Standing Ovation: Reading Response #5

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Reading Response #5

As technology becomes more intertwined with the daily lives of individuals today the power of video texts has greatly increased. In the essay “On Reading a Video Text” be scholar Robert Scholes emphasizes the power of this kind of text and to explain his point dissects a commercial and explains his analysis on it. In his demonstration of a commercial analysis Scholes uses a Budweiser commercial to convey his point. His demonstration shows how in certain video texts we need to have cultural understanding like traditions and well known stories like “rags to riches”. Scholes also points out that with some commercials it sells more then just the product. In his example of the Budweiser commercial it is about an umpire at a baseball game making calls and he gets criticized by his decisions but sticks to his opinion. Scholes states “We root for the umpire because we want the system to work-not just baseball but the whole thing: America”. This is an important concept because it shows the breakdown of video texts and how as it plays with a deeper meaning it makes the viewer not necessarily want the product they want the whole picture of the advertisement.

After reading this essay, I watched a music video “Stupid Girls” by singer Pink and wanted to dissect and grasp the full concept of the video. In the video Pink demonstrates how the women today are being critiqued and judged by society. The video starts out with a little girl sitting on the couch with a Barbie watching TV. As she flips through the channels she starts to see various videos that demonstrate what society’s women of today strive for. Pink expresses this by showing what women today find beautiful, how a nice tan, a big chest, and being skinny are desired. She uses different scandals and well known stereotypes to convey her point such as the Paris Hilton sex tape scandal, the longing to own a chi Wawa dog, bulimic girls and even the Barbie the little girl is holding in the beginning. Pink implies how women today are becoming very superficial and points out that women have lost many ambitions in her lyrics she even states “What happened to the dreams of a girl president, she’s dancing in the video next to 50 cent”. I think that Pink makes a very interesting point in this song and video and she does a good job communicating to her audience her main point. With the help of Scholes it was interesting for me to breakdown a video with better understanding, to see more of the whole picture that Pink was trying to express. I believe Pinks main point to be not just how women today are becoming “stupid” but that as women long for superficial perfection and acceptance they loose who they really are and become fake and are ultimately unhappy. At the end of the video the TV turns off and the little girl has a decision; to either play with her dolls or go outside and play football, she chooses the football.

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Welcome

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Standing Ovation”! The title of this blog refers to the audience of active readers we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. I hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it!