Seeing Ourselves: An Analysis of Ideology and Fantasy in Popular Advert

Seeing Ourselves An Analysis of Ideology and imagine in Popular AdvertisingIn the argonna of publicize in modern Western society, the consumer can become numb from everyplace-saturation. Advertising stretches over all forms of media, with independence that critic Judith Williamson says intentionally reflects our own human reality (Lord, 263). Advertising becomes a natural presence for consumers it overwhelms us until we stop arduous to understand and decode the images and slogans presented to us. In The Rhetoric of the Image, critic Roland Barthes uses extra advertising images as dissection models to systematically extract the meaning of cultural codes. In her essay Decoding Advertisements, Judith Williamson discusses the self-reflective advertising system that assigns human values to products to call down the purchasing of these products to satisfy a non-material need. Advertising, in effect, handles us ourselves, or at least what we would like ourselves to be (264). The com bined theories of Barthes and Williamson are a unharmed springboard in discussing two advertisements angiotensin converting enzyme in print and one in the medium of television. The print advertisement is for a mens cologne called Romance. The magazine ad features a black and white word-painting of a man holding a woman as she aeroembolism backwards, careening almost to the point of falling off of a tire swing. The present moment ad is a thirty second spot depicting trine young teenage girls who flirtatiously use their Coca Cola separate to get free stuff from a surprised (albeit pleased) male clerk. In both ads, beyond the surface of the initial message there resides a somewhat disturbing subtext of sexism, male dominance, and male fantasy. In order to sell their products, Ralph Lauren and Coca Cola ... ...d titillate. The old expression is sex sells but what in reality sells is male dominated sexual fantasy. This is non to say that all advertisements are sexist, or sexis t against only women, but it is to say that in many an(prenominal) ads what may seem like a simple image of toy or a fun trip to the store is really an holy structure of meaning. Roland Barthes and Judith Williamson employ almost scientific methods to extract rhetoric from advertising images but even their methods are not foolproof. The structure of meaning in an advertisement will vary upon the person perceiving it. The important thing is to recognise common dominant ideologies in ads, and the values that advertisements want us to longing and attain through their product. If we must buy into ourselves, we should at least string an informed decision before we accept and pay for ideology which is not our own.