M98MC Week 2 Advertising and Consumer Culture

1. M98MCWeek 2Advertising and Consumer Culture The 1980s and Beyond John Keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

2. Campaign Details • In groups

3. Theory check-up Read • Understains • Words in Ads • Freedom • Captains of Consciousness • Decoding Advertisements Watch Century of the Self and Ways of Seeing

4. Next week • Group work at 2.30pm • Lecture starts at 3pm • Individual tutorials throughout the second part of the session next week

5. Last week – what did you learn?

6. Assignment : analysis of campaign 4000 words

7. Today • 19th Century • 1950s – birth of consumer culture • 1980s – consumer culture takes over • Lifestyles • Hedonism • Commodification • Postmodernism 1 – the break-up of the sign

8. Culture The Nineteenth Century Urbanisation Migration Uprooted mass

9. Richard Hoggart “an all-pervading culture” Read: The Uses of Literature

10. You’ve never had it so good (Harold MacMillan, UK prime-minister) Goldthorpe et al, 1968-9 The Affluent Worker

11. The 1980s • Key ideas • Culture • Thatcherism (UK) Reagan (US) • Lifestyles • Hedonism • Display • Individualism • extravagance

12. Music

13. Fashion

14. Leisure

15. Dance

16. Films

17. TV

18. Hair

20. Greed is Good

21. Lifestyles Gold Blend Yuppie Lifestyles in Advertising Read: David Gauntlett

22. Hedonism ‘modern hedonism is characterized by a longing to experience in reality those pleasures created or enjoyed in the imagination, a longing which results in the ceaseless consumption of novelty’ Lury, 1997: 73 Read: Lead us into temptation

23. Work ‘People now work...not just to stay alive, but in order to be able to afford to buy consumer products. The goods which are advertised serve as goals and rewards for working... consumption has taken off into an almost ethereal, or hyper-real, symbolic level so that it is the idea of purchasing as much as the act of purchasing which operates as a motivation for many in doing paid work’ Bocock, 1995: 50 Why else would you work?

24. DEBATE: WHAT ALTERNATIVES ARE THERE TO HEDONISM?

25. 2. The postmodern condition What do you know?

26. Postmodernism 1 – sign not goods consumption ‘the game of sign consumption is an integral part of the ‘society of the spectacle’ Lury, 1997: 69 Baudrillard ‘all needs are socially created’ Lury, 1997: 68 ‘the logic of production is no longer paramount; instead the logic of signification is all-important’ Lury, 1997: 69

27. Postmodern Consumption 2 - knowing ‘The audience is increasingly made up of a media-literate generation, its members, rather than seeking the truth, in turn self-consciously mimic the media – they adopt the persona of fictional characters as a way of expressing themselves, they discuss their personal lives as analogies with the story-lines of soap-operas, and talk in catch-phrases of celebrities and the slogans of advertising campaigns. They know when they’ve been Tango-ed’ Lury, 1997: 70 ‘it makes no sense to criticize people for being insufficiently materialistic; instead, we should submit to the magic of advertising as a playful code’ Lury, 1997: 71

28. Postmodern Consumption 3 – fluid signified ‘Objects are no longer related to in terms of their practical utility, but instead have become empty signifiers of an increasing number of constantly changing meanings. There is an overproduction of signs and a loss of referents’ Lury, 1997: 71

29. Postmodern Consumption 4 – the consumed individual ‘Rather than people using objects to express differences between themselves... people have become merely the vehicles for expressing the differences between objects’ Lury, 1997: 71

30. Postmodern Consumption 5 - hyperreality ‘the final triumph of capitalism...meaning is a sham...reality flickers like a television screen’ Lury, 1997: 71