Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising, Volume 13Boyars, 1978 - 180 pages A fascinating account of how the admen achieve their effects.'Stuart Hood This book sets out not simply to criticize advertisements on the grounds of dishonesty and exploitation, but to examine in detail, through over a hundred illustrations, their undoubted attractiveness and appeal. The overt economic function of this appeal is to make us buy things. Its ideological function, however, is to involve us as 'individuals' in perpetuating the ideas which endorse the economic basis of our society. If it is economic conditions which make ideology necessary, it is ideology which makes those conditions seem necessary. If society is to be changed, this vicious circle of "necessity" and ideas must be broken. Decoding Advertisements is an attempt to undo one link in the chain which we ourselves help to forge, in our acceptance not only of the images and values of advertising, but of the 'transparent' forms and structures in which they are embodied. It provides not an "answer," but a "set of tools" which we can use to alter our own perceptions of one of society's subtlest and most complex forms of propaganda. Other books by Judith Williamson published by Marion Boyars are Consuming Passions: the Dynamics of Popular Culture and Deadline at Dawn: Film Criticism 1980-1990. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absence actually advertising already appellation become Benson and Hedges bottle brand X calligraphy camera caption Catherine Deneuve Chanel Chapter chocolates Chris Bonington cigarettes Clairol Cockburn's port colour connection connotation consumer cooked correlative create culture deciphered differentiation drink example exchange exist fact feel function future give herbal essence hermeneutic idea ideology imaginary inevitably involves joke knowledge language look magic manufacturers Margaux Hemingway material Max Factor meaning mirror myth mythic narrative nature never objective correlative objects obviously orange ourselves packet past perfume person picture potato precisely present provides reality referent system relation relationship replaces represent seen shown shows signified simply simultaneously skin Smirnoff social society sort Southern Comfort space spatial status structure surrealism Susan Hampshire symbols things Thomson Holidays totemism transformation Vichy woman words