- Jackson Browne, "The Pretender"
This course is based on the conviction that advertising offers us familiar cultural texts that can be pried open to study critical questions about society, culture, ideology and power in advanced capitalist societies. Often deprecated by academics as trivial or 'pop,' advertising is a cultural form that provides an excellent vehicle for developing critical social theory and the study of signs. Rather than treat it as trivial, I contend that advertising has developed into a dominant discourse in capitalist society -- a discourse, which today, shapes our culture just as profoundly as religion and schooling did in previous eras.
Never before in human society has there been such an abundance and concentrated density of visual images. Whether we remember or forget these images we routinely take them in, if only for a moment. We are, however, so accustomed to being addressed by advertising images that we often become indifferent to their full significance. We tend to take them for granted and they become part of the climate of our lives. Although we may accept, reject, sneer, or shrug our shoulders at any given claim made by ads, we generally accept, without reflection, the total system of advertising images.
Since advertisements routinely intrude into our consciousness, it seems appropriate to return the favor and intrude into their space -- to disturb them. This course focuses on developing social and cultural theories of ads, and more generally, of commodity culture. We shall try to do so by developing a critical methodology for reading images and ads.
The Structure of the Course:
This course emphasizes the social character of ads. Critical analysis of advertising culture cannot be conducted as a monologue, but as a dialogue among active readers and writers, speakers and listeners. This class is predicated on student participation and student conversations both inside and outside of class. I presume that every student will be a full participant as a condition of being in the class. On the flip side, non-participation can mean failure in the course. One overt measure of participation is whether a student is present or absent for class sessions. Five absences will result in a grade reduction of one letter. Each additional absence will bring another grade reduction. I'll be pursuing other less obtrusive measures of participation as well, especially with regard to participation in group conversations (see below).
One goal of this course is the development of new critical media for retelling the stories of advertising and creating an interpretive record of its impact on our culture and society. Over the last few years, we have been digitizing the ads we analyze so we can work with them on the computer. The capacity to digitally capture images dramatically alters our capacity to engage in analysis and discussion of advertisements across the computer network. It also makes it possible to better integrate the ads themselves -- images and sounds as well -- into our analyses. You will literally be able to place the images drawn from the ads in your documents. You will be able to produce multimedia presentations. And, to a somewhat limited extent, we will also be able to disassemble (what you will come to know as a practical form of 'deconstruction') some of the advertising images and the ways they have been edited. This approach makes available to you new ways to intervene in the meanings of ads and new ways to convey your analyses of them.
Formal written work includes one take-home exam during the course, dubbed by students who have preceded you as the "take-home from hell." Call it a two-third's term exam, it will be handed out 8-9 weeks into the semester. You'll have 10 days to work on it. This will count for 30% of your course grade.
Another 20% of your grade is based on a series of advertising analyses you write and compile. I'll provide conceptual and analytic angles for each advertising analysis except one. Everything you write for this course must be saved on a word processor, because you will want to be able to rewrite and develop your analyses. Over the first eight weeks of the course you will be asked to do one analysis per week. Your entire collection of revised analyses is due during the thirteenth week. Due dates will not be fudged so back up all your files. Those who do an outstanding job with these analyses will be able to reduce the number of questions required on the take-home exam. So actually, I should now restate and say that the take-home plus the ad analyses will count for 50% of your course grade.
The other half (50%) of your grade is based on course participation which I define as a combination of
a) in-class participation and presence b) your group analyses and conversations
c) your group research projects that will be tailored as contributions to our ongoing Web site. Small groups will be the focal point for both the analytic conversations and research that go into this product.
