Ad Analysis(Post#6)

I chose to analyze the “Absolut Man” advertisement. I feel like there is very much information to be picked up by the viewer, both consciously and subconsciously; as any good advertisement should provide. The advertisement itself, however, brings up issues that will ultimately cause quiet dissention between the sexes.

At face value, this article looks like a strange scene; not one that you are typical to find in everyday life. This factor is what originally catches the attention of the viewer: a scene of a man in pieces, on the floor, with a female standing over him.  As the viewer continues to examine the picture, he/she will observe that the limbs strewn about the floor and such are of different origin. The head bearing glasses doesn’t seem to math with the deeply tanned torso or the one arm holding an electric guitar. Seemingly mismatched, this is the deeper meaning of the picture.

                The reason that the limbs are of different origin are because they represent different personalities, found in men, that women usually enjoy and look for. The viewer will see legs clothed in what appears to be a wedding tuxedo, one arm with an electric guitar, one arm with a bouquet of flowers, a torso that is tanned and obviously in shape, as well as a smiling face complete with modern glasses. The legs represent commitment and marital drive(stability). The guitar arm represents artistry/creativity and somewhat of a sense of spontaneity. The hand with the flowers represents compassion/sincerity/romance/etc. The torso represents physical attractiveness/sex-appeal. Finally, the head, complete with smile and glasses represents kindness/affirmation and intelligence. With all of this representation, the pieces must ultimately lead to a complete idea.

                Subsequently, the pieces of the puzzle lead to the complete idea that in an absolute world (one where everyone gets what they want), a woman could have a man with all of these traits and none of the bad ones that come with being a human being. The finally piece of the puzzle, once the viewer realizes what he/she is reading is the fact that he/she will realize that absolute is spelled like “absolut” and they will be more likely to buy a bottle of the Vodka because of the nostalgic feeling that it gave her or him. The only possible negative outcome of this is the fact that a thinking man will realize how shallow this idea is and will subconsciously boycott the brand because of their insensitivity. This could further lead to brief but unexamined feelings of irritation toward women for seems like participation in that insensitivity.

http://18.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kp798haTVB1qziwjbo1_500.jpg

On revising and such matters…(Post #5)

Now, firstly, I must make a comment on the subject of scruples in writing. I very much believe that I am not the only reader who sometimes “jumps the gun” in making assumptions about writing due to the writer’s “credentials.” I first read the Murray article and was thoroughly impressed with the credentials that the introduction highlighted. I expected that I would glean an incalculable number of helpful tips to improve my writing through. I was sadly mistaken. While this article was brilliantly written and it is obvious that the author is extremely knowledgeable and cualified to write this article, I felt like I got a “twelve-step process” approach to the subject, from the piece. I am not an accomplished writer so I had no basis for this claim, however, I always felt deep-down while writing that someday I would learn “secret insights” about revising and the writing process that would defy the “a,b,c” format that I had been forced to use. I hoped that when I got older and more experienced with writing that the revising process would prove to be something more artistic than the grudge-work Murray presents it as. I am not sure why I held this hope/belief to be a truth. This article was not what I expected, ultimately killing that unsupported notion of mine. Murray’s approach is a structured process that seems to be the epitome of most of the unheeded points of my High-school English education. I have come to the realization that revision is a hard and dirty process that must be utilized and undertaken. There are no easy solutions or shortcuts.

Mr. Murray himself

I read the credentials in the introduction of Zinsser’s article and because they didn’t appear to be as great as Murray’s, I didn’t expect to glean very much from him. I was totally surprised to find that this was one the most helpful articles that I have ever read about writing. The article addresses a problem that I have encountered with many individuals, including myself. Many people choose to bombard their writing with the most complex vocabulary that they can muster, often using words from a thesaurus that they only know the adjacent definition for. However, Zinsser claims “the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.” His commentary on how using simple language is important to keeping a reader, was very beneficial and surprisingly honest. “The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds…” This truly put the subject into context.

