Advertising, Gender, and Capitalism: My Documentary for Advertising and Society

A documentary done by yours truly to explain the linkages between gender, advertising, and capitalism and the linkages between them. Once we enter this world, we are told what we are and how to act through advertisements. Women in particular are told to be sexy. This is the repeated message that is fed to women as they are now able to purchase their own products because of their rising status in the world. Advertising, which is the tool used by capitalism to control society behaviour is run by mostly men, and men make use of this advertising tool in an attempt to handle women and their increasing power.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0gWQvbhg_A

Thank you for watching and I hope you enjoy!

~ Leon

 

References:

- Fennell, C. (2009). Lecture on December 4, 2009.

- Gill, R. (2008). Empowerment/Sexism: Figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising. Feminine Psychology, 18(1), 35-60. Retrieved June 20, 2011, from http://fap.sagepub.com/content/18/1/35.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc

- Harms, J. & Kellner, D. (n.d.) Toward a critical theory of advertising. Southwest Missouri State University. Retrieved July 5, 2011, from http://gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/illumina%20folder/kell6.htm

- Irving, H. (1991). Little eleves and mind control: Advertising and its critics. The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, 4(2). Retrieved July 3, 2011, from http://www.aeforum.org/aeforum.nsf/b6f532dc08e2a32e80256c5100355eab/f0c7e8755ae2e695802567d6004fe42a/$FILE/ajmc0052.pdf

- Jhally, S. (n.d.) Advertising, gender, and sex: What’s wrong with a little objectification? Sut Jhally Website. Retrieved June 26, 2011, from http://www.sutjhally.com/articles/whatswrongwithalit/

- Kumbhoj, K. & Londhe, B. R. (2007). Distorted mirror images in social advertising with special reference to AIDS awareness advertisements. ICFAI Business School. Retrieved July 10, 2011, from http://dspace.iimk.ac.in/bitstream/2259/357/1/299-302.pdf

- Pollay, R. W. (2000). The distorted mirror: Reflections on the unintended consequences of advertising. Advertising and Society Reviews, from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr/v001/1.1pollay.html

Documentary Teaser

Just a tid bit of what my upcoming documentary will be for my Advertising and Society course for Dr. Strangelove. Please follow the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Agb26hPv0

~ Leon

The Beginnings of a Consumer Society

Advertising is distorted communication. Brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola promise a better life, but these essentially will leave the consumer dissatisfied. The more you consume, the greater dissatisfied you will become because advertisements display a desire, a world of which is never fully real. They are partially real because the ideas come from society, but they are hyper real to the point where it is a dream.

Advertising is concentrated in the hands of a few managers and leaders. Thus what we call democracy really is not because only a few hands control this social order. Thus there is an enormous taking of profit by the management and elite class, and society really becomes undemocratic.

It was these few hands that produced the middle class in the 1920s. Thus was the birth of the consumer society. There was much productive capability but there was no middle class to spend, so the leaders created this by raising the wages of the working class for a surplus to accumulate. This way the working class had more money than was necessary to cover vital needs, and were able to spend more on luxury products. The task that these leaders handled was to manage consumer demand, and to diminish the working class in order for people to have more funds to spend.

A century ago, goods were mostly utilitarian. Needs nowadays are not only to survive, but also to express yourself, and goods appeal to secondary needs. Advertising creates patterned systems of meaning and patterns of behaviour. Goods become more than just goods. Advertising directs what to buy, and when to buy it; what are the hottest trends? Advertising has become a tool we depend upon for meaning. We have identifiable classes because of these commodities because of the meanings advertisements give to them. What it means to be wearing a name, what it means to be thin, what it means to be a different race, etc.

This capitalist system we live in forces maximization of profit. Consumers then buy products that are not essential. It is a system that has no end, the worse thing for capitalism is to be satisfied, because if it is then there would be no production. Thus it creates hyper consumption – capitalism is responsible for producing consumers that want that lifestyle, but there are not enough resources to sustain this society’s needs.

There are also codes of consumption. So who you are judges what you buy, and vice versa, so some things are not appropriate to get based on your circumstances. For example, a bank manager in a small town may not want to get a hot little convertible because it may give off the wrong impression. And if he or she does in fact have one, and lives in a small town, they may most likely choose to use another car to go into work, and reserve the convertible for leisure.

