2012 & todays lecture

I went to see the film 2012 the other day with my friend and felt the need to blog about it! I actually thought it was pretty good, other than the horribly soppy moments and the random, unnecessary complications near the end! The story line was seriously dodgy, and I'm not sure it was completely appropriate for the mum to be kissing her ex-husband right after the step dad had been shmooshed (technical term there) by the ship! The effects were fantastic and it was pretty entertaining... and slightly like a bad soap opera...

Anyway, today was the last day for lectures and seminars this semester. I really enjoyed the lecture, a fair bit of it was taken up by a clip from a panorama episode about advertising...

I was extremely irritated by the bratty children in the video. I really just wanted to scream at the label freak to have some individuality, at the skater dude to forget about his clothes and concentrate on the skating and at the home schooled girl (or her parents) to chill out! I really think that parents probably get too hard a time for the actions and attitudes of their children, but in this case the parents are definately to blame. Ultimately it was showing the effects of advertising on children and how good a target that age group is. I liked how it was showing three different types of children and families.

I particularly disliked the label obsessed girl. I think it is utterly wrong for children of 12 to be wearing labels, especially very expensive labels. I definately wasn't wearing anything like that when I was 12. Having said that, I was probably one of the geekiest people in school at that age and was interested mainly in school, my family and hanging out with my friends.

I don't agree with home schooling either, I think socialising, making friends and exploring out of your parents home without your parents is an extremely important part of making a persons identity! I thought it was quite funny how they showed that even this family was effected by advertising when the girl bought a 'Bratz' doll.

I think the skater boy was put in there to show how advertising effects people who claim to not follow the crowd (the sheep comment was quite funny). I liked the point that all of our identitys (in fashion anyway) are pretty much created for us and we have to slot into one. He is the perfect example of this, the typical 'skater' identity of t-shirts and baggy jeans with skate shoes. I went through that phase, thinking I was so individual!

Rant over!

Also, I have never watched the Daily Show, but now I'm going to! The clips from it were hilarious! Who thought of chocolate chip pancake wrapped sausage? That is possibly the most disgusting food I have ever heard of...