John Berger Ways Of Seeing Analysis

In today’s society, no matter where you are, there is always a good chance that you have seen an advertisement. These little creatures are everywhere. You may see them when you are reading a magazine, watching TV, or surfing the internet. We have become so used to them. Advertisements are good at making us stop what we are doing and giving them our full attention. What is an advertisement? An advertisement is an announcement made to the public. In Jib Fowles’ article, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” he is informing us that companies are spending millions of dollars on advertisements to grab our attention in order to manipulate us into spending or thinking of spending our hard-earned money on their product. Even though a lot of people do not want to believe that a paper that is eight times eleven with an image and no more than five words is manipulative because we want to think that we are not that easy to trick. Nike created an advertisement for one of

The claim presented in the article is how ads often set unrealistic beauty standards, and how the author encourages them to “break free” from these standards by giving two examples on how ads should be compelled.

Every day, companies present the people with advertisements everywhere they go. Advertisements have become very prevalent in today’s society nowadays focusing in on a negative connotation. Advertisement has become an effective way for producers to display their new products. In present day, they come in forms of billboards, flyers, e-mails, and even text messages. It is widely known that companies create advertisements to persuade people to buy specific products or goods; however, it is not widely known that advertisements can make a negative impact on today’s society. The companies manipulate people’s mind and emotions, swaying people by new promotions and therefore generating a strong desire to fit into the society, that causes them to make inessential expenditures. Advertisements pose a critical impact on the American culture.

Every minute of every day, millions of people are exposed to advertisements. They plague televisions, streets, radio waves, and all means of communication. These advertisements employ many methods of persuasion and their influence is irresistible. Just like prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we are told every day to invest our time and interest into the subject of these advertisements, and to accept the forms of reality they serve us. Whether it be a commercial for a must-have new car, to a spot featuring desirable fast food, or to magazines with photoshopped models; we are seduced to accept these false

Do you ever watch the Super Bowl for its commercials? Have you ever bought a more expensive product because you had seen its advertisement? If the answer is yes, then you might have been a victim of today’s marketers. Jean Kilbourne, the author of “Killing us Softly” stated in one of her lectures, “The influence of advertising is quick, cumulative and for the most part, subconscious, ads sell more products.” “Advertising has become much more widespread, powerful, and sophisticated.” According to Jean Kilbourne, “babies at six months can recognize corporate logos, and that is the age at which marketers are now starting to target our children.” Jean Kilbourne is a woman who grew up in the 1950s and worked in the media field in the 1960s. This paper will explain the methods used by marketers in today’s advertising. An advertisement contains one or more elements of aesthetics, humor, and sexual nature.

Advertisements are an extremely prominent part of American society. Very few places exist that an individual can go without being exposed to some form of ad. From product placement to billboards, advertisements exist in nearly every facet of life. Marion Nestle discusses what she considers to be one of the more heinous forms of advertisement in her essay, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate.” Nestle uses several persuasive techniques to convince her audience of the evils of supermarkets. Her use of emotionally charged phrases paired with her more logical assertions help to drive her point home while her clear bias and lack of supportive source detract from her overall argument

Kilbourne demonstrates three major main criticisms of advertising. First, advertising objectifies people and objects for the purpose of sales. This critique promotes products as more important than people and exploits human deeds and desires. Kilbourne offers ample evidence to support her first criticism of advertising. For example, Kilbourne examines advertisement such as the Thule car-rack - which humorously places more value on sports equipment been a child's life - is evidence of the trend that advertising is “objectif[ing] people…trivializ[ing and exploiting] our most heartfelt moments and relationships. Every emotion [,person, animal, and natural phenomenon] is used to sell us something” (Kilbourne, 2006, 369). Second - according to Kilbourne - advertising promotes and perpetuates the unnatural passion for products rather than personal relationship. “Advertising corrupts relationships and then offers us products, both as solace and as substitutes for the intimate human connection we all long for and need” (Kilbourne, 2006, 370). Within this concept, advertising also commits ‘cultural rape’ by manipulating sacred symbols for their utilization as emotional leverage in advertising. Third, advertisements damage the personality and structure of culture. For example the Giwch’in tribe’s traditional culture was almost erased by the introduction of advertising through television. “As multinational chains replace local character, we end up in a world in which everyone is Gapped and Starbucked…[Thus] rampant commercialism undermines our physical and psychological health, our environments and our civic life, and creates a toxic society” (Kilbourne, 2006, 371), which robs individuals of cultural and personal diversity. Based on the evidence presented by Kilbourne, I strongly agree with all three of these

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.

