Last Post :( My Reflection

Through media blogs, I have learned more than I ever thought I would. At first, I didn’t realize the impact that media blogs would have on my understanding and comprehension of the media. However, as time went on, I found myself identifying advertisements and commercials that carried specific ad techniques. Now as I reflect on it, I can see how much I have learned just by paying attention to the advertisements that are constantly vying for my attention.

            The amount of media that I see does not affect my life. It creates an outline that I feel I must fit into if I want to fit in with the rest of my peers. Media creates the trends and I follow them because I want to be accepted into our society. This is the idea of mooks and midriffs. Media has become so prominent in our society that we no longer control it. Being aware of this fact has completely changed my view of the media. What I know now is that I must be aware of how the media is trying to affect me. This class has made me literate and fluent in the world of the media. Now that I understand what it is doing, I am able to control it instead of it controlling me. By being literate in media, I am no longer fooled by an advertisement’s ploy to get me to do a certain thing or act a certain way. I can tell now when an advertisement is trying to fool the customer, and I can now avoid that.

Advertisements and commercials today hold nothing back. They will hit you will all that they can to get into your head and stay there. Since the beginning of the semester, my media habits have changed completely. In the past, I would fall for all of the commercials that would try to draw me in, especially the ones using the Need to Satisfy Curiosity or the Need to Nurture. However, I now recognize when these commercials focus on emotional appeals and not only on their product. This allows me to ignore the emotional impact they have on me. While I still love watching commercials with cute puppies, I no longer associate these commercials with using a product. This allows for me to make decisions based on logical and rational facts instead of using a product because I see a picture of a cute puppy. Overall, I am just better at recognizing a commercial’s sad attempt to draw people in. While it still might work on others, it certainly won’t work on me!

I think that it is very important to have media literacy. In today’s society, media can override anything. It is the most powerful “machine” in our world. With the media, you can either make or destroy a person, an idea, or an entire nation. The select few who control the media control everything else. With media literacy, one can decipher what the media tells you to think and what you actually think. Having media literacy will create a society filled with strong people, men and women alike, who are no longer classified as mooks and midriffs. By taking this class, I am able to understand topics with much more complexity than how the topic is presented to me by the media. I understand that the media has a bias about every topic, and unless I filter that (using my media literacy) I might not know the entire story.

An educated consumer has to be media literate and know both sides of a story. If one is not an educated consumer, they might make a poor decision with bad after-effects. For example, they might buy a product because of the emotional appeals in the commercial instead of the actual use of the product. This is a very poor purchasing habit because there might be a better product that the consumer doesn’t know about. Another important idea about being an educated consumer is the idea that if you are not an educated consumer (of media) you might make poor decisions when deciding on leaders. As we saw in the film “Miss Representation,” women are often treated differently than men in political fields. This is very bad because women account for 50% of the population, and that is not represented politically. Being media literate would allow for people to see that this is not fair and that men and women should be treated alike in political fields.

From doing these media logs, I was finally able to understand the impact that media has on my life and the ways in which our society conforms to the media’s ideas. These logs helped me understand how all advertisements use different techniques in order to gain attention from the consumer. This is very important because it made me an educated consumer. I am now able to understand how an advertisement is trying to appeal to me and how I can avoid being sucked into their trap. These logs have changed my media consumptions habits, and for that, I am so grateful.

            While I believe that I am media literate, I think it is also important to recognize that I still pay attention to certain commercials and will always be influenced by the media. However, I feel that, now, the influence of the media on me is so much weaker than ever before. I do not let the media shape my entire life anymore. To me, this is very important. The media has such a large amount of power and is such a big part of society today. If we don’t learn how to float, we will drown- it’s inevitable. Media literacy allows people to make educated and informed decisions about how media will affect them, which is very important. For this reason, I think that more classes, such as critical thinking, should be offered to make students literate in the world of media. If we do not educate students about the media now, the effect that it has on every life will never change. If we really want the world to be a better place, people must be media literate, which would allow them to understand the media, which holds so a major impact on their life. I am so glad to have taken Critical Thinking because now I finally understand the complex world of the media.

#16- Don't Smoke!

                Wow… that’s intense. I’ve been seeing these advertisements and commercials around pretty often lately. They are created to discourage people from smoking cigarettes. They are very effective on me, and I think the same goes for other people.

