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Pleasure™
Picture this: You are in your living room watching your favorite television program
which is just getting to reach the climax of the plot, but suddenly it goes to commercial, and you
are then presented with an advertisement displaying happy attractive people relaxing on a beach
with the words “come here to get away from it all” playing in the background with catchy
rhythmic music. You think nothing much of the commercial you are seeing, and once it is over
you forget most of it, but as it turns out you did not truly forget. Throughout the next day, at your
job, you seem to be humming the commercials tune. You then notice what you are humming,
and then you become aware. Next thing you know you are remembering the relaxing beach, but
what now comes to you is a feeling of jealousy. Why is that? It is because you are jealous at
what you can be experiencing, “Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him in image
of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then
makes him envious of himself as he might be” (Berger 132).
Afterwards, you ask how these emotions came about? It is simply due to the commercial
seen previously even though at first it seemed to have caused no effect, but why were you even
feeling anything for it in the first place? It is because advertisements employ techniques that dig
into natural impulses in an unnoticed effort, but still “they stimulate the imagination by way of
either memory or expectation” (Berger 129). This, as stated before, is the way jealousy was
derived from, and it is also where perception is altered. Indeed, the questions previously said are
valid to ask, but unknown to you is that these questions, and their answers, were already made
known by another party in order to make us of their ability to influence in order to have control
over the masses. Who is this other party you ask? It is corporations.
Moreover, this is the way in which corporations affect people because they use
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advertisements to influence by including biological and psychological predisposed views that
target pleasure, they manipulate psychological views to affect self worth along with self-esteem,
and they use jealousy to aid in their influence.
Initially, corporations in America were once strictly controlled in rural times, but through
the use of cunning tactics to gain wealth, they figured out a way to break free from their
confines, and since then they have grown into titanic proportions that now affect people through
the use of advertisements to buy material goods as they use marketing techniques that exploit
biological and psychological aspects of humans that seek pleasure because these components
easily influence according to Taking ADvantage by Richard F. Taflinger; these given
advertisements use “visual or aural” appeals aimed at a persons subconscious to influence their
mind and emotions. Additionally, from the book it also states that through an evolutionary
standpoint humans formed a natural reflex, called an instinct, which brings out certain reaction
when presented to certain stimuli in an environment causes a predisposed response that is either
negative or positive to the stimuli perceived. Most notably, the response wanted by an
advertisement is that of pleasure (positive), so it is this theme that is present in each media of an
advertisement (Newspaper, Magazine, Commercial, Etc.). What is more, these instinctive
reactions are what Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam describes as jolts; “In broadcasting terms, a jolt is
any “technical event” that interrupts the flow of sound or thought or imagery…a jolt forces your
mind to pump for meaning” (Lasn 15). Even more, these instinctive reactions or jolts have been
taken from the natural world, and put into the consumer world to cause the reactions people were
predisposed to do. Giving to the fact, instincts were once used in defensive situations for
survival, but due to modern conveniences they are not able to play a survival role now because
advertisements have taken advantage of this as they have taken an evolutionary developed
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system of response and turned it into a system that brings out a constant stream of stimuli that
eventually dulls a person which eventually causes them to become connected to modernized life
and attitudes. As a result of this, the pleasures in life as said in Advertising: Appealing to Fun
and Pleasure from Miami University have been targeted and exploited to “change/strengthen
one's attitude toward a certain product or service”, this is how self worth is manipulated.
