Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising

Book Overview

Undressing the Ad aims to empower readers to become media literate through the work of deconstructing the consumer culture that surrounds them. By introducing critical scholarship on advertising in a way that is accessible, the book attempts to show how issues of race, class, and gender are expressed in contemporary advertising. The readings in this book take a decidedly critical political perspective and explore how representation in advertising upholds certain economic and political structures and subverts others, and exposes the myth that advertisements are merely messages aimed at selling goods and services. Rather they are texts that shape contemporary culture and shape our images of ourselves.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820437557
• ISBN13: 9780820437552
• Release Date: July 1998
• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publi
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Want to see through the spell of the Madison Avenue spin-doctors in our consumer-focused world? Then

Ever wonder what those ads in Victoria's Secret are really all about? Or, what about the psychology behind the "This is your brain on drugs" public service announcements? Or, what's the deal with Danny DiVito walking around munching on Dunkin' Donuts all through the movie "Other People's Money?" (Yep, he brings up Dunkin' Donuts nine times during the movie.) Read "Undressing the Ad," edited by a former J. Walter Thompson advertising copywriter, Katherine Toland Frith of Penn State, and you'll never look at advertisements the same way. You'll be scanning the background of ads for consumer-motivation clues, looking at the racial identities of actors in television ads, noticing product placements in movies, and listening to ad dialogue to peg the consumer segment that advertiser is going after. This is a well-written anthology, presented in a larger font than most such texts, thus making it a fast and interesting read. Exploring how ad agencies "sanctify, mythologize, and fantasize...[to] uphold some of the existing economic and political structures and subvert others..." the contributors introduce undergraduates to excellent advertising scholarship on a wide variety of topics - all intended to empower readers to see through the spell of Madison Avenue spin-doctors - to become "media literate" to the point that they can deconstruct the consumer culture that surrounds us all. Topics are as wide-ranging as their chapter titles indicate: (1) Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising by Katherine T. Frith, (Penn State) (2) Finding the Path to Signification: Undressing a Nissan Pathfinder Direct Mail Package by Elizabeth Pauline Lester (University of Georgia) (3) Sponsorship, Globalization, and the Summer Olympics, by Matthew P. McAllister (Virginia Tech) (4) The Paco Man and What is Remembered: New Readings of a Hybrid Language, by Morris B. Holbrook (Columbia) and Barbara B. Stern (Rutgers) (5) As Soft as Straight Gets: African American Women and Mainstream Beauty Standards in Haircare Advertising, by Ernest M. Mayes (Student in copywriting program, Portfolio Center, Atlanta) (6) We Can't Duck the Issue: Imbedded Advertising in the Motion Pictures, by Linda K. Fuller (Worchester State) (7) Ideology in Public Service Advertisements, by Chemi Montes-Armenteros (Penn State) (8) The Cultural Politics of Prevention: Reading Anti-Drug PSAs, by Michael J. Ludwig (Winthrop University) (9) The Diesel Jeans and Workwear Advertising Campaign and the Commodification of Resistance, by Daniel R. Nicholson (Ph.D. candidate, University of Oregon) (10) Cultural Capital: The Cultural Economy of U.S. Advertising, by Christian Vermehren (Ph.D. candidate, University of Cambridge) (11) The Secret of My Desire: Gender, Class, and Sexuality in Lingerie Catalogs, by Angharad N. Valdivia (University of Illinois) Teaching faculty will want to consider this text as a supplemental text for marketing and advertising classes. Highly recommended for college an