"I'm gonna be a happy idiot
and struggle for the legal tender.
Where the ads take aim
and lay their claim
to the heart and the soul of the spender.
And believe in whatever may lie
in those things that money can buy,
though true love could have been a contender."
Jackson Browne, "The Pretender"
This course was born sixteen years ago, based on the conviction that advertising offers us familiar cultural texts that can be pried open to study critical questions about culture, ideology and power in advanced capitalist societies. Often deprecated by academics as trivial and '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 are constantly intruding into our consciousness, it seemed 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. It also focuses on developing a critical methodology for reading images and ads.
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. Hence, the material presented here is of two types. Important readings which have appeared on this course reading list over the years, but have been excised from the required readings, are included in the supplemental and recommended 'select' reading list.
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. Non-participation here will mean failure in the class. One overt measure of participation is whether a student is present or absent for class sessions. Three 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).
For the last few years, we put have been digitizing some of the ads we'll be analyzing so we can work with them on the computer. This has made it possible to better integrate the ads 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 'deconstruction') some of the advertising images and the ways they have been edited. You will have available to you new ways to intervene in the meanings of ads and new ways to convey your analyses of them. One of the tasks this course will try to take on is the development of new critical media for retelling the stories of advertising and create a record of its impact on our culture and society.
The capacity to digitally capture images dramatically alters our capacity to engage analysis and discussion of advertisements across the computer network. We will be using a computer program called Pacerforum to conduct exchanges and conversations about the ads we are analyzing. More about this in a moment. 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 you will also be able to access the ongoing Pacerforum conversations in which you are engaged with other members of the class.
There will be formal written work. This includes one take-home exam during the course. Call it a two-third's term exam, it will be handed out 6-7 weeks into the quarter. You'll have two weeks to work on it. This will count for 30% of the course grade.
Another 20% of the grade is based on a series of six 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. You will want to be able to rewrite and develop your analyses. Your first collection of three analyses will be due at the end of week six. Your entire collection of revised analyses is due during the thirteenth week. Due dates will not be fudged so back up all your files.
Fifty per cent of your grade is course participation which I define as a combination of in-class participation and presence along with your group conversations, your research and your contributions to our Web site. The groups will be the focal point for your conversations and research. Groups should consist of three or four persons. Each group will have its own Pacerforum account. I'll initiate the conversations with a discussion question based on the first book by Berger. From then on, each week, each group will select an advertisement that it will place in the computer. Each group will learn how to scan in a print advertisement, and then how to place the image into the Pacerforum program. Once the image has been placed into Pacerforum, you can conduct written conversations about the meanings of the ads you have chosen to analyze. The analyses that you write, read, reflect on, and write back, will provide the backbone of your learning how to do semiotics and critical analysis. The computer conversation groups will provide an ideal venue for discussing and critiquing interpretive analyses of advertisements. As the term progresses, we will digitize television commercials (as opposed to print ads) and place these on the computer so that Pacerforum discussions can focus on the analysis of TV ads. I encourage you to seize this opportunity to exchange interpretations with one another. Once in a while, I'll call upon groups to present their analyses to the class - focusing on interpretive differences, quandaries, and yes, even discoveries.
Using the conversations as a jumping-off point, the groups will also engage in 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, etc. In fact, I will be asking your groups to assemble your studies of advertising as a WEB site.
Groups will be asked to research specific campaigns or styles of representation and their cultural correlatives. Projects in recent years included Benetton ad campaigns; representations of men in advertising; advertisers appropriation of youth subcultures; changes in the ways ads address consumers over the past five decades.
This term I will strongly encourage projects which address specific topics: 1) Nike advertising (since I am working on a project on Nike now); 2) representations of time and space in ad (particularly in computer technology ads); 3) imagery of collective memory; 4) representations of class and race -- or, as Stuart Hall puts it "race as a floating signifier"; 5) ads that self-consciously address the alienation and the dissatisfaction of consumption.
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, thrown out, and dissed big time!
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: U. of California Press, 1985.
Robert Goldman & Stephen Papson, Sign Wars. New York: Guilford, 1996.
Celeste Olalquiaga, Megalopolis. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota, 1992.
William O'Barr, Culture & the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising. Boulder: Westview, 1994.
Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects. London: Verso, 1996.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing.
John Berger, "Appearances," pp.83-129 in Berger and Jean Mohr, Another Way of Looking. Pantheon, 1982.
