Big Read at Ahira Hall Memorial Library (Brocton)

Monday, April 13th, we (Matt Perloff and Jeff Wilkinson) hosted a Big Read sponsored event at the Ahira Hall Memorial Library in Brocton. The event explored how advertising functions to create the environment of the novel -- from the ever-present eyes of Dr. Eckleberg, to Gatsby himself.

We were pleased to see that the turnout included both students from the local high school and community members. We set it up with the Brocton High School English Department that students who attended and participated would receive extra credit. It worked very well. Though we also promoted the event through Facebook and other websites and also made flyers, our highest number of attendees heard about it through word of mouth or in their classes. This was similar to our experience interning at the campus’ Visiting Writers Program, where the strongest attendance numbers came from students who heard about it in classes and those with incentives to go.

The event, taking its cues from the use of advertising as metaphor in the novel, is an exploration of the many ways advertisements intersect into the lives of people both in the 1920s and today. We started by presenting on advertisements, helping the audience make connections between ads in the ‘20s, ads today, and how ads affect their own lives. We examined how even though the styles have changed, the ideas of how to generate desire in people through advertisements are consistent. Of course we didn’t just say that—we wanted the students in attendance to participate and draw their own conclusions about what the ads were doing, which they did!

The event then transitioned into an “ad-making workshop” where the participants got to create their own ads, piggybacking off the presentation. Each student was given two slips of paper. One contained a product, like soap or sneakers, and the other had a demographic, like teenagers, or parents. Everyone then had to create a targeted advertisement, selling their product to their demographic.

As intended, many of the students used methods to target their groups, but they couldn’t explain why they thought their ads would work. We went around the room and shared, and were able to show each student how their ads were effective, but how they also had to make assumptions about what people wanted in order for the ads to work. Ads can be important, as shown from in our quote from President Coolidge, but are also dangerous because they tell people what they want. If people aren’t careful, they only want what they’re told to.

We then returned to the novel to talk again about Gatsby. Daisy tells Gatsby that he resembles “the advertisement of the man,” which is true—Gatsby did everything he could to be exactly what he knew Daisy was told she wanted in a man. American advertising can be seen as a motivator for what Daisy wants, but also what Gatsby wants and is. We can even expand that to see how the desires of everyone in the novel are related to what they expect to desire.

We were very happy to see that the audience was both receptive and willing to participate. Many of them easily identified points we were leading them to both about advertising and the novel, and we were absolutely impressed by the critical eyes that these high schoolers had. We feel accomplished having given these high schoolers and community members assistance with a complex reading of the book, and having encouraged them to leave the event with thoughts about media literacy. The Big Read was a great way for us to engage the Brocton community by helping the library as well as the area’s citizens, and we felt that we gained a lot of insight from it as well.