William Zinsser-An honest man

So what does this mean for my paper, now? Having read the articles, I have a few thoughts. Overall, I plan on revising to create probably two more drafts of my paper, if at all possible. More specifically, I plan to look through my work, during the revision to make sure that I am not using extraneous vocabulary in any amount. I plan to read the paper, the night before it is due because that is as long as I can put away the piece of work for fair evaluation, and make sure I have a definitive voice in the essay. I believe that these three things combined with the other hundred changes I expect to happen, will make my paper as successful as it can possibly be.

The difficulty with writing about new media

     I’ll just get right into it. There is one factor about writing about new media that has plagued me the most during the construction of this paper. It is the fact that my topic is extremely new and while there is plenty of actual examples of subject matter(see below link), there is almost no writing about the actual media itself. Many people enjoy the form of media, but either no one has thought critically about the form of media, or, no one has taken the time to publish their deeply pensive thoughts. It seems that even the blogs aren’t addressing Mashups in a critical way. It is like everyone assumes that it is just part of everyday life without any need to examine the phenomenon.

     My thesis proposes the claim that the Mashup, while appearing to be a simple musical feat created for personal enjoyment, is actually being used as a tool to connect people of different races/social groups. I believe that it can easily be proved with logic and a one on one discussion. However, writing academically is not about this type of persuasion. It requires someone of some importance in the past having said something similar to the claim being made so that they can, in turn be used as a stepping stone. Their word vouches for the claim of the author. With new media, people are so busy enjoying it, that few people take the time to make a claim so that a student, like me, trying to create an academic essay can say “So and so said this twenty years ago, so what I am saying is true.” I can’t piggy back off of someone if no one is available. 

 Another problem with writing about new media is the fact that it indefinitely will be old someday and with the way that the digital age has made innovations even easier to create, it isn’t usually long until a new media is an old media. What I write about in my essay will not be of any purpose to future generations except possibly to be used to study historically. “What the early two-thousand generation thought new media was.”

http://www.djearworm.com/

A true work of art.

Benjamin Woolley.(Post#3)

Benjamin Woolley is an academic writer about technology, media, and it’s growing effects on our everyday lives. He is obviously a supporter of McLuhan, considering how many times he both quotes and references him in this essay.

Woolley decides to start the essay with friendly instruction to the reader. The tone is so familiar, that it almost suggests a friendly letter. By the opening line including the phrase “We need first…” Woolley identifies with the reader by taking up his un-revealed cross. The strategy is so that in he following sections of the essay, when the problem is specifically identified, the reader will feel that he/she needsto take hold of this problem with the solution proposed by the author because he is our subconscious alli. It is especially interesting that Wooley claims that when commenting on cyberspace, “The actual term is technically unimportant….” Woolley delves into the explanation of cyberspace, not by definition, but by walking very closely around the question of what it is. At one point, he uses historical context.

When discussing the historical context, we get the account of the beginning of networks. We, as the readers, learn that the American  Advanced Research Projects Agency. The network was originally intended for the transfer of data between the computers of different workers. It would later expand to the user friendly technology that we know as the world wide web. This section was very easy to read and established my confidence in Woolley, as a reader, from his knowledge of this history.

I found that his most effective line in the whole of the essay was actually an extension of one of McLuhan’s most famous lines. While commenting on McLuhan’s description of the world as a global village, he says, “we have breached the terminating barrier of the skin.” This is a profound way of describing how our technological communication has taken over our lives and protruded past our previous means.

I did a quick search on any information that I could possibly find about Woolley, on the internet. There wasn’t barely any, except the date that this section of one of his novels was published. It was published in 1992. I found this very interesting because he wrote this during a time when virtual did exist in crude form. He still, however, discusses the technology like something magical.

The essay ends with a fearful though that Woolley proposes. “It was the excitement of being part of this world that stoked up the computing community’s interest in virtually reality. Could this be where the denizens of the global village truly belonged? Could this be the new reality?” This like most of the other new media pieces hold an underlying message of fear. That would be a good topic to discuss: Why is there always fear in these type of readings?

McLuhan, message, and all things media.

     Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian-born thinker and educator. He worked as an English teacher. McLuhan earned his BA and MA from Manitoba University. The majority of Literary Critics find his work to be prophetic. This is due to the fact that most of his work discussing the effects and theology of technology and its effect on society were done nearly half a century ago.