Jan Bruck & John Docker, "Puritanic Rationalism: John Berger's Ways of Seeing & Media & Culture Studies, Theory, Culture & Society, v.8, 1991, pp.79-96.
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. U. of California, 1985.
Rodney Clapp, "Why the Devil Takes Visa," Christianity Today, October 7, 1996, pp.19-33.
Bernard Gendron, "Theodor Adorno Meets the Cadillacs," pp.18-36 in T. Modleski (ed), Studies in Entertainment. U. of Indiana Pr. 1986.
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: the meaning of style. Methuen, 1979, pp.91-127.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, pp.129-54.
Robert Goldman, Reading Ads Socially, pp.37-84. Routledge, 1992.
Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements, pp.1-89.
Susan Willis, "Unwrapping use-value," pp.1-22 in A Primer for Daily Life. Routledge, 1991.
Robert Goldman & Stephen Papson, Sign Wars, pp.1-54.
Recommended: Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Decoding," pp.128-138 in Stuart Hall et al., (eds), Culture Media and Language. London: Hutchinson & Co. 1980.
Roland Barthes, "Myth Today," pp.109-159 in Mythologies. Hill & Wang, (1957)1972.
Richard Herskovitz, "The Shell Answer Man & the Spectator," Social Text, 1979, 1:182-85.
Goldman & Papson, Sign Wars, pp.55-82.
Steve Papson, "The IBM Tramp," Jumpcut, 35, 1990:66-72.
Williamson, Decoding Advertisements, Part II, pp.99-179.
Olalquiaga, Megalopolis, pp.11-35.
Goldman & Papson, Sign Wars, pp.115-140; 187-255.
Recommended: Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, 1977. #1-72.
Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, pp.83-114; 141-186.
Olalquiaga, Megalopolis, pp.36-55.
Recommended: Goldman, Reading Ads Socially, pp.173-201.
Jane Root, "Who Does this Ad Think You Are?" pp.51-68 in Sexuality - Pictures of Women. Pandora Press, 1984.
Judith Williamson, "Woman is an Island: femininity & colonization," pp.99-118 in Tania Modleski (ed) Studies in Entertainment. Indiana U. Press, 1986.
Goldman, Reading Ads Socially, pp.107-154.
Susan Willis, "Gender as Commodity," pp.23-40 in A Primer for Daily Life. Routledge, 1991.
William O'Barr, Culture & the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising. Boulder Westview, 1994.
Susan Willis, "I Want the Black One," pp.108-132 in A Primer for Daily Life. Routledge, 1991.
Recommended: Stuart Ewen, "Form Follows Power," pp.185-232 All Consuming Images, Basic, 1988.
Recommended: Annette Kuhn, "Lawless Seeing," pp.19-47 in The Power of the image: essays on representation and sexuality. Routledge, 1985.
Recommended: Janice Winship, "Sexuality for Sale," pp.217-26 in Stuart Hall et al., (eds), Culture, Media, Language. London: Hutchinson & Co. 1980.
Robert Goldman & Steve Papson, Sign Wars, pp.256-274.
Olalquiaga, Megalopolis, pp.36-55.
Mark Dery, "Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing & Sniping in the Empire of Signs," on reserve and WEB.
Recommended: Dick Hebdige, Hiding in the Light. Routledge, 1988. pp.
Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects. London: Verso, 1996.
Adorno, Theodor. "Culture Industry Reconsidered," New German Critique, Fall 1975, 6:12-19.
Adorno, Theodor. "On Popular Music," Studies in Philosophy and 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 U 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.
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.
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
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 U. Pr. 1985.
Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. Harper, 1976.
Goldman, Robert. Reading Ads Socially. London: 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. U. of Minnesota, 1986.
Hebdige, Dick. Hiding in the Light. London: 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.
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. U. of Indiana Pr. 1981.
Ohmann, Richard. "Doublespeak & Ideology in Ads: a kit for teachers," pp.106-115 in D. Lazere (ed) American Media & Mass Culture. U. of California Pr. 1987.
Parker, Richard and Lindsey Churchill, "Positioning by opening the consumer's mind," International Journal of Advertising, 1986, 5:1-13.
Rothenberg, Randall,
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 U. Pr. 1985.
Weis, Michael. The Clustering of America, pp.1-28, 1988.