Do we want basic cereal or the fancy kind that athletes promote, or can we live with a plain shirt or do we want the one with a guy riding a horse emblem? These want that stray away from our basic needs are all driven by advertisement. No one is born wanting a Gucci shirt, they are taught and conditioned to want one. The Frontline documentary, “The Persuaders”, delves into the world of advertisement in order to explore different aspects of the industry that drives our desire.

With images, words, and sounds been almost endlessly reproduced and distributed, various critics of modern culture suggest that traditional ideas about art and authenticity are no longer applicable. The problem is said to have been noticed back in the 1930s in the popular essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that was concerned about what would happen to the “aura” of unique works of art when photography and other techniques if anybody could make unlimited copies of images. With the rise of digital technology, copying ability became vast and complex and hence the idea of originality is thrown into

In Chapter Seven of Practices of Looking, we start to explore in the ideas of advertising, consumer cultures and desire. Everyday, we are faced with advertisements through newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, billboards, public transportation such as buses and taxis, clothing, the internet, etc. Logos, such as signs, or anything that resemble a brand, are everywhere, they are on clothing, household items, electronics, cars, etc. Consumers are always showing off their brands and advertisements and we are used to seeing those brands and advertisements in an everyday setting. In modern media, advertisers are pressured to always change the ways they show off and get the attention to consumers, old and new. Advertisers also used present figures who were glamorous. Advertisements set up a certain relationship between the product and its meaning to sell the products and the hidden meaning we link to each of the products. Advertisements use the language of conversion. Advertisers try to create a customer relationship to the brand to try to form them as familiar, necessary, and also likeable.

For advertisements sell distracting, purposeless visions? … Perhaps, by learning how advertising works, we can become better equipped to sort out content from hype, product values from emotions, and salesmanship from propaganda” (O'Neill 416). As O’Niell states, advertisements often change a consumer’s mind through persuasiveness and use of rhetorics. To some extent, consumers are not given the chance to buy a product because they faithfully trust it, rather because they are duped into believing it is a fantastic product than what it is worth. This is shocking because a consumer’s decision making power is stolen by the corporations. Corporations want maximum profit and use of their product, so they are more likely to use insincere language to persuade the consumer the best way possible.

In the Tom Ford ad, a woman is seen laying down on her side, half naked and slim, looking at her face full of makeup through a mirror. Marketers use the concept of gender, mainly women to display sexuality, providing a resource that can be used to receive attention. The audiences’ attention is caught right away in this ad as they see a “sexy” woman being the main focus. Advertising shapes a society’s culture, and reflects its values. Furthermore, advertising is a part of “a discourse through and about objects” as it does not mention anything about the product but how it is connected to major domains in our lives (Jhally 328). The makeup product of Tom Ford is not mentioned in the ad whatsoever, but the mirror is used as an indication of beauty viewed through society’s expectations. It promotes images of what the audience assumes to be “the good life” as it tries guiding us to become “happy” through the purchase of products. If a woman were to buy any makeup by Tom Ford, she will automatically be happy as the makeup will give her glow in life because she will be able to do anything with her new and enhanced beauty. The concept of advertising consists of wrapping up your emotions and selling them back to you (329) by giving fake happiness and satisfaction that loops an individual to chase goods in order to fill the void of

In the piece “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin tackles the evolution of reproduction coinciding with the introduction advanced technologies; and how art, specifically film, has transformed since this introduction. He asserts that reproduction has now become part of the process in art because of mediums like film and photography, however their reliance on technology creates less authenticity among art forms due to less of the original art still be connected to the piece. While the authenticity starts to decrease, the number of people who are able to individually experience the art increases because of technologies that are able to mass produce art. This creates his ideas of auras, which are the unique connection between the object of art being experienced and the person experiencing it. However, these objects that are desired to be experienced are sometimes only because of what Benjamin refers to as the “ritual” they have, or history. Benjamin claims that technology separates itself from this idea, creating a medium where reproduction is part of the underlying goal for the work to be successful. This success creates the reception Benjamin breaks down into two different values: cult value and exhibition value. Exhibition value he describes as what the art is valued at when in a public setting, however cult value is the value assigned to art that is not available for the general public to see. Technological reproduction now plays a larger part in

In his essay The Rhetoric of The Image, Roland Barthes explores the relationship between image and meaning. He centres his discussion around the advertisement as advertising is a medium in which there is an intended message being sent to the viewer. Barthes puts forward that if an image contains signs, in advertising the signs are ‘full’, as these signs are formed with the viewer in mind so that the intended message is not missed.