When talking about the Narrative #2: “Land of Equal Opportunity” and “Land of Difference” Cynthia Selfe talks about, “[T]he magic time of the fifties.”(pg. 302) This was the golden age for American’s when airplanes were the sign of technology advancing. But the narrative or myth of equal opportunity didn’t always work. Selfe states, “American know-how can accomplish in the land of equal opportunity when circumstances are right.”(pg. 302) An ad in Selfe’s article explains, “Technology uninfluenced by traditional American values can run amuck, especially in a postmodern world characterized by, ‘conflicting standards,’ ‘rival companies,’ ‘incompatibilities,’ and inefficient work habits.” (pg. 302-303) Technology advancing would lead up to people fighting and competing to create the better product. It wasn’t how the Americans valued things. If the values went ignored then the technology and standards wouldn’t be met.
Then Selfe goes on to talk about “[A] typical American family” (pg. 303) The idea of Narratives goes along with Robert Sholes “On Reading a Video Text” Scholes has the idea that, “In processing a narrative text we actually construct the story, bringing a vast repertory of cultural knowledge to bear upon the text that we are contemplating,(par. 4)” This connects to Selfe when she talks about the ads trying to convince people about the internet. They used the idea of her narratives to get more people to go along with the internet and start to use it. This add was to “suggest that citizens of the twenty-first century can achieve the same kind of happy security and personal well being that was enjoyed by citizens of the fifties.”(pg. 303) The ads are a type of media that the generation of the fifties had. It was the beginning of media and over time it became the video texts that we know now.
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