Rhetorical Analysis the Gigantic Society Mirror : Media.
ENL 101 Essay # 2 Assignment Prof. M. Ryckebusch.
Final Draft 03/26/12 Luis Serrano Word Count : 820 The Gigantic Society Mirror : Media. Living in a society with a fierce hunger for capitalism generates an active promotion of companies’ services and products which incites people to spend money on them. Advertisements and publicity have a strong influence on the companies’ marketing process, where creativity and innovation are the keys of attracting new customers, but the intrigue preserves on where should the limits for this advertisements be bounded in order for society not be exposed to things like violence through the media .
In her essay, ” Two Ways A Women Can Get Hurt”, Jean Kilbourne – an award-winning author and educator who is best known for her works about media images effects on young people- emphasizes how violence ( specifically sexualized violence ) in our culture is present through the media, which she recognizes as a powerful mirror in which society is somehow shaped by. Kilbourne’s analysis suggests that erotism in advertising promotes pornography, which main goal , according to her, is to embraces the idea on people minds that women are objects used to fulfill men’s sexual desire ( Kilbourne 459).
The use of the images in the essay serves as evidence to support the author’s message, where she invites the audience to interpret her arguments by applying appeals to reason while they visualize how inhuman and violent some advertisements are. In addition to her thesis, the author emphasizes that some advertisements foster the belief that women reward men with sex when they wear or buy their products ( Kilbourne 459 ). An equally significant aspect mentioned is that these advertisements produce a collateral damage that aims both genders, where individual ideas/actions coming from the images mentioned can be self-harming (Kilborne 467).
As mentioned before, Kilbourne explains in one of her paragraphs that certain advertisements are not only harmful to women, but also to men. She adds that our economy system has developed new markets that had targeted men as sex objects in advertisements.
Evidence for in support of this position, can be found in the image of an almost naked man making a advertisements of Calvin Klein Jeans, which is shown to sustain her idea of how pornography is invading the media and the negative effects it has on humans by promoting violent aspects (Kilborne 467).
Even though she mentions that men don’t feel targeted the same way women do, nor they feel threaten by this advertisements, the objectification of any human being is a dangerous thing and its never good. Furthermore, it can be seen from the above analysis, that if a man grows up seeing advertisements that encourage them to mistreat women, there will be a high possibility that he will perform such acts of sexism and violence. The images that bombard us daily influence us to think and behave in certain ways, profoundly affecting the way we see ourselves and others.
In this manner, men are also victims of the publicity in the media because they might find themselves in legal accusations and problems because of their lack of understanding how a women should be treated. The author earn’s the attention from a different audience, appealing to pathos, since she mentions how men are also targeted from the media.
In order to support her claim and bridge the controversy the author involves some images, through the essay, in order to bring logos to her thesis. However, there is no shortage of disagreement with the judgements of some images as the main encouragers for a man to mistreat a woman.
In the pictures provided – corresponding to men’s cologne advertisements- the author induce that the admonition behind the publicity infers that ignoring and mistreating a women is a way a men can get her attraction. It is quite obvious that these advertisements she shows are targeted for men customers and the main goal of these advertisements sponsoring products like colognes, is basically to show how effective they are among women. Moreover , it is important to mention that we live in a materialistic society where what what we wear or use is a form of expression that is intended to attract our peers, and in this case the opposite sex.
So when men are wearing a fragrance , they expect women would like the smell of it, since the main purpose of it’s use is attracting women . So on most pictures of cologne , you will always expect a man surrounded by women, indicating the effectiveness of the fragrance instead of men’s supremacy over women. In such declarations, the author show weakness on her credibility by applying excess of emotions when she describes this images, it is apparently clear that the authors feelings lead her to a misconception of some pictures which discredits her ethos.
In writing this essay, Kilbourne faced a challenging task: to write an impressive and brief essay about two of the most broad topics in our society which are media and gender stratification. The problem of people being indifferent toward advertisements is a matter of fact that only few have been aware of.
Even if the main purpose of Kilbourne was to target (by different emotional appeals and some biased feminist thoughts) women as her main audience, this essay embraces the idea of how dangerous the media can be in our society and how offensive it can be . not only women, but buy any human being.
