If ya consider an EL like ${firstThing.secondThing} or
${firstThing["secondThing"]} firstThing has to be an attribute or an EL implicit object....when you're using ${styles[0]} its workin' fine because "styles" is a request attribute....but ${brands[0]} won't work because "brands" is neither an EL implicit object nor an attribute in any of the 4 scopes....
Hope that answers your question
