Analysis activity: campaign advertisements

In order to practice your analytic skills, and especially your ability to recognize ethos-based arguments, you will perform a close reading of two campaign television ads.

Begin by going to the website The Living Room Candidate (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/), which is an archive of historical television political ads. For this activity, you will analyze two ads. One should be from before 1980; the other from 1980 or later. In your analysis, you should address the following prompts for each ad, using specific examples from the advertisement:

• Who is the ad in support of? Did this person end up winning the election?
• What messages or narratives does this article convey? What "story" does the candidate want to get across?
• How does the ad rely on persuasive strategy of ethos in order to make its message? Support your response with specific terms or ideas from chapters 5-8 of Thank You For Arguing.
• Does the ad make use of pathos or logos? How so?
• Is there anything else interesting or noteworthy about this ad?

Write your responses on a Google document and share the final product with me.

You Know You Want... Critical Analysis

OK-- so you've now watched the video for Robin Thicke's 2013 earworm "Blurred Lines" and recorded some of your initial thoughts on it. Your next step in our critical analysis of this piece of ubiquitous ephemeron (I probably earned at least a couple of you some extra credit with those last two words) is to read two essays about the song and use these to take a stance on the following question:

"Is Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' a harmful bit of misogyny masquerading as a pop song? If so, do we have a duty to avoid/condemn it? If not, how did it come to be so vilified?"

Here's a link to the PG-13 version of the video:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU

Here are the essays:

• "Blurred Lines... Is Kind of Rapey" by Tricia Romano
• "'Blurred Lines' is Cocky, Yes. But Rapey, No." by Jennifer Lai 

Your blog response should directly reference both of the essays, the song and/or video, and your own interpretation.

Hey hey hey.