Contemporary Print Advertising in the Age of Irony

Brian Ned Tucker Curtis, A.B.

In candidature for the degree of Master of Arts12 March 2002

Department of EnglishArts Faculty

University of Melbourne

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree ofMaster of Arts (with Advanced Seminars component)

Abstract

Between the closing years of the 1800s and the early 1920s, most of the Western world hademerged from a premodern state of rural and subsistence living and entered into a condition thatwould come to be known as modernity. It has been widely illustrated that this emergence intomodernity coincided with an increasing influence of industry, capitalism, mass production, andprint media. In addition to demonstrating these inter-relations, though, a handful of theorists havepurported that industrial modernity itself was largely the result of an increased focus on productadvertising. As the technical advances of modern industry allowed for an increased productive out-put, a surplus of goods began to accumulate. In the early days of modern advertising, it was thejob of advertisers to promote a culture of consumption in which these surpluses would not gounpurchased. To these ends, advertisers invoked the cultural language of myth in order to natural-ize the consumption process. They used mythology to make modernity and consumption synony-mous and to make them both seem like natural ways of life.

As advertising and industrialism continued to advance, though, their own evolutions began to alterthe very state of modernity which they had helped to create. As it eventually became clear thatindustrial products were no longer the predominant goods in the marketplace, the increasing preva-lence of postindustrial products of culture heralded the arrival of postmodernity. Within this post-modernity, the same advertising methods that were once used in an effort to tame the older indus-trial goods surplus had also contributed to an oversupply of postindustrial cultural goods as well.One side-effect of this increasing availability of media and other cultural forms was that the infor-mation environment of everyday consumers became more and more enriched. Along with thisimprovement in consumer knowledge came an improved audience agency vis-à-vis the media andsupporting advertisement to which they were exposed. As the agency of individual audience mem-bers increased, the ability of advertisers to attract them using their old mythical methods began towane.

To these ends, a new cultural language was developed. In order to sell the surplus products ofpostindustrialism to the increasingly agential consumer within the new social condition of post-modernity, the language of irony was adopted. As the cynicism and wariness of advertising claimsof the past proved to make transparent the intentions of older modes of advertising, ironic advertis-ing was implemented by certain postindustrial cultural producers in an attempt to communicatewith this new consumer.

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Declaration

This is to certify that —

the thesis comprises only my original work except where indicated in the preface,due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used,the thesis is 20,000–22,000 words in length, inclusive of footnotes but exclusive oftables, maps, appendices, and bibliography.

Signed,

Brian Curtis

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Brett Farmer, for his advice and patiencethroughout this project. His insight and perseverance have helped to push myresearch through all the stages of development, from a half-baked idea eventually toa completed thesis. I would also like to acknowledge the support — financial andotherwise — of the University of Melbourne Department of English.

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Table of Contents

Introduction, page 1

Chapter One: Industrialism and Modernity, page 8

Chapter Two: Audience Agency in the Information Age, page 24

Chapter Three: The Rise and Rise of Irony, page 31

Chapter Four: Ironic Advertising, page 41

Conclusion, page 51

Bibliography, page 61

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Index of Images

Page 9: Massachusetts Spy (Laird:1998)Page 10: Dr. King’s (Laird:1998)Page 10: Dr. Kilmer’s (Laird:1998)Page 13: Woodbury’s Soap (Laird:1998)Page 14: Paris Garters (Marchand:1985)Page 14: Williams Shaving Cream (Marchand:1985)Page 15: Listerine (Marchand:1985)Page 16: Listerine (Marchand:1985)Page 16: Listerine (Marchand:1985)Page 17: Scott Tissues (Marchand:1985)Page 17: Motordom (Marchand:1985)Page 18: Ford (Marchand:1985)Page 19: Laundry (Marchand:1985)Page 21: Buick (Marchand:1985)Page 48: Volkswagen (Berger:2001)Page 50: Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company (Laird:1998)Page 50: Miller Genuine Draft (OneShow, Vol. 21)Page 51: Camel (Marchand:1985)Page 52: Camel (Berger:2001)Page 52: Eaton’s Linen (Marchand:1985)Page 53: Stella Artois (Berger:2001)Page 53: Soap and Water (Marchand:1985)Page 54: Astra (Lürzer’z Archive:1999, Vol. 3)Page 55 Mezzo Mix (Art Director’s Club, Vol. 76)Page 55: Mezzo Mix (Art Director’s Club, Vol. 76)Page 55: Campbell’s Soup (Marchand:1985)Page 56: Moon Pie (OneShow, Vol. 20)Page 56: Moon Pie (OneShow, Vol. 20)Page 57: Dos Equis (Lürzer’s Archive:1998, Vol. 5)Page 58: Nike (Lürzer’s Archive:1998, Vol. 5)Page 58: Dos Equis (Lürzer’s Archive:1998, Vol. 5)Page 58: California Pizza Kitchen (Art Director’s Club, Vol. 76)Page 58: California Pizza Kitchen (Art Director’s Club, Vol. 76)Page 59: Village Voice (OneShow, Vol. 18)Page 59: Banff Ice (OneShow, Vol. 22)Page 59: BSM Driving School (Berger:2001)Page 60: Absolut (www.absolut.com)Page 60: Calvin Groot (Lürzer’s Archive:1998, Vol. 5)Page 61: Chrysler (Marchand:1985)Page 61: Hoover (Marchand:1985)Page 61: Village Voice (Art Director’s Club, Vol. 73)Page 61: Village Voice (OneShow, Vol. 16)Page 62: Volkswagen (OneShow, Vol. 21)Page 62: No Frills (OneShow, Vol. 21)Page 62: Horn & Hardart (Berger:2001)Page 63: Stickity Jim’s (OneShow, Vol. 21)Page 63: Hans Brinker (British Design & Art Director Annual:1998)Page 63: TCP (Lürzer’s Archive:2000, Vol. 4)Page 64: The Den (OneShow, Vol. 16)Page 64: The Den (OneShow, Vol. 16)Page 64: Nike (Berger:2001)Page 65: Simple (Twitchell:1996)Page 65: Ayer & Son (Marchand:1985)Page 65: Palmer Jarvis (OneShow, Vol. 20)Page 66: Miller Lite: (Berger:2001)Page 67: Guinness (OneShow, Vol. 21)Page 67: Guinness (OneShow, Vol. 21)

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Page 68: Pepsi (Graphis Advertising Annual:2001)Page 68: Pepsi (Graphis Advertising Annual:2001)Page 68: Gold’s Gym (OneShow, Vol. 21)Page 69: Doritos (Graphis Advertising Annual:2001)Page 69: Lexus (Graphis Advertising Annual:2001)Page 69: Lexus (Graphis Advertising Annual:2001)Page 72: Obsession (Berger:2001)Page 72: Joe Chemo (www.adbusters.com)Page 73: Bob (OneShow, Vol. 21)Page 73: Bob (Berger:2001)Page 73: Absolut (www.adbusters.com)Page 74: Disillusioned (Berger:2001)Page 74: Models (Berger:2001)Page 74: Captain Morgan’s (Berger:2001)

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Introduction

The history

It has been well documented that the world underwent a major structural change early in the twen-

tieth century. Between the closing years of the 1800s and the early 1920s, most of the Western

world had emerged from a premodern state of rural and subsistence living and entered into a con-

dition that would come to be known as modernity. Many scholars have illustrated how this emer-

gence into modernity coincided almost perfectly with an increasing influence of industry, capital-

ism, and mass production [Ewen:1976; Mandel:1997]. That industrialism caused modernity is not

so accurate as to say that both simultaneously contributed to each other’s growth and advancement

well into the latter half of the twentieth century. Indeed, as it’s been written thus far, the history of

the twentieth century is very much the history of modern industrialism.

As the 1900s came to a close, though, another major transformation began to take place within the

same societies that had first emerged into modernity only a century before. It seemed that at the

end of the twentieth century many Western societies were evolving from a modern state into a con-

dition entirely new and unrecognized. Just as scholars have illustrated the coincidence of capital-

ism and mass production that resulted in a state of industrialized modernity, a number of theorists

have put forward that this new condition — this postmodernity* — was the result of an intensifica-

tion of those very coincidences [Castells:2000; Lyon:1998]. As the condition of postmodernity

became more widely experienced and understood within these societies, many saw it as the direct

consequence of a transition into an economic state of postindustrialism, in which the practices and

policies of industry were amplified and expanded into a whole range of nonindustrial commerce.

The short history of this fin de siècle period has been dominated thus far by the idea of the post-

modern.

*A note on usage: This term I use to refer to what many theorists alternately call Post-Modernity, postmodernism,post-modernism, etc. Within this work, ‘postmodernity’refers to the societal condition, whereas ‘postmodernism’refers to the cultural aesthetic.

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Of course, these histories have been written by people, often living within the times of which they

wrote, usually motivated by other interests, and always influenced by what was going on around

them. Of the scholars of modernity, it can broadly be said that there were two kinds: those who

benefited from and supported the changes in economic and social relations that were taking place,

and those who witnessed the same changes but decried the inequities that resulted. The former

camp comprised the courtesans of the industrial barons that were largely responsible for the eco-

nomic shifts leading to modernity. The utopian theories — as written by the likes of Emerson

Harris, N.A. Lindsey, and Calkins and Holden — told of lives far removed from the hardship and

toil of premodern living and were directly influenced by the societal transformations taking place

at the time. The latter group, including theorists such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Arnold

Toynbee, wrote theories of one-sided, class-based dystopias, which were also directly — albeit

oppositely — influenced by the wide-sweeping shifts that they were engulfed in. What both camps

shared, though, was a notion of teleology: Good or bad, modernity was leading society toward one

unavoidable future.

