Thursday 11 April 2013


1) Advertising Appeal:
The most basic of human needs is the need for food, clothing and shelter. Special need for these necessities cannot be created with advertising. However there are certain other products that provide comfort in life and advertising aims to generate demand for these products. Advertising uses appeals as a way of persuading people to buy certain products. Advertising appeals are designed in a way so as to create a positive image of the individuals who use certain products. Advertising agencies and companies use different types of advertising appeals to influences the purchasing decisions of people.
The most important types of advertising appeals include emotional and rational appeals. Emotional appeals are often effective for the youth while rational appeals works well for products directed towards the older generation. Here are just some of the various different kinds of advertising appeals seen in the media today.
2) Fear Appeal
Fear is also an important factor that can have incredible influence on individuals. Fear is often used to good effect in advertising and marketing camaigns of beauty and health products including insurance. Advertising experts indicate that using moderate levels of fear in advertising can prove to be effective.
3) Rational Appeal
Rational appeals as the name suggests aims to focus on the individual's functional, utilitarian or practical needs for particular products and services. Such appeals emphasize the characteristic and features of the product and the service and how it would be beneficial to own or use the particular brand. Print media is particular well suited for rational appeals and is often used with good success. It is also suited for business advertisers and for products that are complex and that need high degree of attention and involvement.
4) Romance Appeal
These advertisement display the attraction between the sexes. The appeal is used is to signify that buying certain product will have a positive impact on the opposite sex and improve your romance or love life. Fragrances, automobiles and other products use these type of advertising appeals. Romance Appeal: A man is shown using a particular cologne after which women are attracted to him. A girl is shown using a particular skin cream and then boys are shown flocking to her. This is romance appeal. It uses the opposite sex. This advertising works especially well with teenagers as they easily believe that using something will be attracted to them.
5) Emotional Appeal
An emotional appeal is related to an individual's psychological and social needs for purchasing certain products and services. Emotions affects all type of purchase decisions. Types of emotional appeals are as follows:
Positive Emotional Appeal- Positive emotions like- humour, love, care, pride, or joy are shown in advertisements to appeal audience to buy that product. For example- Jonson and Jonson baby products.
Negative Emotional Appeal- This includes fear, guilt, and shame to get people to do things they should or stop.
Fear- Fear is an emotional response to a threat that expresses some sort of danger. Ads sometimes use fear appeals to evoke this emotional response and arouse consumers to take steps to remove the threat. For example- Life Insurance
Anxiety- Most people try to avoid feeling anxious. To relieve anxiety, consumers might buy mouthwash, deodorant, a safer car, get retirement pension plan.
Humour- humour causes consumer to watch advertisement, laugh on it, and most important is to remember advertisement and also the product connected with humour. For example- Happydent, and Mentos.


                  Race Discrimination in 'Things Fall Apart'
*Race discrimination means treating someone unfavourably.
*Racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the brief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called race and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior.
*Racism and racial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial.
*Associated with race: based prejudice, violence, dislike, discrimination, or oppression.
*According to Achebe's greatest example of this binary logic is " He saw things as black and white. And black was evil. He spoke in his someone about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in saying the prophetess of Baal".
*'Things Fall Apart', Achebe presents a different idea of African. They have families, religion, honours, and titles, music, economy, laws and court system, complicated farming techniques, a tradition of wise sayings and the art of conversation; on top of this, they successfully practice an unautocratic style of communal living that Western societies long for. Achebe presents some of the same images of shadow that a general and natural fear of literal darkness and solitude. By showing Africans as also fearful of darkness. Achebe is not meaning to say that Ekwefi is gullible or easily scared; he means to say that in dark isolation, fear overcomes one's understanding of truth and humanity. What Achebe suggests is recognizing Africans and this goes for all foreigners, including those of other nations, religious, genders, sexual inclinations, histories, economics back grounds, political status, and over all everyone alien to the self as fundamentally human with the multitude of complexities involved in that.
*Achebe's Criticism:
- "Black and White" thought: that it is based on stories read blind and alone " removed several degrees from reality."
*Achebe on the other hand comments:
- " it is better to be together than to be right or may be that unity is what's right."
*Okonkwo is a character with whom the reader is likely to understand the book- he is brutish, rude, scornful, proud and profoundly sexist- but in reading his story, one comes to sympathize with him at least a little, and one knows for granted that he is a person.
*Achebe characterizes Umuofia's women in the joys and tribulations of their motherhood and selects specific moments of their lives to represent some of the most meaningful, cultural and historical aspect of existence in Igbo community.




