California State University Northridge Signs of Life Readings Discussion

I’m working on a english discussion question and need a sample draft to help me study.

Read each paragraph below. They are taken from this module’s readings in Signs of Life. Read them carefully and then write a paraphrase of each paragraph in the textbox. Make sure you type your response in the textbox. Do not send attachments.

Clearly label your paragraphs A and B. Failure to label A/B will result in lower score.

Make sure your sentences are carefully proofread for logical grammar, spelling, missing words, and correct punctuation. These are counted toward the total score.

A) Mass production means mass marketing, and mass marketing means the creation of mass stereotypes. Like objects on shelves, we too cluster in groups. We find meaning together. As we mature, we move from shelf to shelf, from aisle to aisle, zip code to zip code, from lifestyle to lifestyle, between what the historian Daniel Boorstin calls “consumption communities.” Finally, as full-grown consumers, we stabilize in our buying, and hence meaning-making, patterns. Advertisers soon lose interest in us not just because we stop buying but because we have stopped changing brands (Twitchell 163).

B) Cool has been around for decades. Back in the fifties, there were cool cats and hipsters. In the sixties, hippies and the Beatles were cool. But in those days, cool was only one of many acceptable personal styles. Now it’s revered as a universal quality–something every product tries to be and every kid needs to have. Marketers have defined cool as the key to social success, as what matters for determining who belongs, who’s popular, and who gets accepted by peers. While there is no doubt that the desire for social acceptance is a central theme of growing up, marketers have elevated it to the sine qua non [the essential thing] of children’s psyches. The promotion of cool is a good example of how the practices of marketing to teens, for whom social acceptance is even more important, have filtered down to the children’s sphere. In a recent survey of 4,002 kids in grades 4 through 8, 66 percent reported that cool defines them. Part of why is that cool has become the dominant theme of children’s marketing (Schor 197).