the 1960s. The hippie culture that extends from those original hippies seems to have changed. The media's portrayal of hippies is especially interesting as they so often have to over-exaggerate the different characteristics in order to portray the hippie message. That's the thing with being a hippie, so many people embody part of the spirit. There are people on campus who care about the environment and who didn't get caught up in the college madness, instead choosing to go to a state school or a "random" school somewhere in the middle of nowhere, who don't get called hippies. The people who get called hippies are the ones that look as if they care about the environment or tell their friends to recycle or look/act like "slackers." It seems some of this typecasting has come from the media's portrayal of hippies, which has permeated many popular teenage-oriented television shows. A lot of people don't use "hippie," as a derogatory term. It's often used on campus as a loving way of acknowledging a person's crunchiness or differences, but I'm still interested in studying why we are so eager to typecast people as hippies and where the stereotypes come from.

Above is a video featuring Che, the half-nudist, guitar-playing hippie who was in the last season of The O.C (he's the one wearing the red, green, and yellow striped hat). Che is eager to save the world, knowledgeable on some issues, and often clueless, but he's completely lovable. Interestingly, most hippies on modern television shows are completely nice. They are always kind and welcoming and never do they show their angry or mean sides. Che's garb is especially important, as it sets him far apart from the preppy and artsy kids that surround him on the O.C.

The new show 90210 has also worked to capitalize on hippie stereotypes. They've developed a character named Richard who acts and looks a lot like Che, but whose picture is apparently non-existent in Google Images. Richard is a really nice guy who one of the main characters on the show, Naomi, uses in order to try to get into college. He never yells at her even though she stomps on his heart in her thousand dollar high heels, and he graciously accepts that she has moved on to his jock roommate within minutes of ending things with him. Ivy (below) is another "hippie," on 90210. She dresses in floaty cotton/linen clothes, an has a mother who dates rock stars, dresses in floor length cloth dresses, and smokes weed constantly. Ivy doesn't "style" her hair like the other girls on the show, she surfs and hangs out on the beach. She isn't a great student, but is super "chill."

Without using stereotypes it could be hard for the creators of television shows such as these to capture the attention of teens and give them characters that they can relate to. The hippie stereotypes shown on television bother me excessively because a key part of the hippie lifestyle is missing from these portrayals. The hippies of the sixties seemed to have actually affected change. They were dirty because they were protesting wrongdoings by our country's people and government, not because they didn't want to shower or hated soap. They weren't a bunch of high school kids whose only mission is to surf and sit around and not care about school. Sure, I bet there were a bunch of people in 60s who capitalized on the acceptance of such practices as not bathing and skipping out on work and school without fighting for a cause or doing much of anything, but in general the real hippies changed the way our lives are lived today. Without protesters many Civil Rights bills would have gone ignored. Teens who flooded to Woodstock opened doors for the independence we teenagers experience today. They literally ran away from home for a music festival, and defied the standard that teens stay in the house until college or marriage and generally don't stray from the home. The real hippies of these times seem so much more noble than the versions of hippies on television and the people we describe with hippie terminology. My friends call me their hippie friend because I try to recycle and take short showers, yet compared to the teens of the sixties I am the most spoiled, preppy, "unchill," and least capable of changing the world, person on the planet. Here I am griping about a time period filled with people I neither experienced nor knew, but it bothers me to see a term that used to describe young activists being thrown around so generously, coupled with stereotypes that are often inaccurate.

A final little tidbit about the "ways to be a hippie," courtesy of Youtube.

2010-05-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't say I'm a part of the Sex and the City generation, but I've experienced the tail end of the whole spectacle. Sex and the City troubles me as I'm confused by what these women symbolize in our culture. They certainly aren't run of the mill women, women who don't dress up in designer clothes every day and don't go out every night. The show definitely targets upper-middle class women, and I'd like to delve into all of the stuff, things, messages, ideas, etc... that I see in the Sex and the City television series and movies. The women are not domestic at all, they're independent, and live on their own most of the time. They're all working, as a publicist, an author/columnist, a lawyer, and an art gallery manager. They wear beautiful clothes constantly, and go out almost every night. While these women seem like single ladies living it up in New York, they're constantly talking about men and show an extreme reliance on having men around. These independent women are miserable when they haven't found the one, and then they're miserable when they have. They certainly face problems that seem endemic to the female gender or actually anyone mixing and mingling and settling down in a modern world. They worry about weight, and image, and they've addressed the subject of STDs, cancer, and other worries that often appear in an adult's life, (or that I assume appear in the lives of adults). The independence that Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha demonstrates is decidedly temporary. They live for the future men in their lives, and look forward to settling down and living their lives with a partner, usually a financially stable one. Even Samantha, who is by far the most free-spirited and least likely to settle down of them all, ends up spending five years in a monogamous relationship with a movie star before breaking free and getting back to her man-eating ways.

The one thing they never seem to worry about is money. They live decadent lives that are stable. Their apartments are beautiful, their clothes flawless, and constantly regenerating. They eat out every meal at fancy restaurants and attend over-the-top events. Money, something that dictates the lives of most Americans, even those in the middle class, doesn't even come up in the show. It's easy to absorb oneself into the narrative and sparkle, but there is one key thing missing in these women's lives, the worry about money.

Another interesting part of this television show is how the writers address the topic of children and the roles children play in a woman's life. Children in Sex and the City are like accessories. They don't get in the way of all the glamour. In the first movie, Lily, Charlotte's adopted daughter sits around while they discuss "grown up" stuff and then answers a phone call by saying "sex." She clearly has spent a lot of time sitting with the women as they discuss what they almost never stop discussing. In the trailer for the second Sex and the City movie, Carrie tells Lily that their lives are like the Princess Jasmine, except "with cocktails." Domestic life doesn't disallow Miranda and Charlotte, who have children, from traveling to Abu Dhabi for a major vacation in the second movie, even as Charlotte complains about how overwhelming motherhood is. Middle class women can't fly to Abu Dhabi with a bunch of girlfriends on a whim, and it seems questionable that the rest of them, who are not stay at home mothers but who work, are able to free themselves from their lives as easily.

I'm wondering how Sex and the City contributes to the idea of the New York woman and her life in the city that pervades my generation's goals and plans for the future. For starters, let's say that four normal, real girls were able to secure the jobs that the women in Sex and the City are lucky enough to have. They probably wouldn't be able to afford the apartments that these women have, in such great locations, and the clothes, nor would they so readily meet men of such different backgrounds. Working women in New York seem to be very busy, and probably mingle primarily with men in their offices or in their trade. My friend's sister works as a second year lawyer in New York, and works from 6 to 10 some days. She doesn't get to go out to parties or balls every night, and while she has a beautiful new apartment, she doesn't have a relationship and hasn't met many people since moving to New York from Yale law school. So many girls dream of ending up in New York one way or another, whether it's as an actor or singer or a lawyer or doctor. I have many friends who aspire to life after college in New York. They literally dream of things found in Sex and the City, of glamorous parties, and fashion shows. Two times at Andover, I've had friends compare a group of people to the women from Sex and the City. Freshman year I was Charlotte, this year I'm Samantha. I have little in common with the women, yet at some point someone thought I had "mannerisms" like Charlotte, and looked like Samantha and these things instantly secured a spot for me in the Sex and the City fantasy. A lot of my friends will probably end up wealthy, like these girls, and will end up with wonderful jobs, but they aren't going to fall into them after Andover.

At Andover, we've spent four years as very privileged people. Our parents give us monthly allowances so that we can go into Boston, and go downtown. We have activities planned and paid for us by the school, and we live in a beautiful place surrounded by people who are intelligent and thoughtful and push us to think for ourselves and to think about the world. When we look into the future it looks like it'll be similar to the life we live now in terms of financial stability and intellectual pursuits, yet that just doesn't seem to be realistic. My parents will absolutely cut me off after medical school. They've dropped a small fortune on Andover and on the programs I chose to do my upper year, and I imagine will continue to spend a lot on me so that I can pursue the education I want. They're amazing people for paying so willingly for everything I've wanted to do in my life, and I would feel quite strange packing up after college or med school and going to New York and continuing to live off of their money to maintain a privileged lifestyle until I get off the ground. There's no way I'd be able to get to New York and immediately start living a life of glamour like the women from Sex and the City. We girls also seem to forget that these women are not in their twenties. One of the main things that plagued Carrie in early Sex and the City was turning 30. They've had eightish years to make money and settle down, but we never saw the studio apartments or the late night jobs and takeout dinners. Shows such as Gossip Girl further glamorize the New York lifestyle, as the characters who have just graduated from high school, all live and work in New York and live luxurious lives. They are openly wealthy and privileged though, and overtly mooch off of their parents, so it's a little less conceivable that we would ever live their lives. With Sex and the City we've seem to have been convinced more that we'll be able to live a life like this. Sex and the City women don't talk about how lucky or abnormal their lives are. Noooo, they're normal girls. Sure, they're incredibly fashionable and gifted, but in the end, they're just a group of gals trying to find love in the Big Apple. Even with all of my qualms and concerns about a dream like this, I still want to end up in New York. The glamour means less to me, as I hate wearing high heels and would do terribly released upon high society, but I want an exciting life. More than anything these women seem cosmopolitan and happy. Even with all their man troubles, everything turns out okay. Since they all have different careers and personalities, it seems conceivable that anyone can find a life like theirs in New York. I want to be a doctor, and I know I have many 21 hour days ahead of me and years of working holidays, but I would love to do it in a city where dreams come true, and be surrounded by interesting people. The myth of Sex and the City is a dangerous one, as it sets up any middle class girl to believe that a wonderful life in New York City is attainable no matter your hair color or shoe size or career. Faludi's theses that in post-911 America there has been a pull back to the house is represented in Sex and the City as well. Even though in the first few seasons none of them settled down, now they're all looking to settle down and have children. Sure, they don't represent the family with three kids living in the burbs that seems to be representative of the post-911 family mold, but they represent the desire to be domestic that has been sparked in women in America. None of these girls are feminists. The closest one to a feminist was Miranda, who ended up taking her cheating husband back, and settling back down in her family based life. In one episode Carrie and Samantha even go to a firefighter's gala on an island at which firefighters of the town will model for the guests. They end up meeting firemen and having a great time, and in the episode there are women oozing over the firefighters. I see a lot of Susan Faludi's theses manifested in Sex and the City, even behind its facade of individuality and free-spiritedness.

2010-05-04T19:54:00.000-07:00

I look around my room and see accents of colors amongst the muted tones I usually prefer to decorate my room in. My bedspread is a very pale blue-gray, the furniture I brought from home brown and white. I don't really see any pink in my room. I don't see magenta or baby pink or floral colors involving every shade of pink, yet I feel as if I'm expected to love pink. I have nothing against pink, it's a perfectly nice color, but I wouldn't pick a pink shirt over another color except for maybe olive green, and I certainly wouldn't want to decorate my room in pink. Pink is one of many things I feel I'm supposed to identify with as a girl attending Andover. I have shirts from sports teams and dorms that always have pink on them. The senior girls pinnies many girls have ordered for the spring are bright pink. Of course, girls are expected to identify with pink across the globe, but something about living in a dorm emphasizes for me all the things I'm expected to be as a girl. My room is decorated with scarves, flags, and a map of Maine. People come in my room, and remark on how sparse it is. They wonder how I can live in a room so bereft of color and wall hangings. In fact, my map of Maine brings me more comfort than I could ever get from an extra stuffed animal or posters of dreamy boys all over my wall. The happiest times of my young life took place in Maine last year during my year away from Andover, and I feel warmed by the site of the tiny little Chewonki campus on the broad expanse that is the coast of Maine. The flag of the bahamas I have hanging above my bed reminds me of Island School and all the peace I found there, but I feel as if my room is viewed as a sparse and cold place for its lack of fuzzy, furry or heavily muscled things. My friends who remark on my sparsely or inadequately decorated room have pictures of bunnies and models posing amongst balloons and posters of Twilight characters on their walls. Some of them have cards from their parents and boyfriends and one has a James Dean poster, but in general when I go into their rooms I'm confronted by lots and lots of random things. Many of the things mean nothing, some random bunny in an advertisement for ice cream doesn't mean anything. James Dean could hardly mean something to us as we weren't even alive for his career, fame, and life. A lot of their bed spreads are pink and green, and an abundance of pillows can be found heaped on the beds. I had an allergy attack sitting on one of their beds, as the pillows were stuffed with some kind of weird pillow stuffing, and my friend said that that happened to her often. I asked why she left all the pillows on there, and she said because they were comfy and they looked nice. Im perplexed by this desire to openly show ones ability to be comforted by nice things, even nice, generic things infused with little meaning.

Having an allergy attack while leaning on an ornately decorated floral covered pillow must have a lower comfort level than leaning on a normal rectangular, pillow-cased pillow. Seeing pictures of family members or things that mean something to us is more comforting and homey than pictures of random animals and men right? I'm confused by this trend and why I feel the need to fluffisize and pink-out my room. In some ways our rooms are the only way we can distinguish ourselves amongst the rest of the forty girls in the dorm. Is the decorating a way to show other girls that we live up to the standards of comfort and coziness that girls are expected to cultivate? With things such as clothes and makeup, boys are often who we target our appearance to, but why do we feel our rooms need to be so dang pretty. What are we even trying to prove? Sure, Andover is a stressful place and going home to a comfortable room is an important part of unwinding, but why is our idea of comfort apparently so homogenized? Of course, a soft fluffy pillow is comfortable physically but why are cutouts of other people and other people's animals comforting? Why is seeing the picture of a while attractive, completely unknown to us actor? What about throw pillows that cause allergies is comfortable? If we decorate our rooms in this way in order to stand out, why do our rooms look so similar?

When one of my friends entered my room, he immediately commented on how it was so "artsy," as if I was trying to appear to not be like other girls. I immediately asked him what he meant, partly because I was angry at being accused of trying to be "artsy," and partly because I was interested in what he thought made a girl's room. He pointed out that I had a throw at the end of my bed, something that only "chicks" would have, and said that all the shelves I had with clothes was a girly thing, as well as having all my shoes lined up against the wall. Apparently, girls are supposed to be organized and neat? The "throw" at the end of my bed is a ratty old blanket I had from camp that my mom brought me after I woke up with what felt like ice cubes in my blood in November. I needed that throw, it wasn't about show. He pointed out how the lack of bright colors and wall decorations made it seem like I was trying not to be a girl, but all the neat stuff was indicative of my gender and gave away my real persona. Wall decorations? I have a map and a flag, as well as some dark colored silk scarves hanging on my walls. Apparently, he expected "pictures of dudes and flowers." Alright...

When I google, "pottery barn teen," above is what I found. Pottery Barn kids elicits:

If teenage girl are being told their rooms should look like the first two, and mothers are being told that their little girls' rooms should look like this, no wonder the pink, plush, fluffy girls room has become such a staple in girls dormitories at Andover. We are the Pottery Barn generation. No one knits their own bedding anymore, and more often than not it's easiest to order an entire bedroom on Pottery Barn than worry about picking out disparate parts and bringing them together in a bedroom. Bedrooms are meant to be slept in but we treat them as some extension or expression of who we are, yet we seem to cheat and buy all the same stuff from one store. Do we decorate our rooms like this to escape criticism and give the illusion of fitting in? Is it easiest to just not attract attention to our rooms by decorating with other things? A Pottery barn bedroom is a luxury, so is furnishing our rooms like those above a sign of status? I wonder if Pottery Barn sales went up after 911, when there was a shift back towards conventional families. Pottery Barn is "modern," it's furniture made of new materials, but its advertisement display images of families coming together, and kids who spend time alone in these ads, are spending it in the rooms their moms decked out for them with everything they'd possibly need or want. The families in the ads are perfect, the parents give their kids their own bedrooms, yet they all end up coming together as a family. They balance the modern movement of children away from the home, towards independence at a younger age, and keeping family values of trust and loyalty alive. Do we buy furnishings like these for ourselves and our kids because we really believe they're the best, the most adept at creating a truly comfortable place to live or because we believe it creates a comfortable landscape, capable of giving off the illusion of pure domestic bliss. What is true American comfort? What do Americans value when we want to relax?

Dove

2010-04-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

I've shown this video before in this blog, but in the spirit of examining what makes an American woman, I've decided to reexamine this expository and enlightening video. Women in America are expected to conform to certain standards of beauty, as are men. Being a woman in America is very different from what women in America are expected to look like. One day in seventh grade, I went with my friends to CVS, and bought a panoply of women's magazines. I bought a few teen based ones, Teen People and Cosmogirl, and then I bought Instyle, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, People, US Weekly, and Glamour. I got home, broke, my last 30 dollars spent on the purchase. I was ecstatic though, and I spent the three hours from 4 to 7, when my parents got home, first reading the magazines and then putting pictures of models and celebrities all over my wall. Literally, all over, the four walls of my room were covered ceiling to floor with magazines. When my parents got home they laughed at my project, joking about how I always found some way to have fun, usually one that involved scratching my walls and peeling paint off with tape. Before these pictures, my wall was covered with greeting cards from my entire childhood, which I unceremoniously ripped off in my haste to cover the wall with magazines pictures. My parents left me alone for a while as I continued to flip through the magazines, but later they called me downstairs for one of "the talks." We had "talked" in the past about boys, about homework, about treating people with respect, all when I had run into trouble at school or camp. I had gone to montessori school for elementary school, so when they released me wild into the public school, I ran into a few obstacles. With every obstacle came a lesson, and this was another obstacle my parents saw in my path. My dad started with asking me questions about what the girls in the photos looked like, what their bodies looked like, what their faces and hair looked like. My dad and I have always been close, so I didn't feel particularly uncomfortable talking to him about how large the models decolotage was or how thin their legs were. Alright, I might have felt a little uncomfortable, but it soon subsided.

My mother sat to the side, trying to be supportive, probably wondering where this talk fit into her profession. My mom is an opthalmologist and cosmetic surgeon. She has saved the vision of countless children born with droopy lids or hurt by dog bites or tree branches, things that often confront children's faces, but she had also fixed a lot of women's wrinkly foreheads. My mom isn't a plastic surgeon, she doesn't give liposuction or perform facelifts or breast augmentations, but the lines get a little blurred when you're trying to tell your daughter not to try to look like models yet dealing with old women trying to look younger. Most of the women I see at her practice are actually really young, within their late twenties and thirties, and still getting cosmetic surgery. My father focused on trying to have me identify how unrealistic the images were. They were photoshopped and airbrushed. He quoted my wonderfully feminist aunt saying, "women have pores. These women are abnormal for not having pores." I pointed out how one of the women had her arms above her head but had not a tiny shadow of underarm hair. It was completely smooth, and the color blended right into the rest of her skin, yet her hair was dark. I remember rolling my eyes a few times, wondering why I was being subjected to this, but I was still excited to participate in an adult conversation with my parents. In the years since then the importance of this conversation has become very clear to me.

I've tried to resist pressure to look a certain way in high school. In middle school, I went with the flow, which tended to lead my friends and I toward trying new beauty decisions, often using magazines as a guide for achieving further beauty. I plucked my eyebrows to the point of near extinction, I tried every face product available on the market to try to make my skin better, I wore mascara and eyeliner and eyeshadow. I didn't do anything extreme, but I definitely tried to change how I looked. Midway through freshman year I had a bout of homesickness that lasted about a week, during which I thought about all the things my parents hoped I'd get out of Andover. I didn't want to miss them, to be sad, so I tried to live up to how they hoped I'd live my life, not so that I'd do what they wanted, but so that I'd be happy. I knew they'd be sad to see the five pounds of makeup I had added to my face since eighth grade, which I toned down over break. I knew they'd be unhappy to know that I woke up a half an hour early in order to straighten my hair. I decided to stop it all. I stopped wearing makeup, cold turkey. I didn't turn my straightener on again for the rest of the year, and haven't turned it on since. I stopped it all. For better or for worse, I've cared less and less about my appearance as time has gone on. I shower every day, and make sure my eyebrows don't get too terribly bushy, but besides for a tiny bit of makeup every once in a while, I try not to worry. I have loved the extra hour of sleep I've received, now I use it for breakfast at Commons. Sometimes my friends comment on how often I don't shave my legs or how long it gets in between shaving, but I laugh it off. Sometimes they call me their earth child or dirty hippie, but I'm okay with it.

I watch this Dove video pretty often, whenever I find myself surfing youtube. The girl that enters the beautification process is ordinary looking. She looks like a normal person, not particularly striking, but perfectly nice looking. By the end of the video she's a whole new person. This new person not only doesn't resemble the old, but is entirely unique. Looking at a billboard and seeing an image of the model, I might think, wow she has nice hair, but there is no girl behind that face. It's all fake, and without Dove I would never have known how fake it all really is. My parents tried to explain it to me, I've listened to my aunt discuss it countless times, ranting and raving about her daughters exposure to photo shopped images such as this one. I never imagined it all went so far, to the point where her eyebrows are being lifted, her lips stretched. It's unreal how fake the girl on the billboard is, and I hope that this video continues to circulate because it shows teenage girls, and boys, that it's important not to try to conform to a standard set by a billboard. Sometimes I wonder why our society demands models to look this way, but I realize often that it's because we want to look at beautiful things. Advertisements tend not to be brown and gray, they're usually bright and colorful. We respond to attractive things, but ugly or just plain ordinary things don't capture our attention as easily or they might even turn us off from buying a product. There is a standard of beauty that is appealing to our eyes and brain processing. Proportions of the nose to the mouth to the neck and so forth matter when our eye glimpses a person. Our brains assesse naturally the way a face looks, and will respond to proportions. The Golden Ratio is the mathematical explanation for this standard, but I think our country has developed a standard of its own. Sure, we might think one model is more beautiful than another if the first fits this Golden Ratio, but we don't want to see a beautiful face with chopped off blue hair and piercings all over the face. We have our own standards of what makes a woman beautiful, and it includes long hair and unblemished skin. Proportions and ratios might go into it, but America has developed its own standards, which are being passed down to teens. We're expected to meet those standards if we want to be beautiful, and to look for them amongst our peers.

2010-04-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's difficult to get a sense for what it means to be an American man. I look around me and I see men of all kinds, and I wonder if they're being pressured to conform to a standard or if I'm projecting an image upon them. I do see a lot of stereotype creation, cultivation, and fulfillment of male characters in television. Below are two of the boys from the CW show 90210. They're supposed to be sophomores in college, yet they look like 25 year olds who spend all their waking hours not studying but working out, tanning, and highlighting their hair. The actor who plays Teddy (the blonde one) is actually 32! He's two times as old as the character he's playing on the show. Liam's character is played by a 27 year old! Sophomore year of high school most boys are still small and shrimpy, they still haven't developed completely. What does it tell them and tell teenage girls about how a sophomore in high school should look? These men are really buff. They're conventionally attractive, with blue eyes and monstrous biceps, but they aren't high school athletes who jog around the lax field for an hour and a half per day, they're full grown men.

These boys aren't boys, they're men. This makes me think that American boys are expected to be men at an early age, and American men are expected to be even more manlier. There is one sensitive boy on 90210. He started out as the hopeless virgin who by some strike of luck, gets seduced by the hottest girl in school. It just so happens that this girl is pregnant with another persons baby, and he has a lot of money to pay for her hospital bills. He's a nice guy, but he's also loaded. He's expected to care for his pregnant girlfriend, and makes up for muscle tone with money. He represents another side of manliness in America, a man who can care for a girl using personality and available resources rather than sheer power. To be a man in America is to be able to provide for your woman and children. As Mad Men demonstrates, Don feels like he needs to provide for his wife in many ways, and sacrifices his happiness many times to be with his wife and family. When Betty needs a psychologist, it's a huge crisis of faith. Betty and Don are supposed to be happy, and not need a psychologist. Don is supposed to be able to give her the life she wanted and needed. The same thread of protection of women continues today. Even in the times before 911, American men were expected to provide for their women. They seemed to be more inclined to remember this projected duty and recognize that giving women the ability to free themselves from societal pressures and inequalities in the workplace. In the 90s show Friends, the boys are relaxed and funny and the women hold their own, yet at the end of the day the show is all about love and families. One of them raises a baby with his ex-wife who is now a lesbian. While American men are expected to be able to provide for women, they seem to be encouraged to be selective with the women they choose to provide for.

In high school boys seem to be pressured to treat women unworthy of their attention pretty poorly, and to select women who are small and delicate, ones that they look like they need help or male attention. I wonder if this conflict of expectations is recognized by a lot of boys my age, and how it affects the way they think about themselves, and think about their friends. I see the boys at Andover sometimes balancing these two different ideals. They treat girls with a little less respect than would be nice ,yet put a lot of pressure on themselves to do well in school and athletics. I've heard boys in one of my classes worry out loud about college, letting their guards down, and then immediately covering it up with a snide comment or just falling completely quiet.

I'm not sure when boys are expected to start "protecting" or providing for girls. In 90210, the 16 year old nice guy takes care of his pregnant girlfriend, while the other two buff boys surf on the beach and use the girls on the show. Occasionally a serious relationship crops up, but almost always it ends in a cheating scandal or a fight over growing apart. Relationships on the show are intensely cliched, with the boy being disinterested, and the girl completely obsessed. There's a fourth male character on the show, Ethan, who plays a part in between buff and disinterested and care-for-your-pregnant-girlfriend. He tries to be nice to girls, but can't quite succeed as he goes through relationships very quickly. Interestingly enough, his body type falls in between buff and scrawny, emphasizing further his place on the show.

