Random assortment of thoughts.....

My usual routine was to finish class on Tuesday, make a few notes on what i was going to write about and then complete my Blog on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday while the thoughts were still fresh in my mind. Unfortunately I was a little sidetracked with parent teacher interviews and the beginning of Spring Break that its now been over a week. When i looked at my notes I had no idea what they meant.....kinda like when i read Beaudrillard!

My first note read --> From dust you were made and to dust you will return...
I know it is a Bibilical reference (in Ecclesiates i think)but i'm not sure exactly why that struck me during our class discussion. oh well...i'll return to it if it comes back to me.

Second note: Tiger Woods vs. Alex Bilodeau
Again, seemed like an abstract reference but I think it was made during our discussion of the news. I remember Denis commenting on the fact that the news in not real...or at least not real news. I think that launched us into another Beaudrillardian discussion on the reality as portrayed in the media, advertising, and television. And finally i'll get to my point. I just finished teaching a unit on Advertising and Media to my grade 9 English students. We spent an entire week discussing advertising, manipulation techniques used in advertising, with a focus on product association and celebrities. We used Tiger Woods, and his recent escapades, as the basis of our discussion of the following quesitons.

1. Why are celebrities used so much in advertising?
2. Are celebrtities role models?
3. Do celebrities, after accepting million dollar cheques, have an obligation to act like roles models (behave)?
4. Should Nike, Gillete, Buick etc keep Tiger Woods on as the face of their ad campaigns?

I got a lot of interesting discussion with one student replying with something along the lines of "being a good golfer has nothing to do with cars, shaving, or running shoes so if companies are going to use famous people to sell their products they should at least use good people."
I steered the discussion to Canadian Olympic athletes and asked the question (knowing who they would choose) which Canadian athlete have you seen on TV that would be a better role model for in an advertising campaign. It only took a few seconds for everyone to shout in unison "Alexander Bilodeau!"

My response to that was as follows
"You guys would be dissapointed to hear that Alex Bilodeau was arrested in Vancouver last night."
They then asked me "do you know what he was arrested for?"
I replied "I think he hit his girlfried."

Needless to say, they were all dejected as they had built him up in their minds as this amazing person. This after seeing a 3 minute special clip of him hanging out with his brother (who suffers from Cerebral palsy) and watching him ski jump for 30 minutes.

Of course at the end of class i levelled with them and told them. I told them that i had lied about Bilodeau....he hadn't been arrested (at least to my knowledge).
It did help me make my point which was....that he could have....they really know absolutely nothing about what he is like on a day to day basis. All of them saw a 3 minute clip and decided he was the world's greatest role model....a few weeks after they should have learned their lesson from Tiger Woods. They all set themselves up to be crushed if he ever slipped up and made a dumb mistake (like most people do).
It seems that the advertisers create a false sense of reality that public accepts...or is their portrayal the reality? Was Tiger Woods incident a necessity for society to re-establish a sense of morality?

I don't remember exactly but i'm pretty sure that was the line of thought i had when i wrote down "Tiger Woods vs. Alex Bilodeau"