So, that's that done then. 8318 words and 25% of my degree has now been submitted.
Hasn't quite sunk in that something that elicited so much fear and stress over the years, is not only done, but was relatively painless.
After faffing around for a while, I settled on; "Branding culture: How we claim our identity through commercial media", an exploration of what it means to be a product of our environment in todays culture. I delved into how we individually identify and aspire to obtain/allude ideals through surrounding ourselves with specific brands. I investigated the visual messages presented through; celebrity endorsement (Run-DMC's relationship with Adidas), product placement (Apple and Starbucks omnipresence within media), conventional advertising ("I'm a Mac/I'm a PC") and further brand personification (Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima), and also explored how commercial media can dictate cultural identity as a whole using Coca-Cola's rebranding of Santa Claus and Christmas as a definitive example (Coke popularised and standardised the image of Santa as a fat, jolly man with a white beard and red coat through their advertising. Beforehand Santa Claus/Father Christmas/St. Nick/Kris Kringle etc. differed between cultures).
What I enjoyed in particular with this topic was the scope of research on the "why?". There's a frustrated sociological psychologist of some sort inside me begging to be free, apparently. Who knew? Whether it be our ongoing "quest for cool", the primitive desire for inclusion/recognition from our "tribes", or social conditioning in the vein of Pavlov's Dog where brands have trained us to salivate on command for their products; it's all interesting.
Now we can draw a line under all that. Got my semester one work back too, so all systems go on the next chapter, I suppose. This one is going to be brutal. The last hurdle.
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