Category Archives: Discussion questions #4

Discussion Questions #4

Discussion #4

1.According to Berger, how do “publicity” –what we would call advertising–images influence consumers and why is this significant?

According to Berger, publicity influence consumers by advertising pictures of people who have been transformed.  As a result of transformation, they look enviable in the eyes of public. The state of being envied includes glamor. When we see Marilyn Monroe, it is her glamour that attracts her fans. Therefore, the main purpose of publicity is to promote glamour that attract consumers. It is significant in a way how it helps to develop a hope in an individual. Berger mentions, “Glamour is for everybody who believes they can be glamorous or perhaps more accurately, for everybody who finds that they cannot afford not to be glamorous”. He is telling us that people aspire to achieve glamour like they are promoting. It entices people so much that it forces people to achieve that glamour. So, transformation of people helps generate hope in the public, that they wish to go through the same process of that transformation. In a way, the glamor they are trying to sell is successfully sold to the public.

2.As he compares oil painting to publicity (advertising) photography, Berger argues that oil painting “showed what the owner was already enjoying among his possessions and way of life;” “it enhanced his view of himself as he already was.”  Whereas publicity pictures, “appeal to a way of life that we aspire to or think we aspire to.” Why are these differences important? What do they reveal to us about the production of images for publicity?

These differences are important because each aspect of these imagery, oil painting and publicity photography maintains its own uniqueness and purpose. Berger tells us that oil painting has the idea of grace, elegance and authority and portrays what the owner already has which only adds more to his own views of himself whereas publicity pictures inspire people to the way of life that they wish to attain. It is the aspect of glamor that is missing in oil painting. It is the glamour that drives the whole notion of publicity photographs. Berger argues that a publicity picture “suggests that If we get what it is offering, our life will be different from what it is.” So, in a way it puts forward a promise in an individual, but a promise that can be only attained if we have money. Therefore, the production of these images for publicity reveals our anxieties about money.

3. Choose one of the “dreams” he offers or think of your own. How does this dream offered by advertising use imagery to manipulate consumers?

The dream of faraway places where the images created for different destinations are so eye catching that we tend to delve into the realm of that unseen place which produces an imagination within us. The advertised photographs are exotic enough that it tends to manipulate a consumer’s mind. It delivers the promise of a beautiful experience depicted in the photograph. The consumer begins to envy the promise of a beautiful experience in a faraway land. They wish that promise to be fulfilled, so they do whatever they can do to experience that advertised image. Now that the consumer is influenced, it encourages them to live the experience promoted by the publicity photograph. So that is how the dream, or the promise offered by advertising use of imagery to manipulate consumers.

Discussion Questions #4

Question 1.  According to Berger publicity influences consumers by telling all of us that we are not adequate in the way we are and the way our lives are.  It also suggests that by buying a product we can change that and make our lives richer.  The mechanism it uses to do this is to show people who have been transformed as a result of a product, and are now envied.  And as Berger indicates, this state of being envied is called glamour and publicity is the process of creating glamour.  This is significant because it is a very effective way of selling products.  You make someone feel inadequate and then create an illusion that a certain product can produce the ideal life or lifestyle and thus curing this feeling of inadequacy.

Question 2.  These differences are important because in oil paintings they are not trying to sell something.  The paintings reflect what someone has or had in the present, while publicity is representing a future possibility with a means to achieve it.  The method in which publicity attains this goal is by showing scene after scene of people changing their lives as a result of buying certain products.   And the changing of their lives includes themselves, their homes and even their relationships.  Publicity also uses another method in which to sell products and that is to play upon people’s fears.  Specifically the fear of not being desirable or to be unenviable.

Question 3.  Berger provides three examples of dreams that are used to sell products and one of these he calls, The Dream of later Tonight.  This type of dream shows people greatly enjoying each other’s company with all the participants being good looking and very well dressed.  It also shows certain individuals who appear to be greatly envied, which plays upon the desire to be the life of the party and the most glamorous.  This type of imagery is very effective for selling products like clothing, jewelry, perfumes, alcohol and cigarettes, because if one does not own the finest of these products, one can not even begin to achieve this type of dream.

Discussion question #4

 

 

  1. According to Berger, how do “publicity”–what we would call advertising–images influence consumers and why is this significant?
  • Publicity is the manufacturing process. Publicity persuades us that when we buy something more, it transforms both us and our lives. Publicity or advertising persuades us to spend money by telling people that there would be such a great transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. It offers the buyer a glamourous image of themselves before buying the product. John Berger said: “The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.” The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. Glamour is created in ads by showing people who doesn’t have a specific something that it’s very important and that those people cannot live without it in which its envy is created. Berger also mentioned: “The happiness of being envied is glamour. Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest – if you do, you will become less enviable.” Berger states that personal envy did not exist in old times, therefore glamour did not exist, because status was determined by birth. In the present, personal envy was propagated by models or well-known public figures in publicity images.
  1. As he compares oil painting to publicity (advertising) photography, Berger argues that oil painting “showed what the owner was already enjoying among his possessions and way of life;” “it enhanced his view of himself as he already was.”  Whereas publicity pictures, “appeal to a way of life that we aspire to or think we aspire to.” Why are these differences important? What do they reveal to us about the production of images for publicity?
    • “Oil painting, before anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.” Berger said. Oil painting and ads share the same visual language. In the video he showed us oil paintings and ads side by side. There are a lot of similarity between them. Berger then states that the point of difference between oil paintings and publicity images or ads. The oil painting showed what its owner was already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his view of himself as he already was. It began with facts of his life. On the other hand, publicity images rely on viewers having a certain reaction. It is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. It convinces the buyer to buy the product to have a better life and gets some people before and after getting this product of whatever they are trying to sell and shows how happy they became after buying this product. Publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of this future is endlessly deferred.
  2. Choose one of the “dreams” he offers or think of your own. How does this dream offered by advertising use imagery to manipulate consumers?
    • Berger says that publicity images always depict one of three dreams. First, the dream of later tonight. You are part of the good life they smile at and they are part of the good life you smile at. Everyone is surrounded by what brings pleasure, but it is you who will bring the greatest pleasure of all and next morning you will feel the same about it. Secondly, the skin dream. The surface you can touch. The skin without a biography. Finally, the dream of a faraway place: Is to lie down on the bed alone, to allow one’s thoughts to pass through the light of the window and to travel elsewhere, conjuring images. Distances without horizons. To be in two worlds at the same times, just where Europe ends. The other world, violent, infidel, full of unknown passions. Wearing your own clothes next to your own skin, you join the nomads or to go north next to the ancient castles, an age of chivalry of romantic love. Publicity pretends to interpret the world around us and to explain everything in its own terms, it adds up to a kind of philosophical system. The things which publicity sells are in themselves neutral, just objects and so they have to be made glamourous by being inserted into contexts which are exotic enough to be arresting, but not close enough to offer us a threat. Publicity abuses the realities of public figures and events and struggles in other parts of the world. This reality and unreality confronts each other and then people are faced by contrast which is incomprehensible.