Killing us softly. Really softly.

So this was a pretty crazy documentary. I think that this is held as such an eye opening piece because it takes dozens of advertisements that derive their value from the shock value and put into one short segment. All of these ads are peppered throughout magazines but when put into one place like they were in Killing Us Softly 3, each ad compounded on the other and multiplied how disturbing it was.

While it does seem like that a lot of those ads were handpicked and definitely not the norm, there were many that seemed like they could be very common place. The documentary definitely showed extreme cases, but it did show a trend within American advertising.


http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist34/advertisements/43aveda/43aveda.jpg
http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/images/fitch.jpg

These are a couple of advertisements I found quite easily online that definitely enforce what Jean Kilbourne was trying to say in the film. They both feature women either portrayed as
1)not wearing clothing
or
2)being in a vulnerable sexual position

http://www.knowtebook.com/uploaded/2008/09/89320618_1008a70f5d.jpg

While this advertisement may be a little more subtle, it definitely carries sexual connotations. Hopefully I'm not reading too far into this when I point out these things: the women is leaning back, the man is leaning in, and the "face" on the women features a fairly worried look.

I think this advertisement shows that while there are certainly obvious sexualization of women in ads, it's also very easy to be more subtle about it.

The Blog Thief

So here I am. A little more than 1/4 way into my "choice" novel. I chose The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, an historical fiction told through the perspective of Death. It centers around a girl named Liesel who is growing up in Nazi Germany. After losing her brother to disease and her mother to the communist cleansing of the current regime, she must move in with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, a married couple whose children have already moved out. Hans quickly becomes a friend and ally in this new situation and forms a close bond with Liesel while teaching her how to read.

Liesel is at first uncomfortable in this atmosphere. As she is not able to read at first, the school places her in a grade below where she should be. Evetually she causes enough trouble in the younger grade for the teachers to bring her up. Along the way she accumulates a certain troupe of characters who walk the line of friends and rivals. One of the more colorful characters is Rudy Steiner, a mischeivious boy who seems to have a crush on our protagonist. One of the most memorable parts Rudy has had in the story is the time he spread charcoal all over himself in order to look more like Jesse Owens and therefore run faster. This taking place in Nazi Germany, Rudy's father did not take too kindly to this interest.

While the cast of the book certainly makes the book more entertaining and engaging, the thing that draws me as a reader into it is the voice. Markus Zusak uses the story telling style of Death to the stories advantage. Verbs are used in most visual and graphic ways. Right from the beginning, color is mentioned as being extremely important to Death as it keeps her sane throughout the aeons of her morbid work. While color is certainly highlighted in the most important descriptions, it seems that Death perceives this world in avery different way that we do and will often use descriptions of sight, smell, sound, and taste interchangeably. She speaks of footprints having a smell, and I'm not quite sure whether she does this on purpose or if that's simply how she knows the world.