In consequence, women are the targeted audience for which self-worth is manipulated
vastly in as looking at current advertisements it is shown that vanity affairs are towards the
female gender. Subsequently, beauty has been successfully placed to be the priority for most as it
has shown to be what can truly make someone feel attractive or worth something, and that is how
a persons self worth is mainly influenced. For this reason, advertisers have created an image
problem for women in order to present them with a “solution” which is usually just a product
they can buy, “advertisers employ vigorous advertising strategy techniques such as, constructing
a problem that can only be solved using their products” (Asian Social Science); this issue is also
said in Taking Advantage, “commercials rely on the concept of self esteem, that the of a product
will raise how a person feels about themselves. Similarly, In Beauty Product Advertisements: A
Critical Discourse Analysis it states that an “ideal women” or “ideal look” is used when
advertising towards women in order to show what they are supposed to look like, and that is
specifically where the manipulation of self worth is made as advertisements target a women selfesteem in order to lower their guard, so that they can become susceptible in changing their look
in order to please. Specifically, advertisements do this by offering them a view of how “better”
they can look when they invest the manufactures product, “ the ideology of beauty is constructed
and reconstructed through magazines by stereotyping how beauty products are synonymous with
a better life”. By the same token, through the use of being constantly treated as an object to
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please others a submissive role is placed on women because they are treated as something that is
only meant to be looked at in advertisements, “Nevertheless both women’s products and gender
neutral products seem often to have males portrayed as wise, scientists or knowledgeable experts
and females as happy, grateful and contented users of those products” (Scandinavia Journal of
Psychology). Consequently, striving to look or be like someone else whether by appearance or
status is another way a person can become heavily inclined to do something, but most of the time
it is because of jealousy for what is not experienced or owned by the person’s own projected
image of themselves.
In a like manner, women, as said previously, are presented with a choice meant to have
goods purchased in order for their lives to improve, but what is also supposed to happen is that
they are supposed to become envious of themselves to what they can look like and become, “the
spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product” (Berger
134). In fact, this a way in which jealousy is effectively used to alter a persons feelings of self
worth as they are meant to feel inadequate when the product is not purchased, “the publicity
image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product”
(Berger134). In all honesty, this jealousy comes from being what a person is not as they are
imagining what they can be. Thus, people are not jealous of another person, but of their future
selves because they are experiencing what they currently do not own, “If a deprived person
compares himself/herself with a non-deprived person, a certain degree of discontent is
generated” (Nripesh 449)- in this case the non-deprived person is the future self being imagined.
Likewise, corporations make use of the lack of enjoyment present in a person’s life- such as their
work. That is to say, enjoyment is lacking in their job environment, so a person usually starts to
have fantasies that deal with the themes of pleasure with real world amenities in order for it to be
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felt as some form of real. In the same way, Taflinger states in Taking ADvantage, “When variety
is lacking, so, apparently is enjoyment”, so the dull presence one experiences does not have
enjoyment, so the void is filled through pleasurable thoughts. In all, jealousy may not seem to
cause most to have a grand affect, but when it is coupled with how a person wants to be more,
especially in a dull life, it brings about feelings of anger or inadequacy that is supposed to
motivate one to buy goods to feel something. Nonetheless, this is where the thought of becoming
self aware in what others do in order to influence is important because when a person sees what
is happening then the decision of what to feel can be their own choice, and not the choice of
others.
For this reason, the benefit of analyzing the texts chosen will allow for awareness to
develop as an understanding of how a corporation’s influence is made. In the end, this is the call
to action being disposed because an understanding of biological and predisposed views will let a
person see what is happening to them, an understanding of how psychological views of self
worth and self esteem are manipulated will let a person decide how to view their own worth, and
an understanding of how jealousy aids in influence allows for a person to not let what is not and
fantasy and reality intertwine to affect the now.
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1972. Print.
FURNHAM, ADRIAN, and STEPHANIE PALTZER. "The Portrayal Of Men And Women In
Television Advertisements: An Updated Review Of 30 Studies Published Since 2000."
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Kaur, Kuldip, Nalini Arumugam, and Norimah Mohamad Yunus. "Beauty Product
Advertisements: A Critical Discourse Analysis." Asian Social Science 9.3 (2013): 61-71.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 May 2013.
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America. New York: Eagle Brook, 1999. Print.
Lesniak, James. "Advertising: Appealing to Fun and Pleasure." Muohio.edu. Miami University,
20 Apr. 2002. Web. 29 May 2013.
<http://www.users.muohio.edu/shermarc/p324ads2.shtml>.
Podder, Nripesh. "Relative Deprivation, Envy And Economic Inequality: Reply." Kyklos 52.3
(1999): 449. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 June 2013.
Scandinavian Journal Of Psychology 51.3 (2010): 216-236. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11
June 2013.
Taflinger, Richard F. Taking Advantage. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Pub., 2010. Print.