Fear and Product Placement

Over the past week we have been talking about two different styles of advertisement, product placement and using fear tactics. Product placement is when big companies advertise their brand in performances or movies, and using fear tactics is when companies try to scare consumers into buying their products some way. The thing is with these types of ways theirs a right and wrong way to use them. When it comes to using product placement, you have to be subtle with it. Using a certain type of car in a movie is a perfect example of this. But when companies put in too much of their brand, it seems like its a two hour long advertisement ( which is one of the many reasons why I hate the Transformers movies). When it comes to using fear tactics it has to be the right amount of fear, not so much that it actually makes people lock all of their doors and windows from the outside. The goal is to make people think that your product is the only solution to a certain problem, whether its killing off germs or medications. I think that the most effective way of advertising is product placement because we are constantly receiving subliminal messages whenever we watch TV or movies.

Barbie's Transformation

Since she came to America, Barbie has been on a roller coaster ride when it comes to changing her image. Although none of these changes will ever be as crazy as her origin story. Originally, she had started off as a a gag gift in Germany and didn't get her debut until March 9th of 1959. The doll was made for more of an older audience, but as time went on parents started to share the dolls with their kids. When this trend started to become more popular, Mattel made it so then the the doll would look more cute and pretty for the younger kids instead of sexy from the older generations. What we need and what we've been needing to look at is the impression that this doll can give on little girls. One of the most notable things about this doll is how skinny she is made to look.This may lead young girls to be ashamed of their bodies, and try to change themselves instead of being who they are. Now that people are starting to be more and more aware of what we teach our children, Mattel has made it so then barbies can come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes. This will teach children all around the world that you don't need to be this deathly skinny person in order to make it in the world, and to just be happy with who they are.

Social Media: Yay or Nay?

Nothing is perfect on this floating blue ball of dirt and water, and everything and everyone can have their good qualities as well as their bad ones. Over the past week, we read over and discussed the pros and cons of social media, and these two things that I picked I found the most interesting. 

One of the pros that I found is obviously it keeps you connected with all of your friends and family. Social media makes it so much easier for me to keep in contact with all of my old buddies and talk to old relatives that I've lost touch with. It brings everyone together and it lets people know whats going on in their lives. 

The con that I found was that people became to dependent and glued to their social media or their phones. I found this really ironic because the site that was supposed to bring everyone together is making people pay attention to the media rather than interacting with the people in real life. Also the idea that people have this need to have likes for approval makes me legitimately sick to my stomach. You don't need other peoples approval to be okay with yourself.

Gaming and it's Sweet Reward

Over the last week or so, we looked into the gaming industry and why people love to play video games so much. During that week we read over an article about the values that these video games can have, as well as watching a video about video games can change the world made by Jane McGonigal and they both had a lot of good things to say about gaming and how it can help the world as we know it. One of good qualities that the article mentions that video games have is the ability to relieve stress. I completely agree with this because whenever I am stressed, the first place I usually go is to my living room to play Xbox for a little while to calm my nerves. In the video, Jane also mentions that video games can be an excellent stress reliever, and if anything people need to start playing in order to calm themselves down.

Another quality that the article mentions is that video games give you this sense of celebration when you complete a challenge or task. Whenever you complete a level, you either get some sort of achievement or point reward whenever you complete a mission or finish some sort of side quest. Either way it makes you feel really good about yourself. Jane actually encourages this kind of behavior by saying that in the actual world, we need to be celebrating victories no matter how big or small. 

High School Sports and Religion

Over the 10th week of class, we have looked over and discussed the risks of high school football and why it was so popular. We had talked about the major themes of the sport overall and one of them that I could relate closely to was the one dealing with football being a religion. A lot of the articles that we had read over the 10th week had brought back a ton of memories of what high school football was like. So when people were questioning why players would obviously be hurt, but still want to go back in, the answer would always be that they loved the sport. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but when you spend your summers waking up at 6 am every morning to get to a morning lift at 7, spend the last half of that lift running until you threw up in the blistering heat, practiced every single day practicing and remembering plays and routes, and most of all just preparing to destroy the other team. After all of those hours of hard work, no one in that position would ever give it up for an injury, these players have put their blood, sweat, and tears into this game, and they will see it through to the end.

Empowering Advertisements

During the week before spring break, we were talking about advertisements and how demeaning they can be towards women. In 2019, the ads can still be very demeaning although they've eased up dramatically compared to the advertisements from the 1950s and 60s. For this blog post assignment we needed to find two advertisements that empowered women, and I found some very interesting finds.

The first ad I found was a from a brand named Brawny that makes paper towels. Now this company doesn't make any old regular paper towels, they make the strongest paper towel on the market. But how do we know that, well the big lumberjack on the packaging might have something to do with it. But the company decided to take this icon of strength and go an entirely different route with it. Instead of using the giant lumberjack, they decided to use 4 women wearing the same outfit that the lumberjack would wear with the motto "#strengthhasnogender" across the ad. I thought this was really cool just because I've been buying that brand for years and I've always been so used to seeing a giant lumberjack in the advertisements, but having one that can depict women in that same roll was a nice change of pace

The next ad I found tried to convey a message of empowerment but ended up doing the exact opposite. Whenever people think of empowering women in advertisements, the most well known ad that comes to mind first is Rosie the Riveter (Otherwise known as the "we can do it" girl). The ad uses the image of the well known icon and uses it to sell a Swiffer, which is exactly the opposite of what Rosie was all about. Rosie the Riveter was an advertisement that was released during WWII in order to encourage women to join the work force while the men were over seas. She was supposed to be an image of motivation for women everywhere and now her image is sending a message that cleaning was empowering.