While Ethan demonstrates that it is possible for a guy on the show to get lots of girls by being nice, he ends up leaving a trail of heartbreak in his wake. His niceness causes girls to fall for him, but in the end of the day, he's just a guy, and he gets distracted and moves on to the next girl. His character was also removed from the show midway through a season, so the whole nice guy who gets girls thing didn't really stick. All these character types can be found in most popular teen show, especially those on this network. They teach guys that nice guys end up caring for another guys' baby, while buff, disinterested guys get to surf a lot and hang out with pretty girls.

2010-04-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be an American woman? Is there a difference between an American woman and a woman living in America? I've spent a decent amount of time contemplating these two questions, and have had trouble coming up with any definite answers. It seems that all women living in America are subject to many of the same pressures. There seems to be a societal tendency to separate women into two dichotomized categories. The woman who works and the woman who raises children. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of American women and women in America who live both lives, but society seems to view living both lives as a sacrifice of one thing or another. It seems a working mother is quicker to be called a bad mother if her child breaks their arm or struggles in school. My mom works a full time job, she has a private practice for ophthalmology, and studies with my brother John every night for a science class that has been troubling him all year. My Mom is amazing, yet as soon as John started having problems in science, his teacher implied to my parents in a special meeting that if they were at home more, especially my mom, maybe John wouldn't feel as inclined to rebel against them or waste time playing video games or doing other things that have resulted in a C seventh grade science grade. The teacher happens to skip class once a week to go skiing in the winter, but of course that wasn't discussed in the meeting.

Married women seem to face pressure to seamlessly bring together the disparate aspects of their lives. Married women who don't have children often are regarded in a curious borderline confused borderline disdainful light. Our society expects everyone married to want kids and to try their hardest to have kids. Society also demands of women to want to get married. My mother's best friend from growing up has never chosen to marry. She's had long term relationships spanning five to seven years, yet at age 45 remains unmarried. Of course, it's impossible to know whether or not someone is actually happy with a situation, but my mother and her are very close, and she has always said she's happily unmarried. She treats me and my siblings as her own kids and has been an amazing figure in our lives, but she seems content being a wonderful auntie and an aunt to her many nieces and nephews. I've found that women who don't want children or don't want to get married are sometimes considered crazy or unwell or under some other ridiculous spell or problem or pathogen. The one family in my neighborhood whom my gossipy neighbors talk about is the one without kids. The neighbors think it's "weird" that they live in an expensive town with such a good school system, but don't have kids. Wellesley is filled with nasties like this, but it's beautiful and it makes a lot of sense why this couple has chosen to live there. People who find marriage and life with children the ultimate goal to life seem to look for reasons why these people aren't married or don't have kids. In my town of Wellesley, Massachusetts people look more highly upon a divorced mother with children than a single mother, a married woman without kids or a single woman in middle age who has not married. The broken home is less out of ordinary to them than a home without a husband or kids.

Women in America are also often broken up into categories by their looks, their clothes, and their hair. Everything on the surface of their body is scrutinized and judged by other women and men with whom they interact. My perspective on women in America is very limited as I grew up in a wealthy town in Massachusetts, and have attended school in another wealthy school in Massachusetts. However, I feel that women in America are constantly pressured to conform to some standard. The standards set seem to be different for many different representative parties of women in the United States. Even wealthy women in New England seem to be pressured to look different than wealthy women in California. However, all women seem to be told or influenced in some way, to change and to strive towards an ideal of image. The image of a woman is considered a reflection of what their life is like.

Women in my town of Wellesley, Massachusetts are pressured to fit directly into a J. Crew catalogue. I suppose it could be worse, as J. Crew is a store that I really like, but the J. Crew articles of clothing in Wellesley, Massachusetts carry an image of their own. They stand for wealth, for marriage, and for children. Mothers in my town wear J. Crew and Lily Pullitzer. Unmarried women don't usually live in Wellesley, Massachusetts as there aren't great jobs around and most of the reason people move to Wellesley is to utilize the school system. These women might wear these clothes, but without the husband to go along with them other women in the town call them "fake."

An American woman seems to be one that is expected to stay composed in public even during the hardest of times, and if they need help they are to ask their husbands or family members privately. While psychology is always an option for people suffering from emotional distress, our society does not look objectively at people seeking a psychologist's help. We often assume that patients of psychology have some kind of pathological disorder or are looking for someone to help them solve their problems, copping out in a way. When a woman, married or single, with kids or without, who lives a life most would consider prosperous, shows signs of being worn out, jaded or just plain unhappy we look for an answer. We want to know why someone who has everything is sad. Why they're tired. A woman living in poverty in America is expected to hold down her family, to be a support system in a life that is hard on her and her kids. A woman in America is scrutinized and therefore must choose whether to hide her feelings and weather the storm alone or to reach out and ask for help, whether its from a friend, a relative or a psychologist. This choice an American woman must make multiple times in her life. American women seem pressured to balance every part of their life perfectly in order to escape the judgement of outside parties. In small towns or communities in cities in America, judgement and changed opinions can influence a person's life significantly. When any fiber of a woman's life falls out of place, producing a scandal of sorts, it is immediately picked up by society and used as a tool for insulting a woman who works and has kids, one who never married, one who forgot to wear J. Crew on Monday and Lily Pulitzer on Tuesday or one who cries in public because she can't give her kids everything they need and want.

I've often wondered why the women in my town are all so similar. They go to the same places for vacation, wear the same clothes, exercise at the same pilates studios and gyms, and rarely do anything outside the box. When women get divorced they might stop exercising at the same places or wearing the same clothes, the status quo is disrupted, and often I've found that my friends divorced mothers are left out from their previous group of friends. If they don't fit the mold they aren't necessarily ostracized, they just aren't invited to all the old activities or they feel unwelcome. I think the women in my town behave in this way not to be malicious but because they don't know how to deal with someone who has experienced a divorce. They believe that person to be terribly sad and depressed at the loss of their husband, but never take the time to confirm that this is the case. I've known two women to get divorced in Wellesley. One moved away about six months after buying a new house in Wellesley. During that month I never saw her in my neighborhood, I didn't even see her at the school her kids attended with me. The other mother lived for a year in seclusion and then remarried and reemerged in society. She now has five kids instead of two, and has gone back to yoga parties and shopping, almost as if nothing happened. I don't know her well and at no point would I dream of asking her this, but I wonder if she and her friends ever talked about the divorce. I feel as if one day she got married in a small ceremony where few friends were invited and therefore few were insulted not to be invited, and then the next day there was a message on her machine asking her to pilates, and that's how it went. Maybe the women had a heart to heart about the whole situation, with them expressing their reasons for not talking to her for a year, but somehow I doubt it. Like this woman, women in America are subjected to judgement about the many states of her life, judgement that can lead to life changing events or happenings. American women in some ways can never be free of society's scrutiny. A woman who lives her life the way she wants might find happiness, but will always be subject to a condescending glance in the grocery store or from the family across the street. I wonder if America is alone in its inability to comprehend and accept women living outside the norms of marriage and child bearing. Are other societies more open to the shifts in relationships, and more accepting of a woman's decision to have children or not? I can not possibly give a comprehensive view on womanhood in America, as I'm young and relatively sheltered, but I've tried my best to describe how women in my hometown and the women I've met in my life, are viewed and treated by society.

2010-04-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

As I read the Terror Dream tonight I realized that while I understood the plight of feminism in a post-911 America, I didn't really understand what feminism was like before 911. Women won the right to vote decades ago, as well as the right to own property and have a job, so what exactly were feminists fighting for? I've decided to embark on a mini study of feminism in the United states in the 1990s. I lived through the nineties, yet my breadth of knowledge on what women out there, and some men I'm sure, were fighting to provide me with, is very limited. I'm also interested in examining what manifests when feminism is Googled in a few different ways.

I will begin my search by typing "american feminism 1990s" into Google. The first few pages are wikipedia articles, which I'm choosing to skip as I worry the articles could easily be biased or inaccurate. What I did extract from the blurb below the first wikipedia link was the term "postmodern feminists." Since we're living in the postmodern age, I'm refining my search and using "postmodern feminists America" as my second search. The first yielded very few fruitful results, and as I now find so does the second. Besides for Wikipedia articles, the sites elicited are ultra specific, focusing on particular groups of feminists such as black feminists or Argentine feminists. I broadened my search to "feminism america" and immediately found more promising results.

The first page I'm examining is for the organization Feminists for Life. They have various different sayings or apparent motivations of people who should join the group on their mission page. A few of them are, "If you reject violence and exploitation," "If you refuse to choose between women and children," and "If you believe no woman should be forced to choose between sacrificing her education and career plans and sacrificing her child." The website appears to focus on giving women the right or support to be educated and to work as well as to have a family. I immediately wonder what the website is fighting for. Are they hoping to give support to women who struggle with societal pressures to choose between life in the workplace and life in the home? Do they hope to push for harsher laws punishing husbands or boyfriends who beat women? What's interesting is that the top of the browser reads "Feminists for Life - Pro Woman Pro Life. The term "pro life," carries serious weight as it is ubiquitously applied to people who are anti-abortion. Is this a group of feminists who believe abortion is wrong?Apparently that is exactly what this site is about. After reading all the, "if you ares..." there is a small link to the page that uses the actual term abortion. In all honesty the website was terribly vague before this page.

Even after I clicked on the "FFL's mission," page I had to study the site to find the actual mission. These women believe that abortion rates in America are a sign of society not giving women what they need. It confuses me how abortion connects to societal neglect of women. It seems that giving women the choice for abortion is recognizing them as being fully capable of controlling their reproductive lives. At the same time, I wonder if societal pressures make women feel that having a child will interfere in their work lives and prevent them from having a career. I wonder how this site views teenage pregnancy, which often leads to women being incapable of finishing high school let alone going to college and entering a profession they desire. This website has given me valuable information on the reach of feminism. Women in large numbers are capable of being feminists and being pro-choice.

I do wonder though when this group was created. According to Susan Faludi, the post-911 America has increasingly encouraged women to return to the home, to have children and families, and let their husbands work and protect their livelihood and happiness. Is this site a post-911 compromise between feminists and American sentiments? Is it a unification of women who want women to feel they can have a career and have children, and anti-abortion, and in some ways pro family, feeling.

I next Google "American feminism," and at the very bottom of the page I found a site with quotes from a book about American feminism titled, "American Feminism: A Contemporary History" by Ginette Castro. A few quotes that popped out to me were as follows, "Consciousness-raising has continued because of the perpetual nature of the issues involved, and analysis of these issues has gradually become much more profound. The first of these is the socioeconomic oppression of women...," "The second issue that has retained the attention of feminist thinkers is sexuality...," and "The third issue addressed by feminist theorists has been the cultural oppression of women." These quotes helped me to understand a few of the goals of feminism in America. I'm not sure what decade these issues refer to, but they seem to be continual issues facing women. Also, the topic of sexuality was not freely talked about until later in the twentieth century so I can figure that these aims of feminism were similar to those of feminists in the 1990s pre-911 America. Also the book says the issues are perpetual which contributes to my belief that these quotes are a decent summary of American feminist aims in the 1990s. I wonder, of course, what socioeconomic oppression of women the author perceives in America, and how exactly women are oppressed sexually. I'm quite interested to know what these issues are, and how feminists in America are combatting these problems.

The patterns in feminism throughout the ages seem to be based on similar goals. Although at one point in time feminists were fighting for the legal right to do various things, social injustices still pervade our culture. Percentages of distribution of female and male executives and leaders in the workplace still tip significantly towards the side of men. Feminists in pre-911 America seemed to be fighting to lift these percentages, to see change in the workplace, and to also lift societal pressures on woman that constantly push them to change and conform. Some members of our society view women who work and have kids in a negative light. Some members of society pressure women to be thinner or to change their looks in some way. Of course, our society puts pressure on men to conform and change, but it seems that only feminism has taken a serious punch since 911.

Postcards

2010-04-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in Los Angeles, California, I found myself sorting through boxes filled with thousands of old, rather, vintage postcards. I sat there methodically sorting through the various images, flipping over the cards to see where they came from and whether or not someone had actually sent the postcard to another person. The experience was surreal in a way. It felt so weird to be reading someone's correspondence from 1909 and 1958, yet the little connections I found throughout the postcards were amazing. I recognized some of the places on the cards or the towns they were sent to. What struck me most though was how each decade had its own image. Of course, the individual images varied, but there were overall themes represented in the postcards. I'm not sure if postcards are considered part of the media, but I feel postcard makers in history have had a similar control over the masses as the modern media does now. Both determine how people view human relationships, they shape the way humans interact. In the 1910-1920 group the postcards were simple and almost exclusively had bible quotations or scripture on them, coupled with pastel flower arrangements and curly cues curly qs? hmm... Anyways, the general feeling of the cards was that one person was sending the other a blessing. The cards were serious, the images simple, placing emphasis on the language and messages. The postcard at this time seemed to be a vehicle for a message from a person to a person, it was incredibly personal.

Most of the postcards from the era looked something like this. This one lacks the scripture, but it remains simple and delicate. It's not flashy, and emphasis is placed on the correspondence on the back as the front isn't particularly striking or interesting.

I wasn't capable of finding any postcards from the 1930s, but I did find a lot from the forties and fifties. As time went on the cards got flashier, probably as the materials and technology used to make them improved, but this development also matches the way the times were changing. In the forties the postcards focused on landscapes or structures. They didn't display many people or things, but showed beautiful images. As time went on the images became more and more suggestive. I remember our talk about misrepresentation of teenage sex in the fifties. At this time teenagers were having sex just like teenagers today, but it seemed less talked about. Personal affairs such as these were covered up. Public exchanges between people, such as those on postcards, stuck to emotionally dry or neutral images, as to cover up what was really going on. Of course this could be a conspiracy theory of sorts, but what do we use postcards for? We use them to show people where we are and what we're doing. Rarely are postcards sent to people purely for their enjoyment. If we send stunning images of the Virgin Islands all around the world to our friends, were suggesting something about our lives. The postcard might just show a few islands suspended in an ocean image, but what those islands mean goes so far beyond blue and green shapes. Tropical drinks, suntans, water sports, and gourmet foods all lie beneath the images. In the forties and fifties, images seemed to be used as suggestion, similar to how we use postcards today, but the images today incorporate people and material things, allowing them to suggest even more about our lives. Postcards aren't like greeting cards. They rarely have more writing than a scrawled "Florida," or "The Cathedrals of Spain," adorning them. The images are what count.

As time went on the images in the postcards became more and more suggestive. A postcard of the Bahamas in the forties showed people looking at a waterfall, the same postcard in the 1980s might show those people clad in fancy swimsuits and holding fancy drinks. Sunhats are replaced by sunglasses, and long pants and dresses by two piece swimsuits. The general message, however, is the same throughout the ages. The Bahamas are beautiful and fun and the people experiencing the waterfall are having the time of their lives. Postcard makers get to dictate what exactly we reveal about our lives to our friends. They dictate just how much decadence is evident in a postcard, just how expensive the hotel looks. They dictate how fluffy the snow looks on a postcard of a mountain. In a world of infinite suggestions, a postcard maker decides just how much will be visible and how much will be left to the imagination of the receiver.

The images on postcards we send to friends and family often seem to affect the way they view a trip of ours more so than what we write on the back. Postcards are so short that most of what is written has to be superficial and explanatory, ie. "We're having a great time in the sun. So far we aren't too sunburnt but we have gained weight from the buffets!" This is a generic message, and while it suggests something about the trip, that there is a lot of sun and a lot of food, it suggests little about where the trip is or how it's really going. Gaining weight stinks, but an image of a beautiful person sitting on a beautiful beach speaks loudly and says, "This rocks." I would send this message (the one above) to almost all of my friends and family, but I would pick specific images to send to certain friends and family. I might send best friends a different postcard than a friend I'm in touch with but not completely open with. There are a lot of factors that would go into what type of postcard I sent, and how much it might reveal about my life. If I was sending a postcard to someone I knew hadn't travelled much in their life but really wanted to, I'd probably send a postcard with something more interesting on it and less insanely decadent than a seascape and villa such as this:

This postcard is beautiful, but very revelatory. It shows off a fancy and expensive looking house, and boasts a life or vacation in a beautiful place. It's revealing in some regards, and subtle in others. Postcard creators give us the different views on a place or a situation that we distribute to the many different types of people in our lives. Postcards might just seem like a little thing that you send as a hello of sorts, but they are infused with so much more meaning. Maybe I'm the only one who notices the subtle hints, but I think seeing postcards from different decades made this pattern more distinct. It clarified the subtleties in postcards, the little things that might not seem significant but which change the feel of a postcard completely. Would postcards be considered part of the media? They certainly change the way we communicate with one another and the way we view different places or structures or families or people or lives. In some cases, postcards create an entire image of a place for someone. I've never been to Colorado, but a friend sent me a postcard from Aspen this past winter. Now, whenever I think or hear about Colorado, the only reference I have is a smiling family clad in matching ski gear at the top of a mountain. I know there's so much more to Colorado than just family vacations and skiing, but the image is forever engrained in my head.

Public Apologies

2010-04-12T15:35:00.000-07:00

Public apologies as of late seem to be on the agendas of celebrities of all walks of life. The latest is Jesse James' mistress, Michelle McGee. Apparently she wants to apologize to Sandra Bullock because she feels equally as manipulated. According to People.com McGee was told by Jesse James that he and his wife were separated and that she feels terrible for Sandra Bullock. What does she expect to achieve with this apology? She was never famous, no one counted on her to be an upstanding citizen. This flagrantly screams, "I want more attention." An apology like this doesn't need to be issued publicly, if it even needs to be issued at all. This same woman posed a few years back wearing a nazi outfit, indicating that she might like attention. a lot. Also, the interview itself was conducted with Today Tonight, an Australian television show. Apparently no American television show wished to provide the stage for this apology so she had to look overseas. The whole thing makes me wonder why we as Americans demand a public apology for misdeeds. In our daily lives people do things all the time for which they don't apologize. A lot of times we don't even think of apologizing, as we seem to be a pretty unapologetic nation. People zoom through cross walks that families stand at all the time. They don't apologize. We cut in front of one another in the Commons' lines and rarely apologize. Saying sorry a lot of the time is a reflex, something we don't think about and don't genuinely mean. Why do we expect so much more from the celebrities we follow? We often idealize the lives of celebrities. Do we consider apologetic people to be key to a perfect society? Are we all sick of people being unapologetic but just can't get up the courage to say we're sorry ourselves. Also, does "sorry," really change anything? I could spill a drink on my friends computer purposefully, deleting all of her essays and such, and then I could apologize. That doesn't mean it's any less of a disaster. Even accidents can't be brushed off with an apology. People accidentally hit others with their cars. Sorry doesn't make it any better. Even though apologies don't change much, we demand them, and apparently we rate them. Popcrunch.com has posted the "top 15 most insincere public apologies" (http://www.popcrunch.com/15-most-insincere-public-apologies/). On the list were Tiger, John Mayer, Martha Stewart, Michael Vick, and Johnny Cash.

All of their apologies seem not to compare. They're misdeeds range from beating people publicly to lip synching. The site bashes Martha Stewart for not apologizing for insider trading but what she did got her jail time. Who did the writers of this site expect her to apologize to? She did time, maybe not as much as she deserved, and she didn't really harm her fans. How can her lack of apology be compared to Dr. Dre who after publicly beating up a woman said something along the lines of, "It happens." Johnny Cash meanwhile started a fire in a national park that killed half of the state of California's condors. Apparently his apology appeared in his autobiography. He said, "I don't give a damn about your yellow buzzards. Why should I care?" Apart from eliciting a huge yikes from me, his indiscretions are horrendous compared to John Mayer's sex napalm comments about Jessica Simpson. He killed half of an entire statewide population of birds. He started a fire and didn't report it. John Mayer said his ex girlfriend was good in bed. Does it compare? Why do we expect an apology of equal magnitude from every celebrity for every indiscretion? Also, do we as a public ever consider an apology acceptable? It seems we're always grumbling about the latest celebrity apology that didn't live up to our standards. But what are our standards? Maxim.com has a "10 Crappiest Public Apologies," section. The first on their list is Ashlee Simpson, and her apology for lipsynching on live tv. Apparently she didn't apologize, rather said her band played the wrong song. I don't understand how this would leave her lip synching a song playing in the background, but in her case I understand the anger. People pay for television channels with shows like SNL. Even though I'm pretty sure anyone with the most basic cable package gets Saturday Night Live, we still have to pay for the television and the connection. It's a disappointment when someone lip synchs on a show we pay for, and in some ways it really does cheat the public of something. So we Americans demand a public apology from artists who lip synch on live television shows. That's fair. But why do we demand an apology from people who cheat on their wives or get into taped fights with their daughters (Alec Baldwin). What does their personal life have to do with our lives?

In some ways, celebrities' reputations, fame, and wealth are based upon the public thinking they're good people. Tiger Woods' image was based somewhat on him having a family and a pretty wife, but still being a pro athlete. He seemed to be the guy who balanced it all perfectly. Since we paid to watch him play golf, does that mean we're paying for an image, and does that mean we believe he owes us an apology? Do we really feel injured when a favorite celebrity of ours cheats on his wife or gets a DUI? Do we demand an apology just because we're so used to it? What would happen if instead of apologizing for an incident a celebrity just completely ignored it? Would we really boycott their movies or refuse to vote for them? Also, if the law deals with a celebrities' illegal indiscretions why isn't that enough for us? Is doing hard time not good enough for redemption?

I'm trying to imagine a scenario in which a celebrity gets into trouble for something and completely ignores it. Say he cheated with one person, kind of like Jude Law and his children's nanny, but instead of apologizing about it just went on living his life. If he was super talented he'd still get movie roles. Teenage girls would still watch them because he's attractive and had a British accent. Couldn't he get away with making tons and tons of teenage girl oriented movies and just continue on with his career and money making. What if a politician chose to ignore a scandal? Could they really ignore it? I guess the biggest risk posed to their denying or avoiding it is the other people involved. Say someone cheated on a woman who chose to remain quiet. We would probably demand an apology, but what would we actually do if none was given? At what point does a scandal produce a public demanded apology? When it's been discussed in two magazines? A newspaper? In some ways the media seems to set us up to demand apologies. I suppose it gives them more to do. They can interview a celebrity they've bashed with criticism and sell tons of copies of the interview. If the media hadn't published stories about Tigers' kids and his wife's betrayal would we be so worked up? If the media hadn't shown pictures of the gross girls Jesse James cheated on Sandra Bullock with and written stories about unprotected sex and potential STDs would we be as angry? Also, Jesse James' is barely even a celebrity. Even if we wanted to say we wouldn't vote for him or pay for his movies, we probably would have little to do to punish him for what he did. He has one television show. Are we going to keep watching it now because he apologized? We seem to be set up to demand interviews filled with apologies. We want press conferences only after we see the apparent aftermath and wreckage of a scandal. The scandal itself isn't interesting usually. People cheat on their wives, they cheat investors, they cheat on contracts. Does the media influence us to demand apologies, building on inherent desire for retribution that lives in the American soul? Is the desire for people to apologize for something done wrong inherent to humans or inherent to only some? Is it even inherent?

The Media's Portrayal of Preppy

2010-04-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

The media, specifically the entertainment industry, portrays preppy women and men in unique and over-exaggerated ways. Identifying stereotypes assigned to preppy people is not incredibly important in surpassing negative typecasting or marginalization in the media, but I still find it interesting to examine how preppy people are portrayed. I've identified two types of preppy, country club-esque preppiness characterized by argyle, pastel colors, and alligator embossed sweaters and new wealth preppy characterized by fake tans, gold chains, and huge sunglasses. The first form of preppy often comes attached to wealth and intense neurosis or intense laziness. Sometimes they play the super controlling and anal-retentive best friend or mother and sometimes they play the lazy frat boy who doesn't need to do anything as they'll inherit their parents wealth and/or big bucks empire. Below are a few pictures of characters who fulfill this type of preppy.

Above is Taylor Townsend from the popular teen show The O.C. and Andy Bernard from the Office. Taylor represents the neurotic preppy who has a rough family life and tries to take control of life through controlling others. She's actually a bit of a tragic character because her preppy guise is all part of her trying to fit in, and in some ways she superimposes the preppy stereotypes upon herself in order to fulfill some standard she fells she needs to reach. In some ways preppiness in the media is used to represent misguided or misunderstood characters. Andy Bernard above spends all his time talking about his ivy league education at Cornell and flaunting his bow tie collection, but he has absolutely no game and is constantly failing at picking up a girl in the office who already really likes him. He's a hilarious character and is completely lovable as he's very genuine in his pursuit of her and his pursuit of the other's acceptance, but he seems to use preppiness to pretend to be something he's not. Only the makers of the documentary in the show are able to capture his true side.

Below is a video for Smirnoff alcohol that blatantly pokes fun at the phoniness that is preppiness. Preppy people in the media are often portrayed as fake. While some of them are used to represent troubled characters like Taylor and Andy, some are used to represent the necessary big jerk. Sure, people who attend prep schools and wear lilly pulitzer and vineyard vines can be perfectly nice, but often they're used as the prop for making jokes about wealth and privilege. This video is really funny, and it also represents an amazing advertising feat. I appreciated all the preppy terminology they use, including "wasp," "Martha's vineyard," "Greenwich," "New England," "yacht," "ivy league educations," topsiders." Many of these words don't naturally involve preppiness, but have become associated with wealthy, preppy, people over the course of what I imagine has been many years. This video epitomizes for me the way the world views people who attend prep school. Of course, this is a huge over-generalization, and I've spent countless hours convincing friends from home that the people at my school aren't all like this.

