Children:
Children:
Advertising is an art form these days. Advertisers have made a game of attaching one sign to another and "creating" meaning where there was none. We as consumers are both spectators and players in this highly competitive arena, and as such, it is imperative that we become as aware as possible of the rules that govern play.
One of the main tools advertisers use to construct meaning is the signifier. When an object or image is shown in a particular context in order to refer to some underlying meaning, it is a signifier of that meaning. For example, an image of Abraham Lincoln in an advertisement may be a signifier of leadership and honesty. By strategically placing the signifier within the framework of the advertisement, advertisers are able to effectively transfer meaning from that signifier to the product being advertised. At this web site, we will be looking at children as floating signifiers. In advertisements featuring children there are a wide variety of meanings that the child is intended to represent.
The other side to signifiers is the signified. Children are used in advertisements to prompt a certain feeling or concept. There are general opinions of what children represent. Advertisers play off this collective opinion by using children as beacons and mood-setters to hail the audience they desire. Because of their over-use as signifiers in advertisements, they are quickly losing a clearly perceived identity. Are they the cute and heartwarming products of close, loving families, or are they the terrible side affects of carelessness and ignorance? Do children bring meaning or chaos to our lives? In every advertisement we see on television or in print, the answer is different. There is no longer, if there indeed ever was, a clear set of meanings that can be attached to children; just a fragmented notion of youth and its many attributes.
There are significant possible consequences of this loss of legitimate meaning within the "sign" of the child. Personal identity has become a gray area in recent years. The consumer culture has become entirely too susceptible to advertised messages, and we no longer define clear boundaries between reality and advertised "reality". If we lose sight of what children 'really' mean to us via complex and cluttered advertised images, what will be the consequences for the future? Children are our next generation of world leaders; they are previews of what our world is to become. Thus, children are often used in advertisements as referents to the future. However, there are many other defining characteristics of children that are used in advertising just as often as referencing the future. Children represent the purity and innocence we all would like to believe we used to embody. They are also rambunctious, and can bring chaos and fun into our lives at any given moment, and the mere sign of the child often reminds us of the responsibility we must all take to care for those too young to make their own decisions.
While these are all characteristics of the average perception of children, advertisements stress these particular characteristics individually, and thus confuse the viewer as to what is really at the heart of the child. What we tend to forget is that there is really a vast array of meanings that come with just about any sign. Although advertisements act to remind us of particular parts of signs, we must not forget the whole. If we begin to lose our collective grasp on whole identities, we will inevitably lose ourselves in a 'surreal' world rooted in pseudo-authenticity.