Consumerism:
We now live in a society where we base our worth off what we can buy. We construct our identities through the consumer products that inhabit our lives.
"The Commodity self" is a concept by Stewart Ewen that enhances this idea of basing our worth off of our possessions. We are constantly distancing from our true selves and replacing it with our commodity self, a vision based off clothes, makeup, fancy cars, the latest technology.
Advertising works by attaching symbolic associations to it that attract us. For example, a perfume advert will have beautiful people being social and sophisticated, and the connotations of this is that if we buy, we will have all of these qualities too. We must consume to be superior.
The commodity culture perpetuates false needs through advertising. It does this in 3 ways. Aesthetic innovation is one of them, where a company brings out the a new model of something, and all of a sudden our current model becomes useless. We must continue to buy because this new product looks nicer, or has slightly better specs.
Companies also design products to break or become useless after a certain amount of time. This ensures that we continue to consume and the system keeps progressing and making profit.
Advertising also conceals the background and history of products. We have no idea how something was made, and usually forget that there was an actual human being behind it all. The product is more important than the actual person and labour that went into making it, for example when you go to IKEA, you are presented with an anonymous flat pack box that looks the same as everything else. There is no way of assigning value to it and we have a lesser understanding of the actual product and where it came from.
Reification is an advertising technique that gives products human associations. They are perceived as sexy, romantic, cool, sophisticated, fun, etc. This makes them more relatable and can connect with the consumer.
Commodity culture manipulates us and makes us think one-dimensionally. It stifles us and prevents us living full, meaningful and creative lives.
Gender representation:
In modern advertising, women are either seen as domesticated or hyper sexualised beings. A quote from John Berger states that "men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at."
This quote enforces the stereotypes of gender, and Berger is observing this from his time (which still applies today).
Throughout history of art, men have made erotic images of women for other men to view and enjoy. This labels women as the vain, aesthetic gender and because of this label, women get laughed at for being so concerned about their appearance. Its quite contradictory as this label was enforced by men in the first place. It is a game of power. Men are enforcing all of these labels and norms into the society to gain power. Women are presented to be sexually available, but not threatening. They have a youthful, submissive face but have a fully sexualised body. They are there to be enjoyed by men.
There is a piece of text on the front of a porn magazine that states "The cure to frigidity - HYPNOSIS". This is essentially saying that if any girl doesn't want to make sexual advances towards you, something is wrong with her and she should be hypnotised!
There is a male voice across every industry, for example, in film, design and architecture, all the dominant figures are male. This has been going on since these industries began and it has created a world that has been made for men.
Images that have been marketed at woman have the same male voice. A wonderbra ad has the caption "hello, boys!". It is a call to the men in the world. Come and look at this woman in her underwear!
Another caption for the wonderbra campaign is "engineering 101". This could be a reference to the making of the bra, but it could also be saying that women are not capable through a way of their abilities of getting an education in engineering, and the only way they can actually progress through life is by having massive breasts and showing them off to the world.
Women are being repressed for the interests of men.
Another aspect to this is that men are also objectified in advertising. There is an emphasis that a woman has a right to dress how she likes and demand sexual satisfaction from men. This content is a clear rejection of the conventional response to sex that existed 20 years ago. Men are classed as 'eye candy' and have to respond to the requests of women.
All of this content is predominantly governed by the heterosexual, which is another factor to keep in mind. These ideas could be seen as unattainable by some readers/viewers, which makes us dissatisfied as people, so linking back to consumerism, we buy more stuff to make us feel better.
Political and Social Change:
Propaganda seems like the most obvious choice for this topic, and although it is very interesting and varied, it would be quite difficult to create a body of work for past events such as World War 1.
The introduction to self education could be something to look at, or the movement of modernism. The Bauhaus movement was a huge project with the idea that we could create one universal language for all of humanity and that we could create affordable art for all, etc.
Underground sub culture rejects values of modern society. Zines and OZ Magazine is something that could be researched too.
Overall I think that I am going to chose gender roles as my chosen theme for my project as I am already passionate about it and I think I could produce some good work.