blog 7

Throughout the book, Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer really lays out all of the options on the table. In Chapter 6 I feel like he does it the most though by really clarifying his opinion and helping us truly understand why he feels the way he does towards meat. The fact that he put such an emphasis on personal choice really made me appreciate his argument much more then if he didn't add that in. The part that really got to me during chapter 6 was when he was explaining the PETA mans opinion. The way he thought about the whole factory farming situation really stuck with me and made me question eating meat the most out of anything in this book. The fact that if enough people stood up against this industry it wouldn't be here anymore made me think. Overall, I think this was my favorite chapter in the whole book and I think it was very well written. This book has given me much to think about.

Post #1 - Holdgrafer

In the book Thank You For Arguing I have learned quite a few new things. I learned a little about pathos, ethos and logos and how these things are used in our everyday lives from radio announcers to advertisements to the books we read. Ethos is an appeal to reputation or character, such as a doctor recommending Viagra to a no-longer-intimate-due-to-mechanical-problem couple because he is a doctor and has a decent amount of knowledge on said medicine. Pathos is an appeal to emotion, trying to make people feel a certain way or feeling to enhance your point of objective in a persuasive manner. Logos is an appeal to logic made to give an audience knowledge and facts about a point or argument a rhetor is trying to convince. This book has made me more rhetorically conscience about what I see and what I am reading, as well as to which rhetorical traps I fall victim to. This will help and aid me in making decisions as well as standing firm ground on my beliefs as when trying to be swayed by opponents. I think one thing that surprised me from the reading is the ease of rhetorical tools to be used in an argument and how subtle they can be, especially in pathos. I also thought it was interesting to see Aristotle’s statement that pathos is the most important of the three greek devices to master, as you can win almost any argument by snatching up your audience’s feelings and playing them like a puppet.

post #8

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzYKsLch4GM

       

     Before seeing Jean Kilbourne’s film, “Killing us Softly 4,” I had never really thought about advertising being sexist, but now it is easy for me to see how many advertisements are sexist and just how sexist they are. I stumbled upon a semi-recent superbowl Doritos commercial that exploited a woman’s sex appeal. This commercial conveys that the only way that a woman is going to get a guy to notice her during the superbowl is if she covers her naked body in a mass amount of Doritos. Only then will he want her.

       Kilbourne mentions many times throughout her film that woman are used in this way to promote a product. In this way woman are portrayed as objects and in this case desperate. Advertising is constantly exploiting a woman’s sex appeal by showing their breasts, their stomachs, their legs, and any other body part that will gain attention.  This commercial demonstrates this concept by having the woman lay seductively on a bed with Doritos all over her, making it evident that she does not have any clothes on underneath all of the Doritos.

blog 8

The argument that 'Killing us Softly' was portraying is a serious issue in society in my perspective. If women are always only objectified and made to be only sexy or hot that gives people a bad view about woman. It shows that society only sees beauty as skin deep. On all the L'Oreal commercials about anti-aging serums they put young models that don't even look like they have wrinkles. All this fake advertisement on being 'perfect' and 'flawless' is taking over women's self esteem and it is a problem. Society shouldn't be dictating what someone believes is beautiful. I do hope that one day this changes and that advertising can be normal and not overly sexualized. Even the ads for men to me were shocking but the ones for women I feel like were much worse.

Post #8 (week 9)

Jean Kilbourne’s film, “Killing us Softly 4” surprised me. At first I was skeptical of the film because I’ve heard of sexist ads and know what they are about. I always seemed to deny the fact that they actually affect individuals including myself. I think that because these ads are so common and around us every single day, we tend to just forget the deep message being portrayed, and just brush it off like its nothing. When listening to Kilbourne’s speech, I started to realize that because of these ads, our society has unrealistic expectations of ourselves, mostly in women. I tend to compare myself to other women, in ads or not, and this could be the reasoning for it (the unrealistic expectations). By comparing myself to these “fake” ads, it can sometimes affect my self-esteem, especially if I eat something unhealthy. It also surprised me how fake the ads are with all the in-detail touch ups such as lightening skin, slimming individuals, face touch ups, etc.

I chose an ad that I found on the Internet that I feel is extremely relevant to Jean Kilbourne’s argument about sexist advertisement.

http://sexyad.wikispaces.com/1.+Old+and+sexist+ads

This website has a list of old sexist advertisements, and the one that I found the most insulting was an ad for ketchup saying, “You mean a woman can open it…?” suggesting that a woman isn’t strong enough to even open a ketchup bottle. Ads that degrade women and make them seem weak are purely wrong and disgusting, and after watching “Killing us Softly 4,” I have noticed advertisements like this more and more, and hope to see a change soon.

Post #5

Not necessarily in chapter four or five, but in the whole book of Eating Animals I believe that the ‘Slippery Slope’ fallacy is used consistently. The author talks about all of the horrible things that factory farmers/fishermen to do animals in order to get food onto plates and I think that Foer is trying to bring to our attention that if we do not do anything to stand up for animals now, it is just going to get worse. Foer also brings personal experience into the book when he talks about how he went to a stranger’s farm in the middle of the night to see things for himself and then goes on to talk about how his friend C “rescues” the chick that is suffering. When describing how they helped the chick because the chick was in a serious condition that is also using pathos. I think that Foer is very good at making his argument throughout the book by getting whoever reads to gear towards going vegetarian.

Post #6

While reading chapter six of Eating Animals Jonathon Safran Foer makes a good point that killing animals for food is in no way necessary for families to do, however, it is just what people like. A vegetarian diet can but just as enjoyable, but many people refuse to not eat meat. Foer then goes on to say that the people that profit from factory farming would never argue with the fact that it is wrong. My dad always used to tell me that getting meat for dinner was always such a blessing because it was not always available for a mother raising seven children alone. She did not have the money for or time to cook. On the other hand, today when we go to a restaurant or café, we never think about what we are eating or where it came from, which is crazy in my opinion. We are just trusting the management for getting the food in a sanitary way. I personally eat sushi all the time, and after reading this book I always think about how the shrimp in my sushi roll was probably caught in a huge mass along with many other fish, whom many never even had a chance to grow. This chapter had a positive impact on me because it made me realize that us human beings do not NEED dead animals to eat, instead it is desire that does not need to be fulfilled.