Susan Bordo, "Listening to the Khakis"- Malcolm Gladwell

    In Malcolm Gladwell's article, "Listening to the Khakis", he writes about the success of ad campaigns marketed toward males and specific techniques they use to market and sell their product. He frequently refers to the Dockers' ads for pants, and their 1980s television commercials that started the boom of khaki pants. The camera never showed the actors' faces, but instead only stayed focused on the seats of the mens' pants, the pleats of the khakis, or on their hands going in and out of their pockets. The dialogue consisted of fragments of conversations between male friends bonding over a beer or during a football game in the setting of a living room or bar (Gladwell). The mastermind behind this concept realized men don't pay attention to the little details of things such as the different combinations of outfits their Dockers khakis can produce. An experiment proving this was conducted by two psychologists at York University, results showed that women were able to recall 70% more objects than men from the room both had been placed in (testing fashion sense through awareness) (Gladwell). Levi's overall aim was not to have the main focus of their ads be their khaki pants, but to show how well they fit into a scene men would appreciate; one of male camaraderie.
     Almost ten years later Dockers came out with a new slew of ads to counter their competitors'. In these       marketers planned to use a different approach to target the average male. The new "Nice Pants" campaign combined the heart, head, and groin to show "the complete man" and add the element of sex into the commercial. The crucial element in each ad is a man as the central actor who is unaware of his appearance or "Nice Pants", "if a man is self-confident-if he knows he is attractive and is beautifully dressed- then he's not a man anymore. He's a fop." (Gladwell) The consumers made up of men require subtle and distinct characteristics within an ad to feel the need to buy that company's product. "You can't alter men's minds, particularly on subjects like sexuality. It'll never happen." (Gladwell).

Gladwell, Malcolm (1997). "Listening to the Khakis," The New Yorker, July 28, pp. 54-58

David Foster Wallace

When I'm simply just sitting listening to a person talk my mind tends to drift off. It's not always because I find what the person is saying boring or unappealing, just that my thoughts go in a completely different direction. However, reading Wallace's speech I think he would have had my apt attention through out the entire thing. There were so many points he made that I could relate to. Almost like "Oh! Some one else thinks the same thing I always do!" This realization only adds proof to his claim we think in a very self-centered way. Therefore is there anyone in the world that's truly non-selfish and a GOOD person?? Maybe that's why out of all the people that have walked this earth there's not too many that have been named saints. For me, it's enough that I simply strive to be a decent, good person. An "A" for effort.
It especially resonated when he talked about entering the adult world and its routines. Coming to college, I feel like that's what my life has become-one giant routine. I go to class, come home, do homework, eat, study, then wake up the next day and do it all over again. Occasionally I'll have a meeting or event to attend and even earn myself some R&R (which is rare!), but those somehow work themselves into the life i live during the school week.
I thought it was ironic that Wallace mentioned suicide and how people killed the "master" because isn't that how he died?

The "Banking" Concept of Education

   When Freire was speaking about the oppressors using the banking education to oppress and dehumanize I immediately began to think about the Holocaust and Hitler's affect on Nazi Germany. He brainwashed millions of people into thinking that Jews and other minorities deserved the fates they met in the concentration camps located through out Europe. It's amazing and sickening at the same time how through teaching young children and even adults his ideas and values, Hitler almost took over the world.
    To me this is Freire's banking education concept at its peak. People in this kind of education aren't allowed to really "think" or even "be". That's why problem-prose education is literally so liberalizing because it frees people from these molds and lets them think creatively as actual human beings.
   
I think it's pretty cool that Paulo Freire developed this idea and put his own philosophical spin on it. He isn't just "some guy" that lived centuries ago, whose works we still study. He knew the majority of the world that we know today, having died only about 15 years ago.