Hannah Hoch and James Rosenquist --Insiders and Outsiders of Consumerism and Gender

Jean Kilbourne’s film, Killing Us Softly 4, depicts the way the females are shown in advertisements. She discusses how advertisement sell concepts of normalcy and what it means to be a “male” and a “female.” One of her main arguments focuses on how women aspire to achieve the physical perfection that is portrayed in advertisements but this perfection is actually artificially created through Photoshop and other editing tools. Women in advertisements are often objectified as weak, skinny, and beautiful while men are often portrayed as bigger and stronger. Advertisements utilize the setting, the position of the people in the advertisements, and the products to appeal to the unconscious aspect

Throughout the years the representation of women in advertising has evolved. In the 1940’s and 1950’s adverts mainly focused on portraying females as the helper, mother, wife, social being, and sex object. There was an assumption that a woman’s main desire was to make her husband happy; that while she was the buyer, he was really the main consumer, as the wife cooked, cleaned and looked after the children, which ultimately benefitted him. Even though these ads were targeting female consumers, they were often-and still are- created using the ‘male gaze’ theory. British film theorist Laura Mulvey states that the majority of Western visual culture follows the male gaze, where the gaze is not referring to a specific ‘look’ in the image, but rather to the viewer who is assumed to be a male (Mulvey, 1999). Mulvey says that even women look with a

Erica Carter teaches Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. Recently, she published How German is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the consuming Woman (1996), in which she explores how the development of a "social market economy" after 1949 gave a new centrality to consumers as key players in the economic life of the (German) nation and in that process gave women a new public significance. Carter argues that concepts of nationhood survived in the rhetorics of public policy and in popular culture of the period.

It satirically comments on consumerism and its relation to ‘art’, as the consumer is paying 79300 euros to physically create the object themselves. This is influenced by the the ‘do it yourself’ crafts style products as the consumer becomes the co-designer by recreating the

The pieces aim to question what the rapid growth of the future holds for us. “ Are supermarkets taking over the world?” she explained that this tactile typography is inspired her by newspaper headlines and mocks serious issue with playful humor and plays on words. She explained through her owned example, “ in the piece Suffocation, the printed text on the plastic carrier bag informs users of health and safety information. By using embroidery, I am highlighting the suffocation of communities by the giant supermarkets. The aim here is to critique corporate culture and raise issues and concerns about growth. These pieces have expressed a lot of opinions and emotions. Some viewers are able to relate to the issue closer to home with petitions and emotional locals fearing the loss of independent small

The ongoing process of mass production has caused a major shift in the relationship between the consumer and the object. This is apparent through the growth of advertising and its effect on human perception as well as major historical events which have tainted societies cultural identity. Issues regarding mass production and mass consumption have been a key area of critique for many post-war artists, political activists and Popism artists. This can be demonstrated through creative practitioners such as Ai Weiwei and his response to the Chinese Cultural Revolution in his work Dropping the Han Dynasty Urn (1995), Andreas Gursky’s exploration of globalization and the dramatic increase in the availability of consumer goods in his work 99 Cent (2001)

As Gladys starts to take different kinds of commercial advertisements, she has significant numbers of ads appear on billboards, newspapers, and magazines regularly. At the same time, as Barthes mentions in Mythologies, “[m]yths are nothing but this ceaseless, untiring solicitation, this insidious and inflexible demand that all men recognize themselves in this image, eternal yet bearing a date, which was built of them one day as if for all time. (155)” Therefore, Gladys and her corresponding notion of ‘average American girl’ penetrate deeply into the people’s mind because of the power of media. The mass media transmits and reinforces the message again and again until the public is used to its existence and finally accept it. The bourgeoisie who identify themselves with the image of Gladys as an ordinary individual in the society inevitably desires to purchase the things Gladys endorsed. Since the loyal consumers believe in the myth of Gladys, those things mentioned in the advertisement, for them, turns out to be the essential types of the bourgeois culture with no

