A Day of Debating and Deception

Yesterday's class was one of the most interesting ones yet. It got good the moment I stepped into class. Not only did I have a sandwich in my hand, but we were about to watch a movie. Can it get any better than that? The movie turned out to be a short video of a GAP commercial but it was still really interesting. The first time Mark showed it to us I didn't think anything of it. I thought he would just point the usual things like the fact that clothing companies use celebrities to promote their products because it sells. Mark's thesis was that the video showed how whites dominate blacks. Mark also explained to us how the left is dominant and the right is submissive. This was displayed in the video when Madonna turned from the left and Missy Elliot turned from the right, showing Madonna is dominant over Missy Elliot. There were many other symbols showing Madonna's dominance. Boards go behind both of them as they are walking. The one that goes behind Madonna is colourful and looks like the front of a door. The one that passes behind Missy is brown, ugly and looks like it could be the back of a door. In a third part of the video Madonna is dancing down the street and there is a stop sign behind her. When you pause the video you can see that she is covering up the "S" in the word "STOP" so it only says "TOP", implying that Madonna is on top and dominant. If Mark hadn't pointed these out to the class I would have never found them on my own. I agree with Mark's thesis though and I don't think it was an accident or a coincidence that all of these signs showed Madonna's dominance, it was done intentionally by the editors. It is like a subliminal message to the viewer and one doesn't realize that unconsciously they are beginning to believe that white people are predominant over people of colour.

We also had a debate of relatively no importance to the class which I felt was a waste of time. I'm not paying thousands of dollars to listen to a girl who won't keep her mouth shut. I wanted to learn more than we did about semiotic analysis because I am still a little bit confused about it. The girl started debating, which was fine because that is encouraged in most classes. Mark told her he didn't want to discuss it anymore but she kept pushing him and pushing him to debate it when he wanted to move on. At first I thought Mark had gone too far when he told her she would have to leave if she kept acting out but now I see this may have been the only way to keep her from continuing and he was totally justified in everything he said to her. All the people around me were discussing the topic amongst ourselves but stopped when we were about to move on. This is what she should have done. It did make for an interesting and somewhat controversial class though which I really liked.