Capitalism, Marketing, and the Insidious and Covert Co-optation of the Self

In our daily basis we are bombarded with millions of images, but we rarely stop to think about what those images mean and what they are persuading us to do. Images can be found in many forms, newspapers, magazines, internet, radio, television, smart phones, social media and billboards, amongst other forms. Images have power, which is why individuals need to understand the messages being sent to them.

Through visual anthropology, images, ads, and cartoons are constantly changing individual’s views and the world in which they live in. Images are not merely pictures to state the obvious, they are pictures that have a deeper meaning. Whether the meaning is shown or not shown, they convey representation of something more meaningful in the end. Stuart Hall

Kelsey Timmerman, from rural Ohio, is the author of the book Where Am I Wearing. The spark that influenced his interest in traveling to other countries was because of the pile of clothes on his floor. After Timmerman saw this, he looked at the tags on his clothes. He then wondered exactly where did his clothes come from. The group of people that this book surrounds are American Consumers. Timmerman wanted them to lose their consumer innocence. He wanted them to change their buying habits because the clothes equal the people. Kelsey Timmerman wrote this book because he wanted the American Consumers to see exactly where their clothes are from. He wanted them to understand what the lives of the people in

Everyday people stare at billboards, magazine covers, movies, television, or pictures on the Internet of someone or something that they classify as beautiful. Some things people glance over and other things fascinate them. For example, when Farrah Fawcett’s famous picture of her in her red bathing suit came out; many teenage boys hung that picture in their bedrooms. Their idea of Farrah’s beauty was based strictly her outward appearance.

Susan Bordo’s Hunger as Ideology argues that the seemingly progressive improvement of destabilizing images in advertisements in order to break the stereotypical mold is not as “progressive” as one might think; These images do not challenge the old patterns that dominate the advertisement world but break the barriers of the ideologies that have been classical “sold” to our society. It is agreeable that these “destabilizing” images allow their viewers to challenge the normality usually depicted, however there are categories in which these images do not show progress, but make way for an opposite effect, leaving a negative taste in the mouth of the consumer because of the intent of use of images in the uncommon advertisements.

Fashion is everything to society and the media. The fashion industry has transformed into a necessity in the life of people. Everyone wants to look good, feel fabulous and feel as if we belong with everyone else. The envy and desire to wear certain things and look a certain way all come, from wearing the latest fashion handbags, accessories, dresses, shoes, and the list goes on. But, when is considering fashion into an individual’s life going too far to the extreme? Many do not consider the whereabouts of fashion materials and how the environment is affected by the mere existence of certain garments. Some may believe these objects grow on trees. But that is clearly not the case. Even though it would be nice. The fashion industry as a

“I guess that’s the thing about a hero’s journey. You might not start out as a hero, and you might not even come back that way. But you change, which is the same as everything changing. The journey changes you, whether or not you know it, and whether or not you want it to,” (Kami Garcia). The movie Avatar, released in 2009 and directed by James Cameron, is an example of a main plot and a subplot carried by the hero’s journey and has many examples of other archetypes. Avatar is about Jake Sully, an ex-marine, who takes over his dead brother’s place on a scientific mission to a planet called Pandora. Their goal is to collect a natural resource, Unobtanium, and bring it back to Earth. A clan of Na’vi’, human-like creatures, called the Omaticaya, live in a tree right on top of the main source of the Unobtanium. Jake Sully’s task is to enter an “avatar” body disguised as a Na’vi’ and learn as much as he can about their kind and what the humans have to do to relocate their clan. Eventually, the Omaticaya assimilate Jake into their clan and teach him their ways, not knowing that he is one of the “sky people”, or humans. As the plot of Avatar moves on, Jake begins to change his opinions on the Navi, the idea of nature, and which side he should fight for with help of

People tend to views an image based on how society say it should be they tend to interpret the image on those assumption, but never their own assumptions. Susan Bordo and John Berger writes’ an argumentative essay in relation to how viewing images have an effect on the way we interpret images. Moreover, these arguments come into union to show what society plants into our minds acts itself out when viewing pictures. Both Susan Bordo and John Berger shows that based on assumptions this is what causes us to perceive an image in a certain way. Learning assumption plays into our everyday lives and both authors bring them into reality.