What is appealing about having character's like this in television shows? Besides for often being humorous, it seems this lifestyle is not exactly envied by many people but reminds us all of what we're working for in our lives. These people are prospering. They have money, they have girls, and they have tangible success. A lot of us aren't looking for polo shirt filled futures complete with yachts and crochet. We might look to find other means of success, but at some point it would be nice for all of us to have tangible success like them. We might want homes or cars or children or businesses of our own.

The West Coast preppy portrayed in the media often represents success in beauty and looks. West Coast preps are portrayed as stunning yet overly made up and tanned, something that while we might not strive for, represents an ideal that many of us look towards. Looks matter a lot in our culture, probably a lot more than they should, and we all have goals for perfect bodies or nicer skin. Some of us just want to be comfortable in our own skin, like these confident people on television are. The below video shows Smirnoff's representation of West Coast preppy. The guys are wearing tight v-neck shirts, the girls close to nothing. The hit words they use to represent the wealthy preppy population of the west coast are "botox," "new wealth," "higlights," "platinum blonde," "implants," "gated community," "designer sunglasses," and "life coach." These words are not inherently preppy but they're used often when describing apparent west coast preppiness.

It's easy to identify the stereotypes of preppy people, from both the east coast and the west coast, but its difficult to identify why these characters appear so often in television and movies. There are many representations of wealth and beauty that can be used in television. It's really not necessary to have wealthy people wearing preppy clothes anymore for people to understand that they're of the upper class. I wonder if it has something to do with the accessibility of stereotypes pertaining to preppiness. We've all been exposed to the media's representation of preppy time and time again and have learned the little undercurrents that run from preppy character to preppy character. Maybe the media uses preppy characters because we're predispositioned to believe they'll be beautiful but troubled, wealthy but snotty. In some ways preppy characters could be short cuts, used to represent the exact things the director or writer believes the public believes of preppy people or they could be used to surprise us. When we see a preppy person who is nice in television it's often surprising. When we see a preppy person who works really hard it's often surprising. The preppy character can be used in many different ways, but they all seem to represent some form of financial and aesthetic success.

Good, Bad, Nice, Mean, Frenemy, BFF...

2010-04-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

The one thing our society seems to demand most from the media is controversy. We look to involve ourselves in debates, tiffs, and sometimes even full on fights. The media dichotomizes every story, something we've talked regularly about in class. Americans are either with the country or against it. They're pro America or against it. There's no in between. Lately I've seen that a hybrid zone of sorts is nonexistent in the gossip magazine section of the media. Women figures especially seem to be broken up into different categories. They're nice or they're bad. They're pop stars or they're rebels who sing rock. They're blonde bombshells or dark beauties. Each celebrity is put into one or another category, and rarely are they described as more than one. The categories they're broken into are not always negative. Blonde versus brunette isn't necessarily a deeply controversial split, but it's demonstrative of the way celebrities are often portrayed by the media. Celebrity brand names are so often based on the categories of beauty and talent that the media places them in.

I was looking at People.com today and found a perfect example of this dichotomization. In this case the media has drawn attention to their constant draw towards dichotomization. There was a photo album titled "Good Girls with Tattoos." People magazine started by placing these women into the category of "good," and then proceeded to point out the one thing they had in common that was particularly surprising and "bad". They act as if this mix of good and bad is a huge surprise, something completely unique to these 10 celebrities. There are only a few good girls out there that have tattoos. Also, it surprised me to see People so failingly grasp for some semblance of an interesting album. Tattoos mean completely different things for each tattooed person. One of the women, Alyssa Milano, has a tattoo of a cross on her shoulder. Does that really compare to the "Nine" Eva Longoria has tattooed to her neck or Julia Robert's children's names. All of these tattoos are relatively mild and if People.com is so eager to show that these good girls are having a bad streak, they aren't doing a very good job. What's so disappointing about this article is how eager I was to look at it. For starters, I find tattoos really interesting. It's interesting to know the reasons behind people's tattoos or try to deduce their meaning on my own. Anyways, these types of faux stories catch one's eye. The whole good girl violating that reputation draws our attention. We're so programmed to think of these celebrities in this way and we forget to even realize that these "good" girls are not just good. They aren't just bad. They're a mix, yet we're eager to put them into one category, and excited when they violate their reputations.

Another dichotomization that's interesting to see in the media is that between friends and enemies. When a couple breaks up the first thing People does is dissect the causes behind the split. Are they angry at one another? Was it mutual? What went wrong? Friends who fight are immediately labeled "frenemies," and friends that escape public critique of their relations are best friends forever or "bffs." People.com has a photo album dedicated to the famous friend pairs out there. The whole thing seems silly, so why do we buy into it so readily? Why do we sometimes demand the categorization of the women and men we look up to?

Each age group and socioeconomic group and gender probably has its own reasons for being attracted to the classification of celebrities in the news. Speaking from the perspective of a white eighteen year old female who goes to Andover, lives in the Paul Revere dorm, and takes Ms. T's media studies class, it seems I'm attracted to it because I feel my life would be simpler if I could easily be placed in a category. Life might be dull in this case, but it seems it would be easier to deal with. Making the choice of what college to go to has emphasized this feeling. If I was a preppy person I might choose one school. If I was just into environmental studies I might choose another school. All these schools have reputations that put them into one category or another and peg them against other schools. Pomona clashes with Harvard. One's "artsy" one's I don't even know how to describe Yale's reputation. If I fit the "artsy" category and knew it, maybe making college and other decisions in my life would be easier. Maybe not. Maybe only I find classification of other people's lives therapeutic in a way. It's gross to find relaxation in watching other people be stereotyped and in some ways marginalized and following their marginalization. These celebrities are barely themselves any more. They don't matter, only their images and publicity matters, yet I find it hard to keep my eyes from glimpsing at these stories and photo albums.

Above is a quiz on People.com that asks readers to distinguish between the actress Kristen Stewart and her character Bella Swan. It really interests me that People has all but convinced its readers that there's actually a difference between the two. Sure, Bella Swan is a fictional character created by the writer of Twilight, but the Bella Swan in Twilight is still Kristen Stewart. Kristen Stewart, while maybe not the most adept actress out there, still made Bella Swan a part of herself. There's no difference between the actress and the character in the movie. Sure the actress and the character in the book are different, but that's because they're completely different human beings. They weren't related until Kristen Stewart signed on to put her own spin on the character of Bella, and bring her to life. People.com "forgets" to mention that Bella Swan is not real. They ask "Which brunette beauty has matching brown eyes." They both do silly. They're completely the same person. While our society likes dichotomizing different people and things, Kristen Stewart is a different person entirely from Bella Swan, they also want to link people together. Everyone's excited when two completely different celebrities start dating or they star in a movie together. We want to know that people who are completely different, or who the media pins as completely different, can come together and function. Bella Swan and Kristen Stewart are sooooooo similar! It's so funny and so great that the actress is so much like the character. Nevermind the fact that one's real and one's fake.

Do we hope that we'll meet people completely different from us and create some epic story? How does our desire to watch disparate individuals interact and meet one another get portrayed in television? Movies? How often does our desire to watch two opposite souls become one influence the truth we are given by the media? The gossip magazine industry is notoriously of dubious integrity, but to what extent is what we know about celebrities truth, speculation or just straight up lies? Of course there are a million more layers to celebrities than we as their followers and the American public never view, but are the layers we see accurate at all? I guess this leads me to ask, are celebrities figments of our imaginations. Are they beautiful bodies with photoshopped souls pasted onto them? Can we learn more about them from watching a celebrity act in a movie or television show than we can by seeing pictures of them as themselves in gossip magazines. To what extent are we contributing to the corruption and degradation of our news system and will the news every be free from public influence and will we ever be free from the news' influence. Will we ever be able to truly develop our own observations and opinions of a certain actor or singer before seeing them pasted across a magazine cover while checking out at Whole Foods. Even places that boast being havens for people wishing to get back to nature, display magazines such as People. Will we ever break free from the gossip magazine section of the news and will the gossip magazine section of the news ever break free from us. For them breaking free of public desire and demands means destruction, giving their livelihood up to journalists who don't want to write rumors but want to write truths. Will it ever happen?

The girls of Glee

2010-04-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

Glee is the new "it" show for teens. It returns to much anticipation and speculation in a few weeks, and many people at Andover await with bated breath the revelations of new Glee couples and scandals. I haven't really enjoyed the episodes of Glee I've watched. They're repetitious and seem to consist of stereotyped, hackneyed characters that have appeared in every teenage based television show since the postmodern teenager appeared on television. The girls of Glee have caught my interest as they fulfill so many stereotypes of beauty, intelligence, and behavior. There's the blonde cheerleader, the exotic looking yet manipulative song bird, the soulful, earnest black girl, and the Asian hipster who does her own thing. I feel weird using this language to describe all these characters, but as crass at it is, it seems necessary. Many ethnic and female stereotypes are fulfilled in this show, yet I wonder what has made characters such as these so popular and so widespread in television. When did stereotypes such as these start in television? I decided to look back at teenage-oriented shows of the past ten or so years, picking out characters that fulfill similar roles.

Above are the girls of Glee. The two I'm focusing on specifically are the ones second from the left and to the far right. The first (Rachel) is the exotic songstress who doesn't really fit in with the rest of the group for her neurotic behavior and inability to get along well with others. The second is the blonde cheerleader (Quinn) who suffers from an overbearing religious family and has dealt with teen pregnancy and cheating boyfriends regularly. Below is the cast of One Tree Hill. Brooke on the left represents the personal-life-challenged teen. She lacks the blonde hair, but makes up for it in manipulative behavior and man-eater tendencies. She, like Quinn, has tried to settle down with a boyfriend but is constantly plagued by cheating scandals, pregnancy scares and the like.

Hayley, on the left, plays the neurotic songstress who, always mindful of her perfect GPA and value system, gets married sophomore year of high school so she can have sex without breaking any of her religious beliefs. She, like Rachel, stumbles into the path of the stereotypical athletic, popular basketball player boy slash male model. Peyton in the middle fulfills a stereotype not completely represented in Glee. She plays the scorned ex-it girl, who, after losing her mother to a car crash, pulls away from cheerleading and life as the popular girl in pursuit of a career as an artist involved in multiple passionate but troubled relationships. Peyton's character is very similar to that of Marissa in the O.C., a show very popular in the early 21st century.

Marissa, front and center, is rejected from her popular friend group after she shoots her boyfriends psychotic brother during a fight in which her boyfriend's life is threatened. Summer (on the left) plays the character of manipulative cheerleader, yet represents a spin on the character, getting her act together, settling down with a nerdy but nice boy, rocking a perfect SAT score, and getting into Brown despite having not done homework for four years of high school. While she does experience a role reversal of sorts in the O.C., her character embodies the carefree shopping, tanning, dating crazy cheerleader type.

Now that I've identified stereotypical characters that have occupied popular television shows for the past decade, I'd like to try to identify the reasons these stereotypes are fulfilled character after character. What makes the blonde pregnant teenager an attractive character to watch? Why do we want to follow the exploits of the self-belittling singer who doesn't ever feel at home in high school? Often times the same girl has a rough family life with an absent father or an eternally critical and unsatisfied mother. Many times we sympathize with these characters, but is it empathy that really drives us to connect with them? Can we feel for and understand what these characters are going through? Many popular girls out there probably feel a crippling self-consciousness as do Quinn, Brooke, and Summer, all manifesting in an extreme tendencies towards manipulation, deceit, and a cavalier attitude towards relationships and sex.

Can we really empathize with these characters or do we, in some ways, want to be like them? Despite their troubles, the messed-up cheerleaders and self-depreciating singers all tend to be stunningly beautiful and successful. Some gain success in the college process or they settle down with a strikingly handsome boy and produce adorable little children. Their troubles are glamorized in these shows. They're coated with pearls and designer clothes, sprinkled with amazing parties and social events, and rolled up into an expensive, bright colored package covered with bows. These girls' lives look wonderful from the outside. They talk about all their problems while sitting on the beach, as in the case of the o.c. or in a stunning school. The characters in One Tree Hill aren't wealthy, but they're all beautiful. Everyone is pretty. The town of tree hill where they all live is pretty. Their houses are pretty. It seems quaint, and epitomizes high school in a small town. These people seem to be living high school the way it's supposed to be lived. They party every Saturday night. They sleep around. They never do homework, yet get into great colleges and receive full rides. It's fairytale land, and it seems that while we can't really empathize with these characters, we wish we could be like them. We have similar problems, but are lives don't seem anything like theirs.

When did female characters such as these become so widespread, and almost essential parts of popular television shows for teens? In the 1950's the girls were portrayed as wholesome, sweet individuals and references to sex were taboo. Now, popular teenage-oriented shows require constant references to sex. Vampire shows, especially popular now, are incredibly focused on sex, and can be found on many networks. I wonder when references to sex and these very sexualized and very messed up teenage girls became staples of television shows. Did television change as our population's attitude towards characters such as these and sex changed or did television start the wave of attention towards these things? What came first? Where are we heading next? What types of female characters will proliferate on television in the future? Is the self-defacing yet beautiful female character timeless? Are all these "different" characters really the same girl inside, unique only in looks? As the world becomes more and more connected will stereotype fulfillment on television dwindle or become more strongly emphasized?

Prep School Recruitments

2010-03-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was skimming the Washington Post's website after having subscribed to its full access pass type deal, when my eyes locked on the words "prep" and "schools." I've been hearing this word combination often as of late, what with my brother applying and choosing amongst private schools and my friends debating the merits of a prep school education to a public one in the college admissions process. I was surprised to see it in the news. I think of prep schools as being old news. They're dated institutions that often seem reluctant to change, and seeing an article about prep schools in the national news section of the Washington Post surprised me. The article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032903514.html), written by Michael Alison Chandler, was titled, "U.S. prep schools push to recruit foreign students." As I read the article I tried to determine the author's reasons for writing it, as well as his opinion on prep schools and their recent actions. I looked for the bad guys and the good guys. In general, the author seemed to view many bad guys in the situation. The main gist of the article is that prep schools are actively recruiting individuals from oversees in order to supplement money lost from the economy. I got the sense that the author believed the prep schools to be desperate, and the foreign students to be weak, naive prey. He gave reasons for the apparent attraction to prep schools, saying that job security and elite college diplomas were promised by American prep schools. At first the American prep schools seemed to villains touting false promises and looking for a pay check. He wrote, "aggressive international efforts are becoming more common for other U.S. prep schools eager to recruit from among rising numbers of East Asian students capable of paying full fare." The language renders prep schools cold and manipulative. They care about money, and are not receiving the big bucks from financially floundering Americans.

For a bit of the article, the Asian students were portrayed as victims, schemed into attending schools that would do little. A third party discussed were the parents of foreign students sent to the U.S.A. He described Chinese parents as "interested in giving their children a running start toward a prized American college diploma." This sentence is not overtly condescending but it makes the parents seem a little bit kooky or aggressive even, setting their kids up to get a job so early in life. The "running start" analogy is a bit offensive as these students don't just get released into America with a few suitcases and a pocket full of 40,000 dollar checks. They are talented students, musicians, athletes. If the Asian parents and American schools are aggressors, then the students are victims in Chandler's mind. Chandler places emphasis on how they have to leave home to go to boarding school far away.

By the end of the article the tone seemed to shift to one of not envy exactly but maybe scorn or even anger. Chandler seemed to believe that foreign students were crowing American boarding schools, and infringing on the American job market. Of course, he never explicitly said this, and maybe I've inferred incorrectly, but his tone most certainly shifts. He writes, "Arriving alone and with limited English skills, foreign students add new and weighty responsibilities to schools." This might be very true. Taking care of young teenagers away from home is a huge deal, but he neglects to acknowledge how much these students give to often homogenous American prep schools. Andover is incredibly lucky to find foreign students who are amazingly smart, and offer wonderful additions to the school, but these students usually speak english. If they don't, that makes them all the more special. They aren't threats or burdens, which Chandler seems to view them as. I wonder what schools Chandler is studying. He listed no data pertaining to the whole "the students don't speak a word of english" claim. The prep schools he listed were all concentrated in the South, primarily in Virginia, Florida, and one school from Maryland. The article seemed under researched. It's goal seemed to be to provide information to the American public on the goings on in the prep school world, the results of a diminished economy on American schools and foreign students, yet I mostly just felt I was being involved in a battle of manipulations and bad parenting. While the article was "informative," a few schools were studied, it cited only a select few schools and it seemed to serve as an unnecessary warning. Why does Chandler seem to believe that foreign students are being wooed to American prep schools, unaware of what they are really like. He seemed insensitive, and often kept his analytical skills at bay while presenting some examples. While he could have analyzed and explained the context of a quote, he left some hanging, allowing him to instill meaning by not explaining further. He ended the article by writing, "Min So Kim, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Chungbuk, South Korea, explained her parents' decision to send her to live with relatives in Haymarket this way: 'My father hopes I study English very well and become a famous person.'" This quote says a lot left at the end as such. He seems to be enforcing his claims that foreign exchange students don't know english and are out searching for something unattainable, even with a prep school diploma. In reality, the girl is probably uncovering many parents' reasons for sending their kids to prep school, they want them to do well. Many parents seem to think that their children will be happier if they have stable jobs and incomes when they're older. Her parents don't seem to be aggressors, they seem to be parents. Chandler forgets to mention where this girl is living. Is she living in a war zone? A decrepit house? Are her parents wealthy but absent? He makes her seem like just another poor innocent soul shipped off by greedy, conniving parents looking to make the big bucks off of the precocious child. There are hundreds of reasons people go to prep school, and yes one of them is in order to secure a diploma that looks good on a job resume. Is there something innately wrong with that? I would love to get a job when I get older, and if I end up having children, I'll want them to work. Working doesn't just fulfill financial needs, it gives a person purpose and is often times emotionally and socially fulfilling. Maybe Min So Kim will receive a more comprehensive education in American that in her town. Maybe she wasn't accepted to any schools near her home. She's in eighth grade and is probably 13 or 14 years old. To quote her saying why her parents sent her to boarding school in order to support an under-researched claim seems silly and misguided. Overall, this news article seemed like a big hunk of bias. I understand many of Chandler's points, and he's a clear and concise writer, but he seemed overtly and terribly biased, and many of his biases seem to affect the quality of this news article.

The Oscars, Female Celebrities, and New Media Meet

2010-03-06T18:08:00.000-08:00

On People.com, the website of People magazine, there is an entire section on the Red Carpet. Displayed from early in the year are pictures of the SAG awards and other award shows, but the Academy Awards have the biggest section, most of it focused less on the awards themselves and more on the appearances of the people nominated for the awards or even those just attending the show. I was surprised to see that instead of being focused on the nominees and the movies, it focused on hair and fashion. Of course, I should have expected that from People magazine, and I suppose that the "Red Carpet" heading emphasized documentation of the time of photographs and dress-displaying that goes on before the awards. I was especially surprised that they focused little on people actually nominated for awards.

There was a trivia of "Guess the Oscar Dress!" and "Oscars' Baby Bumps," all displaying images of celebrities dressed up for the show, many of whom have never won nor have a chance of winning (haven't been nominated) this year. What interested me most was their "Predict the Oscar gown,"challenge. It struck me, scrolling through the pictures of celebrities and dress possibilities for them, how much goes into branding a celebrity, especially how much stalking goes into the branding of a celebrity! Each of the women featured, Penelope Cruz and even Miley Cyrus who has no place presenting at the Oscars as she's an actress on a teeny bopper Nickelodeon show, had a brand associated to them. The gowns chosen as possibilities for them were chosen based on studies of their gowns over the past few years, the jewelry they've worn, the colors they've choosen. These celebrities have been pinned as the cute Southern Girl, the hot Latina, the "mature" children's show actress. It's all there on the site, details of their pasts, and their future! Their brands have taken them to a point where the creators of People are creating a future of sorts for them, based on all the branding they've been subjected too over the course of their fame. What's even funnier is that most celebrities have publicists and stylists that shape their brand for them. They have agents who choose movies. Their brands, based on the littlest things such as how much money they earn per movie, are all manipulated. They're all pretty much fake!

I suppose it's like advertising for Nike if you're a shoe vender. If your business is based on celebrity gossip, you better be advertising the celebrities, even those that aren't the most consequential at the time (those who aren't nominated or aren't even actresses). Even if Nike has a brand new type of shoe, many vendors advertise all of their old shoes too.

How has new media changed the branding of the female celebrity, the way she is approached by the media during times when her career as an actress/singer and a fashionista is being scrutinized and the scrutinization is being funneled into a brand name and image? This year is the 82nd Academy Awards. How has each year, each new technology, each change in the way technologies are used, changed the way celebrities are viewed around this time? Branding of a celebrity has many levels and many influences. A female celebrity's family life, her style choices, her acting career, all go into her overall brand, and during this time, the Oscars, each aspect of her life is examined. Brands are added to each year, they're enforced by years of emphasis on certain aspects of a celebrity. New media seems to allow all these aspects to be compiled, and studied together over the course of many years, the ones that seem most defining or are made most defining by a tabloid or a certain event, emphasized further. A celebrity's brand is years thick, reinforced with new pictures and commentary every year. People.com also has a "Cursed! From Oscar to Split," section showing couples who were present at the Oscars together, but now are broken up. Another section is the "Which Couple Should Make Their Red Carpet Debut Oscar Night?" poll. Couples are starting to be branded together. Eva Longoria Parker and her NBA playing husband carry a significant brand, based a lot on the fact that she's about 5'2" and he's at least 6'2." Images of them together at shows such as the Oscars go into their brand, and every year their size difference is emphasized, showing that they are a branded couple who defy height discrepancies trying to keep them apart! In fact, their different heights, according to the media, represent the way they balance one another out, making them the perfect couple. The Oscars is the time of ultimate branding, so how has the branding changed?

In the 30s Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were famous, the forties, Lucille Ball, Katharine Hepburn, Veronica Lake, Vivien Leigh, and Ava Gardner. Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, Brigitte Bardot, and Elizabeth Taylor all held the attention of audiences and the media in the fifties. So many celebrities have been in the spotlight for the past ninety years! How has the media changed in the way they brand them? How did the Oscars and award shows contribute to celebrity branding during the 20s and 30s and 40s. The 50s and 60s? Were celebrities less branded back then, when brand names were less emphasized than they are now? By the sixties, at least, celebrities were definitely starting to carry brand names that have lasted through the millennium and continue to hold strong.

Above is Joan Crawford at the 1962 Oscars, after her time in the spotlight, but warranting attention all the same. She looks regal, classic, and many of the sites I looked at boast her time-defying beauty.

Olivia de Havilland won best actress in 1946 (above). Vivien Leigh (below) won best actress for Gone with the Wind in 1939.

The photos are in black and white, they show women wearing different styles, but they are all in the spotlight. They were all subjected to the media's spin on their apparel and the awards they won. While looking for these photos I found little commentary on the actresses from the time of their fame. This probably has a lot to do with the technology the media had access to at the time. The articles I did find placed more emphasis on the awards and the movies the actresses were in, their actual careers, rather than the fashions they were sporting. Also, the coverage of their lives, their families and boyfriends, was much less emphasized.

Has the new media single handedly transformed celebrity branding into a spectacle where everything is known and public about celebrities? Of course new media has subtracted from privacy and augmented gossip, but to what extent? How has it changed the gossip being discussed? Has a shift in values in American society created a fascination with knowing everything about our favorite movie stars, with the new media just serving as vehicle for playing out these values?

Marilyn Monroe's rumored 1960s affair with JFK was scrutinized by the public and the media. She was criticized for a "sexy" birthday song she sang to him around the time of their apparent affair. While Marilyn Monroe was considered seductive and the ultimate womanly woman, Audrey Hepburn was praised for her beauty too, both of them living at the same time and occupying the same media sphere. They have completely different brands. Hepburn is considered lady-like, giving (she was greatly involved in UNICEF efforts), traditional, while Monroe is considered daring, defying the time she lived in by emphasizing her sexuality and body.

Looking for pictures of these women at the Oscars, I stumbled upon a website (sodahead.com?) that seemed like a dubious information provider, but had started a debate as to who was more naturally beautiful Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe. This type of media attention must have followed the two girls around throughout their careers. When I googled Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn I came to about three sites on the front of Google who had polls going of Audrey versus Marilyn beauty wise. Only one of the sites even mentioned their acting skills or careers. Does this emphasis on image we see today, what kinds of men an actress chooses to date, what her dress looks like and her boyfriend's clothes, always been placed on actresses above their careers? For People.com and other tabloids the Oscars are less about the movies and more about the images of people interacting in a space where movies brought them together. Have female celebrity brands, those of actresses specifically, always been based more on images of them at work or at events surrounding their work than the actual work they're doing? Has new media just allowed this pattern to be emphasized more in accessible forums? Is this emphasis on image rather than content balanced out by other branches of the new media, such as those providing access to the actual content exclusively, Itunes, OnDemand, without commentary on the actors or actresses in it.

How do the Academy Awards resist the urge to give awards to actresses or actors that are particularly famous at the time. This would allow for more movies to be made with that star, and more money to be generated in the industry. Would Americans protest as a united front against giving bad actresses or actors with nice faces and pretty spouses awards? It's said that most of the Academy Awards given are influenced by producers with deep pockets, but why haven't producers started sponsoring, by securing them awards, the careers of actresses and actors who are just a pretty face so as to deepen their brand and their brand's ability to make money. I know little about what makes a good actor or actress, so for all I know we've already gotten to the point where the majority of awards given aren't to the best of the best. Have we gotten to a point where nominations and praise for an actresses or actors work doesn't really matter in influencing their fame? Some actresses and actors brand names are based a bit on them having noticeably little skill but very good looks and an interesting personal life. New media is definitely changing the way celebrities at the Oscars are viewed and how the Oscars influence the way they're viewed the rest of the year, but how exactly?

