One down and six more to go!, my first week in college went very well. I finished my assignments in no time flat and I'm ready for my 2nd week of school. So far it has been a no brainer. It is far easier then I originally thought.
I have uploaded my homework and it can be viewed here.
Essay 1) Marketing Research - The Demonization of Black People in Advertizing
Essay 2) Critical Thinking & Research - Why American's are FAT!
Feel free to comment on my Essays. I very much look forward to any and all feedback.
<======== ESSAY 1 ========>
Jason J. Morgan
Professor Midkiff
Marketing Communications P-Comm 3338 and A-Comm 3338
Short Paper #1
30 June 2008
Demonization of Black People in Advertising:
My first visit to the benetton.com website was uneventful. I browsed their advertising campaign archive and to my surprise, I was very pleased with the level of creativity in their work. For example, one of their ad campaigns called “James and Other Apes” is a series of Ape portraits looking directly into their face. Their name printed directly over their faces. Thereby giving them more dignity as mammals and personifying them to humans. I consider it to be very simple, creative, and uniquely brilliant. This changed very quickly when I found myself starring directly at a picture of two semi-nude children around the age of three to five. It was a headshot, one child is white and the other is black. They are hugging each other and both are facing the camera. The complete image is that of an Angelic white child and that of a devilish black child hugging each other. The white child has blond hair, blue eyes and is smiling happily, most importantly this child’s hair is done similarly to that of an angel. The black child is not smiling, and it too is important to note, his hair is made up to give the appearance of devil horns.
The moral and ethical objection I have about this piece is that it perpetuates the demonization of black people in the world through advertising. Unsure of the target audience they are trying to reach. I can’t imagine, in this day and age an audience this imagery would be suitable for. As the saying goes, “A picture speaks a thousand words,” there-by using already established religious doctrines “the devil is evil” and should be feared. This image tells its audience that black people are the devil and they should be feared. Benetton really missed an opportunity to be unique and creative with this ad campaign.
I am not in favor of demonizing any individual or group. This is a long-standing practice that goes as far back as ancient civilization. For example, the Christians would demonize Pagan gods, by claiming they were not worthy of worship and that they were evil deities and should not be worshiped. According to wikipedia.org, “demonization is the reinterpretation of polytheistic deities as demons by other religions.” It is a technique, I would even call it a technology, used to oppress the people it is aimed at and to persuade others to see the target of this technology as evil, untrustworthy, and/or insignificant.
Here is a company, with the resources to reach a great number of people through out the world and they are choosing to demonize the black child in the image. This practice simply demonstrates their lack of vision. Instead of perpetuating the demonization of black people in the world, here was an opportunity they had to perpetuate trust, unity, and cooperativeness between cultures. By not adding the angelic or devilish hair and leaving those two beautiful children clothed and in their natural state Benetton missed the real opportunity to be creative and most importantly “Unique.” That would have demonstrated true innovation and creative thought. Instead they took the easy way out, by using an ancient idea and continued to perpetuate it.
Benetton is not the only company in the world to use this type of demonizing technology, there are many companies in the United States of America that have practiced this same type of advertising. Disney has a banned carton depicting black people as animals called “Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat.” Vogue Magazine often uses demonizing images on its front cover. Memin Pinguin, a comic book depicting black people as ape like characters.
Therefore, whether it be deities, a group of people, or an individual such as the black child in this particular ad campaign, I find this practice to be horribly unethical, brutally demoralizing, and voraciously indignant. Not only to the targeted group or person, but for the audience it is aimed at. It also demonstrates Benetton’s complete lack of respect toward the public at large but most important the target of this campaign. Furthermore, it demonstrates their complete and utter disregard for the community as a whole and the people that buy their products. Fundamentally, at the core of this issue, the bottom line is, this technology called “demonization” can be used against anyone at anytime and anywhere in the world. The demonization of black men in the world is not just their problem it is every ones problem.
<======== ESSAY 2 ========>
Jason J. Morgan
Professor Johnson
A-NCCI 3330: CRITICAL THINKING AND RESEARCH
Belief Paper
30 June 2008
Why American’s are Fat:
I believe I have discovered the truth as to why American’s are fat. I know, “Fat” is a hard word to use, but I want to make sure I have your attention. This discovery came about through my own experience of gaining weight and becoming what the Center for Disease and Control calls “obese and/or overweight.” I quit smoking in 2003 and immediately started putting on the pounds, 25 to 30 pounds within the first year. Of course this caught my attention. I started asking ex-smokers if this happened to them, most if not all said it would come off within a year or so. This was not true for me. I actually gained another 20 pounds after the first year. It became abundantly clear that I had a serious problem on my hands, and I needed to figure out what was happening. I soon found that I was not alone and many of my fellow American’s were suffering from the same problem.
It all started one day while I was waiting in-line at a service station. I just finished filling up my car with gas and I went inside to pay. On this particular day for unknown reasons the cashier was taking a long time to ring up one of the customers. In turn, I became acutely aware of my surroundings. In the store there were two cashiers and four customers, including myself a total of six people in that store. I was last in line and standing back to leave room for the door entrance. I also noticed of the six people only one was slim, i.e. not overweight or obese, which was one of the cashiers. At this point I am shocked. That is four out of six people were obese or overweight. WOW! needless to say it caught my attention. I immediately looked at what they were buying; all three people in front of me purchased a huge 46 once drink. At first glance what they were drinking did not mean much, but later it became really important.
