Once Brothers

Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic were teammates and best friends on Yugoslavia's national basketball team and helped to pave the way for European stars to journey to the NBA.  Both were heroes in their native countries and helped each other to deal with the fame they achieved.  However, with Divac experiencing immediate success as the starting center for the Lakers and Petrovic riding the bench his rookie season, the two started to grow apart.  The relationship was then ultimately severed by the political tension back home.  Civil war broke out in Yugoslavia in 1991.  Petrovic was Croatian and Divac was Serbian, leaving the former friends on separate sides of the war and causing contempt to grow between them.  The two grew in skill in popularity in the NBA separately, Divac waiting for the right moment to come for the two to reconcile.  That moment never came.  Petrovic died in a fatal car crash on the way to a national game back in Croatia.  Michael Tolajian directed the documentary Once Brothers, chronicling this moving story.  Vlade Divac himself narrates the film and gives a first hand perspective to the film.  The documentary was distributed by ESPN as part of their 30 for 30 documentary series.

In order to draw the emotional response from the audience that was desired, the film first decides to introduce the main characters of the film to the audience.  The chronological order that the film was presented in was effective because it helped the film make sense logically and allowed the viewer to experience the players’ lives from the beginning.  The setting of the film was mainly in modern day Serbia and Croatia, where Divac recounts the events.  This makes the film much more personal by showing the roots of the characters and also allowing Divac to visit families and people who lived through the Civil War.  Much of the story was told from a coffee shop or homes of the players, establishing a sense of friendliness in the film.  Since the speakers in the film commonly used a foreign language, text was used to translate.  The choice to not dub the voices enabled raw emotion to show in the speakers. The documentary also does a good job of keeping both the basketball context and the political context consistent and paralleled throughout the film.  This is very important because the eventual break up of the friends occurs because of the political division.  This is done subtly and mostly through comments that the cast makes, foreshadowing the events of the film without giving them away.  Background knowledge is provided both about the Yugoslavian team and the state of Yugoslavia after World War II. 

When retelling the story of the careers of Divac and Petrovic, a lot of archival footage is used both of interviews and of games.  Old interviews are the only way to incorporate Petrovic’s input into the film, and the old games give the viewers a sense of how sensational the Yugoslavians actually were.  Later, to tell the story of the Civil War, archival footage was used to show the devastation.  The Yugoslavian Civil War was the worst fighting in Europe since WWII, and the documentary uses images to show the viewers how horrible it actually was.  Injured babies and crying mothers were shown, establishing pathos.  Explosions and aftermath were shown to further the effect.  For a technical understanding, maps were added that explained the war.  With all of this devastation, however, the mood needed to be lightened.  This was done mostly by the characters in the film and their dialogue.  For example, Magic Johnson opened his conversation by stating, “All I want is a Coke and a burger.”  In addition, the change in mood was cued by the music playing in the background.  Ultimately, all of the rhetorical choices were made to focus on the relationship of the players.  Basketball wasn’t the main focus of the text, just the background.  Divac and Tolajian created the documentary to recount the loss of a friendship and the hatred that arose from sectionalism in the divided Yugoslavia of the ‘90’s. 

Once Brothers. Dir. Michael Tolajian. Perf. Vlade Divac. ESPN, 2010. Online Film. 

TOW Reflection

Back in September, when I sat down with the syllabus for my first taste of an AP English course, I was honestly skeptical about how the TOWs would benefit me and help me become a more effective writer.  It seemed back then a trivial task that would make my Sundays longer.  However, I realize now that through the hard work that I put into the TOWs throughout the year, I gained vital knowledge for my success in the course.  I first realized how beneficial the TOWs were when we started writing argument essays in class, and both of my examples for one of the essays came from the assignments from the last two weekends.  I noticed that I wasn’t only going on a website and choosing an article at random to try to find examples of parallelism.  For the first time in my life, I was spending an hour each weekend reading the news and becoming an informed citizen.  When added to the practice that the TOWs gave me in argument and analysis, it is evident that this assignment slowly, but surely, improved my writing. 

            This improvement is shown throughout the progression of my posts.  Rereading the first TOW I wrote was painful; it really shows how much my writing has changed.  A common theme throughout the first marking period was that my entries read like a list.  I was following the assignment sheet to a point and made my writing seem robotic.  I was summarizing the articles I read or the videos I watched more than I was analyzing them.  In addition, I didn’t have a full understanding of the various forms that rhetoric could appear in and was relentlessly sifting through the texts looking for specific rhetorical devices, even if they were insignificant to the purpose.  The lack of awareness I had pertaining to the assignment itself was also evident because my choice of texts was narrow and did not encompass a variety of topics.  However, the first marking period did serve as a foundation to my ability to analyze texts effectively in the future.

            After the shock of the first marking period, things started to click for me, including the TOWs.  I started to develop arguments in each post and spend the majority of my time focusing on the analysis.  In addition, the skills I learned from the class appeared in my entries.  The posts read less like bulleted lists and contained more sophisticated diction and sentence structure.  The major criticism of these TOWs is that they weren’t very sophisticated in terms of creativity.  The hooks weren’t very good and each one was in the same format from week to week.  However, I was covering a wide array of topics from numerous sources and reaped the benefits from that.  By the end of the year, the level of my TOWs peaked.  The structure of each one varied and they were written like concise essays.  However, as the AP exam approached, the TOWs were at a comparable length with those from the beginning of the year.  This worked though, because the space was being used effectively.  The best qualities of the latest TOWs included an assessment of the author’s rhetoric pertaining to the purpose of the paper and connections between the current topic and other events.  I felt as if I was able to master forming an argument and analyzing a text during these TOWs, which made writing the graded class essays easier.

            Even with all of the improvements, there are still areas where I can approve.  I think the leading category would be to make sure that I fully elaborate the argument that I am developing.  At times I skimmed that and just focus on the analysis.  Also, I need to make my writing more creative and interesting for success in the future.  Ultimately, the TOW assignments proved to be extremely helpful throughout the school year.  Not only did I have a weekly tool to help develop my writing ability, I was also given a medium to push me to inform myself about the world around me.

Geico Lord Stanley

Known for its witty advertising campaign, Geico maximizes its commercial's effects by producing a wide variety of them and matching them with specific target audiences.  This particular commercial was geared towards hockey fans.  It features Niklas Backstrom, a sensational goal scorer for the Washington Capitals, and the ghost that comes to visit him, Lord Stanley.  With the subject completely separate from car insurance, Geico relies on its brand name for results.  Part of the effectiveness of this commercial comes from the humor that is used.  When Lord Stanley shows up in the locker room, he says that he has a secret to tell.  According to the setting, viewers would infer that it is hockey related, but when Lord Stanley recites Geico's slogan, humor is added and the commercial is effective.  Another pun is made when the commercial makes a play on words.  Lord Stanley enters holding a silver cup, making it Stanley's cup, which shares the name with hockey's coveted trophy the Stanley Cup.  Because this commercial was shown on NBC during a Stanley Cup playoff game, the audience will be able to relate to the humor and the celebrity endorsement, making this commercial an effective marketing tool.

Link to Commercial