Sports Pages #13

When you look at the African American culture in sport it is usually of struggles and making it out of bad situations. The white side of course is based mostly off the idea that the player was really talented and came from a nice place. This makes sport a very essential for a black person to be able to go to college, if there is no sport then college is most likely not an option.

In the movie Coach Carter there is a team of mostly black kids with some white kids all living in the ghettos. The message you get from the movie is that this is the life of the average black kid playing a sport. Coach Carter tries to turn the team around by making them get good grades so that they can have a chance to go to college. This is a nice theme that shows school matters to a student athlete but it is also saying that you cannot go to college unless you have both pieces to the puzzle. Due to the neighborhood and school district there are not many kids who can do really good in school and go to college for it. If you are a great ball player but cannot get the grades then there is another problem. The message is that you cannot just be smart or just be a good athlete in these types of school (predominantly black) you have to have both to go to the college level. In white neighborhoods the college rate may be higher due to the ability for normal students to be able to attend college just by doing well in school. This puts a huge stress on being good in sports for the poorer areas that black people live in. Being good in sports is the only thing that could get you out of these poor areas so that makes it a priority.

An example of a culture flip of this idea is of the movie The Blind Side. The boy got moved to a white school where he began to concentrate on school rather than football. He had the opportunity to be comfortable with his new family and not worry about being the one who brings his family out of poverty. This put less stress on sport and just allowed him to play.

Sports Pages #12 (Formerly SP#14)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaJFnGGECJo

The commercial I have found is of Troy Polamalu endorsing the head and shoulders hair product. Head and Shoulders hair products are usually for women. The product they have introduced in the past few years is called Head and Shoulders for MEN. I believe that this company wanted to expand their sales to cover the male market.

The brand head and shoulders was already well known, and well known to be used by women. The problem now was getting men to use it. So they turned to one of the manlier sports, Football. Not many male players have long hair in sports, so finding a long hair player who is top ranked is a gold mine for Head and Shoulders. They used the masculinity of the sport and the masculinity of Tory being one of the best all time safeties and hardest hitters to show that this product can be used by men.

In the commercial the two obvious things are as I mentioned above, football and Tory. The next part that shows it’s a manly product to use is the fact that it is set in a locker room after a game or practice. The men are all pretty manly and they are not hiding this bottle of Head and Shoulders they are openly handling it. The whole message continues to be that it is okay for men to use this product. I believe their strategy works out well for them and they do display this product as very manly. When they show a close up of the product it is also showed in a manly way. There is a close up of a wall with showers going on behind it then and hand tapped up slams the bottle down taking the center view. They could have had just the close up of the product but to have it slammed down by a taped up hand makes more of the masculine statement.

In all I believe that the Head and Shoulders company is really trying to appeal to the male audience by making their product masculine. They do a good job of accomplishing their goal by using, football, tough men, tough setting, and a key main character.