Thursday, January 31

Chapter 6 Notes from Reading

-Images are not free. Images have a primary role in the functioning of commerce through advertisements. This means that images are a central aspect of commodity culture and of consumer societies dependent upon the constant production and consumption of goods in order to function.

*commodity-goods marketed to consumers in a commodity culture.

-Ads present social values and ideologies about what the “good life” is.

*abstraction-the quality of being conceived apart from concrete realities. In advertising, the term is used to describe the fantasy world that is created by ads, in which they abstract us as viewers away from out everyday world, suspend its normal laws, and offer us instead a space of desire defined by imagination.

*strategy- a term used by French theorist Michel de Certeau to describe the practices by which dominant institutions seek to structure time, place, and actions of their social subjects.

*tactics-a term used by French theorist Michel de Certeau to indicate those practices deployed by people who are not in positions of power to gain some control over the spaces of their daily lives. De Certeau defined tactics as the acts of the weak which do not have lasting effect.

-In the world of advertising, images can be presented as art, science, documentary evidence, or personal memories.

~Consumer Society~
-Advertising is one of the primary means through which the exchange of goods is promoted in capitalism.
-In a consumer society, there are great social and physical distances between the manufacture of goods and their purchase and use.
-Increased industrialization and bureaucratization in the late 19th century meant a decrease in the number of small entrepreneurs and an increase in large manufacturers; this in turn resulted in people traveling longer distances to work. As places filled with mobile crowds, mass transit and city streets became forums for advertising.

-In Marxist theory, it is understood that capitalism is dependent upon the overproduction of goods and the need for workers to be consumers and spend large sums on mass-produced goods.
-In a consumer society, a large segment of the population must have discretionary income and leisure time.
-During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the department store announced itself as a site of both commerce and leisure.

-Charles Baudelaire (French poet) wrote about 19th century urban landscapes as the visual terrain for the flaneur, a man who strolled the streets as an observer, never quite engaging in his surroundings but taking an interest in them.

*flaneur-A French term 1st popularized by 19th century poet Charles Baudelaire that refers to a person who wanders city streets, taking in the sights, especially those of consumer society.

-Walter Benjamin also wrote about the flaneur and the complex shopping arcades of 19th century Paris.
-Friedberg introduces the concept of the flaneuse. As window shopping became an important activity, this allowed for the flaneuse, as a window shopper to emerge in more contemporary contexts.

*flaneuse-The flaneur was traditionally male, but criticism has caused theorists to develop the concept of the flaneuse as the female equivalent.

-One of the fundamental changes in the turn-of-the-century Euro-American societies that was integral to the rise of consumer culture was the emergence of what historian T.J. Jackson Lears calls the “therapeutic ethos”. These societies shifted over a period of time from valorizing a Protestant work ethic, civil responsibility, and self-denial to legitimating ideas of leisure, spending, and individual fulfillment.
-As a result, the idea that everyone was potentially inadequate and in need of improvement took hold.
-Modern advertisements were able increasingly to speak to problems of anxiety an identity crisis.

~Commodity culture and commodity fetishism~
-The concept of commodity culture is intricately allied with the idea that we construct our identities, at least in part, through the consumer products that inhabit our lives.

*commodity self-a term, coined by Stuart Ewen, that refers to how we construct our identities, at least in part, through the consumer products that inhabit our lives. The concept of commodity self implies that our selves, if not our subjectivities, are mediated and constructed in part thorough our identification with commodity signs.

-Advertising encourages consumers to thing of commodities as central means through which to convey their personalities.

-Communication theorist Michael Schudson has argued that the ability of advertising to sell specific products is much overrated. Advertisers are more often than not guessing rather than accurately assessing consumer desires and attitudes.

*exchange value-the monetary value that gets assigned to a commodity in a consumer culture. When an object is seen in terms of its exchange value, its economic worth is more important than what it can be used for.

*use value-the practical function originally assigned to an object, in other words, what it does. This is in contrast to its exchange value, which is what is paid for it. Marxist theory critiques the emphasis in capitalism on exchange value over use value.

*commodity fetishism-the process through which commodities are emptied of the meaning of their production and filled instead with abstract meaning. In Marxism, commodity fetishism is the process of mystification that exists in capitalism between what things are and how they appear. It also describes the process by which special life powers are attributed to commodities rather than to other elements in social life.

*reification- a term from Marxist theory that describes the process by which abstract ideas are rendered concrete. This means, in part, the material objects, such as commodities, are awarded the characteristics of human subjects, while relations between human beings become more objectified.

*connotative meaning- In semiotics, all the social, cultural, and historical meanings that are added to a sign’s literal meaning. Connotative meanings rely on the cultural and historical context of the image and its viewers’ lived, felt knowledge of those circumstances.

-The Frankfurt school theorists saw commodities as hollowed out objects which propagated a loss of identity and eroded our sense of history.

