Blog Post 12: Extra Credit

Before attending RTF 305 I had hardly had a handle on the workings of Facebook.  The blog was definitely a completely new experience.

The blogs helped to force the application of the course material.  They made you think about what it was that you were saying when talking about the RTF concepts and helped to give insight into how those concepts are used.  It was also a great tool to help study for the tests. 

The only thing that was a little frustrating at times was they limited ability to manipulate the actual blog page with inserting pictures; it could be my lack of computer knowledge though.  Finding examples was a bit of a challenge at times.  I was always concerned as to whether or not the example would fit the prompt.  No major issues though.

The ability to check other people’s blogs to see how they answered the prompt or how they may have formatted their post was a great help.  Whenever I happened to get stuck I would just go see how others interpreted the prompt to help get me get started, and if it was a technical problem I would just ask or call some people to help me out.

One of my personal favorite posts was the one about long, medium and close up shots.  I thought it was fun to look through a film and discover those scenes in the movie.  It gave me a new perspective on film techniques and exactly why some shots are the way they are.  It was also cool to look through some films and find where these techniques were used and how effectively they were at that.

I think the use of a blog, as long as it doesn’t become overly cumbersome, is a great way to engage the students in the material they are learning and to apply it in a way that reflects their personal opinions. 

The use of a more obvious grading scale would have made the blogs less stressful.  Often times I found myself spending excessive amounts of time on the blogs making them far too long in the fear of not getting that third point. 

Yes, you can use my blog in a paper or report.

Blog Post 11: Globalization

Globalization can be defined simply as the way by which nations become more interrelated and alleviate dissimilarities in their respective culture and between their people.  This process of unification is enhanced with new technologies, phones and the internet for example, which allows for even easier communication and transference of ideas and media. 

Hybridization, a part of globalization, is the use of an idea or formulaic success that has occurred in one nation and attempts to adjust it to a new nation in the hopes of having a similar success.  The mixing of ideas, that of which were formally separated by the boundaries of each individual nation, allows for nations to evolve their cultures with outside ideas and may eventually yield a completely new culture altogether. 

A perfect example of hybridization is exemplified through the expansion of the Top Model series.  Originally beginning in America with America’s Next Top Model, the show has now branched production to a plethora of new countries creating such subsequent series as Canada’s, Australia’s, Britain’s, Brazil’s and Vietnam’s Next Top Model.  This not only portrays the hybridization of the media format of the show being a success but also the portrayal of a cultural standard that is slowly being established globally by the show.  The competition is for the most part identical in each country and the contestants are for the most part similar in appearance, thus gradually setting a global standard for beauty among women.  The different series, the American and the Brazil for example, have also intermixed themselves on the actual show with guest judges and trips to foreign countries.  This cultural crossover on the show only furthers the globalization effect with the two cultures interacting with each other on the same medium, in regards to the shows formula and the image of the people on it.

Blog Post 10: Advertising Appeals

This advertisement for Axe body spray is powerful and persuasive in such a hyperbolic sense that it is comical.  Not only does it make a claim that by purchasing the body spray will a man, regardless of demeanor, have an army of overzealous lustful women hunting him down like wolves to their prey but it also makes a statement about women as well, presenting the idea that all one needs to sway a woman’s attention is a little body spray.  On the surface level most people will view the advertisement as an obvious exaggeration; however, subconsciously the message of body spray giving a man power over women is still present and taken from the commercial.  Many people know the commercial is obviously unrealistic, yet they still go to the store and buy the axe body spray.  This goes to prove the point that some of the most persuasive commercials are not the ones that force one to buy a product but rather the commercials that present an idea to someone to which they unconsciously accept as fact: hegemonic advertisements.

This commercial clearly demonstrates a use of the advertisement appeal of sex and affiliation to commandeer its audience into a purchase.  This particular form of advertising appeal presents a product and how buying that product is affiliated with “getting the girl” or some kind of ostentatious fantasy.  These commercials usually use sex appeal to get the audience member to buy the product with scantily-clad women and half naked men. 

In this particular commercial, the techniques of sex appealing advertisements are taken to the farthest extreme.  The advertisement does not only promise the user of the axe body spray hundreds of women but rather that these women will be so passionately attracted to the user that they will traverse mountains, forests, and oceans to get a piece of him in their lustful hot women frenzy.  The commercial spares no expenses both in that every woman in the commercial is wearing a bikini and fits perfectly within the ideal dimensions of the standard of beauty which the media has also done so well at creating.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU