The Accuracy of Argo

Last week Mr. O'Connor brought up an interesting fact about the movie Lincoln. O'Connor announced that Lincoln knowingly expresses misleading information. In the movie, it supposedly states that Connecticut voted against the 13th Amendment, while in reality Connecticut was in favor for it. Just as Lincoln displayed false information, the movie Argo did as well. 

According to this interview on CNN with Jimmy Carter, Carter states, "that ninety percent of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian, [however] the movie gives almost full credit to the American CIA".

First off, I understand that directors choose to "alter" aspects of history in order to add drama, however, I wonder to what degree is it considered ok for directors to knowingly change facts of history?

To add, I also find it interesting that, as Carter mentioned above, the directors of Argo chose to give credit to the Americans, rather than the rightfully deserved Canadians. Did the directors choose to divert the attention to the American CIA for merely the affect of drama? Or are Americans not inclined to watch a film where they are not shown in the most positive light possible?

This reminds me of another discussion we had in the beginning of the year about how the government chose to only show clips of the Vietnam war that illustrated progress and success, instead of showing that there was very little progress or success actually being made. Just as the U.S. government chose to not tell the whole truth, do you think the film-makers of Argo had the right to stretch the truth in order to appeal to the audience, why? If you were the director of Argo would you have chosen to do the same thing?

The much success of "Downton Abbey"

           Over the weekend I heard about a T.V. show called "Downton Abbey", appparently a very popular show. Anyways, I asked my friends about this show and recieved many positive comments about it. Not only were my friends  hooked onto to this show, but many parents are big fans as well. One of my good friend even mentioned that her dad left a dinner party to come home and watch the finale of "Downton Abbey".  After hearing all of the commotion about this show, I started to wonder why was "Downton Abbey"so well-liked?
          From only watching one episode, I could not tell you a whole lot on what it is about. However, from this article I learned that this show contains "stories [that] are about emotional situations that everyone can understand” and "it deals with timeless themes such as, social rankings, money,  and homosexuals". 
      Many of these "timeless themes" mentioned are big themes practiced in American culture, and as such, I wonder is that why this show has become so accepted, because Americans can just connect with it? Hoever, the show does take place in the 20th century in Britian, so how much can Americans connect with it? 
      In any case, what do you think makes a T.V. show become so popular in America? What must it contain to make it well-liked? Are there any common themes between "Downton Abbey" and other popular shows like "Modern Family" or "Homeland"?

What is the Calvin Kline Commercial Really Saying?

Over the weekend, I went to my cousins house to watch the Superbowl. While I was excited to watch the game, the commercials are something I always look forward to seeing. I find the commercials to be quite amusing, however, in class today we looked at commercials more closely, and not just their entertainment value, specifically the Audi commercial. After this thoughtful discussion, I began to think of other commercials I could further analyze. The one that immediately popped into my head was the Calvin Kline commercial.

In this commercial there is a man, with the "perfect body", modeling Calvin Kline underwear. What struck me most about this commercial was that it was appealing to a woman's audience. During the Superbowl, about every other commercial was directed towards a male audience, such as, the Ram, Bud Light, and M&M commercial. My question, then was, why was Calvin Kline trying to persuade Women, and not men, to purchase Men's underwear?

The only logical explanation that I had was woman are buying the underwear for men.

As such, with this reasoning in mind, I wonder does America view women as the ones who just do the shopping? The ones who take care of all of the domestic needs, like clothing? The ones who's sole function is to take care of their husbands?