Culture jamming and the gaze
2November 30, 2012 by meyer1327
Sut Jhally writes in his essay that the values of today’s society stem from advertisements of various commodities that are claimed to be essential to living a satisfying, happy life. This consumer need for gratification is also infringing on other critical ideals of Earth’s habitants: electoral politics, children’s play, auditory perception and experience, as well as gender identity. Advertising’s reliance on images influences the consumer’s emotions in such a way where perceptions of “normal” may be skewed. Jhally suggests that “grammar of images” be taught in schools to build the minds of youths to be critical and resilient to these manipulated ads. Jhally’s stands somewhat coincides with the Bell Hooks’ argument For instance, women are often depicted as objects, moreover sex objects in select ads, that are intended to affect the consumer to purchase the product to gain that particular satisfaction. This practice typically surrounds the feelings of happiness as one is given the opportunity to assimilate with the advertisement. This relates back to Hooks’ argument of how women often viewed in films, or in this case advertisements, are objectified as merely things that consumers want or want to be like. The correlation between the two is sickening as it seems women are only useful for the gratification of others.
The discussions that we’ve had with regards to messages that are contained within advertisements have been very interesting. I hadn’t thought very much about these messages until last year when I had a drama class and we discussed the issue. Its something that seems very easy to overlook, but the more that one thinks about it, the easier it is to begin to see some of these messages in advertisements and commercials. I also wonder why men aren’t commodified more often. This would arguably make more sense since it is believed that women have control over the spending of the family (the origin of the daytime soap operas).
I honestly believe it is because women still are not viewed as equal to men, which is fine in my opinion because we are very two very different creatures. However, objectifying either sex is uncalled for, but I do see this happening more frequently with men. Men are often stereotyped to be muscular and strong. If they don’t look like a shirtless hunk of 5% body fat, with a side of solid glutes then they are cast off as disappointing and weak. This class especially has opened my eyes to the world’s messages in advertisements in regards to sexualizing men and women to persuade consumers to buy a product.