The questions for these subjects are...
Gender representation-To what extent does advertising construct our ideas of gender?
Consumerism-What is the relationship between branding and the consumer self? (Ewen).
Social/political-Discuss the role graphic design has played as a part of social and political change?
Starting with consumerism, Times square is an example of a place where you are faced with an onslaught of consumer society. Consumerism is advertising forced in our faces every day trying to convince us to want to be certain people and buy certain things. Even people who choose to ignore it are subconsciously affected and shaped by it.
According to studies in 2012 the average person in Britain watched 47 tv adverts a day and with the recent increase in online on demand watching this has most definitely gone up dramatically. As a society we are saturated with these messages, this has an immense social influence on everything we do and the way we interact with people.
Karl Marx was a very influential theorist behind communism, he was one of the first to identify consumerism as a capitalist tactic to keep a heavy flow of income to the rich people in the world. Marxism is defined as "a worldview and method of societal analysis that focuses on class relations and societal conflict, that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, and a dialectical view of social transformation." The system of capitalism depends on us constantly buying things we don't need and thats why consumerist advertising is one of their most valuable assets.
Another big figure in anti capitalist views and being against consumerism is Judith Williamson. A great quote of hers is "Instead of being identified by what we produce, people identify themselves through what they consume". The idea being we don't see other people or ourselves judging by our personalities and skills but more by the clothes we wear, car we own and things we buy. It means that when we meet someone for the first time we judge them on their appearance looking for similarities to ourselves, the bad thing being we ignore a whole other mass of people who are almost definitely great people but because they don't look like us we don't engage with them. The dominant thing that shapes our lives is the sale , production and advertisement of products.
Advertising convinces us that its not just a car we are buying but something that changes our personalities and how people see us, it becomes the thing that makes us cool and popular. Advertising is not very successful in making us want to buy things for what they are and the needs they will satisfy. But it is brilliant at implanting an idea that it will benefit us and our personalities and lives if we buy it.
A perfect example of this is the advertisement for CK one perfume. The advert is designed to make you feel like a model, attractive, popular, a sense of belonging, sex appeal, sophistication and wealth all from the images of the people. Not once does the imagery attempt to suggest the perfume smells nice, it focuses more on showing the models having a good time to make you think you're a step closer to being like the people in the image by buying the product, it makes you desire a lifestyle you don't have.
These days we have Instagram, Facebook and other social networking sites to post photos of the things we buy all over. So now there's the satisfaction of buying things and people seeing them in person but also posting it on the internet so the whole world thinks you're classy for buying an expensive bottle of perfume.
An example of social networkings effect on consumerism is BLK water. It literally is water with black food colouring in and in a nicely designed bottle. They're marketing strategy was to give it to lots of celebrities and people with a lot of followers on social networking sites. They then took photos of the water and posted it online creating this desire for the product that is so hard to find. Its now pretty hard to find out of London in England but people still pay stupid amounts of money for it, despite it being the same thing that comes out of your taps. Obviously people don't want to buy it to drink the water and feel the satisfaction of something they could have at home. They want to buy it to post it online themselves so people will think they are exclusive somehow. Its ridiculous but an incredibly intelligent marketing technique in a society filled with social network addicts.
A tactic of people selling products is aesthetic innovation. Convincing people the more expensive and attractive products (on trend) will make you happier. By remodelling something essentially you can continue to sell the same product over and over again to the same people just by making small changes in the look. An example is the IPhone you get a momentary feeling of satisfaction buying one when its the newest model but that feeling is dampened when the new model is released and all of a sudden your IPhone seems crap in comparison convincing you to go out and buy another one.
Another much more dirty tactic is planned obsolescence. Companies basically make things that are designed to break after a certain amount of time. Its a horrible way to make sure that people less effected by aesthetic innovation still have to buy new things now and again.
The system makes us materialistic about everything. We are in turn alienated by society, removed from what we are as people and instead judging other people on the goods they own and their appearance.
