Thoughts on Wednesday's Class Discussion

This is what we're supposed to blog about, right?

I thought everybody had some really good points about this. Most people basically were in agreement that the article's main idea- that the objectification of women in ads happens and is bad- was true. Not everyone agreed on whether Kilbourne wrote well or not, among other things. It's my opinion that she did write a good article. It's funny, that her essay-thing was like the ads she rails against. Her writing is up on a soapbox, borderline offensive, exaggerated and over-analyzing. However, it has great shock value (especially seeing the pictures, most of which were definitely disturbing), and it made you remember and think about the article. Just like the ads were shocking and made people remember the product. (And those ads do work- otherwise it would be a waste of money to air them, so the producers wouldn't if they didn't work, so since they're there, they work. Did that make sense?) So while the article was good rhetorical writing, I don't agree with all of it and can see why others don't as well. It sort of reminds me of that torture essay earlier this year, which was good writing but in my opinion idiotic.

I also just thought of something. We talked about billboards, signposts and TV. What about the Internet? Popup ads sometimes have weird pictures on them, too. Especially those weird ones for dating services. What would the role of Internet ads be in objectifying people?