No Such Thing as Bad Publicity

It's sad to see that as a society, our moods and attitudes towards certain social constructs haven't changed much or at all. Yes, everyone can vote now and we all have equal rights and all that, but that's all on the surface. Discrimination, however subtle, is still prevalent, and the images used in our media is all generated under a very patriarchal system that segregates in such a way that comes off as casual. TV commercials still enforce gender roles and magazines still prop up women as an object or part of an object only to be visually stimulating and not truly have an identity of its own under the "male gaze".


SEX SELLS

In the advertising world, the intended result of an advertisement is to somehow manipulate and endorse a product in such a way that a consumer will be compelled to buy. The unintended effects would be the enforcement of patriarchal and sexist doctrines long established in our culture and society. An easy example that I'm using for this case is Cosmopolitan magazine. Last week's presentation wasn't lying about what that magazine was advertising. I went to look for a Cosmo cover and pretty much every single search result had either the word sex in it multiple times, or displayed tips on pleasing men, etc. This cover has sex displayed three times and mentions orgasms. From the surface, I would think these topics would be coming from a Playboy magazine. Despite what the magazine's title implies, there is nothing freeing or liberating from trying to live the life that they advocate of being a sex object to please others.


Old Coors Light Commercial

I'm assuming the idea behind constructing these ads are to validate the consumer and assure that the experience being shown is the result of their product. This old Coors Light commercial basically is trying to sell me on the idea that Football is a fun crowd, and drinking their light beer will allow me to share and enjoy their decadence. Any advertisement on television is promising me a great time if I just buy their product. This might come off as a little insensitive, but I love seeing McDonald's commercials of skinny attractive people eating their food and telling me that they're loving it. Personally, I don't buy it.

I think the best way to truly construct an alternative to mainstream images is to have a creative team that's truly diverse, all kinds of people from all kinds of live. Personally, I know what I like but those tastes don't translate to the masses, and I wouldn't be able to creatively construct something that sells that much by myself. I am not that good, so I need help. My time at Hunter taking Media Production courses has enforced that idea in my head, and I've been fortunate to have had good creative teams so far. I've picked this clip to tie my cluelessness to Mel Gibson's character, and that he needed some supernatural power to become better at his job. I think with a truly diverse and balanced team, ideas that come up won't be too extreme in one part of the spectrum and the end result would be a quality advertisement, free from any power hierarchies, sexist or racist connotations that constantly plague this society's ad world.

What Women Want (2000)

Some anti advertising messages were created as a backlash to the massive amounts of sexist and stereotyped imagery that surrounds our society in advertisements. Cortese writes in constructed bodies about how subvertising "uses the power of brand recognition and brand hegemony either against itself or to promote an unrelated value or idea." This kind of counter-culture counter-ads use a company's known image to criticize the product and to raise awareness of the harms coming from the product to make a strong point. I believe this to be an extremely effective way of an alternative path for anti-advertising messages to get their point across by using well known corporate images that are designed to catch the eye, and sell information instead of a product. Even if sued for infringing on a corporate image, the "no such thing as bad publicity" rule still works here, and the news generated from this happening could spread awareness on the cause in question.