Many would argue that the future is now here, and it doesn’t look entirely like the picture painted

by either the doomsayers or the optimists. From within the confines of the postmodern condition

in which much of society now finds itself, at least one assertion can be made: The telos of moder-

nity envisioned by these thinkers never quite eventuated as planned. That’s not to say, though, that

the foresight of some of these theorists was not better than others. For the critics of modernity who

foretold of the future without optimism, certain new modes of scholarship attained a great degree

of prominence. The Marxism as practiced by many of these theorists attempted to explain the mod-

ern world in terms of economics. It was a class-based theory of how one group attained power at

the expense of another group’s labor. But their inquiries were not necessarily limited to the eco-

nomic: Culture — in its position as the base supporting the superstructural subjugation of the

underclass — was a fertile ground for examination. Especially appealing to these new theorists

were products of culture that were themselves particularly modern. The novel, the automobile,

modern art, and architecture were all thoroughly examined for their contribution to, and interaction

with, modern society. The methods that these modern theorists developed for explaining what they

2

saw would continue to hold prominence for as long — and in many cases longer — than the very

products of modernity under examination.

Eventually, these theorists would address other phenomena of modern culture, among which adver-

tising was a notable example. Although it had existed as a practice in various forms for millennia,

it wasn’t until the advent of industrialized modernity that advertising really attained prominence.

And it wasn’t — without coincidence — until the age of modernity that advertising was given any-

thing more than a passing glance as an appropriate subject of academic inquiry. For those who

chose to study the early days of modern advertising it was a deeply political affair. Heavily influ-

enced by conflict theory and its various incarnations, theorists of modern advertising like Toynbee,

Packard, Galbraith, and Ewen were interested in bringing to light the sometimes underhanded

strategies of the advertising world. Although not directly affiliated with the Frankfurt School,

many of these early theorists borrowed from the tools and techniques of Habermas, Marcuse, and

Adorno to illustrate — often in convincing fashion — the multifarious ways in which advertising

insinuated itself in the lives and minds of the modern public.

By and large these methods proved effective. This was the era of metanarrativity, of deep structure,

of Marxism, and of psychoanalysis. Using these techniques with great skill and persuasiveness,

these scholars were able to show the origins of modern advertising and their inseparable relation-

ship to the advent of industrial capitalism. Their arguments about advertising in early modernity

were undeniably plausible and have well stood the test of both scrutiny and time, but there was

also one deleterious effect of their plausibility: Some of the followers of these schools of thought

have continued to use these techniques of modernity well past their expiration date.

As the conditions of late modernity began to metamorphose into what would come to be recog-

nized as postmodernity, the efficacy of modern ways of thinking began to wane. When theorists

tried to stretch the pertinence of their methods for studying early modern advertising to the exami-

nation of latter-day advertising, certain things began to fall apart. As effective as these Marxist

mass-society techniques may have been within the contexts of modernity, they have proven less

than entirely efficacious apropos the admittedly nebulous postmodern conditions in which we now

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find ourselves. To offer a critique of modern advertising, modern techniques were required; but to

theorize, analyze, and criticize postmodern advertising, more specific and arguably complex strata-

gems must be employed.

The approach

Part of my research aim in this thesis is to narrate the transition from modernity to postmodernity,

highlighting, through a focus on advertising, the way the two eras interact with one another. As

Kellner argues, though, there are certain issues to consider in attempting to historicize the recent

past. “If one wishes to claim that a transition from modern to postmodern society has occurred,”

he admonishes, “one must provide an account of the features of the previous social order (moder-

nity), the new social order (postmodernity), and the rupture or break between them” [1988, p256].

In this vein, the material in Chapter One provides a brief background on the major theories of

modernity, particularly as they relate to the growing influence of print advertising. In Chapter Two

I detail much of the work that has gone into exploring the liminal space in which postmodernity

was born. Throughout the work, though, I am not only interested in detailing the differences

between the conditions of modernity and postmodernity, I am also keen to illustrate the disparities

between modern and postmodern modes of critique.

It is not enough, however, simply to point to the ways that the modern and the postmodern diverge.

In addition to the need to provide an account of the rupture, Kellner further states that “one should

also indicate both the continuities and discontinuities between the old and the new, the previous

and the current social order” [1988, p256]. In this respect, another goal of the thesis is to demon-

strate that postmodernity need not imply a complete break from the state of modernity. The condi-

tions of postmodernity are often, as I will illustrate, a skewed continuation of those same modern

conditions. As Ihab Hassan wrote in an early treatise on this transitional period, “modernism and

postmodernism are not separated by an Iron Curtain or Chinese Wall; for history is a palimpsest,

and culture is permeable to time past, time present, and time future” [1971, p276]. So, just as

many of the products of postmodern culture are not complete reinventions — rather evolutions —

of products of modern culture, it is also my position that the techniques for coming to understand

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them need not be entirely new. Although much modernist theory may be inadequate to the task of

explaining postmodern phenomena, one of the other intentions of this thesis is to recuperate some

of the strategies from the former for adapted use in the latter. For this reason, there are a few theo-

rists whose modern techniques fit in most well conceptually and critically with my postmodern

undertaking.

Although largely limited now in efficacy, the ideas of Marxian analysis and metanarrativity still

hold a great degree of explanatory power, and therefore interest. Particularly useful for my inquiry

into postmodern advertising is the work of Gramsci and Jameson. The notion of Gramscian hege-

mony goes a long way to bridging the gap between the totalizing Marxist theory of modernist

structural functionalism and the rhizomatic, decentered nature of postmodern poststructuralism.

Likewise, the work of Fredric Jameson and his not-so-strict adherence to the tenets of teleological

conflict theory continue to have much exegetic power for how the shifts in economic modes are

reverberated through other social formations and their cultural (by)products.

The (by)product in question in this thesis of course is advertising. Like modern art, architecture,

and the novel mentioned earlier, advertising has undergone some major transformations with the

advent of postmodernity. It is my intent first to cite the historical work on the original development

of advertising in the age of modernity; and then in turn to apply — and, where appropriate, to deny

the applicability of — this work to advertising in the age of postmodernity. I am especially inter-

ested in exploring how advertising of different eras must call upon different cultural languages in

order to communicate with the audience. The third chapter is dedicated to investigating the ways in

which irony has come to be the dominant mode of speech within postmodern cultural discourse

generally; while the fourth chapter provides specific examples of how this irony is borne out with-

in the culture industry of print advertising. Ultimately, my central claim is this: In modernity

advertisers invoked the language of mythology in order to sell to a growing and homogenizing

population the surpluses of industrial capitalism. As the goods surplus grew, so did the mass

media, sponsored as it was by the very advertisements that were created in an attempt to tackle the

oversupply of goods in the first place. Eventually this resulted in a glut of cultural and media

forms too, as well as an increasingly savvy and heterogeneous population. Again advertising

5

stepped in to try to reduce the surplus, this time not using traditional myth, but the language of

irony, to communicate with a disparate and increasingly agential audience.

Whereas many early theorists attempted to posit a cause-and-effect relationship between advertis-

ing and industrial modernity, I am interested in approaching notions of causality for the advent of

postmodernity using advertising not as a cause but as a symptomatic case study. Their arguments

were largely economic, dealing in issues of industry and commerce. I also approach the subject

from an economic perspective, even if the focus of my study deals largely in the language of art,

culture, and audience reception. For this, advertising is the perfect case study. It is, as John Sinclair

says, “the study of an economic system in its symbolic forms” [1987, p1].

The difficulty of the task

What is interesting about advertising, though, is that it is a symbolic form with an identifiable,

financially motivated actor behind its creation. When I attempt to use the language of advertising

to recount the history of modernity’s progression into postmodernity, one figure remains central to

the plot: the creative advertiser. There is an inherent danger, of course, in trying to narrate the very

recent past of postindustrial transformations, particularly in light of the fact that narrativity is itself

quite counter to most of the tenets of postmodernity. When I begin to explain certain postmodern

cultural and economic phenomena in ways that are decidedly unpostmodern, I run the risk of

endangering the entire point of my argument. Zygmunt Bauman explains:

If the purpose or effect of narration is to bring order to a semantically loaded yet confused space, to con-jure up logical consistency where chaos would otherwise rule, any narrative aiming to serve well its rai -son d’etre stands a risk of implying more coherence than the postmodern condition could possiblyuphold. Once we remember that incoherence is the most distinctive among the attributes of postmoderni-ty (arguably its defining feature), we need to reconcile ourselves to the prospect that all narratives will beto a varying extent flawed. [1992, pxxiv]

The only escape I may have from these critical dangers could fall in exploring the nature of the

advertising creative him/herself. In the end, if all other explanations and attempts at narration

prove to be untenable in the face of postmodernity’s incoherence, perhaps it is simply the plight

and motivations of the advertiser that can offer coherency enough.

