For Essay 1, you should try out Paraphrase x3 on several of the key lines from your commercial-- are there any repeating phrases or taglines? Is there a major introductory or conclusion statement about the product? Practicing Paraphrase x3 will help you dig into the material of the commercial and gain an in-depth understanding of how your commercial's argument functions.
Below you will find an article on how TV commercials work. First, individually skim pages. 36-38 in Writing Analytically and then read the article below. Then join with your writing groups to practice Paraphrase x3 on the bolded text your group is assigned. You may use laptops, phones, etc. to help you come up with synonyms for words. After you come up with 3 paraphrases, return to the original bolded passage and interpret the meaning while taking into consideration all the paraphrasing you have done. Nominate a group member to record you work and one or two members to share your ideas with the rest of the class.
How TV Commercials Influence American Culture:
(1)TV ads are built on one simple
idea: If you buy X, you'll get Y. But Y is rarely the product itself. Rather,
it's a positive emotion, a perfect relationship, higher social status or an
amazing experience. For example, if you buy Big Red gum, you'll get to "kiss
a little longer." Or if you go to Toys "R" Us, you'll reconnect
with your youthful self, allowing you to have even more fun with your kids:
After all, you don't wanna grow up, 'cause maybe if you did, you couldn't be a
Toys "R" Us kid! Leaving the jingles aside, if you had a Verizon phone, you'd be able to stay close with your family. Or if you owned a Kia car, you
would immediately transform into an ultracool rodent. (Well, maybe that one's a
little far-fetched!)
Maybe
more importantly, in terms of TV ads' impact on culture, buying Calvin Klein
jeans will make you sexy like Kate Moss, or buying Nike sports apparel will
make you ready to "Just Do It," like a professional beach volleyball
player. Of course, this isn't breaking news. (2) What's cool, though, is how exactly it works -- more specifically, how tv ads both reflect
culture and drive it forward, pulling us unsuspecting viewers along with it.
In
the early 1900s, clever industrialists faced competition from other clever
industrialists. They quickly realized that instead of simply selling a better
cooking stove, for example, they could sell the idea that their cooking stove
above any other on the market was the key to a "modern" household.
And what did society want? It wanted to be modern. And how did society achieve
this? By buying brand X's stove, because it appeared to be the obvious choice.
And thus the idea of buying your way to an idealized life was born.
We've already established that TV ads reflect culture. They parrot back to consumers what consumers already want: a modern household, the ability to properly nurture a family according to cultural standards, the perfect relationship and more.
(3) But this reflection is a magic mirror: one
that you can look into and see not you as you are, but a better self. According to the ads, this
better self is funnier than you (the misquoted football coaches of Coors), cooler than you (the guy driving a Dodge Charger) and way,
way sexier than you (Kate Moss, Tyra Banks or the ever-alluring David
Hasselhoff).
In
fact, almost all of the 16,000 ads the average American sees every day have one
thing in common: They're idealized (Savan). Idealization means that whatever's happening in the ad is ahead of where culture
is right now. It's not what we've got, but instead it's richer, sexier and
cooler!
(4) TV ads drive culture by reflecting only the
lucky top 0.001 percent of what's possible, and then when the remaining 99.999
percent of culture imitates it, the center of culture shifts. Ads show sexy, liberated
women smoking, so more average American women start smoking to try to achieve
that sexy liberation. Ads show perfect natural beauty, or athletic beauty, or
posh beauty, or stick-figure beauty, and when culture imitates these ideals,
the center shifts and the ads have to get more extreme to remain ideal. For
example, how could you not want to be as cool as the Kia hamsters in their
saggy pants, hoodies and dark glasses?
(5) If we're not careful, these
ads can be cultural quicksand. Culture suggests something and ads drive it --
whether the destination is worthwhile or not is beside the point.
Excepted from howstuffworks.com-- "How do TV commercials influence American consumers?"
Excepted from howstuffworks.com-- "How do TV commercials influence American consumers?"
•
Allor, Kevin. "The Rise of Advertisement and American
Consumer Culture." Maryland State Archives. Aug. 24, 2006. (March 28,
2011)http://teachingamericanhistorymd.net/000001/000000/000129/html/t129.html
•
Craig, Steve. "Madison Avenue versus The Feminine
Mystique: How the Advertising Industry Responded to the Onset of the Modern
Women's Movement." Popular Culture Association. March 27, 1997. (March 28,
2011)http://www.asc.upenn.edu/courses/comm334/Docs/femads.pdf
•
Ewen, Stuart and Elizabeth Ewen. "Channels of Desire:
Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness." University of
Minnesota Press. 1992.
•
Savan, Leslie. "The Bribed Soul: Ads, TV and American
Culture." Center for Media Literacy. (March 28,
2011)http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/bribed-soul-ads-tv-and-american-culture
•
Schudson, Michael. "Advertising, the Uneasy
Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society." Basic Books. 1984.
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