As the culture and the techniques of advertising and exerting influence on human mind progress, we face more and more elaborate depictions and images of the human body. Jean Kilbourne's lecture presents a variety of them and gives some explicit comments. In the ads that surround ads, people age mainly shown either as unreachable idols or as things personifying some quality, concept, or even brand. While these depictions may seem to be genuinely different, in reality, they produce the same effect on the consumer. They dehumanize them, both the subject of objectification and the idol which is regarded only as some sort of inanimate ideal. Objectification is very dangerous because it exerts the intended influence over vulnerable minds and alters society’s values and its concept normalcy. As people are dehumanized, we lose sensitivity, empathy, love (not lust) – all higher feelings that make us humans. And this is by far its worst consequence.
Response
“Who is guilty in our problems?” We love this question so much that sometimes we lose the sensation of ourselves and of what we truly want to achieve. In Jean Kilbourne's presentation, she explains the concepts used in advertising, how people are turned into things and vice versa. She tells us about the painful objectification of female and now even male body, about its harmful influence on the minds of younger and adolescent men and women. This makes us feel bad about ads and the marketers who make them. Why do they do this to us? Why are they so mean and greedy that earn their fortunes at the cost of society's welfare? We are eager to find the answers and do it successfully. In this race towards finding and punishing the guilty, we forget one small but crucial thing. It was omitted by Jean Kilbourne as well. We forget that it is not because of the marketers such techniques exist in advertising but because of our own desires. As Lisa Gevelber justifies, it is our own “passions and frustrations” that power up the ads. We have to understand that these ads will be produced as much as we would want to see them. Jean Kilbourne's and other activists’ actions led to the changes that now take place (the decision to employ only real-life women and not extra skinny models). Nonetheless, she often loses focus and concentrates on the symptoms of the problem, not on its causes. Such ads are only an indicator of larger problems taking place in the minds of masses. The problem is that the ads are not what people are ought perceive, they are what people want to perceive. The magnificent social ads with the positive message and a wonderful elaboration on higher feelings just pass by broad audience out of a simple reason that it is simply not what the majority wants. We should accept that the environment we live in is not separate from us, moreover, it is shaped by our thoughts, desires, and actions. And until we acknowledge and accept this fact, nothing will really change. This is the point where everyone should, first of all, begin with thyself. The most basic action that we can do is to control what we give our main currency, attention, to. We can produce the effect not by criticizing bad ads but by not mentioning them, by not spreading it among our friends and family and by depriving them of any attention at all. This may seem as utterly weak decision, but, in reality, it can change our society.
Works Cited
Gevelber, Lisa. "5 Ways Brands Are Making Their Youtube Ads Unskippable". AdWeek. N.p., 2014. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.
Kilbourne, Jean. Killing Us Softly. 2012. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.
