Malicious Media – Where Advertisements Go Awry
by Cultural Corres... | March 9, 2009 at 12:06 PM
american_apparel.jpgA global recession notwithstanding, the culture of consumption is breeding more than lavish spending habits. Advertisements that cater to a primarily female market are simultaneously objectifying and demeaning them. These culprits depict women in a less-than-favourable light, eroticizing, plasticizing, and sensationalizing them, and often drawing parallels to animals or corpses.
What is worse is that, with the exception of alternative media sources such as MediaWatch.com and About-Face.org, women are not exactly screaming from their rooftops to end such ominous representations. Far from it, in fact. Rather, we are dropping our credit cards on those shiny department store and couture house counters, and by doing so, we are essentially authorizing the development and distribution of such blatantly offensive marketing.
How little these corporations and advertisers must think of us as to undermine us right under our noses. How little we must think of ourselves to let it continue for so long without so much as a peep.
I will readily hold myself accountable as I cannot count the number of times I have made purchases without first researching the ethical position of a company, only to later discover advertisements that would make me want to hurl my new belongings off of a moving bus.
Included in this post are select advertisements that successfully meet all three O’s: objectifying, offensive, oppressive. Congratulations to these “winners”!
dehumanize.jpg
dumb_blond.jpg
get_brain_read_books.jpg
model_of_the_year.jpg
sexy_corpse_1.jpg
sexy_corpse_2.jpg
sexy_corpse_3.jpg
sexy_corpse_4.jpg
sexy_corpse_5.jpg
sexy_doll_1.jpg
sexy_doll_2.jpg
sexy_pain.jpg
sexy_racism.jpg
sexy_rape_1.jpg
sexy_rape_2.jpg
sexy_rape_3.jpg
wife_beater.jpg
Comments
DISGUSTING
DISGUSTING
A wise woman can turn a desert into a beautiful garden
Decoding media text
Firstly, these pictures were beautifully captured, edited and packaged to create an illusion. Secondly, they are very disgusting ("sexy rape", "dumb blond") because they perpertuate ideologies of those who own the means of production. In addition, whoever produced them manipulates communication to advance their ideologies (I will post an article of critical media theories used to encode and decode media text e.g. semiotics, marxism, the Althusserian theory which explores who capitalism is perpetuatetd through the media including advertising.
I have also posted an article focusing on the influence of mass media on youth and in my article i also focused on advertisements and what they do to consumers.
Marxist critics note that mass media which disseminates advertisements creates artifical needs and wants in people through covering the process with illusion. They create desires so as to bring into being wants that previously did not exist. The result is consumerism, which is the ideological indoctrination of consumers by powerful interests.
In short, its aimed at perpetuating consumerism and in turn capitalism by creating a state of false consciousness. So when people see the images you have posted they are actually seeing the lifestyle associated with the models ie. being beautiful, sexy and vulnerable (for the women) or macho, in control and powerful (for the men).
You have inspired me to do more research in decoding media text and i will post an article about the influence of advertisng on consumers.
Warm regars,
Gertrude Pswarayi
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