Students Again

Final Project: Killing Us Softly 3 – Diagnosis of Thinking

In this final project I will be diagnosing the thinking behind the argument that was made in the film Killing Us Softly 3. This film was hosted by Jean Kilbourne and bears the sub title, Advertising Image of Women. The argument of this film deals with the issue of how women are depicted in advertising. In diagnosing the thinking of this argument, I intend to state in the following paragraphs, the main question of the argument, the point-of-view of the presenter of the argument, the conclusion of the argument, and the evidence that was put forth to support the conclusion. After I have stated these components of the argument I will revisit the conclusion and examine it for logic and depth and the evidence in which I will examine the intellectual standards (clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logicalness, and significance) to determine if the evidence is flawed or can stand up on its own.

The first part of the argument of this film I would like to talk about is the question. The question Jean Kilbourne asked was; is there a problem with the way women are portrayed in advertising and if so what can we do to correct the problem? I know that this is the question because in the beginning of the film she asked the audience “something that no one has asked of them before and that was to take advertising seriously.” In this single statement she has indicated that there might be an issue with the subject matter of advertising materials. She indicated this by acknowledging that advertising is overlooked and the subtle messages fall to the wayside of most peoples minds without looking at the advertising seriously enough to see what the advertiser is selling other than just the product. Jean does not come out in her “asking” statement and tell you that this is what she is actually asking you to do, but there is a certain depth to the general statement of asking her audience to take advertising seriously and in my line of thinking this is part of the underlying things that she is actually asking you to do. In conjunction with the subtitle of the film and her asking her audience to take advertising seriously, in my line of thinking combined with the depth of her request tells me that the question that I stated in the beginning of this paragraph is the question of the argument.

Now let’s move on and explore from what point-of-view Jean Kilbourne is making her argument. The point-of-view that Jean Kilbourne has while making her argument is that of a woman who has worked in the advertising industry. The point-ofview, for Jean in particular, leaves the opportunity for bias in her argument. The reason this point-of-view leaves potential for bias is because as a woman this topic hits too close to home as she is, obviously, a member of the female sex. This is comparable to a man fighting for a man’s issue. I think her argument would have more legs if it were presented by a male. The problem is that in presenting her argument she could be viewing the advertisements, in disgust, as if it were her being depicted in the advertisement which could lead to a personal bias to get her point across at all cost, even going as far as making irrelevant evidence look relevant. The other part that leaves a potential for bias is the fact that Jean has worked for the advertising industry. On the surface this statement could look like she may have some knowledge of the way the industry is run in regards to her argument. However, when she let it be known in the film that she had worked for the industry, she stated it as a “mindless” job. This introduction to her past led me to think she had certain contempt for the industry. In addition, since she is no longer working in the industry, maybe she left on bad terms which could further her bias. Another potential for bias regarding her past work history, even if she did have an inside track, is that she seemed to have worked in the advertising industry some time ago while she makes claims mostly about current advertising, it is possible the industry might have changed quite a bit since her last experience. One last thing, even though she worked in the advertising industry, she may not have had a position that had any authority on the outcome of ads nor any insight as to what else might be being said or “sold” in an advertisement better than any of the rest of the consumers that see the ads.

The next part I would like to discuss is the conclusion of the argument made in this film. The conclusion is three fold and comes in the form of an explanation, a prediction, and a recommendation. The conclusion as an explanation is that women are depicted poorly in advertising which is made through evidence which I will state in a moment and then revisit to analyze later in this paper. The conclusion as a prediction is that if people watch so many ads then over time they will inherit the attributes set forth in the advertisements such as violence. Jean provided a graph in her argument containing the budget of the advertising industry and that the average human being sees more than three thousand advertisements a day and spends three years of their life viewing the advertisements. The final part of the conclusion is a recommendation in which she recommends for people to take advertising seriously and get involved in the fight to change advertising for the better of which the change has to be profound and global.

The last thing I would like to state before we move on to analysis is the evidence put forth in the argument made by Jean Kilbourne. In stating the evidence of this argument I will state four of the eight main subdivisions of evidence and three of the main points of evidence within each of those subdivisions.

