Advertainment

I just recently read the article “That’s Advertainment” by Veronica Majerol, about how advertisers are “blurring the line between entertainment and commercials.” In Lady Gaga’s music video “Telephone” she checks for calls on her Virgin Mobile phone and puts Miracle Whip salad dressing on sandwitches. In Sims 3 players of the video game can download Renaults Twizy electric concept car into their game. Not only do I love these examples Veronica uses because they bring her message across clearly, but they also helped me form an opinion on something I have been thinking about recently—are these advertisements put in entertainments done on purpose? Why would advertisers pay to put their product in a famous music video instead of just a commercial on TV?

Veronica Majerol wants the reader to be aware that there is more to advertising than just the ones on TV and that advertisers are getting more and more creative to make their products known. “Typically, when people view a commercial that they know is a commercial, they employ a veil of skepticism,” says Corie Wright at Free Press, a nonprofit organization that works to educate consumers about media. But “product placement tends to shape viewers’ preferences even [when] the viewer isn’t aware they’ve seen a commercial.” Majerol uses some interesting craft moves to convey this message. The first thing I noticed was that she uses many examples to support her message that would interest the reader such as one of Lady Gaga’s hit music videos. She also included quotes that supported her message. My favorite quote she added was, “We want to blur the lines between the commercial breaks and the entertainment content,” says Dario Spina, who handles “integrated marketing” for Comedy Central, Spike, and MTV’s other entertainment channels. The reason why I love this quote so much is because it basically just summed up what the entire article was about. It’s also something you can have an opinion on but you can’t really disagree with it…

As I mentioned earlier, “advertainment” is something I have been wondering about and this article has definitely shaped my opinion. What I took away from this article is that advertisers are sneaky tricksters and often advertise their product without you even realizing something is being advertised! I think Majerol is right about this and I also think that the reason why people don’t realize a product is being advertised while playing a video game, for example, is because people get so caught up in the video game that they don’t really notice what's being advertised--well they see the product obviously, but don't realize that advertisers paid to put it there on purpose. I think this is a really interesting article and definitely worth reading! Here’s the link: http://upfront.scholastic.com/resource/uploads_upfront/Issues/021813/UPF-021813-ProductPlacement011011.pdf

 

So, what are your thoughts and opinions?

Do NOt Go Gentle into that Good Night

In the poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, he uses rhyme scheme, repetition, similes, and metaphors to convey his message. After unpacking this poem, I think Dylan is trying to say that people should accept death and even when they’re getting close to it, never let it take away the energy needed to continue living life to its fullest.

The first thing I noticed Dylan used was repetition. I think he used this technique to not only bring a strong point the reader, but to make the reader think “why?” For example, Dylan repeats the line, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” in stanzas 1, 2, 4, and 6. He repeats “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” in stanzas 1, 3, 5, ad 6. This helped me realize that throughout the poem he repeats “light” and “night.” When I think of night, I think of darkness, death, or some sort of ending. Maybe death is meant to symbolize these things? I also feel like light is meant to symbolize happiness, goodness, a new beginning, and this idea of an “inner light.” Now after unpacking this, I think that what Thomas Dylan is really trying to say is do not die without fighting for the light. I also think this relates to the other line “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” since death could substitute in for the dying light. Throughout this process of unpacking, I noticed that Dylan uses symbolism throughout the repetition to give the poem a somewhat deeper meaning.

The second thing I noticed while reading this poem was that Dylan Thomas uses similes, metaphors, and personification to help convey his message. After unpacking this poem I realized that that what Dylan was really talking is death and that you should fight against it—but I also feel like death is a symbol itself that represents something or an idea that you know is wrong. So when Thomas says “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (death), does he mean something more than just fight against death? When looking at this line in context to the poem, it sounded like he was trying to say that you should stand up for what you believe in and using death as an example seemed like an easy way to get his message to the reader. Death is a symbol that gives this poem a deeper message.

The last this I noticed were the metaphors Thomas uses in this poem. One that really stood out to me was, “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight/ blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay.” This metaphor is referring to men who lived their lives at the fullest but they still rage against the “dying light” because they see their lives could have been more. Even those men who were wild (mentioned in stanza 3 of the poem) realized too late the meaning of their lives but this is no reason for them to fade away. Dylan Thomas uses descriptive imagery within his metaphors to help convey this message.

In conclusion, Dylan Thomas uses repetition, similes, metaphors, and imagery to convey a very important message. After unpacking parts of the poem, it seems like there are two similar messages Dylan is trying to bring to the reader. One is that people should accept death and even when they’re getting close to it, never let it take away the energy needed to continue living life to its fullest. Another similar message I found was that people should fight for what they believe in and not let their fears get in the way of this because if they don’t there will eventually come a time when they’ll realize it’s too late.