Monday 8 April 2013


'Mayor of Casterbridge' as a Tragedy



Thomas Hardy incorporates many elements of the classical Aristotlean tragedy in his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886). In an Aristotelian tragedy, the most important element is the experience of catharsis, the arousing of pity and fear in the audience. The effect of catharsis on the audience depends on the unity of the plot and the effective presence of a tragic hero. The plot in an Aristotelian tragedy consists of the reversal, the recognition and the final suffering. In the protagonist’s following a pattern of decline and alienation, Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge is similar to the Greek tragedies, in particular Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. Both literary works use three elements — catharsis, a complicated plot containing a secret, and the presence of a tragic hero — to create the effect of tragedy. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, however, Hardy uses these three characteristics to create a modern Aristotelian tragedy played out in mid-nineteenth century England.
Thomas Hardy incorporates many elements of the classical Aristotlean tragedy in his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886). In an Aristotelian tragedy, the most important element is the experience of catharsis, the arousing of pity and fear in the audience. The effect of catharsis on the audience depends on the unity of the plot and the effective presence of a tragic hero. The plot in an Aristotelian tragedy consists of the reversal, the recognition and the final suffering. In the protagonist's following a pattern of decline and alienation, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge is similar to the Greek tragedies, in particular Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Both literary works use three elements — catharsis, a complicated plot containing a secret, and the presence of a tragic hero — to create the effect of tragedy. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, however, Hardy uses these three characteristics to create a modern Aristotelian tragedy played out in mid-nineteenth century England.
According to Aristotle, a tragedy must contain the presence of a tragic hero: "a leader in his society who mistakenly brings about his own downfall because of some error in a judgement or innate flaw". Both Oedipus of Thebes and Michael Henchard of Casterbridge satisfy many Aristotelian requirements of the tragic hero. Thomas Hardy's novel records Henchard's rise and fall, revealing him at the outset as an ambitious, proud, and impulsive hay-trusser who (between chapters, and outside the narrative, as it were) "rises from shameful obscurity to the mayoralty". Early in the novel, Henchard is at the height of his prosperity and resides at the top of fortune's wheel. He is well liked and highly esteemed by the townspeople of Casterbridge. Consequently, Henchard position in society is high enough for his fall to be considered tragic.
In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy unites Michael Henchard's tragic fall with his excessive pride, his impulsive nature and his ambition to succeed. Throughout the novel, Henchard makes many mistakes: he fails to maintain his wealth, his social position and his relationships with those who care for him. His jealousy of Farfrae causes "him to lose both a faithful employee and a good friend". Henchard's pride cannot accept the fact that Farfrae has become more popular then he among the townspeople of Casterbridge. Furthermore, he feels threatened by Farfrae's sudden success; thus, he dismisses Farfrae. Donald Farfrae's dismissal leads to a drawn-out business competition between the two corn-factors that strips Henchard of his personal possessions, his public favour as mayor, and the two women in his life: Lucetta Templeman and Elizabeth-Jane Newson.
Michael Henchard's excessive pride not only destroys his relationship with Donald Farfrae, but it also causes him to alienate Elizabeth-Jane. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Henchard's "discovery that [Elizabeth-Jane] is not his daughter" wounds his fatherly pride; as a consequence of this knowledge, his treatment of Elizabeth-Jane changes dramatically. He becomes very cold toward her and even avoids addressing her by name. Hardy notes that "Henchard showed a positive distaste for the presence of this girl not his own, whenever he encountered her". Consequently, Elizabeth-Jane eventually moves in with Lucetta and this separation further weakens Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane's already strained relationship. Henchard's relationship with Lucetta suffers as well. He is too proud to visit Lucetta when his stepdaughter is present, in addition, his pride prevents him from accepting Lucetta's invitation for a private meeting. His recurring absent disheartens Lucetta, who "no longer  Henchard all that warm allegiance which had characterized her in their first acquaintance". Subsequently, she marries Donald Farfrae instead, rationalizing that Henchard's conduct at Weydon-Prioirs negates his elibility as a socially accepotable husband.
In an Aristotelian tragedy, the most important element in the audience's response, catharsis, depends upon the emotional effect of the literary work. Despite being classified as a novel, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge evokes both the feeling of pity and fear in response to Michael Henchard's suffering. Henchard is a man "who reacts to circumstances according to his character — a man ready to absorb greater opposition than he receives, and then laying himself open, willing to accept full blame for what unexpectedly happens". For instance, Henchard refuses to defend himself against Elizabeth-Jane's accusation regarding his deception of Newson; he does "not sufficiently value himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal or elaborate argument". Furthermore, Henchard seeks out his own punishment because he is determined to shoulder the burden of his own mistakes. Even in death, he is punishing himself for his past misdeeds. An example is the closing lines of Henchard's will where he asks ?that no man remember" him. In The Mayor of Casterbridge the more Henchard condemns and punishes himself for his past transgressions, the more sympathy and pity the reader feels for him.
In addition to evoking readers' sympathy and pity, Thomas Hardy also arouses their sense of fear. The destruction of harmony in the novel following Henchard's tragic fall affects the lives of those around him, such as Farfrae, Lucetta, and Elizabeth-Jane. These individuals are witnesses to the repercussions of Henchard's actions and are also subject to suffer from his transgressions. For instance, the reader fears for Farfrae's life immediately following "the battle of physical strength" between himself and Henchard. Hardy uses the reader's uncertainty regarding Farfrae's fate to instill the emotion of fear. Like the bull, Henchard?s nature is self-destructive. His death at the end of the novel is tragic, yet it also alleviates the reader's anxiety. Subsequently, Hardy succeeds in creating a cathartic experience.



