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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1995-07-05, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1995. PAGE 5. We live in the Irony Age Few people at the beginning of the 19th century needed an advertising man to tell them what they wanted. John Kenneth Galbraith It's true, you know. When future chroniclers come to record the 20th century, chances are we'll be immortalized as the folks who lived through the First Age of Advertising. The Irony Age, if you will. I harbour an ambivalent attitude toward the beast. There are 30 second commercials on TV that can make me laugh out loud. Sometimes the ads I see in magazines are more creative and artistic than the editorial fodder that interrupts them. But there are also commercials that make me want to throw a potted plant through the TV screen. And I've stopped buying magazines that smell like cheap cologne. Advertising it seems, can sell anything. Did you know that the defence attorneys for O.J. Simpson get rafts of floral tributes virtually every day? From anonymous admirers. Who in their right mind would ever want to send flowers to F. Lee Bailey? Oriental inscrutability Did you ever almost learn a language? I'm not sure how you would answer that question, but it could well be with another question. You could ask, for example, what I meant by almost learn and that, I think, would be a fair question. Perhaps it will all become a bit clearer when I tell you of the language I almost learned. I'm not sure how it came about but I once made the statement that I might like to learn Chinese some day. I must have said it with a great deal of forcefulness, but whatever the intensity, the person I said it to turned up a few weeks later with a real Chinese person with the great desire to teach somebody his language. We would, my friend assured both of us, be a perfect combination. Not wanting to lose face, above all to someone to whom the loss of face is a highly undesirable event, I said, why not? and so for the next two years I attempted to get my tongue around the Chinese language. One day my teacher decided that I should make a speech (a short one) to some assembled Chinese. In due course, after much practising, I found myself in front of an assembled group of his countrymen and, somewhat nervously, I proceeded to do my thing. During my speech the Chinese sat there showing the inscrutability for which they are famous. At the end they treated me to a warm round of applause. It was at that point that a very surprising thing happened. My teacher got up and spoke to them in a dialect that I did not understand at all. What had happened is this. Each major city or region in China has its own dialect which is comprehensible only to the people of that area. Thus, while written Chinese may be read and understood by everybody, spoken Chinese is very much And the commodities that advertising sells! I'm looking right now at a newspaper photo of a blonde model in New York wearing a pair of MiracleBoost jeans. MiracleBoost jeans feature a swatch of spandex in the bum area. This, says the ad, "lifts the buttocks to make the wearer look shapelier". The manufacturers are hoping their falsiejeans will enjoy the same sales surge as the cleavage-enhancing Wonderbra brassiere introduced last year. To quote the fuel conservation ads from World War II — is this trip really necessary? And don't try to escape by turning to the Boob Tube. Advertising there is blooming faster than the flesh-eating virus. With 500- station broadcasting on the horizon, advertising is taking over whole channels. Thus, we can look forward to (or askance at) — a TV watching future that will include a Game Show Channel, a Golf Channel, a Therapy Channel and — my favourite — the Military Channel. As of this summer, cable watchers will be able to tune into a channel that offers 24-hour coverage of wars — ongoing wars, past wars, future wars — not to mention war documentaries and of course, John Wayne war movies. Oh yes, and there will also be a home shopping program offering combat and adventure gear for couch potatoes with a mercenary bent. a another matter. The official language is called Mandarin which is spoken in the capital of the country, Beijing. However, almost all the Chinese in Canada come from Hong Kong which speaks the dialect of the city of Canton which is right across the border in China. Cantonese and Mandarin are totally incomprehensible. My teacher was understandably unable to find anybody who spoke Mandafin; rather than disappoint me he rounded up a group of Cantonese speakers and informed them what I was about to do. Thus they sat there politely, not understanding a word I said. Applaud they could and so they did! Unfortunately when it came time for me to go to China, the Communist regime was in the process of excluding all foreigners and for this reason I could not get a visa. Thus my Chinese, still in rather a basic stage, was allowed to wither on the vine. I recalled all this recently when I was making a speech to a group of Chinese businessmen. They all spoke Cantonese and thus there was no point of trying out my rusty Mandarin. Instead my one and a half hour speech was made through an interpreter. I told them the above story and it brought smiles to all their faces. At the end one of them came up and spoke French to me. He had learned it some time ago and wanted to know how good it was. I assured him that he would not have any problem in getting around a French speaking community. The different dialects reflect something of China. It tends to be a country of regions just as Canada is, rather than a centralized one. I pointed this out to them and they were surprised that Canadians had no trouble in understanding each other's speech regardless of where they were from. The speech, by the way, was on our economic system in Canada, its strengths and weaknesses and by the time I was ready to give it I was surprised at the number of parallels. One major difference was in Such a strange world, the world of advertising. Last month, the