Paradise; An Escape from Reality

Last night I was flipping through pages in my family’s picture album and came across the most adorable pictures of me when I was young. I noticed that in all the pictures I was smiling. I miss being so carefree and innocent and when the biggest decision you had to make was what flavor of ice cream to get. But weren’t we all like this at one point? Didn’t we all have big dreams and gummy smiles? “What happened?”

I have recently been listening to a song called “Paradise” by Coldplay. It’s about a girl like any other who had big dreams when she was young. “She expected the world but it flew away from her reach.” It’s like she expected the world to come to her…except when she grows up reality strikes her. “Life goes on, it gets so heavy, and the wheels break the butterfly, every tear a waterfall.” I really love the metaphors used in this stanza and “every tear a water fall” shows how big even the tiny problems and challenges she has to face seem. To escape her reality, this girl dreams of paradise. It seems like she really loved this perfect, imaginary world she created in her mind that she kept going back to it…it seems like she got addicted to it. When you become addicted to something, you tend to block out reality so I’m thinking that she started to block out her friends and family because she wanted to be in paradise more than anywhere else. “I know the sun must set to rise.” She is stuck in this world waiting for sunset to rise—I see this as a metaphor saying that she is waiting for the pain to end and to get over her addiction in her world before she can truly be happy in the real world. She wants to be able to cry but since she’s held it in for such a long time it’s like all she wants is to be in paradise like she was when she was younger.

I think the message here is that it’s okay to take a break from your life and escape reality for a while—just remember that there’s a difference between escaping reality and blocking the truth.

I feel like everyone can relate to this song because weather we realize it or not, we all have places we go to escape reality. For the girl in the song it’s paradise…an imaginary place she has created in her mind. For me, it’s through writing poetry. I express my feelings using metaphors similar to the ones in this song. When I’m at my country house in France in the summer I escape reality a different way—I walk alone in the forests and then stop at this one special spot I go to on the mountain when I’m feeling sad, alone, and worthless. Looking across the country as far as the eye can see is something that gives me hope. It’s a special place where I can clear my mind completely and let my tears pour down like a waterfall.

Where do you go when you need an escape from reality?

Disabled Athletes

link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/sports/disabled-athletes-suit-up-raising-questions-of-logistics-and-fairness.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

In the article “Forging Path to Starting Line for Younger Disabled Athletes” by Mary Pilon, is mainly about weather disabled body athletes—such as an athlete without a leg, blind, or deaf—should be able to compete competitively with able body athletes. Federal laws have long provided guidance on what students with disabilities are legally entitled to during the school day. But what exactly is reasonable accommodation in sports? Also, if you're in a wheelchair does it really mean you have an "advantage"??

Mary Pion definitely wants the reader to look at this topic from her perspective so she includes many stories of disabled athletes. She wants to show the reader how unfair it is to discriminate against disabled athletes and that disabled athletes don’t always have thing to their “advantage.” For example, Kiara Chapple—a tennis played deaf since birth—relied on an interpreter on the sideline to show the score and communicate what Kiara couldn’t to her doubles partner and opponent. ‘Chapple said she was surprised when, at a doubles tournament in her sophomore year in 2009, her interpreter was removed after complaints from a coach for the opposing team.’ I find this shocking and incredibly unfair especially after reading what Chapple had said. ““I thought it was unfair,” Chapple said. “They were discriminating, and I have rights to an interpreter. I felt sad. We lost the match, and I couldn’t communicate with anyone.” Mary Pilon also tells the story of Mary Callahan who began swimming when she was 6 and wanted to join her high school team but she got a rare disease and could not use her legs. She was told that she could not compete in any statewide competitions. “I really wanted to have a true swim meet,” Callahan said. “I wanted to compete against the best. Swimming is part of my high school experience.” Lisa Madigan took on Callahan’s case as a co-counsel and helped win a settlement in September that allowed her to swim at the state meet, along with at least six other high school girls with disabilities. “We didn’t change much,” Renee Miller, Callahan’s swim coach, said of how the team accommodated Callahan in the pool. “We made sure we had a bus to accommodate a wheelchair so she could travel with us and made sure that schools we traveled to could accommodate her.” This made me really hopeful and confident that in the not too far future disabled athletes will be able to participate competitively and that they won’t have to fight to get there.

This is an issue that I have been thinking a lot about recently. I think about what would happen if I had an accident and lost a leg…how would I run track? I probably wouldn’t be able to play softball or tennis. Now that I’m thinking about it, sports are a major part of my life and I wouldn’t be able to live without them. I feel like what Callahan was able to do worked because she had a team that was probably very supportive of her. If I were to lose a leg, I feel like my team would go through the pain with me—we would all be in it together. But what about tennis? How could I run? If I got one of those metal running devices would people discriminate against me because they’d think I have an “advantage”? I like to run but running competitively and in a real race is not only a lot more fun, but it really pushes me to excel. I think there are ways disabled athletes can participate in competitive sports and it’s not always to their advantage…

Writing about What Haunts Us

Orner, Peter. "Writing about What Haunts Us." New York Times 12 Jan. 2013. Opinion. 15 Jan. 2013
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/writing-about-what-haunts-us/?ref=opinion.


