Together, writing samples 1 and 2 will help me give you a placement recommendation eng100. You should also take the first year writing program's directed self placement questionnaire and include the results on the placement sheet you staple to the front of your writing samples should form a single packet with the sheet on top and the two samples behind it. If you believe you should be enrolled in a different course, please contact me as soon as possible.

Writing sample 1 prompt: response essay_ in masters of desire: the culture of american advertising, jack solomon argues that the power of advertising in the u.s. Is intimately connected to our myths and values in particular the american dream and the hopes and fears those myths generate. For this first sample, read solomon's section on fear and trembling in the marketplace pages 410 412 available through our library reserves and respond to it in 2 3 pages using an example or two from more recent advertisements. Solomon's article was originally published in 1988, so your question in reading and responding could simply be, are solomon's observations about the use of fear in american advertising still applicable twenty years later? coincidentally, his essay was published shortly after the market crash of 1987 and he analyzes several ads that play on the fears and culture generated by it. You may also wish to address the fact that our media viewing habits have changed substantially since 1988, a time before widespread access to the internet. Be as specific as you can be in providing evidence from the example ads you choose. As you respond, envision an academic audience who has not read solomon's article, but who is interested in popular culture and advertisement.

This means you should briefly summarize solomon in addition to making your argument about whether advertisements work the same way today as they did in the 1980s. Structure your paper as an essay, using your prior knowledge about essays and how they should be organized. Use your knowledge of citation preferably mla to document your outside sources, both in your text and at the end. _ once you are happy with writing sample 1, turn your attention to writing sample 2.

Explain In Details How Good Essays Are Supposed to Be Written

I need two examples of your writing to make an informed placement recommendation. Together, writing samples 1 and 2 will help me give you a placement recommendation eng100. Make sure to also take the first year writing program's directed self placement questionnaire. If you believe you should be enrolled in a different course than english 101, contact me asap. Writing sample 2 prompt: response essay_ in masters of desire: the culture of american advertising, jack solomon argues that the power of advertising in the u.s. For this second sample, read the opening section of solomon's article pages 401 406 available online through our library reserves , and respond to it using an example or two from more recent advertisements as your evidence.

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Solomon's article was originally published in 1988, so your question in reading and responding could simply be, are solomon's observations about american advertising still applicable twenty years later? you may also wish to address the fact that our media viewing habits have changed substantially since 1988, a time before widespread access to the internet. Be as specific as you can be in providing evidence from the example ads you choose detailed description and analysis of the ads will make your claims more convincing. This means you should briefly introduce and summarize solomon in addition to making your argument about whether advertisements work the same way today as they did in the 1980s.

Follow mla citation guidelines to document your sources including your ads! , both in your text and at the end. As with your first writing sample, aim for a 2 3 double spaced page essay, following mla guidelines for formatting your text. State university length: 378 words 1.1 double spaced pages rating: red free 'masters of desire: the culture of american advertising' 'always real: coke chillin' in the hood' how would these two guys analyze an advertisement? evidently, these two guys know how to sell something. The advertisements aren't just selling a product to americans, but rather the advertisements are directed towards a targeted market. For example a commercial that wants to sell a regular beer will show normal guys hanging out. The targeted market would be mostly men because in the commercials it's mostly men with the exception of a beautiful woman here and there.

The chevrolet commercials have a slogan that makes one feel to be american, one must by american. Chevrolet's slogan is 'the heartbeat of america.' car commercials also have targeted markets also. For a truck commercial, they will show a truck getting all dirty and going through an obstacle.

For a luxury car commercial the mood or the commercial is nice and pleasant, the car is on a country road representing one driving to there country home. These cars were once targeted towards upper class people, but now they are targeted towards everyone according to solomon. A commercial strives on the ever so enduring drive for americans to have better things and climb up the social status ladder. Marketers know this, so they place normal, average, everyday looking people in their commercials to let middle class people know that they can have the car, too.

Solomon and charles know that an advertisement should be aired when the targeted market is watching. A commercial for bud light would be worthless to anhuiser bush if they aired it on a saturday morning during cartoon time. The last thing that solomon and charles would analyze, would be the fear of not fitting in. So, some commercials try to make people feel like they have to buy a product just to fit in.

22 feb 2016

masters of desire: the culture of american advertising

ch. 59 76, from jack solomon's the signs of our time amongst democratic nations, men easily attain certain equality of condition but they can never attain as much as they desire. Alexis de tocqueville 0n may 10, 1831, a young french aristocrat named alexis de tocqueville arrived in new york city at the start of what would become one of the most famous visits to america in our history. He had come to observe first hand the institutions of the freest, most egalitarian society of the age, but what he found was a paradox. For behind america's mythic promise of equal opportunity, tocqueville discovered a desire for unequal social rewards, a ferocious competition for privilege and distinction. As he wrote in his monumental study, democracy in america: when all privileges of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and a man's own energies may place him at the top of any of one them, an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambition.

For when men are nearly alike, and all follow the same track, it is very difficult for any one individual to walk quick and cleave a way through the same throng which surrounds and presses him. We americans dream of rising above the crowd, of attaining a social summit beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. The american dream, in other words, has two faces: the one communally egalitarian and the other competitively elitist. This contradiction is no accident it is fundamental to the structure of american society. Even as america's great myth of equality celebrates the virtues of mom, apple pie, and the girl or boy next door, it also lures us to achieve social distinction, to rise above the crowd and bask alone in the glory. This land is your land and this land is my land, woody guthrie's populist anthem tells us, but we keep trying to increase the my at the expense of the your. Rather than fostering contentment, the american dream breeds desire, a longing for a greater share of the pie.

It is as if our society were a vast high school football game, with the bulk of the participants noisily rooting in the stands while, deep down, each of them is wishing he or she could be the star quarterback or head cheerleader. For the semiotician, the contradictory nature of the american myth of equality is nowhere written so clearly as in the signs that american advertisers use to manipulate us into buying their wares. Manipulate is the word here, not persuade for advertising campaigns are not sources of product information, they are exercises in behavior modification. Appealing to our subconscious emotions rather than to our conscious intellects, advertisements are designed to exploit the discontentments fostered by the american dream, the constant desire for social success and the material rewards that accompany it. America's consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects from peanut butter to political candidates into signs of all the things that americans covet most. But by semiotically reading the signs that advertising agencies manufacture to stimulate consumption, we can plot the precise state of desire in the audiences to which they are addressed. In this chapter, we'll look at a representative sample of ads and what they say about the emotional climate of the country and the fast changing trends of american life.