The Fate of Alice and Wonderland

2010-03-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I'm going to see Alice in Wonderland, actually I'm being dragged to see Alice and Wonderland. Convinced that it will be a perfect study break, my friends have decided to take a mandatory field trip to see the movie. I've asked why they want to see it every day for the past week, but I've received no definitive answers. I suppose I'm trying to protect my childhood memories of glossy pages with bright colors, all of the images of weird creatures changing as Alice goes on her journey. I feel part of my aversion to the film is a desire to remain true to something my parents taught me as a child. They always encouraged me to read a book before seeing the movie version, and if I loved the book, they encouraged me often not to see the movie. My father is an avid reader, and I have yet to read a book (besides for the various chick lit my mom hands down to me), that he hasn't already read and knows a great deal about. As far as movies go, he likes watching a select few, has a few personal favorites to which he remains completely loyal, and has never found the movie version of a book satisfying. There are few movies out there that I have read the book for, and vice versa. I read Harry Potter and saw the movie, I read Inkheart and saw the movie, but I tried to avoid seeing Love in the Time of Cholera, the Grapes of Wrath, and other books whose movies I fear will take away from the way I view the characters and understand the book. I relented in eighth grade and saw To Kill a Mockingbird, only after reading the book of course, and I found the movie to be quite good.

As far as Alice and Wonderland goes I fear the images of the movie will change how I feel about the book. There are images in the book, but it still allows for some creations of one's own. The movie is a movie, the images are all put out there, each part of the story line accompanied by a redheaded crimped bowl-cut sporting Johnny Depp and bleached haired Anne Hathaway. The movie's trailer makes me wonder what audience the film is targeting. Traditionally Alice and Wonderland is a children's book, targeting younger audiences, yet the film is pg, typically not meant for young children. In all honesty the trailer looks a tad frightening to be for children. I expected the movie to be rated pg-13 after I saw the trailer, but it ended up being PG.

Johnny Depp is a skilled actor, but his skills in this case have be used towards creating the mad hatter character who has ended up sounding and looking far creepier than I expected. I suppose using actors such as Johnny Depp allows the producers to develop the characters more, each actor giving the character a new spin. While animation has been around for a while, this type of film seems to constitute new media or at least medium media. It's certainly not old and traditional, and I wonder how the Alice and Wonderland story has been changed by animation and modern technology. Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) wrote Alice in Wonderland, which was originally titled Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, far before television or animation. Rumor has it that Alice in Wonderland is about a spectacular drug trip Carroll went on, and "down the rabbit hole" is often used to represent hallucinogenic drug trips. Has new media changed the book from one for adults to one for children or vice versa? In 1951 Disney produced the animated version of the film, complete with a flaxen haired Alice who looks much younger than the one in the new version, and seems to be targeted at a younger audience. Caroll received a lot of criticism for his book, as it was believed to have too many references to sexuality, drugs, and in some cases schools censured it for fear it was not just for adults but against the church. I never remember any references in the book to these things as a child, although my parents didn't let me watch much television so I probably wasn't as exposed to grown-up topics as other children might have been. According to Wikipedia, Carroll wrote the book for Alice Lidell, a girl of seven, whom he met on a boat. She asked him to tell her a story, and he produced Alice in Wonderland. This seems to hint that Alice in Wonderland was meant to be a children's story, and that new media is transforming it into a children's story that requires parental guidance. As I was looking on google for the trailer, I saw a few posts of reviews of the movie. Many of them suggested that children under 11 or 12 shouldn't see the movie as it was frightening and difficult to watch at times. That doesn't sound like the Clice in Wonderland of Carroll's nor Disney's originial movie version. The characters have become modernized in a way in the new movie. As a side note, most of the reviews praised the movie, and a few have said they thought it was a perfect modern version of the book! Pheww!

The mad hatter of 1951 looks far more tame than Johnny Depp's character. Coupled with his chirpy voice, Depp's character seems truly mad, potentially too crazy for a kid. Is this a pattern of new media taking old media (in this case books) and centering it for either the same audience, expecting that the kids of this day will enjoy the suspense and tricks in Burton's film or a pattern of centering it around a different age group? What would Jenkins' say about a parent's responsibility to talk to their child about movies like these. How does he suggest these conversations take place? Are they necessary? Does our society prepare kids to enjoy, understand, and accept movies such as these, at a younger age? Children are constantly being exposed to adult content on the television, on the radio, everywhere really. Still, there are movies made, such as Cars and Finding Nemo, for the age group Alice and Wonderland seemed to be targetting in Carroll's time and in the 1950s. Was the trippy Alice and Wonderland story inevitably meant to shift from a younger audience to an older one or has the new media, complete with modern animation, costuming, makeup, and acting, forced the story to change and become targeted to an older audience or an audience of the same age who are expected to understand the film? Who am I to say I wouldn't take a young child to the movie? I'm not a mother, and I expect as a mother I'd try to let my children do what they want. After all, Alice in Wonderland was my favorite book as a child. Maybe I would want my children to see the movie, as it's a wonderful story?

Another example of an old (ish book) turned movie is Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. Having read the book when I was younger, I saw the movie when it came out this year. The movie was phenomenal, with catchy music. In my mind it was an accurate representation of Dahl's book. The Fantastic Mr. Fox was written in 1970, not particularly long ago, but before the new media we see today.

The above two images are of the two book covers available, and below those is the trailer for the movie. The voices are of modern actors, but the animation holds true to the book's images and the story lines up well. This story could definitely have been made more violent or graphic in movie form, yet it wasn't. Both authors, Carroll and Dahl were deceased before the making of the films so they had no impact on the conversion of their books to the big screen. Was it left to producers? To directors? Who chose to change Alice and Wonderland or to emphasize it's freakiest aspects with intense graphics? Interestingly, the Fantastic Mr. Fox was rated PG for "action, smoking and slang humor." Is it fair to say that smoking is more friendly than trippy bunny rabbits and mad hatters? Or is there something to be said for the adultness of talking foxes, as a child would need to understand that they don't exist in real life. Whose to say that Alice in Wonderland has strayed more from being kid-friendly? According to the same site, film jabber, Alice and Wonderland was rated PG for "fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar." What's worse? Is saying one's worse for kids than the other far too simple an observation or opinion? If Alice and Wonderland sparks the imaginations of hundreds of kids who go on to write fantastic novels, create new artistic techniques, and change the world with creativity, are Alice and Wonderland's advanced images of smoking caterpillars and fantasy action necessary or better than a movie that might not spark as much creativity such as the Fantastic Mr. Fox? Are we even able to compare the two movies? Maybe their audience is up to the discretion of parents, who can decide which movie is right for their kids and family. A child under eleven probably wouldn't be at the movies alone anyway, so the PG rating is relatively extraneous, although it does allow parent's to choose whether or not they think they should bring their kid to the movie or not.

Now that I've watched the Alice and Wonderland trailer multiple times perusing it for hints about its audience, I'm quite interested in seeing it. I forget how much I like Johnny Depp, and I'll always remember the Alice and Wonderland copy that resides as my favorite book from childhood on my bookshelf at home. Maybe some of my questions will be resolved in 3D tomorrow!

Visual Representation of Promises of Change

2010-03-02T17:48:00.000-08:00

Above is the symbol for the Nation Recovery Administration, created in 1933 to combat the economic turmoil of the Great Depression. The NRA was a group established by the National Industrial Recovery Act, whose main goal was to create jobs in the country, as well as facilitate discussions between the government and business representatives in order to establish a system of fair trade. In the end, the NRA and NIRA were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and deemed useless by the over 30% unemployed in the country and business owners who were losing money daily. During their time, The NRA launched a huge publicity campaign as a way to encourage businesses to follow the codes they established. A business that followed the codes posted the above flyer in their window or onto pamphlets, showing that they were following the NRA and helping the country to recover from the economic crisis. In reality, the NRA produced so many regulations that businesses were unable to do much of anything during this time, so buying from a company displaying the blue eagle might have meant buying from a company that was losing money. While this might have been the case, the real interest I have in this time period (besides for writing a decent history paper about it for my final) is the publicity and attempted branding of the NRA. The NRA posters kept reminding me of the Obama posters with change and hope written on them.

The above posters are beautiful works of advertising and branding. They show the American colors (the first one isn't supposed to look so purple, although purple is a mix of blue and red), and their simplistic message is one that every American can relate to. What's so powerful about the Obama and change connection is that it makes Obama a president for everyone. Everyone wants change, Democrats, Republicans, people pro-choice or anti-abortion. Obama and change aren't about him changing the effects of the Republican Bush, they're about changing the country, part of which is lifting the country out of an economic crisis that is starting to look somewhat similar to the Great Depression. At both of these times the country wanted evidence of improvement. Franklin Roosevelt, while a powerful president, did not inspire citizens as much has Obama does. He was certainly an active president, more legislation was passed in the first one hundred days of his presidency than was passed in the span of other president's entire four years, but he didn't look like change. Even 80 years ago visuals were more effective than verbal promises. Obama is African American, he's the first African American president in the United States. Roosevelt was white, wore glasses, and was in appearance just another Democrat and Republican. He certainly had a lot of public support, but his policies were what the public wanted to see in effect. They needed more than just the broad promise of change, they wanted to see that they'd be making money. Thus emerged the NRA and the rally to promote American spirit and support the NRAs goals, all while displaying the blue eagle brand.

For Americans now change seems to embody so much more than just economic change. Obama started his presidency by devoting much time to health care reform, which leads to a potential change in abortion policy, both things of moral, social, and political consequence as well as the inciters of fiery debate. Other changes to be made are to the economy. Many people are disillusioned with the new president because the economy is still failing, more and more people are losing work, and the health care bill has not even been passed. In some ways the Obama Change posters seem to have raised the public's expectations. The posters branded Obama in a special way, as they had to target the entire American public. Most products or businesses have a slightly narrower demographic to appeal to, but sure enough Obama had to target everyone age 18 to 114 (Gertrude Baines, World's Oldest Person, lives in LA and voted for Obama http://longevity.about.com/od/wholiveslongest/tp/worlds-oldest-person.htm, there's even a video of her voting at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/02/114-year-old-gertrude-bai_n_154822.html).

What makes Americans so eager for physical proof of a promise for change? Maybe it's not just Americans. A tiny village in France named their town square after Obama. He represents a world-wide change in the way race is viewed not just in politics but in daily life. Over 50 percent of the United States voted for Obama as a politician and a person. They voted for him and his family, the way he lives his life, and proved that our country's majority isn't cripplingly racist, to the point where they can't elect a black president. I think a lot of people questioned whether the United States populace would really be able to do it, and Obama's election was based a lot on change, and his promise to bring change.

The Obama hope posters show another side of America. Americans are disheartened emerging from the Bush administration of war and economic tailspin. They need and want change, but they have hope. They're hoping that Obama will make changes. In some ways the hope campaign represents the skeptical nature of Americans, probably at high points after disheartening presidents such as Hoover (during the Depression) and Bush. Some Americans in 1930 were doing their part but were the others. The "We do our part," is a challenge of sorts, a I'm either counting on you to do yours to or I don't think you'll do it and it's depressing and sad and you're un-American. While the Obama Hope posters are a message saying that Obama has hope for the future and that you should feel hope when you think of Obama, the underlying doubtfulness of Americans seems to have a small part in these posters. In reality, America has little to be jaded to. Yes we've had too many bad presidents, yes we're all losing money and jobs, but we aren't dying of AIDS at astronomical rates like many people in Africa. We aren't under Mugabe's murderous command. Most of of us aren't impoverished. Of course it is incredibly important that those Americans who are living in extreme poverty receive representation in the government and attention, in general Americans have little to be truly disheartened over. However, we all have hope and Obama's campaign, that is still plastered to t-shirts and bumper stickers, shows an important aspect of modern politics. Obama seems to be a particularly branded president, what Americans want has been interwoven into his brand. His brand is luckily based on hope and change. When I think of Obama or see an Obama sticker I actually feel proud to be an American. I'm grateful to the American populace for being open to a necessary change. Even if Obama doesn't solve the economic crisis or reform health care, his election will always be a milestone in American history, at least for me. I haven't lost my job in the recession, O haven't had to withdraw from school because I can't afford it, and I'm looking at Obama from the perspective of someone whose advocacy of social reform reigns over all others. Also, I'm certainly too young to feel true embarrassment at being an American, as I've never lived in another country for more than a few months nor do I know enough about the world to really say that America isn't the place for me, but I shuddered amongst thousands when Bush pronounced nuclear and nuke u ler. I was a little embarrassed sophomore year when Exeter fans chanted "George Bush, George Bush," at us after we had made fun of their dress code. George Bush was president at a time when I was first starting to understand American politics, and most importantly, the issues plaguing Americans. I had no idea that monopolies were bad when I was six, I didn't know that there had been wealthy white men in the White House for years who favored giving large corporations the easy way to increased mega wealth while there were Americans struggling with poverty. When George Bush was elected President I was learning about these things, I had determined that they were bad, and I saw Bush doing the same things. In middle school my friends brother, a soldier in Afghanistan, died and left her family to cope in the country that had sent him there, and planned to send thousands of other sons and brothers to the same deadly place. Obama for me was a real change, one that would last and I'm wondering how the new media affected my perspective on Obama, my steadfast faith that Obama will change something. It leads me to wonder how the new media is affecting politics. I know that newspapers and television stations have all in the past had immense influence on the way the public viewed politicians. How do things such as Facebook, Myspace, Skype, and Google affect the branding of politics. Bumper stickers and t-shirts have been available to campaigns for years, but the Obama t-shirts and bumper stickers represent a great trend that is spreading across new media sources.

Would Google ever risk tracking a person's political affiliation and advancing say Obama articles if someone searches "election of 2012?" Will corporations, now able to spend as much as they want on political campaigns, pay companies such as Facebook to advertise a certain campaign candidate? How did the new media portray Obama and McCain and how great was their effect on Obama's rise and McCain's downfall. Was the branding of Obama as an initiator of change, a beacon of hope, literally glowing with white light in his posters, influenced greatly by social networks and our ability to find out as much as we wanted about candidates. Is new media helping us to make better choices, as we're more informed, letting us choose the right candidate?

Deodorant!

2010-02-27T20:53:00.000-08:00

Deodorant is a product that with time has become almost indistinguishable by brand. While each brand has different scents, most strive to be clear and clothes residue-free and almost all are antiperspirants as well as deodorants. Deodorant, however, is an important part of our daily lives, and the many brands out there have to distinguish themselves from the others in some way. Secret deodorant has a clinical strength version, apparently it's as strong as a prescription deodorant. Dove also has a clinical protection deodorant. Deodorant brands such as Dove and Secret interest me because they market strictly to women. Companies such as Axe target men as consumers, but the buff men in commercials and reaction of women to the Axe men, make women feel that buying Axe for their boyfriends might make their lives as exciting as the people in the Axe commercials. Dove and Secret deodorants are almost entirely targeted to women. Commercials for Dove Go Fresh deodorant show average looking women putting deodorant on and testing its effect. Dove markets itself as being for "real women." How do other brands advertise themselves? Others out there are Ban and Lady Speed Stick, and all must find a way to pose themselves as better than the others. Do they market to certain groups of women or do they try to cover all women out there. Below is an advertisement from 1985 for Secret deodorant.

The commercial emphasizes the important of female based products, and appeals primarily to women. It shows a girl beating her significant other at a sport. Also, she disproves his idea that women's perspiration is more "delicate." The phrase at the end, "Strong enough for a man but made for a woman," empowers women to embrace having the strength of a man while still acknowledging the difference between their bodies. Interestingly, this commercial teaches some dependence on men as the woman has been taught to play by her significant other and asks him to hand her his deodorant. At the same time, she has beat him and doesn't allow him to use her deodorant. Modern commercials also use this technique of showing that women can have exactly what men have, only in a form that's better for their bodies. There's a razor commercial out there showing that a woman doesn't need to steal a man's razor, but can have one with the same number of blades and level of effectiveness, but with a shape that is special for a woman's body.

Secret has stuck with its slogan "strong enough for a man, but made for a woman," yet their recent commercials don't usually involve important male characters. This commercial (below) calls attention to the secret nature of secret, how Secret doesn't stain dresses and can help cover for a girl who wears her roommate's dress without asking. The images of the woman dancing and partying make Secret seem like a brand for party animals who just need to cover up their misdeeds from the night before. Secret is giving women the power to do what they want and not have to pay the price the next day, in not having a stained dress and a knowingly betrayed and angry friend.

Secret's deodorant containers also contribute to the idea that it's for women who are going out on the town and women who are girly girls. The "scent expressions" give women the power to choose how they smell and how they show themselves to the world. The colors are bright and fun, the bottle sleek. There's no mistaking that this product is for a girl.

Above is a commercial for the Dove Go Fresh challenge. This is a European commercial, but it's primarily the same as American ones. It targets women in normal clothes who just want to be able to wear tank tops. It's hard for me to see the connection between a deodorant and a white tank top, as deodorant doesn't appear on white shirts nor does deodorant prevent hair growth, but in general the commercial makes dove seem particularly accessible and effective. Also, its clinical protection deodorant boasts being aluminum free and as natural as possible, so the company appeals to women who are normal and also want to pollute their bodies less.

Dove has launched a promotion of sorts to encourage women to be self confident and comfortable with themselves. Above is a really interesting commercial showing how a normal looking woman can be changed into a billboard model using makeup and photoshop. It renders models unreal and fake and shows the girls features being reshaped into something more "beautiful." Dove's Real Beauty Workshops fit into their desire to provide women with the products they need to live their lives. While dove has made their deodorant seem to be for down to earth, normal women, they have commercials now that make their products seem sexier. The below commercial, while for a body wash, is part of their Go Fresh line which includes deodorant.

The commercial portrays Dove as fun. It's incredible bright, the images are interesting. The whole commercial makes the woman seem sexy, and her experience with Dove doesn't attribute pleasure to men or sex, rather she's having fun with Dove body wash. The commercial below is just a short one about Go Fresh deodorant, it's similar to the body wash one.

The above commercial is from the 50s, when Dove soap was a new product. Interestingly the soap has stayed in that shape, and still boasts moisturizing power and creaminess. This commercial appeals to women, just as the ones now do. The woman seems wealthy and upper-class, so Dove at the time seemed to be appealing to the upper-class. In some ways, Dove seems to continue to appeal to the upper-class. The all-natural and organic craze that has spread through supermarkets is definitely a product of the upper-class. Whole Foods is incredibly expensive, and all the organic products they sell there can only be bought by a select few. Dove, with it's natural products and fancy showers, seems to be targetting upper-class women. The real women" who use Dove and were part of the Dove challenge commercial could certainly be from all socio-economic groups, but people who have time to test deodorants and report on them usually tend to not need to work really hard for their money. I'm wondering how products like this really get women of all ages, ethnicities, and socioeconomic groups interested in them. The commercials show women who are primarily white and young. Do these companies, Secret and Dove, rely on people's need for deodorant? Do they market differently in other countries? While searching for commercials I found a lot that were the American version in other languages. One was the Go Fresh commercial, showing a white blonde girl, in Chinese. Are these deodorant companies using the idea of the American dream in promoting commercials showing very American products being used by white girls? America is still considered a land of freedom and prosperity, so does putting American product commercials overseas elicit consumers who are hoping to one day be wealthy and free like the women in the commercials. They have the choice to buy whatever deodorant or soap they want in an array of scents. Is it productive for these companies to only portray themselves as American?

Competition or Cockiness? Can anyone really beat Google?

2010-02-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

Ken Auletta's Googled has unearthed and provided evidence for the idea that Google might not be an everlasting power. What with potential government intervention or internal struggles Google's clout in the technological world and its ability to innovate might eventually weaken. Another potential source of Google's decline could be the appearance of another powerhouse. The search engine is still a new and changing invention. While Google first developed a search engine that functioned to give users a fast way to find what they wanted, there seems to be real room for improvement or change.

There's certainly a lot of science and theory that goes into predicting the success of a company, including search engines. I'm nothing close to an expert in this subject, but I've decided to educate myself by conducting a little experiment. I'm interested to know what is different about each search engine. I know there are many hidden things that go into the business and economic successes of companies but most of them aim to in part please users. I've decided to start with a random site called dogpile. Apparently, it compiles Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask into one search engine. I wonder how it really works, and how it combines all the different methods each engine employs. I'll put "restaurants in boston" in each search engine, as it will certainly yield results in all, but isn't too broad. When I searched in dogpile, the first few hits were "Boston Dining Guide" and a link to zagat.com. Interestingly, below the top few hits it said "Sponsored: Ads by Google." Has Google Ads or their advertising clients sponsored these hits? What about with Yahoo? Below the top few it starts saying "Found on: Google, Bing, Yahoo! Search..." Most of these sites are meant to educate people on restaurants, but don't focus on one, nor do they provide links to specific location or food variety searches. The aren't websites saying "we are the best restaurant in Boston," it's purely links to things such as Yellowbook.com. As a viewer this site seems pretty helpful. If I was from another place, this would be a good start for finding a restaurant I liked in Boston, although it might take me a while to weed through all the hits. I'd like to also know more about how dogpile came into existence and how it amalgamates the four search engines.

The next site I'll test is Yahoo Search. Although Bing and Yahoo have merged they still appear as two separate sites. Interestingly, Yahoo has a very simple home page, similar to that of Google. Yahoo elicited first three different restaurants, Pizzeria Regna, Finale, and Pagluica's Restaurant and showed their locations on a map. Apparently these are under "Local Results" and clicking on a link can bring you to 7022 more local results. Yahoo also gives links to specific places, such as Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and Kenmore Square. The first two regular results are at local.yahoo.com. It's interesting that Yahoo so obviously endorses itself. It contradicts with how Google CEO Scmidt is hesitant to allow Google to become content creators as he worries that it will favor Google's content and will become less trustworthy to the public (Auletta's Googled). I don't know how I feel about Yahoo favoring its own site. I suppose it does make me trust the search engine less, but at the same time I trust Yahoo to help me with restaurant choices. Below the first two Yahoo links are links to the "Best restaurants" and then below follows the yellowpages, similar to Dogpile. In general Yahoo Search makes me feel like I'll get somewhere faster than Bing. If I know anything about Boston, such as that the North End has Italian Food, I can specify The North End and get a map of a few restaurants there.

It appears Yahoo has done some redesigning as the text colors have changed to purple, and the homepage, while still simple, has moved around a bit. Also going to search.yahoo.com brings you to a page that no longer is called Yahoo Search. I wonder if the Search part has been used in the merger with Bing. Below is the old Yahoo search:

My next variable is Bing. My first impression of it is that it's incredibly different from Google. It has more color variation, the background is grey, and it displays pictures of American Olympians on the homepage. It's incredibly interesting that Bing is displaying itself as pro-American. Google considers itself universal, so maybe Bing is trying to seem more wholesome and All-American, a company that would never run into issues with China's government and one that would never violate anti-trust laws. Bing's logo interestingly is much more simple than Google's (color and font wise), and its use of onomatopoeia make me feel like I'll get results instantly. I can almost hear a bing sound as millions of search results are produced! If I wasn't looking at Bing's homepage with a critical lens I would probably think it more personal than Google. It seems less stark and cold. Links at the bottom to the Medal count and other olympic events make it seem more like a magazine, but it's not as in your face as most magazine's sites so I think I'd be more willing to click on the links and less likely to exit out of the site from being overwhelmed.

When I Binged (interestingly the name can be turned into a verb like "googled") "Restaurants in Boston" I got something similar to Yahoo. It was five rather than three restaurants with a map of Boston showing where they are all located. The first it was from boston.com, the Boston Globe's site. I was pleasantly surprised to see a newspaper site as the first hit. I trust the Globe and seeing a responsible source first makes me trust Bing. After a few hits Bing starts giving users new options. First is : Top Boston Restaurants." A few are displayed but a link takes you to more if desired. The next is "Best Restaurants in Boston," the next "Famous Boston Restaurants." Other's involve different food types or locations. This seems to demonstrate the concept of vertical search that Auletta discusses in Googled. Each of these different links bring a person to a very specific type of search, using key words such as "top" and "best". It's more specific than I recall Google being. In all honesty I feel that Bing is giving me more of what I want. When I want to browse articles about a broad topic, such as health care, I like Google. I'm exposed to lots of different view points and ideas. It's funny that Google wants to give me what I want, yet gives me the viewpoints of other people. Maybe it really is all-knowing and knows I like doing research before making my own opinions! I understand the argument that Google will prevent us from being exposed to many different viewpoints, but I don't think that has happened yet. With Bing I feel like the information will be easier to sort through, and for searches such as these that's what I'm looking for. It won't be blogs of people talking about restaurants, but sites bringing me to top rated restaurants. While Google organizes its results with the less bloggy and more official sites first, it's so easy to find oneself still pursuing a search in the fifth page of Google, where it's often less official.

Bing also has a little module that says "Ask your friends to recommend restaurants" with logos and links of facebook and twitter. Bing seems to be doing what MIT grad student Kwan Lee mentioned Google doesn't in Auletta's Googled. Google doesn't take into account social networks and gravitations of its users. Google displays things by using a CPU to find them and categorize them, but people like Lee argue that the brain wants more than just what a computer thinks they want, they want interaction with people. Bing is giving users an option to branch out and receive oppinions, and make connections all from their search engine.