Philip Morris tobacco company took out full page ads in hundreds of newspapers to announce that it was recalling some eight billion cigarettes. Why? Well, the cigarettes may have had defective filters. Folks at Philip Morris were concerned that the faulty filters might "make their customers wheeze or feel dizzy." A cigarette that's dangerous to the health. Is nothing sacred? Last month was also when Molson Breweries USA announced that it's throwing a party this summer. Big party. They're flying in Metallica and three Alternative Rock Bands, plus a By- Invitation-Only audience of 500. To Tuktoyaktuk. A tiny village 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Why? Well, Molson makes Molson Ice — as anyone who watches any TV at all knows only too well. The PR boys at Molson thought it would be great to stage an ice- beer-sponsored rock concert smack dab in the middle of "the land where ice is born". Shouldn't cost more than a few million bucks. What's neat is that you can't buy a Molson Ice beer in Tuktoyaktuk — not for love or any amount of money. Tuk is dry. The sale of alcoholic beverages is forbidden. I told you we live in the Irony Age. population. China has 1.2 billion; we have 30 million and I emphasized that we were justly proud of what so few people had been able to achieve in a country that was even larger than China. China and Canada have one interesting thing in common. We are both virtually unknown countries. Even the Americans next door don't know much about Canada and the Europeans are in somewhat the same position. People tend to have simplistic concepts of China when in effect it is a very complex country. One thing is certain; they are just as inscrutable as they were when I made my maiden speech 45 years ago. Letter to the editor Continued from page 4 donated by Subway in Listowel. Other charitable donations were made by McDonald's in Listowel, Smith's Valu-Mart in Listowel, Fordwich Meats, Palmerston L & M, Arthur L & M, Listowel Dairy Queen, Listowel Zehrs and Wingham Zehrs. The event helped promote the area's unemployed students in an effort to increase public awareness and encourage the community to hire a student. The proceeds from the barbecue have been donated to Haven Homes for Youth which is funded through the Salvation Army and provides emergency shelter for youth in troubled situations. The Haven Homes program was established in January, 1995 and serves the area covered by Listowel District Secondary School. Both male and female students between the ages of 16 and 21 are assisted by the program by two volunteer homes in the Listowel area. The Canada Employment Centre for Students and Huron Haven Homes would like to thank all those who participated in this event making Hire-a-Student Day a success again this year! Leanne Hoyles Student Employment Officer. The short of it By Bonnie Gropp Wooing sleeping geniuses When I first hear his name, the things that come to mind immediately are the enormous crush I had on him and his sense of humour. No, I'm not talking about an old boyfriend; I'm actually referring to my Grade 5 teacher. Though my previous teachers had been nice and each had taken the task of expanding my knowledge and done usually a better than adequate job, this particular one I remember differently. He was the first who treated my classmates and I as, well, not little kids. Having passed the mid-point in our elementary years, we were ready to spread our wings and while we may have flown a little out of bounds at times, he never clipped them. His discipline was to give respect when and only if we had earned it. His classroom was less structured than the others that had gone before, where good little boys and girls were gently guided through the field of education, rather than being encouraged to take a path unknown. Not committed to the idea that the business of education must always be taken seriously, he would tease. One memorable occasion was when he noted that he was missing some chalk, then as he passed my desk he pretended to find it in my hair. But, he could also be more sombre, treating us as intelligent beings with thoughts of our own. He would talk about issues that interested him and ask for our views. Most importantly, he taught us that learning could be fun. I am currently reading The Water is Wide, a true story about a man who taught at a school on an island just off the coast of South Carolina. It was 1969. His students were black and ignorant. He believed that to open their eyes to the world around them, he needed first to get their attention, which he did using a number of somewhat eccentric methods. While the kids often questioned the sanity of this rather colourful white man, they were ultimately mesmerized into learning. This past week our local Grade 8 students held their graduation ceremonies. It is a time when their thoughts are moving forward, with little given to reflection of the past. It is ,,nly as we gain maturity and the distance ahead of us looks shorter than what's behind us, that introspection becomes such an active pastime. But I am sure in years to come there will be that one teacher for each of them, that one person who, for even one brief year, made them look at learning as a wondrous and exciting challenge. I know that I have used this column before to talk about the inefficient teachers, whom we all must admit unfortunately do exist, but fortunately are few in number. For that reason, however, I wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge the ones who made a difference in my life and the ones whom I have already noticed have done the same for my children. The value that can be brought to us through the talent of a caring, committed educator is tangible. They can, with the subtlety of a Casanova, woo the sleeping genius out of the unconscious mind. They can inspire the artist and create the inspired. Some day the graduates of these 1995 classes will look back and remember their teachers, most fondly, others less so. I hope there are many that they can remember as having made a difference. Arthur Black International Scene