Commodity fetishism is where companies cover up the truth about the real origins of their goods. You could go buy shoes from a local shoe maker who has spent their good time making them but instead you choose to spend £100 pound on Nikes made by people paid pennies in Indonesian sweatshops. We do this because Nike branding doesn't tell us the shoes origin instead its covered by third party idealisms and images showing attractive people running. It is a hidden truth.
Reification is when products are given human associations. Products themselves are perceived ad sexy, romantic, cool. An example being red lipstick being sexy, its not the woman thats being called sexy its the product, is she not sexy without? As a result of products becoming more human we are treating other people more like objects, removing their personalities and judging them solely by appearance.
Next we looked at the extent advertising constructs our ideas of gender. Advertising over the years is very guilty of portraying harmful stereotypes of people, over sexualising women and showing them to be the domestic sex and making men the figure of power. A good quote from John Berger's, Ways of seeing is "men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at". This is veiw something society is currently trying to challenge in showing women in their full power but its not an issue thats anywhere near to being overcome. The idea that men are the active sex and women passive is something believed by many in the world both female and male and we are far from a gender equal society, women are paid less in the majority of jobs.
This painting above is by Hans Memling and is titled 'Vanity'. The painting was was done in 1485 and at this time painters were predominantly male and the only people rich enough to buy them were also male. The paintings were made to please that certain audience of rich men who wanted to see young, innocent nude women. This image shows where the birth of gender roles in todays society stemmed from. The idea of paintings like this was to present women as always being available sexually and put the idea into mens heads that if a woman isn't always available to serve his needs than she is not a good wife and he is not a strong enough man. The title 'vanity' implies that women are only interested in their own appearance this then justifies the sexualisation of women as they are seen as animals of vanity and ignorance. This keeps men in the position of dominance. The women in the paintings at this time were always very young and innocent looking, this was so the men never felt overpowered by the women shown. They were innocent but sexual this also led to a lot of peodophilic happenings that were seen as more acceptable because of this.
The image above is by a feminist group called the Guerilla Girls. This was a protest placed outside the met museum making a factual point about the artwork they showed and also the art world in general. Art is still dominated by men and is something they and many other women feel should be more equal.
This advert above is a brilliant ad ridiculous example of how advertising forces gender roles. The advert shows the man blowing his cigarette smoke in the womans face and suggests doing this will attract any woman you want. It shows that a man just with the power of buying these cigarettes can have ultimate power over women. Its completely stupid as of course if a man was to actually blow smoke in your face you'd almost definitely think he was rude and be disgusted and not want to follow him at all. But this advert worked, men bought the cigarettes thinking he would become a sexual figure all the women would want just from this product.
This wonderbra advert is another example the woman is oversexualised a lot and althought the product is for women the advert seems more aimed at men, making them think its acceptable to think of women as objects. From a woman's point of view this is making them think that this is the way to be a successful women and make men like you. The image signifies that women should be able to provide sexuality and and to make food as a domestic woman. This becomes an influence on mens views of men and also is an instructional lesson to women on how they should behave to be a success.
As advertising agencies are being criticised for oversexualing women they are now trying to create a messed up equality by making men oversexualised too and createing ideals about how they now should look. This is not a good solution because now not only are women pressured by advertising to act and look a certain way but men are also suffering from it too. Dont get me wrong its not to the same extent as women are hit by it a lot harder but its not healthy for either sex.
Next the social and political question-"discuss the role graphic design has played a part in social and political change?". The easiest way to approach this would be propaganda which is not something I would like to base my essay on so im going to keep this short as i've pretty much written it off as an option. From the seminar I took down a few notes about approaches I could take if I was to choose this question such as...
- El Lissitzky-"beat the whites with the red wedge"
- Oz magazine- About hippie culture
- Zines- They record the attitudes of subcultures (punk etc.)
- Adbusters- culture jammers
- Occupy movement- subtervising
So conclusively I am choosing to base my essay and body of work on consumerism as I find it interesting and easy to write about. I will do some further research into it to expand my ideas for studio work.
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