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Pleasure™
Picture this: You are in your living room watching your favorite television program which is just getting to reach the climax of the plot, but suddenly it goes to commercial. Afterwards, you are then presented with an advertisement displaying happy attractive people relaxing on a beach with the words “come here to get away from it all” playing in the background with catchy rhythmic music. Immediately, you think nothing much of the commercial you are seeing, and once it is over you forget most of it, but as it turns out you did not truly forget. Later, throughout the next day at your job, you seem to be humming the commercials tune. Next, you then notice what you are humming, and then you become aware of what you are doing. Shortly after, you are now remembering the relaxing beach, but what now comes to you is a feeling of jealousy. Why is that? It is because you are jealous at what you can be experiencing, “Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him in image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be” (Berger 132).
Thereafter, you ask how these emotions came about? It is simply due to the commercial seen previously even though at first it seemed to have caused no effect, but why were you even feeling anything for it in the first place? It is because advertisements employ techniques that dig into natural impulses in an unnoticed effort, but still “they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation” (Berger 129). Incidentally, as stated before, this is the way jealousy was derived from, and it is also where perception is altered. Indeed, the questions previously said are valid to ask, but unknown to you is that these questions, and their answers, were already made known by another party in order to make use of their ability to influence in order to have control over the masses; who is this other party you ask? It is corporations.
Moreover, this is the way in which corporations affect people because they use advertisements to influence by including biological and psychological predisposed views that target pleasure, they manipulate psychological views to affect self worth along with self-esteem, and they use jealousy to aid in their efforts.
Initially, corporations in America were once strictly controlled in rural times, but through the use of cunning tactics they figured out a way to break free from their confines, and since then they have grown into titanic proportions that now affect people through the use of advertisements to buy material goods as they use marketing techniques that exploit biological and psychological aspects of humans that seek pleasure because these components easily influence according to Taking ADvantage by Richard F. Taflinger; these given advertisements use “visual or aural” appeals aimed at a persons subconscious to influence their mind and emotions. Additionally, it also states that through an evolutionary standpoint humans formed a natural reflex, called an instinct, which brings out certain reactions when presented to certain stimuli in an environment that is supposed to cause a predisposed response that is either negative or positive to the stimuli perceived. Most notably, the response wanted by an advertisement is that of pleasure (positive), so it is this theme that is present in each media of an advertisement (Newspaper, Magazine, Commercial, Etc.). What is more, these instinctive reactions are what Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam describes as jolts, “In broadcasting terms, a jolt is any “technical event” that interrupts the flow of sound or thought or imagery…a jolt forces your mind to pump for meaning” (Lasn 15). Even more, these instinctive reactions or jolts have been taken from the natural world, and put into the consumer world to cause the reactions people were predisposed to do. Giving to the fact, instincts were once used in defensive situations for survival, but due to modern conveniences they are not able to play a survival role now. Furthermore, advertisements have taken advantage of this as they have taken an evolutionary developed system of response and turned it into a system that brings out a constant stream of stimuli that eventually dulls a person which eventually causes them to become connected to modernized life and attitudes. As a result of this, the pleasures in life as said in Advertising: Appealing to Fun and Pleasure from Miami University have been targeted, and exploited, to “change/strengthen one's attitude toward a certain product or service”, and here is where self worth is manipulated.
