Brittany Blanton
I decided that I would address an issue found in Alone Together that went along with our
film study, Catfish. I tried to
choose an issue that would not necessarily jump out right at you, but more one
that was harder to bring in examples of that way I could think more deeply when
writing the analysis. So, I chose the issue of “the perfect companion.” The
source Catfish shows how deeply
society cares about beauty and the idea of this perfect companion. Because of
Angela’s self-esteem issue and the pressure on her to be beautiful, she felt as
if she had to hide her identity and pretend to be her (supposed) attractive,
teenaged daughter. Although age is definitely a factor, I can’t help but to
think to ask the question: if Angela was Nev’s age and didn’t care about
society’s need for beauty, would she still have concealed her appearance with the picture of someone else? As I’m sure you all noticed, Nev fell in love with supposed
Meghan’s picture, but he also fell in love with the personality Angela put with
it. Society’s flaw is that personality is not considered as much in terms of
importance as appearance. This is why we have the issue of the perfect
companion. With all the advertisements on billboards, magazines, television,
and nearly everywhere else, there is no way of avoiding this perfection. This
brings me to a second source I used, the Dove campaigns. The campaigns show the
process that leads to this image of perfection. These campaigns go to show that
just because someone may look like they are perfection when looking at
billboards or magazines or any time of advertisements that are everywhere, they
probably didn’t start out that way. The “Evolution” video shows a simple woman
transforming into a billboard image and not just with makeup, but also feature
changing with technology. The “Beauty Pressure” shows the dieting, plastic
surgeries, and more examples of how people get to society’s ideal image of
perfection. Without this pressure from society, one can’t help but think of
what it would be like if it didn’t exist.
The connection that you made between Alone together and Catfish is one that i used in my paper as well and it is a spot on representation of how people are not happen with who they are.
ReplyDeleteThis was definitely interesting to read. You bring out a unique response to Catfish and the Dove Beauty Campaign and create a very nice comparison. I have never thought of it that way, like when you said "he also fell in love with the personality he put with it," it kind of struck me. Because i knew he fell in love but didn't put it into context the way that you did
ReplyDeleteI like how you incorporating catfish, dove campaign, and alone together in your post and you pose some interesting thoughts. When you mentioned that personality should be most important and that Nev fell in love with Angela's personality it made me think about the whole situation differently. At first one could think that Nev was acting a bit shallow, but really because everything Angela said was a lie, she clearly has a wild imagination. She basically made up an entire story like an author would when they write novels. Authors create characters and can become anyone when they write. This could mean that the personality Angela played while talking to Nev may not even be her personality but just a character she made up. It just goes to show we really have to talk to people in person to get to know the real them.
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