~ Leon

Reference:

Harms, J. & Kellner, D. (n.d.) Toward a critical theory of advertising. Southwest Missouri State University. Retrieved July 5, 2011, from http://gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/illumina%20folder/kell6.htm

False Needs

It is well known that advertising entices people to buy products they really do not need, with money they haven’t got, and that advertisements produce wants for needs that we do not necessarily have to satisfy. This all began in the 1920s as a method to passify a mass industrial workforce that was no longer able to be controlled through workshop discipline. Advertisers integrated into their appeal to consumers the message that consumption means freedom, and that individuals who are ‘free’ can seek their identity and liberty through the purchase of these commodities. This type of advertising plays onto the psychological approach into human nature; particularly the tendency to social conform.

Many would say that advertising tugs at the strings that we most desire. Packard tells us that “motivational research, replaced the earlier simple psychological sell of market research advertising (appeals to shame, pride, greed, etc.) by appealing directly to the unconscious, irrational impulses in the human psyche.” But because these desires are unconsciously motivated, our response to them takes on a symbolic form in order to disguise them because the conscious opposes them. Similar to when we dream in symbolic form to avoid accepting our unconscious cravings. This is why advertisements seem to be more ineffective than effective. And because there are so many advertisements, they neutralize each other and quickly come to a level where adverts are diffused in the consumer’s consciousness.

But what is at times successful about advertisements is their appeal to needs and wants. They appeal to a range of material needs and social needs for mythology (which was once fulfilled by art and religion). Advertisements also appeal to “the psychological desire for the unified self of the pre-symbolic stage… but in doing this, advertisements create false wants: we want consumer items instead of real emotions, real social relations, and our real selves.” At a social level, symbolic structures have altered and confused our understanding of the real structure of society; advertising disguises the real issues.

It is widely acknowledged that the method used for advertising manipulation is the creation of false needs. According to Irving, “in a mass capitalist culture we have our needs created for us, imposed upon us, and these needs are false, contributing in fact to the individual’s repression.” Thus these false needs are the willingness to comply without hesitation.

But advertisements are not false images, in fact they appropriate anything they feel will have appeal, this includes themes taken from feminism, environmentalism, alternative lifestyles, and social critique. Advertisements deal with images of society, thus they are not false, but genuine images of society and social relations.

~ Leon

Reference:

Irving, H. (1991). Little eleves and mind control: Advertising and its critics. The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, 4(2). Retrieved July 3, 2011, from http://www.aeforum.org/aeforum.nsf/b6f532dc08e2a32e80256c5100355eab/f0c7e8755ae2e695802567d6004fe42a/$FILE/ajmc0052.pdf

Women and Capitalism: The Fight over Power

We live in an asexual society. The public sphere is desexualized by our conformity with business suits, military suits, etc. Advertising is the sexual explosion displayed in this disciplined, repressed sexual system that we live in. Advertising comes directly from capitalism; in fact it’s the voice of capitalism. To understand the effect and influence of advertising, we need to look at capitalism.

Now, no other country spends more on advertising than America does. According to Dr. Michael Strangelove, a Communications Professor at the University of Ottawa, 20 cents of a product goes towards the cost of the product while the other 80 cents goes towards the advertising for it. Each political party needs to cultivate 1 billion dollars to allocate towards advertising in order to be in the running. So, that’s 1 billion dollars to tell the citizens of America that you are the best candidate and will do them no wrong, or… the least amount of damage.

Advertisements are designed to make the audience feel a bit anxious; they do this to engage the viewers, similar to news. This is why we see men usually having the upper hand in some way in advertisements with women or women with men. We see advertisements that are increasingly blurring the lines of what is decent and what is not, yet we accept both – this is the pornogrification of the advertisement industry. There are some advertisements where we see the woman using the product in a similar to the way they would to a penis; thus, directly linking the woman to a sexual context. Also we often are displayed women in beer adverts holding the beer product close to the breasts, by doing so it associates the product to mother’s milk.

The marketplace determines what the appropriate behaviour is for society and for the culture. It defines relationships, how each party interacts, and how to present yourself. Advertising’s job consists of two aspects: 1) to display reality in order for the audience to be able to relate to it (ideas of which are drawn from society itself); and 2) to distort reality for the audience to see what they desire and what they should become. So, advertisements are not unusual enough that it alienates the target audience that the advert is aiming to please. Yet it does create a sense of tension in order for the audience to feel like they are not good enough to be the elite like the figures displayed in these adverts. By creating this yearning and pressure, the audience will then seek to obtain whatever product is promoted in the advert and make the transition from audience member to consumer.

