M98MC Week 2 Advertising and Consumer Culture
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Transcript of M98MC Week 2 Advertising and Consumer Culture
Last week – one thing you learned
Shun Li learned
Tissa Faith learned
I learnt advertising involves lots of signs
Brenda Bogonuo learnedadvertising is about making the consumer anxious and unhappy with their lifestyle
and it sells dreams
Dian Cao learned
Shiwan Chen learned
Ismail Elnour learned
the concept of different ways of seeing
Jian Du learned
Na Wang learned
Mary Ighorhiuni learned
Faizul Khan learned
persil from 1980s to 21st century what changes is human behaviour
Wei Li learned
Campaign Details
• In groups
Theory check-up
Read• Understains • Words in Ads • Freedom • Captains of Consciousness• Decoding Advertisements
Watch Century of the Self and Ways of Seeing
Today
• 19th Century• 1950s – birth of consumer culture• 1980s – consumer culture takes over• Lifestyles• Hedonism• Commodification• Postmodernism 1 – the break-up of the sign
Culture
3 definitions –Raymond WilliamsHigh, popular, a way of life
A structure of feeling Raymond Williams
Consumer Culture
Shiyan Lu 2014:
Growth of Consumer Culture
• Capitalism/Enlightenment 16th-17th Centuries• Massification – alienation 19th Century• The affluent worker 1950s
The 1980s
• The 1980s, Neoliberalism and the Commodification of Everything
• Postmodern Culture and Consumption – you know you’ve been Tango-ed
Key Terms
KeynesianNeoliberalismLifestylesHedonismCommodificationPostmodernism – the break-up of the sign
The Jerk
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are freeJohann Wolfgang von Goethe
Captains of Consciousness
mindcasting
pp. Posting a series of messages that reflect one's current thoughts, ideas, passions, observations, readings, and other intellectual interests.
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* http://www.wordspy.com/words/mindcasting.asp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/09/facebook-users-union-demands-payment?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.facebook.com/advertising/
Be Like No Other
Pseudo-individuality Adorno
Who is our captain?Who is your captain?
I consume, therefore I am
Me
What else do I consume?
TV charactersplaces
filmseducation
books
Food (object/meaning)
other cultures
musicians
“False needs”
• Raymond Williams• Advertising: The
Magic System (1962)• Because of
advertising we live in fantasy
We are what and how we produce and consume
CultureThe Nineteenth Century
UrbanisationMigrationUprooted mass
Richard Hoggart
“an all-pervading culture”
Read: The Uses of Literature
Shared working-class life in the 1930s
Superstition - touch wood, black cats
Attitude - family, neighbour
Fixed gender roles
wife - corner shop, clothes line,
husband - work, pub
Language - mam, our Alice
Food - chops, chips
You’ve never had it so good (Harold MacMillan, UK prime-
minister)
Goldthorpe et al, 1968-9The Affluent Worker
Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive
John Berger 3.39
Watch: John Berger Ways of Seeing
Sigmund Freud
Edward Bernays
‘constantly moving happiness machines’Herbert Hoover29/4/2002 The Century of the Self
Century of the Self8.33
1970s - Keynesian• financial and oil crises bring social unrest
1980s• Rise of new economic and political doctrines– Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan
1990s• Demise of contrasting ideologies– Fall of the Berlin Wall– Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Neoliberalism
The 1980s
Key ideas•Culture•Thatcherism (UK) Reagan (US)•Lifestyles•Hedonism•Display•Individualism•extravagance
Music
Fashion
Leisure
Dance
Films
TV
Hair
Greed is Good
Lifestyles
Gold BlendYuppie
Lifestyles in Advertising
Read: David Gauntlett
Hedonism
‘modern hedonism is characterized by a longing to experience in reality those pleasures created or enjoyed in the imagination, a longing which results in the ceaseless consumption of novelty’ Lury, 1997: 73
Read: Lead us into temptation
‘People now work...not just to stay alive, but in order to be able to afford to buy consumer products. The goods which are advertised serve as goals and rewards for working... consumption has taken off into an almost ethereal, or hyper-real, symbolic level so that it is the idea of purchasing as much as the act of purchasing which operates as a motivation for many in doing paid work’
Bocock, 1995: 50
Work
Why else would you work?
DEBATE: WHAT ALTERNATIVES ARE THERE TO HEDONISM?
2. The postmodern condition
What do you know?
‘the game of sign consumption is an integral part of the ‘society of the spectacle’ Lury, 1997: 69
Postmodernism 1 – sign not goods consumption
Baudrillard
‘all needs are socially created’ Lury, 1997: 68
‘the logic of production is no longer paramount; instead the logic of signification is all-important’ Lury, 1997: 69
‘The audience is increasingly made up of a media-literate generation, its members, rather than seeking the truth, in turn self-consciously mimic the media – they adopt the persona of fictional characters as a way of expressing themselves, they discuss their personal lives as analogies with the story-lines of soap-operas, and talk in catch-phrases of celebrities and the slogans of advertising campaigns. They know when they’ve been Tango-ed’ Lury, 1997: 70
Postmodern Consumption 2 - knowing
‘it makes no sense to criticize people for being insufficiently materialistic; instead, we should submit to the magic of advertising as a playful code’ Lury, 1997: 71
‘Objects are no longer related to in terms of their practical utility, but instead have become empty signifiers of an increasing number of constantly changing meanings. There is an overproduction of signs and a loss of referents’ Lury, 1997: 71
Postmodern Consumption 3 – fluid signified
‘Rather than people using objects to express differences between themselves... people have become merely the vehicles for expressing the differences between objects’ Lury, 1997: 71
Postmodern Consumption 4 – the consumed individual
‘the final triumph of capitalism...meaning is a sham...reality flickers like a television screen’ Lury, 1997: 71
Postmodern Consumption 5 - hyperreality