An unfortunate reality about the American culture is how simple it is for us trap ourselves in trivial detail but not take time to recognize the small things that are important. We are worried about wearing a name brand to fit in with peers, stress over getting a bit of dirt on the bottoms of our brand new sneakers, and complain when we have to do something ourselves. These worries only pause for a moment when something exciting or tragic occurs in our lives and when we numb our minds to enjoy things like music, television, or movies. American culture has made us obsessed with having the finest worldly goods and not being required to accomplish anything in return.
Many companies have noticed this exact cultural mythology. Some have used it to persuade us to purchase items that maybe we do not necessarily need but want to make our lives simpler. An excellent example of this is Chrysler’s Ram line of pickup trucks. In Ram’s early 2013 commercial for the Super Bowl, they are selling their line of pickup trucks. While that is the true objective of the two-minute long commercial, the advertisers want to sell something more: the beauty and benefit from hard work. Americans have a deep-seated belief that hard work is dirty and below them. However, Ram is showing the presence of this mythology through subtle reverse psychology. They remind us of the negative connotation regarding hard work by showing positive images. Farmers are merely Ram’s example of hard work. While many occupations are hard work induced, a farmer’s hard work is highly visible in comparison to a business executive. There are many symbols that the creators of the commercial use to present these beliefs. These symbols include the speech, photographs, and typeface involv...
... middle of paper ...
...ey’s speech “So God Made a Farmer,” reminds the audience of how dirty hard work is in a poetic sound. The photographs taken by ten acclaimed photographers emphasize these words and draw out the feelings about hard work. The typeface used at the beginning and end of the two-minute commercial, brings everything together: the current mythology present, the former belief, and the product. American society, in general, takes hard work as dirty and views themselves superior to said labor; however, hard work makes each success and reward so much sweeter than just getting them for no reason outside of wanting whatever that reward or success may be.
Works Cited
Franke-Ruta, Garance. "Paul Harvey's 1978 'So God Made a Farmer' Speech." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 03 Feb. 2013. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.
Link to the advertisement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHjV-FPMm_I
In “On Reading a Video Text,” Robert Scholes discusses the idea of cultural reinforcement within television commercials. Scholes claims that television commercials remind viewers of their social whereabouts and displays their association with society. Commercials are played year around and people have the chance to view and form their own values and beliefs based on what they see. For instance, Scholes blatantly describes to his audience that the Budweiser commercial from the 80s focuses on more than just advertising their product; they try selling a message. Two and a half decades later Budweiser is at it again. In a recent Super Bowl commercial they focus in on a similar aspect, the American Dream. Only this time it is a little more
In 2013 Dodge Ram Trucks made a commitment to raise one million dollars for the Future Farmers of America. Dodge deemed 2013 to be “the year of the farmer” (Christian posts). During the fourth quarter of Super Bowl forty-seven Dodge aired a two minute and forty-two second tribute to the American farmer. The commercial “Farmer” was a slideshow that depicted American agricultural life. A speech given by Paul Harvey was used to narrate the tribute. As the commercial begins Paul Harvey’s name is printed onto a picture of a solitary cow standing in a frozen field. Then a picture of an old church is displayed and Harvey’s first words are: "And on the 8th day God looked down on His planned paradise and said, 'I need a caretaker!' So, God made a farmer”
Wendell Berry writes in his book, “What are people for?” a thesis that modern culture is destroying the agricultural culture. He feels that technology is seen and used as the easy way to produce food faster and more efficiently. With this modern way of farming comes the idea that we need to work smarter not harder which is not always true. The goal is comfort and leisure and Berry feels that this is the reason for the down fall of the agricultural culture. He believes that hard work and pride in workmanship is more important than material goods and money. This was by no means a perfect society. The people had often been violent wand wasteful in the use of land of each other. Its present ills have already taken root in it. Even with these faults, this society appreciated the hard work of farming compared to the easy way of living today.
Joel Salatin’s family moved to Virginia in 1961, to a very poorly maintained farm. This farm was the family’s “clean slate” which they could make into whatever they wanted. His parents were the original unconventional small farmers. They began planting crops and building moveable fences and shelters for their livestock. With the help of Joel’s father William, the work that had progressed after his father’s death, in 1988 Polyface began to skyrocket in its’ growth. The idea of unconventional farming normally has a negative connotation, but Joel Salatin as an “out-of-the-box thinking process” (Polyfaces.com, video).