            Now, I’ve never in my entire life considered smoking. I have been educated on the very harmful and dangerous effects that smoking can have on a person’s long-term health. However, I imagine that for some people, this can be a very eye-opening ad. Many people know that it is bad for you, but some don’t know just how bad, and addicting, it can be. They think that they will just be able to do it a little bit and nothing will happen, but that’s just not true.

            One way that this ad is effective is by showing the picture of the woman who is a former smoker. Her hair and most of her face look like any other person’s. However, parts of her mouth as disfigured and she has a hole in the base of her throat. These are some of the effects of smoking on one’s health. By showing a normal woman, who looks very average aside from the effects of smoking, the advertisers are showing the viewer that this can happen to anyone. This uses the Plain Folks Ad technique. You can see a picture of a son or grandson in the background and nothing about it looks abnormal.

At the bottom of the picture, it lists her name, Terrie, and her age, 52. By telling her name, the advertisers established a personal connection between the viewer and this woman. She is not just any woman. She is a woman named Terrie who has a family. She could be any smoker. Also, they show her age. She is only 52, which is very young to start having major health problems. Her age shows how harmful the effects of smoking can be even for people who are very old.

This advertisement also uses the Need to Satisfy Curiosity. When people see the woman and the text, they are not exactly sure what the advertisement is for. You must focus on the entire picture and on the text at the top to understand what the ad is about. This is very important because many people would just ignore an ad about the harmful long-term effects of smoking on one’s body.

Now we will get to the focus of the ad. At the very top of the page, there is a little black box with text inside that reads “A tip from a former smoker.” This establishes common ground between the woman and the viewer, who is potentially a smoker. The focus of the advertisement is the large, white text in the middle of the page. It reads “Record your voice for your loved ones while you still can.” (Smoking can cause irreversible damage which results in a tool necessary to speak and an altered voice.) This woman is telling the viewer that smoking is very bad and that there are things that she can’t do now, like speak to her family with her real voice, that she could do before the smoking caused damage. Also, she says “…for your loved ones….” This brings it to the family level. She is not just another woman. She has a family that she can’t communicate with the way she would like.

This ad demonstrates the harmful effects of smoking. It is a very good advertisement and it supports a good message. Overall, I think that this advertisement is very effective.

#15- Victoria's Secret Hate.. whoops, I meant Love... Your Body campaign

            After watching the documentary “Miss Representation”, I immediately thought of the Victoria’s Secret “Love your body” campaign.

The idea of this campaign can be interpreted in so many different ways. One way is to say that Victoria’s Secret wants you to love your body just the way it is. However, when you look at the models on the ad, this just doesn’t seem like a realistic goal. The models placed in this ad are tall and really scarily skinny. Their bodies have been photo-shopped and airbrushed to “perfection.”

Another way to interpret this ad, which is more realistic to the picture they have, is by saying that when you look like the models you will love your body, and that you can look like the models by buying Victoria’s Secret products. This isn’t true. You can’t look like an airbrushed and photo-shopped model just by wearing a certain product.

This ad severely objectifies women. This can be seen in the smaller black text. It reads “Meet our newest bodies.” Not “meet our newest angels,” (Victoria’s Secret models are called angels) or something similar. No. They had to call these women “bodies.” By calling them bodies, they are treated as something unimportant and replaceable. They are not strong or independent women. They are used only for their looks, and when they don’t look the right way, they will be thrown out and new “bodies” will be found. This is terrible. Women are not just some object that you can throw out when they get to old.

This ad is also very guilty of treating women as sexual objects. This problem has much of the same logic found in the above argument. Look at how these women are dressed. They were wearing close to nothing and their bodies are extremely retouched before they are allowed on the ad. If one were to compare the before retouching and after retouching, the differences would be drastic. These women are not realistic and they shouldn’t be treating as something that is only for looking at. These women have thoughts and feelings just as much as anyone else and this advertisement treats them as if they are just to be looked at.

Despite all of my objections to this advertisement, it is effective. This advertisement would make any woman in the world feel insecure about their bodies, which just creates an endless cycle of objectification, sexual and otherwise. These women want to believe that the product will make them look like the women in the ad, but that just isn’t true. No one can look like the women who are artificially created. However, the women are still willing to try and will use Victoria’s Secret products to try and obtain the society constructed view of beauty.