Car Ads Are Really About Self-Actualization, Independence, Freedom, and Purification
Escape the Banal Monotony of Your Wasted Existence by Buying a Land Rover
Another Message: You Will be Invincible and Safe Inside the Vehicle
Very common, as we read in today's essay, is the theme of connecting with pristine nature through the acquisition of the vehicle:
Alan Foljambe, "Car Advertising--Dominating Nature"
One. What is the oxymoron or irony of car advertising?
An oxymoron, or self-contradiction, is contained in the fact that cars are brutal toward our environment on one hand but are portrayed in ads as a benign and integral part of nature. They are "totems of freedom and interaction with the natural world" (para. 2).
There are two types of green ads: alleviation, or dark green, which appeal to those consumers who are sensitive to the environment; and there's domination, light green, customers who look at Earth as a thing to be conquered and consumed with reckless disregard.
Domination green appeals to a sense of privilege and entitlement and a need to "own" Earth by driving on its hostile terrain with a rugged SUV of some sort.
The domination car is more than a car; it's a status symbol of individual strength, courage, and initiative. We read that the desert is often a symbol of "purification and spirituality" (achieved in a Lexus).
Part of the ad's mirage or illusion in these domination car ads is its pristine image of nature as a backdrop to the rugged SUV, as if the vehicle does not pose a threat to nature when in fact it does.
Some domination ads evidence infantile, selfish narcissism: The driver is ruining nature, but who cares? He's here to have "fun, excitement, and self-fulfillment" and the hell with anyone who might try to stop him. "Nature is my doormat; I'll do with it as I please."
Brainstorm a Thesis
Car is a status symbol.
Car is not a machine but an opportunity for self-transformation, freedom, independence, distinction.
A car embodies narcissism: desiring admiration from people while having complete disregard for others (wanting to run them off the road in your superior vehicle).
Be in nature while you pollute it: Have your cake and eat it too.
Enjoy your dreams of omnipotence.
Ads sell dreams and fantasies for those who are stuck in a rut and think a consumer experience is the solution to their problems.
Car ads cater to narcissism, frustration, materialism, and an infantile notion of the "good life" based on having recreation at the expense of Planet Earth.
Why do car ads focus more on fantasy than car's content and performance?
Should I argue that content isn't enough to compete against cars? That fantasy is essential? And if so, why?
Gloria Steinem, "Sex, Lies, and Advertising"
One. What is Steinem's biggest complaint?
That the tentacles of the ad industry infiltrate everything, including magazine content, so that chosen subject matter and opinions are biased and influenced from the corporate sponsors who want their products in a "healthy ecosystem."
Could you have an article about the possible dangers of artificial sweetener, for example, of one of your sponsors is a company that makes saccharine?
Could you have a women's magazine address skin rashes and possible cancer from certain perfumes when your sponsor is Prada, Christian Dior, or Versace?
Two. What other complaints poured out in Steinem's diatribe?
1. The aforementioned sponsor effect on content; for example, they couldn't have negative film reviews because sponsors for the magazine feared the film would dump their ads.
2. The dumbing down effect evidenced by showing women how to put on lipstick or apply suntan lotion as lame filler.
3. The sameness effect:All the magazines are alike.
4. Working in an ad-dominant world was like working in a male-dominant world: Everything was fine as long as you did what you were told.
5. Too often the perception was that a women's magazine was really a shopping catalog and therefore couldn't be taken seriously as a work of journalism.
6. "Real" magazines like Time and Newsweek didn't have to write gushing praise of automobiles to get auto ads; however, women's magazines had to writing lavish articles about perfume, moisturizer, and such to get those ads. In other words, there was a double-standard.
7. Steinam wanted good car ads about the car's performance, but male ad people believed women wanted "cute colors."
8. Some computer and electronics companies don't think women are "tech" enough to be interested in their products.
9. By 1986, magazine costs rise 400 percent, but income from ads is flat. There's growing pressure for article "tie-ins" to product, so the magazine's integrity is threatened. Because of these pressures, many magazines become "one giant ad."
Three. What is most depressing about the article?
That a lack of demand for fiction, critical journalism, and independent thinking makes vital magazines almost an impossibility in the face commercial magazines, which shape the malleable, mindless consumer.
Mindless consumerism, lacking an appetite for heavy-hitting writing, is perhaps the most depressing point of the article.
We're talking about a small educated class that hungers for good writing and "the masses" who blindly consume ad copy while thinking they're enriching their "lifestyle."
Perhaps Just as Depressing
Women consumers are treated like superficial idiots who want fluff, beauty and diet aids, pink colors, etc., but they have no interest in real content. The advertisers have contempt for the female consumer.
Writing Prompt
Support, refute, or complicate the assertion that "virtually all content in women's magazines is a disguised form of advertising."
Brainstorm a thesis for the above prompt.
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