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Whereas the notion of narrating this time of transition may indeed be too riddled with flaws, it is

possible that there may be some saving grace in approaching the advertiser as a timeless figure

with artistic concerns that stretch across the boundaries of socioeconomic eras. Cultural critic

Jonathan Dee once remarked that advertising professionals are nothing more than “artists with

nothing to say” [1999; p64]. As advertisers are confronted with the task of being creative within

the same stifling conditions of incoherency that make postmodernity impossible to narrate, perhaps

irony attains dominance not for the all the complicated social and economic reasons that I hope to

explicate within this thesis. There may indeed be a simpler explanation: If Jedediah Purdy is cor-

rect in characterizing the ironist as someone for whom “his wariness becomes a mistrust of lan-

guage itself,” then indeed irony might be the perfect mode of speech for an artist with nothing to

say. I conclude the thesis by suggesting that irony may be the postmodern technique par excellence

by which the advertiser can speak without saying anything at all. For within the context of post-

modernity, irony is the very language by which “he disowns his words” [1999, pxi].

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Chapter One: Industrialism and Modernity

In Fredric Jameson’s 1984 reworking of Ernst Mandel’s cultural periodization, monopoly capital

begets modernism. This is essentially a more specific example of the argument which states that

modernity is a result of the latter stages of the Industrial Revolution. This argument has been put

forward by a number of thinkers, on both the left and the right. In its simplest form, it goes like

this: In the late nineteenth century, America entered into a postbellum period of economic prosper-

ity. Great improvements in industrial machinery and manufacturing techniques were introduced.

Specialization and differentiation occurred in the workplace. As the efficiency on the factory floor

increased, the average laborer’s workweek shortened. But even with this decreased need for labor

hours, the productive capacity of the US — and later, the rest of the West — reached unprecedent-

ed levels [Ohmann:1996, p73; Norris:1990, p xv]. The ability of manufacturers to produce goods

outstripped the demand for those goods. Consumers entering into this period of modernity were

faced with two things they’d never encountered before: a surplus of free time, and a wide selection

of household goods from which to choose. On the flipside, producers were themselves faced with

new prospects: a productive capacity capable of generating a greater variety of goods than had ever

been needed, and a potential market of consumers that had never been bigger.

Advertising steps in

The advertisers’claim to modernity rested on their role in pushing economic modernization furtheralong its logical course of development. An economy organized for efficient production througheconomies of scale, rationalization of the working place, functional specialization, and a rapid andintegrated flow of materials and communications also needed a high ‘velocity of flow’in the pur-chase of goods by consumers. Ad creators were becoming the highly specialized facilitators of thatprocess. As some business leaders in the 1920s began to worry about the damages of over-produc-tion, advertising agents gained increased respect for their role as guardians of uninterruptedprogress. [Marchand:1985, p1]

Following the argument that correlates industrialism and modernity, there flows another theory that

has grown familiar over time. While industrial expansion made possible the endless choice of con-

sumer goods, there was an additional force that contributed to the continuation of that expansion.

There have been many histories of advertising written in recent years, and almost all of them pro-

vide some sort of variation on a common theme: As more and more goods chased after the same

8

set of consumers, advertising made the difference. It ensured the continued production of excess

goods by naturalizing the excess consumption of goods. In Captains of Consciousness, a classic

exploration of advertising and the social roots of consumer culture, Stuart Ewen explains how the

industrial machine transformed “the nature of consumption among a broad sector of the popula-

tion” [1976, p16]. He was one of the first to illustrate the intricate relations between the rise of

industrial capitalism and the rapid expansion and growing influence of advertising in early twenti-

eth century America. Many historians and theorists followed in his footsteps, detailing a historical

narrative that varies so little from one version to the next that their collective account verges on the

canonic. It is essentially this account, however simplified, that follows.

Advertising is born and comes of age

Advertising has not always existed. Pervasive as it is today, there was a time when much of the

population had never been exposed to an advertisement. Up until the mid-1800s there was no such

thing as packaged goods either. Products were made in small batches, either by hand or by rudi-

mentary machinery. They were then sold generically and in bulk by local merchants. Some of the

earliest examples of advertising took the form of stock announcements, in which shopkeepers

would hire spruikers, construct signs or, print up flyers to announce the arrival of new stock in

their stores. Even early newspaper ads largely consisted

of simple columns of text, outlining goods for sale. This

front page from an 1821 edition of the Massachusetts

Spy advertises a number items, from cough drops to next

year’s almanac. These early ads didn’t emphasize prod-

uct features or consumer benefits, they merely brought

attention to goods that were currently available for pur-

chase. In fact, this style of advertising had gone virtually

unchanged for nearly 200 years in England, where the

calls of town criers announcing the arrival of the latest

shipment in port could be heard as early as the 1600s

and as late as the 1800s [Laird:1998, p16]. However, as

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migration from rural areas continued to increase the populations of urban areas in nineteenth cen-

tury England and America, the city streets eventually became too crowded and noisy for spruiking

to have any impact. It was also around this time that the nature of advertising began to change.

Although the Industrial Revolution nominally began in

England in 1760, it wasn’t until many years later that its

effects would be generally felt by everyday consumers in other

parts of the world. In the United States in the early nineteenth

century a consumer faced with the prospect of buying soap

from a shop usually had nothing more than one locally pro-

duced variety to choose from. Likewise for other generic

household products such as oats, washing boards, and candles

[Norris:1990, p14]. There was one exception to this rule,

though. From the beginning, preparers and purveyors of

medicinal products faced different marketing problems than manufacturers of other consumer

goods. Unlike most household goods, which required no explanation to sell, branded patent medi-

cines all claimed to offer unique remedies to their potential customers’ maladies. These proprietary

remedies had to be explained — and more importantly differentiated

— so that consumers would be able to choose between the benefits of

one over the other. This was also an area in which there was much

competition; the general lack of effective medical care during this era

resulted in a high demand for these nostrums, which again resulted in

an increased number of entrepreneurs willing to sell them. Faced with

such a high degree of competition, manufacturers of these medicines

turned to a variety of methods to make their products more appealing

to the buying public [Marchand:1985]. Some medicines, like Dr.

King’s, made extravagant claims about their health benefits, some

invoked symbols of strength and vitality, some adopted exotic-sound-

ing brand names, and some developed flashy logos and packaging, all

in an effort to lure customers. This advertisement for Dr. Kilmer’s is

10

one example of the elaborate and decorative technique used by these patent medicines. The result,

at any rate, was a giant leap in the extent of product marketing. Never before had so much atten-

tion been paid to issues of advertising and product packaging, and many of the techniques discov-

ered by these mid-1800s patent medicine hawkers would go on to influence how the remaining

world of consumer goods would be approached and promoted.

By the late nineteenth century, America was emerging from the depression of the Civil War and

entering into a period of industrial expansion. The quality of industrial machinery was improving,

and its use growing widespread, to the point that consumer choice across the board began to

expand. Consumers no longer had to settle for one unbranded variety of soap at the neighborhood

store but were faced instead with an increasing variety of soaps from which to choose

[Norris:1990]. Even the local shopkeeper, at one time a trusted advisor when it came to consump-

tion decisions, couldn’t be expected to know enough about the differences between the soap brands

to recommend one over the other. It was during this broad period that product advertisements

finally caught up with patent medicines, and modern advertising was effectively born. Filling a

void of indecision, early twentieth century advertisers stepped in to help consumers make their

confusing purchasing choices.

At first retailers and manufacturers used a variety of methods for advertising their wares. As the

calls of the street criers grew fainter, advertisers were experimenting with media such as wagons

covered with signs, decorated clocks, and mechanical gizmos and other small devices, adorned

with brand names, that performed tasks from cutting the tips off cigars to providing therapeutic

electric shocks [Laird:1998, p15]. All of these techniques, though, suffered from limited market

reach, and the medium that eventually came to prominence was print advertising. On the back of

increased production capacity — and thanks to efficient movable type and printing presses,

improved distribution channels, and recently completed transcontinental railroad lines — newspa-

pers were experiencing a surge in growth and readership. The sheer size of the new mass reader-

ship of the popular press provided advertisers with a potential market for their goods that had been

previously unimaginable [Ohmann:1996]. With one printed ad in a newspaper, a retailer or manu-

11

facturer could now reach as many people in a day as street-side advertisements would have previ-

ously reached in a year.

Initially these early print ads followed the tradition of their forebears; they were often simple,

unadorned lists of products available. But as the medium evolved and competition increased, the

print ads themselves became more sophisticated and ornate. Previously, handbills and placards had

been designed primarily by the actual merchant with the help of a competent typesetter. Even the

extravagant design and copy on advertisements for patent medicines had been mostly done as an

in-house operation. As print ads began to proliferate however, increased competition started to give

rise to budding industries.

The concept of an advertising agency was born during this era. Originally the ad agency was a

wholesaler of advertising space in print media. The agency would buy space in bulk from the local

newspaper, and then sell individual spaces to the merchants or manufacturers that wished to adver-

tise there [Ohmann:1996]. The relationship between agency and advertiser continued in this vein

for a while until, through a concentration of core competencies, the merchants and manufacturers

realized their time and effort were better spent in doing what they did best: selling and making.