A few days later I happen to be picking up my wife from an event. The event she was attending was in a large five or six story office building. The event lasted till 5-5:30pm. I arrived early so I parked my car and went inside to wait for her. I was sitting in the waiting area of the building when I noticed a wave of people leaving. At first I was startled. I thought maybe there was a fire drill going on or something like it. I looked at my watch and it was 5pm, quitting time for everyone who worked in the building. Remember, just a few days before I noticed that I wasn’t the only one in America that was overweight or obese. I quickly pulled out my Treo PDA and opened a program called Tally. It is a program for counting i.e. taking tallies. I started counting the number of people leaving. I marked once for people that appeared to be slim, and once for people that appeared to be overweight or obese. Granted I’m just going on looks alone, but I had to see for myself if what I was noticing was in anyway influenced by my own need to feel like I wasn’t alone in this battle of the bulge or if it was a very real thing happening to everyone in America. I counted just over 500 people leaving that day and almost 400 of them were what I marked as obese or overweight.
There I was sitting in the waiting area of this building, and my wife taps me on the shoulder to ask me if I was okay. I asked her to sit down, and I showed her the results of my little quiet study on obesity in America. She first smiled as she does, tilting her head she say’s “I don’t know anyone else in the world that would just start talling people out of the blue” in her sweet and enduring way. Sure it was kind of odd but I had a very serious problem; I was gaining weight and I didn’t know why. Most importantly, I knew for sure, I wasn’t the only person with this problem. I wasn’t alone.
On the drive home I asked myself, if this is happening to roughly 3 out of 5 people then who in the world would know what was happening? The first place that came to mind was the Center for Disease and Control (CDC). I went to their website and sure enough right there on the first page was an bulleted headline “66% of American’s are overweight or obese”. This was great news; my little study an hour earlier was confirmed. I wasn’t crazy or going out of my mind. At the same time this was very sad news to hear. Because what this also meant was that 66% of my fellow citizens were lazy and undisciplined, Right!.
Wrong! Think about what this means, in short, three out of five people are overweight and obese. Something seriously bad is happening. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if 66% of the people in this county are suffering from the same symptoms that it is a result of something outside of their control.
Trained as a Nuclear Engineer in the U.S. Navy, I immediately started to research or what I like to affectionately call “troubleshoot” what was happening. I began looking at the ingredients of the food I was eating, more specifically I was looking at the first 5 ingredients. I was searching for the most commonly used ingredient. It didn’t take me long before I found the number one, most used ingredient to be High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). To learn more about this surprisingly popular ingredient, I immediately started googling. I found a carload of information. Yet, none of it was really providing any answers until I came across an article written in the Seattle Times.
The article was about a study conducted by Dr. George Bray, who served as the founding president of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. Allow me to really hammer in just how qualified this man is to be conducting this kind of research. Dr. Bray is also the former director of the Pennington Center at Louisiana State University now serving as a research professor. The Pennington Center is known as the largest nutritional institute in the world. If you want to know about nutrition and you want to know it from a world leader, then this is the place you go and Dr. Bray is the person you talk to.
To summarize the article and Dr. Bray’s findings, it says High Fructose Corn Syrup cancels the messages that are sent from the stomach to the brain. What this means is that The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a chemical used by the food industry which they put in just about every food product on the market today. And this chemical keeps my brain from knowing that my body is nourished. It cancels, interrupts, and disables my natural ability to eat healthy.
This chemical literally handicaps me. The definition of handicap or disable individual is, “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.” Eating is a major life activity. I would also consider this to be property damage. My body is my property and the food industry along with the FDA worked together, and collaborated in the vandalism and destruction of my body. They are literally causing damage to my body i.e. property damage, and they know they are doing it. If they were to come to my home and spray paint my house it would be a crime. I could have them arrested and put into jail. I digress; this is beyond the scope of this paper but certainly an important point to keep in mind. Nowhere does it give this information on the containers food is stored in. This is important information to know, yet it’s not required by the FDA and it certainly isn’t volunteered by the food industry.
There are hundreds of arguments, or counter points to this, but keep in mind first and foremost,. if you are not informed of the affects of the chemicals put into the “product” you put into your body, I’m not even going to call it food. Then you are not at choice. Your freedom to make an informed decision is hindered. You are at the mercy of the information you are given, or in this case not given. This chemical literally disables you. It keeps your natural ability to eat and nourish your body from working properly; in turn you will consume more of the product.
This brings me back to the 46 once drinks the three people in front of me were purchasing in the service station. After reading the article in The Seattle Times, and haven given the information considerable thought, I conducted one more experiment. I purchased two 42 once sodas. One made with High Fructose Corn Syrup, and one made with real sugar. I drank each soda on different days. The first day I drank the soda with High Fructose Corn Syrup, and the soda with sugar the next. The soda with High Fructose Corn Syrup I drank the whole thing, no problem, there was nothing to it. To my surprise, I could not finish the one with sugar. I wanted to, yet I could only drink about half of it. The reason I was not able to finish it was that my brain by way of the messages from my stomach was receiving information to stop drinking. I was full, my brain new not to drink anymore.
I understand for most people this is a lot of information to consume and make sence of. I also understand that most people really do believe that 66% of my fellow citizens are lazy and undisciplined. That no matter what is said, whether it be solid empirical evidence performed by a world leader in nutrition or one mans quest to understand his own body, there will always be people that will stand solid and un waving in their own beliefs.
I also understand if you are an intelligent, reasonable, compassionate, and understanding person then this essay is a no brainier for you and the information you acquire from it will be useful to you and you will value the work I have done to understand this for myself. This doesn’t just affect me; it is a problem that affects every American. Based on my own experience, coupled with those around me in my community, I have discovered High Fructose Corn Syrup is the reason why American are fat.