Through this tension, advertisements are designed to make the audience wonder how they feel about themselves. Thus, it is constructing subjectivity, a sense of self, and how they feel about the world. And the capitalist system that we live in has created this feeling in order to promote the buying of goods in order to relieve this tension. Unfortunately, it is only a temporary fix for this tension as we are bombarded by images everyday of how one should be. Consequently, from this, the society has driven itself into a continuous loop of buying products to produce a feeling of contentment and to obtain the ‘freedom’ of which the products promise (false promises), yet we are never fully satisfied in the end because we will continuously have an urge to buy more at some point because we realize that the specific products that were obtained did not give us the freedom we were told we would have. The capitalism system has created a disciplined culture where we work for a living, and many will keep spending to the point that they need to work increasingly more – and when you work so much where is the freedom?

With women’s rising status and increasing payrolls, they have recently become a large target in the capitalist system that runs advertising. However, men still are the ones who pull the majority of the strings; they are the ones who run the capitalist system. Thus why it is believed that the women’s identity is being subjected to a direct attack, by narrowly defining us as infantile creatures, as sexual beings that must be experienced and always up for it, and by defining us as constantly lesser than men.

Sure women have stepped up in the world, but in advertisements we still are being objectified because the capitalist system wants to put them in their place. Advertisements have created a specific type of femininity that is narrowly defined by sexual agency, not any mention of women’s smarts or holiness, etc. This is known as commodity feminism which we see in ‘Sex and the City’ for example, where women try to express themselves through sexy clothes Manolo Blaniks, and advertising is selling through the guise of this type of femininity. This is how the capitalist system, run by mostly men, tries to appropriate women. Commodity feminism is essentially stripping away the empowerment of feminism. And that’s how our culture likes it.

 

~ Leon

 

Reference:

Jhally, S. (n.d.) Advertising, gender, and sex: What’s wrong with a little objectification?Sut Jhally Website. Retrieved June 26, 2011, from http://www.sutjhally.com/articles/whatswrongwithalit/

The Objectification of Women in Advertisements

It is surprising to see that we are so accepting of advertisements and often not bothered at how strange they must look to us. A common theme seen in advertisements is the relation between men and women, and how they each gender is portrayed. For example, in advertising, according to Goffman, “the best way to understand the male/female relation is compare it to the parent/child relation in which men take on the roles of parents while women behave as children would be expected to.”

Thus, women are treated and seen basically as children. We often see in advertisements with women a common pose of finger to mouth which directly suggestive of children’s manners. Also, the common pose of women snuggling into the man similar to the way that children seek safety and consolation from their mothers.

An observation seen between gender relations is how often women and children are positioned on beds and floors, which is associated with less clean parts of a room; thus, those using them will be situated as subordinate to anyone who’s sitting or standing which is usually a man.

Another observation found between how each gender is displayed is how women are largely found to caress the object and lightly touch it, which may suggest that the women are always yearning for the object but cannot have complete power of it. In comparison we see men who are usually grasping, or manipulating the product.

So how come this doesn’t seem weird to us?

It is because advertisements draws its materials and ideas from the experiences of the audience and reformulates them in a distinctive way. According to Jhally, “It draws upon the same corpus of displays that we all use to make sense of social life.” Advertisements are neither false nor true mirror images of social reality because they are indeed part of social reality. Advertisements are part of the context where we attempt to comprehend and describe gender relations; thus, advertisements become part of the process in which we learn about gender. It is these conventionalized portrayals of gender that advertising bases much of their advertisements on.

But why is advertising so infatuated with gender and gender relations?

One reason is that gender is “one of our deepest and most important traits as human beings”, according to Jhally. We understand ourselves through individual identity, and gender is the key characteristics to defining ourselves as unique. Another reason that gender is used so frequently is that it can be communicated instantly. This is what advertisers love as they are able to communicate something that is instantly recognized that reaches the center of our identity.

This is the task that culture holds, for their job is make everyone fit. Society defines what a man is and what a woman is. It is a taboo to have an ambiguous gender, and there has been hysteria around characters that have had ill-defined gender identities. Society seems to have this requirement to strictly define the two to keep the system running. This is what advertisements support, and this is why they are so successful.