They increasingly began to leave the task of creating the ads — not just the placement of them —

to the advertising agencies. Within the agencies themselves, further division and specialization of

duties began to take place. The jobs of media buying, copywriting, typesetting, offset printing,

once done by the same person, were increasingly differentiated. This shift from a craftsperson to

an assembly-line method of advertising creation resulted in ever more complex print ads. In their

areas of specialty, copywriters were experimenting with new flourishes of language, typesetters

were ever pushing the boundaries of fontography, printers were increasingly utilizing attractive

woodcuts to add a visual element to their ads [Laird:1998].

The following advertisement for Woodbury’s Soap illustrates some of the advances being made in

the sophistication of print ads. As improved distribution channels began opening up more of

America to products and the advertisements that promoted them, manufacturers faced the problem

of how to differentiate their goods from those of their competitors. To this challenge rose the

12

advertising agency, which attempted to attract the buy-

ing public with their new and improved ads.

Soon, though, the technical merits of a sophisticated ad

alone were not enough to distinguish one product from

another. In short time, the attractively produced print ad

was the norm rather than the exception. At this point,

advertisers had a more difficult challenge to overcome.

In the early days of modern advertising, the brunt of

that challenge fell squarely on the shoulders of the

advertising copywriter. The copywriter of the 1920s had

to convince the buying public — who were accustomed

to purchasing generic, unpackaged, bulk items — that

the branded products they were promoting were better in every way than the alternative. To a large

extent, this is still the charge of the advertising copywriter. And to a large extent, the techniques

they developed in the 1920s would go on to inform much of the tenor of advertising for many

years to come.

Advertising enters the realm of mythology

In the language of cultural anthropology, myths act as guidelines for living within a society. They

both reflect and shape that society’s value systems. In essence, a myth serves to tell someone how

to live based on how others had lived. Within the context of advertising, mythology first came to

prominence when the messages of the ads began to change form. Just as ancient mythology used

stories and morality tales to get across important lessons about life, advertising began to adopt

similar techniques in its attempt to garner customers. It was when advertisers stopped selling prod-

ucts and started selling the benefits of products that they assumed their modern role as myth-mak-

ers. As one cultural anthropologist explains:

Advertising performs in modern society much the same function that myth performs in other soci-eties. As a myth in modern disguise it nevertheless has the same roles as ancient myth. Lévi-Straussdefines this role to be the resolution of potential conflicts. Myths serve to reinforce accepted modes

13

of behavior by scanning all the alternative solutions and ‘proving’that the one which predominatesin any society, in given circumstances, is the best. As such, myth is precisely like advertising, a con-servative force. [Leymore:1976, p ix]

In his work on advertisers as apostles of modernity, Roland

Marchand has discussed what he calls the ‘great parables’ of early

modern advertising [1985, p206]. These are scenes that served as

social tableaux. They described to consumers situations that they

might encounter in their everyday lives, and how certain products

could help them prevail in these situations. But more than that,

these tableaux, like the ancient biblical and secular parables,

offered instructions on how to live in the modern era. Some of the

tableaux reappeared frequently enough for Marchand to propose a

rudimentary taxonomy. There was The Parable of the First Impression,

The Parable of the Democracy of Goods, The Parable of Civilization

Redeemed. These ads for sock garters and shaving cream offer exam-

ples of Marchand’s first impression parable, in which consumers are

warned that they are constantly under the scrutiny of others. The moral

for each of these parables differed slightly, but they all spoke the same

simple truth: Every man and woman could improve his or her life by

buying the proper products.

Other examples of these parables abound, but few offer as good a view of the use of mythology as

the often-cited story of the national rise to prominence of Quaker Oats [Marchand:1985;

Laird:1998]. When the company made its branded emergence into the stores of America it had to

prove to the buying public the merits not only of oatmeal in general, but of Quaker Oats in particu-

lar. Prior to 1854, rolled oats had never been marketed for human consumption. Until the brands of

the American Cereal Company — F.S. and Quaker Oats — introduced the idea of eating oatmeal

for breakfast, oats had long been regarded as fit for consumption by only horses and livestock. In

their attempts to present oats as a human staple, the two brands embarked on very different adver-

tising campaigns. F.S. ran stark newspaper ads extolling the healthful virtues and low costs of eat-

14

ing oats. In contrast Quaker Oats, under the leadership of the now legendary Henry Parsons

Crowell, experimented broadly with advertising techniques. The company offered its oats in bright

and attractive packaging with complimentary recipe ideas; it produced ads with customer testimo-

nials and endorsements by medical professionals. With no prior knowledge of the milling industry,

Crowell began to apply to his oats business some of the tactics long used to sell patent medicines.

While F.S. was selling its identical product less expensively, Quaker Oats outperformed the compe-

tition by introducing the idea of narrative, story-line advertising, in which consumers of Quaker

Oats allegedly experienced almost miraculous attainment of their most cherished desires due to

their consumption of the cereal.

Throughout the late 1800s, F.S. continued to employ its old advertising methods sporadically,

almost grudgingly in local newspapers. Meanwhile Crowell embarked on advertising “on a mas-

sive scale, with extensive national placements through magazines and newspapers,” mythologizing

the benefits of Quaker Oats [Laird:1998, p251]. Eventually Quaker Oats drove its competition out

of business. The defeat of F.S. sounded a symbolic knell for older forms of advertising. A new

mode of product promotion was here. Quaker Oats had won the day, not through offering a superi-

or product, not through selling its cereal less expensively than the competition, and not through

knowing the industry more intimately, but through marketing alone. The brand had succeeded not

by marketing oats, but by marketing healthy teeth, and growing children, and strong bones. Its

advertisements were not just for the product, but for the ideal of what that

product could provide its consumers. The ads for Quaker Oats, as Crowell

commented, wrapped the product “in the tissue of a dream” [quoted in

Marchand:1985, p24].

These lessons were well learned by the rest of the advertising industry. In

1920 Listerine was not a new product. It had been sold for years as a sim-

ple and general antiseptic. But when the makers of Listerine wanted to

expand its customer base, they found the most success in not just convert-

ing the product to a new use, but to “induce the public to discover a new

need” [Marchand:1985, p18]. The story is by now a famous one in the

15

short history of advertising, and its protagonists considered heroes and

pioneers. Whereas Quaker Oats had succeeded by positively reinforc-

ing its consumers’ foremost dreams, Listerine used scare tactics to

force consumers to face their nightmares of social failure. Company

president Gerard Lambert hired the talents of copywriters Milton

Feasley and Gordon Seagrove to transform his general antiseptic into a

bottle — and a brand name — that would be in every American home.

They started by resurrecting from the inner reaches of an old medical

dictionary the term halitosis, an infrequently occurring gastronomic condition otherwise known as

bad breath. To extraordinary effect, they used this frightening-sounding technical term in conjunc-

tion with a mythology that spoke to a growing modern concern for social conformity.

Once again it was the consumer and his or her life — not the product

itself — that was the center of attention for these ads. Taking the tone of

the tabloids’ personal interest stories, the ads for Listerine were small

fables of social shame and how it could be avoided. Invariably they

depicted images of normal people, who were perfect in almost every

noticeable way but one: bad breath. It was bad breath that kept unmarried

women single, unemployed men jobless. But Listerine offered a cure for

all this. By just using the mouthwash every morning, a person could be

assured that he or she stood every chance for social success. These were small stories to which

every American was hoped to be able to relate. As Printers’Ink reflected in a tribute to the copy-

writer Milton Feasley: “He dealt more with humanity than with merchandise. He wrote advertising

dramas rather than business announcements — dramas so common to everyday experience that

every reader could easily fit himself into the plot as a hero or culprit of its action” [quoted in

Marchand:1985, p18].

The technique worked. The Listerine advertising budget ballooned from $100,000 in 1922 to $5

million in 1928; and the style and tactics of the campaign were mimicked by innumerable other

consumer products [Marchand:1985]. New conditions were cropping up daily on the pages of

16

newspapers that had heretofore escaped the attention of

medical professionals. But even more than its influence on

the creation of fictitious maladies, Listerine proved to the

rest of the advertising world that the most effective way to

sell goods was not to promote a product, but to promote a

lifestyle that can be improved by the use of the product.

The moral of the Listerine story was clear: Although indi-

vidual consumption habits may vary, there were always

certain goods that would be beneficial to the whole popu-

lation.

As advertisers began to address their messages to an ever-growing, ever-widening populace, and as

the reach and accessibility of the national media expanded, the concept of mass marketing started

to take hold. Individual consumers were growing increasingly difficult to address singly as society

continued to modernize. It became far more effective to treat them as a distinct mass, and to speak

to them in their own collective language [Ewen:1976]. The new science of demographics was born

to help advertisers recognize their target audiences. The Hoover vacuum cleaner was no longer

being sold to a housewife in Brooklyn, it was being promoted to the housewife segment of

America’s middle-class population. Likewise

the Parker pen, which was no longer market-

ed to that man down the street, but now to

‘The Man on the Street’. And the automo-

bile, formerly a mere means of transporta-

tion, was elevated in status to be the official

vehicle for every modern family.

