Animal Cruelty Ads

      All the ads were published by different animal protection/animal rights activist groups. These groups include PETA, Freedom for Animals, Mercy for Animals, and the ASPCA. 

2.   They are intended for animal lovers, and consumers in general who might be unaware of the animal cruelty caused by their everyday products.  They’re meant to persuade and raise awareness.

3.      The PETA and ASPCA ads are targeted toward animal lovers; we can tell this because they use terms like “your dog” and personify the dog by telling the reader he is “waiting to love you.” The other two ads are aimed at consumers because they point out specific stores and products that people use every day that sponsor cruelty.  

4.       The purpose of the ads is to make people aware that their actions, even inadvertently, can affect animals.  They’re meant to raise awareness, and get people to stop using certain products/shopping at certain places.

5.       These ads rely on emotional and ethical appeals, by asking the readers if they support animal cruelty.  They show upsetting images of dogs and animals to evoke emotion out of the audience.  It appeals to rationality by giving facts, and stating statistics. 

6.       The ads, as stated before, use upsetting images as well as bold text to grab the reader’s attention and make them listen, and care.  They use phrases like “Do you support cruelty to animals?” to make the reader think.

7.       They all catch the reader’s attention and make the audience think about how their actions/ choices affect animals.  Also, they disturb the readers.

"Advertisements R Us" Summary

In “Advertisements R Us”, author Melissa Rubin discusses how much we can learn about a society’s culture by studying its advertisements. She uses a Coca-Cola ad as her example.  Rubin starts her analysis by describing the ad in depth, noting the people in the ad, their placement, and the background. Rubin then goes on to give historical context about Coca-Cola being identified with mainstream American culture, noting its particular connection to the military. She then begins to respond to her thesis by explaining what the ad tells us about society. First, the position of the people is very important, as it reflects the white male-dominated society.  Men uniform are placed in the foreground, highlighting their importance, a blue-collar worker and a businessmen are placed next to the servicemen, but their position suggests they take a second tier role to those in the military. There are only a few women in the ad, which Rubin notes is the assumption that women had a smaller role to play in society. Then, Rubin goes on to discuss how the ad shows the smoke coming out of the smokestacks is shown in a prideful way, suggesting that society was not as concerned with the environment as we are today. Another reflection of society that Rubin observes is that everyone is white, showing how prevalent racism was. Rubin closes with the idea that while at first Coca-Cola ads reflected their culture, they have grown to shape culture.

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1.Rubin provides a lot of insight about the ad. She gives a very detailed description of the ad-the people in it, where they are in it, the background, etc. Also, Rubin places the ad in its historical context, which provides a lot of insight, and detail that would be overlooked if you just looked at the ad superficially. For example, she describes the importance and value places on military at the time of the ad. This is why the men in uniform are placed in the center. She talks about how women weren’t important in the work place and that is why they are in the back and how racism was still very prevalent, which is why there are no black people.  She cites her sources for this information. Yes, she has persuaded me to accept her conclusions. I think she wrote a well-researched and thorough analysis and I agree with her.

2.As I mentioned before, she does use a lot of historical context. She incorporates this as the meat of her analysis. I think it strengthens her analysis because it gives the readers all the background information to understand why Coca-Cola put the people in the ad that they did and why they are where they are, etc.

3.You might try to answer: Who is the intended audience? What do advertisers want you to feel when you see the ad? What is the message of the ad? How does the ad convey its message? What values are important to the society the ad is in?

4.Cosmetic ads with celebrity endorsements, like the Cover Girl ads, reflect values of the society we live in. Looks are very important in our society, as are celebrities. So, combining the two makes for an effective ad campaign. These types of ads are similar to the Coca-Cola ad. Although they are advertising two different things, they are appealing to what the audience values. For the Coca-Cola ad, military was very important at the time, so there are servicemen front and center. For the Cover Girl ads, celebrities are admired in current society, so they are put in the ads.

