Pantene's Stereotypical Commercial

The Pantene commercial included many racial and gender stereotypes.  When watching the commercial these stereotypes were not very obvious, but after analyzing the commercial one gets angry about the awful stereotypes that it includes.  The most obvious gender stereotype included in it was that girls, especially highschool girls, are catty.  The jealousy that the "rich" pianist had towards the apparently "poor" violinist was very Mean Girls-esqupe and an incredibly common stereotype about young girls. Another theme that the commercial had was the stereotype of a helpless girl crying about not being able to do something.  The deaf violinist is portrayed as a helpless girl with no family that has to be "saved" by a fairytale "Prince Charming" MALE character.  The "Prince Charming" is the street violinist who teaches her how to play the violin.  This scenario is a common one that is heavily shown in Disney movies.  In almost all Disney movies the princess' parents are not alive/around and a male figure saves them from some awful fate.  This stereotype that a girl always needs help from a guy is also apparent when the group of boys break her violin.  This was probably set up by the mean pianist to jeopardize the violinist in the classical music competition.  It is so terribly predictable in films and literature for a girl's older boyfriend or brother to help her by beating up someone else.  This stereotype is also a good marketing tool for Pantene because it states that girls need help from males in life to overcome obstacles, and they need help from Pantene products to overcome bad hair.

The racial stereotypes in this commercial were very offensive towards Asians.  First of all, the commercial was subtitled, but it was actually meant for Americans to see.  Because of this all of the racial stereotypes included in the commercial were meant to be stereotypical.  The first stereotype was that all Asian females are subservient and obedient of men.  This reiterates the "helpless girl" stereotype.  This is a sad and untrue stereotype because that is not at all how most cultures think nowadays.  A second theme is that Asians only play classical music.  The fact that the girls are playing classical instruments and music makes the watcher think that classical music is more popular than any other type of music in Asia which is untrue.  That is a very old stereotype that does not fit with the modern world.  Lastly, Pantene has specifically chosen Asians to be the characters in their commercial because Pantene feels as though all females desire long, straight "Asian hair."  This is an assumption that makes Asians seem like puppets only wanted in this commercial for their hair.  All of these stereotypes were used solely for Pantene to sell their product, which is wrong.

Writing With Crayons

The Emily Dickinson writing assignment that was done in crayon felt different to write than a writing assignment done on the computer on Microsoft word or in a notebook with an erasable pencil.  When I am writing I am often afraid to make mistakes and not be able to erase them.  Because of this I always try to write in pencil, not pen, so writing with a crayon was hard for me.  Obviously you cannot erase crayon, and so when I was writing my response to the poem I really had to think about what i wanted to say to avoid having too many "cross-outs."  Also, I did not feel as though I had to leave out any ideas that I wanted to say, but I really had to plan ahead because of the space constraint.  I did not want to have to leave any of my ideas out because I ran out of space.  Writing with a crayon was much more difficult than I expected!

Some adjectives I used to describe the different pages of my classmates colleagues are peaceful, naive, short, precise, impersonal, professional, creative, intelligent, dull, colorful, neat, and childish.  I used these adjectives to mostly describe the different ways all of the projects looked and the content of the writing.  Some were peaceful, childish, and naive like the one that included pictures of colored animals and said in it that everyone should always tell the truth.  These adjectives seemed to fit because it is an unrealistic statement to make that the human race should always tell the truth.  Human nature is to lie to protect oneself and others.  Also, this person probably drew pictures of animals and nature because nature is always straight forward and tells the truth.  Many of the colleagues were very professional, creative, intelligent, colorful and neat.  These projects were all very neatly written and colorful and the responses to the poem all included quotes from the poem and good insight.  People that did their projects like this might have written their responses out before actually writing them on the paper with crayon to ensure that they would be neat and fit the page.  Some colleagues could be described as being short, but precise.  Some people wrote very short responses, but they were mostly all to the point.  People that did this probably did not enjoy writing with the crayon because it was so hard, and so they tried to write less and make their point quickly.

A culture that only uses crayons as writing implements might seem childish or unintelligent to us.  But, if that is all that the this culture knows then it would be very natural to them to use crayons to write and would not seem childish at all to them.  This culture would probably be much more creative and free than us.  When we are children we often color, doodle, or draw with crayons because we can only color, not write words yet.  One cannot color with lead pencils because they do not have an assortment of colors and holding a thin pencil is hard for little fingers.  Once we learn to write our crayons are taken away from us and are replaced with more professional pencils and pens.  If we lived in a culture where crayons were never taken away from us to learn to write we would all be much more creative.  Because of this the culture would probably be most proud of their creativity among their people.  The more free and creative a person was would probably be considered a sign of intellectual prowess.  I believe that writing with only crayons would make a culture more innovative.  

The writing implement that one uses to write with can greatly affect the content of their writing.  Because it was so physically hard to write with the crayon, it was more tempting to write less and be more precise.  Also, the constraints of the paper and how permanent the crayon was made it vital to really think about what one was going to say before writing it down.  Although, writing with a crayon was much more creative which made me think more creatively.  Because of this I think my response was deeper and insightful.  Writing implements can really change the way one thinks and physically writes.