According to Sontag, the purpose of cameras are to take photos which "democratize all experiences by translating them into images"(pg.7). So when you look at a photo, you are not just looking at an image, you are looking at an experience. The experience a person sees in a photo is a "narrowly selective transparency"(pg.6). Sontag explains a photo this way because even though a photo shows reality, it is still an interpretation of the world. The photographer puts their own mark on a photo by deciding how they take the photo, in what light they take the photo, the time of the photo, and what exposure they use. All of these aspects affect how the photo will be interpreted by later generations.
Sontag views photographs as an expression of "a feeling both sentimental and implicitly magical," and sees them as "attempts to contact or lay claim to another reality"(pg.16). When an speculator looks at a photo, they get a certain feeling and attitude form the photo. It can make a person fell happy or sad, angry or grateful.
Sontag explains how a photo only "show[s] shock insofar as they show something novel"(pg.19). Her point is that the more times a person is exposed to a certain type of image, the less "surprise" there is in seeing that type of image, and the less real the photo becomes. The main example of this which she bases her book on is on the pain and suffering of others. I agree with her view that the more we are exposed to the horrible truths of the world, the more "normal" they become, making the real reality of the events seem less shocking and more ordinary and immanent. An example of this today would be the war in Iraq. Photos of the war are still seen all over the news, but because it has been going on for so many years and we have been exposed to so many photos, the shameful truth has become less atrocious.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
The Corporation and No Logo Response
Advertisers and marketers today are not just targeting consumers, but the consumers children. As discussed in the film "The Corporation", toy ads are made to sell toys directly to the child. They make the child believe they need the toy because "all the cool kids have one", so that the child will nag their parents until they buy them the toy. But what these children, and even some of their parents, don't realize is that there are children their own age half way across the world in Third World countries making the toy, for two or three cents an hour, under horrible working conditions. This point is also pointed out by Klein in her book "No Logo". Klein talks about the billboards that are placed in poor neighborhoods that give children of the ghetto the idea that if they buy their product they will be buying an escape from there lives. So even before a child can do simple math problems, they are being brainwashed by the adverting industry into thinking they need their product to be happy.
Another idea discussed both in the movie and the book is that advertisements are everywhere. As stated in the movie, it is a fact that every person sees eight to nine undercover advertisements a day. This could include people just walking down the street talking loudly about a certain product. As a passerby, you don't know they are being paid to do this. Klein points out that in the late nineties, advertisements were even added into one of our most private places, the bathroom. So no matter where you go, corporations are always one step ahead of you, trying to sell you there product, and sometimes you may not even realize it.
Both "No Logo" and "The Corporation" also show how far corporations like IBM will go to make a profit. Klein talks about a seventeen-year-old girl she met in Manila who assembles CD-ROM drives for IBM, who is probably only paid a few cents an hour. IBM also made the machines that kept track of concentration camp prisoners, as shown in the movie. And instead of IBM standing up for the young children workers or the concentration camp prisoners, they just collect their profits and keep their mouths shut. It is like the movie points out: a corporation can be given the rights of a moral person, but they have no conscience, no soul to save and no body to incinerate.
Another idea discussed both in the movie and the book is that advertisements are everywhere. As stated in the movie, it is a fact that every person sees eight to nine undercover advertisements a day. This could include people just walking down the street talking loudly about a certain product. As a passerby, you don't know they are being paid to do this. Klein points out that in the late nineties, advertisements were even added into one of our most private places, the bathroom. So no matter where you go, corporations are always one step ahead of you, trying to sell you there product, and sometimes you may not even realize it.
Both "No Logo" and "The Corporation" also show how far corporations like IBM will go to make a profit. Klein talks about a seventeen-year-old girl she met in Manila who assembles CD-ROM drives for IBM, who is probably only paid a few cents an hour. IBM also made the machines that kept track of concentration camp prisoners, as shown in the movie. And instead of IBM standing up for the young children workers or the concentration camp prisoners, they just collect their profits and keep their mouths shut. It is like the movie points out: a corporation can be given the rights of a moral person, but they have no conscience, no soul to save and no body to incinerate.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Response to "No Logo" By Naomi Klein
In the introduction chapter of "No Logo", Naomi Klein states that she wrote this book "on a simple hypothesis: that as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations, particularly those with very high name-brand recognition". So is her hypothesis right? If the general public was better informed by people like "the student activists identifying themselves as "Spiders"" , who "are now free to swing off this web of logos like spy/spiders- trading information about the labor practices, chemical spills, animal cruelty and unethical marketing around the world", would people stop buying "brand name" items and instead buy "bargain/no-name brands"?