The first main subdivision of evidence is the ideal image of women. The first point within that subdivision comes in the form of a Mirabella magazine cover advertisement that was introduced by Jean. The interest in this cover as pertains to the evidence is that the cover was of a computer generated face of a woman. This was made by taking different facial features, such as a nose, from several different faces to create “the perfect face.” The second point was a computer graphics company that generated, by computer, a moving image of a woman that “looks real.” The third point dealt with the possibility of real women obtaining perfection. This point was introduced by Jean stating that the perfect image depicted in advertising intertwines with the core belief of women that this image is possible to achieve.

The second main subdivision contains point of evidence that women are objectified. The first point in this evidence comes in the form of a series of advertisements. The advertisements included an original red beer bottle shaped to be a woman, a woman that was a bottle of Tanquery gin, and an advertisement that depicted scissors but the sharp ends of the scissors where replaced by a pair of women’s legs. The second point of evidence was that women of color are depicted as animals. This also comes in a series of advertisements that include a female rap artist in animal head wear, a Diesel jeans advertisement with a woman laying on zebra print, and an advertisement for Animale, which looked to be cologne or perfume, in which a woman was dressed as an animal. The third point of evidence was that advertisement dismembered women’s bodies. This was shown in a Lee jeans and an underwear advertisement in which just the mid section of the women’s bodies were depicted.

The third main subdivision has to do with dysfunctional sexuality. The first point is a baby’s love soft advertisement which contained copy that stated “because innocence is sexier than you think.” Jean argues that advertisements like this demand women to aspire to be “innocent and sexy, virginal and experienced all at once.” The second point is that advertisers are America’s real pornographers. Jean introduces this idea with a Tobasco hot sauce advertisement entitled “The Exciter” which Jean says to depict a bottle of Tobasco having intercourse with a baked potato and an advertisement of a woman with copy that states “whatever you are giving him tonight he will enjoy it more with rice” to which Jean attributes a pornographic connotation. The third point is that advertisements show that a woman always needs a man to be happy and there is never an alternative. This is introduced by a commercial, “whatever Lola wants, Lola gets,” and a series of advertisements in which there are a man and women, half naked, and all over each other.

The fourth main subdivision is about Men’s advertisements. The first point that Jean states is that there is no consequence for men to be objectified in advertisements, such as being raped, harassed, or beaten. This first point is introduced with a Clavin Klein advertisement in which the man is totally naked with the exception of an article of clothing covering his genitals. The second point is that when men are advertised with female qualities the female qualities, which are labeled by our culture, are devalued, such as talking and communication being a weakness. The third is that men or women only being able to possess one set of qualities is dehumanizing.

Now let’s digress back to the conclusion that Jean comes to with her argument and analyze for logic and depth. The first I would like to analyze is the conclusion as an explanation in which Jean concludes that women are portrayed poorly in advertising.

This conclusion is logical because it can be made sense of through the extensive amount of advertisements that Jean shows throughout the film. This part of the conclusion can be thought of as logical because through the system of reasoning that Jean uses to draw this conclusion in which she puts forth hundreds of advertisements that, even at first glance, appear to depict women poorly and she also states several other forms of evidence that would lead to the logical conclusion that women are depicted poorly in advertising. This conclusion also has depth because there are a lot of other questions and thought that could be raised with a conclusion such as this. In my line of thinking this ties directly with Jeans statement that advertisers are selling much more than just their product with the advertisements they produce. Some of the questions, in my mind, this conclusion could raise are: How are women depicted poorly? What makes that depiction poor? How do these poor depictions sell more than just the product offered? Some of these questions were slightly covered in this film, but further add to depth because they raise additional questions. The depth of this conclusion include, but is not limited to, inducing thoughts and raising other question about societal problems as a result of poor depiction of women in advertising. The second part of the conclusion of the conclusion as a prediction is that if people watch so many ads then over time they will inherit the attributes set forth in the advertisements such as violence. This is a logical conclusion because it could be compared to the “Pavlov’s dog” experiments of psychologist Ivan Pavlov proved how animals, with certain stimuli, could be trained to respond in a certain way and that this could also be applied to humans. If humans as seeing three thousand advertisements a day, as shown in a graph by Jean, were seeing this many advertisements with a particular stimuli, such as violence, it is logical that that stimuli might be embedded into the human subconscious and could be invoked, regardless of consequence, without presence of mind. This part of the conclusion also has depth because it introduces a whole bevy of other questions. What attributes are we inheriting through the viewing of so many advertisements? What kind of impact could these inherited attributes have on our society? The third part of the conclusion as a recommendation in which Jean recommends for people to take advertising seriously and get involved in the fight to change advertising for the better of which the change has to be profound and global. This part of the conclusion is logical because it is inevitable that the way to change the advertising industry and the message they depict is for people as a whole to make their grievance known and to take an active role in correcting those grievances. I am less optimistic as to whether this part of the conclusion has depth. Jean didn’t really delve into how to get involved in changing the face of advertising. She just stated that the change would have to be global and profound which sound big, but doesn’t, at least in my mind, leave much in the way of to participate in creating this “global and profound” change in the advertising industry nor does it, at least for me, invoke much insight for me to form my own ideas of how to help fight for change.