• https://mashable.com/2016/03/08/brands-women-empowerment/#gMLYdyLS2aqu
• https://buffer.com/resources/pov

Teens and Sexting

Over the past week we looked over teens and the phenomenon called "sexting". Sexting is when sexually explicit photos are sent over text to another person. We read a few articles about the subject and we created a chart with all of the information pertaining to the subject, and what really captured my attention was the information on the teenagers that actually sent the texts in the first place.

According one of the articles that we looked at, on in seven teenagers send the texts, and one in four receive them (1-7). In a lot of cases, the sender will feel peer pressured into doing it, but his/her self image would be on the line.  But then when these teenagers receive these messages, 12.5% of them forward the messages without the senders consent to other people in their school, or people they don't even know(1-7). Since these teens are not of legal age, teens are basically trading child pornography in school, which is a federal offense. After the texts have been sent, 13% of these teenagers have reported that they have had a bad experience with sexting(TAS). The senders may receive a large amount of backlash from other students or their own friends because of the messages.

The Modern Lavish Wedding

 The Lavish wedding is basically a wedding that gives the bride the taste of royalty that they've always dreamed of. These brides get the fancy dresses, expensive venues , and ice sculptures just to name a few things that these weddings require in order for it to be the perfect day. But some of these brides take the royalty thing a little bit too far on the TV show, Say Yes to The Dress.

Deborah Doty is a bride that is basing her entire wedding on the royal family. Now that doesn't mean that shes just basing her dress off of a princess' wedding gown, her idea was if Buckingham Palace didn't have it, she didn't want to see it in her wedding. Her family has even expressed that she thinks she IS Princess Diana. The first thing that she needed to pick out for her perfect day is the dress. Now of course every girl that comes into that dress shop wants to become the princess of their dreams, but Deborah needed a dress that felt like Princess Diana would actually walk down the isle with it on. She even said that whenever she put it on that the dress brought her back to the royal wedding. The second thing that she needed was the venue. The reception was being held in this huge place that literally looks like a castle on the inside of it. She had said that she wanted the wedding to be extravagant, and full of glam, just like Princess Diana's special day. The last thing that she needed was the most important piece of all... the tiara. How else are you going to have a princess wedding without a tiara? At the day of wedding when everything was pieced together, she said that she "talked" to the late Princess Diana and said that they were both connected that day, (little strange if you ask me). 

Cultivation Theory and Torture

Cultivation Theory is basically what happens when we watch too much TV. The theory is that the more people live in the television world, they are going to believe that the social reality on television is going to be the same as the social reality in real life. In other words, its the classic "I saw some one do it on TV therefore it's okay" excuse.

In class we watched an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that went over America's views on torture. Of course torture is a scary thing on it's own but the thing that scared me the most was on the statistics on the topic of torture methods like waterboarding. In the video it had said that 69% of American's believe that waterboarding was indeed a form of torture, however 49% of people believe that torture is justified and and about 57% of Americans firmly believe that torture is actually useful in obtaining information. But that's not even the scariest part of all of this. Their was an article on torture in The Atlantic dating back to June 19th of 2007 and their is a quote from supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, mentioning torture and why it's justified because of the show 24. He said "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles, he saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Is anyone going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so." Honestly that right there is the most terrifying thing I have ever heard in my life. A supreme court justice is trying to justify torturing human lives just because he saw Kiefer Sutherland do it on TV. The only thing that I can think of that would be even more terrifying is if Donald Trump thought dropping anvils on people was okay because he saw it on Loony Toons.

Dungeons and Dragons: The Never Ending Blame Game

The video that we watched in class was about a younger college student that went missing. The student traveled far from home when he was only a young teenager and was a shut in due to the fact that everyone was older than him and he had a hard time making friends. When he was found, instead of the main concern being the mental health of the kid, everyone decided to focus the blame on a game called Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy role playing game and it was accused of being satanic and corrupting children for some reason. With all of the drama circling around a board game, a new phenomenon revealed it's ugly face. And it's name was Media Phobia.

According to Karen Sternheimer, Media Phobia can be defined as a fear of pop culture and it's "social problems" that people think it creates. Instead of focusing on the problem itself, people try to find the thing or the person responsible for it. Another great example of this would be The Columbine Shootings and the blame that was put on musicians like Eminem and Marilyn Manson. A lot of the blame for that tragedy was shifted toward the violence and anarchy that these artists portrayed in their songs. Marilyn Manson had quoted in an interview " The president has been shooting bombs over seas, yet I'm a bad guy for singing some rock and roll songs. And who's a bigger influence; the president or Marilyn Manson. I'd like to think me, but I'm going to go with the president." People need to understand that pop culture has nothing to do with the problems that we create for ourselves. If anything, pop culture has been the one showing us that their are problems going on in our world that need to be fixed. Instead of going on this which hunt with who is to blame, lets just focus on the actual problem instead.