       Compare 'Da Vinci Code' with movie and novel




New writers have approached writing screenplays as they would writing novels but this adaptation highlights the differences. The First the Aristotelian dramatic principles have been brought into effect. By using few locations, removing minor characters, deleting repetitive plotting, and using time effectively, Goldsman makes Dan Brown’s story easier to digest. What Goldsman can’t change too much are the ingredients of the novel’s plot but he can try and make them more pleasant.

For example, a bad guy is captured and transported hundreds of miles for no reason whatsoever in the book - except to help the plot later. In the movie Goldsman gives a reason, ‘we might need him’. For what reason on could he possibly be needed for? There's no need for that but at least Goldsman tried.

The movie adaptation of the text is as similar as the text itself. The movie and book both start out exactly the same: Sohpie Neveu’s grandfather is murdered in The Louvre by the albino. Robert Langdon is abroad and is contacted by Interpol to look at the body. Sophie gives Robert her cell phone to listen to her voicemail message telling him to meet her in the bathroom. Sophie tells Robert about the tracker in his jacket pocket, and she attaches it to the soap and throws it out the window. The two sneak back into the museum to look at the body. They find the clues in black light writing, then the fleur-de-lis key. They are then chased out of the museum by security, and must run for safety. Simultaneously, the albino monk has killed the final living members of the primary guardians of the grail.

The safety deposit box scene at the bank was extremely similar as well. The scene at Lee’s house is almost verbatim from the book, which I thought was great.

I’m getting a little confused with the cryptex. I believe in the book there were two, one embedded within the other; and in the movie there was only one. (book and movie were starting to merge!) But both words to open the final clue were Apple.

The major difference between the book and the movie was Sophie. In the book, the story revolves around Sophie, her family, and her past. In the movie, the story is about how Robert helps solve the crime. I wish that the movie would have made Sophie more of the lead character she was in the book. But I understand how Hollywood works, and how Tom Hanks had to be the movie lead. However, I don’t think it would have made much of a difference if Sophie has the larger role she did in the book.

Another difference was the man at the church at the end of the movie. We are led to believe that he is just someone that works at the church, however in the book he is Sophie’s brother. Sophie was led to believe that her parents and brother were killed in a car crash, but it was a rouse to split up her family to help protect the bloodline.

The book was more detailed, which is always the case when a book is turned into a movie. Some of the background in the book was extremely interesting… however some of the content is very ‘textbook like.’ I had a flashback to a college art history class, and felt some of it was unnecessary and too much. But I understand and respect why it was included.

The ending of the book and movie were the same: Robert discovering that Mary’s body is being held in the Louvre. However, I feel the movie has more impact. Listening to the score build, and Robert following the Roseline is much more compelling than simply reading the words on paper.