Reading Response #2- "Ideological Criticism"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRsl_-8SOyc



So I saw this commercial many times during the previews when I go to watch a movie. This Sprint commercial starts out when a manager negotiates for his client (a chimpanzee) with producers and writers on the phone about a part in a movie the client is signing onto. The manager, the producer and the writers go back and forth via cell phone negotiating and compromising with each other about the monkey’s price and other details for the movie. At the end of the commercial, it says, “It takes many calls to make a movie and only one to ruin it. Please no calls or texts during the movie.”

I found it interesting that there is a common relationship between the viewer going to the movies and the commercial taking place around a movie and that they are using cell phones to communicate with each other. Another thing was how the commercial is telling everyone at the movies to silence their cell phones while watching the movie because a cell phone going off during the movie is a distraction for others trying to enjoy the movie.

What I believe the cultural narrative the ad is saying especially to everyone watching the movies is to keep their cell phones on silent or turn them off during the movie because cell phones are a distraction. The commercial emphasizes this issue greatly because we are in an era where people are hooked to their cell phones by talking or texting their friends on it. By having certain people either talking or texting during the movie and what they don’t realize is that they have created a distraction for the other people trying to enjoy the movies. This distraction is frustrating because the people were so focus on watching the movie that a cell phone ringing steers away their focus towards the annoying sound and they just want the ringing to stop so they can redirect their focus back to the movie.

You would have to have prior knowledge or experiences with distractions. We have to understand that we have trained our minds to focus with the work at hand that when a distraction comes around; your mind focuses on that distraction instead of what you were doing previously.

The cultural narrative this ad is reinforcing is that we are in an era where many people use their cell phones so often to communicate with other people for example like making a movie, but truly stress to everyone by not letting your cell phone be the distraction during a movie.