Bing's logo:

My final test is the Google control. When I typed "Restaurants in Boston" into Google I received many results, however they didn't feel organized. Some of the websites were the same as the other search engines, but they weren't categorized. Interestingly, the first site was a sponsored site. I know Google avoids taking bribes or money to rank a site higher in the search. Maybe since they say it's sponsored they assume people won't count it as a real search result. Google out did the rest of the sites on their map. They had seven different restaurants bubbled on a map of Boston at the beginning! Google really does do everything bigger. I'm still trying to decide if they really do things bigger and better though! It feels as if Google's page is visually disorganized. There was no categorizing of any apparent kind. I suppose Google hopes to study a person's mind and know what kind of category they're searching, but it didn't achieve that for me. They would have known that I favor North End italian restaurants, but few of those popped up on the map of local results. Maybe if I constantly ordered pizza through Domino's online service it would display pizza results on the first page or if I often Googled a certain restaurant, that same restaurant would appear on the map. Overall, Google is a bit of a mystery to me. I wonder if these sites are actually arranged in a way that would aid me in my search better than another search engine. The people behind Google are so intelligent that I feel like they've figured out some kind of visual or subconscious mechanism triggering arrangement of the sites that will make me wake up tomorrow feeling as if Google is the one and only. Who knows? Maybe my next post will have me raving about Google or maybe I'll be raving about Bing. In the mean time though, I'm going to try to use them both to see if I can detect other differences between them.

I also found this interesting article about competition and rivalry between Microsoft and Google.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022605578.html

It seems Microsoft's interference has caused a problem for Google from foreign governments, something Ken Auletta posed in his book as a threat to Google's dominance.

Amp energy...

2010-02-21T16:11:00.000-08:00

Amp energy drinks have notoriously crazy commercials. In all honesty, most of the commercials I've seen have made me not want to drink Amp. They feature people doing ridiculous things to their bodies that seem both painful and unnecessary.

This commercial makes Amp seem more than a little scary to me. If after drinking it I feel like I have the power to jack a car using stellar dance moves, I'd be a little concerned. Also, Amp and other energy drinks have gotten a lot of negative criticism because of all the sugar they contain, so seeing a rather over weight man drinking Amp makes me a little wary of drinking it. I'm sure that man didn't gain weight solely because he drank Amp, but after hearing stories of how much sugar one Amp contains, and knowing that excess sugar gets converted to fat in the body, I'm a little hesitant to buy it. I guess Amp now has a sugar free version, so I suppose a lot of the energy comes from caffeine rather than sugar in this drink. Fake sugars are also not great in large concentrations, and even sugar free Amp is ridiculously sweet so drinking sugar free Amp seems dangerous. I suppose Amp might be trying to spin itself as a brand for everyone. It's not just for athletes or teenagers. A lot of energy drinks focus on how energy can give athlete's power. Amp does too at times, but maybe this commercial is meant to counteract that image of them only being for major athletes who need all that energy. The guy is sorta average. Not in clothes or behavior, but in size and facial appearance. Every day normal Americans find themselves in exhausting situations or find themselves in need of a car jack, just like this man.

So why do people drink Amp rather than Red Bull or other energy drink brands? Is it purely out of necessity, they need energy and Amp is the biggest energy drink that gives the best energy boost? Or does Amp promote individuality and freedom? As ridiculous as these two commercials are, the actors are doing extraordinary things. Both of them are completely impossible for normal people to do if not impossible for everyone to do (start a car using dance moves?) Even though what the actors are doing in the commercials is out of this world what does it say about Amp? Is is it primarily to exaggerate the influence Amp has on a person? In some ways Amp has spun itself as allowing people to live on the extremes. They sponsor or have some kind of partnership with Dale Earnhardt Jr. a race car driver and they sponsor snowboarding. Their website has a "sports section" with "racing" and "snowboarding" under it. Both of these sports are extreme. By sponsoring them Amp seems to be pegging itself as a brand for people who not only like to be active but who push their limits, are adrenaline junkies, and don't mind have a racing heart beat. Amp coupled with race car driving seems like a horrible idea as with Amp your heart races very fast at times, and I can imagine driving a race car would raise your heartbeat so that would be a double whammy to the old ticker, part of that punch coming from a sugary caffeinated artificially flavored and died drink. The commercials showing normal, maybe unathletic people doing other crazy, potentially dangerous things adds to this image of Amp=extreme for everyone.

I wonder who wants to buy these drinks? I'm the only one out of my friends who has never bought Amp in order to stay up late, and many teenagers do. It seems like most of them buy it because it really does give them an energy boost, but why do they pick Amp. The Den only carried Amp energy drinks but they also had a lot of Starbucks energy drinks. Most people chose Amp. I suppose Amp might give a person a bigger energy boost, but I would imagine it would also provide a bigger energy crash. I guess if a teenager needed just two more hours to study and then planned to sleep, a perfectly timed Amp-induced energy deterioration would be perfect and put them right to bed. It's funny that the Amp commercials have nothing to do with studying, and I've never seen someone drink an Amp before a sporting event. A few people have said Amp makes them feel sick even without exercising. A lot of my friends at home drink Amp, even though they readily have access to grocery stores and pharmacies.

It seems as if the company is trying to make up for their reputation as being unhealthy. Even though teenagers do crazy things to their bodies, most can recognize when their bodies are becoming groggy or overloaded with sugars and fats, and many try to counteract that. Whether it's because spring break is approaching swiftly or because they have athletic competitions to prepare for, regular sugar binges can lead to needing a change. Amp has created a Sugar Free variety, and they now have Amp Energy Juice in Orange and Mixed berry flavors for the morning! It boasts being 100 percent juice so I don't understand what's so new or special about it, but I suppose an avid Amp drinker might choose an Amp OJ over a Tropicana one if they saw them next to one another.

Amp commercials and branding seem unoriginal to me. Many companies and products try to peg themselves as being extreme. A lot of times beer commercials show people doing crazy things as do car commercials. Why is Amp so successful? What is greater, the attraction to Amp they spark in consumers or their viewers need for extra energy on a regular basis? Are Amp commercials meant to just put the idea of Amp in the minds of stressed teenagers so that next time they need to study late at night they'll remember Amp? I wonder if Amp is slightly addictive too. I know caffeine is addictive, as people often get headaches if they don't drink coffee after months of drinking it in the morning. Even if Amp isn't physically addictive I wonder if it makes people think they need it. Do students believe that once they start drinking Amp they'll not be able to work past say eleven without it?

Amp's competitor Red Bull has a very similar approach to advertising. It's website focuses on extreme sports such as motorcycle/motorbike (I can't tell the difference!) racing and it shows girls jumping off a very high cliff into a stunning caribbean ocean. When you first enter the site it gives you the option of going to the redbullusa.com or the regular site. I can't tell the difference between the two, but maybe one is devoted exclusively to American athletes and the regular site to athletes from around the globe. Both sites have articles about featured athletes and teams and the vibe is very similar to that of Amp. Red Bulls commercials though tend to appeal less to athletes and more to people who lead busy lives.

The above commercial shows a normal business man trying to get to work after missing a bus or unsuccessfully hailing a taxi. Red Bull "gives him wings" and allows him to use the cans to move/fly/speed to work. He ends up drinking a Red Bull at the end, but the commercial doesn't show Redbull making him stronger. It shows Redbull being there for him. Redbull helps you when you need it most, it keeps you on track, and it recognizes that you aren't a major league athlete or Olympian and you have to go to work every day. Redbull likes the common man, and it understands that he needs energy too. This commercial distinguishes Red Bull from Amp and other drinks, although the advertising and marketing for the two companies still remains very similar.

Looking at these somewhat similar companies makes me wonder how they both stay afoot. Are they appealing to equal numbers of people? Why hasn't one of them launched some crazy campaign that targets a broader age group. It seems as though they've both stuck to the 15-30 group. Old people get tired more easily and a lot of them have to work! Now that the economy is such a train wreck I imagine people will retire later as they'll have to rebuild savings that have either disappeared or depreciated in this economy. Although there's a generation gap between Amp creators and the elderly, I'm sure they could find some way to appeal to the elderly. They've replaced coffee in young people, why haven't they tried to do the same in old people? I suppose this is me being entirely cynical and thinking that energy drink companies would have no problem with trying to sell their poison to the elderly. However, if they're willing to make people think they'll be a contortionist if they drink energy drinks, then it seems like they're not that worried about sticking to strong morals. I wonder if there are health problems that come with drinking Amp and could be worse for the elderly. This is all just speculation, but I wonder why one company hasn't come out on top. Maybe it has nothing to do with selling more drinks but is limited by the law. Do antitrust laws prevent one energy drink company from buying out another? I wonder if Amp or Redbull has the money to buy out the other but can't because they'd get thrown in jail or fined a trillion dollars.

According to topnews.in (http://www.topnews.in/red-bulls-growth-rate-halved-2008-2120124) Red Bull had sales of 3.32 billion euros (4.28 billion dollars) in 2008, but their growth rate was cut in half. They had a rise of 16.6 percent in 2006 but only 7.9 percent in 2008. It looks as if Red Bull is continuing to make the big bucks, but isn't really growing as much.

Amp is owned by Pepsi, which made $43 billion in revenues (rather than sales) in 2008, which is much greater than that of Redbull. I wonder if Pepsi wants to buy Red Bull out but just can't because of our country's monopoly preventing policies?

And what's there to say about Monster, another competitor of Amp and Redbull?

Pet food

2010-02-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

Dog is man's best friend. Apparently so is cat, rabbit, lizard, hermit crab, and ferret. Americans care intensely about their pets, and we treat them almost like humans, especially dogs. Some of us treat our dogs better than we treat some humans. We bathe our animals, we brush them, we cut their fingernails. Many of the things we do are to make them look and smell better, but we also go out of our way to make them happy. My mom lets my dogs eat these hideous pig ear chew toy things. They smell, they get mushy and disintegrate onto our floors, and they're pig ears whose consumption goes against all of our instincts as animal lovers. Yet, the pig ears make my dogs ecstatic. They bark with joy, mostly they yap as they're the size of soccer balls, they wag their tails furiously, and I can sometimes detect the hint of a real live doggy smile on their smushed pug faces. It makes me laugh to see them so happy when my mom pulls out the bag of toys. I will always remember their reaction, and their health and wellness is really important to me and my family. When my dogs get sick they're taken to the vet faster than I'm taken to the doctor when ill. The fact that we can't ever really understand them or know what they're thinking or feeling makes us even more convinced that we must do everything to make sure they're doing well.

We've struggled with making food choices for them. We want the best in food for them, and since one is extremely fat and the other very athletic, we've tried all sorts of discrete foods. There was dry food shaped like dog paws and dried food shaped like bones, because apparently one likes paw shaped food and the other bone shaped food. There was organic wet food with lamb, pork, steak, turkey, chicken, all prepared in different ways. A lot of times my mom follows my vet's recommendation for food based on what crazy doggy diet she has my dogs on, but I'm sure a lot of people buy dog food for their normal dogs and have to make the monthly decision of what brand to buy. Pet food commercials tend to be the cutest ones out there, but animals in general are cute, so different brands must find ways to distinguish themselves from the others.

What's funny is that I can only think of one type of dog food brand, Iams. I can't recall any others, although as soon as I do a google search I'm sure I'll recognize a few. Even though I know the Iams brand, when I'm in the stores I recognize dog foods a lot of times by the dog on the cover. Some brands seem to have stuck with a similar animal or animal breed, and when I recognize the dog from a commercial on a bag of food I immediately recall all the frolicking

with the owner in the park, the wagging tail at meal time, and the general good feelings.

Above are two images of Iams chunks proactive health. Proactive seems to have become a buzz word in food. There are probiotic yogurts out their for humans. I have no idea what the difference between proactive dog food and other dog food is, but the dog is adorable. The two bags are slightly different, as the product is available in different types, but it's the same dog. This same dog appears in a commercial (shown below).

This dog TALKS about how Iams is great for him. If this dog likes Iams wouldn't my dog? I mean it SAYS it likes Iams, and it's voice sounds like what I would imagine that kind of dog would sound like. The next time I'm in the store and see the dog on the Iams package, I will have completely forgotten the health information displayed at the end of the commercial, and if I remember I wull have nothing to compare the ingredients to. I'll mostly recall the talking dog though and his dominance in the commercial. The dog, not the owner, wants Iams dog food. Iams seems to be using images to attract buyers. The images aren't of the dog food, but of the thing that matters much more than the food, the dog itself. It's there, it's cute, it's healthy, and it has a personality so we trust it to make the right decisions for itself and other dogs.

Below are a few Purina dog commercial from the 70s. The first one focuses more on the cleanliness of the food for the owner. It emphasizes it's no-mess dry pieces, and only at the end mentions the flavors a dog might like. However, the second commercial features more talking dogs, raving about the dog food. What's funny though is that to me the talking dogs seem "unrealistic" because of their voices. Iams has perfected the voice to the point where it seems like that of a dog, but carries the authority of a human as it isn't completely ridiculous. By far more ridiculous is that fact that the Iams dog seems to be more trustworthy now to me, because dogs most certainly can not talk, but it's interesting how the dog voices and behaviors have changed. The Iams modern dog seems organic. It seems free to be a dog, to be the healthiest dog it can be, whereas these dogs from the 70s seem less free and dog like. They seem like humans wearing dog suits, trying to sell dog food. I wonder what people in the 70s thought about these talking dogs and Purina Dog food.

The above commercial would not only be considered freaky, since the teacher is letting her student dog sit for her, but the dog has so little personality. It really doesn't develop the dog's personality as much as it does the dog food's reputation of being clean. Also, the use of characters from Leave it to Beaver, a very family-focused All-American show, renders Purina family friendly. Forty years ago the portrayal of companies as family-focused seemed important in advertising just as it is today. I wonder if family focused commercials are more important today, now that families are often broken apart by jobs and the global nature of our society. Were 70s housewives buying dog food interested in knowing that the company was family based, since family was very important and times were changing. Were people scared in the seventies of the break up of the family and an increased focus on independence in kids of much younger ages? Could they see the shift, and were they trying to hold onto surrounding themselves with things that seemed not only interested in the family but important to the well-being and happiness of the family? The commercial below pegs Purina as global and cosmopolitan. Were people in the seventies looking for family oriented products or ones that were cool and hip? Was change welcomed and were people starting to surround themselves with things that linked them to the big wide world? I suppose now there are commercials on both ends of the spectrum. Some products, such as cereal, tend to focus on family values and parent-child relationships whereas perfume companies almost always try to make themselves seem modern and global, a link between good smelling hipsters across the world.

The above commercial makes Purina seem modern. It's like some kind of news program devoted directly to Purina. Also, the dog speaking in a foreign language, spanish I believe, depicts Purina as being cosmopolitan. Another funny little aspect is that it's called dog chow rather than dog food. I'm sure this is just because of the time, but dog chow makes dog food seem more like food for a dog rather than for some equal being to humans, whereas dog food puts dogs on the same level, in that they're eating the same thing, food, just special for dogs. Also, the phrase dog chow seems so old fashioned, so stunningly and wonderfully traditional and simple. Of course, the words don't have much different meaning, but I wonder if the shift represents a shift in the way humans treat their dogs or what they want for their dogs. Were dogs considered less important when dog chow was fed to them? What's funny too is that Purina has multiple dog food types, but they have one called "Dog Chow brand Dog Food." It seems they're trying to maintain the image of being an old, wise company, wholesome and devoted to the well-being of many generations of dogs, while being modern. Purina harkens back to the good old days, but how did the good old days of the seventies feel about Purina then?

Purina Dog Chow The more modern Purina "One"

old fashioned, traditional (above) Still simple and pure, but newer and fancier. (below)

The Ultimate Decision

2010-02-17T16:35:00.001-08:00

Even the health nuts among us (myself included) find themselves in front of a vending machine at some point. For me it happens probably once every two months. Hospitals are notoriously replete with vending machines, as well as car garages, malls, airports, gyms, and Andover's own campus. In each vending machine is a wide range of candy varities and within each variety are different brands. Many different brands. Chocolate hosts Hersheys, Milky Way, Snickers, Kit Kat, Reeses, and Crunch. The sticky, chewy, fruity variety has Skittles and Starbursts in many different flavors such as mixed berry and tropical. The selection is endless, so how does one really choose? Often times a vending machine serves as a quick food option, and I'm sure many vending machine users make candy decisions impetuously and quickly, maybe based on subconscious mechanisms inspired by advertisements. Candy advertisements are everywhere, but I'm wondering who each brand tries to appeal to and what values or feelings they hope to conjure in their commercials. Mars brand owns many of the candy bars, but commercials almost always specialize in one candy rather than the whole brand. I wonder why they choose to focus on one candy rather than all the different Mars Candies. Companies like Nike don't advertise just sneakers, but all apparel in one commercial. I suppose a lot of food companies advertise specific things, such as just Special K cereal or just Lucky Charms. Post Cereal owns many brands and advertises them separately. General Mills also owns a variety of cereals. My next post could be about cereal advertisements, but for now back to candy.

Mars owns the m&m brand, Snickers, and Dove. Mars also controls Wrigley which owns Skittles, Altoids, Starburst, Hubba Bubba, Five gum, Orbit, Extra, and all the Wrigley's gums. Tootsie roll owns Charleston Chew, Junior mints, Razzles, Tootsie Pops, Charms Blow Pops. Overall, there are a few candy dynasties that are charged with advertising all of their products in productive ways.

Above is a Kit Kat Commercial. This commercial summons up feelings that Americans working repetitive and low-wage jobs must feel. The guy's working hard, feeling "like a machine," and the Kit Kat is there to make his day a little bit better. If I in some way empathized with this man, I might choose Kit Kat when looking at all the chocolate selections in a vending machine. Also the commercial is kind of funny, so I might remember it and choose a Kit Kat bar over the others.

The above Skittle ad confuses me. I don't understand why it would make people want to buy Skittles. I guess the idea of not having the use of my hands really bums me out, to the point of it might be a phobia of sorts, so maybe the commercial just doesn't appeal to me specifically. But who really doesn't want the use of their hands. Also, at the same time, my friend just asked me why I was laughing so much at a Skittles commercial, and I honestly do find it very funny. The end, when he pounds his fists on the desk and it turns to Skittles leaves me laughing uncontrollably. It's all in the images. Also the slogan, "Taste the Rainbow, feel the Rainbow," sticks in my mind as the commercial links to the idea of the rainbow being everywhere, acknowledged by many of our senses, and in the case of this poor man, his entire tactile sense is Skittles. In general, I think this ad is intended to make us laugh. As unoriginal as the concept of hilarity inspiring buying is, this commercial successfully accomplishes just that.

The above Snicker's accomplishes two things, it renders Snickers a meal-substitute, hunger-ridding food stuff, and also makes us laugh and willing to buy. The guys are total doofuses, but they're lovable and silly. The displaced hunger plaguing the foreign man is also ridiculous, but embeds the Snickers-getting-rid-of-hunger-idea further in our brains.

This Snickers commercial is flat-out ridiculous. The characters are to put it blatantly, total freaks, very lovable, but very freaky. They're funny looking, wearing funny clothes, and have funny voices. The whole thing is actually kind of gross when you think further about the fact that they're regurgitating Snickers bars. However, it links laughter and goofiness to eating Snickers, and the pile of Snickers on the ground at the end makes the viewer (well me) hungry! The "Free refills with a magic mouth," statement at the end is funny, and it drew my attention. I thought it was some sort of promotion or free-giveaway, but it supports the whole ridiculousness of the commercial in that it's promoting a magic mouth that conjures up an endless supply of Snickers bars, as long as the person's able to laugh. It appeals to the money-savers and bargain-searchers within us all. Also, although kids often don't find themselves buying candy with their own money, I bet it appeals greatly to young children. It's easy, visual humor, like the Skittles commercial, and would appeal to a wide range of ages. The hunger banishing Snickers commercial involves less physical humor and more of (this is a stretch) an intellectual humor. It's about the dorky dudes sitting on their couch, probably stoned, thinking about some man constantly hungry in a foreign land. It appeals to older people, as they have to understand how humorous the whole pot head scene can be.

All these commercials raise more questions for me, most of them related to the reasons behind their production. For starters, who comes up with these ideas? I'd love to meet the person who came up with the Snickers Magic Mouth one. Is it a nerdy genius somewhere who has spent hours studying consumer interests? I just finished the section from Ken Auletta's book, and what I recall the most about Page and Brin is their devotion to facts, figures, and math. They make decisions based on calculations. They calculate what consumers look at, what they value, sticking to an entirely quantitative approach. How do the producers of commercials like this know these ads will attract customers? Could they really find at the end of a math equation the conclusion that Snickers eaters would love to see a bunch of dorky dudes spitting out candy bars? Is the candy advertising industry, candy being something that people don't need but do have to choose amongst, more of a qualitative industry, knowing that humor will attract customers. These commercials use blatant hilarity and involve strong images. I can see the man touching the stapler and watching it turn to Skittles. I see the two lovable dorks giggling and spitting out Snicker's Bars in some random park. They involve incredible, powerful imagery. I also wonder why some commercials use one shot or reference to a product, and why others use so many. The first Snicker's commercial showed one shot of a Snicker's bar, and mentioned it really only once. The rest of the dialogue branched off of the intitial, Snicker's banishes hunger idea, but it was about the hunger itself and its disappearance from there. In the Magic Mouth commercial the Snicker's bar was repeatedly shown to the audience. The first commercial was put on YouTube in October of 2009, and the second in August. It's very possible these commercials were put on Youtube months after release, and that they weren't released in August and October, but if they were, does that mean Snickers has decided to use less brand saturation and show the brand less. The Skittle's commercial too didn't show the Skittles name until the end, but instead showed just the candy. I wonder what's more effective, seeing the colorful candy or the branded package?

I looked at some of the comments under the Snicker's regurgitation video, and most of them included words such as "vomit," "blech," "yuck," and "gross." There were also a few "I lost my appetite"s thrown in the mix. I wonder if Snicker's expected a response like that. Were they aiming to engrain the Snicker's name into the subconscious of the viewer, so that when faced with the vending machine decision, they would remember Snickers. They probably didn't expect the commercial to be appetizing, so I suppose they were probably trying to sell the brand memory rather than a direct desire to buy the brand. In general, the world of advertising is big and scary and daunting, but overall it's exciting. It takes some mucking through, but it's rewarding when questions I've had from watching advertisements are answered in readings and class. The adventure continues...

Politicians as Brands

2010-02-15T17:06:00.000-08:00

Some politicians seem to have more than just a reputation, they seem to have a brand name. I suppose in order to link brand names to politicians, it's important to have at least a semi-definition of what a brand is and how it's applicable to politics. I think a brand can work to promote a product or an idea. Some politicians seem to fall through the cracks, in that they never develop into a representative of something greater than themselves. Some politicians are also predictable, cookie cutter molds that don't really have the idiosyncratic clout necessary to be a brand. Obama seems to carry a brand name in that he symbolizes change. Another politician that has an interesting brand name is Sarah Palin. Palin definitely seemed to be aiming for something like brand name status from the get go. She tried to develop a unique personality, and promoted herself as an apparent "maverick," someone who represents the overall American, not just a Republican American. She was a working mother, plagued with a host of familial issues that thousands of other families deal with every day. Her brand took a turn for the worse when she started being portrayed as naive and uninformed. Palin and the McCain campaign seemed to believe that Americans were less interested in political action and more interested in appearances. Sarah Palin seemed like a hard-working American woman, but one who would accomplish very little if elected into the white house, and the American public chose the chance for progress over appearances.

Saturday Night Live is sometimes a good program to watch in order to learn of public opinion on certain figures or celebrities. While there are many other stronger parodic news programs out there, such as the Daily Show, SNL succeeds in developing further brand names for some celebrities such as Palin or in her case, transforming their brand name into something much different.

It makes me a little sad how politically incorrect SNL can be, but they did a great job of developing the Palin personality or their take on her personality. A few of my favorite points were when she said there were too many foreigners at the UN conference, and when she called Bono the King of Ireland. These two statements portray Palin as naive, sheltered, and quite unintelligent. They turn her brand from representative of the people to representative of a goofy woman who believed she would go far in politics.

It seems that the Palin brand now works to promote elitist sentiment in the United States. I'd say SNL is probably viewed more by the middle and upper classes. It seems that in order to enjoy SNL a person would probably need to have time to watch late night television shows which makes me think that people working hard to support their families probably don't have time for comedy shows that air in the middle of the night. I suppose SNL might target more to an older demographic rather than a middle class one. Also, some knowledge of politics and what's happening in the news is needed to understand it, so I'm assuming they target people who choose to inform themselves on politics and news stories, something the elderly have time to do. Sadly though, a lot of people who have time to understand politics instead watch SNL and believe what's said without realizing its falsity.

I know little of who SNL is targeting, but from what I can tell, SNL played a large role in shaping how many of us teenagers view Sarah Palin. The video was incredibly popular. I saw the SNL skit before even knowing anything about Sarah Palin, and if I hadn't felt silly and done a little research on her I would have had that SNL image stuck in my head. The SNL skit really isn't as far off as I would hope for a person so close to the vice-presidency, but even so it worked as part of the propaganda against Sarah Palin, in their case slightly inaccurate propaganda. Her brand seems to be working for both Republicans and Democrats alike to make arguments for politicians with higher education and lives in New England based law firms. In general, SNL seems to have pinned Palin as the anti-politician, naive and uneducated, and a lot of people "jokingly" link her unintelligence to her upbringing in rural Alaska.