~Addressing the Consumer~
*appellation-the process in advertising by which an ad speaks directly to the viewer/consumer. This many occur in the use of the term “you” in text or spoken workds, or may be implied in the address of the ad.

*pseudoindividuality-a term used in Marxist theory to describe the way that mass culture creates a false sense of individuality in cultural consumers. It refers to the effect of pop culture and advertising that addresses the viewer/consumer specifically as an individual, while it is speaking to many people at once.

-it can be said that advertising asks us not to consumer commodities but to consume signs in the semiotic meaning of the term.

-a brand is a product name that we know about whether or not we own or ever intend to purchase the product.
-The strategy of repeating a motif in an advertising campaign can be used not only to establish familiarity with a product for viewers, but also to keep viewers’ attention by varying the elements within a motif.

*presumption of relevance-in advertising, the manner of speaking that makes the presumption that the issues presented are of utmost importance.

*equivalence-a term used in applications of semiotics to refer to the establishment in an image of a relationship between elements within the frame or between a product and its signifier.

*differentiation- in advertising, the strategies to differentiate or distinguish wualities of one product or one brand from another.

~Images and Text~
*photographic truth-as images produced by the mechanical device of a photographic camera, photographs have the power to project images of the truth and to be seen as unmediated copies of reality. The myth of photographic truth means that photographs are understood to be evidence of actual people, events, and objects of the past, even through they are relatively easy to manipulate.

-Text can often have a powerful effect in establishing the meaning of an advertisement, and changing the meaning of the photograph or image presented.

*connoisseur- a person who is particularly skilled at discerning quality in a particular art. The term connoisseur is a class-based concept that has been traditionally used to refer to those with “discriminating” taste, i.e. those of an upper-class status.

-The enviable world of advertising is thus presented to viewers as a fantasy of what their lives could be, and it entices consumers to believe that this life is attainable through the act of consumption.

*docile bodies- a term used by Michel Foucault to describe the process by which social subjects submit bodily to social norms.

*lack- a term used in psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan to describe an essential aspect of the human psyche. According to Lacan, the human subject is defined by lack from the moment of birth and his or her separation from the mother. The subject is lacking because it is believed to be a fragment of something larger and more primordial. The human sense of always wanting something that is out of reach or unattainable is a result of lack.

~Belonging and difference~
-ads sell both concepts of belonging and difference.

*counter-hegemony- the forces in a given society that work against dominant meaning and power systems, and keep in constant tension and flux those dominant meanings.

*Bricolage-the practice of working with whatever materials are at hand. As a cultural practice, it refers to the activity of taking consumer products and commodities and making them one’s own by giving them new meaning.

-Fashion designers and advertisers use a form of counter-bricolage to appropriate styles which have reconfigured commodities. They repackage the youth styles that use bricolage to change the meaning of commodities and resell those ideas to mainstream consumers.
*counter-bricolage-the practice used by advertisers and marketers of manufacturing and selling as commodities aspects of bricolage style. For example, counter-bricolage occurs when certain youth styles are created to change the meaning of commodities and those styles are then appropriated by manufacturers and packaged and sold to consumers.

~The Brand~
-philosopher Jean Baudrillard has suggested that the late 19th century saw the emergence of a commodity culture in which the distinction between objects and images eroded. Instead of a real world of objects to which ads refer, we see the emergence of a culture in which the image itself is what we live through and consume. Identity is no longer the signifier of a product. Rather, identity is the pure product that we consumer, either as information or as image.

~Anti-ad practices~
-artist Hans Haacke has created a whole series of works that use the codes of advertising as forums for political critique. In 1978, he reworked a series of advertisements for Leyland Vehicles in which he incorporated info about the company’s practices in South Africa during apartheid, and created new slogans for the company such as “a breed apart”

KEY WORDS
*Sigmund Freud- (1856 –1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression. He is also renowned for his redefinition of sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life which is directed toward a wide variety of objects; as well as his therapeutic techniques, including his theory of transference in the therapeutic relationship and the presumed value of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires.

*Jacques Lacan - (1901 –1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. Lacan's ideas centered on Freudian concepts such as the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, focusing on identifications, and the centrality of language to subjectivity.
Lacan on desire- Lacan follows Spinoza in arguing that "desire is the essence of man." Desire is simultaneously the heart of human existence and the central concern of psychoanalysis. However, when Lacan talks about desire, it is not any kind of desire he is referring to, but always unconscious desire.

*John Peter Berger- (born 1926) is an art critic, novelist, painter and author. The best-known among his many works include the novel G., winner of the 1972 Booker Prize, and the introductory essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing.

*Madonna- (born 1958) is an American pop singer-songwriter, musician, dancer, record producer, film producer, actress and author. She is known for the use of sexual, social and religious themes in her work. Madonna has cited her Catholic and Italian background as major influences in her life and career.