Social Construction of Reality (SumBlog 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXbuzD5bunE


Dear Volkswagen:






Thank you for your super bowl commercial that has challenged the popular beliefs about race in our country.  Your "C'mon get happy" commercial is representative of all three aspects of the construction of reality: externalization, objectifization, and internalization (not necessarily in that order though).






The video starts out with a "white" man named Dave speaking "rasta," which comes across as very peculiar and comical to viewers.  This plays on the fact that our culture tends to assume that only dark skinned Jamaican people should speak with a rasta accent.  Objectifization is the process of the prescribed meaning of something being taken for granted and becoming a social norm, which is exactly what has happened concerning our understanding of the rasta accent.  We have come to the point as a society where the rasta language as a communication norm is associated with only Jamaica and its inhabitants.  However, this is not a law of human-nature, rather it is the meaning that our culture has prescribed to the rasta accent.






As I have previously stated, we have determined that "rasta" is a language spoken only by native Jamaicans.  This occurrence began with the process of externalization, which is the act of the initial prescription of meaning to something.  This process is exemplified again at the end of your commercial, when it becomes suggestive that your cars make everybody happy.  Essentially, the commercial implies that rasta is spoken by anybody that is happy, rather than simply by Jamaicans.  This is a heroic attempt to attach a new, previously unrecognized meaning to anyone with a rasta accent.






At one point about half way through the commercial you chose to feature one man asking Dave where he is from, to which he answers "Minnesota."  The man that asks him this question is clearly trying to point out that Dave should be talking in a different way than he is.  This exemplifies internalization because the man believes that Dave should be following the communication norms of everyone else in Minnesota, rather than speaking with a rasta accent.  Internalization is defined as what occurs when a prescribed norm is practiced by both individuals and groups in any given culture, influencing their personal beliefs and actions.  Thus, the man's behavior is due to his internalization of the cultural understanding of rasta.






In the end, I find your video to be an excellent visual example of the social construction of reality and it's three different stages.




Thank you again for the application of this difficult topic,
Dillon