Point of View

       Douglass and Harnden discuss the importance of the three types of POV's : first, second, and third person and how that relates to literature, and then to film. Overall, generally I feel like all three types of POV's are much easier to convey in literature than in film. As an ex-English major wannabe, I've taken dozens of writing courses to improve on short story and creative writing, as well as poetic skills. If I've taken anything away from any of these courses, is that it is so incredibly important for the author to include details, details and more details. With text, obviously anything above a first or second grade level book wouldn't have pictures, therefore the more there is a need for the author to essentially spell it out to the audience. If one character is jealous of another character, an amateur author (such as me!) would probably write something like, "she was jealous of the way he looked at her friend Maria." According to my peers and professors though, a better way of writing a sentence in which "she" was jealous of "him" in the way that he looked at Maria, would be something like "She couldn't help but feel crushed as she watched him gawk adoringly at Maria." Or something like that. My point is, a lot of that would be so much easier if say, in a movie, the jealous female lead here would be able to convey that in her facial expressions. Which also makes it harder for her as well, as it would be weird to caption somewhere in that scene "she was jealous."

          Anyway, enough of my ranting. Another thing that I noticed as I was reading this was the idea of the second-person perspective, and how Douglass and Harnden propose that this technique is used as means of addressing the audience in "you" form. As in "here is the product that you should buy," or "here is how you do this!" In my Intro to Mass Comm class, we had recently just talked about advertising and how a lot of billboards or commercials will address the public audience as "you," which is a strategy to make anyone that is watching feel like they especially went out of their way to send them that message, when in reality it's just for anyone. Recently (and embarrassingly...), I started, or really I should say attempted, the Insanity program. Shaun T, the director and creator of the program that also leads all the work outs in the weekly videos, addresses the customer as "you." I thought about my own experiences with the way that he addressed "me" as a consumer while I was attempting to follow along his ridiculously intense work outs. Not that I didn't realize he wasn't actually addressing me, I do have to admit as I was working out, I was so consumed in following the steps that it didn't really dawn on me that it was just a strategy so that consumers would feel like he was engaged with them and keeping it personal. Though I now do feel a little cheated, I do feel like it is a smart and strategic move in terms of marketing.