Sports have became a big part of the American culture. Whatever sport you follow, you root for "your team,"and in away by playing for a specific city each team has a target market. People look up to athletes as role models and a lot of people are inspired by some athletes. I've found that companies using athletes are target marketing, such as the ad below for Hanes.
Michael Jordan in an advertisement for Hanes.
This is ties into Joseph Turow's essay "Targeting a New World," because being an athlete or a fan of Michael Jordan is part of someone's lifestyle.
Tattoos have became mainstream in society,and now they have became very popular among professional athletes. If you're watching basketball, baseball, boxing, or football you will see a lot of tattoos. In John Leo's "The Modern Primitives" he describes how we have a cultural crisis at hand. Body-modification has spread, but you rarely see athletes with piercings. Here is a picture of the athlete who really brought tattoos and piercings to the public eye.
Dennis Rodman
Dennis Rodman is a prime example of what John Leo would call a member of the body-modification movement. In Stephanie Dolgoff's essay "Tattoo Me Again and Again"she described how each one of her tattoos represented an event in her life. Dennis Rodman, like Dolgoff, is the type of person who is who he is and proud of it regardless of what others think. I'm sure that he would agree with Dolgoff in that his reasons for getting his tattoos make sense to him and that's all that matters. He didn't have the best reputation in the NBA, he was always looked at as a loose canon. Regardless of his actions on the court, he represented a change in professional sports with his tattoos, piercings, and dyed hair. Now if a player dyes his hair, has tattoos, and/or has piercings they don't stand out like Rodman once did. This supports John Leo's theory of people in the body-modification are having to go to extremes to stand out from the crowd now, and maybe in some ways it may represent a lack of power in willing to change the way things our. Cultural crisis or just modern society, either way athletes are influencing us more and more through the media.
Heres a link of an article discussing how athletes are being used in the media for advertisement purposes.
http://www.talentzoo.com/news/Why-Athletes-Are-the-Perfect-Team-Players-in-Media/788.html
Music is a big part of our culture. In a way what you listen to represents a part of who you are. This advertisement above depicts Kevin Durant wearing Skullcandy headphones. This ad is targeting basketball fans. It probably leans towards young men because Kevin Durant is a young basketball player who was a big part of this years U.S.A. Team that won the gold medal. Kevin Durant isn't the only basketball player they have sponsored. They have used a lot of famous young professional basketball players to make basketball fans want to buy Skullcandy headphones.
I believe that young men have become Skullcandy'sprimary target.
Skullcandy has a not only a basketball team, but a skateboarding team as well. I'm a big basketball fan and I was a sponsored skateboarder and I know that a majority of basketball fans and skateboarders are young guys.
I remember meeting Eric Koston (the one with the hat that's not backwards) and I can tell you that everyone in line to meet Koston was a young man.
As a skateboarder and a basketball fan I find these ads to be effective towards their target audience. I was in Best Buy when I stopped by the headphone section. My cheap headphones died out on one side so I needed new headphones, but I didn't want to shell out the money to get Beats so I bought a Skullcandy headphones. So far the headphones have been pretty durable with decent quality. I found the Skullcandy headphones to be worth the $30 compared to Beats $100 or more headphones. Maybe they know that some young men don't want to spend a lot of money on headphones or can't afford a more expensive brand such as Beats.
(Remember I'm talking about headphones, not earbuds.)
I'm definitely part of Skullcandy's target audience. Skullcandy may be narrowing down their target audience, but it seems like the more these advertisements narrow down their audience the more personal their ads become.
Everyday we are surrounded by thousands of ads telling you that you will be better off with their product rather than without it. These ads appear on television, buses, billboards, online, and it's come to the point that ads will follow you wherever you go.
These ads are always portraying a beautiful skinny young woman or a tall, dark, and handsome man who's also buff. They want you to believe that you will benefit from their product and that you will be closer to becoming whoever they are depicting in their ad.
As humans we are always striving to be better than we are and that's the bait the advertisement companies use to lure us in. People can't be perfect and to me that means that our possibilities in life are limitless.
Who would have thought that the annoying commercials screaming for our attention everyday could symbolize limitless possibilitiesin life. They tell you that you aren't perfect and once you realize that perfection isn't possible you realize that their claims are dramatically exaggerated. There is no product that can change who you are, but only what you have.
Persuasion and manipulation are advertisements weapons, it's up to you to remember that all of these ads hire models who make a living off of their looks. Appearance is something you are (usually) born with and products may claim to benefit your overall look, but it's the identity that remains the same. It's your personality that makes you who you are.
Remember next time you see a commercial that you aren't perfect. You will never be perfect and that's what makes life so AMAZING. Since perfection is out of reach, there is always room for improvement.
This video is about technology and how it is beneficial and destructive. Without technology there would only be the real world, no virtual or multi-media world. Humans use of technology is growing rapidly. The question arises, how does technology affect us today?
The Magnificent Seven is one of the best Westerns, if not the best Western ever made. This film was directed by John Sturges and it starred Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, and one of my favorites, Steve McQueen. This film is an Americanization of the famous Japanese movie known as the Seven Samurai. The Magnificent Seven was released in 1960, and I chose this movie because movies today revolve around computer generated images and it's hard to find a movie that's well directed with an all-star cast like this. Too many people around my age don't even know who Steve McQueen is, he's been in so many great movies like the Great Escape, Bullet, not to mention his TV show Wanted: Dead or Alive.
