Just to start I would like to
appreciated that I am privileged enough to understand and see the flaws of
advertisement in everyday life. I
do not have cable but when I am at a friends and see the current advertisements
I am bothered by how ridiculously misleading they can be. TV ads are different than magazine ads
because they can also encapsulate the viewer with sound. Sometimes I will also find that I do
get sucked into the trap and find it hard to look away. Advertisements trick the uneducated because when they see the photograph they believe it to be the truth.
With
a photographic ad that does not include motion I find it easier to point out
flaws because the sound is not there to distract from my thinking. In this case study of the
commodification of human relations and experience, I find what they are talking
about to be common among many ads.
Wells speaks about two parts of an advertisement. The connoted message and the denoted
message. The denoted message is
what is obvious clear message, which for this advertisement is an image of a
young man on his television mobile device on a truck in a desert. Advertisements can come across as being
simple messages but this case studies says how that is incorrect. This is where the connoted message
comes into play. The connoted
message deals with the hidden meanings in the image that come from
context. Ali Zafar is a pop star
in Pakistan and is known as a urban, Americanized, rebel-without-a-cause
through his music videos. When the
viewer sees this advertisement they immediately relate all the knowledge they
have of Zafar with the mobile company.
This can happen consciously and subconsciously and either way the
company wins.
My
issue with this advertisement is the issue I have with the growing technology
in this world. Distance. Zafar is pictured on this truck with a
bunch of rugged men where he is well kept with nice clothes and straight hair. He is not paying attention to anything
around him except the phone. This
is similar to students that walk around on campus not paying any attention to
what is going on around them. I am
not okay with this. The fact that
the advertisement is promoting this as well is displeasing. Advertisements have to ability to make positive
change in the world but their only goal is to make money off of whoever they can.
2 comments:
I think you are definitely correct about how the way video draws us into ads so much more that photographs do. Part of me believes that this is because video is activating more human senses than photography does. I also think that with television advertisements it becomes hard to look away because you are forced to sit there and watch it unless you want to change the channel. With a magazine ad, you aren't forced to stare at the ad. You can simply flip the page and its over. You don't have to think about in depth as something more than an image.
I liked reading what you had to say Ransom, because I agree that it is easier to analyze a still ad, over one in a video format. This i a point I never really thought about too much before, but it's so true. In magazines, ads can sometimes seem ridiculous, (almost comical) because you can see how set-up and edited they are.
In combination with this, I think video ads are harder to critique and break down because we have this sort of fascination with seeing something play out as it would be in real life. This is why we like watching movies- it tells a story as if we were there too. It seems more real; more believable.
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