The 1980s and Beyond John Keenan johnkeenancoventryacuk Theory checkup Read Understains Words in Ads Freedom Captains of Consciousness Decoding Advertisements Watch Century of the Self and Ways of Seeing ID: 796972
Download The PPT/PDF document "M98MC Week 2 Advertising and Consumer Cu..." is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
Slide1
M98MCWeek 2Advertising and Consumer Culture
The 1980s and Beyond
John Keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk
Slide2Theory check-up
Read
Understains
Words in Ads
Freedom
Captains of Consciousness
Decoding Advertisements
Watch
Century of the Self and Ways of Seeing
Slide3Last week – one thing you learned
Slide4Jingyi Chen learned
Slide5David Adesanwo learned
Slide6Cynthia Amah learned
Slide7Tam Nguyen learned
Slide8Campaign DetailsIn groups of a maximum of 6
Slide9Today19th
Century
1950s – birth of consumer culture
1980s – consumer culture takes
over
Neoliberalism
Lifestyles
Hedonism
Postmodernism
Slide10Culture3 definitions –Raymond Williams
High, popular, a way of life
A structure of feeling
Raymond Williams
Slide11Growth of Consumer CultureCapitalism/Enlightenment 16
th
-17
th
Centuries
Massification
– alienation 19
th
Century
The affluent worker 1950s
Slide12The 1980sThe 1980s, Neoliberalism and the Commodification of Everything
Postmodern Culture and Consumption – you know you’ve been Tango-
ed
Slide13Culture
The Nineteenth Century
Urbanisation
Migration
Uprooted mass
Slide14You
’
ve
never had it so
good (Harold MacMillan, UK prime-minister)
Goldthorpe
et al, 1968-9
The Affluent Worker
Slide15Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity
capitalism
could not survive
John Berger 3.39
Watch: John Berger Ways of Seeing
Slide16Sigmund Freud
Edward Bernays
‘
constantly moving happiness machines
’
Herbert Hoover29/4/2002 The Century of the Self
Century of the Self
8.33
Slide17The 1980s
Key ideas
Culture
Thatcherism (UK) Reagan (US)
Lifestyles
Hedonism
Display
Individualism
extravagance
Slide18Music
Slide19Fashion
Slide20Leisure
Slide21Dance
Slide22Films
Slide23TV
Slide24Hair
Slide25Slide26Greed is Good
Slide27Lifestyles
Gold Blend
Yuppie
Lifestyles in Advertising
Read: David
Gauntlett
Slide28Hedonism‘modern hedonism is characterized by a longing to experience in reality those pleasures created or enjoyed in the imagination, a longing which results in the ceaseless consumption of novelty’
Lury
, 1997: 73
Read: Lead us into temptation
Slide29‘People now work...not just to stay alive, but in order to be able to afford to buy consumer products. The goods which are advertised serve as goals and rewards for working
... consumption
has taken off into an almost ethereal, or hyper-real, symbolic level so that it is the idea of purchasing as much as the act of purchasing which operates as a motivation for many in doing paid work’
Bocock
, 1995: 50
Work
Why else would you work?
Slide30DEBATE: WHAT ALTERNATIVES ARE THERE TO HEDONISM?
Slide311970s - Keynesian
• financial and oil crises bring social unrest
1980s
• Rise of new
economic
and political doctrines
–
Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan
1990s
• Demise of contrasting ideologies
– Fall of the Berlin Wall
– Dissolution of the Soviet Union
Neoliberalism
Slide32The postmodern condition
What do you know?
Slide33‘the game of sign consumption is an integral part of the ‘society of the spectacle’
Lury
, 1997: 69
Postmodernism 1 – sign not goods consumption
Baudrillard
‘
all needs are socially created’
Lury
, 1997:
68
‘the logic of production is no longer paramount; instead the logic of signification is all-important’
Lury
, 1997: 69
Slide34‘The audience is increasingly made up of a media-literate generation, its members, rather than seeking the truth, in turn self-consciously mimic the media – they adopt the persona of fictional characters as a way of expressing themselves, they discuss their personal lives as analogies with the story-lines of soap-operas, and talk in catch-phrases of celebrities and the slogans of advertising campaigns. They know when they’ve been Tango-
ed
’
Lury
, 1997: 70
Postmodern Consumption 2 - knowing
‘it makes no sense to criticize people for being insufficiently materialistic; instead, we should submit to the magic of advertising as a playful code’
Lury
, 1997: 71
Slide35‘Objects are no longer related to in terms of their practical utility, but instead have become empty signifiers of an increasing number of constantly changing meanings. There is an overproduction of signs and a loss of referents’
Lury
, 1997: 71
Postmodern Consumption 3 – fluid signified
Slide36‘Rather than people using objects to express differences between themselves
... people
have become merely the vehicles for expressing the differences between objects’
Lury
, 1997: 71
Postmodern Consumption 4 – the consumed individual
Slide37‘the final triumph of capitalism...meaning is a sham...reality flickers like a television screen’
Lury
, 1997: 71
Postmodern Consumption 5 -
hyperreality
Slide38The postmodern condition
Slide39I consume therefore I am
I consume therefore I am
Slide40The death of God left the angels in a strange position. They were overtaken suddenly by a fundamental question… The question was,
‘
What are angels?
