This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 194.217.93.115 (talk) at 13:08, 30 March 2006 (→Some Famous Old Chigwellians). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 13:08, 30 March 2006 by 194.217.93.115 (talk) (→Some Famous Old Chigwellians)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Chigwell School is an English public school in the Epping Forest district of Essex. It was founded by Samuel Harsnett in 1629. There are around 730 pupils, aged between 7 and 18 years.
The school motto is aut viam inveniam aut faciam, a Latin phrase which translates literally as Either I shall find a way or I shall make one, but is usually rendered as Find a way or make a way.
There are four day houses, named Caswalls', Lambourne, Penn's, and Swallow's. The boarding houses are Grange Court, Sandon Lodge, and Hainault House.
Some Famous Old Chigwellians
- Ken Campbell, actor.
- Tim Collins, Conservative politician.
- Sir Arthur Grimble, colonial governor.
- Austin Bradford Hill, medical statistician and epidemiologist.
- Sir Ian Holm, actor.
- Michael Marshall Smith, novelist.
- William Penn, founder of the American state of Pennsylvania.
- Ben Shephard, television presenter.
- Horace Smith, nineteenth-century poet.
- Prof. Sir Bernard Williams, philosopher.
- Yehuda Ben Schlosberg - worlds fattest man
- Vicky Pollard - Rather large, and provocative
- I like cheese
- Upon the Power of Cheese
While the power of cheese nor the influence that advertising cheese has over the daily lactose needs of the consumer have been explicitly debated, it is certain that, beyond a person's superficial dairy wants, there lies a desire for something more than their cheese consumption alone can offer them. As per usual with the American mentality, this desire follows the general pattern of association of happiness with consumption. The American Dairy Association (ADA), being fully aware of this mentality, presents the public with the accompanying sugarcoated ad that, regardless of its subject matter, is polluted with many more clandestine associations and underlying motives than simply equating cheese and its quaint slogan with being one of the simpler pleasures in life. The overt and subliminal messages of this ad are intricately designed to follow three guidelines; that of mass appeal and subsequent associations, of a variety of subconsciously implanted connections, and of the mentality behind the making of the ad.
The cheese advertisement consists of an askew photograph of toy football players on a miniature field that appear to be moving unaided toward a plate of two huge chunks of white and yellow cheeses all in front of a blurred picture of a televised football game in the background. The only words on the ad are those in the caption and slogan of the American Dairy Farmers, "Ahh, the power of cheese," written centered on the bottom. While this innocent scene may appear as harmless as the toys themselves, this is certainly not the case. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that in July of 1999 there were 272,691,000 people (both sexes, all races, all ages) living in the United States. Of those, CBS SportsLine announces that 127,500,000 were tuned into Super Bowl XXXIII of last year. Therefore, through simple mathematics, it can be concluded that nearly half of all residents of the United States would be interested in an ad that relates to football alone. Having achieved the attention of a colossal costumers base, the ad resorts to, somewhat furtively but seemingly harmlessly, placing alongside the revered pastime another symbol, the cheese, that, by way of their close proximity, instantly connects the two in the consumer's mind. Regardless of any ensuing subliminal messages, the ad entrusts the public with the duty of, upon being faced with football on television (the medium within which it is usually enjoyed), to recall the football-oriented cheese ad that caught their eye an indefinable length of time ago and to, inevitably, force them to fall victim to their own self-developed psychological craving of cheese.
However, as intimated upon in the previous paragraph, the aforementioned interchangeability passively forced upon the consumer is not without numerous attempts at aggressive embedment of psychological connections. This interchangeability appears throughout the ad in three forms. The first instance of substitutability, as mentioned in the above paragraph, is in the choice of subjects. The cheese makers, having done their own analyses of American culture, set out, by placing football directly alongside a chunk of cheddar, to make targeted consumers establish a connection between their beloved pastime and a forgotten food group. The second instance is found in the barely perceptible shot of a television with football playing upon it in the background of the picture. Though it is nearly impossible to discern the darker motives behind its placement, the blurred shot, by way of its placement, is serving its purpose as a tactic; a part of the picture that seeks to augment the overall message but yet "without taking it over in its entirety," (de Certeau 408). Finally, the last example of subliminal messaging can further be broken down into two less controversial, though equally significant, aspects of the ad: the 'independent' movement of the toys towards the cheese and the bright, cheerful colors of the picture as a whole. Through graphics technology, the photograph is morphed, according to the theory of Walter Benjamin in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", "into which would be out of reach for the original itself," (319); that is, having given animation to the toys, they have become more humanlike and thus have the ability to draw, however minutely, more of the viewer's attention. Next, the previously mentioned facet of the general public's ignorance, that a product's value is determined largely on the basis of the proportion of happiness relative to consumption, plays a valuable part in the selling process and, though broached in other aspects of the ad, is the main reasoning behind the ad's color choices. Though blue is purposefully excluded because it is an appetite suppressant, the abundance of motley hues is present for the purpose of partially fulfilling the facet; bright colors have been a symbol of happiness longer than greys have been associated with depression (Morton). Consequently to all the factors, the customer has been lead to ascertain that if cheese equals football and football equals happiness, then, as any elementarily educated individual can conclude, cheese must equal happiness.
A justifiable influence in the messages behind the ad, aside from the whims of the public and explorations into the depths of human nature, is found in the mentality of the American Dairy Association, the sponsor of the ad. The 8 billion pounds per year production level of cheese in the United States recorded in the 1990s, coupled with the irrefutable fact that the ad conveys only a very slight gesture towards urgency, suggests that, above all other implications ensuing from the ad, the most irrefutable is the notion that this ad was not published with the intent of an immediate consumer response, a initiative not consistent with many other campaigns. Also, by virtue of the 'power of suggestion', the ADA asserts that the average viewer will connotate the overt and subliminal indications without any more linguistic assistance than an exceedingly simple, yet poignantly relevant, caption. Additionally, considering the circulation of Time magazine, the origin of the ad, at a mere 4 million viewers, it is questionable as to how many of the 127.5 million football fans will even see this particular ad, assuming it is not being circulated by way of any other magazines. Therefore, in light of the above recent conclusions, it is acceptable to assume that also, contractictory to the analysis of the ad thus far, the American Dairy Association may have been merely attempting to introduce a comical approach to their product and might not have been, as was conversely argued, psychologically implanting a craving for cheese at the sight of a football game. Without the aid an informant inside the boundaries of the ADA, either assumption is equally credible and less than favorable. With one, paranoia directed towards the government follows, and with the other, an apathy bred by lack of involvment into the minds of consumers proves the ad a failure.
Regardless of the motives of the ADA, it is sufficient to say that chances are favorable towards the preceding construction of the ad where it both consumes and warps the unsuspecting attention of the intended viewer. Perhaps the greatest impact of the ad is its ability to satisfy an entire category of culture as defined by Raymond Williams while at the same time adjusting it to suit its purpose; the ad manipulates football, a defining social aspect of culture into an association wholly unintended by the sport itself (622). These self-perpetuating associations, the powers of which were made clear by Judith Williamson in "Meaning and Ideology", direct the ad to relentlessly seek implantation of the idea that football is undeniably associated with cheese by way of the unattainable and forever alluring medium of happiness.
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