As advertisers began to take advantage of this concept of the mass, the mass itself was having the

effect of conglomerating a diverse and growing nation. If the Ford Motor Company was to sell the

same Model T to the whole of the country, the advertisers behind the Model T campaign had to

find the common threads which bound all the far-flung, would-be car buyers together. In short, as

17

mass marketing continued to proliferate, it had

the effect of expanding and solidifying national

consciousness. If the makers of Campbell’s Soup

were to sell their Cream of Mushroom to every

household in America, they first had to commu-

nicate the product’s benefits to every household

in America. To do this advertisers had to create

the image of the idealized American household. This image had to be familiar enough to all who

would see it that they would immediately recognize themselves in the picture. These early ads,

aimed at the whole of the American consuming public, served not only as product advertisements,

but as mirrors, reflecting back to the consumer images of themselves affirming what it was to be a

member of the American consuming public. This process was pivotal in creating a mass conscious-

ness, a group identity with which modern Americans could identify.

Symbolism, subjects, and imagined communities

In his work on nationality, Benedict Anderson famously introduces the concept of the ‘imagined

community’. Linking the ways that national identities have been formed within the conditions of

modernity and capitalist consumption, Anderson points out the ways that “print capitalism brought

into being mass publics who began to imagine, through the media, a new type of community: the

nation” [1992, p8]. For the public of early twentieth century America, this entailed not only imag-

ining themselves as citizens of a newly powerful country, but also as members of a modern era

bent on progress and the attainment of the Good Life. How this was accomplished through the

advertising media also goes to explaining the power behind the use of mythology as a selling tool.

Part of the function of mythology is to link individuals with a greater collective. In advertising it

functions as a binding force between the advertisement’s subject and the actual viewer of the ad. In

his work on the rise of magazines and consumer culture, Richard Ohmann invokes the Althusserian

notion of suture to explain the ways in which advertising interpellates readers, how it binds them

to an ideology. “Ads also explain how to participate in society,” he claims. “They tell what mean-

18

ings commodities have for other people, whether just for the ad writer, for the celebrity endorser,

for the average user, or for the imaginary people in ad images. So they gesture toward courses of

action by which ‘you’ might become like those exemplary people, join their company” [1996,

p212]. John Storey takes this further in discussing consumers as subjects.

When... I am told by an advertisement that ‘people like you’are turning to this or that product, I ambeing interpellated as a member of a group, but, more importantly, as an individual ‘you’ of thatgroup. I am addressed as an individual who can recognize myself in the imaginary space opened upby the pronoun ‘you’. Thus I am invited to become the ‘you’ spoken to in the advertisement. But forAlthusser, my response to the advertisement’s invitation is an act of ideological ‘misrecognition’.First, it is an act of misrecognition in the sense that in order for the advertisement to work, it mustinvite many others who must also (mis)recognize themselves in the ‘you’of its discourse. Second, itis a misrecognition in another sense: the ‘you’ I (mis)recognize in the advertisement is in fact a ‘you’created by the advertisement. Advertising thus flatters us into thinking we are the special ‘you’of itsdiscourse and, by so doing, interpellates us as subjects of and subjected to its material practices.[1998, p97]

In this way, modern advertising allowed publics to be treated

as a mass by convincing individuals that they were part of a

mass. And these new modern subjects were happy to be part

of a larger whole. In the confines of an increasingly complex

modern society, being connected to other people helped them

make sense of the world. It gave them grounding and mean-

ing. As this ad for the Association of Laundry Owners illus-

trates, advertising can even offer guidlines as to how to be a

proper spouse.

Naturalizing goods

Ideological interpellation and group identity weren’t the only way mythology contributed to con-

sumers’ understanding of the world. Richard Ohmann again points out how people gain meaning

through consumption, this time not by relating to each other, but by relating to the things they pur-

chase: “In re-presenting objects, ads connect them to one another, to situations, to social processes,

to us and our desires. They teach us the ‘communicative function of goods’, and the place of goods

in ‘our’ way of living and imagining” [1996, p212]. To return to the mythology of advertising, the

goods depicted in ads like those for cars, Quaker Oats, and Listerine serve many of the same func-

19

tions as talismans and totems in more conventional notions of mythology. The premodern subject

could connect him/herself to the world with some totemic object infused with commonly held

symbolic properties. For modern subjects, those objects were consumer goods, ready made and

branded by manufacturers in search of a profit. Raymond Williams has described this pattern of

symbolic signification as “magic: a highly organized and professional system of magical induce-

ments and satisfactions, functionally very similar to magical systems in simpler societies” [1961,

p335]. Like magic, Listerine (not just any antiseptic mouthwash) represented one’s commitment to

cleanliness and a sanitary life. Quaker Oats, more than F.S., symbolized a consumer’s desire for a

strong body and healthy children. The differentiation of these brands was pivotal in mythologizing

consumption as the path to happiness.

Naturalizing culture

Neil Harris suggests that the greater the variety of brands available, the more consumers found

their interest in “the object’s symbolic properties” [quoted in Marchand:1985, p342]. Early adver-

tisers had hit upon the basic human desire for the Good Life and they tried to convince the public

that their desires could be attained through the consumption of individually branded goods that had

been infused with mythical symbolism. Again, the premodern corollary to this can be found in the

examples of anthropological — even religious — myth: In taking communion with the ‘body’ of

Christ, attendees at the last supper used their act of consumption to symbolize not only their col-

lective commitment to a higher purpose, but also to each other. In his exploration of consumer cul-

ture, Hugh Mackay takes this to its logical modern conclusion, in which branding “becomes the

largest mythology of all — that our products are our culture, because it is in consumerism that we

most express our sense of social belonging” [Mackay:1997, p123].

As consumers embraced the culture brought about by these commercial products’ symbolic proper-

ties, they began to forget the history behind the products themselves. If purchasing a refrigerator

could come to represent a consumer’s commitment to modern advancement, it was often over-

looked that it was the consumers (in their other role, as producers) that also manufactured these

appliances. French theorist Roland Barthes would claim that it was the relationship between

20

mythology and culture that allowed this to happen. In his landmark work on this relationship,

Barthes outlines “the very principle of myth: It transforms history into nature” [1972, p116]. Thus

the ‘magic system’ — an effective selling technique invented in an attempt to connect with con-

sumers’ Good Life aspirations — was also for early industrialists an iron-clad method for natural-

izing the process of consumption. Stuart Ewen remarks on how the industrial machine naturalized

consumption, encouraging workers to improve their lives by purchasing the very things they creat-

ed [1976, p16]. But here Barthes takes the notion one step further, explaining the process by which

the fabrication of consumer goods can be removed from the fact of their actual production. In this

sense the industrialists enlisted the aid of mythology because myth “is constituted by the loss of

the historical quality of things: In it, things lose the memory that they once were made” [1972,

p117]. When the symbolic property of a good could be separated from the mundane history of its

production, that good would then be free to take on a life of its own as a marker of modernity. To

buy such modern items was to be modern; and the more items consumers bought, the more mod-

ern they could become.

The thoroughly modern consumer

To these ends, advertising was employed in the early days not only to

sell individual products, but to sell the idea of consumption. The

goods on the store shelves were the very building blocks out of

which modern citizens could contruct their modern selves. All across

the pages of 1920s magazines images of people engaging in acts of

progress and advancement could be seen. The example here isn’t just an advertisement for Buick

cars specifically, but for the concept of the automobile in general. Perhaps even more, it is an ad

for the kind of freedom that could only be afforded to citizens of modernity by an automobile (all

the more by this brand of automobile). Such bold imagery was used for products as diverse as

washing machines, vacuums, and cigarettes. It was iconography like this that led Raymond

Williams to call advertising “the official art of modern capitalist society” [1961, p334]. Following

this suggestion sociologist Michael Schudson argues that “advertising imagery can be thought of

as capitalism’s equivalent to Soviet ‘social realist’ art in the way which it mythologizes capitalism,

21

and especially US capitalism as a way of life” [quoted in Dee:1999, p63]. Put another way, “adver-

tising was where all the ideology of capitalist society was given shape, where competitive con-

sumerism ... assumed attractive and concrete images which became diffused throughout all enter-

tainment and publicity in an endless ‘spectacle’” [Sinclair:1998, p11]. By the middle of the centu-

ry, these spectacles were so ubiquitous that French Situationist Guy Debord came to refer to

modernity as the ‘society of the spectacle’. In speaking of the imagery of modern advertising he

claims that “the language of the spectacle is composed of signs of the dominant organization of

production — signs which are at the same time the ultimate end-products of that organization”

[1994, p14]. In this way advertising was at once the product and the message of modern industrial-

ism. It spoke in signs which confirmed the relations of consumers to their goods and each other.

And they also provided the public with a basic symbolic vocabulary on which to base their under-

standing of the modern times in which they lived.

In the end, advertising used these mythical signs and symbols to point out the sometimes harsh

realities of modernity and offered solutions for living well even in the face of these realities.

According to Stuart Ewen, “the logic of contemporaneous advertising read, one can free oneself

from the ills of modern life by embroiling oneself in the maintenance of that life” [1976, p44].

Thus was consumer culture born: a product of, and response to, modern industrialism.

Consumer culture is created and criticized

That advertising played such a prominent role in the transformation of society into a state of mod-

ern advancement did not go unannounced by the proponents of early advertising. One would

assume advertisers to be masters in the art of self-promotion, and some of the following proclama-

tions illustrate well just what they thought of their persuasive powers and just where they placed

themselves and their work in the grander picture of modernity.

