Jimmylolaiv

This assignment asks you to analyze images in popular culture. Our focus will be on still image advertising or photography that reveals deeper issues within our culture, and what a set of chosen images communicates to us about our society.

The idea will be to take these ads and analyze what the creators of the ads are trying to say about those interested in their products, and our culture as a whole.

• You may wish to attack this from the angle of our “concept of beauty”. Look at ads and the people in them and how to they perpetuate idealized “norms” of how to look, dress, eat, and live?

• You may also choose to write about a series or group of images, for example a series of advertisements in a fashion magazine or collection of ads by companies such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, or Victoria’s Secret.
• If you are interested in art, you might consider the relationship and/or differences between painting, photography, sculpture, etc. and commercial images (advertising).
• You may also be more interested in the “How”. Meaning what advertising techniques are the producers using to appeal to their audience, humor, nostalgia, sex…
• Or you could look at two competitors and see what conversation they are having through their advertisements.

The Assignment:

• Choose at least two advertisements or other images (such as any you find in fashion magazines or on the web) that reflect the issue you have chosen and that appeal to the same or to different audiences. Examples include:
  • An advertisement of the same product, one aimed at men and one aimed at women). You may find that the issue reveals itself after analyzing the images.
  • Advertisements from previous generations or classical works of art and how our ideas of beauty may or may not have changed over time.
  • A series of images, Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister ads, for example.

• Describe the ads/images in detail (summarize them) so that your audience can easily visualize them without actually seeing them.
• Analyze the ads/images and explain how each appeal to its target audience. As you write, answer the following question: How is each attempting to appeal to its audience by using imagery and other features to appeal to an important value the audience holds?
• Analyze the ads/images for their wider significance.Answer the following questions: What larger concerns are invoked by the ads/images? In what ways does your analysis answer the “So What?” question? (Why might your readers be interested in or need to read about what you will say?)
• Open the essay with the larger issue or the idea that connects these two images and formulate a thesis or argument around the issue, use your ads as a part of your evidence, alongside other outside sources.

Format:

• Length: 5-6 pages, double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman.
• MLA Format, with proper in-text citations and a works cited page.
• Minimum of four outside sources, in addition to the images