Blog Post on Chapter 13

Upon reading this article I couldn't help but find myself questioning what my own stereotypes were of different races in advertising. The different examples that Ellen Seiter listed in the article are not necessarily stereotypes that I have even considered when evaluating a form of advertising. For example, she states that "one of the most common stereotypes of white infants and and small children in advertising is the go-getter". She then goes on to say "the go-getter is not a stereotype available for the representation of black children". I do not feel that this is a commonly held belief or level of interpretation that viewers get when they see commercials featuring young white or black children. Then again, maybe it's because I am white that I don't see the subliminal messages misrepresenting African Americans? Regardless of how people perceive advertisements I don't necessarily believe that these representations of race in advertising are as picked apart by the average consumer, as Ellen Seiter does.
Also, I found this article to be very relatable to our conversation about semiotics. More specifically, this article hits on the idea that we can define or understand things as they exist in relation to one another and that they can be explained by their differences. If we did not have a basic foundation for the stereotype of "whiteness", we would not be able to define blackness and if it were not for the positive stereotypes of each races, we would not be able to define what is considered to be a negative stereotype.
This article is also very relatable to Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding article because everybody has a different reading of media texts. While one person may have a dominant reading of an advertisement that has 3 white babies and 1 black baby playing together all smiley and giggly, another person may have more of a negotiated or oppositional reading of the text and perceive the advertisement in a different way, thinking the black baby was left out and in isolation and outnumbered by his or her white playmates.