~ Leon

Reference:

Jhally, S. (n.d.) Advertising, gender, and sex: What’s wrong with a little objectification? Sut Jhally Website. Retrieved June 26, 2011, from http://www.sutjhally.com/articles/whatswrongwithalit/

The Rise of Women?

Many say that women are rising up in the world, they are now able to vote, able to have their own loans and mortgages from the bank, and able to drive and have possession of their own cars. Decades ago this was unimaginable!

We see in the early 1970s (maybe even a bit before that) an increasing trend in advertisements and media recognizing women’s rising status. Women of this time are being told their new found freedom and independence from men. A well known hit TV series known as The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77) is a clear example of this ‘modernized woman’. The show is based on a woman (Mary) who has left her fiancé due to troubles in their relationship; she then goes to seek work as an associate producer in a newsroom. She is also a SINGLE working woman. Before this, it was expected that all women were supposed to be married or engaged to be able to have such a high level position.

We see this everywhere in the media, advertisements, and entertainment business. It is an increasing revolt against the narrow expectations of women. Like African Americans were once told where their place was in society, women were always told what to doà to stay at home, cook and care for the children and husband, and be man’s subordinate. Now, women are taking control of their own destiny by buying their own shoes and clothes, and their own food. This trend is also the excuse advertisers use to promote products targeted towards women using a discourse of empowerment to lure them in.

These trivial acts are championed as proud, courageous declarations of their autonomy from the repressive control men held over them. Now women are invited to buy bras to coffees to cigarettes as symbols of their power. But what most don’t see is that advertisements still do objectify women in a way.

In this culture we have the increasing power of women, but also a highly sexualized culture. This shift came as a result of a mix of discourses of ‘girl power’.  Academics now address the sexualization of culture and the pornograhpication of everyday life. Rather than a repressed culture, we now are open t the suggestion and talk of sex at every turn, and female sexual desire takes on a large role in this.

The emergence of women’s increasing wallet sizes meant that they became targets for new products and services, and also forced the advertising industry to rethink strategies to cater to this new market. Thus is why in recent years advertising has moved away from pure objectification of women to women’s sexual agency.

There are three specific forms of empowerment by women- sexual agency- and its interpretation in contemporary advertising. The first is the ‘midriff’. This is one of the most significant shifts in advertising in the last couple decades which is the production of another ideal figure. I say figure because it is in the sense that her personality is absent or unnecessary. This figure is a young, attractive, heterosexual women that is sexually experienced and always ready for sex. This figure plays with her sexuality and sees it as a way to obtain what she wants.

Midriff advertising comprises of four themes: the highlighting the body, a move from objectification to sexual subjectification, a debate upon choice and self-sufficiency, and attention towards women’s empowerment.

It is now the possession of a toned, waxed, moisturized, scented, well dressed, and sexy body that is displayed as the key to success and individuality for women today. Women are demonstrated in these advertisements as not striving for the man’s approval but as a way to please themselves. But by doing so, will win them over in the end ultimately. Thus, the definition of empowerment is the possession of a slender sexy body to attract the male gaze, yet also suggest female envy. This is a shift from an external male critique to a self-monitoring narcissistic one.

The second form of empowerment is the revenge advertisements. This is a vengeful woman acting out a revenge fantasy against her (ex) partner. There was a shift in advertising from the unintelligent woman to a feisty and in control woman. A key theme is the representation of a woman having the advantage by punishing a man who has misbehaved, and the mistreatment of the woman’s belongings. This rage is usually directed towards a previous partner rather than friends or family. This type of hostile figure does not support ‘girl power’, but rather, displays momentary outbursts of uncontrollable rage that symbolizes powerlessness and leaves the gender relations intact, unchanged, possibly more hindered than it was before.

The third and final form of empowerment is the display of ‘hot lesbians’ in advertisements. This offers a new representation of femininity and

is an easy way of adding a pleasing and popular edginess to a product’s image. These women in this form of advertising still possess the ‘midriff’ figure, which is contrary to the previous negative images of lesbians as being butch and ugly. Like the midriff, these advertisements are designed for the male gaze, and male titillatation. What is characteristic about these advertisements are two or more women always in an embrace, or touching, or kissing the other. Also, it is either the woman shown with another similar looking woman (thus suggesting twin sexà another male fantasy). Or, they are shown with a woman opposite to her; such as a black woman with a very fair skinned fair haired woman, thus like many soft porn scenarios where men get to ‘choose their type’. This girl-on-girl action is shown as exciting and displays the women as experimental and not serious, thus it is not threatening to heterosexuality, but simply aims to please the male.