Sarah Palin probably wouldn't have been a great vice president. She really didn't seem creative or particularly intelligent, but I think that has little to do with her life in Alaska. It's naive of people who pin Palin as a hick from Alaska to think that someone's upbringing can really detract from their ability to lead. Upbringing might subtract from an understand of politics, but with study and work, politics can be understood. Politicians often have inherent traits that contribute to their success. I learned today in my history textbook that Teddy Roosevelt was loved for his charisma and speech giving ability. Those things are specific to him not his education. If Sarah Palin had those qualities and studied hard in law school or on her own, she would probably have made a decent politician. Skits like SNL contribute to this image that the puffed-hair ex-beauty queen from Alaska was never meant to be in the White House, that she just didn't have the background, the education or the intelligence, detract from our understanding of what makes a good politician. It also restricts progress. I'm sure there are plenty of wealthy people out there who look at Palin and say, you know she just wasn't naturally intelligent, but there are a lot that say she's too sheltered to understand politics. They look at her coal-mining husband and pregnant teen and call her something similar to white trash. As someone who loves the environment and wants to study environmental studies, her environmental policies as a governor appall me. She seems to have a disregard for the natural world, and I shutter to think of her in the White House, but at the same time good for her for getting so far. She was a governor one day, and a step away from the White House the next day. Had Obama not been such a strong candidate or had American sentiments been in favor of everything All-American the results of the election could have been in her and McCain's favor. Obama represents cosmopolitanism and change in a time when Americans want something knew, they want a better standing in the world. During the times of the Monroe Doctrine or during its extension in the late 1800s, Sarah Palin might have seemed like the perfect representative for the people. She probably understands the average American middle-class better than a lot of other politicians, but in today Americans want help from the outside world, they want a change in economics and job status, and Obama represents change. Palin wouldn't have been a good vice-president for a variety of reasons, but to blame it on her life in Alaska is the opposite of change and progress. To be happy Obama's in the White House and then glad that middle-of-nowhere-Russia-viewing-uneducated Palin isn't, doesn't function to promote the ideals of change and progress. It creates a brand name for her that's based on false advertising. SNL is a hilarious program and it often represents general sentiment accurately, but it can lead us to making false conclusions. We see someone doing something on SNL and assume that the subject of the joke does the same, and then we look for answers and come up with Alaska doesn't support intelligence and beauty pageant queens can't be anything more but housewives.

Here I am chastising people for making assumptions about Palin while I make assumptions about them. I've taken all of the conclusions I've made about Palin from conversations I've had with friends and family. My friends and family represent a very small section of the American population though, so it's very possible that I've found the select few people who label, based on her appearance and the media's response to her, Sarah Palin as a sheltered small town girl with no hopes for political success. I'm hoping to work further on supporting my claims in this blog. Videos and photos work to bring up ideas, but the claims I make sometimes feel unfounded or unsupported by evidence. I wonder how journalists strike a balance between presenting their opinion or their spin on events and proving their claims. It's one thing to report just the facts or the facts one might hear, sometimes "facts" are false, but often journalists are called on to process, explain, and make conclusions from the facts. I hope to practice further finding a balance between presenting my own opinions and thoughts and including proof as to why my conclusions feel correct.

Why Bottled Water?

2010-02-13T18:32:00.000-08:00

Why do people buy bottled water? Convenience? Health? Americans buy more bottled water today than ever before, even though water sanitation systems effectively purify and clean public water supplies that we use at home. According to fastmagazine.com, in 1976 Americans individually drank 1.6 gallons of bottled water per year, but last year (2006) each America drank an average of 28.3 gallons of bottled water (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html?page=0%2C1).

What about bottled water appeals to the average American? Why are we convinced that drinking bottled water is somehow better than drinking tap water? Below is a commercial for Aquafina water. Aquafina is the Official Bottled Water of Major League Baseball. The commercial stars Lou Piniella, who manages the Chicago Cubs.

What about this commercial convinces people that they should drink bottled water? Do they really believe bottled water will make them less irritable and crazy? Or does Aquafina's association with baseball appeal to something specific in Americans? Baseball is an all-American sport. It's America's past time. Aquafina's association with it makes the water seem family-focused. It makes Aquafina seem like part of the American experience, watching baseball, watching crazy coaches yell at the refs, watching Aquafina water soothe his nerves, and watching the game go on. Even though Aquafina isn't putting itself in the hands of a mother or a child in this commercial, it's linking itself to a greater American icon, irresistible even to people trying to cut down on monthly expenses or save the environment. This commercial makes Aquafina seem like a commodity. Watching televised sports is a favorite activity of Americans, and if this commercial came on in the middle of a Red Sox games, the viewers might believe that drinking Aquafina is an integral part of the baseball viewing experience.

While Aquafina maintains an all American image, waters like Fiji and Evian have a reputation of being exotic. Fiji water comes from the island of Fiji, but is, like all water, just water. It's not all that different from Dasani and Aquafina. It isn't fortified with vitamins, and it doesn't have flavoring or bubbles. Fiji also advertises much less than these other waters. Their bottles, however, function as advertisements more so than the others. Below is a Fiji water bottle.

It has beautiful colors, bold lettering, and the ultimate description, "Artesian water." Artesian wells or aquifers are wells drilled or naturally formed perpendicularly to a water source. The water is pressurized in the earth, and flows from the ground up and out into the open. Apparently, the Fiji company collects water from artesian wells, but the water is probably not that different from water collected from other types of wells or underground deposits. It hydrates just like tap water. Many Americans probably don't even know what artesian wells are. I didn't until a few days ago. However, the name sounds incredibly exotic. It sounds like Artistic or Parisian, words that hold great meaning and connotations. They have reputations in a way, in that when I hear the word "artistic" I think of interesting, beautiful things. When I hear "Parisian" I think of elegance. The word Artesian happens to relate to water, and it happens to sound exotic, and even if these things are coincidences, coupled with the stunning bottle, it makes Fiji seem like the ultimate water. It's like a little burst of tropical sunlight, of island-induced happiness. Drinking Fiji water in the middle of the New England winter might make someone feel like they have their own piece of paradise and luxury. They could easily reuse the Fiji bottle, fill it up with tap water, but the colors and fancy words would remain. Drinking Fiji water can also be a sign of status, as it tends to be more expensive than other waters, and its reputation and unique bottles continue to promote it. When someone at the gym puts a Fiji bottle down while lifting weights, others might notice its bright colors and fancy lettering, and when they see it at the supermarket later, they might investigate the exotic H2O.

I went on the website of Fiji and found it to be modern and minimalist. It plays ethereal music, and shows synthetic waves drifting around a bottle of water. Even more interesting, the bottle displayed says "Natural Artesian Water" rather than just "Artesian Water." Nowadays, the words "natural" and "organic" carry immense weight. Eating naturally or organically is all the rage, and so apparently Fiji water is now no longer artificial, but natural. Overall, Fiji seems to be appealing to those of us looking for something new and special in our lives. It's beautiful, it's exotic, it makes us forget we're just boring old Americans with normal lives in cold New England. As a final note, Fiji's website says the water is drawn from an artesian aquifer, at "the very edge of a primitive rainforest, hundreds of miles away from the nearest continent." This phrase makes almost no sense. Even though Fiji isn't its own continent, it is still a land mass, and it's still populated. Apparently continents mean pollution and human contact, so the fact the Fiji isn't on a continent supposedly makes it fresher. Also, rain forests can't really be primitive. It seems they're using primitive as a way to say untouched or unblemished, but primitive is more effective in selling water as it makes it seem more pure, just simple water. A primitive rainforest would be one completely unaffected by outside forces, including evolution, but in selling water, a primitive source would be the ultimate in freshness.

Fiji has a ridiculous way of marketing its product (they have a "why we're green page") and a horrible grasp on the english language, but I admire the way they sell their water. They don't have commercials on during baseball games or any sports for that matter. I don't think they even advertise on television, but they're certainly doing something right, and they're doing it in a low impact, low annoyance way. They've figured out the trick to preventing consumers' immunity to advertisements, as Fiji continues to be popular. I wonder what Klein would say about this brand and the way they advertise and sell themselves. How has their brand name and image developed over the years?

Poland Springs has taken a different approach to advertisement. All I could find online were fake Poland Spring commercials, created for various multimedia classes across the country, but looking at their website I could infer a few things about their advertising techniques. From what I can recall also from commercials, Poland Springs has marketed itself as being water for the outdoorsy and the adventurous. It isn't particularly fancy, but its pure, it's convenient, and its from good old Maine. Lately, Poland Springs seems to be marketing to families or people who consider themselves low maintainance but busy and active. The bottles aren't fancy shapes for the sake of being fancy, but are odd shapes for convenience. On their website, the products page brings you to a bunch of water bottle outlines. There are 13 total water bottles of different sizes and shapes. Each one "speaks" when the mouse rolls over it. A little speech bubble appears saying things such as "I live in your fridge" and "small bags love me." There's a new bottle that says "I'm stackable". It had a top that fits into the bottom of another bottle, for easy and efficient storage. About half of them focus on the environment and say things like, "Less plastic, better environment." Above all these bottles is a blurb that says "Poland Spring Brand Natural Spring Water offers naturally great tasting, bottled water to fit every occassion in your life." It gives the vibe of being family oriented and open. It wants to be there for everyone, people who want to save the environment and those who want to save space in their garages. Lately Poland Spring has done an amazing job of marketing their "Eco-shape" bottle. It has a smaller cap, smaller label and a curvy plastic-saving shape. Apparently it is made with 30% less plastic than other water bottles.

On the left is the old Poland Spring bottle, and on the right is the new bottle. I'm not sure whether or not the old ones are even sold anymore, but they've maintained the same logo and advertising power of the Poland Spring green landscape logo, while changing the shape enough for people to recognize its renovation. The above bottle doesn't point out the new smaller cap, but recent bottles have a small cap. What's funny is that the small cap is harder to grasp than the old cap, so the only reason I noticed it was smaller was because I frustratingly stared at the bottle after having attempted to open it a few times, and saw a little blurb on it saying the cap was smaller for environmental purposes. Then I realized I was attempting to drink bottled water when I could be drinking from a tap filled Sigg bottle, and I put it back unopened.

Below is a final tidbit on Poland Springs. This ad was for the new bottle. It maintains its natural environment focus, prevalent in most Poland Spring ads, while showcasing its new modern shape. Needless to say I don't think the new bottle would really do that much better if deposited in a landfill or dropped in that beautiful stream displayed on the bottle. However, Poland Springs seems like a caring brand, one looking out for its customers and its earth.

Army

2010-02-12T17:19:00.001-08:00

The most recent Army commercial I could find online was from 2006, so it wasn't particularly new. I compared it to commercials I recalled from television and the website, and the messages seemed similar. Army puts power into the hands of the individual, even though the army transforms its soldiers into nondescript entities. The Army brand carries a stereotypical image of the Army soldier, broad shouldered men with crew cuts, but in the commercial, Americans of different ethnicities and both genders were represented. The Army ads portray enlisting as a life changing event, yet artfully avoid what kinds of changes the Army makes in a person's life. It doesn't mention war casualties or times sitting around in base camps. I know little about the Army, but I know enough to recognize the commercials' lapse in accuracy. They might not have lied per say, but I felt as if enlisting in the Army would not just lead me to being strong, powerful, and heavily muscled.

Even though I was wary of the commercial, I thought about joining the Army for a few days after watching. I never really considered actually enlisting, but I found myself imagining what my life would be like if I enlisted. What if I went to the military Academy at West Point? One of my closest friend's brother goes there and enjoys it. He's found friends on the wrestling team and has felt as though he has more drive and more goals in life than he would had he been partying at another school. The Army gives everyone an option for something different, and their commercials adeptly incorporate this idea.

The text in the commercial is as follows:

"There's strong, and then there's army strong."

"A strength like no other"

"It is a physical strength. It is an emotional strength. It is a strength of character, and strength of purpose. The strength to do good today. And the strength to do good tomorrow. The strength to obey. And the strength to command. The strength to build. And strength to tear down. The strength to get yourself over. And the strength to get over yourself. There is nothing on this green earth that is stronger than the US Army. Because there is nothing on this green earth that is stronger than a US Army soldier."

One thing that surprised me about the commercial was its use of cliches. In a way, there are many phrases (bordering on cliches) that the Army has coined, such as "Army strong," but the use of other phrases such as "green earth," and "The strength to get over yourself," seemed like far too much of an oversimplification. I suppose the Army is trying to reach out to teenage and 20 something year old males who might not be watching television to think deeply about advertisements, but in trying to make the Army seem complex and enthralling, they've made it seem cheap and a little silly. The U.S. Army soldiers are amazing people. They might not all be individually kind nor gracious, and their motives for joining the Army might not be pure, but they do amazing things. To talk about the earth as being green and lovely makes the Army seem like a cake walk, and the images of beautiful vistas with US Army soldiers saving children add to this image. They say a US Army soldier is the strongest thing on Earth, and although this is physically impossible, do they mention how these soldiers came to be this strong? I felt as if I would join the Army and wake up the next day with huge muscles, resolve to work hard, and the ability to do anything. In reality, the process would be immeasurably difficult.

It's entirely possible that the makers of this commercial realized that they would attract people with these green earth, running through the woods, emerging over stunning mountains having saved the lives of children, ads. The advertisers make changing one's course in life a phone call or signature away, and according to the ad the change will be amazing. I'm one of the most privileged people in the world, all Andover students are, and I was considering joining the Army, even with all the opportunity I have at home. Joining the Army is a noble thing, and many people with everything going for them, good grades, happy family life, join the Army. However, I am probably the last person they expected to target as a New Englang prep school girl who likes environmental studies. I suppose there are few other girls my age out there who would seem even less interested in the Army, but irregardless, the Army ad made me think. I suppose if I was a little bit more impetuous or had just been rejected from every college I applied to, I probably would have googled the local recruiting office and hitch-hiked there. It's very possible. My initial reactions to the ads were negative, I thought they were phony, but the the Army brand has a power in it of itself, discrete from the image conjured by commercials. The Army is filled with strong people, as signing one's life away to the organization is an indicator of some kind of strength, yet the commercial heralding their soldiers' strength just didn't seem to do it justice. I think Army brand has a power because it really does change lives. Even those of us who are sheltered and secluded on Andover's peaceful little campus, are aware of the change joining the Army would bring. Verizon, McDonald's, Sears, and Apple might bring about changes in a person's life, but they wouldn't so readily change the course of a life.

This commercial also seemed to render the Army an individual journey. They showed images of groups and teamwork, but forgot to mention living in barracks with dozens of other people. Most people assume that the Army will build strong bonds that will last forever, but I wonder why this commercial didn't emphasize that. So many teenagers are lonely and searching for answers to their loneliness. There are boys who feel like outcasts because they don't play football. There are girls who feel like outcasts because they don't wear makeup and skinny jeans. The chance to join a group, bound by a common resolve and goal, not a sport or an article of clothing, would act as a major recruiter (in my opinion). The ads didn't focus on the group, but on the individual, an ad strategy or concept that puzzled me. I suppose teenagers are also very selfish, and might believe that the Army is perfect for them because it will give them exactly what they're looking for, rather than give hundreds of other kids the same standard immutable things.

Above is the U.S. Army logo. Even though it's simple I think it's one of the most interesting logos out there. It doesn't use abstract lettering or designs to portray a message, but puts an image out there, and a name in bold letters. The funny thing is, I have no idea what the logo means. The colors? No clue. They aren't red, white and blue. These are also the colors of Army college sports. As a an interesting side note, the Army sports webpage (www.goarmysports.com) has a striking amount of advertisement. The first inch on the left hand of the page are advertisements that are constantly changing. A few are for Provident Bank, the "Official Bank of Army Athletics." I've never heard of that bank, but ads for resorts and AT&T can also be found on the site. It's interesting that Army has sold advertising rights. Apparently U.S. government funding is lacking. I was reading an article on a cross country runner, by chance I clicked on the page, and everytime I started a new line my eye settled on the ads. They were some of the most effective internet ads I've ever seen, as they weren't easily deleted pop ups.

Anyways, the U.S. Army logo fascinates me. What does the star symbolize? Why even have the star? Is it there because it sticks in a person's head? What about the yellow, white, and black color choice? Why is the inside of the star white? I'd like to do some more research into the logo in the future and find out when it was created and why this specific logo was chosen.

Ke$ha

2010-02-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

Ke$ha, born Kesha Rose Sebert, represents an amazing achievement in advertising and branding. As a pop singer she has been constantly competing with the dozens of other female 20-something pops singers, yet she has emerged on top, matted hair and all. Ke$ha has not been marketed as the usual bubble-gum popping, hair twirling, pink-sequin wearing pop songstress, nor has she been portrayed as the deep, intellectual, troubled quasi-Indie singers that have become popular in the past decade or so. Ke$ha has been portrayed as some sort of crazy, wild animal, and correspondingly her premier album is titled Animal. While some pop stars such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga thrive off of wearing bright colors, Ke$ha thrives off of wearing dirt and old converses. Promotional photos of her are sexualized, as are those of any pop artist, but her dual life as half laid back, relaxed L.A. chick and crazy untamable animal has captured the attention of many listeners.

Above is a picture for her first single, Tik Tok. It seems what people admire in Ke$ha is her lack of inhibition. Often pop singers have melt downs and end up with pictures like this taken by tabloids or mug shots, but Ke$ha has presented herself like this from the get go. She seems "real," although not down to earth. No one in the age group 15-25 wants to follow an artist who seems down to earth and normal. They want drama, craziness, swearing and references to illegal substances. They want to see stars bathing in illegal substances, and getting arrested for bathing in illegal substances. The person also can't be embarrassed by the arrests or the illegal substances. Ke$ha presents herself as someone unashamed of being her, potentially soap-phobic, self.

A second aspect of Ke$ha's brand's success is her appeal to both women and men. Her brand is not limited by gender. Her ability to be herself appeals to girls who want to be cool and comfortable with themselves. At the same time, photos such as the one below display her as a bro's girl, one who likes drinking beer and hanging out. Her pose is also compromising, putting her in a sexual light.

Ke$ha's music runs parallel to her image. She talks of little more than alcohol and sex, yet does it in an apparently appealing mix of melodies and sounds. One of the lines that sticks in my head from her song Tik Tok is:

Aint got no care in the world, but got plenty of beer

Aint got no money in my pocket, but I'm already here

Now, the dudes are lining up cause they hear we got swagger

But we kick em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger.

The rhymes make little sense, but the words "beer," "swagger,"and "Mick Jagger" stick in your mind, creating an image of Ke$ha having an overall great time, surviving off of partying and alcohol. Ke$ha embodies what college age kids want to do with their time, they want to party in cool places. She seems chill and modern, although her brand name has been created from appealing to the age-old desires of teenagers and young-teens.

Pop/"country" singer Taylor Swift appears to lie on the opposite end of the pop star spectrum. Her brand name is surrounded by pastel colors and pleated curls, yet her brand has also been based on what teenagers crave, companionship. While Ke$ha has appealed to people looking for party companions, Taylor Swift talks about love and happiness. Her demographic might be a little younger than that of Ke$ha, although they overlap in the age 15-20 age group (approximately). Taylor Swift's appeal on the outside seems to target girls who wear pink lipgloss, like glitter and roses, and want to find true love sooner rather than later. Taylor Swift is 19 years old, only a year older than seniors at Andover, yet she acts as an authority on love in the eyes of teenage girls. She sings about being 15 and having her first kiss as if it was a million years ago, and she's now a wise woman reflecting on wonderful times. Beneath T Swift's pink lace, is a sex appeal that has contributed to her brand. If she only appealed to women her brand name would be much less strong and powerful.

Below are two different pictures of Taylor Swift.

I think both of them appeal to women and men, although at first glance they seem to individually appeal to the two genders (the first to women, the second to men). The top one casts her as a princess, reaching out to dream-seeking teenagers. At the same time, it shows her as virginal and innocent, something that appeals to teenage males. The second picture shows her holding a book about singing, wearing floral prints and looking happy. Her outfit and beautiful hair and makeup are representations of what many teen girls want in their lives. At the same time the face she's making and the position she's in casts her as a sex symbol of sorts, appealing again to teenage males.

Taylor Swift's album title Fearless, filled with songs that give the illusion that if you are fearless you'll be able to conquer anything including insecurity, also taps into teenagers desire to be themselves or get to the point when they can be comfortable with themselves. Like Ke$ha, her image revolves around her being herself, even though being Ke$ha and Taylor Swift is nothing like being a normal high-school or college attending teenager. Ke$ha and Taylor Swift have brand images that are very different, yet they appeal to similar aged kids looking for the same things.

As a last comment, Taylor Swift has 2.5 million followers on celebrity site Twitter, a testament to the power of her brand.

30 Rock

2010-02-06T20:44:00.001-08:00

30 Rock is a comedy show that airs weekly on nbc. The show is named after the NBC studio at the GE building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. 30 Rock follows the lives of employees and actors on a live sketch comedy series, known as TGS, with Tracy Jordan (played by actor Tracy Morgan) as the host. What I love most about 30 Rock is the way it pokes fun at the business or corporate side of television and television shows themselves. One of the characters, Jenna Maroney, plays the stereotypical self-adulating yet self-conscious blonde bombshell B-lister trying to make her way up in the ranks. In one episode, she dates actor James Franco as a joint effort by both of their PRs to advance their carriers. She ends up falling for him while he ends up having a bizarre obsession with a female blow-up doll. In general, the portrayal of the actor as kooky and checked out and the complete falsity that was their relationship shines light on how many celebrity relationships probably start this way. It was mentioned in class that in gossip magazines celebrity representatives plant stories in order to increase their clients' fame and brand name. The magazines spin it as if they are digging up the scoop for the public's benefit, when in reality they are probably being given the scoop and asked to spin it in a very particular way. All the little webs between the media and celebrities are hard to sort out, but 30 Rock sheds some hysterical light on them.

Another revealing character in the show is Jack Donaghy, played by Alec Baldwin, who represents a Republican media executive. I wish I could say who he's mimicking on the show or who his character is based on, but I'm not sure. Since the show is by NBC its very possible he's poking fun of Roger Ailes or another rival of NBC's on Fox. Donaghy is a conservative and self-centered womanizer who spends most of his time chasing down new conquests or creating problems for the TGS show. On one of my favorite episodes he starts secretly dating a Democratic politician/lawyer (her title is obscure), who is suing the parent company of TGS, GE, and ends up settling the court case in order to go public with her relationship. Donaghy takes her into the lunchroom of the hoity toity executives of the television show, and announces to them that he is dating a Democrat. This revelation encourages others to spill secrets. There are a few "I donate to NPR every year"s and "My children go to public school,"s with each revelation followed by gasps. At the end an old man stands up and declares "I killed my wife." The whole scene is ridiculous, but artfully ridicules the way the Republican board members were so quick to share with the group, as if they were part of a cult following of sorts, and how each one hides behind a veil of money and appearances. The murdering Republican pokes fun at the apparent ridiculousness of big corporations or in NBC's opinion the right-wing big businesses, in that a murderous man is able to maintain a high position in the company and goes undetected or ignored.

Below is a video in which Jack Donaghy's assistant, "reveals" information about Donaghy. My favorite secrets are, "Mr. Donaghy can control all of New York City's traffic lights," and "Mr Donaghy once put together investors to purchase Canada, but the UN got in the way." All of these secrets are revealed by an over-the top portrayal of a homosexual assistant who reveres the man who apparently fired Donald Trump and inspired the Indiana Jones movies.

While the video is ridiculous, it makes me wonder how much of our daily lives are controlled by high powered executives such as Jack Donaghy. I know we are exposed to an almost innumerable amount of advertisements every day, yet what else is controlled by these huge corporations, such as GE, who are linked directly to the media. 30 Rock places power into the hands of the executives, when in reality money probably holds the most control. Can companies use their funds to control things like traffic lights in real life? Could they make a traffic light by a huge billboard of their company's product last longer? Of course they couldn't just press a button and cause a redlight, as in the video, but could they hypothetically buy themselves into this aspect of government? Corporations are legally forbidden from ingratiating themselves with or bribing officials, but are they able to make legal "donations" with certain stipulations, to government run programs? We know that government acts as part of a filter (sourcing) on the media, but do big corporations who control media systems, such as GE, also act as a filter in the government? Republican politicians certainly work to please big business as they have the power to influence a politician's popularity, through the media, but does their money work to influence government systems too rather than just individual government officials?

As a last thought, I'd be interested to know how many large American companies, such as GE, are Republican (run by Republicans) and how many are Democratic. Since Republicans more ardently support big business and the preservation of the wealthy's wealth, I would imagine the percentage errs on the Republican side, but I'd be interested to know the actual numbers (if they're available). A little Googling might elicit the figures.

As a second last thought, below is a video in which Donaghy's assistant states, "Mr. Donaghy is the reason Glenn Beck is always crying." This jab by NBC at Fox stood out, and even though I had seen this video before, I didn't understand its significance until taking media studies. I've realized that I now dissect the television I watch, as I know more of the personalities and I know the names of people being made fun of. I'm sure there are dozens of jabs like these at Fox personnel in 30 Rock, but I never realized them. The humor in these shows is much more appreciable now.

