Advertising

Advertising is everywhere.  It speaks volumes to us as we sometimes fall prey to its grip on human nature and our ability to make mistakes.  This could involve the usage of sexism, racism, and power hierarchies.  Through all of this, we see a product through these ads and want to purchase the product.  This creates a false sense of consumerism that robs us.  These images generate a change in the way we see the world, for good and for bad. 

Sexism plays a major role in how the advertising industry is run.  To make a product more appealing to men, a sultry woman in scanty clothes is a successful way of drawing in an audience.  The woman on the ad just needs to look pretty to help the product sell, regardless if the product has to do anything with the woman.  Kilbourne states, “Primarily girls are told by advertisers that what is the most important about them is their perfume, their clothing, their body, their beauty” (Kilbourne 132).  In other words, sex sells products.

Racism is also present in much of the ads.  The ad below is for SalesGenie and was aired at Super Bowl XLII.  The panda depicted below has a heavy Asian accent, while the genie in the ad has an American accent.  This was very controversial since the ad should have used one accent universally, preferable an American accent since it was aired at the American Super Bowl.  Bell hooks explains, "The North American audiences have enjoyed the elegance of manners governing relations of dominance and subordination between the races" (173).  This quote supports that the North Americans (in this ad case, the United State audience) would find this ad sickly funny at the Asian's dilemma and accent.

 A lot of ads are unintentionally sexist or racist, making them funny to some viewers.  In the ad below, the message is clearly racist.  If you read the fine print, the ad is for the Rice campaign.  If one were to merely glance at the ad, it would be racist.  As supported in much of bell hook's articles, she states how the minority are made stereotypically "funny" to draw in others and to sell products.

Ads are sometimes intentionally racist or sexist.  Others might not be.  The ad companies try to make us addicted and therefore sell the product regardless of what is on the ad.  The ad sometimes remains in our mind, therefore making the product immaculate, regardless of how useless or unneeded it is.  Pop culture plays a major role in the way we see the world.  The ad above shows viewers Chinese are thin and therefore all other races/ethnicities should follow the example to be thin.  Ads shape the way we buy products and probably have more influence in our choices than the product itself.