And the greatest of these is love... I mean pride...


Lexus ad for the GS 

When I  first thought of advertisements that were based around a deadly sin, I immediately thought about lust because the media often uses sexuality to draw our eyes and uses fallacies to gain attention, making us think, "If I buy that product I could look like that hot model."

In the ad above, created by Lexus and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit in 2013, the Lexus GS model is not the only product being advertised. It is also advertising the woman and the Tori 500. It shows a hot woman in a bikini standing beside a new sports car on a race track. The primary audience is upper class men around ages 25 to 50 because they would have to have the money to purchase a luxury car as well as the sexual attraction to the model being displayed. The audience is also shown in the ad by the phrase, "Gentlemen start your i Phones," in which Lexus and Sports Illustrated is directly targeting men. To fully understand this ad, the audience must also have an understanding of luxury vehicles and the technology of smart phones, since there is reference to related apps.

This ad focuses around two deadly sins- lust and greed. The greed comes from the luxury car that is being advertised, showing that if you have a lot of money , you can buy a fancy and expensive car like this. However, the lust portion comes from multiple different aspects in the ad. The first being the obvious, there is a woman who is modeling beside the car in a bikini. If the ad is further read into, there is mention of the Tori 500, which is a race track that was shaped around the model's body. In a competition, two men raced around the track, and the winner would get to a victory lap with the model. This ad is going along with a common stereotype of women, portraying her as an object since she was a track for which her curves were important and a prize to the men who raced. Also, since Lexus was working as partners with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, they reference an ad in which people can upload images of supermodels into their own pictures. Again, all centering around women's sexuality; therefore, focusing on lust.

Some interesting techniques in this advertisement also include the layout and use of color. For the layout, the woman in the center of the ad. This is interesting because although the product is the car, the selling technique is the sexy woman who is supposed too capture your attention. Also, color is used to draw your attention to the model's body. The majority of the colors used are blues and grays, which provide a sharp contrast to the model's pale skin, again, bringing your focus to her. Also, her swimsuit is the same metallic gray color as the car, which draws a comparison between the sexy model and the sexy car, making you think the car is beautiful as well.

Also, the language in the ad is used to sway the audience into buying the car. The words, "there's no going back" imply that this is a new creation that is better than anything that the consumers have ever seen before. Also, at the bottom of the add, it says, "the pursuit of perfection" which implies that the car and the woman in the ad are perfect and if you buy into this product you are also buying into the idea and can be perfect too.

Can't bury these tales: Canterbury Tales and Jane Eyre

Question 6

     A school designed to raise up young girls with strong values of morality and modesty should not be governed by ways of hypocrisy. However, this is Lowood.

     Lowood was established to raise up poor, orphaned girls based on evangelical ideas which have been distorted to the point of being absurd! When Mr. Brocklehurst, the man in charge, visits the school he immediately begins revealing his unpleasant character (as a nice way to put it). 

     Mr. Brocklehurst states, "my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying" (Bronte).  While these intentions seem innocent enough he goes about them in a horrible manor. In focusing on plain perfection, he criticizes a young girl for having curly hair, saying she is sinning by conforming to society, "Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly" (Bronte). However, this girl's hair is naturally curly. Proving his ridiculousness, he goes on to explain how it is still unacceptable because she should not conform to nature either. This proves to be ironic though because if she were to alter her naturally curly hair, she would be conforming to his ideas, making his a hypocrite. 

     

     This idea of hypocrisy is also seen when Mr. Brocklehurst's family enters the room. They are ordained in expensive clothing, displaying the most modern fashions and are looked up to by the teachers of Lowood. They are obviously wealthy compared to the girls of Lowood, whose clothes are rationed out each week. If any of the girls there were to dress like that they would be punished for such a sin. 

     The double standards that are set reveal the gap between the lower and higher classes of the time. For these poor, lower class girls, they are expected to be plain and modest to be referred to as a respectable Christian women; however, the women of the upper class are considered to be worthy of more respect for actions that the lower classes are condemned for. As for the society they are a part of, this reveals how ideas of good morals are taught but not commonly practiced. 

     The society is heavily shaped around Christian beliefs, Mr. Brocklehurst even claims that he is serving God, " I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world" (Bronte). He uses religious justifications in order to force his ideas of perfectionism onto the girls of Lowood. In the case of Jane Eyre, lying is a sin; however, I do not believe that young girls need to be punished by isolation and physical pain in order to learn a lesson. Brocklehurst tells the teachers that Jane is a heathen and that she should not be interacted with; although, if salvation is possible it is their job to force it upon her, "punish her body to save her soul" (Bronte). 

     The example of Jane's treatment at Lowood shows how society believes that cruel punishment is acceptable if it helps to enforce the values of society (usually set by the upper class). She explains how the world she lives in is so concerned with erasing all the little imperfections of people but she counters that idea by exclaiming that imperfections make the individual, "Such is the imperfect nature of man!Such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb" (Bronte). 

P.S. - I found that little excerpt really interesting, some of its ridiculousness, like having curly hair being a sin, reminded me of The Crucible and how insane the Salem witch trials were.