Bordo Question #1

Bordo’s organization within her essay, making some discussions very long and others quite short, keeps the reader in tune. Personally, I like the strategy. Sometimes she keeps the argument short and you’re stuck with a feeling of wanting more from her and having to draw your own conclusions. But other times, she over does it. The discussion drags out for what seems like forever and it is wrung dry and with nothing left to say. You ask yourself why some of this time could not have been devoted to developing the other pieces of the argument more in depth. She does this not only because some parts require it, but to draw the reader in and sometimes make them think for themselves and other times take away this same ability. The freedom is taken away, which captures the reader and makes them read on.

I feel like this is a strategy that is only useful for certain types of essays and on certain subjects. It would be tough to coordinate this into an essay and would really take some thought and planning to make sure it is useful. Anyone can probably incorporate it, but it has to be effective or it could ruin an essay.

Timely Advertising

The 1940’s advertisement is advertising sanitary over all else. It wants to promote women being clean and worthy of going into public view without being embarrassed or having a problem. By the time the 1970’s come about the focus has moved away from cleanliness and more towards sexuality. While cleanliness is still a focus of the ad, now the woman is the sole person being shown, and in a very suggestive pose, with her feet up close and blocking parts of her body. A little of her breast is showing too, which in the 1940’s would be stepping over the line.  Now notice the dress of the other ad.  The 1940’s clothes are very covering and proper.  The 1940’s ad barely focuses on the female body at all. It focuses on circumstances that the female might encounter and must be clean to succeed in. The 1970’s showed that if you were sexy you could succeed, so use Kotex and be clean and sexy.  And smell great.  Both ads promote confident womanhood and being comfortable around men and in public situations, but go about this from two different angles.

I chose to compare ads for cigarettes from the 80’s and 90’s.  The Camel ad shows the company’s signature character at a race track smoking a cigarette with a girl in the background and he seems very content smoking his cigarette.  This ad shows that if you smoke cigarettes you will be happy.  There is nothing negative about the ad except for the government enforced warning at the bottom.  The colors are bright and vibrant and everything is going well.  The slogan “smooth character” says that not only is the cigarette smooth to smoke but it helps the person smoking it be smooth in all aspects of their life.  The 90’s ad takes a different approach.  Instead of promoting how happy you will be now the advertiser has decided to sell based on price.  Lots of negative media is coming out against cigarettes at this time so they can no longer sell using old principles, they need to make them cheap so people will forget about the health concerns and spend their money on patches or gum and buy the cigarettes they are addicted to instead.  People have been taught to see through the fake advertising and are looking for facts.

Douglas Question #2

Douglas blames the media for creating the image, but also the woman for listening to them and not thinking for themselves and creating their own ideas of what they should look like.  Woman never want to look old so they constantly buy the newest products to keep a young look and feel.  The media does a good job of this by getting the skinniest and best looking woman there are and making them even more beautiful by putting their products on them and using lighting and camera effects to enhance their beauty even more.  In her essay Douglas is criticizing the media for portraying such an image and not giving all the facts about their products.  She also feels the women should be smart enough to decipher the messages.  Full blame does not lie on either party.

Douglas Question #1

Douglas talks about having a toned body over a beautiful one that all the ads try to persuade people to have.  Instead of going for the perfect body that is projected all over the different media sources they should go for their own style and something that fits them and is practical.  Forget the toned butt and wrinkle free skin, and go for overall fitness and take care of your face but do not overload it with chemicals and other substances that could cause wrinkles later or are only a temporary fix.  Womanly is not an image, it is an idea.  Ads try to portray the womanly image when in reality it is impossible because people are thought to be womanly based on how they look, but do not look womanly.

Alternative Women #2

http://img.hottopic.com/is/image/HotTopic/HT_HARAJUK_HALLOWEEN_hi?$product$
This advertisement is from the website for the stor Hot Topic.  It shows a girl with pink hair and pink stockings in a black dress.  This differs from the view we normally see of the woman in light colored clothing.   Also, the type of makeup she has on is not the norm.  The girl also has gloves on her hands and a tattoo.  The typical woman we see has neither of these.  This seems to be promoting being original and unique.  The girl doesn’t fall into the trap of society today where everything is about have perfect skin and “showing skin.”

Alternative Women #1

http://www.thebusywoman.com/media/prntngcvroct.jpg

This is the cover of Parenting magazine.  I see this as a different way to view a woman because she is not glamorized in the typical fashion with loads of makeup and other beautifying products.  While she no doubt has them on, this ad is not promoting them.  This ad is about raising a kid and and still have a life outside of this full time job.  This is also showing that parenting comes before beauty.  You have a child to take care of and while beauty should not be forgotten you have to have your priorities straight.

Ways of Seeing

1) Berger seems to be using the word “history” to describe the conclusions we have drawn from the past and record things that have happened while preserving them for a time period that would extend beyond the events life span.  People make art in order to remember the things with emotion, rather than just facts that can be written down by anybody and read.  Art involves a deeper part of the being that ties into history.  History is what is important.  The little facts are the past, while the events that left an impression create history.  When the people look at the pictures they FEEL the past.  They learn more about it than a simple text book could tell them.  The way Berger uses the word in his essay leads to me believe this.  The definition is not what Merriam-Webster says it is.  It is the key elements that stay in peoples minds.  A person will always remember what a painting looks like, but will they memorize what a page in a book with 500 words looks like? Probably not.  Therefore history is memorable.

