Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [61]
[10] Yet in reality, this marketing of liberation is paradoxical; although this freeing message promotes rebellion and nonconformity, it actually supports the market economy and feeds into capitalism and conformity. When advertisers employ political protest messages to be associated with products, they imply that buying the product is a form of political action.
[11] But lastly, the ad gives another paradoxical message with the portrayal of the beauty of the American, unspoiled, natural environment. Another typical American image is of the untouched landscapes, green pastures, and cloudless blue skies of the open frontier, which serves as the ad’s backdrop. The ad’s clear blue sky with the American flag flying freely in the wind encourages the viewer to link the beauty of the natural American landscape with the purchase of tommy girl. Sut Jhally, editor of the video Advertising and the End of the World (1998), would argue that the ad’s purpose—the consumption of the product—is paradoxically putting the environment at risk. Our “freedom” to buy all of what we need (and especially, what we don’t need) is essentially spoiling the natural surroundings that we romanticize. And so the viewers are simply left to decide: Does this tommy girl ad truly portray a declaration of independence, or of dependence?
REFERENCES
Frank, T. (1997). Liberation marketing and the culture trust. In E. Barnouw et al. (Ed.), Conglomerates and the media (pp. 173–190). New York: The New Press.
Jhally, S. (Ed.). (1998). Advertising and the end of the world [Videotape]. Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation.
Kilbourne, J. (2003). The more you subtract, the more you add: Cutting girls down to size. In G. Dines & J. Humez (Eds.), Gender, race and class in media (pp. 258–267). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
GUIDELINES FOR ANALYSIS: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES
Avoid deciding what your subject means before you analyze it, and remember that analysis often operates in areas where there is no one right answer.
As a general rule, analysis favors live questions—where something remains to be resolved—over inert answers, places where things are nailed down and don’t leave much space for further thinking.
As you analyze a subject, ask not just “What are its defining parts?” but also “How do these parts help me to understand the meaning of the subject as a whole?”
Look for patterns of repetition and organizing contrasts in the data, as well as anomalies, and ask yourself questions about what these mean.
Make the implicit explicit: convert the suggested meanings of particular details into overt statements.
When you describe and summarize, attend carefully to the language you choose, since the words themselves will usually contain the germs of ideas.
The analytical process is one of trial and error. Learning to write well is largely a matter of learning how to frame questions. Whatever questions you ask, the answers will often produce more questions.
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Assignments
1. Expand a Try This into a Longer Essay. Two of the Try This exercises in this chapter are suitable for more extended pieces of writing: Try This 3.2: Making Inferences and Try This 3.4: Apply the Five Analytical Moves to a Speech. Develop either into a piece of several pages in length.
2. Analyze a Portrait or Other Visual Image. Locate any portrait, preferably a good reproduction from an art book or magazine, one that shows detail clearly. Then do a version of what we’ve done with Whistler’s Mother.
Your goal is to produce an analysis of the portrait with the steps we included in analyzing Whistler’s Mother. First, summarize the portrait, describing accurately its significant details.