The Hunger Games and Racism

There has been a good deal of discussion of racist reactions by fans of the Hunger Games when they saw the film and for the first time realized that the characters they loved were Black all along. Here is an example: I think this commentary is quite interesting and on point, but I want to [...]

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Commercials Done Right

I am often critical of advertisements on this blog because commercials are so often horrible: they reinforce rigid gender roles; they attempt to instill dissatisfaction in the viewer to urge purchases; they use emotional manipulation to get us to buy products that have little to do with the emotion; and they are increasingly turning up [...]

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Help! The Capitalist Broke Into My House!

I am writing this simply to boost the signal on another post “Microsoft Conducts a Home Invasion” over at The MassOrnament. I agree with them about the absolute outrageousness of this commercial: Note that her computer is only FOUR (4!) years old. Having a four year old computer apparently justifies Microsoft in breaking into your house and harassing you [...]

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Cancer Treatment Centers of America: Hope, But Don’t Hope

I often see these commercials for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, and I find them misleading and unethical. I can’t seem to embed the video, but it can be found at this link. Most of their commercials are all about giving the patient “hope” where there was no hope before. But each commercial also carries [...]

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Manipulating Morals: Drugs and Video Games

On Monday the Guardian ran an article about using drugs to improve moral behaviour. Some drugs affect our emotions, increasing our feelings of trust, social bonding, empathy and lowering our anxiety. Scientists are now discussing the possibility that these drugs might be used to improve our moral behaviour. The assumption seems to be  that we [...]

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Advertisements and Appropriating Mundane Affective Moments

Probably many readers have seen this video of Jessica who is in a good mood and is talking about all the things she likes and how great she is. It is really cute and uplifting. Whoever was filming her captured one of those family moments that make parenthood worth its hardships. This is an emotive [...]

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I Played a Commercial and I Didn’t Like It

Almost nobody likes commercials. Since technologies such as VCRs, DVRs and TiVo are now available, many people prerecord TV shows and skip through the commercials. So marketers and advertisers are trying to come up with commercials that we are willing to watch, or that we cannot get around watching (for example, because they are part [...]

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Game Covers Women Want to See

One of my favorite blogs, The Border House, is renewing a meme about game covers that women want to see. The meme encourages women to write a post about the kinds of game covers that made us want to play a game. The Border House is compiling a list of these blog posts at the [...]

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