Finally, let’s analyze the evidence that I had previously stated. I will take each of the four main subdivisions and the three points of each of the four subdivisions and analyze them. In analyzing each point I will discuss one part of the eight intellectual standards (which I listed in the introduction paragraph at the beginning of this paper) for each point.

The first main subdivision of evidence is the ideal image of women. The first point within that subdivision comes in the form of a Mirabella magazine cover advertisement that was introduced by Jean. The interest in this cover as pertains to the evidence is that the cover was of a computer generated face of a woman. This was made by taking different facial features, such as a nose, from several different to create “the perfect face.” This example of evidence was not accurate. It was not accurate because the face was clearly not “perfect.” If you looked closely at this cover it was far from a “perfect” face. It was clear that it was not one face as it looked like a face put together like a jigsaw puzzle, if you looked close I believe I saw line where some of the features were inserted. In addition, some parts of the faces complexion looked darker and some lighter attributing to a skin tone that was not constant which further detract this image from being the “perfect” face. The second point was a computer graphics company that generated, by computer, a moving image of a woman that “looks real.” This point defied significance because as you looked at the movement of the created image it was not fluid, rather robotic in a sense. If a moving computer model like this in an advertisement it would be clear it was computer generated. The statement that Jean made that “soon we won’t need models at all” is way off mark. Given this view of the current technology in the field of moving computer generated models it is insignificant to this argument because the current image could not replace real models and if it ever does, given this sample, it will be a lot longer than “soon.” The third point dealt with the possibility of real women obtaining perfection. This point was introduced by Jean stating that the perfect image depicted in advertising intertwines with the core belief of women that this image is possible to achieve. This bit of evidence lacks clarity because Jean makes a generalization as to the core belief of women. Maybe the idea that this perfect image is attainable is a core belief of a certain demographic of women might hold true, but without this information the generalization that this is the core belief of all women lacks clarity. Jean generalizes that this is the core belief of women, however, she is a woman and has made it known that she does not think the perfect image created by advertisers is attainable. How can she generalize what women’s core beliefs are when she, as a woman, does not believe?

The second main subdivision contains point of evidence that women are objectified. The first point in this evidence comes in the form of a series of advertisements. The advertisements included an original red beer bottle shaped to be a woman, a woman that was a bottle of Tanquery gin, and an advertisement that depicted scissors but the sharp ends of the scissors where replaced by a pair of women’s legs. This argument lacked logicalness because these advertisements where clearly of women. When I saw these ads I could not focus on the center piece of the advertisement being an object, such as a bottle of gin, because it was clear that a woman was depicted. The second point of evidence was that women of color are depicted as animals. This also comes in a series of advertisements that include a female rap artist in animal head wear, a Diesel jeans advertisement with a woman laying on zebra print, and an advertisement for Animale, which looked to be cologne or perfume, in which a woman was dressed as an animal. This piece of evidence lacks precision because in the Diesel jeans advertisement the woman was not a woman of color and she was laying on an animal print, she wasn’t depicted as an animal herself. The third point of evidence was that advertisement dismembered women’s bodies. This was shown in a Lee jeans and an underwear advertisement in which just the mid section of the women’s bodies were depicted. This part of evidence lacks relevance because these advertisements were advertising underwear and jeans. I would expect the focus to be on the product which happens to be located on a certain part of the body. Why would you focus on the whole body for an underwear advertisement?

