I wonder what Freud would have said about advertisements?
Althusser and Zizek felt that Freud’s ideas contributed to the foundation for
semiotics, a school often used when looking at media and advertisements. Where
I believe Freud comes into play when looking at the symbolism of recent media
advertisements is with his view of seduction in relation to polymorphous
perversion. We are constantly being seduced by those who want our money. Everybody knows that "sex sells" but it is our reaction to sex or sexual images, especially when in relation to a commodity or luxury good, that seals the deal. If Freud was right that we are innately predisposed to perversion, then advertisements show just how far sex is used to stimulate consumerism. Take the popular Fiat 500 Abarth commercial, originally airing during last year's Super Bowl. In the ad, the car is actually personified by a beautiful and foreign woman speaking in Italian, who consequently leaves the average joe breathless at her beauty and sex appeal.
The scorpion in the ad holds the sexual meaning to which the car has been given, as it is the icon of the car and the tattoo on the woman's neck. We as consumer's are seduced by both the sexuality applied to the product and to the mystically sexual way we will be viewed if we get the car. The sexuality behind advertisement is the result of our nature, we are weak to seduction, and subject to the exploitation by the consumerist cycle.
While considering what to write my post about, I thought about this topic and basically stemmed from it the topic that I chose. I just wanted to relate this to my own topic of Freud's thoughts on sexual freedom. I would like to know how he would react in today's culture if he saw all the ads that use sex to gain people's attention. Would he believe that this is letting society be too free? Playing too much into the sexual desires so that they might become too open with their desires? It is an overstatement to say that these types of advertisements are going to draw a man from a civilized being to become a purely sex driven animal, however it could be leaning in that way.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, is called "the father of public relations," which is to say, modern advertising. He quite explicitly argued that advertisers could manipulate the emotions and instincts of consumers to get them to buy things. He was, incidentally, also the man who sponsored Freud's granddaughter, Sophie Freud, so she could get a visa to the United States in the 1940s.
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