Globalizations Connection with Cultural Imperialism

            Hello fellow RTF classmates. I hope you all are having an awesome weekend; and may I just add: 51-17 HOOKE ‘EM \m/. That win that we’ve been longing for definitely made the weekend that much sweeter for me. This week’s blog post I will be discussing GLOBALIZATION and how it connects to CULTURAL IMPERIALISM. I hope you all enjoy my blog post and learn something along the way as well.

            What exactly is globalization? According to my “Media Now” textbook, “globalization is reducing differences that existed between nations in time, space, and culture” (Media Now, 503). Globalization of media is accelerated by technological advances, and increases interconnectedness among nations, cultures, and individuals. It brings an increase of opportunities for communication, migration of people across national borders, and exchange of material and symbolic goods. Globalization of communications media has some main issues; among these issues, cultural imperialism is included. Cultural imperialism occurs when one or more countries dominate all others in the media. In cultural imperialism, “cultural flow reflects an imbalance in global power structure. Global media flow has been very unequal in terms of direction and volume” (Straubhaar). In present time, there are only very few U.S. or transnational conglomerates that dominate global media flow. As a whole, the people of the United States have transformed from a nation that saves to one that mainly consumes. Computers are a good example of media that illustrates the ideas of cultural imperialism.

            Although computers have the ability to promote U.S. corporate centralization of global operations, computer networks and data transfers also allow for high-end jobs, for example computer programming, to be transferred to lower waged nations such as India. This has become an offshore outsourcing center for several corporations of all sizes. A situation like this depicts an economic opportunity for a number of Indians, but will result in a loss of jobs for a handful of Americans who had previously held the jobs that did that type of work. High-end computer programming and systems analyst jobs are being increasingly exported to India and other countries as well. This reverses the patter of dominance and determines where it is held. “In fact, an increasingly dense and complex integration of companies’ operations between the U.S., India, and lots of other places via the Internet is now one of the most crucial defining characteristics of globalization for many people” (Media Now, 529). This allows for the U.S. to outsource jobs to low labor cost countries, such as India.

            I hope you all enjoyed my blog post for this week and learned at least a little something about how globalization connects to cultural imperialism. You all will probably think that this is a really random video that I have given to you below, but, despite that, I’m giving it to you anyways! This is a video that I took at a Michael Buble concert in Dallas, TX this year. For those of you who don't know of him, he is the next Frank Sinatra. He is one of my favorite singer/songwriter/performers, so hopefully if none of you knew him before, you know him now and enjoy his music. Seems to always put me in a good mood! I hope you all enjoy and have an awesome Thanksgiving break!!

The Power and Persuasiveness of Victoria's Secret Ads

           What’s up everyone, I hope you are all having a great weekend. This past week was insanely busy for me, so this relaxing, stress-free weekend is exactly what I needed. This week’s blog I will be discussing Victoria’s Secret advertisements, their power, persuasiveness, and the specific appeal of advertising that it uses. I’m sure that most of you, just like me, aren’t the biggest advertisement fans out there. Most people tend to just ignore the ads in television until their show that they’re viewing comes back on. Though, there are a few ads that catch our eyes, and in my opinion, Victoria Secret not only attracts attention from the females who wear their clothing, but also the men who buy their product for their significant other.

            Music is my number one passion in this world. While browsing on an internet free music website, a large advertisement appeared in the background that caught my eye: a Victoria’s Secret advertisement. Also, I have recently been seeing Victoria’s Secret ads on the television as well. What do these ads consist of you ask? They tend to feature young, beautiful, thin, busty, female underwear models. I find these advertisements to be powerful and persuasive, because unlike many other ads that search for one target audience, I believe that with their ads, Victoria’s Secret not only reaches the women who wear their product, but also men who buy their product for their significant others. By reaching more than one target audience, Victoria’s Secret has a very powerful advertisement strategy that could, and more than likely does produce many more sales than your average advertisement. There are several different potential appeals of advertising, but the one that applies to these ads is the sex, affiliation appeal.

            The sex, affiliation appeal is the use of sexual or erotic imagery to present products that a certain company produces, and to attract potential customers to make sales for the company. Sex appeal in ads especially targets a young audience, one whose hormones run much higher than that of others. Most ads that feature sex appeal present women in erotic forms over using men. Sex appeal advertising gives the concept that not only the product itself is being sold to the consumer, but certain values and attitudes are being ‘sold’ as well. These values, for example, can be anything from a woman buying a product that will allow her to be a sexually attractive as the girl in the advertisement that supposedly used the product, or a guy seeing a beer commercial using sex appeal with a woman, making him believe that if he consumes that beer then he will also get the girl.

            The Victoria’s Secret ads and the sex appeal that it uses have proven to be very affective over time. The sexual and erotic way that the Victoria’s Secret advertisements portray their product on beautiful women grabs the attention of both women and men. Seeing the product on these models can have the effect of making women want to purchase the product to obtain the same sexual appeal and appearance as these models. Men can be attracted to these ads because of a similar reason: they want to purchase Victoria’s Secret products for their girlfriend or significant other in hopes that she will take on the appearance of one of the models in the advertisement. Sex appeal in Victoria’s Secret advertisements is very persuasive toward both female and male sexes, and is very powerful.

            Sex appeal is widely used in current time in advertisements from all over the world. Some reach more people than others, but the Victoria’s Secret ads, in my opinion, have overall been affective. They reach not only one target audience, but women and men alike. I hope you all enjoyed my blog post for this week. I have added a link to a Victoria’s Secret advertisement that is displayed on television. I hope you all had a great weekend!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmNEG8IFd_Y