I just recently read “Writing about What Haunts Us” by Peter Orner. One reason why I got hooked into this article was because it started with a sort of anecdote that I could relate to. Peter writes fiction and often feels like he is “dressing up” the truth. He tells a story about his father who got these new lambskin leather gloves and how a week later Peter stole the gloves from his father. “I learned for the first time how easy it is to just grab something.” Peter hid the gloves for a while and then took them with him everywhere he went—but he never once put them on. This is because Peter didn’t steal the gloves because he actually wanted them…he stole them because he was afraid of his father and since they had so little in common, the gloves seemed like a part of his father that Peter could hold on to. Although it seemed like Peter was trying to contort his theft in a made-up story, I also got the feeling that he was trying to convey an important message: That “well-made things eventually deteriorate.” Peter describes the gloves as “no longer baby soft” because “all the handless years had dried them up” and then compares it to his father—“pulling on the beautiful gloves with a rare stillness in his face and a kind of hopeful calm.” Peter now thinks to himself, “Was this what I wanted to steal?”

By comparing the gloves that eventually got dull and lost its softness to his father who was still hopeful and full of free spirit, Peter definitely wants the reader to remember the elements in our lives that don’t deteriorate. Peter also writes in his article, “Our imaginations sometimes fail us for a reason. Not because it is cathartic to tell the truth but because coming clean may also be a better, if smaller, story.” I found this line really deep and thought provoking. I think it’s telling us that writing fiction and disguising the truth isn’t always a bad thing to do, but sometimes you have to just face the pure truth to move on.

I think this is a really important message because often times we tend to ignore our fears or the ugly truths and push them farther away, pretending they don’t exist. Over the last year I have started to write a lot of poetry to express myself and my feelings. Sort of like how Peter contorts his fears through made-up stories, I find it much easier to disguise my fears beneath the symbolism and depth in my poems.

Penetrating Truths

Have you ever been so embarrassed about something that you lied about it or hid it/kept it inside of you? Or you did something you know was really wrong but you tried to hide while you were doing it? I’m sure we all have been in this position at least once in our lives. Although I can’t think of a recent moment, I do remember when I was in pre-k we had “nap time.” We got to place our mats anywhere in the classroom and I often placed mine next to the bucket of little plastic bears. I was looking at the bears and then quickly reached my hand in the bucket and pulled a yellow one out. I quickly glanced around the classroom to make sure Ms. Rose didn’t see me. I hid the bear in my shirt and brought it home. When I got home, however, I felt really bad. I know taking a plastic bear from school doesn’t seem like a big deal and I’m sure the teacher wouldn’t have minded, but for me I still felt like I had done something wrong (being the “perfect” calm child I used to be).

I just recently began reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and I have been looking very closely Jeannette’s character and her decisions. She has not made any huge decisions yet, but she has made a very minor one that tells me a lot about her character and personality. Since this is a memoir and obviously it’s real, I thought it was interesting to picture myself in Jeannette’s shoes and what I would do if I were in the same situation.

The first chapter is all about how Jeannette sees her mother digging through the trash and how afraid she got. She was afraid that her mother would see her and start to hug her and talk to her and how she was afraid someone from the party she was going to would find out that that old woman (who seriously did look like a hobo) was her mother. This chapter really pulled me into the story. I was desperate to know more about Jeannette and her relationship with her mother….how did her mother turn out to be a hobo? Was it a mistake, or did she really want to be living on the streets? Why does Jeannette seem to have money, yet her mother seems so poor?—I mean, she’s in a taxi and she is going to a party…she even asks her mother later what she could do to help her. But whatever her relationship is with her mother, or however much money she has, I tried to picture myself in the same situation as Jeannette. Would I make the decision to hide if I found my mother digging through the trash? Would I be embarrassed? Honestly, I think I would be afraid for the same reason—that someone from the party or one of my friends would see me. I would be embarrassed just like Jeannette was… I mean, if your mother is a hobo living on the street and some of your friends see that she is digging through the trash….who wouldn’t be embarrassed?

This seemed like a very minor decision at first (just like when I took the yellow bear from school) but then I realized that from the first chapter, I already know a lot about Jeannette’s character and her personality. She’s definitely ashamed and embarrassed of her mother because she is afraid a friend or someone from the party would find out her “secret.” She is so embarrassed she hides! This probably means that she’s someone who cares a lot about what other people think of her.

