For your first essay-response blog post, I want you to discuss some of the key insights raised in the readings for this week (excerpts from Brought to You By), and to use those ideas – especially the author’s discussion in the Conclusion – to analyze a piece of TV advertising that shaped your own ideas about the meaning and value of consumption when you were younger.
For example, was there any TV advertising for a specific brand or product that really spoke to you, or appealed to your desires in a new way? Or something that, in hindsight, really played off of your own insecurities? Were there particular images that challenged, or manipulated, or resonated with, your sense of identity (for better or worse)? What are some of the assumptions those ads made about you and your relationship to things you buy? And what do you think about that years later?
These are all possible questions to consider in your discussion. But regardless of what angle you take, the main thing I want you to do is to discuss how and why you think those images affected you…and to put that in conversation with some of the points raised in this week’s readings.
Try to focus your discussion around a specific example that shaped your thinking, such as advertising for a particular brand, or a singular product, or even a specific TV advertising campaign. Think of this as a case study that you’ll examine in detail with your post. In order to make your case study as vivid as possible, you should search the web to find those original commercials and include them in your post…along with any other relevant images (such as screenshots or related print ads). Adding images to your blog post is super easy, and embedding videos is as simple as copying and pasting a Youtube address where you want it to go in the text (the link just has to stand as its own sentence). If you’re new to blogging, or you simply need a refresher about incorporating media into your posts, you can learn how in under 5 minutes by following these links:
- Adding images: http://help.edublogs.org/add-images/
- Embedding videos: http://help.edublogs.org/embed-videos/
One last thing: I recognize that this assignment is asking everyone to engage in a bit of semi-public self-reflection, and that may feel a little weird since we’re not always used to admitting how we’re shaped by the media we routinely see and hear, unless its to comment on something trivial, like how a commercial for tacos made us crave tacos (mmmmm, tacos). But the important thing to keep in mind is that we all share similar kinds of experiences with TV advertising, especially when we were kids or teenagers. Admitting as much certainly doesn’t make us suckers or dupes. It simply shows that we’re human, and therefore susceptible to influence by a form of media that saturates our culture and relentlessly persuades us to view the world through its lens (which is to say, from the vantage point of a shopping cart).
I look forward to reading everyone’s work and also hearing your thoughts about your classmates’ posts. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions, and make sure to check out the guidelines for creating your own essay-response blog post before you get started.