The third main subdivision has to do with dysfunctional sexuality. The first point is a baby’s love soft advertisement which contained copy that stated “because innocence is sexier than you think.” Jean argues that advertisements like this demand women to aspire to be “innocent and sexy, virginal and experienced all at once.” This point lacked depth because Jean neglected to ask alternative questions as to what the advertisement might have been trying to depict. I believe this advertisement was for a lotion. Maybe the message is that your skin will be as soft as a baby’s skin if you use our lotion. The second point is that advertisers are America’s real pornographers. Jean introduces this idea with a Tobasco hot sauce advertisement entitled “The Exciter” which Jean says to depict a bottle of Tobasco having intercourse with a baked potato and an advertisement of a woman with copy that states “whatever you are giving him tonight he will enjoy it more with rice” to which Jean attributes a pornographic connotation. This point lacks accuracy because these ads hardly seem to be of a sexual nature. A baked potato by itself is bland and Tobasco is hot maybe the advertiser is just trying to send the message that Tobasco will “excite” the flavor of bland food. The third point is that advertisements show that a woman always needs a man to be happy and there is never an alternative. This is introduced by a commercial, “whatever Lola wants, Lola gets,” and a series of advertisements in which there are a man and women, half naked, and all over each other. This evidence lacks depth because some of these advertisements some women on top of men placing them in a position of power. In this case I think it could be argued that the woman is in control and is the important one and maybe these advertisements show that a man needs a woman rather than the other way around.

The fourth main subdivision is about Men’s advertisements. The first point that Jean states is that there is no consequence for men to be objectified in advertisements, such as being raped, harassed, or beaten. This first point is introduced with a Clavin Klein advertisement in which the man is totally naked with the exception of an article of clothing covering his genitals. This evidence lacks logicalness because Jean stated that “turning a human into a thing is almost always the first step to violence.” If this is true, any human (man or woman) that is objectified could be subject to violence. Therefore, men will suffer consequences of being objectified. The second point is that when men are advertised with female qualities the female qualities, which are labeled by our culture, are devalued, such as talking and communication being a weakness. This evidence lacks breadth because Jean did not sufficiently explain how she knows female qualities are devalued by men advertised in possession of these qualities. The third is that men or women only being able to possess one set of qualities is dehumanizing. This argument lacks clarity because Jean is not clear why men and women are doomed to only one set of stereotypical qualities.

In conclusion, I think Jean has raised question to a valid topic. However, I believe her argument could have better served the betterment of the depiction of women in advertising if she had left out the portions of evidence that I have discussed, if she expanded of her conclusion as a recommendation, and if she painted the picture of her point-of-view a little bit differently.

Mid Term

Spontaneous

The meaning of spontaneous is to do something without knowing the cause and never having emotion and reason work in harmony. The whole purpose of being spontaneous is to fulfill habit or inherited actions. Having spontaneous thought produces problems because by fulfilling habit you never have beliefs of your own. If you do not have beliefs of your own then you cannot know why you believe something and if you do not know why you believe in something then you can never prove what you believe. My recommendation to overcome spontaneity would be to learn how to ask the right questions to balance emotion and reason to find the self-evident foundation of what you believe. If you do not learn to understand why you believe in something then your beliefs will always be looked at through the perspective of laziness and gullibility. It is necessary to be able to pinpoint and explain why you believe what you believe because if you can not explain why you believe in something then it is evident that are continuing to think spontaneously. The concept of being completely spontaneous will leave you susceptible to being brainwashed or indoctrinated and lead you to being a slave to the ideals of someone else’s thoughts and control. The biggest consequences of being spontaneous, other than you will never have original creative thoughts of your own, is that you can never reach a complete and happy life. The reason you can never be complete is because you can never be in touch with your own identity because you do not know why your beliefs exist as they are. If you do not know why your beliefs are then you can never know if your beliefs are valid or should be changed because they have never been examined.

Reflective

To be reflective is to examine your own thoughts and beliefs to see if there are any flaws in your ideas and determine whether your beliefs are true to yourself or need to be modified which will enable to be in touch with your identity and you will know and be able to explain why you believe in something. The main goal or purpose in being reflective is to reach completion and be happy. The question you have to answer if you want to be reflective is whether your thoughts are free and authentic. In answering this question, if your beliefs are examined then it will lead you to freedom of authentic choice which will in turn lead you to completion and happiness. The reflective person looks through the eyes of a skeptic. A reflective person may perceive ideas in a cynical or gullible way at times, but a reflective person always looks for a reason to examine a concept to understand why it is that way rather than it is just that way. The reflective person assumes they need to educate themselves rather than be schooled by others. The evidence that a person is reflective is that they can backup their beliefs and thoughts with a well thought out explanation and or self-evident proof of their thoughts and beliefs. The reflective person is a critical thinker at heart because they have the desire to ask the right questions to get to the truth of their ideas and beliefs as well as others ideas and beliefs. The consequence of not being reflective is that if you can not examine your thoughts in a critical way and can backup your beliefs with explanation or self-evident proof then you will not be in touch with your identity which will prevent you from achieving happiness.