“Advertising aims to teach people that they have wants, which they did not realize before, and where such wants canbe best supplied.” —Thompson Red Book on Advertising

“Advertising is literature which compels Action... [and] changes the mind of millions at will.” —Lord & Thomas

“Advertising modifies the course of a people’s daily wants.” —N.A. Lindsey

22

“My aim in advertising was to do educational and constructive work so as to awaken an interest in and create ademand for cereals where none existed.” —Henry P. Crowell

“The advertiser takes the vague discontent or need of the public, changes it into want, and the want into effectivedesire.” —Emerson P. Harris

“Advertising is a powerful force whereby the advertiser creates a demand for a given article in the minds of a greatmany people or arouses the demand that is already there in latent form.” —Calkins and Holden [all quoted inOhmann:1996, p109]

But these proud proclamations by advertising’s proponents were frequently off-set and overshad-

owed by the even louder cries of advertising’s critics. As the ubiquity of advertising increased, and

its contribution to a sometimes distasteful and inequitable consumer culture was brought to the

fore, the critics of advertising made their voices heard.

“I cannot think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.” —Arnold Toynbee [quoted inKirkpatrick:1994, p1]

“Advertising is an instrument of moral, as well as intellectual, miseducation. Insofar as it succeeds in influencing peo-ple’s minds, it conditions them not to think for themselves. It is intentionally hypnotic in its effect. It makes peoplesuggestible and docile. In fact it prepares them for a totalitarian regime!” —Arnold Toynbee [quoted in Assael:1963,p434]

The tone of many of these criticisms of advertising would continue to reverberate for decades. To

this day, the vast majority of critiques of advertising fall into one of two types: critiques of adver-

tising as demand creation and the duping of an innocent public; and critiques of advertising as a

base and lowly form of mass culture. While these reproofs of advertising may have been at least

partially valid during the age of modernity, their accuracy has waned over time. Eventually the

conditions that gave rise to modernity began to change, and with those changes so too did the

nature of consumption and advertising. If both the proponents and detractors of modern advertis-

ing pointed to the coercive power held by the ads, a new form of power came into existence as

modernity began to evolve. Dwight Macdonald has pointed out the oft-cited curse of mass culture,

claiming that it is imposed from above, created by technicians hired by businessmen, and that “its

audiences are passive consumers, their participation limited to the choice between buying and not

buying” [1957, p23]. As modernity began to transform itself into an ever more complex social and

cultural system, that mode of participation was greatly expanded. In the next chapter I will elabo-

rate on these shifts within modernity, and will detail the new power of the audience.

23

Chapter Two: Audience Agency in the Information Age

The rise of information society

Whereas the relationship between advertising and the emergence of industrial modernity has been

effectively documented, little work has been done on the relationship between contemporary adver-

tising and the socioeconomic conditions of postindustrial postmodernity. Thanks to the efforts of

twentieth century structural functionalists and Marxists, we now take for granted that the condi-

tions we have come to identify with modernity derived in large part from the economic transfor-

mations of industrial capitalism. As many of the conditions heretofore identified with modernity

began to metamorphose in the late 1900s, a small but significant group of sociologists, econo-

mists, and critical theorists began to investigate the societal changes and their potential explana-

tions. Theorists as diverse as Alvin Toffler, Alain Touraine, Daniel Bell, Zygmunt Bauman, Scott

Lash and John Urry, and Manuel Castells have all tried to find causality for the genesis of post-

modernity. Their research offers a functional explanation for the transformations of modernity that

began to take place in the latter half of the twentieth century. Of these, the sociological works of

Lash and Urry and the economic work of Castells have come the closest to employing the kind of

historical and empirical rigor in explaining the advent of postmodernity that their predecessors did

with modernity.

Following Toffler’s concept of the ‘third wave’, in which agriculture and industrialism come to be

replaced by an information society, Manuel Castells offers an exhaustive overview of the ways that

advanced capitalist economies have changed in recent years, and how these economic changes are

manifested socially [Lyon:1988, p2]. Castells’s historical account of the late twentieth century, rich

with statistical detail, documents the transition of a capitalist economy focused on producing

goods to one geared toward the production of information. In accounts of modern society’s emer-

gence into an economy dominated by industrialism, much credit is given to advances in technology

and industrial machinery that allowed goods to be produced in record numbers and distributed in

record time to large portions of the population. Likewise in Castells’s portrayal of the advent of

postindustrialism, it is the technology of production itself that allows for a radical transformation

24

in both the type and availability of postindustrial products. “The emergence of a new technological

paradigm organized around new, more powerful, and more flexible information technologies makes

it possible for information itself to become the product of the production process” [2000, p78]. In

this example, it is the very tools of production and drives for increased market share themselves —

however intensified — that changed the nature of industrial capitalism. If mass communications

were aimed at increasing demand for industrial products, then it was the radical proliferation of

communications that eventually increased demand for communication itself. Knowledge and infor-

mation thereby became the primary products of postindustrialism. Hence the information age was

born. And like the industrial age before it, in which the kinds and quantities of products available

gave birth to grand societal transformations, the citizens of the information society were faced

with many new modes of consumption.

Castells goes on to point out the types of products that typify the new consumer goods in the infor-

mation age. Foremost among consumption options for members of the information society are the

media. As the industrial revolution enabled the production of machinery that would make media

and mass communications possible, the information revolution contributed to the proliferation of

media forms across multiple channels of distribution. Castells offers insightful figures for the

expansion of all media forms, from the multiplication of radio and television channels, to the

emergence of new computer-mediated communications such as the internet, to the rapid growth in

the number of magazine and book titles available on the shelves. According to Castells, people in

the information society spend more time consuming knowledge and information than any other

product. In fact, “the predominant pattern of behavior around the world seems to be that in urban

societies media consumption is the second largest category of activity after work” [2000, p362].

But that is really only half of the equation. Just as in industrial society, where citizens were occu-

pied not only in consuming goods but in producing them, a large percentage of labor in the infor-

mation age necessarily goes into the production of information. Lyon and Castells also illustrate

the changing face of the work force in this information society, but it is in the work of sociologists

Lash and Urry and Pierre Bourdieu that many of the facets of a labor force engaged in producing

knowledge are explored. In their book Economies of Signs and Space, Lash and Urry detail many

25

of the effects of having a large portion of the population working in the culture-producing indus-

tries. It is their contention that, with ever increasing numbers of employees dedicated to producing

TV shows, movies, music, and magazines, media consumption is not only a major category of

activity after work — for a growing percentage of the labor force it is also the primary category of

activity during work [1994]. They then go on to explore some of the constituent effects on the

information society of having a population actively and constantly engaged in the production and

consumption of knowledge.

The new cultural intermediaries

However, the continued growth in the late 1900s of a substantial work force involved in media pro-

duction was not sufficient to affect a new social order by itself. Instead, theorists such as Pierre

Bourdieu have pointed to the interaction between these media producers and influential media con-

sumers as one of the defining distinctions of postmodernity. Citing Pierre Bourdieu’s social cri-

tique of taste, Mike Featherstone emphasizes the “need to look at artists, intellectuals and academ-

ics as specialists in symbolic production and consider their relationship to other symbolic special-

ists in the media, and those engaged in consumer culture, popular culture and fashion occupations”

[1991, p10]. This group of influential professionals, dubbed the ‘new cultural intermediaries’ by

Bourdieu [1984], arose from the burgeoning service industry of the postindustrial era, but were

also broadly informed by the aesthetics of the 1960s counterculture. In their new role they acted as

both producers/disseminators and consumers/audiences for cultural goods, rapidly circulating

information between heretofore out-of-touch groups. Further identifying this new creature of post-

modernity, Featherstone writes:

Given conditions of an increasing supply of symbolic goods (Touraine, 1985), demand grows forcultural specialists and intermediaries who have the capacity to ransack various traditions and cul-tures in order to produce new symbolic goods, and in addition provide the necessary interpretationson their use. Their habitus, dispositions and lifestyle preferences are such that they identify withartists and intellectuals, yet under conditions of the de-monopolization of artistic and intellectualcommodity enclaves they have the apparent contradictory interests of sustaining the prestige and cul-tural capital of these enclaves, while at the same time popularizing and making them more accessibleto wider audiences. [Featherstone:1991, p19]

These new cultural intermediaries were therefore saddled with the responsibility of helping ordi-

nary audiences interpret the growing array of cultural transmission available to them. Their posi-

26

tion in postmodern society was, accordingly, highly influential. However, within this already influ-

ential group of people, there were some engaged in certain occupations whose influence was even

more profound. Among this elite list of cultural occupations, Featherstone proclaims that the

advertiser is uniquely influential. It is worth noting, though, that this description of influence dif-

fers largely from that described by earlier critics of advertising. Gone are the charges of advertis-

ers’ uncompassionate persuasion techniques, their subliminal messages, and their reification of the

vulgar. Instead, this new theory of cultural interpretation relies on a notion of a more empowered

consumer, one that had the resources of circulated information at his/her disposal, one that didn’t

need to take every cultural transmission at face value.

Agency and postmodernity

One of the defining characteristics of modernity was the pervasion of ‘mass culture’. Mass culture

theorists saw the atomization of modern subjects, saw a sprawling and disconnected mass being

bombarded by one-way messages, and saw this uniform cultural dissemination as all pervasive and

evil. In the case of these mass theorists on advertising, they attacked this mass culture from the

left, declaring that it was merely commercial propaganda aimed at supporting the capitalist base of

an industrial economy. The toned-down version of their arguments — as described in the first

chapter — were eminently believable, but as society began to change so too did the nature of com-

munications.