’
Postmodernism: identity
Slide41Modernism
THE IDEA OF
PROGRESS
Creation of Metanarratives
Rational Thought
History
Voltaire (1694-1778) - ordered history and set it in a time frame and judged it by a fixed morality and scientific
laws
Science
Newton (1643-1727) - science. 17th Century onwards:
‘
science became the major aspect of human life…science could only move one way, forward
’
SIDNEY POLLARD LONDON: MIDDLESEX, 1968, P.20
Philosophy
Descartes (1596-1650): I think therefore I am
Pascal(1623-62):
‘
men…as one man, always living and incessantly learning
’
cited in THE IDEA OF PROGRESS, SIDNEY POLLARD LONDON: MIDDLESEX, 1968, P.20
Slide42All that is solid will melt into air
Berman cited in Hebdige, After the Masses, in New Times, Hall S and jacques (Eds),1989: p.76
We are swimming in a sea of signs
Jean Baudrillard
Postmodernism
Postmodern culture is a fragmented culture
John Fiske, Postmodernism and Television, Chapter 3 in Mass Media and Society, 2nd Edition (1996), London: Arnold p.56
Slide43metanarratives 1
Science
By understanding the world we will control it
The universe was made by a Big Bang
People evolved from apes
People keep improving life
We exist to make the world better
(progress)
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide44metanarratives 2
History
Cavemen were wild
Civilisations like The Romans controlled them but were violent and dangerous
Kings established a secure civilised country
Democracy came and gave us power
We live to maintain this progress
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide45Metanarratives 3
Church
God creates world
People go bad
Jesus dies to save people from Hell
Repent and go to Heaven
Life is a trial
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide46metanarratives 4
Authority
Some people have special skills
These people should use them to serve society
We must respect those who serve for our good
Life is about knowing your place in society and serving where you can
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide47metanarratives 5
State
I am born an Englishman
I like roast beef, drink pints and show no emotion
These values I will fight for my children to have
I exist to maintain the natural way of life of my people
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide48metanarratives 6
Marxism
We are all born equal
We must take from those with more than they need and give it to those who need it
I exist to ensure that the world becomes fair
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Some have more than others, some starve
Slide49metanarratives 6
Feminism
Women are oppressed by men
I exist to make the world fairer for women
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Women need to rise up and take an equal place
Slide50Post-modernism
Lyotard - an incredulity towards metanarratives
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide51High
Windows
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide52High Windows
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought,
That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds
. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Slide53Slide54A culture with
No progress
No common ideology
No common meaning
We are free.
We are lost.
The loss of metanarratives
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide55The loss of meta-narratives
Dick Hebdige
3 Negations
Against totalisation
Against teleology – designed for result
Against utopia
As if (1950s) As if (2000s)
Postmodernism 1: Metanarratives
Slide56‘
Consumers use these symbolic meanings to construct, maintain and express each of their multiple identities
’
Elliot 133
Postmodernism: identity
Slide57‘
The self is conceptualised in post-modernity not as a given product of a social system nor as a fixed entity which the individual can simply adopt, but as something the person actively creates, partially through consumption
’
Elliot p.132
Postmodernism identity
Slide58‘
the individual endeavours to construct and maintain an identity that will remain stable through a rapidly changing environment
’
Elliot p.131
Postmodernism identity
Slide59Amir Khan
British - accent
Northern - down-to earth
Muslim - prays to Allah
Pakistani - supports them at cricket
Male - watches football
Teenager - wears a baseball cap
Sporty - Adidas
Postmodernism identity
Amir Khan
Slide60Who am I?
rural
green
rich
Slide61Who am I?
I am powerful
I am sporty/be the best
I am independent/art above science
Slide62Who am I?
Educated and liberal
Fashionable/active
Young and sociable
Slide63‘
The individual is offered resources to achieve
‘
an ego-ideal
’
which commands the respect of others and inspires self-love
’
Elliot p.131
Slide64Who could you be?
Slide65Who could you be?
A pool of possible selves
Slide6610.
‘
Culture and commerce are now fully intertwined
’
Davidson M, The Consumerist Manifesto, 1992, London: Routledge, p.191
Slide67‘
The self is a symbolic project, which the individual must actively construct out of the available symbolic materials
’
Elliot, p.131