Ombama

2010-02-05T19:36:00.000-08:00

Athletic clothes have become an important extension of fashion. With the coming of new fancy workouts such as pilates and spinning, and the popularization of ancient exercises such as yoga, clothing has transitioned into an important part of an athlete's identity. Companies such as Nike and Under Armour have capitalized on intensity and hard work, while companies like lululemon athletica have appealed to a new demographic, women who strive for peace, serenity, and self-acceptance. Lululemon markets itself as an integral part of a woman's quest for health and beauty. Instead of creating intense advertisements in which people run marathons and scale mountains, they've advertised with pictures of yoga and peaceful settings. Recently, Lululemon has sparked controversy with their use of Obama references in advertising. Below is an ad they used to link their messages with those of Obama, released in

the January 2009 version of the Yoga Journal. According to www.yogadork.com, a blog written by a yoga aficionado, Lululemon wrote in response to the article that "yoga brings about transformation and change, just as a new president does." In general, the anti-lululemon sentiments that have been found on blogs such as these, seem to stem from a hatred of the overpriced store rather than a disgust with the ad. However, I'm quite surprised by the ad and its daring portrayal of our president. While yoga does indeed bring about changes, how can one compare yoga to Obama, and what was the pretext behind using Obama as part of a campaign for change. Why did they really use him? It seemed like the company was trying to capitalize directly on the nation's excitement about Obama's election, rather that actually promote change. In fact, Lululemon seemed to have no cause in mind when they made these ads. Had they been raising money for something, the ads would have been, in my opinion, in better taste. At the same time, are names and images of politicians public domain? Is it perfectly reasonable for companies to use a politicians visage to create stir or attract attention. What about another type of celebrity? It would certainly cost them a lot less to draw a picture of someone, rather than hire them to endorse a product.

All this makes me wonder what types of regulations are placed on celebrity names and images. I know a company can't falsely claim that someone said something they didn't, but can they use anyone's face or make a play on anyone's name, such as Ombama. The ad was creative, but what hoops did Lululemon have to jump through to produce it? Were there any legal obstacles, and if so how were they overcome? I was unable to find any Obama comments on the advertisements, but I wonder what his response, if he found out, was. Is it possible that his PR contacted that of Lululemon or vice versa and worked out some kind of deal to advance both brands. Obama's name is a brand of sorts and Lululemon certainly is. I'm sure people would be angry if Obama endorsed a fancy brand directly, and he has to tread very carefully when dealing with companies and products that have reputations. He certainly can't expressly support a company but if he subtly endorsed Lululemon he would be called an elitist. People would jump down his throat about endorsing "hippies" and "yoga." They'd say he was being too passive, too relaxed. Is this type of ad the kind that Obama's representatives would encourage, as it can not be linked directly to Obama, or did they have no knowledge of it. It would be impossible to find these answers, but it makes me think about all the connections politics and advertising have and how every product surrounding me in my room right now probably has connections to people or places I could never imagine.

Also, how will the relationship between politicians and companies change now that the Supreme Court has sanctioned unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns? Will corporations work to brand politicians even more? They will have a disgusting amount of power to influence a candidate's actions and their advertising presented to the public. Will we start seeing candidates running as "Bank of America candidate NAME..." or will posters of politicians be marked with advertisements. Will politicians even be forced by big corporate spenders to wear clothing endorsing that particular contributing company? I'm looking forward to the start of the next elections campaigning as it will shed light on the cultural and physical manifestations of this Supreme Court case. It will be interesting to see what types of companies will endorse politicians, and how many advertisements similar to the Ombama one will crop up.

Geeks

2010-02-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

The wave of technology that has defined the past decade has lead to an increasing gap between civilians and the makers of new technologies. With technologies in the past, troubleshooting occurred over a telephone or a book such as "Windows 7 for Dummies (http://www.dummiesbooks.net/)." Now, we rely on others to fix problems with have with technologies and completely forgo learning how to work our technologies or fix them if broken. Apple company has their Genius Bar, and sells a special package that allows for unlimited meetings with the geniuses. The meeting can address computers, itunes, ipods, iphones, and anything and everything in between. A whole new market has emerged, selling themselves as intermediaries between busy, hard-working Americans who have no time to deal with broken things, and the sneaky little buggers who work in the oh-so-distant and enigmatic production of technology. A particularly interesting company is the Geek Squad, which markets itself very well. The Geek Squad has commercials similar to those for pest control companies, basing their services on rapid responses and complete expertise.

Geek squad cars or "Geek Mobiles" such as the one above are replete in Massachusetts suburbs, and my family has been known to have had a Geek Squad Car or two parked in the drive. Actually, more often than not we have hired people from Geek Housecalls, a similar service to the Geek Squad based exclusively in New England. While Geek Housecalls has not gone out of business, it hardly has the reputation of the Geek Squad. Also, the Geek Squad is run out of Best Buy, one of the biggest destinations for technology, whereas Geek Housecalls operates independently. The Geek Housecalls business has a bit of a cult following in Massachusetts, as it gives off the vibe of being friendly and family-oriented. It's website is very simple compared to that of the Geek Squad. The website can be found at http://geekhousecalls.reachlocal.com/coupon/?scid=669421&cid=484254&tc=10020315521738467&rl_key=1eeda8dd13c0223090491a1ddcfbff3e&kw=5276100&dynamic_proxy=1&primary_serv=geekhousecalls.reachlocal.net&se_refer=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Fsearch%253Fclient%253Dsafari%2526rls%253Den%2526q%253Dgeek%252Bhousecalls%2526ie%253DUTF-8%2526oe%253DUTF-8. sdf

What's so funny about the whole business is the emphasis it has placed on the word geek. If a "private computer installer, programer, and troubleshooter" came to your house, rather than a Geek from the Geek Squad, you might feel like you'd been ripped off. Having a Geek come to your house is almost an experience in it of itself. Our "Geek," an MIT student who worked through Geek Housecalls, came frequently to the Heher residence of four impatient pre-teens and teens, and when offered, beer, wine, water or another drink, asked for milk. Whether or not he really liked milk or had been told to ask for this my his employers, it caused my Mom to whisper not so inconspicuously to my dad that he seemed so responsible and honest. I'm sure there are some pretty awful lawbreakers and other "bad" people out there who like milk, but in my Mother's eyes asking for milk was like taking a pledge to uphold family as a value above all others. What's also funny is how the Geek Housecalls website operates as a sort of vending machine system. The language on the site makes it seem like there's a person from up above who organizes the Geeks, and dispenses them to customer's house. This body seems to consist of Average Joes, who really understand the plight of dealing with technology problems. They use language such as "Helping you with computer stuff. That's our specialty!" The language is simple and easy to understand, nothing like the computer language people imagine MIT grads and Geek Squaders would use.

The Geek Squads own website is extremely fancy, and functions as a well oiled machine. They put a lot of emphasis on the availability of Geeks, and there's an online support module that shows a picture, reminiscent of a logo from an AOL instant messenger user, and a connect now button. Apparently, Cory W. is online right now, has received five stars, and is ready to help me with whatever computer problem I have. The site also has downloadable videos showing technological support, and an entire page devoted to "gaming." In this day and age video games have become so important that apparently it's worth it to pay someone to fix a glitch in a video game system. The Geeks have covered all the technological bases, while maintaining a very sharp and specific image. They refer to themselves as "agents," who work out of "precincts" at Best Buy. They have special titles such as on-site Double Agents and Deputies of Counter Intelligence. They wear short sleeve button downs and clip on, modern, thin ties and police style badges. Geek Squad workers who install home theaters wear shirts that look something like that of a stereotypical repair man. This dual image makes the Geek Squad seem like a luxury, something that is a modern commodity in Suburbia, yet places emphasis on the connection with the working class. They've extended their demographic from the wealthy CEO types who need help setting up home theaters or fancy computer systems and also appeal to those of us who might not have time to deal with technology. The "Housecalls" aspect conjures images (at least in my mind) of doctors and midwives visiting sick patients at their homes in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I have this probably historically inaccurate image of friendly, helpful doctors rushing to the bedsides of fatally ill-patients, leaches and useless herbal remedies in hand. The Geeks seem to operate as a similar body, always at the ready to help. My family has grown quite attached to Mike from Geek Housecalls, and even after he left the company and worked independently, we still hired him to help out with the many computers in our household. He is a genuinely nice guy who works hard and never charges for overtime work, and when he moved last year to be married in Alabama, he left us with his new email address in case we had any questions that could be answered from afar. The image of him arriving in his Geek car, with a lanyard filled with flash drives on his belt and a big gym bag filled with computer bits and pieces, will always stick in my mind, but now I primarily recall his genuineness.

Even though companies such as the Geek Squad are using advertising to track us down and target us, like all the other products out there, I will always think highly of them. Maybe they only hire wholesome milk lovers like Mike, in order to maintain a friendly family-oriented image, but I've really been helped by Mike. I could have spent time perusing a Computers for Dummies book, but it would have taken me four days to learn how to turn on the Mac I got last year. It took Mike 20 minutes to register it, install Word, and transfer over all my itunes files. I now have a fancy "Virtual Machine" which allows me to view my old pc's hardrive on my Mac. When I open the program all I see is the old desktop of my HP and I have access to all my old files. The Geek Squad company is another fascinating extension of the media, and I wonder what relationship these style companies have to media companies or computer companies. Do CBS, NBC, FOX or CNN have any kind of relationship to these companies. Even though these networks don't sell technological products, they sell images, and the sale and troubleshooting of fancy televisions relates to their business. With all the connections the media world has, it seems impossible that the Geek Squad doesn't receive funding or some kind of influence from the media gods up above. I tried to do some digging and find out what networks or cable channels the Geek Squad Commercials air on, but I couldn't find much information. Also, the Geek Squad was started in 1994, a time when ipods didn't even exist. How has the Geek Squad changed over time? How have the demographics they target shifted, and how has the way they market themselves changed? Now that "Geeks," are cool and in-style, has further emphasis been placed on the word. Could we even go as far to say that Geek carries a brand now? Geeksquad?

Above is one of the first Geek Squad commercials, and below is one released three months later (March compared to June). What has changed about the advertisements? In the first one the cars were being parachuted in, but in the second the Geeks used jet-packs. What does this say about our ideas of technology now?

This is a recent commercial. What does this say about technology and family values?

The State of Celebrity Diet Crazes 2010

2010-01-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

I was searching for more information on Obama's State of the Union address when I clicked on an article on news.yahoo.com. The title, "FACT CHECK: Obama and a toothless commission" was devoted to disproving claims by Obama or drawing attention to flaws or mistruths within them. The article seems silly to me as I doubt these reporters really know what they're talking about. It frustrated me to see Obama quotes and then rebuttals underneath titled The facts. The facts the article states seem less like facts and more like longwinded approacesh at twisting Obama's words. They make flimsy, weak statements such as "Any commission set up by Obama would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success." Using the words would and almost in one sentence automatically limits the author's authority. I read to the bottom of the "dialogue," and frustrated, scrolled up slowly trying to dissect why I felt that these reporters were rather sleazy. On the side of the article were a variety of advertisements and sponsored links. There was an ad showing an annoyed woman, half naked, holding a pillow over her ears, called "How to Cure Snoring Once and for All." The naked picture attracts the readers attention, but its content was of little interest. A few ads down was one titled, "Hollywood's New Secret...How to Convince the Brain to Stop Over-Eating. Yikes a million. This ad draws the reader in way too easily. The words secret, and stop over-eating would probably attract many Americans looking for a new trick for weightloss. Before clicking on the website I thought about the statement "convince the brain," and how ridiculously silly it is.

While its silly, the articles title makes it sound as if knowing one little secret will allow for the brain to be convinced to do something extraordinary. I clicked on the article and a new title emerged - "Hollywood's New Diet Secret...Appetite Control." Appetite control? Haven't we all known that controlling our appetite, watching what we eat and eating healthy are ways to stay thin? I've been told a million times that eating breakfast allows your body to regulate its calorie needs for the day. The article's first paragraph accuses the press of putting pressure on stars to stay thin, establishing themselves as an honest "anti-tabloid" site looking to help people out. The article advertised "Sensa" a weightloss product, of "odorless and tasteless food crystals," that people are supposed to sprinkle on their food to change the way their body reacts to smells and tastes, and control appetite. The article then follows up with an extra plus to the product, besides for ultimate thinness, "Best of all, Sensa contains no stimulants or fat-blockers, so there are no unpleasant side-effects." No side effects? Putting chemicals on one's food leads to no side effects? What about the fact that you have to eat a weird textured crystal mixture on your food? Is tricking your brain into not craving certain foods really not a side-effect? That is absolutely not healthy. Also, there are many other ways to control one's appetite without foul chemicals. The article at the bottom stated that since the company knew people would be skeptical to use the product as so many weightloss products are useless, they are offering a free trial. Well that's super, but what if the product doesn't work with the free trial? What if it works for a month before your hair falls out and you get hospitalized for nutrient deficiencies? Our bodies' cravings and hunger signals mean something, and tampering with them with chemicals is silly. I understand the reasons behind gastric bypass surgery and weightloss programs that design meal plans such as Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. These programs might not be healthy for everyone, but at least they put emphasis on portion control and eating healthy rather than eating fake chemicals.

The article boasted that the program allows one to eat whatever they want, that the chemical will control cravings and prevent a person from feeling starving. For how long will it work and how much of a person's cravings will it control? If it controls a person's cravings for chocolate but not for icecream, couldn't that person end up the same size after following the program? Also, when was the last time we Americans only ate when we were "starving," not only is that use of adjective in an advertisement shaky, as true starvation would not be reached if the person using the crystals would be able to eat as much as they want, but we eat when food is around, when we feel like it. Does the crystal chemical account for food cravings linked to depression or having a bad day? How does it prevent us from eating whenever, not just when we're hungry?How, in fact, does the chemical even work? The article gives no explanation and the program's website offers even less information. How do these companies expect us to trust this product? Are they relying on our constant fight for a new weight or body? Are they assuming that a desire for thinness will surpass our critical reasoning or basic investigative skills? As a final thought, what kind of a website is www.howlifeworks.com? This website acts as a cure-all, an all-knowing body there to guide us lost, confused little humans. Other titles of articles available on the site are, "Owning a Franchise is Easy." Is it really easy? Another is "How to get a Free Audiobook and Start Enjoying Great Literature Again? At what point did we become illiterate or unable to appreciate classics? The whole site is phony, yet they appear to actually have something to offer, as they toot partnerships with fancy scientists who study weight-loss. It's silly that there's one website like this out there but how many more are there? Most likely far too many!

The article is available at: http://www.howlifeworks.com/health_beauty/sensa_hollywood/?cid=8088pe_news_rm

The product's website is: http://start.trysensa.com/dms1420/

"Vitamin" Water

2010-01-29T16:34:00.000-08:00

In the past few years water infused with vitamins and fruit flavors has become all the rage. In fact, a lot of my friends rely on these waters as a source of nutrients in their busy days or they rely on the comfort drinking vitamins brings them. If you read the label of a water fortified with vitamins it rarely has more than vitamin C and often contains tons of sugar or a sugar substitute such as sucralose. Your body needs no more than 100 percent of a daily dosage of vitamin C, so drinking a water with over 100 percent vitamin C is silly and unproductive. The companies have marketed these products very well and I have easily fallen prey to their charms and bright colors. I love Vitamin Water, produced by the Glaceau water company, recently bought by Coca Cola. I've tried every single flavor, ranging from blueberry-pomegranate to jackfruit-guava. I did not even know what a jackfruit was until drinking the jackfruit flavored Vitamin Water and googling the fruit. Apparently they grow in India and are popular in Brazil (http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/jackfruit.html). Vitamin Water mixes exotic fruits in exotic combinations that make the water seem ultra-special. The Vitamin Water website appeals to those of us who want to make our lives less complicated and relaxed. As the page loads, text reads "We'll spare you the cheesy on hold" music. Until taking Media Studies I visited the Vitamin Water Site and felt happy that they were saving me from seconds of some awful music. I completely bought into their "we're helping you out vibe," and by the time the page loaded I was ready to see the new flavors. Now I'm wary of the company as I find myself analyzing the ads I'm attracted to and the way advertisers hook people like me in. In fact, I like listening to music, and the loading process of vitaminwater.com is quite long and boring without music to listen to. Lucky for the advertisers, Vitamin Water has a wonderful flavor, and they're marketing truly tasty stuff. While the flavors are great, the advertising is what makes me go back every time for a newly released flavor, as their ads are very bright and in you face. I rarely miss them.

Another interesting marketing tactic they employ is the nouns they assign their waters, intangible things the water is supposed to bring a drinker. The raspberry-apple flavor is "defense," and there's a peach-mango one titled "endurance." It's ridiculous to believe that a water can assist in building up endurance, especially one fortified with vitamin e and ribose. Ribose is a sugar, and the bottle boasts sustained energy, when in fact drinking liquid sugar before a workout can lead to energy crashes. It's a big stinky fib, not quite a lie, yet certainly not a truth. Another hilarious little thing I noticed as I perused the website was the nouns associated with two flavors they have, one is b-relaxed, and the other is tranquilo. Tranquilo in spanish means calm, so by using essentially the same word in another language they have rendered their water exotic and themselves, in my mind, uncreative. They then dye the water bright colors, and it is truly special. Vitamin water ads also permeate the internet, at least many of the sites I access. It probably wasn't hard to track a vitamin water addict like me down via cookies, but I still find myself seeing disproportionate numbers of of vitamin water ads. It might be that I notice these ads more often, as they always use bright colors and blocky, flashy fonts.

The Vitamin Water craze seems to fit into a larger vogue water and vogue health food trend. Vitamin Water advertisements amalgamate the glamour of an alcohol commercial with the health benefits of an organic food item. The bright colors and flashy signs evoke vodka ads, pushing Cosmopolitans and other fancy drinks. These ads appeal to young twenty somethings striving to lead glamorous lives, filled with exotic drinks. The fancy flavors fit both in the alcohol category of making the audience feel as if all the flavors in the world are available to them, while the blurbs about health and wellness adorning every Vitamin Water bottle are very similar to those on health foods. The Odwalla Company has very similar blurbs about the power of the ingredients used to promote good health and wellness. Health foods are becoming more and more glamourous. Vitamin Water appeals to the young crowd who occupy cities and strive to live a life of exoticism and glitter, and the young crowd who wants to live close to the earth, and drink fruit infused waters. My mom is a cosmetic surgeon, and works often with city-dwelling wealthy women who live extremely privileged and glamorous lives. She always has a vitamin water display in a rainbow of colors, similar to the one above, so her customs can drink the water of young people while having procedures done to make them look younger. Underlying all Vitamin Water ads seems to be that laid back, I'm caring for myself without having to eat a salad, kind of vibe. They appeal to the side of us all that just wants to be chill and cool and nonchalant.

Companies like Vitamin Water, which market a very specific thing, interest me greatly. I wonder how they choose the demographic they will advertise to. Do they study advertising and market trends of past products that are similar? Do they practice trial and error, rolling ads until one of them sparks an increase in sales? I can try to pinpoint the type of people who would be interested in Vitamin Water by looking at the ads and interacting with people who consume it, but how did Vitamin Water know who exactly would be interested and how to get their attention? The company appears to be growing, as they release new flavored waters often. Coca Cola bought Glaceau in 2007 for 4.2 billion dollars (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/business/26drink-web.html), which alludes to some success in the company. Under such a powerhouse as Coca Cola, Glaceau and Vitamin Water seemed to have grown. As they've grown I've noticed that their flavors have gotten fancier and fancier. At the beginning they had lemonade, fruit punch, and grape, and now they have fruits I've never heard of, and I'm a major fruit lover. The company seems to be moving rapidly in the direction of the exotic and the cosmopolitan, and I wonder what has sparked them to do that. What types of people have responded to their ads, besides for girls named Anneke who go to prep school in Massachusetts?

In the Aftermath of Haiti

2010-01-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

In the Aftermath of Haiti

2010-01-26T16:15:00.000-08:00

Information on Haiti is hard to find on the web now, specifically on newspaper sites. It's there, but it's hidden behind stories about the Celtics and Toyota recalls. On the New York Times' website the only information is in a tiny print, and shows links to pictures and a special-interest story titled "Girls' Rescue From Haiti Expands Family by Two..." The picture above the caption shows a man and Haitian girl embracing in a manner evoking familial love and care. Within the article a variety of pictures can be found, such as the one above. The article tells the story of a family who has been working for three years to adopt two children, Bettania and Dieunette, from Haiti. Dieunette, shown above, had come to the United States for a brain surgery, funded by the Heaton family, and had then returned to a mother in Haiti who was struggling to care for her daughters. A hurricane in 2008 prompted their mother to put them up for adoption, and the Heaton family immediately volunteered to adopt the sisters. The mother, Kristin Heaton (shown above), visited Haiti every 3 months for over a year to check on the two girls, until the earthquake. The family waited for days for news of the girls, until receiving a text message with the word "alive," from the orphanage. In the days that followed a rescue mission brought the girls and many other children from orphanages to the United States, where visa requirements for Haitian orphans who had been close to being adopted pre-earthquake, had decreased. The girls were in Nebraska within a week of the Hurricane where they met their new family. They were in poor health, Dieunette had a tape worm, but are continuing to get healthier.

In general, the whole story is heartwarming, yet it makes me question what news about Haiti should focus on at this time. The article warns that over 10,000 children are predicted to have been orphaned in the earthquake, but gives no information on adoption or other means of saving them. I appreciated the beautiful story as I love to hear about happy endings like us all, however I'm confused about why exactly this story was printed and what purpose it serves. The motives of the New York Times seem to focus less on drawing attention to Haiti and more on drawing attention to the newspaper itself and its focus on happy, peaceful stories. If the latter covers the Times' motives is that inherently bad? Is any attention to Haiti good attention, as it creates awareness? Maybe the New York times is doing Haiti a favor by writing stories that will attract readers and bring awareness. I'm wondering if there are stages that the media follows before changing the direction they view an international or national disaster or crisis. Is there a certain time in which they report mostly facts (or what they perceive to be or call facts) and information on the reaction of the world, before transitioning to individual stories that appeal to the teddy bears in us all, looking for a happy ending? Does the media's take on an event in the aftermath depend entirely on the crisis and they way the world is viewing it? Would pictures of the sustained devastation make Americans depressed and less likely to take action to help or is the media worried about the advertising filter and rendering Americans depressed and unlikely to buy? In general, I'm wondering why the only information on Haiti is about Haitian children in America, and just two children at that. Why aren't we seeing more pictures of children abandoned, children who need homes, and links to donating to orphanages? Why aren't we seeing links to the Red Cross and other organizations that can help the thousands of girls and boys out there that haven't been so kindly taken in? Are newspapers concerned that if a person donates to Haiti relief they won't spend money elsewhere, such as with their advertisers? Why has the media seemed reluctant to make more of a difference? Would it be against the Code of Ethics for a journalist to display the opinion that it is good to donate to victims of natural disasters? Does this avoidance stem from something deeper in the media complex? How do filters such as advertising and sourcing play into the way in which newspapers such as the Times display information on disasters like the earthquake?

The article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/26orphans.html

The Top ten, top 100, best, most beautiful..

2010-01-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

To celebrate the end of the first decade of the 21st century, many magazines and newspapers made lists of the top movies, shows, songs, artists, and books of the decade. Every year many magazines also do the lists of the top and best whatever, one of the most famous being People's Most Beautiful released each year. All of these awards and lists make me question our society's loyalty to the media to give us accurate perspectives on the most important things in our life, entertainment and appearances. I'm wary of trusting media sources to tell me which movies to watch or music to listen to, but I still find it hard to combat the influence. Rolling Stone published a Best of the Decade article and I immediately bought about half of the albums they discussed and watched three of the movies they advertised. A lot of these movies and albums were from the early 2000's, when I was just nine or ten years old. I had no interest in music back then or movies outside of the Disney and Nickelodeon realm, yet while reading this list, I still felt like I had missed out on an important part of my life. I experienced a huge cultural gap, and I trusted Rolling Stone to fill me in accurately on what I had missed.

In some ways compilations of different media sources, such as movies, is a good way to get a glimpse into a year of movies unwatched, yet each magazine or tv show or news program has its own opinions on what makes a good movie or a good artist. In Rolling Stone they posted the editors and reporter's top ten and then in the corner they posted the reader's top ten. Some of the reader's choices went without representation in the editor's top ten, and the movies that were the same through out were in different orders, some number one on one list and number ten on the other. While Rolling Stones readers too have a different perspective on different media sources, the dichotomy is emphasized by the fact that both parties are interested in the same magazine yet have vastly different opinions. We trust beauty commercials to give us accurate information on what will make us more beautiful.

