Research Paper Rationale

1. My argument has finally been narrowed down to celebrity advertising, in clothing ads. I will focus on The Gap specifically, to examine the correlation between a famous celebrity or famous model promoting their products as opposed to an average model who is not very well-known. I am interested to see if the public audience responds differently to one advertising technique more than another. I will take ads put out by The Gap throughout the past few decades, in addition to looking at the ads that they are currently using to promote their products. I will also do some background research about the advertising industry in general, to get a feel for their techniques and how they go about capturing their audience. I am interested to see what they feel it takes to get a consumer’s attention and how they trick the public into thinking that they need to buy a certain product.

2. Given my research thus far, I think I will find a correlation between celebrities and product sales. It seems as though once a person (be it a model, actresses, actor, singer, whatever) has established themselves and their name in the public’s eye, they become role models. People want to be like them, and will do whatever it takes in order to so. Buying a pair of jeans that a certain celebrity advertises will make a consumer feel more sophisticated, and almost better than everyone else, just because of what they are wearing. A celebrity endorsing a product makes puts it on a higher level; if a high-class celebrity likes a product (a pair of jeans, or even a shirt) being sold at the Gap, then the consumer is on a high-class level if they, too, purchase it.

3. I have been lucky in finding very informative resources for my research. The website that most specifically relates itself to my topic is http://www.bwgreyscale.com/ads/. This site houses an archive of actual Gap advertisements, with a mixture of celebrity-endorsed ads and regular model ads. They are pretty much the basis of my research, and will contribute a good amount of observable information. Additionally, I have acquired three books: “Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer,” by Max Sutherland, “Social Communication in Advertising: Consumption in the Meditated Marketplace,” by William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut Jhully, and Jacqueline Botterill. The last is “Ads, Fads, and Consumer Culture,” by Arthur Asa Berger. All of these texts give a comprehensive overview of the advertising industry in general, and how they respond to the public. Each one of these books goes into great detail, deconstructing advertisements for what they are verses what they are trying to say, and how these influence the consumer. They also include important terminology relevant to the advertising world, and give techniques to successfully sell a product based on consumer appeal. I feel that these resources will give me the basic and general information that I need to successfully back up my point about the Gap advertisements themselves.

4. While I have established my topic and my goal for my research, there are still a few things that are not yet completely clear. I need to ensure that I have enough information to completely back up my points, hopefully more statistical information or sales information that pertain particularly to the Gap. I am also interesting in examining their sales verses how much money they spend in advertising. While this is obviously a multi-billion dollar industry, I cannot help but wonder if it is truly worth it. Hiring celebrities to endorse a product would make the cost of advertising go up even more, and I am interested to see how that evens out, and if it is monetarily worth it.

Questions for a Second Reading – “The “Banking” Concept of Education, by Paulo Freire

1. The politics of the classroom play a large role in helping to convey Freire’s point in this essay. A “problem-posing” class in English, history, psychology, or math would probably be one that requires students to think for themselves. This type of education “responds to the essence of consciousness – intentionality – rejects communiqués and embodies communications. It opens up a situation for discussions and deeper thoughts, considering various opinions and views in order to answer a question. The power struggle that Freire also poses ties into this as well, with that being the source of the problem in learning to begin with. It seems as if the educator’s job is to feed students information. When one is removed from that, a “problem-posing” class can truly take place. It is ironic to consider that one would not be able to critically think about things in the classroom, yet it is all entirely true. The idea of freedom in learning is one that he explores in greatly depth, and it is critical that a student (or the object, as he refers to them) and the teacher (or the Subject) are open about sharing thoughts and opinions. An “authentic form of thought and action” must be referred to as well, and it is crucial that students do not simply take in information. They must process it, scrutinize it, and develop it in order to be actively taking part in the learning process. Being “conscious of consciousness” is an interesting thing to consider, especially after reading this essay. It takes a deeper look into just how important it is to be aware of this consciousness in the learning state. Too often, people just accept things for how they are or what they are – instead of being processed, people absorb information and store it. They are “fed,” as Freire refers to it as. A time in my life, when I was “conscious of consciousness” was last year in my French class, when we were reading about existentialism. My teacher posed a question that, at the time, seemed like it had an obvious answer: “What is this?,” she asked, holding up a pen. “Un stylo,” everyone in the class replied. However, after further explanation, she told us that it was only a pen because we accepted it to be a pen. We were told when we were very young that is what it was called, and our minds processed it as being just that. I think that it is hard to really dwell on this idea too long, as it is hard to process. However, it is an interesting idea – are things just things because we accept them to be? Is this concept of an object just one that we make up and develop as time passes?

2. The two words that Freire draws from Marxist literature – praxis and alienation – are two that are easy to define after reading this essay. He discusses liberation being “praxis,” and defines it as the “action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.” In other words, praxis could be explained as being the use of knowledge or information in a practical manner. I think it is important to understand that he uses this in reference to being aware of one’s consciousness. Freire also discusses alienation, which could be defined as a way to isolate someone from something, and in this case, it is knowledge. He feels that the “practice of freedom – as opposed to education as the practice of domination – denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart form people. Going along with his views on consciousness, both of these terms are used to help support his arguments.

3. Freire does frame his essay as though he were making deposits in a bank. His points are clear, conscious, and backed up by strong reasons and support. He even evokes points of other famous views, such as alienation and praxis. Freire casts the reader into a role of a listener; however, they are also engaged by his strong details and striking points. All of the points that he makes about “authentic liberation” really grabbed me as a reader, and made it easier to understand his point of consciousness. Backing up his main point by smaller details allows the reader to fully grasp what he is trying to say. I think it is important for him to do this, as his existentialist view is a vast one to comprehend. His discussion of the submersion of consciousness and the emergence of consciousness as well as critical intervention in reality are all important in conveying his point as well.