Rhetorically Zune

There are within this Zune commercial some straightforward rhetorical strategies and there are some that I believe are alluded to and with some thought can be seen.

One strategy in this advertisement is Hasty Generalization. A potential customer/commercial viewer could be guilty of making a hasty generalization that the purchase and state of ownership of a Zune would propel them into the hip and trendy status of a strapping young man who appears on the outside to be quite "indie".

Also this commercial to some degree uses a red herring technique. The product itself is not focused on very much except for a small bookend mention at the beginning and end of the commercial. However, the brief mentions that the Zune gets displays its practical and pretty neat video capabilities even though there is not one mention as to the specifications about the product. Rather the bulk of the commercial focuses on a cool artistic sense that one would assume could come with purchasing a Zune although this is merely alluded to and never stated directly.

Again not ever mentioned is an assumed cause and effect. The purchase of a Zune will have the effect of being a young lad who galavants around in strange fashions that are intriguing. In a similar sense there is a narration that is unspoken. There is a story about this guy that is not exactly told but it is shown throughout the commercial.

One of the last strategies that I found that I can actually explain is description. The product is briefly described in that its potential uses are both shown and alluded to during the commercial. The direct descriptions of the Zune are that music can be heard (as throughout the ad) and that videos can be watched. The allusion of description is that images can also be stored on the Zune (the gallery of photos of himself). However, in order to find this out one would have to access the Zune website.

Clean Part Review

"It's just a feeling that we have--the desire to go deeper." - Kate Greenstreet in Salt chapter 13 [did not originate in the pools where it was found]. This reminds me of something that Kate said during her readings. She told of how after one of her readings a girl came up and told her that she really liked her book Case Sensitive and she thanked the girl and politely continued the conversation. The girl elaborated on why she liked the book so much and said it was because the chapter titles were written in brackets. Such a sense of humor made Kate funny in a very human like way. What I mean by that is that she did not conduct herself with too much of a sense of sophistication or an artistic nature and thereby separate herself from the audience.

No, instead she easily talked with friends in the audience walked up to the podium with barefeet and appeared very at ease with herself and the audience. She presented her work with a calm attitude and a soft tone.

However, most of her material went over my head during her reading. I don't believe that I am the perfect candidate to attend poetry readings unless they hand out pamphlets with the material on it that they are planning on reading. Being a very visual rather than auditory person I am more prone to like to read stuff rather than listen to it. However, there are definately positives to attending a poetry reading over reading the author's poetry by itself.

Regarding the quote at the beginning of this post. This was one line of Kate's that stuck out to me. I believe that she said it very nicely when she said that. It is indeed very true and I'll honestly say that I can't encorporate all of the thoughts that I have about what she said in the last bit of this review. Honestly, I could write a whole other blog on this subject and maybe I'll just have to do that at some point. But truly, Kate and all the other artists/poets were spectacular and it is sad that only one other classmate got to enjoy this event.

Zune-ification

Within this commercial for Zune titled, "Academy of Dreams," there are many occurences that one could describe simply as being strange. The ad starts off being completely normal with a guy on a bus listening to his music and from there takes a definite turn for the weirder side of things.

Diving into his nifty handheld, video capable music player one must wonder why he finds himself within a large stone head's ear as music notes flitter about him. Of course there must be some strong allusion to finding yourself and being able to reflect upon your true charactersitics once you own a Zune. However, this commercial really amps these ideas up as it develops. Falling into a gallery of images of himself that come to life and run past him when James Mercer politely wails "a thousand different version of yourself". As these people take seats and pile onto each other forming a giant human pyramid the young man climbs up to the apex while a light glows around him and the music climaxes.

When the instrumentals peak the man takes a leap off of the pyramid of himself and falls onto a dicer that slices himself into an image of an ice cream cone that he for some reason is watching on the same bus that he started upon.

There are many subtle parts of this commercial that have importance to potential customers that are not necessarily consciously thought of the first time when someone watches it. For instance the idea that once your purchase a Zune you will have great introspect and look inside your head and notice that you are surrounded with music. And of course there is the train of thought that you will become an independent person, fully capable of listening to hip music and looking trendy at the same time. Zune customers that embrace this should become fully conscious of their new and improved life with this new purchase.

Zaireeka Reflection

The whole of what was accomplished with this album is really quite unique and fairly impressive. Such noises that are presented very randomly and yet somehow form coherent tracks is astonishing. If each four album discs were listened to separately one might say that not a whole lot was accomplished. However, with multiple tracks played at once, the true identity of the project is revealed and that is when it all comes together and the chaos and randomness becomes a carefully plotted out, structured work. Due to the varying levels of desynchronization, the interpretations garnered while listening would have to be different each time and while to some people that would be very annoying. I believe that it is really cool – and not just cool – this random assortment of sounds that experience a variety of effects just might blow someone’s mind. Instead of getting the same song for track three each time, every listen becomes a new, unique piece of artwork. This album is even more artistic than other albums because it constantly morphs into new, ever-changing pieces with each listen.
This is something quite unique and completely rare within the world of art (as far as music goes). While at times the noises were viewed as disconnected chords that rarely reverberated with much sense or seeming reason to them, the moments of peace and synchronization during the songs was almost euphoric bliss.
Many people would probably not have preferred to have been presented with music in such a manner. It’s true, the album poses many difficulties to those individuals who do not possess the patience of the four cd players to fully enjoy the complexities of the album.
However, these people never were the target audience for The Flaming Lips. But rather the audience is the people who sat on the floor in Old Main and were perfectly content with enjoying the calm as well as the disconcerted moments during the roughly 45 minutes of listening time.