Progressive academics have made tremendous contributions to our ability to see through the lies and manipulation embedded in advertising.
Leftist critiques inform us that advertisements trigger our emotions, impulses and our deepest fears to override logic. When we buy a product, we don’t just buy the product itself, but the idea of that product, the feeling we have been manipulated to feel in buying that product, the image and the lifestyle we aspire to because of how that product has been packaged.
As such, advertisers present to us a false version of reality. In particular, advertising encourages us to accept a false image of our own selves.
Furthermore, existent systems of oppression in the advertising industry, and the commercials it produces, privilege those with power and marginalise those on the periphery, thus reinforcing said systems of oppression.
It is with this in mind that I encourage you to watch the following video. Let us know in the comments how far in you made it before pressing stop:
As a palette cleanser, enjoy the following short clip. Because the internet never forgets:
It’s your XYZ.