Thus, these types of ‘girl power’ advertisements designed to show that we have evolved from previous social restrictions reveals to us that we

have not come very far. These midriff and hot lesbian advertisements are framed exclusively in relation to men and the male gaze, and the target of female revenge adverts are always of a male (ex-) partner.

 

~ Leon

 

Reference:

Gill, R. (2008). Empowerment/Sexism: Figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising. Feminine Psychology, 18(1), 35-60. Retrieved June 20, 2011, from http://fap.sagepub.com/content/18/1/35.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc

About Me and my Blogs! (For Advertising and Society)

Hello all!

My name is K Leon and I am a student in the Department of Communications. I am a Chinese Canadian with a touch of Mexican blood, and take pleasure in spending time with friends and family. I look to one day achieve a career in the advertising industry, wish to one day be able to shake the hands of Armin Van Buuren, and enjoy long walks on the beach.

This section of the blog for Advertising and Society focuses on advertising and its effects on culture, gender, the economy, and vice versa. Advertising influences us, while we simultaneously influence advertising. The scary thing is is that the world lives off of it. Magazines, news, professional sports, certain websites, and anything in the entertainment business thrive off of advertising dollars as it is the main source of funding.

As you will read in the next few posts regarding Advertising and Society, you will begin to gain a brief overview about advertising, how it creates meaning, how it is used as a tool for communication, the key techniques towards the phenomenon, and how these techniques are applied to entice the audience.

There is much interest towards gender and the role of sex used as a means in advertising which is due in speculation to the corporate control over this industry. Women are continuously objectified in advertisements and presented as sexual and always also ready for sex.

This will be what the documentary sets out to explore, which is the battle of the sexes and men’s constant hold over women as they attempt to objectify and tame them.

Although women have seemed to come a long way since the 1960s, and have gained value and esteem within the corporate world, they continue to be viewed as subordinate and second to men. This is evidently displayed in advertisements still to this day of how women are portrayed as infantile and uncontrollable.

Yes, women such as those displayed in Sex and the City exert ‘power’ through buying products that normally a man would buy for her in past decades: shoes, jewellery, clothes, etc. Saying to the world that she no longer needs a man to shoe her, clothe her, and that she can do all these things herself – thus revealing an ‘empowered’ women. But is buying shoes and clothes really that empowering? By supporting the capitalist system that the men run, it is still farfetched to say that women are equals in this society that we live in. Women remain to be paid less than men in the same positions, and as women strive to obtain what the men have, they attempt to control and limit women by presenting the image of women as we see them in advertisements today. These women are sexy, thin, and ready for sex – in other words, a man’s ideal woman. Advertisements continue to cater towards the men in the society, as they hold the key to capitalism and a functional economy, not women.

This is what the blogs and documentary will be exploring for the next few weeks for my course in Advertising in Society. Hope you enjoy!

~ Leon

Bedroom Broadcasting

Many YouTube bloggers/videoographers often perform and record their material in their own bedroom/house. My friend Laura tells me it’s usually the only place that she can record her films because even though she is broadcasted throughout the world, she feels most comfortable taping in the security of her own home. She says that when you tape in public, you often have people in the background spoiling your videos or teasing you because you are taping in public. So, in order to exceute the video the way that she wants, she makes it in a controlled environment; thus, the privacy of her own home. By doing this she also invites the whole online community into her own world.

~Leon

Getting Paid and Sponsored

Those whom are popular on YouTube get paid by YouTube to continue making videos.

Matt is famous for his “Where the hell is Matt?” videos, especially his 2008 version which was sponsored by Stride Gum, and has accomplished to date 19,731,634 views, and 72, 454 ratings over the span of just 9 months!

Other video bloggers such as mememolly and Paperlilies also get paid by YouTube for a large amount of subscribers and viewership, YouTube offers them incentive to continue making videos. Knowing that they have a loyal fan base, YouTube does this as a strategy to maintain viewship in the company.

~Leon