The Magnificent Seven is about a Mexican village of farmers who are terrorized by a gang of bandits who take whatever they want, and leave the villagers with minimal food. The villagers are sick of growing all of their crops and having the bandits come and take almost all of it. The villagers ask the elder what they should do and he tells them to get guns and fight back. A couple of the villagers go to America to get guns, but realize that it's smarter to hire gun slingers who know how to use guns so that they can help defend the village and teach some of the villagers how to use guns. The villagers witness a classic Western battle in the movies sub story, which gets them to ask Chris (Yul Brynner) for help and he helps gather the rest of the men and assemble the Magnificent Seven. It's up to them to help defend the town from the 40 bandits who rob the hard working villagers.
This movie has amazing shots, great music, and as I said before an all-star cast. John Sturges did an an outstanding job and that's why this movie is considered one of the best films ever made. I wouldn't want to sit in the director's chair for this movie because it's such a masterpiece I can't see anyone doing it any justice trying to change it in any way. I don't say that very often, because I'm an aspiring filmmaker.
This is a serious movie with some light humor, but it fits like a glove in this brilliantly written movie. This movie covers prejudice topics and stereotypes that were accurate for the setting of the movie. The movie has a great message, to stand up for what's right and the passion to do it because of the morality behind it not necessarily for some type of monetary reward. I have to give credit to the Seven Samurai, because without that film this one wouldn't have ever happened. I will have to add the Seven Samurai to my Netflix list.
Here's a quote of when the villagers ask the old man for advice on what to do about the gang of bandits terrorizing them.
Hilario: Even if we had the guns, we know how to plant and grow, we don't know how to kill. Old Man: Then learn, or die!
Here's a quote of the leading Bandit talking to one of the Magnificent Seven about the villagers.
Calvera: If God didn't want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.
I definitely recommend this movie to anyone who loves a well written action movie with great actors and good message. Obviously not everyone enjoys Westerns, but this isn't your average Western, it's the Western that stands alone. As much as I love Clint Eastwood's The Good The Bad And The Ugly and John Wayne's Stagecoach, I can't compare those great Westerns to this outstanding movie. If you have the patience to watch this two hour movie and enjoy the trailer below give it a shot.
Here's some interesting facts.
One thing that stands out to me is that Eli Wallach, Calvera (the bad guy), is one of the stars in another hit Western called the Good the Bad and the Ugly. I also recommend that movie if you want to see another good Western, but as I said before I believe the Magnificent Seven is a better movie overall for an audience that is not just into Westerns. Yul Brynner got married on the set and used a bunch of the props from the movie in his wedding. Yul Brynner also decided to stand on a little mound of Earth in every shot he was in with Steve McQueen, because he wanted to appear taller than McQueen and without that little mound they were only a half an inch apart. In the movie McQueen actually casually kicks the mound down every time he passes it. Steve McQueen wanted to act in this movie but his schedule for his TV show Wanted: Dead or Alive wouldn't allow him to do so, so while he was "out sick" from a car accident he shot this film. Yul Brynner also had a problem with McQueen, even though Yul Brynner is the one who recommended that they have McQueen in the movie. Brynner was worried that McQueen was upstaging him in the movie, when Brynner and McQueen were together on screen McQueen did things such as shaking shotgun shells or taking off his hat off to check the sun to draw attention to his character. Yul Brynner became so worried that he hired an assistant to count how many times McQueen touched his hat while Brynner was speaking, the body count was 55. One of the best-known scores ever composed was in the Magnificent Seven and was composed by Elmer Bernstein, who ironically also did a score for the parody of this film, the Three Amigos.
It's been an honor reviewing one of the best films ever made, and I appreciate this film a lot more now that I'm older and studying filmmaking. This is definitely a film that influenced many long after it's time, this is one of the vey first films that had a sub story at the beginning that introduced some of the characters but had nothing to do with the real story it lead into, besides introducing the villagers to the gunslingers.
The cartoon that I chose from What Matters in America was by Andy Singer and it was titled quitting fantasies. It's on page 259, it shows how this employee wishes he could say to his boss and what he actually says to his boss. He wishes he could tell his boss how bad he is, and for his boss to tell him how important it is for him (the employee) to stay and not quit. In reality he asks to resign and the boss says "Good! Get the hell outta here!"
This represents how what we wish would happen doesn't always happen, especially at work.
The cartoon I chose to compare it to was another cartoon done by Andy Singer, and is posted below.
Both of these cartoons show that "you can't always get what you want". The caveman who wants more isn't happy and the business man of today who has practically everything isn't happy either. It shows how people who are happy from only materialistic items can never have enough and never be satisfied. The man in the other cartoon wants to tell his boss how it is and quit, but feel wanted by his boss. He ends up losing his job, but feels completely unwanted and doesn't even tell his boss what he wants to.
These cartoons are about two different scenarios. One compares the past and the future while the other compares one's fantasies to his reality.
I believe the similarity between these cartoons is in the message.
I interpreted it to mean that happiness doesn't come from what you have but what you do with the life you've been given. People are always trying to have more, what they have is never enough. That's why people aren't satisfied even when rule the world and morph it into what's convenient for themselves rather than what's best for the world as a whole. Technology can always improve and people need to realize that people themselves as the human race can improve not only for themselves and the future of mankind, but for the world we live on.
