Tuesday, February 24, 2015
The Art of Lying
Although we didn't have any reading necessarily assigned for this week, I was still thinking about how writers can completely manipulate the reader. Furthermore, I was thinking about how this could relate to humans and our current society. For example, the use of advertisements by big companies and corporation. Similar to what we have learned so far, the writer has all power in how and what the reader will think. In our country of capitalism, these big and major companies also have the power to hire the "best" and most persuasive writers. In doing so, these advertisement producers probably lie and manipulate the mind of the consumers. For example, the many many soda and beer advertisements we see on the daily. These companies associate there product to people enjoying and having fun. By doing so, consumers will think about that product overtime they are having fun or in a similar scenario as the advertisement. Although they don't explicitly lie to the consumers face, it is very reasonable to presume that these advertisement producers lie by making it seem as though their product and having fun are correlated with one another. This really shocked me and opened my eyes to how people manipulate one another in our modern world. The use of telling "lies" in a non direct and deceiving way is probably used in more than just the advertisement world. However, by being able to identify and catch these manipulative acts, I can see through the lies and deceptions that these companies put out. By doing so, I am saving myself from falling for just another trick up these companies' sleeves.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is an interesting take on manipulation of the reader. It's true that in our society we are constantly being manipulated. When I think of societal manipulation I think of magazines. Almost all girls have read some kind of magazine that manipulates them in awful ways. Magazines like Cosmo, Seventeen, and Glamour tell girls how to dress, eat, talk to boys, and act on a day to day basis. They might not say these things out right, but they talk what celebrities do and how fabulous they are. From a very young age these girls are manipulated to think that being a certain way is right and a lot of them change themselves to fit this character. And I'm sure this happens to boys too. I have a feeling that attempting to live up to these supermodels is similar to living up to the men in Magnum. I think a majority of people recognize the fact that these magazines are bad, but they'll never stop being made because people still buy them. We've been manipulated to the point where we can't look back. We have gotten to the point where we will always want to be these perfect magazine people, so we continue to propagate the negative manipulation.
ReplyDeleteI think you touched on an important point of this class. One of the reasons for reading this specific literature is to hone our skills in sorting through lies. While some lies clearly have their place, as we have seen, other lies have more malevolent interests at heart. Just as lies have manipulated us in class and in literature for the purpose of our growth, lies in the real world manipulate us for our money. It is important to develop our skills in order to not fall prey to these schemes.
ReplyDelete