     I was surprised when reading these various pieces of writing. Part of my surprise came from the fact that I strongly agreed with the points made about the media. The rest of my surprise came from the fact that  found some of the content to be too “out-there” for me to agree with. I did feel, although disagreeing with some of the thoughts that the writing included, that trying to make sense of the whole technology and new media topic is proactive and half of the battle toward understanding it. The points that peaked my interest enough to highlight are as follows:

    “Marshall McLuhan in 1964, ‘the globe is no more than a village’”(Wooley, pg. 5). This dea was one that had a delayed reaction for me. At first, I read over it and continued reading without much thought. It wasn’t until i reading the next page that i realized what McLuhan was saying. By stating the claim that the world is nothing more than a village, McLuhan is saying that we are so well connected through media, that we are not nearly as separated as we used to be. He is absolutely right, though I’m sure that he had no idea just how true his claim would be today, in an age of email and instant messaging. “We have breached the terminating barrier of the skin.”(Wooley, pg. 6).

     The information about ARPAnet was, though having little to do with McLuhan himself, extremely interesting from a historical perspective.

     “Just plug the helmet and some sort of sensory body shock into the telephone and television and you would be away, literally, away discovering the true meaning of McLuhan’s limitless sensorium.”(Wooley, pg. 8). I found this to be a great example of how McLuhan’s statements were before his time. Today we have virtual reality games that end us visually and “physically” into another place.

     “‘The medium is the message.’”(Wooley, pg. 9). This quotation is one of the most famous made by McLuhan. I didn’t understand what it meant until Wooley explained it. It actually means that the ability to use a particular medium is ultimately more important than the information that is being transmitted using that medium. This seems like a somewhat valid idea but still doesnt sit completely right with me.

     “‘The content of a medium is like a juicy piece of meat’”(Digital McLuhan, pg. 37). I found tha this quotation was interesting because it seemed to propose the idea of fear. I don’t think that any one or two lines could prove this claim, but i couldn’t help but get the feeling that McLuhan was addressing AI(Artificial Intelligence).

     McLuhan paints the mediums as something slightly sinister and secretive. I wonder if any other of his writings gave this impression…

A conlgomerate of blogs.

     I viewed a blog entitled “Hot Air.” This is a news oriented blog that posts on political issues. I noticed that the blog varied in the way information was both presented and responded to. I viewed one post on the blog that dealt with TV News Anchor Glenn Beck’s interview with Katie Couric. The post was long and had it been formatted in word probably would have amounted to roughly two pages double spaced ad 12 font. However, there was only one tiny, one sentence, response to the extensive post. inversely, i found another post about Al Gore’s most recent comments on global warming. That post wa only about three sentences, yet there amounted to roughly 80 responses. visually, the blog was very linear with hard edges and neutral colors, giving the idea of formality. The writing in the blog is highly sardonic/sarcastic toward its subject matter. 

     Viewing the blog “Video Gum”, I saw how an arts/culture blog differs from that of a typical political blog. Video Gum is all about reviewing movies and television programs. THe actual blog, itself, is very warm, visually appealing, and inviting. It was barely linear and was full of color and intrusive designs. There were any opportunities, even while reading the blog, to watch clips from the material being reviewed.

     The science blog that I viewed was somewhat smilar and somewhat different than the other blogs that i viewed. The science blog was very linear. However, it was full of vivid, even flourescent, colors. The review themselves wer mainly about technology, but they were much less boring than i expected. It appeared to be a very “fun fact” based blog. Also, the reviews were much more objective than the previous two blogs. This blog also employed the use of video clips embedded withing the text. This gave a pleasingly multi sensory experience.

     The last blog that i visited was called “Art(h)ist’ry.” When i found out that this was going to be an academic blog, i expected that i wouldn’t like it at all. I expected to be absolutely bored with it. It turned out, however, to be terribly interesting. Although the content was very linear and only images were included(no video), i felt like it had an air of informalityor maybe comfort is the better word. The bloggers discussed art in the news and in their immediate surroundings and i was enthralled. I felt like the comments followed suit with the previous air of comfort. Also, like the other blogs, i see only the commonality of paragraphs. As far as length is concerned, here seems to be no cohesion.