Athletes Are Not Role Models Essay

Good morning/ afternoon
Athletes are admired for the hard work they do to achieve their goal of winning. People look up to them and want to be like them, but in reality, no one is perfect.
In this presentation, I will explain how a group of people in society is represented across two texts and the effects of the aesthetic features on audience positioning. The chosen texts are a video and an article.

The first text is a video of Charles Barkley, who was a famous NBA player. He joined a Nike campaign in 1993 called “I am not a role model” that aimed to promote the acceptance that athletes are not role models. Even though this was a long time ago, this video is still used as an example when relating to this controversial topic and strongly positions the audience to agree. The target audience of this video is people who view and think of athletes as role models. Children especially view famous people as role models and tend to think athletes as one of them. The speech invites the audience to understand a genuine aspect of how an athlete could feel.
*show video
This video displays an unusual representation of athletes. It greatly values the image of athletes especially the skills and attributes should be admired from their performance. Also their behaviour when playing their

Athletes should have an awareness that people are watching and behave in an appropriate manner. As they are only one of the many individuals someone would look up to. Athletes receive endorsements, the reason why, is simply because of the fact that the companies know that if athletes promote a product the audience will be influenced to buy them. Which displays the strong influence athletes have. Both these texts have different perspectives and bring forth an emotional response. Thus, from these two texts, readers are positioned to either perceive athletes as role models or not by the use of aesthetic