The images that surround us- Post 1

Power is such a complex thing to have, yet its definition is quite simple; the way I see it, having power is having control.  Hegemony is among the same lines; it simply means to have influence over others.

(it took me a while to find a picture that represented what I had in mind. I looked for "poder" instead. here's the picture credit)

What is the purpose of publicity and advertising? Why is it so effective? How are publicity and sexuality often used together?

In one way or another, every one of our readings so far are related the images that surround us. Either the way in which these images are used to convince the public to consume, the way we should look and think about these images and/or the how convincing these images can be.

Berger's Way of Seeing explains the purpose of publicity by the use of images. 

"Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure."

Images have the power to convince us that we have to own the product that they are selling. They use the glamour that it offers and convince us that if we own it, we'll be just as glamorous.  Catch phrases such us "Because you're worth it", become associated with the product and the psychology used behind it reassures us that these products are okay to buy.

I'm sure that we've all heard the extremely annoying cliche "sex sells", correct? Well as sad and disturbing as it sounds, it is the truth. 

Sex is used because it sells. It can either as subtle as a woman holding a can of soda, or full front nudity, but it sells. Here's a link to one of this year's Super Bowl Commercials, where Kate Upton is used as a sex object to sell a Mercedes Benz : Kate Upton Commercial   

"Publicity is about social relations, not objects."

Bells Hooks wants us to think critically of these images and have a different way of seeing them. She wants us to analyze popular culture, race and gender and to realize that sexism is all around us. She says that we live in a white supremacist patriarchal society in which sexism and popular culture (mainstream ideas, images, attitude etc shared)  are used as a way to foster social roles and stereotypes based on sex and gender. 

Do Images Mean Anything? Of course they do!

Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle argues that our society is dominated by modern productions and that the representation of life is done through a series of "spectacles" or images of what life is supposed to be like.

"The spectacle is the flip side of money. It, too, is an abstract general equivalent of all commodities. But whereas money has dominated society as the representation of universal equivalence — the exchangeability of different goods whose uses remain uncomparable — the spectacle is the modern complement of money: a representation of the commodity world as a whole which serves as a general equivalent for what the entire society can be and can do. The spectacle is money one can only look at, because in it all use has already been exchanged for the totality of abstract representation. The spectacle is not just a servant of pseudo-use, it is already in itself a pseudo-use of life."

We live in a society driven by the consumption of goods. Advertising uses images to make us believe that we must own these products in order for us to feel complete. As a result, we work more, and enjoy less. With the images that surround us, we are lead to believe that happiness is represented in the things that we own.