Groups work best when they consist of three or four persons. Each group will have its own shared file server site. I'll initiate the conversations with a discussion question based on the first book by John Berger on "Ways of Seeing." From then on, each week, each group should select an advertisement (initially print ads, and later television commercials) that it will digitize, and place it on the computer server. Each group will learn how to scan in a print advertisement, and then how to place the image into the WebCT program which you will be trained to use. Once the image has been placed into WebCT, you can engage in written conversations about the meanings of the ads you have chosen to analyze. The analyses that you write, read, reflect on, and reply to, can provide the practical applications of your learning how to do semiotics and critical analysis. The computer conversation groups also provide an ideal venue for discussing and critiquing interpretive analyses of advertisements. As the term progresses, we will digitize television commercials (as opposed to just print ads) and place these on the computer so that the WebCT discussions can focus on the analysis of TV ads during the latter half of the term. I encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to exchange interpretations with one another. Use of this tool will help prepare us for sharper and more fruitful classroom conversations about the materials at hand.
The technologies of computers and digitalization are central to the class. I will structure most assignments via the computer network. The advertisements for your analyses will be placed on a file server. You will receive a password for accessing the file server to open up the assigned ads. From the computer labs, or from home, you will also be able to access the ongoing WebCT conversations that you are engage with other members of the class.
Using the conversations as a jumping-off point, each group will be asked to design and execute a creative research project. Each research group will present and defend their research projects during the period scheduled for the final exam. All projects should draw on, and utilize, multimedia resources -- e.g., slides, Quicktime videos, music, Powerpoint presentations, etc. In fact, I will be asking your groups to assemble your studies of advertising as part of a class-based WEB site.
All team projects must be approved by me. These projects vary in substance each year. This year I will ask that you work with advertising content drawn from two sources. The first is a body of about 500 corporate television commercials that my colleague Steve Papson and I have assembled for our current research project. The second body of ads that you may work on will be the television commercials aired during the upcoming Summer Olympics in Australia.
The finished research project will be assembled in the form of web pages. Because many of you have no background in doing web projects, as a rough guide, I expect the finished project to be at least the equivalent of a 30 page paper. The course reading list along with the select bibliography appended at the end of this document should constitute the basic working bibliography for your research project. Let me put this more strongly: a research project submitted in this course which does not ground itself in the course readings will be summarily dismissed, and assigned a failing grade!
Books:
John Berger, Ways of Seeing. New York: Penguin, 1972.
Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertisements. London: Marion Boyars, 1978. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Robert Goldman & Stephen Papson, Sign Wars. New York: Guilford, 1996.
Robert Goldman & Stephen Papson, Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh. London: Sage Publications, 1998.
Celeste Olalquiaga, Megalopolis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1992.
Course Outline and Readings
On Meaning & Ideology in Images
John Berger, Ways of Seeing. Chapters 1-4. John Berger, "Appearances," pp.83-129 in John Berger and Jean Mohr, Another Way of Looking. Pantheon, 1982.
Toward A History & Theory of Mass Culture and Advertising
Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: advertising & the social roots of the consumer culture, pp.23-109. McGraw-Hill, 1976. T.J. Jackson Lears, "From Salvation to Self-Realization: advertising & the therapeutic roots of the consumer culture, 1880-1930," pp.3-38 in R. W. Fox and T.J.J. Lears (eds), The Culture of Consumption. Pantheon, 1983.
Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, pp.xv-24; 52-87; 117-205. University of California Press, 1985.
Bernard Gendron, "Theodor Adorno Meets the Cadillacs," pp.18-36 in T. Modleski (ed), Studies in Entertainment. University of Indiana Press, 1986.
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: the meaning of style, pp.91-127. Methuen, 1979.
Jean Baudrillard, "The Order of Simulacra," pp.50-86 in Symbolic Exchange & Death, Sage, 1993.
Reading Ads or How to Break the Code
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, pp.129-54. Robert Goldman, "The Mortise & the Frame," in Reading Ads Socially, pp.61-84. Routledge, 1992.
Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements, pp.1-89.
Recommended: Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Decoding," pp.128-138 in Stuart Hall et al., (eds), Culture Media and Language. London: Hutchinson & Co. 1980.
