Sociology

The popularizing of brands has scoured almost all corners of the American world. From billboards to newspapers, the average American is thought to have been exposed to hundreds of advertisements everyday. For the virtue of providing exact statistics, the ordinary American is said to be faced with 247 commercials everyday according to recent surveys conducted by the Consumer reports Website. On the other hand, he Business Journal Phoenix Website has reported the existence of 600 advertisements which consumers face everyday. It is for this fact that one can say, somehow, that the act of popularizing a product has a huge impact on the normal American way of life.

There are almost thousands of advertisements flourishing the televisions and the internet today. One of this was made famous during the holiday seasons known as the Apple Holiday commercial featuring two friends who are designing their first Christmas tree. It basically shows the relationship of Mac and PC as they consider each other very good friends. While decorating their holiday tree, Mac says he was just glad that they have something sensible to do out of the boring holidays. In the end, PC was forced to show his creation. He plugged the Christmas lights and bright letterings of PC Rules highlighted the tree. This commercial is evidently a reflection of how Americans do away with boredom through the use of humor and entertainment. According to Robert Scholes, advertisements like this are geared to create the best single virtue of art. He further emphasized that they (commercials in video text) offer us what is perhaps the greatest single virtue of art change from the normal, a defense against the ever-present threat of boredom. Video texts, like all except the most utilitarian forms of textuality, are constructed upon a base of boredom, from which they promise us relief.

It is in this light that this Mac commercial offers its viewers the idea that the best way to highlight the holiday seasons and break away from boredom is to get a personal computer which rules the American world. It is indeed characterizing the American culture of technology.

Visual fascination by cultural reinforcement is the process through which video texts confirm viewers in their ideological positions and reassure them as to their membership in a collective cultural body. This function, which operates in the ethical-political realm, is an extremely important element of video textuality and, indeed, an extremely important dimension of all the mass media. (Scholes, 1989)

Another video text commercial to be analyzed proving Scholes claims is the
David Beckham Sharpie TV commercial. David Beckham is seen signing autographs for different kinds of people in various places including grocery stores and even in ordinary side streets. He makes of his Sharpie pen to indicate his surname Beckham on any kind of flat surfaces which the fans ask him to write on. At the end of every autograph signing, the fans could be seen going away with his Sharpie pen. He was even posed fighting for the pen against a little girl. This shows that even a celebrated TV icon could not let go of his Sharpie pen. In the end, Beckham is seen to have changed his ways by keeping his Sharpie pen at once after every signing. He could give up his clothes in order for him to keep the pen.

This Sharpie video text is very simple to be understood by the ordinary audience. The use of narratives has paved the way for comprehension. Commercials always have the power to induce from the audience their ability to construct the stories based from given scenes.

An audience that can understand this commercial, successfully constructing the umps story from the scenes represented in the text and the comments of the narrative voice, is an audience that understands narrative structure and has a significant amount of cultural knowledge as well, including both data (how baseball leagues are organized, for instance, and how the game is played) and myth (what constitutes success, for example, and what initiation is). (Scholes, 1989)

Indeed, advertisements have this power to influence the preference of the audience because of its inherent characteristics of creating the bridge between the audiences cultural inclination and the product being promoted. Scholes has emphasized that visual texts have the ability to capture the attention of the viewers using narrativity (story construction) and cultural reinforcement. Either way, the audience finds relief looking at the visual aspects like colors (the first featured commercial by Apple made used of interesting cartoon characters) and cultural referencing (David Beckham as an American icon).