M98MCWeek 2

Advertising and Consumer Culture

The 1980s and BeyondJohn Keenan

john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

Campaign Details

• In groups

Theory check-up

Read• Understains • Words in Ads • Freedom • Captains of Consciousness• Decoding Advertisements

Watch Century of the Self and Ways of Seeing

Next week

• Group work at 2.30pm• Lecture starts at 3pm • Individual tutorials throughout the second

part of the session next week

Last week – what did you learn?

Assignment : analysis of campaign4000 words

Today

• 19th Century• 1950s – birth of consumer culture• 1980s – consumer culture takes over• Lifestyles• Hedonism• Commodification• Postmodernism 1 – the break-up of the sign

CultureThe Nineteenth Century

UrbanisationMigrationUprooted mass

Richard Hoggart

“an all-pervading culture”

Read: The Uses of Literature

You’ve never had it so good (Harold MacMillan, UK prime-

minister)

Goldthorpe et al, 1968-9The Affluent Worker

The 1980s

Key ideas•Culture•Thatcherism (UK) Reagan (US)•Lifestyles•Hedonism•Display•Individualism•extravagance

Music

Fashion

Leisure

Dance

Films

TV

Hair

Greed is Good

Lifestyles

Gold BlendYuppie

Lifestyles in Advertising

Read: David Gauntlett

Hedonism

‘modern hedonism is characterized by a longing to experience in reality those pleasures created or enjoyed in the imagination, a longing which results in the ceaseless consumption of novelty’ Lury, 1997: 73

Read: Lead us into temptation

‘People now work...not just to stay alive, but in order to be able to afford to buy consumer products. The goods which are advertised serve as goals and rewards for working... consumption has taken off into an almost ethereal, or hyper-real, symbolic level so that it is the idea of purchasing as much as the act of purchasing which operates as a motivation for many in doing paid work’

Bocock, 1995: 50

Work

Why else would you work?

DEBATE: WHAT ALTERNATIVES ARE THERE TO HEDONISM?

2. The postmodern condition

What do you know?

‘the game of sign consumption is an integral part of the ‘society of the spectacle’ Lury, 1997: 69

Postmodernism 1 – sign not goods consumption

Baudrillard

‘all needs are socially created’ Lury, 1997: 68

‘the logic of production is no longer paramount; instead the logic of signification is all-important’ Lury, 1997: 69

‘The audience is increasingly made up of a media-literate generation, its members, rather than seeking the truth, in turn self-consciously mimic the media – they adopt the persona of fictional characters as a way of expressing themselves, they discuss their personal lives as analogies with the story-lines of soap-operas, and talk in catch-phrases of celebrities and the slogans of advertising campaigns. They know when they’ve been Tango-ed’ Lury, 1997: 70

Postmodern Consumption 2 - knowing

‘it makes no sense to criticize people for being insufficiently materialistic; instead, we should submit to the magic of advertising as a playful code’ Lury, 1997: 71

‘Objects are no longer related to in terms of their practical utility, but instead have become empty signifiers of an increasing number of constantly changing meanings. There is an overproduction of signs and a loss of referents’ Lury, 1997: 71

Postmodern Consumption 3 – fluid signified

‘Rather than people using objects to express differences between themselves... people have become merely the vehicles for expressing the differences between objects’ Lury, 1997: 71

Postmodern Consumption 4 – the consumed individual

‘the final triumph of capitalism...meaning is a sham...reality flickers like a television screen’ Lury, 1997: 71

Postmodern Consumption 5 - hyperreality