september 19/20 image + ideology:advertising

Discussion of John Berger's "Publicity" from Ways of Seeing

Advertising Promises + the Future
Explain and discuss the following statement:

“The publicity image belongs to the moment. We see it as we turn a page, as we turn a corner, as a vehicle passes us. Or, we see it on a television screen while waiting for the commercial break to end. Publicity images also belong to the moment in the sense that they must be continually renewed and made-up-date. Yet, they never speak of the present. Often they refer to the past and always they speak of the future.”

Berger states the following: “Within publicity choices are offered between this cream and that cream, that car or this car but publicity as a system only makes a single proposal.” What is the proposal that he refers to and how is this proposal made?

Berger also argues that: “publicity is about social relations, not objects.” What does he mean?

Publicity + Oil Paintings
Explain and discuss the following statement:

“Publicity is the culture of the consumer society. It propagates through images that society's belief in itself. There are several reasons why these images use the language of oil painting.

Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have. It is a mistake to think of publicity supplanting the visual art of post-Renaissance Europe; it is the last moribund form of that art.”

Money, Sex + Glamour
Discuss the following statements:
“All publicity works upon anxiety. The sum of everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety. Alternatively the anxiety on which publicity plays is the fear that having nothing you will be nothing. Money is life. Not in the sense that without money you starve. Not in the sense that capital gives one class power over the entire lives of another class. But in the sense that money is the token of, and the key to, every human capacity. The power to spend money is the power to live. According to the legends of publicity, those who lack the power to spend money become literally faceless. Those who have the power become loveable.”


“Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.” How is social envy is generated in contemporary life. What social conditions exist in order for envy and glamour to arise?


Democracy + Philosophy
“Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. The choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world. Publicity adds up to a kind of philosophical system. It explains everything in its own terms. ” Discuss what Berger means by this statement.

Screening: The Ad + the Ego or Killing Us Softly III