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| Image credit: Buzzemand |
Last semester, my English professor assigned us students to critically analyze a print advertisement. As part of his introduction to the assignment, he explained that he wanted us to learn to hate ads. We spent a few class periods discussing the evils of advertising and how advertisers are maliciously manipulating the consumers' subconscious minds. Now I must confess that at this point in the semester, I wasn't too happy with my professor. He hadn't returned my first paper as timely as I would have liked, and he hadn't given me the grade I felt I deserved. (I should point out that I kinda like him now because I got an A in his class. Cha-CHING!) So the more he talked about how bad advertising is, the more I began to think, "Wow. I actually really like advertisements!"
Unfortunately, my positive view towards advertising led me to make a fatal mistake in my ad analysis paper: in my conclusion, I specifically stated that I enjoyed the advertisement that I analyzed. Gasp. When I got the paper back from my professor, he expressed his own views on the ad and said, "Seen in this light, the ad gets a little less funny . . ." This paper received a worse grade than my first one. I was not very pleased, especially since I felt like his grade was based on the fact that my opinions differed from his.