I believe that if people were better informed about all the horrible consequences of their "brand name" buying, they might consider changing their ways, and look beyond the "branding" of a product . Instead of buying "Nike sneakers [that] have been traced back to abusive sweatshops of Vietnam", they would buy a private label brand that was made in the U.S., which probably actually costs less, are better quality, and were made under strict laws that protect workers from unsafe and unethical working conditions. This isn't such a far fetched idea as some might think. It has happened before and will happen again.
April 2, 1993, became known in marketing circles as "Marlboro Friday". On that day was when Philip Morris made the announcement that he he "would slash the price of Marlboro cigarettes by 20 percent in an attempt to compete with bargain brands that were eating into the market". This proves that there is an alternative to "brand name" living; it is called the "value generation" where people suffer form "brand blindness". But if everyone stopped buying brand names and went back to "the proverbial shopkeeper dishing out generic goods form the barrel in the prebranded era", what would happen to capitalism? I believe this could lead to the end of capitalism, because as Graham H. Phillips said, "a commodity marketplace in which one competed solely on price, promotion and trade deals, all of which can easily be duplicated by competition, leading to ever-decreasing profits, decay and eventually bankruptcy".
In order for this not to happen, many companies have gone beyond just "branding" a product, and into "lifestyle marketing". They give the consumer an experience through their product. Consumers know that there is no real difference between a Starbucks coffee and the coffee you can make at home. They are not buying the product, they are buying the experience. As CEO of Starbucks Howard Shultz explains, people "aren't just there for the coffee. It's the romance of the coffee experience, the feeling of warmth and community people get in Starbucks stores", that the consumer is looking for.
I believe as long as producers keep "branding" and "lifestyle marketing" their products, consumers will be continually brainwashed into buying brand-name over value-brand products. So for now, it looks like capitalism will survive.
I believe that if people were better informed about all the horrible consequences of their "brand name" buying, they might consider changing their ways, and look beyond the "branding" of a product . Instead of buying "Nike sneakers [that] have been traced back to abusive sweatshops of Vietnam", they would buy a private label brand that was made in the U.S., which probably actually costs less, are better quality, and were made under strict laws that protect workers from unsafe and unethical working conditions. This isn't such a far fetched idea as some might think. It has happened before and will happen again.
April 2, 1993, became known in marketing circles as "Marlboro Friday". On that day was when Philip Morris made the announcement that he he "would slash the price of Marlboro cigarettes by 20 percent in an attempt to compete with bargain brands that were eating into the market". This proves that there is an alternative to "brand name" living; it is called the "value generation" where people suffer form "brand blindness". But if everyone stopped buying brand names and went back to "the proverbial shopkeeper dishing out generic goods form the barrel in the prebranded era", what would happen to capitalism? I believe this could lead to the end of capitalism, because as Graham H. Phillips said, "a commodity marketplace in which one competed solely on price, promotion and trade deals, all of which can easily be duplicated by competition, leading to ever-decreasing profits, decay and eventually bankruptcy".
In order for this not to happen, many companies have gone beyond just "branding" a product, and into "lifestyle marketing". They give the consumer an experience through their product. Consumers know that there is no real difference between a Starbucks coffee and the coffee you can make at home. They are not buying the product, they are buying the experience. As CEO of Starbucks Howard Shultz explains, people "aren't just there for the coffee. It's the romance of the coffee experience, the feeling of warmth and community people get in Starbucks stores", that the consumer is looking for.
I believe as long as producers keep "branding" and "lifestyle marketing" their products, consumers will be continually brainwashed into buying brand-name over value-brand products. So for now, it looks like capitalism will survive.
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