Congratulations on completing the writing project devoted to gendered advertising a week ago! I really appreciate that! Thank you!! This week we have our midterm assessment, a written response designed to assess our progress in our class.
We have seen that advertising often exploits our sense of gender identity. According to Craig, advertisers manipulate viewers by showing stereotypical representations of gendered behavior.
But gender is not the only way that advertisers commodify desire to sell their products. In “Brought to You B(u)y: The Signs of Advertising,” Maasik and Solomon observe that advertising often “reflects a basic division within the American dream itself, a mythic promise that at once celebrates democratic equality and encourages you to rise above the crowd, to be better than anyone else (248).”
In other words, advertising exploits the two faces of the American dream: the desire to be equal, fit in, and belong, and the desire to rise above, achieve status, and prestige.
Below are two examples of this contradiction. Pay attention to the signs. Which ad appeals to the desire for belonging? Which one appeals to the desire for status?
Now, read Jack Solomon’s article “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising” (250-260). In it, Solomon again argues that advertisers use signs to manipulate the two faces of the American dream: the desire to fit in (populism) and the desire to rise above (elitism).
Solomon puts it this way: “Even as America’s great myth of equality celebrates the virtues of Mom, apple pie, and the boy or girl next door, it also lures us to achieve social distinction, to rise above the crowd and bask alone in the glory (251).”
Working closely with the article, write a 4- page essay that responds to the following:
The American political scene has changed since the late 1980s when this article was first published. Do you think the contradiction between populism and elitism that Solomon describes still affects American advertising?
Remember to summarize Solomon’s argument for your imaginary reader, someone who has not read the article.
Support your response with two of your own examples (one for each face of the American dream). Describe the ads for your imaginary reader, and analyze the signs in the ads you chose.