            

"Stay Sweet As You Are"

“Stay Sweet As You Are” by Doug Lantry  fits the criteria for an analysis paper because it is analyzing how magazine ads aimed at women enforce ideas like finding a husband and looking good for him. There is a clear thesis so the audience knows what point Lantry is trying to make. Lantry uses three ads as examples-a Resinol soap ad that claims that velvety skin is the only way to find a husband, a Lux soap ad that claims you will look like a movie star if you follow the regimen, and a Listerine ad claiming to help girls catch boys. Lantry analyzes the ads language and explains how it tries to make women believe that not only do they need to use these products to win a man, they need to make themselves look better for that man and in order to be happy and not for themselves. He provides a lot of supporting details and evidence as he explains each ad clearly. Lantry explicitly connects each ad back to his thesis. He also places a picture of each ad in the analysis which helps him support his thesis because it gives the audience a visual. Lantry uses engaging language to make the audience care about the topic.

Collaborative Activity 10.20.15

Writing analytically requires a different process than writing a narrative. We learned that you need to make sure that your audience knows background information on your topic and that you have a clear thesis. You need to have done thorough research on your topic before you start writing and make sure that you have enough examples to support your thesis. Also, you need to find a way to make your topic matter to your audience and make it relatable. You need to respond to counterarguments by using your evidence to negate their claims. In addition, it is imperative that you care about what you’re writing about so your readers will be interested in the topic as well. You can cite other sources but make sure to relate them back to your argument and not to use too many so your voice gets lost.

Literacy Narrative Final Draft

I have never enjoyed writing.  Growing up, the only writing I ever did was for school assignments, and I pushed those off until the last minute. I never kept a journal or a diary or wrote anything just for fun.  So, I was not looking forward to taking creative writing second semester of my senior year of high school. But, I had a hole in my schedule and I heard the class was a breeze, so I took it, figuring it would be an easy ‘A’.  I had done my time in high school, got good grades, got accepted to all the colleges I wanted to go to, and was ready just to cruise through my last semester.  But, I wouldn’t be telling this story if that were the case. The truth is that my creative writing class, the final assignment in particular, was one of the most challenging, but rewarding assignments that I’ve ever done.  This is the story of how I came to love creative writing.

            On the first day of creative writing, my teacher, Ms. Boss, asked the class what we like to read, kinds of writing we enjoy writing, how often we write, etc. Students were raising their hands saying things like they were in the process of writing a book, or they wanted to be a creative writing major. This took me aback: I thought the class was going to be full of people like me who just needed the credit. I was already feeling in over my head, overwhelmed, and inferior when Ms. Boss told us what the class’s final assignment would be-a 25-page piece. It could be about whatever we wanted, in any format we wanted and we would start working on it second quarter. My friend Tee and I exchanged horrified glances. She was like me, just in the class to fill a hole.  As we were muttering things like “are you kidding me?” and “there’s no way” to each other, the rest of the class was eagerly writing down notes and whispering possible ideas. It was like they were buzzing with excitement.  Most of them probably had 25 pages written several times over and the assignment would be just something fun to do.

            Since we didn’t have to start working on the final until second quarter, I put it out of my head and did the smaller assignments for the class. They were all simple and I didn’t need to put much effort into them to get full credit. The class was turning out to be that easy ‘A’ I had wanted. But then, second quarter came around and sure enough, on the first day, we were brainstorming ideas for the final. Ms. Boss told us it could be one long story or a collection of short stories or poems tied together with a common theme. It really could be anything we wanted, we just had to explain our idea to her and get it approved. She gave us a schedule telling us when each five page increment was due. We had a couple days to decide before we had to meet with her. But, most of the people in the class didn’t need the time. They were presenting their ideas on the first day. I heard the scratch of pencils on paper, computer keys typing away all around me, and Ms. Boss telling people she loved their ideas and couldn’t wait to read the finished product. And there I sat, my desk empty, struggling to come up with even one idea. I don’t know what I was more intimidated by, the length of the assignment or its open-ended creative format. Probably equal parts of both. The longest thing I’d ever written was probably 10 pages, double-spaced. And I hadn’t written anything fiction or creative since elementary school.  I relied on structure in my writing- a clear prompt with bullet points or a checklist of what needed to be included.