Information Age

The information Age is an era of immediate information available at any time through mediums such as the internet, newspapers, magazines, twenty four hour television news stations, and many other sources through the advance of technology. The purpose of the Information Age is to receive information that you desire at any time of the day or night in a spontaneous fashion. The problem with receiving information in this fashion is that there is too much information available that it bombards you until you are completely overwhelmed. In order to overcome this problem you must cut through the problem using a procedure of inquiry to find which information is truthful and which information is flawed. It is necessary to find a self-evident explanation to support the facts you discover in the Information Age and determine if it is a belief you can trust as truthful and create your own beliefs and ideas with this foundation. A person who relies on the fact finding ways of the Information Age without question can be perceived as an impatient person who is more interested in finding the information rather than being concerned if the information is credible. By being impatient and more interested in the information itself rather than its credibility this type of person assumes the information’s credibility instead of taking the initiative to examine the information for truth. It is evident that a person like this in the era of the Information Age will be fooled by people printing web pages with their own biased agendas because anyone can publish a web page for any reason they desire. This argument also holds true, to a lesser extent, for the television news in the sense that it has become a program that holds entertainment value as high as the value of truth and can also be biased due to privately owned broadcast corporations. The Information Age creates confusion because there is too much information which create frustration because you don’t know what information to believe which creates apathy or a lack of interest or concern in information of general importance which induces a passive attitude and leads to you to being controlled by others. If you use the Information Age’s availability of immediate information without question you will suffer the consequence of being a slave to other people’s agendas and be left with out original thought or freedom of choice.

Diversity Obstacle

The diversity obstacle is the attempt to strive for equality with the idea that many different people or things are better than singletons in order to improve the whole. The purpose of diversity is to stop inequality because if everything is treated equally then the strengths of everything can be pulled together to enrich everything. The problem with diversity is that it is its own worst enemy, the very mention of the word implants that there are differences and by focusing on the differences comes the preference for on thing over the other which in turn circles the whole idea back to creating inequality rather than stopping inequality. To overcome this problem you will have to focus on how the function of different things can better the whole rather than focus on the differences themselves. The perspective of diversity is that of an optimist by assuming that the focus on the differences can be overcome and equality can be achieved which will benefit all. There is a mound of evidence that diversity is its own worst enemy in the past and the present. One example would be segregation in which diverse people were separated because of their differences and one was viewed to be better than another which created inequality. Segregation does not exist by law today, but we are still hung up on the differences of our diverse nation rather than pooling together our strengths to improve all of our lives and view each other as human rather than be defined by a difference. This is out of the scope of this paper, but I think our government is the biggest supporter of letting us know how different we are because it increases the government’s ability to control all of us in groups rather than as a whole. Variety is “the spice of life” as soon as that is realized without focus on differences the better chance that the word diversity can live up to its definition of trying to stop inequality. The positive consequence of diversity under its true meaning is for everything to be treated equal and for everything to be better for it.

Allegory of the Cave

The Allegory of the Cave shows us that if we do not reflect on our thoughts we will never function freely, only spontaneously, and will remain slaves under the control of others and we will never be authentically complete or happy. The purpose of The Allegory of the Cave is to symbolically through a story introduce abstract thought about our own personal “caves” and how to escape them. The problem is that if you go through life following lies that were never examined and exposed as lies then you will be a slave and after a while the conformity to these lies become safe and you will resist the truth. Being kept from the truth keeps you blind and prevents you from asking questions or even knowing that there are questions that could be asked which prevent you from being on the course to ever becoming complete. A person who is comparable to the slaves of The Allegory of the Cave story is even lower than a spontaneous person because they have no thought, they don’t know or question anything, they will always do whatever is asked of them and believe whatever is told to them. They will always assume that there is nothing else, what they are asked to do and what they are told is all there is to everything. The evidence, as pertains to The Allegory of the Cave, is that once the chains were removed and the prisoner was taken out of the cave to be shown the truth he believed that it was a lie and wanted to go back to the safety of conformity in the cave. The consequence of being a prisoner, as in The Allegory of the Cave, is that you will always be told what to do and you will always do as you are told, never to have freedom of choice.