Image is everything in today’s society appearance of things have become more important that what they really are and these images are being constantly fed to us through the media. Image has both a positive and negative influence on the individual but most people have been drawn into

Although Sturken and Cartwright claim it is quite easy to fall for the misconception that photographs are “unmediated copies of the real world” (Sturken & Cartwright, 17), this is no longer true, if it ever was. While cumbersome, even before the advent of image editing software, it was possible to modify photographs. Furthermore, in contemporary society, we have completely lost faith in mass media representation; rarely do people expect images to be completely unmodified anymore. This is especially visible in western culture since people are pressured to conform into highly specific aesthetics where even a “natural” look is artificially crafted with makeup and digital filters. Even disregarding direct manipulation to a print through methods such as Photoshop, photographs are manipulated in such obvious ways, it almost seems absurd to point it out. The framing, lighting, and positioning are always adjusted by the photographer. Therefore, people themselves are a type of manipulation; a representative filter through which biases are imbued. In effect, Sturken and Cartwright’s conclusion that all camera-generated images bear an “aura of machine objectivity” (Sturken & Cartwright, 16) stemming from “the … legacy of still-photography” (Sturken & Cartwright, 17) is

This sub-genre explores the corruption and propaganda that engulfs the narrative. Such as the manipulation of Jake and his disability, almost leaving him with no voice also subjecting his character into a sub-altern state because without the military and its advancements he wouldn’t have been able to walk. The military acts as the antagonist to Jake and the Avatars. The movie explores the symbolic code of religion and belief. The avatars are connected to their world through nature and prayer.

Human interactions with each other and with tangible objects such as technological products, help create relationships among human beings themselves, and among human beings and physical objects. From these relationships, most people have either faced acceptance or rejection from the people or things they have related with. Some of these are results of differences in what is conventionally accepted as normal while others are just results of unfulfilled expectations from the relationships created. In Andrew Solomon’s article “Son,” he discusses that his mother modified his identity at an early age, which caused the struggle between his real identity formation and the expectation that his mother and the society had. For Solomon, relationships can sometimes disintegrate on the basis that one’s real identity does not conform to what conventionally passes as normal, because a majority of people are not accepting to standards that differs from normal. In contrast, in Sherry Turkle’s article “Selection from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology And Less from Each Other,” she discusses how expectations from human relationships, e.g. love and emotional connections, create new fronts of identity formations with technology when human beings do not meet such expectations. From these two articles, the ideology of identity formation is a variable of relationships. Most importantly, human relationships with each other and with technology create acceptance or rejection,

The term cyborg was first created when researchers attempted to alter the human body for space travel (Corbett, 2009). It is short for cybernetic organism, that is, a being with both organic and biomechatronic components. The film Ghost in the Shell (1995) is an example of speculative fiction and takes place in a futuristic Hong Kong inspired cityscape, where cyborgs and prosthetic bodies are not unusual. Oshii Masamune’s animated science fiction film is set in 2029, when people can customise their bodies, replay memories and move from shell to shell. Susan Napier describes the film as an "exploration of the possibilities of transcending individual and corporeal identity" (Napier, 2001, as cited in Ashby, 2008, 2.4).

In cognitive science there is a growing theory that cognitive processes develop when bodies and their environment have real-time, goal-directed interactions (IEP). The human mind is stimulated and developed when the mind, body and environment conjointly interact and influence one another. Embodiment is comprehended as the distinctive way a body can effectively interact with its environment through the body’s sensorimotor capabilities. In today’s world, modern video games have presented a new form of embodiment that is now being studied. The study focuses on the relationship between players, avatars and 3D-virtual worlds. There is a wide debate about whether the embodiment of avatars in modern video games can have an effect on the human

Like almost every middle class family members, I went to Wal-mart and bought a $5 T-shirt. At first, I was excited to get a T-shirt for such a low price, but later when I read the news about the Bangladesh garment factory collapse, I questioned myself, “was I partly responsible for the incident by buying the $5 T-shirt?” After an extensive research, I discovered that our cheap buying habits unintentionally can lead to such disasters. In the last decades, Fast Fashion industry, “a business model that offers (the perception of) fashionable clothes at affordable prices,” has been growing rapidly. Therefore, today, a number of stores are full of cheap products, and everyday consumers utilize these cheap products on a daily basis. Although these cheap products are economical, they also contribute to increasing pollution, and creating labor issues. Thus, consumers need to consider not only price or design, but also the stories behind the products to decide what to wear and what to choose.