One aspect of postindustrial society that Lash and Urry comment on in great depth is the expan-

sion of individual reflexivity. To them, the growth in reflexivity is a product of increasing individu-

alization in the wake of high modernity, coupled with an expansion in the structured forms of

communication flows. This reflexivity allows individuals to consider the flows of knowledge and

information that they are subject to, and eventually to evaluate them on their own terms. Thus indi-

viduals are granted increased agency, which, in turn, allows them to interpret communications

messages not as disconnected units within a mass, but as well-connected nodes in what Deleuze

and Guattari [1987] have referred to as a rhizomatic structure. In Lash and Urry’s terms, the

increasing individualization that gave rise to atomization in the mass communications structures of

27

modernity have resulted in a process “in which agency is set free from structure, a process in

which, further, it is structural change itself in modernization that so to speak forces agency to take

on powers that heretofore lay in social structures themselves” [1994, p5]. The same conditions of

industrialized modernity that have produced the atomized individual — residential suburbaniza-

tion, a segmented labor force, generalized media flows, and the shrinkage of secondary communi-

cation groups — have been carried to their extreme and have resulted in the isolated individual

agent. This isolation eventuated in increasing reflexivity, as the individual lacked the grounding to

consider much outside of his/her own world. To put it succinctly, the changing nature of communi-

cation models at the end of the industrial age gave birth to information society and the notion of

the reflexive agent. Here I will discuss the benefits of this reflexivity; in a later section I will begin

to highlight its drawbacks.

These notions of agency and reflexivity would go a long way to explaining a number of the condi-

tions of postmodernity, while at the same time illustrating the shortcomings of modernist theory.

As Lash and Urry, Castells, and others have illustrated, the shift from an economy dominated by

industrial production to information production has had a number of profound effects. Clearly the

amount of information being produced has grown significantly. Also, the channels by which infor-

mation is disseminated have drastically multiplied and decentralized. As more and more informa-

tion is produced, and more people are left with more time, finances, and cultural capital with

which to consume this information, the demand for knowledge and information continues to

expand. These are both the continued cause and effect of increased information production and

consumption.

But there is another side-effect of all these increases: Schudson has shown that as consumers gain

access to more information, the agency of those consumers is expanded [1984, p91]. The effect of

this is that, as a consumer’s agency increases, so too does his/her ability to offer a unique and indi-

vidual interpretation of the information being consumed. Of course this has a snowballing effect:

As an agent is able to interpret messages toward his/her own ends, whatever meaning that agent

grants to a message is then added to the producer’s intended meaning, thereby essentially doubling

the amount of information contained in that one message. As agency and the volume of informa-

28

tion increase, this effect will become exponential, particularly if the meanings assigned to symbols

by consumers differ from those of the producers. Michel de Certeau has explained this effect,

claiming that “to a rationalized, expansionist and at the same time centralized, clamorous, and

spectacular production corresponds another production, called ‘consumption’” [1984, p484]. This

has been confirmed by Walter Benjamin, who sees that “the greatly increased mass of participation

has produced a change in the mode of participation” [1968, p234]. In this view, the reader itself

gains access to authorship.

Making meanings

In her classic structural/Marxist exploration of decoding advertising, Judith Williamson goes to

great lengths detailing the way that ads work in a modern capitalist system. Invoking the tech-

niques of earlier Frankfurt School theorists like Adorno, Williamson explains how advertising

works by emphasizing the exchange-value of a good over its original use-value, thereby freeing the

commodity up to take on a secondary use-value. Using the language of Saussurian structural lin-

guistics, she illustrates how advertising seeks to conflate signifiers and signifieds. In this configu-

ration, a good is given a symbolic property beyond its original function. The modern advertiser

may construct an ad in such a way that a box of chocolates would come to mean ‘love’ or a luxury

car mean ‘success’. In her view, modern advertising worked by forcing consumers into “taking the

sign for what it signifies, the thing for the feeling” [1978, p12]. The ersatz use-value thus estab-

lished, the link between product and symbolic meaning is thus concretized. But this formulation all

turns on a scarcity of interpretations for any given sign. In modernity, communications flows were

limited and highly controlled; the people who owned the distribution of media also had a virtual

monopoly on the production of signifiers, and thereby the connoted meaning of the media they

produced. Consumers could be forced to conflate chocolate and ‘love’ because their information

environment was impoverished. As the information channels began to expand, though, this monop-

oly was broken. When there is a one-on-one relationship between signifier and signified, advertis-

ing may work as simply as Williamson explained, but as efforts in poststructuralist theory have

29

since shown, one distinct consequence of the information age has been an over-abundance of

potential symbols for interpretation.

As has been discussed, one result of postindustrialism has been a glut in cultural products. As Lash

and Urry seek to illustrate, this increase in actual cultural messages and the means by which they

are disseminated has flooded the symbolic landscape. “With an ever quickening turnover time,

objects as well as cultural artefacts become disposable and depleted of meaning. Some of these

objects, such as computers, television sets, VCRs and hi-fis, produce many more cultural artefacts

or signs (‘signifiers’) than people can cope with. People are bombarded with signifiers and

increasingly becoming incapable of attaching ‘signifieds’ or meanings to them” [1994, p2]. What’s

more, this proliferation of signifiers has outpaced the producers’ability to singularly manage the

impressions of their meanings. Without carefully constructed denotations for all the signs they are

confronted with, the public is now free, as Benjamin and de Certeau pointed out earlier, to offer

their own interpretations.

But this again is only half the picture; there has been a rush to fill this vacuum of meaning for sig-

nifiers. For every signifier without a signified in this era of postmodernity, there is an ever-increas-

ing number of signifiers with multiple signifieds. In technical terms, this polysemy derives not

from referentially produced meanings, but by a lack of such meaning. Two poststructuralist semi-

oticians have both approached these issues of polysemy and the derivation of meaning. Julia

Kristeva introduced the notion of intertextuality, in which “several utterances taken from other

texts intersect and neutralize one another” in the space of a given text. This same text, according to

Barthes, “is experienced only in an activity of production” [both quoted in Harland:1987, p168].

Thus both are interested in exploring the way that, in a postindustrial landscape of heightened

flows of information, there is a new ‘freedom of the Reader’, turning the individual into a ‘speak-

ing subject’. As an example, the luxury car mentioned above can come to mean not only ‘success’,

as the advertiser may have intended, but alternately ‘ostentation’ as interpreted by an individual

with enough agency to see the sign for what it is. This is all a function of the amount of informa-

tion being produced and disseminated. The more information flowing in a cultural space, the

greater the individual’s possibility of increased knowledge. As Bauman explains, “accessibility of

30

tokens for self-assembly varies from agent to agent, depending mostly on the resources that a

given agent commands. Increasingly, the most strategic role among the resources is played by

knowledge; the growth of individually appropriated knowledge widens the range of assembly pat-

terns which can be realistically chosen” [1992, p195]. When an individual is exposed to enough

information, his/her understanding — and thereby resources — will become less impoverished,

and this enrichment will result in a greater possibility for alternate interpretations of the connota-

tive signs of would-be advertisers. As this range of interpretation grows, so too does the polysemy

of advertising messages. In modernity one product had one attributed symbol, in postmodernity

one product has multiple symbols. The individual thus removed from the one-way mass communi-

cations of social control that Williamson illustrated, we see again that the functional explanation

for this rise in polysemy is highly intertwined with the notion of increased audience agency.

The habitat of agency

As has been discussed above, structural changes in the economy and communications flows of

postindustrialism have resulted in increased channels of information and in a decentered audience

of consumers. The more divergent pieces of information one individual is exposed to, the greater

that individual’s chance for perspective. In turn, the greater the individual’s perspective, the greater

the chance for varied interpretations for any given signifier. Not only might the individual agent

assign a meaning to a cultural product contrary to the producer’s intent, but that same agent might

assign a number of different meanings to the signifier, depending on the agent’s relationship to the

rest of the cultural world. If the individual happens to be one of Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural interme-

diaries, sitting the fence between the artist and the market as bona fide culture-bearer, it is entirely

possible that the agent may have two diametrically opposed signifieds for one signifier. It is impor-

tant, therefore, to do as postmodern sociologist Zygmunt Bauman suggests, and look not only at

agency, but “on the habitat in which agency operates and which it produces in the course of opera-

31

tion” [1994, p190]. For him, it is in the habitat that both symbol production and meaning-assign-

ment are made possible.

The prospect of polysemy and the range of meanings that may be assigned to any given cultural

product are therefore dependent on the type of culturescape in which any individual operates. If

the agent occupies a knowledge-rich habitat, then a wealth of tokens will be available for any com-

bination of assembly or dissembly. Some habitats, like those occupied by the new cultural interme-

diaries are veritable cornucopias of knowledge and information. But even the habitats of normal

citizens continue to become increasingly culture rich, as evidence of the consumption patterns of

the urban West has shown. The end result is not only a symbolic field in which more and more sig-

nifiers are produced each day, but also one in which each signifier can have a bewildering array of

attached meanings.