Jeannette seems like she is the kind of person who blocks out the truth and tries to hide it just like she tried to hide behind some bushes so her mother wouldn’t notice her. Over the years and after reading this book, I have come to realizing that blocking out the truth is probably one of the most hurtful things you could ever do to yourself.

When my grandmother passed away two years ago I pretended to act as if everything was fine—although I did get really depressed. Sometimes at school my friends would ask me if I was okay but I never wanted—or maybe I just didn’t know how—to express the pain I was feeling. So I would say, “Yeah I’m fine. I’m just really tired.” At the time I thought it would have been more painful to just be honest with them but now I’m starting to realize that hiding the truth and pretending as if it isn’t hurting you is far worse.

You suddenly begin to realize that you’re all alone in the dark—you are nothing more than a dark figure wandering the streets of a lonesome village. To others you are invisible in the taciturn, dark silence…but if you listen intently, instead of a scream for help, you will hear a shatter in the distance. Next thing you know, it’s the shatter of your heart calling to fix up all the broken parts.  But realizing this is too late…no one can put back together all the millions of shattered parts that fell apart from your sunken heart.

Cold Tiles of Truth

Some nights when I’m lying down in my bed and letting my mind wander free, I realize tears running down my cheeks. But it’s weird…these tears don’t come from something that happened that made me sad, or mad, or even angry. They just seem to appear out of nowhere….and so I usually ask myself questions as if I’m the only thing visible in the dark silence, “why is life so complicated? Why do I have to make it so hard for myself?” Often I think about school and why I couldn’t just shoot for the “average” student—“why do force myself to do all the extra work when I could get perfectly good grades without doing it?” And since probably more than half of my life right now is devoted to sports, I usually ask myself questions like, “Why are you spending your weekend trying to become a “perfect” pitcher when you could easily let the other two girls on the team do all the work?” It’s almost as if I force myself to go beyond just a base player in softball, but to devote my Saturdays into doing all this extra work that seems to do nothing but give me cramps, bruises, and get me extremely tired. Often I fall asleep thinking, “what’s the point?”

As I’m reading Ishmael Beah’s memoire, “A Long Way Gone” it not only made me feel incredibly mad at myself for thinking about my life being hard but it helped me in my understanding to why I must push myself so hard in everything that I do. “A Long Way Gone” is the true story of Ishmael Beah who became an unwilling boy soldier during the war in Sierra Leone. When he was twelve years old his village was attacked which left Beah, his brother, and his friends wandering village to village in search of food and shelter. This becomes a day-to-day struggle both in their hearts and physically to survive. Although I’m not that far into the story, I find it so incredibly unreal that such a thing could happen to a twelve year old—though it’s filled with heartbreaking honesty.

On page 54 when Beah is all alone in the woods and letting his mind wander free, he begins to think about his father saying, “If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.” However this quote is not where I got hit by a strong realization. It’s what Beah had written after that that really stuck with me. “Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.” In life—or anyone’s life really, you have something—big or small that keeps you going. This reminded me of a book I just recently finished a couple months ago, “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein. It’s told from the point of view of a dog named Enzo. At one point in the book he figures out that life, like racing, isn’t simply about going fast. Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully navigate the vehicle even when there are bumps along the way. For me, I think that I could end up in a dangerous situation wanting everything to be perfect and all, but I guess that’s just a part of who I am….pushing myself hard in everything is what gives my life purpose. If I were to stop pitching, play a piano piece “at my level” and start writing blog posts that meet standards, sure I would still get good grades and play good music….but for me that’s not enough. However if I were in Beah’s shoes and had lost basically everything—even my family—I think that I would also hold onto my memories and find even the tiniest things in life to keep me going so I wouldn’t slowly fade away like black watercolor when it hits paper—so I would still have purpose in my life to keep going with a linger of hope for tomorrow.

Later on page 69 Ishmael Beah writes, “One of the most unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end.” This reminds me of my first cross country race at the beginning of the year. I felt like I just kept running and running and at each strait-away I thought it was the finish but it never was. I felt like it was going on forever and would never stop which made me want to slow down for a while. I am not the type of person who gives up easily but I have to say, that was probably one of the closest times I have been to giving up in a long time. Then Beah writes, “To survive each passing day was my goal in life. At villages we managed to find some happiness by being treated to food or fresh water.” Again, Beah is finding even the smallest things in his struggle to survive to keep him from a drooping sunflower lacking a drop of water.

If I were in Ishmael Beahs situation, I think I would also hold onto the little things throughout my daily struggle for survival to keep my burning soul alive. Within the depth of this story I seem to have discovered the cold tiles of heartbreaking truth and meaning. I have also found the fire burning in my soul and the wood that keeps it burning red, roaring, and alive. The wood may be hard to get and may give me many scratches while gathering, but if it’s what keeps me going in life, the scratches are worth it.