Scholes explains that a video text is usually a lot more than just a narrative strung across a series of frames and then glued together with plot devices. Video texts can be crafted to be instruments that tap into the underlying psyche of our cultural identity. This is accomplished by invoking myths and ideological paragons our environment has given us since childhood. Through the resurfacing of these images and ideas we unquestioningly adopted as children, video texts can quietly frame our sense of self within that construct of cultural narrative, establishing our identity by the reinforcement of cultural text. For the less critical, this can be accomplished within the matter of a 30-second advertisement, despite any gulf that exists between the childhood myth of our identity, and all the different realities we’ve been living since. Scholes is wary of this anti-critical philosophy because it can lead someone to trying to hold two inconsistent ideas. Furthermore, he is especially compelled to be critical because he feels that: “In this age of massive manipulation and disinformation, criticism is the only way we have of taking something seriously.” This is apparent in the fact that so many of today‘s liberal-minded youth pay more attention to satire news than regular news. We can see that with our environment and with the motives of those that fill it with its content, a critical approach is necessary. The transgenic power of video over our identity is used against us from every direction, in marketing and in propaganda. It is an art of peddling junk ideologies and commodities that has been honed to a science of psychological exploitation. So, lest we risk becoming as trivial as the worst parts of our culture, it is best be critical by unpacking the ideologies from the narratives and examining them closely for what we agree with.
In this commercial a soldier is returning home from a war, his mother and brother meet him at the airport and drive him home, but his father was unable to make it. On the way home there is a yellow ribbon tied to a clock in the middle of the city and another tied to a tree near their home. Upon arriving home, he meets his baby cousin for the first time. He then is staring at the picture of himself in his service uniform and the picture of his dad in his service uniform that is above it. He helps his mother with some dishes, she tells him that his father was running an errand and will be back soon, but he says with a tone of sarcasm that he wonders what he was going out for this time. His dad comes home in his older Ford Mustang. He begins retelling “war stories” to his son about how he remembered the day he got his Mustang, and how every guy from his squad coming back from the war wanted to get one. He mentions that when he was over in the war just the thought of his car kept his mind off things. The dad asks him if he wants to finally go for a ride, opening the garage to reveal a brand new red Mustang for his son.
The most important myth that this this commercial is trying to sell and reinforce is the tale of duty and patriotism our cultural narrative instills in us to honor. It is the story of the veteran coming home from war after nobly serving his country and returning to find himself struggling again to integrate back into old culture, finding old family wounds still healing, and meeting newborns for the first time. This narrative is trying to provoke the viewer into recognizing his role in the national heritage of patriotism, that is, as a non-soldier it is his duty to support the troops, or it is at least the most patriotic thing he can do bar becoming a solder himself. This is suggested by the little boy in the airport that salutes him, the little yellow ribbons he sees in the city and on a tree in the rural landscape. All of this reinforces the narrative that family values have been a story of American values, that our sense of nationalism is a foundation for the family unit, as is also suggested by his staring at the portraits of him and his dad in their uniforms on the wall. This is made more explicit by how his service helped mollify the disunity between him and his father through the association of Mustang with patriotism and service of country, which helps gap their differences and unites them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkNznIoboho&feature=related
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