When Berger discusses that with Hals paintings they draw a connection with the past.  When they are viewed by people, though, they are not seen for these connections but for the actual art work.  By studying these paintings Berger has managed to connect peoples thoughts on the particular painting and how Hals wanted them viewed.  He gave us a point in time and showed us what it meant to live then.  He painted a visual of life during that time.  The way I can see this being viewed as a political act is that Berger wants us to open our eyes and minds to what is going on around us and realize all that needs to be changed to make the world a better place, and learn from our past mistakes.

2)   I would say that Berger’s account of the two paintings is trying to clear up the confusion brought on by the historian and show the viewers what it is really meant to show.  Was the man drunk or was this just how he really looked?  Was Hals so old that he portrayed everyone in a different light all together, maybe?  Berger wants to stretch peoples minds and see beyond the visual aspect of the paintings into what was painted, not what was seen.  He sees what he thinks it really there.  Everyone can see something that differs from the next persons idea but at no time should they be accepted for face value.  What stops the paintings from being self evident is the fact that the people alive now were not alive then.  They don’t know all there is to know about society from that time period and how people dressed and looked.  Berger calls on the experts to help everyone else see it clearly because they study not only paintings but why people paint and what the setting would be for a painting.  They have more data that can be put into a summary of the painting.  Berger seems to know the basic points to why people paint and what is typically hidden in a painting.  He absorbs knowledge from the painting just as a student gains knowledge from a textbook or teacher.  He believes every painting has a purpose and is not painted for the art,but for the history and understanding.  Wrapped into everyone piece of art is a persons lifestyle, age, and personal views.

Questions for Reading #1

Percy progresses through his essay adding example to example, and providing multiple examples for the situation. Yet he manages to do this without repeating himself or sounding redundant. His thoughts progress from being simple and commonplace, to more abstract and far-fetched. He start with everyday people and moves to more educated people who have a different view on things and different ideas of how to deal with the places they visit. Take the tourists to the Grand Canyon and compare them to the Mexican travelers.  The people that go to the Grand Canyon are everyday tourists who go to the places they are told they should see, as Percy is talking about.  They go there to enjoy what they are supposed to enjoy.  While Percy does not distinguish between the two different tourists, I view the Mexican group as travelers.  They move around teh country and when they get lost they embrace it.  This is his simplest progression.  Or, with the example of the students, he starts with a highschool biology class and goes to a college level reading class. He does this as a way to show the progression of ideas. At first people see it as ruined to a certain extent, but eventually see it in a different light that is more educated and understanding of what is going on. It shows that this is going to happen and there is nothing people can do about it. All the beautiful hidden treasures and such that people discover are meant to be shown to the world.  This includes places or objects.  This is how the world gets to what it is today by sharing information.  As Percy progresses through his essay it slowly becomes more evident that without sharing knowledge with everyone we would be stuck in one place our whole lives, literally and figuratively.

Questions for Reading #2

As Percy continuously talks of loss throughout his essay we see that we have not lost anything physical, but something that is more mental. We have lost originality and the opportunity for new experiences that completely differ from everyone elses. Since all the parks have been discovered and school lessons revised to make it as easy as possible to comprehend, no longer do people have to think abstractly about things and use their intuition to learn. It is all set right in front of them. I feel this is Percy’s loss of creature. People are built up to expect something and in a sense lose their freedom of thought. Everything is presented in a way that is thought to be easy to understand so that everyone can enjoy it. But we can’t judge that everyone feels this way. Some people have the freedom of mind to see the Grand Canyon for the first time and not have it spoiled by what they were told it would be like and what they should do there. Cardenas is a good example of one, but at the same time maybe he did have preconceived notions. He could have either seen a canyon such as this before and automatically compared the two, or was lead there by the natives. No one knows, but Percy assumes Cardenas was the first to see it and record its beauty then send people to see it later. By doing this everyone else lost the chance to see it unscathed and in its original state. Therefore, Percy is trying to get us to believe that everyone who travels to an area such as this should be concerned about the loss they have inccured. Percy wants us feel like we have lost something important to us. In reality, we may never have gained this perspective without it being discovered. From there we must evaluate: is what we lost worth more to us than what has been gained? I would say no. A chance to see the wonders of the world whether through a non-biased point of view or from the vision that it has been used, abused, and completely gone from its natural state is a terrific experience.

The Loss of the Creature

I enjoyed reading Walker Percy’s The Loss of the Creature. It made some very interesting arguments and gave me a different perspective on things that are studied and how they should be approached when put in front of you. There were a few parts of his writing that I did not quite understand. One was how he was so negative. It seemed to me as if Percy was constantly showing everything in a negative light instead of showing the good things about how the world has changed, especially when talking about the Grand Canyon. Also, it seemed to me as if the cases he proposed were quite extreme. How often will a couple mistakenly show up at a camp site and then bring back a scientist to study it, remembering its whereabouts and the natives seeing no problem with this. Seems a little unlikely to me.

The only struggle I had with this reading was the part about the Grand Canyon. Percy jumped around too much and how did he jump from people coming to visit and finding unmarked trails to having the hotel he mentions be a home for wounded soldiers? That was a little to far fetched. I struggled grasping the concept of the Grand Canyon ever being anything but a vacation area.

Finally, this reading did tie in to our class discussion on cliches. Every scenario Percy proposed was typical to me. Someone finding a hidden tribe in an unmarked area, people looking for new ways to view a common object, and the student taking everything he has been taught and not understanding conceptually but in the way the textbook or teacher tells them to. These are cliche assumptions that everyone sees happening and are not original to any thinker.