Consumerism is in control of the world. While consumerism is in control, creativity is being thrown to the side. Fredrik DeBoer, an author and doctoral student, and Damien Walter, a course director and an author, both wrote about the topics of consumerism and creativity and how they impact culture but in completely different ways. Fredrik DeBoer’s article, “The Resentment Machine: The Immeriseration of the Digital Creative Class” discusses how consumption has led to competitiveness of individuals which in turn has led to capitalism and the media platforms being able to criticize what is worthy and unworthy. He argues that capitalism has reduced human life to a way to profit but states that he has no idea how to fix the problem. He states,

“An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have.” This was one of the many famous quotes uttered by the eccentric yet revolutionary artist, Andy Warhol. At first one might think this quote would be the word of an advertising agent and indeed it is. This very idea, however, is what created the commercialized idea of Pop Art in the 1960s. Andy Warhol’s background as a commercial illustrator provided him with the ability to pioneer a new artistic movement. Warhol highlights the American shift towards consumerism through his work by using the techniques used by marketing plans, such as mass production and rhetoric. Warhol’s first solo New York exhibit at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery established the spark of commercialism and pop culture that is heavily embedded in our society today. Warhol used his knowledge of advertisements; his artistic talents and his impeccable timing to single-handedly illuminate the societal ideals of products and celebrities alike in his artwork.

Tom Ford’s advertisement for Menswear utilizes the power of media to make a social critique of stereotypical gender construction. The main purpose of an advertisement is to appeal to a certain type of audience and satisfy to what captures the eye of a particular view. In this advertisement, it is the male gaze that the creators of the ad are trying to essentially gratify. Little nuances such as the posture of the couple represents a slight change of gender roles and inherently questions who actually is in power in the advertisement. For example, the woman has her hand on her hip with her head tilt back. The hand on the hip can represent a dominant stance filled with control and independence. The

This essay will compare and contrast the view of authentic art with the account of The Culture Industry laid out in Chapter One of the “Dialectic of Enlightenment” By Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. The implications of which will be explored for a critical theory in society. The objective aim of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is to criticize the social and cultural conditions of society by drawing out the insidious psychological messages from media and The Culture Industry (Film, Radio, Music etc.) Adorno and Horkheimer notice a pattern, or “system of domination” being imposed on us through seemingly innocent consumerist messages. They hoped to highlight the extent that which the products we consume are imposed on us from the industry rather

Post-World War 2 the world was steadily resetting itself from the aftermath of war. This was a time where a new generation was coming through, determined to change the world and bring radical transformation, avoiding the mistakes of the previous generation. With this we saw historical movements namely the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Second-Wave of Feminism and the boom in Consumerism that have shaped the world we live in today. This new way of thinking brought the 1960s design era, also known as the POP! Movement, with the aim to challenge what makes good design and blurring quality art with low culture sources. I will focus on the ideas of Feminism and Consumerism during the POP movement and how the Poster Dresses by Harry Gordon and BG66 by Bonnie MacLean reflect the two concepts through their design.

The main thesis of this article is that “the discourse of consumption constituted by the advertising, articles, and fiction within the developing mass-market magazine of the 1890s subsumed both feminist and conservative views in the interest of sales (p. 66).” Then, the author started introducing the

“Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance”(Berger 133). Publicity is designed to create the illusion of glamor. In some way, shape or form advertisements try to convince us that our lives are somehow incomplete without their product. In an attempt to appease Man’s most carnal desires advertisements have found themselves over-sexualizing women perpetuating the objectification and mistreatment of them. The Carl's Jr. advertisements exhibit John Berger's idea of women, as the “surveyor and the surveyed”(Berger 46) as seen in Ways Of Seeing.This idea is made prevalent in the Carl’s Jr ads. These advertisements use this dynamic to satisfy our insatiable yearning as a platform to make their product more appealing.

Dada was a reaction to the brutality and destruction of world war one and was completely opposed to the fundamental values of nationalism, bourgeoise and of the construct of society as a whole. The movement was shocking and at times abrasive, as the artists - like Hannah Höch below - wanted to disgust and outrage the audience. The work shown here is clearly expressing the destruction of war and the broken fragments it has left behind. There is a stark bitterness and despondence in the work, due to the chosen colour palette as well as the meticulously placed newspaper trimmings conveying Höch’s condemnation of the nationalist belief in war and violence.