Paper for Saturday

Directions: Respond to the assignment below. Be as clear and concise as possible with responses. Offer specific illustrations to support your opinions, observations, and concept applications. The paper is worth a maximum value of 50 points.

As Lessons 3 and 4 indicate, television commercials constitute a major form of popular culture. As advertisements, television commercials work largely on the basis of asking viewers to make connections among various things and then associating these things with the product being sold. To do so, commercials rely on viewers’ assumptions as ideologies upon which to build their messages. For this assignment, choose one of the commercials from the 2017 Super Bowl, which can be found at Super Bowl LI Commercials, and analyze it to describe the major assumptions that it uses to make its connections and convey its messages. The commercial you select must be at least thirty seconds in duration. In 2014, the cost of a thirty second Super Bowl XLVIII commercial averaged about $4 million or $133,333 per second. In 2015, a thirty second Super Bowl XLIX product pitch reached $4.5 million or $150,000 per second! In 2016, a half minute Super Bowl 50 (bypassing the use of the solitary Roman numeral L just for this year) commercial climbed to about $4.8 million (or $160,000 per second) to $5 million (or $166,667 per second). In 2017, the cost for a thirty second slot ran from $5 million (or $166,667 per second) to $5.5 million (or $183,333 per second)—a staggering amount!

1. Provide an opening paragraph that introduces the topic and the commercial. In one sentence at the end of your introduction, provide a thesis statement that gives the reader a specific sense of what overall conclusion(s) your paper will show. In this sentence, summarize the specific assumptions you will suggest the commercial uses and how these provide the basis for the connections upon which the commercial conveys its message(s).
2. In your second paragraph, describe the commercial in your own words. Provide a full description of what the commercial entails, including any significant parts of the commercial you will use in your analysis. Be sure your description names the product the commercial advertises.
3. In the remainder of your paper, use the specific details of the commercial to explain the overall message(s) of the commercial, the connections the commercial uses to convey its message(s), and what these connections assume the viewers believe or value. Try to get at the deep cultural values and beliefs the commercial takes for granted, as these constitute the deep ideological basis for the commercial.
4. In the body paragraphs provide specific examples from the commercial you have chosen and clearly explain how these specific details illustrate your points. In other words, link your specific examples to the opinions expressed in their topic sentences. All examples and all topic sentence opinions should link to the argument that appears in your thesis statement. Make sure you include enough commentary to make your reasoning clear. This assignment asks you to develop your own interpretations from what you see when you look at the commercial. You will be graded on the overall essay format and how well you express and support your ideas. If you use essays from the course texts, be sure to cite them appropriately. See Step 7 of the "General Instructions for Papers" in this lesson for directions on how to cite the essays properly.
5. Create a fitting, descriptive title for your paper. You can summarize the content to follow or you can devise a clever title connected to what the body of your paper discusses.
6. Be sure to have a clear conclusion to your paper that brings together the major points from your paper.