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

Seeing Ourselves An Analysis of Ideology and vision in Popular AdvertisingIn the argonna of announce in modern Western society, the consumer can become numb from over-saturation. Advertising stretches over all forms of media, with independence that critic Judith Williamson says intentionally reflects our own human realness (Lord, 263). Advertising becomes a natural presence for consumers it overwhelms us until we stop toilsome to understand and decode the images and slogans presented to us. In The Rhetoric of the Image, critic Roland Barthes uses special(a) 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 evoke the purchasing of these products to satisfy a non-material need. Advertising, in effect, thrust outs us ourselves, or at least what we would like ourselves to be (264). The com bined theories of Barthes and Williamson are a square(a) springboard in discussing two advertisements bingle in print and one in the medium of television. The print advertisement is for a mens cologne water called Romance. The magazine ad features a black and white word picture of a man holding a woman as she air embolism backwards, careening almost to the point of falling off of a tire swing. The bet on ad is a thirty second spot depicting triple young teenage girls who flirtatiously use their Coca Cola cards 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 genuinely sells is male dominated sexual fantasy. This is non to say that all advertisements are sexist, or sexist against only women, but it is to say that in umpteen ads what may seem like a simple image of dally or a fun trip to the store is really an total 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 tell apart common dominant ideologies in ads, and the values that advertisements want us to inclination and attain through their product. If we must buy into ourselves, we should at least make an informed decision before we accept and pay for ideology which is not our own.