There's something to be said for the fact that our whole world is intertwined in a web of dependence. We depend on doctors and lawyers to keep us healthy and fix us and save our money and win us money. However, the law and medical trades are based on knowledge and a specialized set of skills, whereas magazines and television shows are more based on a specific opinions that are developed, rationalized, and promoted. The people creating these media sources are very skillful, yet they have skills in promoting not the real truth, but the truth viewers want to hear. Television shows and magazines form their own personalities not based on having attended a specific school or studying a certain discipline but by knowing how to adapt. We trust magazines and television to tell us what we should like and what we should do with our free time. Also, the people reading many of these top 50 or most beautiful articles are of a young (ish) age, relative to those not viewing these types of media. Younger people tend not to put health and money at the top of their lists of the most important things in their life, so many of us are placing entertainment as the number one priority. College kids trust magazines and television to tell them what types of alcohol to drink and what types of parties to throw. Mothers and homeowner's trust House and Garden to tell them what their house should look and feel like. They trust House Beautiful to tell them the best colors for a living room or a kitchen. Home renovations are an important part of our lives outside of work and making a living. Our homes are representations of ourselves as much as what music we listen to is. In many ways we are putting our identities in the hands of the media, as we often listen to their advice and shape our lives around what they say. I've never defined myself by my doctor or the grocery store I shop at. Even though the people involved in these enterprises are more important to our well being we don't always listen to what they say or advise. A diagnosis at the doctor's might define us as someone with a disease or a condition, but we don't base our identities on the opinions of doctors as much, such as their opinions of what foods to eat or medicines to take. I wonder how media sources target what we find important and what we want to define ourselves by. While what they say and write is often based on their opinions, they are also targeting certain people and interests. How often do they track what their readers and viewers want to see? What is the rate of change for how media sources approach their viewers and what they give them? Hourly, daily, weekly? When Tiger's mistresses were revealed his shows were immediately pulled from the air. Does the media usually work this fast at changing what they show viewers based on what their values are (American's don't value cheating celebrities) or do they only work this fast in the case of disasters, when viewers would be angered by Tiger endorsements? How do the different filters described by Chomsky and Herman influence the way the media shapes our identities? Do these filters work to shape our identities by catering more to us or does their work shape our identities because they operate with their best interests in mind? If what we are viewing is what the filters have produced based on their values, opinions, and identities, then what does that say about our relationship to the filters? What does it say about the American identity?

"I feel very plastic" - Heidi Montag

2010-01-21T17:27:00.000-08:00

I was looking for a link to the trailer for the Lovely Bones, a movie that premiered this week, and I ended up on people.com, the website of People magazine. There was an article about a girl I knew from a television show one of my friends from home used to watch, the Hills. The article said she had had plastic surgery, which wasn't really interesting. However, the girl under her name, Heidi Montag, looked nothing like the person I knew from the Hills. While not an avid fan, I had watched enough episodes to know that, she had indeed, had plastic surgery. In fact, Montag had 10 surgeries in one day, leading to a near death experience with Demerol. The story fascinated me, as I had never seen someone so changed by plastic surgery. People like Joan Rivers have had plastic surgery but I was not at the age to notice a change in her. When I became a teenager she had already gone under the knife. Montag was the first celebrity I was familiar with to change the way they looked so clearly. I googled "Heidi Montag interviews," hoping to find some commentary on why she had had the surgeries. I understand plastic surgery and the motivations behind it, my mom is a cosmetic surgeon, but I've never known someone to get 10 surgeries in one day. Montag received botox, at age 23, had her eyebrows lifted, had fat from her legs put in her cheeks and lips, and butt and breast implants. Before she was a thin, blonde, pretty 23 year old, who seemed to have no need for plastic surgery. I watched the video of the interview she gave to Access Hollywood.

Montag had many reasons for having the surgeries, and apparently didn't regret them. She cited paparazzi and gossip blogs for motivation for doing the surgery, as they had criticized the size of her chin. She also had her ears surgically pinned back, as she thought that they had stuck out too much before and she couldn't wear her hair up on the red carpet.

I'm interested to explore the many different ways the media shapes this ideal woman or even 23 year old girl. Montag had parts of her back bone and muscle taken off, in order to have a curvier "bombshell look." That surgery itself is beyond extreme and coupled with nine more must have stemmed from something she thought was seriously wrong with her and sparked her to move towards something supposedly better. I've looked around blogs speaking of her change, and have been particularly surprised by the way others on her show have responded. They've criticized her for getting too much done and setting the wrong example for young girls. The Hills show is one of the most ridiculous reality television shows, as it makes the lives these college age students lead seem realistic. All of the girls on the show work at various magazines and companies in Los Angeles. They've lived together on and off through the seasons and their "friendships" have erupted in giant posed fights on air. They shop on the daily, date tons of people, party almost every night, and generally make it seem as though they're normal girls trying to make it in the real world. Montag's surgeries cost 30, 000 dollars. She apparently has been paid generously on the Hills, and it's ridiculous to say that these girls are normal. By just living their lives or the staged versions, they make a very decent living. Shows like these definitely affect the image of the perfect woman, as not one of the girls on the show is overweight in the slightest. None of them have acne. They all have personal trainers, and makeup artists. They're not normal girls, but they act like it, creating a dangerous trap for people thinking all that glamour is readily attainable.

I've heard from my mother and grandmother once or twice a year for the past ten years of my life that I should be who I am and not worry about what others think. I express concern that my belt doesn't match my shirt and my mom launches into the "you are beautiful in every way" speech. I've dreaded these moments, as I know how planned and crafted they are, yet now that I've gotten older and become happier with myself I can realize how important they are, how grounding they are. People magazine has reported that Heidi Montag's mother is unhappy with the surgeries, and that Montag is scared to face her family. She's from a small town in Colorado, and seems to have been raised to respect family and God. One episode of the Hills shows Montag's visit home and her parents seem like grounded hard-working individuals, although its hard to know with television, especially this type of television. One thing is sure though, there's a trend of girls working surrounded by the media who do crazy things to make themselves look different or change their reputation. The media has drained some of the power parents have to guide their children, and it must be all consuming for celebrities who are constantly in the spotlight. Most teenagers do things their parents disagree with, maybe they get their nose pierced or something similar, but Montag almost got herself killed and spent 30,000 dollars doing it, and this is all without her mother's consent. Even though she's an adult, when did she reach the point when her family's concern for health no longer mattered? I don't have many answers, but I'd like to continue to explore what aspects of the media contribute to this image and ideal Montag was pursuing. Television, magazines, and blogs surely do, but what are their techniques? Do they tend to try to hide or embrace their cultivation of this image as it sells spreads on famous people, such as People's "100 Most Beautiful" issue that is released every year. I wonder how websites and magazines will comment on Montag's transformation in the future, once she has recovered and emerged from her self-imposed exile.

Going Green

2010-01-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

In the past few years being "green" and buying sustainable products has become all the rage. I attended two programs last year that focused on sustainability and living green and since returning to "civilization," I've noticed and scrutinized all the green advertisements and the way previously dorky or lame companies (to teenagers), such as LL Bean are now considered cool and hip. Whenever my mom would buy me LL Bean outfits in middle school I'd promptly bury them at the back of my closet, and now I find myself enjoying time spent in LL Bean and wearing LL Bean apparel with pride, knowing its often made with the environment in mind. Some of it has to do with my abandonment of the quest to be fashionable. Comfort and warmth now occupy the part of my mind that picks out clothes. Anyways, magazines such as Vogue now sport spreads of green gifts around the holidays and green replacements for other things, such as organic soaps and lotions. Often, green products

are advertised with all the flash and thrills, and are typically sold for more money. The shirt on top is a teal American apparel T that retails for $17. The one on the bottom is an organic American Apparel T that retails for $18. While this margin is small, if someone chooses to buy ten t-shirts, say for making jerseys for a sports team, the company has already made ten more dollars. While organic cotton is often times softer and more sumptuous, high-end stores such as American Apparel tend to use nice cotton for their regular t-shirts, decreasing the softness margin between the two shirts significantly. They do however have an all organics section on their website where people might look and buy from, without knowing that the organic shirts probably aren't that different physically than the other shirts. Their production is definitely different, but often times teenagers shopping at American Apparel care less about where the product comes from and its production's affect on the environment and more about its price, look, and feel. Organic beauty product ads can also be found in magazines typically considered classy and up to date, such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Instyle.

Above is a magazine spread displaying green bags, made with organic or recycled materials. The article, found at http://www.vogue.com/voguedaily/2009/06/eco-centric-green-totes-at-the-green-market/, epitomizes the mix of fashion lingo with green lingo found in articles about green products. The article also discusses the work of green fashion designers. Even if every fashionista in the U.S.A. bought organic or recycled purses, our country would still be in an environmental crisis. However, the little things everyone does matter. Some of us try to do more things, such as Andover's entrance into the Green Cup Challenge, but if people normally uninterested in the environment find a flashy ad for natural beauty products that won't pollute the earth, then that's great. Often times natural beauty products are advertised as being better for the skin and less toxic on the body.

Nowadays, magazines and websites focusing on the environment itself are becoming more and more popular. The series Planet Earth has become a sensation in the U.S.A. Planet Earch addresses the problems plaguing the earth while delivering stunning footage of the environment and images of cute animals to its audience. Some of my friends who never before cared about the environment, vowed to take shorter showers and start taking the train into boston rather than driving, after I showed them Planet Earth. The Discovery Channel, run by the BBC, has succeeded in attracting a large population of teenagers of all backgrounds (jocks, girly girls, etc.), and have used this to the environment's advantage. The annual Shark Week on the Discovery Channel is something that we teenagers look forward to, and the Discovery Channel reminds viewers that many species of sharks are endangered while showing them clips of the coolest animals alive. In general, I've found that advertising for programs based on the environment as well as products that are eco-friendly are doing well and attracting people of different interests and demographics to the environmental cause.

Individualism versus Dependence: The dichotomy of America's two standards

2010-01-16T19:56:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I find myself browsing the ads on apple.com/startpage, the home screen of Safari. Apple has catchy ads and nice pictures, and owns the one form of technology I follow - the iPod. Today I opened a few safari browsers with the intent of searching the web and finding potential topics for a blog post. This was the first time I actually went in search of something to write about, and in all honesty, my heart wasn't really in it. The beauty of blogging is that you can write about what's on your mind, and it felt phony to go searching for something to write about. I glanced over a few websites before abandoning my search and opening another page in order to go to facebook.com, the sign of ultimate defeat. Once on facebook, I find it hard to move away. On the apple page was an ad with the title "Be your own Cupid." Below that was an advertisement for "mobile Me" and other ads for "your Mac" and a bunch of the classic "i"s like "iwork." In general the focus was on the individual. The overall message was that each individual can find and buy for themselves what they want from Apple. Even Valentine's day can focus on the individual, and each computer and each application is in one's control. The emphasis on me as an individual made me think of the various apple electronics I own. I thought about my iPhone and the fact that I need to buy a new case for it. Next thing I knew I had picked out a case online and was entering my credit card information. Today at dinner I found myself asking my dad to buy me a new case, and not an hour later I had already ordered one for myself. I picked out the color and had it delivered to me at Andover. It made me feel grateful to Apple for being so easy to use or even "helpful," although no one specifically helped me. It's interesting how Apple's emphasis on the individual places that person in a position of wanting to buy things for themselves. It's nice to buy things for ourselves and it makes us feel as if we are independent, emotionally and physically capable of buying what we want or need. In many jewelry commercials the emphasis is on reliance and relationships. The man buys the woman a ring and the woman waits for him to buy the ring. A diamond bought by a woman for herself is hardly liberating or exciting. If anything, it is a reminder of something we don't have. I remember a scene in the Sex and the City Movie where Samantha is angry that her boyfriend outbid her at an auction for a ring that she wanted to buy for herself. While she was happy to have the ring, she was also frustrated that he had bought it for her. She said she wanted to buy it for herself as a sign of her independence and prosperous career, and her friends immediately chimed in with proclamations about how it symbolized his love for her. She seemed to think it was a harbinger for a life in which she relied too heavily on him. By the end of the movie she had abandoned her relationship for the life as a single woman. I'm wondering why some companies focus advertising on individualism and some on reliance on others. The ipod and jewelry are targeting different age groups most likely. Does age decide what focus advertisers take? Does it depend on the product itself rather than the demographics trying to being reached? I suppose jewelry shops make a lot of their money selling diamond wedding rings and anniversary gifts, so can they subsist over advertising to a specific demographic, such as engaged or married 25 to 40 year olds? Kay jewelers for instance has the classic jingle "Every kiss begins with Kay," which emphasizes reliance on both a partner and an item of jewelry. Essentially, they are saying that a wealthy partner with good taste in jewelry is necessary in any girl's life or any girl wanting jewels. There seems to be a rift in the media between relying only on oneself and relying on others. I think striking a balance between both would be most rewarding, but in advertising the two don't seem to mesh. I've seen Apple advertising buying something for oneself or for a loved one, but I've never seen them target anyone besides the individual. Never have they said "This would be perfect for your boyfriend to buy you" or "Why don't you add this to your Christmas list." Apple gives us the power to change our lives and the lives of others, whereas stores like Kay Jewelers shows us the power we have to change others lives or the power others have to change our lives. Even though I've identified this polarity, and tried to do some research online, I'm left wondering what an advertising agency would say about this. When do they assign buying power to the individual and when do they assign it to someone else? When is one perspective more advantageous than the other?

Haiti

2010-01-15T17:45:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday I was searching for information on how to donate to Haiti and I stumbled upon the blog of Wyclef Jean, a Haitian rapper and musician. The blog (http://wyclefjean.wordpress.com/) was exclusively focused (for the past few days) on what specific steps Americans can take to assist Haiti, as well as a personal plea from the famous musician Quincy Jones. I'm really impressed by the website's focus on providing relief rather than emphasizing the tragedy in a way that tries to appeal to American's fascination with disaster. While Wyclef's organization, Yele, obviously acknowledges the awful events, it has mobilized in a way that few others seem to have. Wyclef Jean is using his fame and power in a way that goes beyond just donating some money and going back to a life of luxury. He has provided lists of items Haitians need, as well as places for these items to be dropped off. I've been surprised by the lack of information available on how people can work to help Haitians. Even the Red cross' website (www.redcross.org) has focused not on how people can help but on what they (the red cross) have been doing. Articles such as "Red Cross Continuing to Push Aid to Haiti Amid Difficult Conditions" and "CBS News Helps Red Cross Transport Blood into Haiti," read as them wanting praise for the efforts being made. Evidently, red cross is an amazing organization, but why have they not made information on providing donations readily available? There is a "Donate Now" button in the corner, but in the middle of the page are advertisements about "winter preparedness tips" and getting the flu shot. I know there's only so much one organization can do, but why don't they too have visible lists of materials needed in Haiti? Why haven't they provided multiple outlets for donations or relief? Why are they focusing on the flu shot when people are dying every single minute? The bandaids and blankets I send aren't going to go very far, but if every person at Andover or everyone in Massachusetts even sent a box of band-aids and some blankets, it could achieve something. I feel bad for only thinking about Haiti about 5% of the day. My thoughts have been consumed by school and college and senior hour. I've definitely relied on the Red Cross and other organizations to deal with this crisis while I go on with my life. I'm ready to focus more on what I can do so far removed from the crisis, but I searched for 30 minutes before finding a site that advertised more than texting money in or paying with a credit card. If other media sources such as the Boston Globe made giving donations to Haiti Relief take over the whole "above the fold" section of their website maybe more people would donate. If they wrote articles on exactly what is needed in Haiti and organized specific places for these things to be collected maybe people would donate. These organizations have immense power but it seems like they aren't really doing all that they can. It's great that CBS news is bringing blood to Haiti, but maybe they should stop advertising that and start making donating more available. Their website has flashy ads advertising computers, but maybe flashy ads advertising helping Haiti would make more people notice. I read an article on CBS news about how it's going to be hard to make sure the aid money doesn't get lost in the corrupt government. While the article merits thought, since there have been questionable disappearances in Haiti of aid money in the past, the article appeals to those of us who want a scandal. The article's subtitle is "Corruption, Theft, Violence Will Add to Challenges of Making Sure Aid is Properly Spent." I don't understand how violence will lead to the disappearance of aid money. The money is not going to be carried around in suitcases on the streets, the holder mugged and robbed. The government of Haiti probably wouldn't openly assault someone donating aid money in order to get their hands on it. This article is an appeal to the drama queens and Law and Order addicts of America, and as a small concession they've included a tiny link named "How to Help Victims." After the link they discuss how aid money has disappeared in the past in Haiti and render giving aid something to be seriously questioned. I'm glad people like Wyclef Jean are using their power to encourage donations as I feel as if our country, myself included, isn't doing enough to help. Ms. Sykes' email about giving aid to Haiti is wonderful, and I wish CBS and the Boston Globe would mobilize and act in similar ways.

Ready for Launch: the Development of Yahoo's music website

2010-01-12T19:09:00.000-08:00

A few years ago Launch music magazine was bought by Yahoo. Its website, previously known as launch.com transformed into music.yahoo.com. Until a few days ago I hadn't been on launch.com in over a year. I remembered that it's name had changed and I was worried that it would be found at a new web address, one I didn't know. However, when I typed launch.com into my web browser it redirected me to music.yahoo.com sans conflict. This action got me thinking about companies bought out by another, which lead me back to the article we read tonight about Time Warner and AOL. I'm interested to know what motivations companies generally have for buying out or merging with another. For AOL and Time Warner the goal appeared to be a compilation of two large media companies with different specialties, joined by the common purpose of advancing the oh-so-hip-internet. Was money the real object of this merger? Why would a company like Yahoo buy out a music magazine? Launch.com barely resembles the site it once was. What was nice about Launch was its simplicity. A user typed in the name of a video and then could watch it, for free, as many times as they wanted. There were no subscriptions or emails or any conspicuous or annoying advertising. Now yahoo.music.com is an overly flashy, pop-music centered site that in no way embodies simplicity or ease. The first half of it, the "above the fold" section is filled half way with circulating ads, advertising Mariah Carey's "Diva Moments" and American Idol. The purple color of Yahoo Music's symbol (a pair of headphones with a Y on them), adorning the site, is another testament to the change launch has undergone. One thing I have noticed is that Yahoo has managed to procure interviews with famous musicians and live performances exclusive to Yahoo, a feat that Launch was not able to achieve. I wonder how Yahoo justified changing Launch so much. They did buy the company, but how did they maintain the demographic viewing Launch.com without angering a lot of loyal fans? Had I known Launch was being sold I would have worried about the outcome of its acquisition by such a large media system. I wonder what the site viewer statistics have been since the change, and what the Demographic has transformed into. Overall, I'm wondering how companies like AOL, who seemed to be in more power than Time Warner, and Yahoo, combine with or buy other companies without chasing away fans of the old company or without changing the Demographic. Do these companies think about demographics before buying or changing an acquisition, deciding whether or not they plan to take a new spin on the Demographic or not? Are they looking to expand their demographic with new acquisitions or buy up and control a specific demographic, such as teenage pop lovers.

2010-01-09T15:52:00.000-08:00

Perezhilton.com is a stunning, if ridiculous, phenomenon. "Perez Hilton," whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, is a celebrity blogger who boasts controlling and writing for "Hollywood's Most-Hated Web Site (perezhilton.com)." What I find most interesting about Hilton's blog is the many layers of media that make up the gossip site. First, there is the news Hilton prints, the stories he feels are newsworthy. Hilton often times includes false information or caddy remarks in his stories, and then crosses them out and inserts the "right" or accurate words, correspondingly printing the news and instilling his opinions on the story or the subject at the same time. Hilton also displays photos of the subjects of his news and often times draws on them to display certain emotions he feels or emphasis a characteristic of theirs that he finds prevalent or consequential. An example of this is a drool mark of sorts that connotes stupidness or cluelessness, a mark he uses often in his blog. He also gives nicknames to some celebrities as a way of emphasizing his opinions of them. Lindsay Lohan has received the nickname "Lindsanity" and Jeremy Piven has been deemed "The Pivert." While reading Hilton's blog it is difficult to read the stories from one's own perspective. Hilton has so completely and systematically infused his news stories with his opinions that he has skewed all edges of subjectivity and objectivity. At this point his opinion completely overlaps with the news, making it impossible to distinguish between true and false. It is easier to just unwaveringly believe what he is saying because if a person starts questioning his words nothing will be left unquestioned. If a person is using Perez Hilton as their only news source their actions are clashing severely with the principles of formulating one's own opinion or doing research before formulating those opinions. Even using Hilton's blog as a source for celebrity gossip/news is faulty as he often seems to miss some celebrity stories, favoring covering the celebrities he finds most interesting. If most celebrity gossip reported by upstanding news sources, ones apparently less hated by Hollywood, such as People or Us Weekly, sources that we public often seem to trust, is false, then what does that make Perez Hilton's news? Is it even news anymore or fictional stories? Most celebrities seem to deny what magazines and gossip columns print, so is there any way to even distinguish? How important is it to acknowledge the level of accuracy a source has before reading it or using it to inform one's knowledge on a certain occurrence or story? Is it possible to really determine whether or not one source, such as People, is more accurate that one like that of Perez? Does People magazine infuse their magazine with more subtle opinions and subjectivity than Perez? Correspondingly, could Perez be considered more honest by openly acknowledging disdain for a celebrity than People magazine, whose writers might inconspicuously take a point of view when writing an article ? Has celebrity news already parted from the limits of accuracy completely, when even photos, something usually trusted as a sign of accuracy, can be staged and manipulated?

2010-01-08T20:46:00.000-08:00

After class today I launched a, what I thought would be, quick look into the life and work of Spike Lee. I figured I would find movie titles he directed and then head over to the library to grab a few before the weekend set in. My search was not close to quick, as Spike Lee's name elicits almost 5 million hits on google. The articles I was viewing started out addressing his career. There was imdb.com, which is a movie site that lists all the works of a specific actor, director or producer, and the standard wikipedia page. Below all those sites were news results addressing Spike Lee's entrance onto the committee that is working to host the World Cup in the U.S.A. in 2018, 2022. Other news stories from USA Today displayed titles such as "Iowa football players chat up Spike Lee in Miami" and "Michael Jackson's "This Is It" by Spike Lee." Lee is truly a monumental figure in our country, and paralleling his influence on the American public is his influence on the media. Media sources of all kind appear to be lapping up information about the director. He's involved in sports, politics, and entertainment. One google hit was an article complaining that Spike Lee is inhibiting the advancement of the American black community in his work. Other hits praised him for his response to Katrina and the way he dealt with portraying the story in the documentary, When the Levees Broke. Another suprising aspect of the Spike Lee google search is that the news on him is constantly being updated. One of the "news results" was from eight hours ago. It is amazing how newspapers and websites that deliver the news are able to act so quickly. I'm a chronic googler and am also constantly surprised by the breadth of material google presents and the way it couples advertising with providing information. Spike Lee brought a link to the lavin agency (thelavinagency.com) which is a group that provides speakers to companies or schools such as Andover and helps them track down and book the speaker. There was a bio on Lee advertising his many cinema achievements and also a look into his life and the way he has lived in the spotlight. The website advertised his articulacy and worked to sell him as a speaker. It is amazing how searching a name can bring one to so many different results. I know so much more about Spike Lee now, and have received this information from many different news sources working from different angles. Spike Lee, director, producer, actor, avid soccer fan, mourner of Michael Jackson, sparker of controversy, and his many other personas are available through typing two words into google. The many media sources of the world come together on the web to deliver information. There were reporters behind my google search, writers, and editors. By searching one name on google I was reaching out all over the world, and receiving a host of information. Without meaning to I was being exposed to information well outside the realm of my search, while acting as a target for advertising. It is an amazing, albeit daunting thing, how accessible the world is. In the future I hope to learn more about the way google receives links to websites and in what categories it sorts these sites. What does google consider newsworthy?

Media, Media, Media, Oh my!

2010-01-07T05:48:00.000-08:00

My media landscape is spread out across magazines, books, newspapers, television, and the radio. While I don't interact with all of these sources on a daily basis, I do interact with many of them every day. I try to read the news each morning and usually frequent Boston.com, the Boston Globe's website, where I can unearth a mix of local and national news as well as special-interests stories, which are often really interesting. While I use the web often, I am not very adventurous with the sites I visit. On any given day I look at PAnet, Hotmail.com, facebook.com, wordreference.com (an english to spanish translation site), weather.com, and often dictionary.com. These sites tend to hold strong to their content in that they rarely venture from providing what they've promised, such as spanish words or the weather. Many of them though have advertisements that are constantly changing above a given article or weather report. Facebook seems to be capable of tracking a users interests as I've often seen advertisements targeting bands I am interested or states I have visited. The ads on facebook switch every time a person looks at a different page, so I might see up to twenty ads depending on the duration of my time on facebook.

I am also interested in music, so I am on the itunes music store daily, as well as paste.com and rollingstone.com, the websites of two music based magazines. Both of these sites advertise new artists or magazine issues themselves, and often have advertisements not pertaining to the music. This morning rollingstone. com had a Cole Haan shoe advertisement above the article I was reading. I often see advertisements for special deals or sales on rollingstone.com, usually in a really bright print that distracts the reader from the article.

My final regular interaction with a specific type of media are magazines. While I don't receive magazines monthly, my family members and roommate do. My father passes down his music magazines to me, my mother the gossip-types such as People and Us Weekly, and my roommate the fashion-based ones such as Nylon, Vogue, and Instyle. I find myself reading a magazine in each of these categories at least once in a two-week span, and none of them stick to just fashion or music or gossip. Their content ranges from politics to movies to the best restaurants in Boston, and beyond.

As far as radio and television go, I interact with these usually only over break in exceedingly large amounts. I often find myself watching television for the first three days of break almost constantly as I recover from exams. Coupled with sleeping, the channel cwtv, which runs teen-oriented shows such as Melrose Place and Vampire Diaries, comprises my vacation existence. I also watch music videos on MTV occasionally. Both of these channels tend to display the latest in teenage interest, such as vampires or a particular artist. The shows on the CW are constantly changing and each show employs twenty-somethings playing fifteen to eighteen year olds in high school. Once the comatose stage of break ends I like to catch up on music and I listen to the radio, usually gravitating towards local stations such as Jammin 94.5, The River or Mix 104.1. Jammin and Mix play the latest hit pop music and tend to have ads reaching out to the young-American population (under 30), it seems, whereas the river often plays more indie music, including music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and hosts advertisements that don't seem to target a particular age group or demographic, but most likely do. Something I am looking forward to in this class is exploring the demographics media sources target and how they do it.