Newport Cigarette commercial

Newport Cigarette Commercial

On “Reading a video text,” by Robert Scholes, he talks about the cultural knowledge that we viewers, already know even when we haven’t experienced whatever it may be at all. For example, we know that horses or dogs have nothing to do with alcohol or that cigarettes have nothing to do with smoking. Yet, some people still fall for it. Scholes also says that video text come in many different forms and have a different affect for each one. “Close-ups position us where we could never stand. Slow motion allows us an extraordinary penetration into the mechanics of movement, and, combined with music; lends a balletic grace to ordinary forms of locomotion.”(Scholes) This quote is basically saying that those who produce the adds, add on many different kind of focus. When the ad is in slow music with some maybe melodic music in the background, it can lead us to have maybe a different view on the ad.
I had chosen an ad called, “Newport Cigarette Commercial,” which was trying to make people buy Newport Cigarettes instead of any other brand. In this ad, they showed a woman at a beach with another man smoking Newport Cigarettes. The woman was wearing a short dress and looked all fresh. The Cultural Knowledge in this ad was the things that every person already knew even when they don’t even smoke cigarettes. First of all, people know that by smoking Newport cigarettes, you won’t be “fresh,” or you won’t have a beautiful woman or even be on the beach. To the man that was walking by the billboard, he thought that the billboard was alive because it was singing to him and the bus driver that came to pick him up, thought he was a bit crazy.
The ad is trying to make the audience believe that no other brand is better than the Newport brand and no other brand is fresher or tastier and that attractive women smoke the Newport cigarettes as well. What I don’t like about any ad not only this one in particular, is that whatever they are trying to sell, whether it be cigarettes or alcohol, they make it all seem so good and innocent. But when you look on the negative side of everything, these things can actually kill you or give cancer.
I think that Robert Scholes had done an excellent job with his article because he talks about the things people already know without having to experience because we seem to be constantly around all of these thing and know enough about them. He also talks about the common sense that people as well. Everything that he had said in the article come together in this ad because it proves to you that by adding certain music, people, beauty, etc., they can grab peoples attention and so the next time a person is in the store, they think about the commercial they’ve seen and end up buying that product. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPCMnZ-1HNE