Blog Post 3

The purpose of advertising was and is to sell products to consumers. However, the methods to go about such processes have always contained a sort of nitty grittiness when it comes to the messages that they portray in order to to actually sell. Since I was young, I remember seeing ads for products and wondering how in the world they actually relate, only to find out later that the point wasn’t to make sense, but to be remembered. At one time, the belief was that any attention was good attention because a name or brand was being followed or listened to by people. However, while there are still controversial images and ads that occur today, I think there is a sense of morality (whether it be genuine or not) in ads because it will affect the business of them.

This ad explicitly tells women what not to look like

    Advertisements seem to have always been most successful when at someone else’s expense, which explains their long history of sexism and toxic gender roles, as well as classism and racism. Ads target insecurities, and encourage the use of products in order to fix such insecurities. We see this especially in ads targeted towards women, in that a woman’s body is always up for display and judgement. Since the beginning of time, women were thought of as merely objects that were at men’s disposable, compliant with anything. While advertisements aren’t responsible for this view (as it has been around since the beginning of time), ads enforce these messages, as well as provide visuals to them. In the article “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising” by Jean Kilbourne, it says “Advertising images do not cause they problems, but the contribute to them by creating a climate in which the marketing of women’s bodies….is seen as acceptable”. Not only does it add to the social commentary of how a woman should look (which in itself is ridiculous for one person to be concerned with someone else, it also promotes the idea that a woman’s body is a commodity, one that can be bought and improved upon and tweaked. Since a huge percentage of media is being consumed by women, they feel these ads are targeted at them directly, which leads them to believe the problem is with themselves.
            We also see this problem when it comes to the inclusion of those being marketed to. While the idea of advertisements is scary and perhaps wanted to be avoided, ads seem to focus on one particular demographic, which is straight white people. Commercial after commercial, we see a white family consisting of a mother and father and their two and half children, living the American Dream. This is a result of who is actually in charge of the ads, which is in fact rich white people. By deliberately excluding people, or being too vague in what a person might be or their sexuality (as Danae Clark refers to as "gay window advertising" in her article Commodity Lesbianism) or using vile stereotypes in ads when they actually decide to include them too, the advertisers are saying that one group is more profitable and therefore better than the other.
    One type of media that I still consider somewhat pure in my eyes are books. While of course there is often a brand name mentioned throughout a story, the author’s goal isn’t to get you to buy a new car or try a different type of cereal. One book in particular that is sort of meta when it comes to this topic of advertisements is “White Noise” by Don DeLillo. The book itself talks about the subliminal ways in which ads overtake our lives and inherently ruin them.
 Another type of media that I have recently gotten myself into are podcasts. For me, podcasts are especially enjoyable during work, because it’s nice to just have a sort of background noise as you get what you need done. I think this could be dangerous when it comes to advertisements because the people getting sponsored may try to just slip it into whatever they’re talking about without you paying much mind to it. However, the podcasts that I have been listening to are pretty self aware, and often comment on the fact that they don’t think their audience may need such a product, or warn the audience beforehand that there will be random ads throughout. This reminded me of Gloria Steinem’s article “Sex, Lies, and Advertising”, where she says “Though we don't think we should tell our readers what to do, we do think we should provide facts so they can decide for themselves.” While in that Steinem is talking more about prevention against products, I think getting ads is inevitable because people need to make money, so if the most a medium can do is warn me, I’ll take it.
      Another type of media that I am guilty of consuming is television, and in particular reality TV. My favorite station is Bravo, which is home to shows like “The Real Housewives” and “Below Deck”. Unless I am just completely naive to the fact of what I am being advertised in the actual shows, I appreciate the fact that when besides during the commercial breaks, I’m not being tapped into. In fact, a lot of times on the reality shows that I watch, the show will blur out brand names in order to not be a free advertisement for a product.
          One type of media that I find myself consumed in that I know is filled with advertisements are music videos. Music videos will often be sponsored by a certain brand in order to have their product casually placed in the video. This shows the audience that such a celebrity uses the product too. A lot of times, it’s interesting because the product itself looks so out of place, which takes away the subliminality of it.
        Lastly, my main source of media I would say is probably the news. In my house, the news on day and night. From the time I get up in the morning, the news is already one, and by the time I go to bed, my parents are still up watching it. That isn’t to say that it’s all everyone watched in my house, but it is something that is consistently on, usually for background noise. I personally watch channels like CBS because I find it to be fair in political terms, and I think it has a mix of uplifting stories as well as harsh reality. I don’t find commercials or Advertising that it broadcasts as controversial or damaging as some other channels. I think the reason for that is that it is pretty self aware and understanding of the current climate of the country.