Blog Entry #3: What the Hail?

The add that I had used for my blog was the Bauer Vapor APX2 hockey stick commercial. What happens in this commercial is that it shows a hockey player named Patrick Kane from the Chicago Blackhawks stick-handling with a puck through a plethora of other pucks which are stationary on the ice and there is progressively more and more pucks on the ice for him to stick-handle around.

The company Bauer utilizes a star player from the NHL to lure younger aspiring hockey player in to buy their product. In the textbook it states: "Do you notice that different sec ions of the newspaper seem to be addressing different social subjects? The sport section hails the reader as male, the social pages hail the reader as female…" (186, O'Shaughnessy). In relation to this, I believe that the target audience for this commercial could technically be anybody who plays hockey, regardless of their age, nationality, or gender. I however believe that the advertisement would typically effect younger males more than anyone else. The textbook also says that: "the game Joanna Dark is in '3D first person shooter' format, which means that those who plat the game have to BE Joanna Dark. In other words, male players have to transvest themselves, in a virtual sense, and occupy a female body in order to participate in the game" (184, O'Shaughnessy). I see Patrick Kane in this commercial in a way that the writers of the textbook see Joanna Dark. The consumers of the stick from the commercial wish to be like and ultimately play like Patrick Kane. 

From my personal point of view, I feel as though the advertisement did a very good job in generating a want from the viewer. By using a super star NHL player (Kane) in their commercial it makes the viewer feel like they can become as good as him if they use the same equipment as him. This works on children, however not as much in adolescents and adults because as you get older you understand that the equipment does not make the player but the player makes the equipment.