GENERATION LIKE

What are possible consequences of people structuring their identity around commercial products and initiatives? 

Nowadays young teens are so focused to portray their identity as "the one", to busy focusing on how to dress, impress and show off and not seeing the impact this has on them. They alter their lifestyle to suit themselves to be able to have the time to follow, re-tweet and get as many likes as possible. They're brainwashed to thinking that these products will help them in different sort of ways and help them achieve what they want and most importantly to them, receive the recognition they desire. 
As Douglas Rushkoff mentioned in the video, "They're living their lives in a marketplace" these teens spend all their time promoting products and movies, fame for other people when this isn't their job. They become so physically and emotionally attached to it, that after a while they don't realize it themselves, it becomes a natural habit.
Thanks to social media, teens are able to directly interact with their culture - celebrities, movies, brands -- in ways they would never have imagined but that's to some extent empowerment yet marketers still hold the upper hand. Young teens go through a quest to find their identity which has now migrated to the web .

All of that has consequences on these people who are just focusing their identity around commercial products. These teens start to become opposed with this idea and slowly start to lose touch with what actually matters, things such as family, education, socializing with people in person and another long term bigger effect would be that our society would alter to this transformation and it would become the new norm. People would adjust to this not realizing the effects that build up due to this. 

You better blur those lines Robin!

Robin Thicke's biggest song of the year Blurred Lines sure did make a massive hit when it came out last year but not so much now.

The song promotes a horrible attitude towards sex and consent which is why it has been an alarming issue for many women who view it as 'rapey'. The music video portrays a widespread sexism and especially the sexualisation and objectification of women which has a growing impact on women's day to day lives. These types of messages depict women as highly sexualised passive sex objects.

One might first listen to the song and find it quite catchy and not pay much attention to how the phrases have been put or intended but when looking closer to the lyrics of the song. He says:

" OK now he was close, tried to domesticate you

But you're an animal, baby it's in your nature

Just let me liberate you

You don't need no paper, that man is not your maker"

Implying that the woman should just leave her boyfriend for him and that it's in her "nature"

The video itself shows three naked women prancing around three fully dressed men. Robin Thicke absolutely degrades women in this video. Most women these days are required to wear close to nothing whereas men can stay fully clothed and still earn more attention than the women. Social media and celebrities have managed to devalue the feminine sex and convince a lot of the female population that they're worthless if they don't live up to the expectations of society.

This targets the male group yet uses the female group which are clearly not presented in the most appropriate way to do so.

This reveals a lot to us about our society and how we as a society have altered our perspective of women and their position in our society. They are viewed as nothing more than objects, inferior to men.

All in all this shows us how society has changed its perspective vision of what is now seen as appropriate and what can actually be accepted. As females in society continue to accept such a profane behavior and attitude from celebrities, it slowly becomes the norm for females to be viewed in such a manner, without this being viewed as disrespectful or of any offense to women therefore lessening the outrage that showed be happening and that women should be protesting. 

Written Task 2

1. How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers?

The text that I chose to focus on was the Fairy soap ad that features two young children of different races. The white kid stands in an etiquette posture wearing a clean blue dress, socks and shoes and standing by him is an black African American child who is wearing nothing but a side torn dress that she tugs on while bowing her head down in embarrassment and evidently unlike the white child her hairline is receded and unkempt. All of these features of the children are of course purposely inputted. 

This ad was published during a historically important time that affects how this ad would be viewed by different readers at that time.

It was during the time where the black race was segregated and slavery and considered to be inferior to the white race. 

This ad was targeted at the white Americans yet also to the black Americans. Although the ad degrades the black race it still manages to send them a powerful message. White American females are particularly targeted as a main audience in this ad. The caption below says: Why doesn't your mama wash you with fairy soap?" Women would view this and think that because they aren't applying fairy soap on their own white children, they're are equivalent to being as unhygienic as an African American. In some what ways it portrays a fear technique on these women trying to convincingly make them believe that they can't let their high class be brought down to a level of an African American. That being said, not only does this target the white women as stated before but also aims to remind the black race where their place in society is. They devalue their race and portray them as nothing more than dirty, unintelligent beings who don't play a single role in society expect for being forced to slave themselves to the white race. 

The white race readers reading such a text at that time would ofcourse not view it as offensive but rather as the truth being shown to the people and through the credibility of, what used to be a multimillion firm at that time, they manage to convince people not to stoop to the level of the African Americans by using fairy soap. Yet in contrary, if this text was to be viewed by an African American at that time, they would think of nothing but how offensive this ad is and how much it disrespects them and the way the look. 

English literature& Language 

FOA reflection 

My Further Oral Activity analysed how the black race was exploited in advertisements. Although many people would say that racism no longer plays a role in society, I portrayed by disagreeing argument by showing two different advertisements, one from a much older time and one that was much more recent and analysed how racism still holds a role yet more discreetly then it did before. 

The criteria were based on 4 different criterions which were Knowledge and understanding, organisation, language and understanding how language is used. The problem with both my advertisements were the fact that they both lacked language. The first one only contained one line of writing because the picture itself was so powerful so therefore there wasn't too much on the language. The second ad as well as the first focused mainly on the image and seeing as it was a more modern ad it was harder to find one with open racist language because that's not something seen nowadays in society so the image discreetly tries to portray the racism. The organisation of the presentation was good, I talked in order of what I wanted to say with a bit of looking into my transcript but otherwise it was fairly well. 

My overall feeling to the presentation is alright, I feel like I could have done more and said more yet it was very time consuming to find images that fit my expectations to present to the class and I was also very nervous throughout the presentation which of course had an impact on my speech because I could have included much more which I had written on my transcript and elaborated on it much more than I had. So therefore I was quite successful yet I could have been more.

I choose this topic because I found it very interesting and I liked how I could talk about how this issue is still seen nowadays in advertisements and now only in the past. I was able to touch on the audience and purpose and intent meaning of both the ads and the tone and mood, style and the content of the ads, ethos and I had some pathos that I wasn't able to fully elaborate on during my presentation.

I've learned many new things about language and advertising and how society chooses to portray certain aspects through advertisements. In my particular topic, I have gained new knowledge that I didn't know beforehand. Yet not only through my topic but also through this Further Oral Activity how language is portrayed and the different techniques used and how to identify them when looking at a text and how this can change the meaning of a given advert. 

For future FOAs I will spend more time trying to memorise the speech to keep it following and not be as nervous to make it all formal and presentable and also find ones that suit the criteria more, so they'd include more text to be analysed but overall as this being my first time presenting a Further Oral Activity I am quite happy.