The Last One

As the term comes to an end, students are required to write out or answer evaluations sheets in efforts of providing feedback to the instructor. I typically stay away from the evaluations because I don’t think my opinion really matters in a sense of how a class is structured. I have accepted my role as a student and realized that it is the instructor who shapes and organizes a class. There are some classes I will love and some classes I will hate, but as a student I must still put the necessary effort in to each class in effort of achieving a good grade and actually getting something out of the class.

As for this class, I think it was structure pretty well. There are always things that are talked about in class in which I have no interest in. The topic in this class that I had a hard time talking about was politics. Personally it’s a dead subject, I feel as if every political figure is saying the same thing. These political figures always seem to have the right answer in how our country should be ran, yet there are still tons of problems within our country. Enough of about politics. The required readings for this class were kind of out dated. This was a pop culture class and the readings were from the 90’s. It was sort of difficult to tie the two together.

Now to the positives of the class. I think the activities were amazing. Starting out by eating pizza in the class was something I have never experienced. The activity that required us all to take out are cellular devices was kind of scary. I had no clue what was the purpose of us taking out are cellular phone. I thought Dr. Goodnow had something up here sleeves, you never know with the Dr.

As far as discussions, I think the biggest class discussion was about fashion. I think the discussion drew so much attention because we all come from different places and have our own unique fashion. It was nice to see pretty much the whole class involved in the discussion defending the fashion of their choice. There is not enough time and space for me to continue to talk about my loving of the blogs assignments.

The blogs assignments were a good change up for me. I was able to write letters to thank you letters to family members. I also got a chance to see where all my money was going when we had to document our expenses during the first couple of weeks.

Overall the class was pretty good. Although, I didn’t have the most enjoyable time reading the material, I think Dr. Goodnow did a very good job of explaining the readings and relating them to the discussions in class. Dr. Goodnow may have done an exceptional job running the class, but it was having class at Clods that made this class one of the best class ever.

ads

Wow, have times change in the advertising industry. I can recall a period of time when advertisements, whether it was seen on television, listened heard on the radio or featured in a magazine newspaper etc.., would actually feature the product. Now day’s theses advertisement may only feature a catchy phrase in efforts of gaining the attention of the consumer. “The argument here is that advertisements used to tell us how valuable and useful a product was.” (Strinati 214). Sometimes these advertisements make sense, other times I'm simply left wondering. Strinati, goes on to explain modern day advertisements, “they say less about the product directly, and are more concerned with sending up or parodying advertising itself by citing other adverts, by using references drawn from popular culture and by self-consciously making clear their status as advertisements.” (Strinati 214).

The contemporary advertisement print I chose to analyze for this exercise was Mercedes Benz advertisement I stumbled across during one of my weekly readings of Cosmo while on the toilet. The Mercedes advertisement actually took up two pages in the magazine, yet the actual car product was not even featured no where in the two pages. There was the Mercedes Benz logo in the sky, similar to the Batman logo, the Benz symbol was inserted into the moon as people walked the streets. I the logo symbolized Mercedes Benz was a savior for car or possibly the car amongst cars to have. The advertisement was simply unexplainable and didn’t make sense to me.

For clarification purposes I thought it would be best to surf the web of old automobile advertisements, specifically Mercedes Benz ads, in effort of seeing the difference in the advertisement history. As I looked at older ads, they all seemed to have one thing in common, the actual product was there. It was interesting that the advertisement was plain, simply having a white or black background and the car. There was nothing fancy about these advertisements at all.

I think the time period in which were in now, the car really doesn’t have to be present for individuals to be interested in the advertisement. Seeing that Mercedes Benz are known as one of the most popular luxury cars that are affordable for a middle class person, it doesn’t take much effort on the Mercedes Benz part to sell their product. “Although the intention is still to sell, it is contended that nowadays the postmodern effect is achieved by seemingly overt efforts within advertising to undermine this purpose.” (Strinati 215). I think it’s more acceptable for ads with the popularity of a Mercedes Benz, or a Coke cola. I say this because they products have been apart of our lives forever and with the popularity in which they have gained we recognize and accept them as a part of culture, which leads to advertisement company putting out these ads such as the one I mentioned in this blog. Ads have and will be around forever. I think one, were comfortable with the product and two, the advertisement writers are running out of ideas to sell their product.