So this was a pretty crazy documentary. I think that this is held as such an eye opening piece because it takes dozens of advertisements that derive their value from the shock value and put into one short segment. All of these ads are peppered throughout magazines but when put into one place like they were in Killing Us Softly 3, each ad compounded on the other and multiplied how disturbing it was.
While it does seem like that a lot of those ads were handpicked and definitely not the norm, there were many that seemed like they could be very common place. The documentary definitely showed extreme cases, but it did show a trend within American advertising.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist34/advertisements/43aveda/43aveda.jpg
http://www.banterist.com/archivefiles/images/fitch.jpg
These are a couple of advertisements I found quite easily online that definitely enforce what Jean Kilbourne was trying to say in the film. They both feature women either portrayed as
1)not wearing clothing
or
2)being in a vulnerable sexual position
http://www.knowtebook.com/uploaded/2008/09/89320618_1008a70f5d.jpg
While this advertisement may be a little more subtle, it definitely carries sexual connotations. Hopefully I'm not reading too far into this when I point out these things: the women is leaning back, the man is leaning in, and the "face" on the women features a fairly worried look.
I think this advertisement shows that while there are certainly obvious sexualization of women in ads, it's also very easy to be more subtle about it.
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5 comments:
I agree with you sammmm. I think that in this society sex sells and they make the consumer think that if you buy this product you will be sexy. I feel that she did kind of go to the extreme on a couple but it really did open my eyes to what is actually going on.
Sam, you have hit the nail on the head. Bringing in the outside examples to your post strengthened the overall argument. Ben is right that no product will instantly make you "sexy". Also he was right that a few examples in the documentary were extreme.
yes she picked adds to fit her theories. If you make a theory it is very easy to find evidence to back it up if you look for it.
I agree that just showing all of these adds together really shows how serious this problem really is. Most of these ads when seen in a magazine are often viewed as "harmless" or "simply to catch attention" but these advertisements are becoming so common place, it could really make a long lasting impression on the human mind.
sex sells!
thats kind of sad
women are always being shown in the sexy light
never as being smart or powerful
mostly vulnerable
gross
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