Sunday, November 9, 2014

Dove ~ Onslaught


What is beauty? Everyone has their own opinion on what beauty is and what makes someone beautiful, but unfortunately most people are heavily influence by the twisted portrayal of beauty that the media has etched into our minds. Dove's Onslaught video cleverly and artistically displays the mind altering displays of unrealistic perfection through photo shopping and airbrushing. The first frame of the video shows a young girl starring into the camera; the innocence she represents is extremely symbolic. The camera focuses on her face for several frames until at the camera starts to show a consistent stream of images that portray the distorted image of beauty that the media tries to play off as "natural."  The camera zooms through the pictures so fast that it bombards the viewers mind and they become overwhelmed. This is a strategic filming technique to get the viewers full attention and to draw them into the video. The images and clips that are pieced together to create the video go through different stages that are arranged in a cause and effect like order. The images first start out as just ads displaying overly edited photos of women then switches to some short clips that voice how women should improve themselves in order to become like them women in the photos. Dove is trying to show how this is psychologically damaging to the minds of girls of all ages. This becomes evident when the clips and images of women resorting to plastic surgery and eating disorders in order to try to attain the impossible image the media is playing off as "beauty." 

The final frames of the video shoe the young girl we saw before, the innocence she represented has been stripped away. Her sweet subtle smile is gone and her once make-up free face now has a fresh coat of cosmetics spread upon it. You see her walking across the street following a group of girls her age; she has become yet another "follower," which is what happens when young girls are expose to the suggestive pictures of fake perfection that they are brainwashed into believing is normal and beautiful. The media took away her innocence, what are they taking away from you?

5 comments:

  1. I also wrote about this topic. I agree that the media is definitely taking away the innocence of children today, not just on this level, but they are also exposed to more things that as a kid I was not exposed to. At some point this exposure will have gone to far.

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  2. I agree with what you have written, also with what Drew commented about children being more exposed to media and beauty pressure. How far does it actually have to go before we actually stop the pressure and exposure to unrealistic beauty measures. Not only for children, but also the older ones to such as teenagers.

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  3. I agree with your prompt but in my opinion there is no such thing as beauty or ugly everyone is unique in their own way what brings beauty and ugliness about is what society accepts and believes what people are supposed to look like when really its a huge part of a social norm in psychology, there isn't any written law that says this is beauty and what is socially accepted everyone puts their pants on the same way what matters most is the personality behind all is what separates a beautiful person to the most ugly person living and an "ugly" person to the most beautiful person walking

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  4. I agree that young children are being attacked with subliminal messages of "beauty". Children need to be taught that real beauty is within.

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  5. This video got me thinking about my future, and hopefully someday I will have kids. Its sad to think that as many times as I can tell them that they are beautiful and amazing some add can change how they view themselves.

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