Recommended: Susan Willis, "Unwrapping use-value," pp.1-22 in A Primer for Daily Life. Routledge, 1991.
Myth & Falsified Metacommunication in the Society of the Spectacle
Roland Barthes, "Myth Today," pp.109-159 in Mythologies. Hill & Wang, 1972. Richard Herskovitz, "The Shell Answer Man & the Spectator," Social Text, 1979, 1:182-85.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, 1977. #1-72. On the Internet
Ideology, Culture & Nature in Commodity Culture
Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements, Part II, pp.99-179. Celeste Olalquiaga, Megalopolis, pp. 56-74.
Advertising in an Age of Accelerated Meaning
Robert Goldman & Stephen Papson, Sign Wars, pp.1-186.
Legitimation Scripts -- Appropriating Opposition
Goldman & Papson, Sign Wars, pp. 187-255.
Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler, "The Rebel Consumer," pp.29-78.
Postmodernism and Commodity Culture
Olalquiaga, Megalopolis, pp.1-35. Olalquiaga, Megalopolis, pp.36-55.
Olalquiaga, Megalopolis, pp.75-91.
Living in a Sign Economy
Goldman & Papson, Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh.
Contradictions of a Commodity Culture
Robert Goldman & Steve Papson, Sign Wars, "Sneakerization and Hyperculture," pp.256-274. Robert Goldman & Steve Papson, Nike Culture, pp.169-185.
Mark Dery, "Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing & Sniping in the Empire of Signs," on reserve and WEB.
Over the years the course has continued to evolve and the readings have proliferated. Many excellent books and articles have been cut to make way for more current articles and books, or simply new topics. Readings which have appeared on this course reading list over the years, but have been excised from the required readings, are included in a) the following optional section, and b) the supplemental and recommended 'select' reading list below.
Optional: (De)Constructing the appearances and appropriations of gender and race
Judith Williamson, "Woman is an Island: femininity & colonization," pp.99-118 in Tania Modleski (ed) Studies in Entertainment. Indiana University Press, 1986. Susan Willis, "Gender as Commodity," pp.23-40 in A Primer for Daily Life. Routledge, 1991.
Susan Willis, "I Want the Black One," pp.108-132 in A Primer for Daily Life. Routledge, 1991.
Stuart Ewen, "Form Follows Power," pp.185-232 All Consuming Images, Basic, 1988.
Annette Kuhn, "Lawless Seeing," pp.19-47 in The Power of the image: essays on representation and sexuality. Routledge, 1985.
Janice Winship, "Sexuality for Sale," pp.217-26 in Stuart Hall et al., (eds), Culture, Media, Language. London: Hutchinson & Co. 1980.
Jane Root, "Who Does this Ad Think You Are?" pp.51-68 in Sexuality - Pictures of Women. Pandora Press, 1984.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adorno, Theodor. "Culture Industry Reconsidered," New German Critique, Fall 1975, 6:12-19. Adorno, Theodor. "On Popular Music," Studies in Philosophy & Social Science, v.9, 1941: 199-230.
Arlen, Michael. Thirty Seconds, Penguin, 1978.
Atlas, James. "Beyond Demographics," Atlantic Monthly, October 1984: 49-58.
Barnouw, Erik. The Sponsor: notes on a modern potentate. Oxford University Pr. 1978, pp.79-151.
Barthes, Roland. "The Rhetoric of the Image," pp.32-51 in Image-Music-Text. Hill & Wang, 1978.
Baudrillard, Jean. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Telos Press. 1981.
Baudrillard, Jean. "The Order of Simulacra," pp.50-86 in Symbolic Exchange & Death, Sage. 1993.
Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. London: Verso, 1996.
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," pp.217-251 in Illuminations. Schocken, 1969.
Brown, Mary Ellen. "The Dialectic of the Feminine: melodrama and commodity in the Ferraro Pepsi commercial," Communication, 9, 1987:335-354.