In the last thirty-eight years, Ford has known how to target the audience they have for the F- series of trucks. After the new advertisement that Ford produced it can be implied that they replicated their success again. With the first commercial being aired on television and online during the 2014 college football playoffs, Ford had a marketing strategy. It is apparent in almost all of the advertisements, including this one that Ford produced is to showcase the newest and the best of the best F-Series of trucks and that they aim to get all the hard working American man. The dream of most hard working men is to be well off, to have a family, and to have nice things to show the success they have worked so hard for. Ford tries to compel the consumer that the new 2015 Ford F150 is the truck to buy that shows how hard you work and is reliable and tough enough keep up with the hard working man that you are. In the advertisement for the 2015 Ford F150 it is easily perceived that convincing word choice, the setting, and the overall logistics of the advertisement appeals to the all American hardworking man.
...ble environmental concerns, no matter the cost while meeting them where they are. Dr. Farmer’s story states that helping the suffering poor is possible. This gentle, humble, and peaceful man has fought the courageous battle against man’s opinion of the oppressed and excitedly, he has won.
The huckleberry fields are of no exception to this. Thoreau talks about the line of production in which the huckleberry’s go from being picked, send down the line, then to a person who will cook them, and finally to the consumer. Thus taking the effort and beauty he saw while working out of the process. “I believe in a different kind of labor where the consumer should be encouraged to divide himself freely between him library and the huckleberry field’s (29). This is an idea that is manly lost in the modern era, because of how easy it is to just go to a store to buy our food and forget the work done to get this stuff to us. So the idea of working for one’s supper is a hard concept to implement. Thoreau saw it was a way so that we don’t let big business take over our lives and nature. We have allowed the companies to make life complex, by finding a way to make money from everything in our lives and selling it to us as if they have just simplified
Americans have long since depended on a falsified ideology of idealized life referred to as the American dream. The construct of this dream has become more elusive with the emergence of popular cultural advertisements that sell items promoting a highly gendered goal of achieving perfection. In “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon states that ads are creating a “symbolic association between their products and what is most coveted by the consumer” to draw on the consumer’s desire to outwardly express high social standing (544). The American dream has sold the idea of equality between genders, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds, but advertisements have manipulated this concept entirely through representations
He is not only a farmer, but also a writer. He writes about the differences between industrialism and agrarianism. He states these two types of societies are “two nearly opposite concepts of agriculture and land use, but also two nearly opposite ways of understanding ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our world.” He highlights that agrarianism is about the land, plants, and the rest of nature. Industrialism is about high technology machines and increasing profit. He compares industrialism to mining, saying that when used, it only abuses the land (Berry). For Berry, and other agrarianists, farming is so much more than planting and harvesting as quickly as possible. Old traditions are used, and the hard work that is put into the crop, is done so with love. Agrarian societies practice subsistence agriculture, meaning they grow just enough food to support their families. This culture’s practices are done with the goal of being completely
The commercial described in Scholes composition is a “well-known Budweiser commercial which tells…the life story of a black man pursuing a career as a baseball umpire” (Scholes, p. 620). Scholes feels that this commercial elegantly proves his theory that video texts can hold a viewer captive and control his thought pattern through the use of visual effects, narrativity, and of course, cultural reinforcement. The commercial itself tells the story of a young black man, working as an umpire in the minor baseball leagues, risen from the provinces, having overcome great racial tension throughout his life, who “makes it” as he is accepted by a white manager after making a close call during a game.
Amid jeers, he didn’t back down, telling the audience, “ You can’t do it, my friends.” (Thompson 82) Clearly it is not only correct to give a dignifying individual a position of labor that is in desperate need of occupation, but also worthwhile for the land and community who need people to harvest their farms so they can meet the simple daily life essentials, conveniently located at your local Ayala 3 grocery store. As the workday continues, Thompson realizes a farmworkers job of harvesting is not as simple as it may sound.
The video describes how our society may not even care about the product being advertised, but we still read the billboard or watch the commercial. Also mentioned was the use of colors in a commercial, the marketing effects in politics, and even market research obtained by studying different cults. Frontline takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar “persuasion industries” of advertising and how this rhetoric affects everyone. So whether this is in the form of a television commercial or a billboard, pathos, logos, and ethos can be found in all advertisements.
In life, especially in American culture, our existence revolves around the physical, materialistic possessions and goals. Every commercial, ad and salesman caters to those who need more “stuff”
influence in the farmers’ point of view. The farmers in the book translate to adults in real
As doubts of economic possibilities of farming and ranching continue to decline, the true farmer still respects their land and practices. The general stereotype of farmers and ranchers is poor stewardship. Historically, hunters and farmers were more interested environmentalists than compared with the liberal, urban vegetarians of today. However both share the same conditions for living and breathing. This creates confusion between needing and wanting within a typical household (Kingsolver, 2003).