Seminar 2 - Consumerism

In todays Seminar we had a quick recap of the lecture which was what the seminar was to be about - Consumerism.

Some of the points we had gone through were:

• Freuds theory - instinctual desire for sex and violence
• Pleasure principle
• Docile
• Incompatibility with society
• consumption to satisfy desire
• Political control
• Public relations
• Fordism > Mass Production > Disposable Income > Increased Consumption > Brand Culture
• Manufacturing False needs of sex, desire, power, status.

We were then split into groups of 5 and given a task to look at a section of the last chapter of 'Ways of Seeing' By John Berger. I was in a group with Lizzy, Issy and Jnae. We had decided to look at a perfume advert, the advert we chose was this one:

We decided that this advert would be suitable for the quotes we were going to be looking at as the main ideas which is covers are envy, desire, appeal and glamour. The first quote was

Publicity does not manufacture the dream. All that it does is to teach one of us that we are not yet enviable - yet could be.

This advert is an excellent example of this as from the get go you know what the advert is going to be about and the use of actress Scarlett Johansson in the advert straight away implies glamour, as the advert goes on she keeps talking about wanting to be desired, and being the woman you've always wanted to be. The advert end on her saying 'Oh I'm not looking for a million things, just that one, perfect thing, love' the bottle of perfume is then shown and is actually saying that the way to become this desirable and enviable woman is love which in fact is the perfume.7

The gap between what publicity actually offers and the future it promises, corresponds with the gap between what the spectator-buyer feels himself to be and what he would like to be.

This heavily links into the point made above how publicity offers and promotes different ideas to what you will actually receive from consuming this product. In this case the buyer is meant to feel that the perfume will get them love, desire and make them enviable and without it they are incomplete. But this would only work if the buyer can see themselves once they have consumed the product.

I thought that this task was very interesting as it teaches you how advertising has a sense of control over society and how they sell false needs in order to sell these products which we do not need.