In consequence, women are the targeted audience for which self-worth is manipulated vastly as looking at current advertisements it is shown that vanity affairs are towards the female gender. Subsequently, beauty has been successfully placed to be the priority for most because it has shown to be what can truly make someone feel attractive or worth something, and that is how a persons self worth is mainly influenced. For this reason, advertiserscreated an image problem for women in order to present them with a “solution” which is usually just a product they can buy, “advertisers employ vigorous advertising strategy techniques such as, constructing a problem that can only be solved using their products” (Asian Social Science); this issue is also said in Taking Advantage, “commercials rely on the concept of self esteem, that theuse of a product will raise how a person feels about themselves. Similarly, In Beauty Product Advertisements: A Critical Discourse Analysis it states that an “ideal women” or “ideal look” is used when advertising towards women in order to show what they are supposed to look like, and that is specifically where the manipulation of self worth is made as advertisements target a women’s self-esteem in order to lower their guard, so that they can become susceptible in changing their look in order to please. Specifically, advertisements do this by offering them a view of how “better” they can look when they invest in the manufacture’s product, “ the ideology of beauty is constructed and reconstructed through magazines by stereotyping how beauty products are synonymous with a better life”. By the same token, through the use of being constantly treated as an object to please others a submissive role is placed on women because they are treated as something only meant to be looked at in advertisements, “Nevertheless both women’s products and gender neutral products seem often to have males portrayed as wise, scientists or knowledgeable experts and females as happy, grateful and contented users of those products” (Scandinavia Journal of Psychology). Consequently, striving to look or be like someone else whether by appearance or status is another way a person can become heavily inclined to do something, but most of the time it is because of jealousy for what is not experienced or owned by the person’s own projected self image.
In a like manner, women, as said previously, are presented with a choice meant to have goods purchased in order for their lives to improve, but what is also supposed to happen is that they are supposed to become envious of themselves to what they can look like and become, “the spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product” (Berger 134). In fact, this a way in which jealousy is effectively used to alter a persons feelings of self worth because they are meant to feel inadequate when the product is not purchased, “the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product” (Berger134). In all honesty, this jealousy comes from being what a person is not as they are imagining what they can be. Thus people are not jealous of another person, but of their future selves because they are experiencing what they currently do not own, “If a deprived person compares himself/herself with a non-deprived person, a certain degree of discontent is generated” (Nripesh 449)- in this case the non-deprived person is the future self being imagined. Likewise, corporations make use of the lack of enjoyment present in a person’s life- such as their work. That is to say, enjoyment is lacking in their job environment, so a person usually starts to have fantasies that deal with the themes of pleasure with real world amenities in order for it to be felt as some form of real. In the same way, Taflinger states in Taking ADvantage, “When variety is lacking, so, apparently is enjoyment”, so the dull presence one experiences does not have enjoyment;therefore, the void is filled through pleasurable thoughts. In all, jealousy may not seem to cause a grand affect, but when it is coupled with how a person wants to be more, especially in a dull life, it brings about feelings of anger or inadequacy that is supposed to motivate one to buy goods to feel something. Nonetheless, this is where the thought of becoming self aware in what others do to influence is greatly suggested because when a person sees what is happening then the decision of what to feel can be their own choice, and not the choice of others.
For this reason, the benefit of analyzing the texts chosen will allow for awareness to develop as an understanding of how a corporation’s influence is made. In the end, this is the call to action being proposed because an understanding of biological and predisposed views will let a person see what is happening to them, an understanding of how psychological views of self worth and self esteem are manipulated will let a person decide how to view their own worth, and an understanding of how jealousy aids in influence allows for a person to not let what is not and fantasy and reality intertwine to affect the now.
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1972. Print.
FURNHAM, ADRIAN, and STEPHANIE PALTZER. "The Portrayal Of Men And Women In Television Advertisements: An Updated Review Of 30 Studies Published Since 2000."
Kaur, Kuldip, Nalini Arumugam, and Norimah Mohamad Yunus. "Beauty Product
Advertisements: A Critical Discourse Analysis." Asian Social Science 9.3 (2013): 61-71.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 May 2013.
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America. New York: Eagle Brook, 1999. Print.
Lesniak, James. "Advertising: Appealing to Fun and Pleasure." Muohio.edu. Miami University,
20 Apr. 2002. Web. 29 May 2013. <
Podder, Nripesh. "Relative Deprivation, Envy And Economic Inequality: Reply." Kyklos 52.3
(1999): 449. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 June 2013.
Scandinavian Journal Of Psychology 51.3 (2010): 216-236. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11
June 2013.
Taflinger, Richard F. Taking Advantage. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Pub., 2010. Print.