Blog Post 8: Frozen Barriers Broken:

           

            Over the weekend, I was conned into watching a movie by my fiancé that I thought I would never watch in a million years. Being the Disney freak that she is she wanted to watch frozen with me. When I sat down to watch it I couldn’t help but think that feeling of “Awwww here we go again.” The feeling that I have gotten from watching any Disney princess movie. The feeling that of course the girl is going to find the prince and live happily ever after. But with this movie, I was in for a rude awakening.

            The movie is about a young princess Elsa, who takes the seat of her parents’ throne following a tragic event with their parents. When this happens, she is forced to come out of hiding and ends up showing a secret that she never wanted to have known about her.

            This movie was revolutionizing in the ideas that were conveyed. First of all whenever I watch a movie like this it always has the same premise. That being the girl finds prince charming and the whole happily ever after takes place. Well the first part dose in fact take place but… The latter never occurs. It comes to be found out that the prince is all smoke and mirrors. He is deceiving, a liar, and many other things. In my opinion this teaches girls a valuable lesson. That lesson is that this idea of running off with the “perfect one” may not be all it is cracked up to be. There may be a case where instead of the frog turning into a prince, it is the other way around. This is a good thing because it dose not say that there is no perfect one, but what it does say is that girls should wait and see if the guy is all that they are cracked up to be. 

            The second thing is that true love is not just what the prince expresses to the girl in order to save her. True love can come from a number of different places. This one in particular is the love of a sibling. At the end of the movie as a result of the cold feelings that she has the princess acts out in rage and strikes her sister. When this happens, her sister’s heart is turned cold and it ends up resulting her sister being frozen solid. The only way out of this is that there must be an act of true love that can break the curse. Someone very unexpected breaks the curse. That person being the very one that placed the curse on her. This was interesting because unlike other Disney movies, this one dose not have a prince saving the day, but instead the sister. This in my opinion shows that it is not always the love of the prince that saves the day but the love someone that can be someone you are with everyday and would do anything for you.

            Lastly, the one thing that this movie did that no other Disney movie has ever done before. That is the fact that there was a hint of a same-sex relationship. Following the movie’s release, there was criticism that this was an issue that was a little too complex for kids to understand. But the way I see it, it would be better for kids to learn about it in an environment that is controlled rather than see it in the way that the biased news channels can show it to be. It goes on to show that times are changing and that from early on kids should be tolerant to the ideas of any relationship.

            I think that this movie has broken many barriers and because of this there is evidence based in this movie that supports the idea that there is a change in the style of Disney movies that are going to be produced. So I have to say that overall this movie really opened my eyes to these situations and after looking into it farther has led me to understand these ideas better.          

Blog Post 7: Animation Marketing; is it always a good thing?? Midterm Submission:

When I thought about the post that I wanted to submit for my midterm I couldn't think of one that that was more interesting than the one I wrote the other week on Animation Marketing. This is the origional post below.

In class last week, we looked at a cartoon character known as Buster Brown. What was interesting about this was that it was the first instance in which an animation was used in the marketing of a product. This was a revolutionary way to be able to get consumers to buy a product. This has since been used to promote what seems as an infinite amount of products. Everything from cereal all the way to types of clothing are being advertised nowadays by animated characters, there are even some characters that are thought up just to market that one product. This is all fine and dandy, but there is one thing that happened with marketing and animated characters that was a setback.

This instance that I am referring to is the character that was created to advertise Camel cigarettes known as Joe Camel. Throughout the 1990s when I was a kid I could remember seeing this character always looking as cool as possible with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth. Now I am not against smoking, I know plenty of people that do, but these comics did look like they had a likeness that could appeal to children. These ads were in any magazine that an adult would usually read and some of them do in fact look amusing, but when you are dealing with kids who try and hang on to everything that they read or see on television it becomes a problem. The problem that usually generates out of these ads is that the kid wants to look as “cool” as the character on the ad. Due to this they are convinced that in order to be “cool” they need to smoke. The point that I am trying to make out of all this is that things like this should not fall into the hands of kids it is just another thing for them to try and hold on to. This is why advertisers need to be a little more careful as to what they use in order to advertise to people. So, this poses the question is animation marketing always a good thing? 

Following this post there were a few comments that were posted to this that I would like to take time to acknowledge. 
The First is the comment on The Flintstones advertising for Winston Cigarette company https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdHSIquSHMw. I do agree that animation does appeal to all, but this particular commercial was in a time where many things were not known about smoking. But as time went on, more research was done and now we are trying to make sure that our kids don't pick up the habit. It is very interesting as to how these commercials make you think. On one hand you see your favorite cartoon character getting ready to light up, but nowadays it is something that almost seems to be taboo for television. It really is amazing as to how times have changed. 
As for the second comment, I could not agree more with the fact that there are some cartoon shows that are all about pushing product. that video game cartoon is a very good example. The show is titled "Captain N: The Game Master." I did not even have to get through the opening segment when I saw little hints of marketing. Part of the title was written in the very same characters that Nintendo uses to brand themselves. So I can see where there is a way that advertising through animation can appeal to all, but both of these cases are not the best for children. For the cigarette ads, there has been enough research conducted to show that yes they can kill you, and now we see all of these ads for smoking and what it takes away from you. Obviously this is so kids do not even want to start. As for the video game show, this is a problem that has been taking toll on kids since I was growing up. Yes video games are ok but, there needs to be moderation and time taken for physical activity. This is why there has been an ongoing spread of the idea of the World Wide Day Of Play idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImEuVrgK8Qg. This was started up by Nickelodeon and has some animation mixed in with live action to show just how much fun it can be to get out of the house. So have there been instances to say that animated advertising is not too god of an idea, which is what I agreed to before. But now I am having second guesses I believe that there is a massive sweep in animated advertising that is leading to healthier lifestyles based on what is being shown. With that being said, I believe that there was a lot of bad in animated advertising but now there is a new wave of advertising coming in trying to repair that of what most of us saw when we were all kids.

  

Blog Post 6: Animation Marketing; is it always a good thing??

In class last week, we looked at a cartoon character known as Buster Brown. What was interesting about this was that it was the first instance in which an animation was used in the marketing of a product. This was a revolutionary way to be able to get consumers to buy a product. This has since been used to promote what seems as an infinite amount of products. Everything from cereal all the way to types of clothing are being advertised nowadays by animated characters, there are even some characters that are thought up just to market that one product. This is all fine and dandy, but there is one thing that happened with marketing and animated characters that was a setback.

This instance that I am referring to is the character that was created to advertise Camel cigarettes known as Joe Camel. Throughout the 1990s when I was a kid I could remember seeing this character always looking as cool as possible with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth. Now I am not against smoking I know plenty of people that do, but these comics did look like they had a likeness that could appeal to children. These ads were in any magazine that an adult would usually read and some of them do in fact look amusing, but when you are dealing with kids who try and hang on to everything that they read or see on television it becomes a problem. The problem that usually generates out of these ads is that the kid wants to look as “cool” as the character on the ad. Due to this they are convinced that in order to be “cool” they need to smoke. The point that I am trying to make out of all this is that things like this should not fall into the hands of kids it is just another thing for them to try and hold on to. This is why advertisers need to be a little more careful as to what they use in order to advertise to people. So, this poses the question is animation marketing always a good thing?