Bruck, Jan & John Docker, "Puritanic Rationalism: John Berger's Ways of Seeing & Media & Culture Studies, Theory, Culture & Society, v.8, 1991, pp.79-96.
Clapp, Rodney. "Why the Devil Takes Visa," Christianity Today, October 7, 1996, pp.19-33.
Featherstone, Mike. "The Body in Consumer Culture," Theory, Culture & Society, 1,2, 1983:18-33.
Frith, Simon & Howard Horne, Art into Pop. Methuen, 1987, pp.1-25; 162-82
Frank, Thomas and Matt Weiland (Eds.). Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler. W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Gitlin, Todd. "Domesticating Nature," Theory & Society, 8, 1979:291-97.
Godzich, Wlad. "The Semiotics of Semiotics," pp.421-447 in Marshall Blonsky (ed), On Signs. Johns Hopkins University Pr. 1985.
Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. Harper, 1976.
Goldman, Robert. Reading Ads Socially. Routledge, 1992.
Goldman, Robert & David Dickens, "The Selling of Rural America," Rural Sociology 1983, 48 (4):585-606.
Goldman, Robert & Michael Montagne, "Marketing 'Mind Mechanics': decoding antidepressant drug ads," Social Science & Medicine, 1986, 22 (10):1047-58.
Haug, Wolfgang Fritz. Critique of Commodity Aesthetics. University of Minnesota, 1986.
Hebdige, Dick. Hiding in the Light. Routledge, 1988.
Hirsch, Glenn. "Only You Can Prevent Ideological Hegemony," Insurgent Sociologist, 5,3 1975 (Spring):64-82.
Horkheimer, Max & Adorno, Theodor. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," pp.120-67 in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Allen Lane, 1972.
Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture. Routledge. 1996.
Kellner, Douglas. Jean Baudrillard. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Kline, Stephen & William Leiss, "Advertising, Needs & 'Commodity Fetishism,'" Canadian Journal of Political & Social Theory, 1, 1978 (Winter):5-30.
Langholz-Leymore, Varda. "The Structure is the Message - The case of advertising," pp.319-331 in Jean Umiker-Sebeok (ed) Marketing & Semiotics: new directions in the study of signs for sale. Mouton de Gruyter, 1987.
Lears, Jackson. Fables of Abundance. Basic Books, 1994.
Miller, Mark C. "Getting Dirty," New Republic, June 2, 1982:25-28.
Morris, Meaghan. "Things to do with shopping centres," pp.295-319 in S. During (ed), The Cultural Studies Reader. Routledge, 1993.
Nichols, Bill. "The Analysis of Representational Images," pp.43-68 in Ideology and the Image. University of Indiana Pr. 1981.
O'Barr, William. Culture & the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising. Westview. 1994.
Ohmann, Richard. "Doublespeak & Ideology in Ads: a kit for teachers," pp.106-115 in D. Lazere (ed) American Media & Mass Culture. University of California Pr. 1987.
Papson, Steve. "The IBM Tramp," Jumpcut, 35, 1990:66-72.
Parker, Richard and Lindsey Churchill, "Positioning by opening the consumer's mind," International Journal of Advertising, 1986, 5:1-13.
Savan, Leslie. The Sponsored Life. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
Schwartz, Tony. "Hard Sell, Soft Sell, Deep Sell," pp.320-30 in The Commercial Connection.
Smythe, Dallas. "Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism," Canadian Journal of Political & Social Theory, 1:1-27.
Tolmach, Robin & Raquel Scherr. "The Problem of Beauty: Myth & Reality," Face Value: the politics of beauty. Routledge, 1984, pp.21-43.
Weintraub, Ronald. "Lifting the Veil," pp.475-480 in M. Blonsky (ed), On Signs. Johns Hopkins University Pr. 1985.
Weis, Michael. The Clustering of America, pp.1-28, 1988.