Page 28 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Advert s ng and Persuas on |

Models of Perfection
For the female consumer of beauty, fashion, and glamour products, celeb-
rity endorsement is also essential. Far more effective than extolling the ingredi-
ents or quality of any particular brand of make-up, perfume, or shampoo is the
promise that those products are the very ones used by the beautiful models and
celebrities that populate the landscape of popular culture. In what is called “la-
tent content,” the message implies that the beautiful, perfect models have been
transformed by the products into the stunning visions seen in the advertise-
ments; as one cosmetics company teases, “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s
Maybelline.” But consumers are rarely aware that pictures of models have almost
always been “touched up” to present perfect images. Graphic digital technology
is also used to create larger-than-life advertising images that seem perfect, and
along the way cultural standards of beauty become impossible for average con-
sumers to emulate. When women are constantly told they can and should look
like the glamorous models in advertisements, it is no wonder that the major-
ity of American women are dissatisfied with their own body image. Underlying
many advertising appeals to join the world of beautiful people and fantasy wish
fulfillment is the anxiety of not fitting in or living up to the cultural standard.

Anxiety
Some strategies of persuasion play on personal anxieties, especially those for
hygiene products. The word halitosis entered the cultural lexicon in early Lis-
terine advertisements, and since then, dandruff, bad breath, and hair loss have
all been portrayed as impediments to social acceptance, mobility, and fulfilling

Minority report: FuturistiC Visions oF ConsuMer Culture

In preparation for the film Minority Report, Tom Cruise and the film’s creators reportedly
consulted with marketing and advertising professionals in order to more accurately portray
what the world of consumer culture might look like in the year 2050. In Minority Report, the
body becomes branded and the market penetrates every aspect of life and body. In the film
Cruise is seen walking though a Gap store as sensors automatically “read” the individual
human code identified in his irises. An automated voice reminds him of his last purchase in
an attempt to interest him in another. Some of the most chilling scenes in the movie revolve
around the idea that marketing information is inscribed within the human body, specifically
within the eyeball. The eye-reading technology exists within a total information society, and
that information has a dual purpose. It is also used for state control. In one of the most grue-
some sequences, the film presents a distopian future in which the commercial information
is shared with a repressive governing regime with severe consequences to individual liberty.
As he struggles to maintain his freedom, Cruise’s character is forced to have his eyes brutally
removed. The film is fiction and it depicts an extreme case, but it serves as a warning of the
dangers of accumulating, cross-referencing, and centralizing huge amounts of personal data
on individual citizens and making it available to those who would use it for political purposes.