            Tee couldn’t come up with a topic either, so we went to talk to Ms. Boss after school one day. She told us we could expand on something we wrote during first quarter since we were having trouble coming up with something new. I went home and thought about what she said. The more I thought about it, the more I liked her idea. I had written this short story about a teenage girl getting kidnapped and her family had to come up with the ransom money. It was barely five pages long and didn’t have much detail, but it was the best thing I had.  The next day in class I told Tee about how I was going to take it and transform it into a 25-page story.  She wanted to do something similar with a story she had written about a high school. As we were talking about directions for our stories and characters, I stopped and said, “What if we are writing about the same girl and we merge our stories?” Tee loved the idea, and we immediately went to Ms. Boss to ask if we could do that. She said we could, and that was the start of me loving creative writing.

            We had some difficulty figuring out how our two stories would be connected because separately, they were totally different. But, we ended up deciding that Tee’s story would be about the characters in high school and it would lead up to the kidnapping of our main character, Katie. My story would start with Katie’s parents getting the ransom note and then follow their efforts to get her back.  We spent the whole class period lost in discussion about who our characters were going to be and how we were going to bring them to life. We were behind the rest of the class and had five pages due coming up, but for the first time, I was excited about writing. And I was excited about getting to create these characters and figuring out what happens to them.

            That night I went home and I started writing. I was surprised that ideas were coming to me and that I was actually enjoying it. I wrote the first five pages to turn in. Tee and I would go to the small back room of our high school library every day in class to write. It was hot, cramped, and right behind the library secretary’s desk- she always had to tell us to be quiet, but that’s where our story came to life. We’d laugh and laugh, plan out plot twists, and talk about what actors we wanted to play our characters when the story got turned into a movie. When we would write at home, we would always text each other with changes to the story or for help. It wasn’t long before it stopped feeling like an assignment and creative writing became my favorite class. I had so much fun thinking of ideas, characters, feelings, dialogue, plots, and not worrying about a checklist. I was truly enjoying myself.

            We finished our stories on time, and they were even over 25 pages. I was so proud when they were coming out of that library printer. Ms. Boss loved our stories and loved that we collaborated on them. I put mine in my senior presentation as one of my best works. I ended up getting an A in creative writing. But, I’m glad it wasn’t the easy one I was looking for because then I never would have found out that I actually do like to write.

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1. Havrilesky's main insight about Mad Men is that the show, and its characters, reflect the discontent of the American public due to the birth of advertising. In the first three paragraphs, Heavrilesky discusses Americans constant need to have the next best thing, their dissatisfaction with what they have, and this caused unhappiness in the American public. She provides this background detail to set up her analysis of Mad Men. Specific passages that reflect this are, “…underscoring the disconnect between American dream and reality by distilling our deep-seated frustrations as a nation into painfully palpable vignettes.” (p. 171), “The ambition and conflicted desires of these characters in their pursuit of happiness is what makes Mad Men such a singular and resonant reflection of a particularly American puzzle.” (p. 174), and the last paragraph, especially “the birth of the advertising age coincides directly with the birth oh our discontent as a nation…” (p. 175).

2. The footnote says that Havrilesky is the television critic at Salon, so that gives her credibility. Her job is to critique television shows, so it is assumed that she is objective and educated on television. In the article, Havrilesky establishes authority to write about Mad Men and have people believe her by being informed about the show. Her summaries of the plots and the characters are clear, informed, and insightful. She also references the show’s creator, which gives her authority.

3. Havrilesky mostly appeals to the reader’s emotions in the opening three paragraphs when she is describing the Americans’ discontent. For example,  “It’s a sickness that’s infused in out blood, a dissatisfaction with the ordinary that’s instilled in us from childhood.”, “Slowly we come to view our own lives as inconsequential, grubby, even intolerable.” and “…millions of aspiring 3-year old princesses hum ‘Someday my prince will come!’”

4. I had not seen Mad Men before reading the essay, but having read it, yes I do understand the basic premise of the show-it follows an ad agency in 1960’s New York. Havrilesky did make me want watch the show a little bit because the way she described the characters was intriguing.