This overload of signs is one of the contributing factors toward what Jameson among others have

referred to as postmodern schizophrenia [Storey:1998, p34]. The postmodern schizophrenic is con-

stantly drawn in different directions by his/her divergent interests. For the typical audience mem-

ber, this may be their simultaneous position as both consumers and advocates of nonconsumption.

For cultural intermediaries like advertisers, this may be their oppositional status as people involved

in both in the production of commerce and culture, and in the spreading of influence and informa-

tion. The institutional ties, wrought by postmodernity, between the commerce and cultural indus-

tries have produced powerful new conglomerates like the Sony Corporation, whose physical prod-

ucts (CD Walkmans, Trinitron TV sets) can be used to disseminate its cultural products (Sony

Music artists, Sony Pictures movies). As Jensen says, this sort of “conglomeration breeds intertex-

tuality” [1995, p258]. The cultural intermediary, often employed by such conglomerates, is faced

daily with the charge of dealing with this increasing intertextuality. Like the chaotic internal dia-

logue going on inside the head of a person with multiple personality disorder, this intertextuality,

in which texts intertwine — often with divergent messages and meanings — is another symptom

of this schizophrenia. In this case, postmodern schizophrenia has supplanted modern atomized

anomie (described by Max Weber, among others) as the dominant cultural malady. In the face of

this sort of schizophrenia, one of the only palliatives afforded those stricken is an increasing

32

reflexivity. I mentioned earlier how Lash and Urry’s structural explanation for today’s reflexive

individual lies in an increasing “pervasion of information and communication structures” [1994,

p6]. Now, however, I would add that internal conflict among individual agents is a large factor con-

tributing to a state of contemporary hyper-reflexivity.

Reflexive engagement with the world

The reflexivity of the postmodern citizen is largely the defining characteristic of life in an era of

postindustrial formations. It is borne out in many ways, particularly among the new cultural inter-

mediaries, but its primary effect is a sort of hyperconsciousness, in which those affected interact

with the world in an almost exclusively referential manner. Flooded with signs and symbols, the

only way to make any sense of any of them is to play one off the other in a never-ending stream of

historical and cultural references.

But the average subject in capitalism hasn’t always interacted with the world in such a reflexive

manner. During the days of early industrial modernity, there was less a sense of history than of

destiny. For those who were benefiting from the advances made under a world organized around

industrial production (i.e. those same capitalists discussed in the first chapter), the ideal was very

much one of progress. There was no sense in looking backward for reference; all that was good

was to be found by looking forward to the future. Such were the ideas espoused by the advertising

myths of the early 1900s. Modern citizens were yet to be exposed to information and communica-

tions flows on such a massive scale, and they were afforded little agency with which to reflect on

the messages of the ads they were exposed to. The message for all during modernity was unified:

The future was a bright and beautiful place, and the harder they worked and the more they con-

sumed, the quicker they would get there. Without reflexive agency, one had to either accept or deny

this.

For those who chose to deny this progressive vision of a better world through capitalism, there was

still no real form of historical reference. It is no coincidence that the tenets of Marxism were born

at the same time as industrial modernity — they are a reaction to it, a denial of modernity’s opti-

33

mistic worldview. Marxists denied the capitalists’ version of a perfect future based on consump-

tion. But their outlook too was entirely oriented in progress. Like the industrial capitalists, the

Marxists lacked any referential perspective. The capitalists viewed a future of free-flowing

economies and happy consumer/citizens; the future of the Marxists foretold of a classless utopia in

which laborers would own their own means of production. For both, their view of the past and

present was equally overshadowed by the future. And if the outlook didn’t look too rosy, the natu-

ral choice in modernity was to resist; to struggle to create the ideal future that they envisioned.

But what if the postmodern citizen wants to engage in resistance? Certainly the transformations of

postindustrialization can offer him/her many more and varied modes of resistance. But perhaps the

same transformation can offer no more than many modes of reflexivity. Truly, in today’s cul-

turescape of increased agency, polysemy, and intertextuality, an individual’s options for reference

are vastly increased over his/her modern forebears. No longer limited to looking to the future,

postmodern ‘speaking subjects’ increasingly chose to refer to and embrace the fragmented past.

Those wishing to make a break from the stifling limitations of modernity have eschewed many of

its headier pronouncements. In his now famous proclamation, Jean-François Lyotard defines post-

modernism as “incredulity towards metanarratives” [quoted in Storey:1998, p346]. These include

such grand notions as capitalist progress and the Marxist End of History. Instead, as Baudrillard

has said in another famous quip, all the postmodern subject is left to do “is to play with the

pieces” of past culture [quoted in Kellner:1988, p247]. But of course, for all these individuals only

recently entered into the postindustrial age, the overwhelming majority of pieces that get left to

play with are those left over from the recent past of capitalist industrial modernity.

The postmodern commodity

When the words and ideas of postmodernity first started appearing on the cultural and academic

fields late in the twentieth century, there was great debate as to what they all meant and as to what

a shift to the postmodern might entail. Lyotard characterized postmodernity as an epochal shift in

society, but as it has been shown numerous times now, this sort of explanation relies heavily on the

same sort of metanarrativity that the postmodern supposedly put to rest. In contrast, Fredric

34

Jameson saw postmodernity as merely an extension — a ‘cultural logic’ — of the latest form of

multinational capitalism. Somewhere between these two explanations probably lies the right

answer.

So what exactly is implied by the prefix ‘post’? To many, the ‘post’ may refer to a fundamental

rupture with modernity, a leaving behind, a moving on. But that smacks too much of the same

ideal of progress that postmodernity abnegates. Instead, the ‘post’ can best be understood as an

inscription: All that modernity was — and much more besides — is fully inscribed within the post-

modern. Within its borders, postmodernity includes all the social structures that were modernity,

only in a much more disorganized manner. And the same goes for the cultural outputs of postmod-

ernism. As Lash and Urry claim, “postmodernism is not so much a critique or radical refusal of

modernism, but its radical exaggeration” [1994, p3]. Andreas Huyssens has a similar take:

“Postmodernism is far from making modernism obsolete. On the contrary, it casts a new light on it

and appropriates many of its aesthetic strategies and techniques inserting them and making them

work in new constellations” [1986, p146]. In other words, to theorize postmodernity is not neces-

sarily to abandon all the work of the theorists of modernity. Rather, it is to appreciate their insights

on culture, capitalism, and consumerism, but to adapt them to an unstable and inflated societal

condition. Just as modernity was born of capitalist industrialism, postmodernity was born of capi-

talist postindustrialism. Within the information age, too, are all the characteristics of the industrial

age. One must still be careful, though, not to fall into the trap of theorizing postmodernity or

postindustrialism as simple extensions of their predecessors. Zygmunt Bauman sums it up well in

the following passage:

Postmodernity is not a transitory departure from the ‘normal state’of modernity; neither is it a dis-eased state of modernity, an ailment likely to be rectified, a case of ‘modernity in crisis’. It is,instead, a self-reproducing, pragmatically self-sustainable and logically self-contained social condi-tion defined by distinctive features of its own. A theory of postmodernity therefore cannot be a mod-ified theory of modernity, a theory of modernity with a set of negative markers. [1992, p188]

In trying to provide a theoretical overview of postmodernity as it relates to advertising, I have tried

to keep these sometimes conflicting principles in mind: While postmodernity may be an entirely

self-contained societal condition, it is still driven by the interests of postindustrial capitalism. And

since I am looking at advertising — one particular cultural product of this condition — I must

35

always consider that postmodernism is, as Kellner has stated “ultimately an intensification of the

sort of dynamism, restless quest for novelty, experimentation, and constant revolutionizing of life

that is associated with modernity” [1988, p254]. This is especially important as it relates to capital-

ism, and the never-ending search for consumers in a space increasingly flooded with goods, both

physical and symbolic.

Advertising may have delivered the age of modern industrialism by mythologizing the consump-

tion process and creating the modern consumer, but there has never been a time of more potential

consumption than during postmodernity. In the next chapter I outline how these shifts from moder-

nity to postmodernity have necessitated a change in the mode of cultural production. For audience

members and cultural intermediaries alike (of which advertising professionals occupy a prominent

role) the consumption and production of culture is increasingly done in a reflexive manner. The

perceived need of advertisers to differentiate their products in a market awash with goods and

information has thus been met with a dominant new language in advertising. Written by and for

the reflexive postindustrial consumer, contemporary print ads use the language of postmodern

irony to communicate with the new agential audience of the information age.

36

Chapter Three: The Rise and Rise of Irony

It is nothing new to say that irony is one of the defining characteristics of the postmodern. Since

its early days postmodernism has been marked by its adoption of the techniques of irony, parody,

and pastiche. As postmodern actors have been left to ‘play with the pieces’of past civilizations,

irony has become a primary mode and extension of this playfulness. In his work Horizons of

Assent, Alan Wilde looks at the study of irony in its historical context. He concludes that postmod-

ern irony should be understood “as a mode of consciousness, a perceptual response to a world

without unity or cohesion” [1981, p2]. More than just a mode of consciousness, though, I want to

continue with my Barthesian analogy of myth as a form of speech. I wish to characterize irony too

as a mode of signification, however different in form to myth. If myth indeed is “depoliticized

speech,” [1972, p117] then irony is, to borrow a phrase from the previous chapter, the radical exag-

geration of depoliticized speech.

For such a claim to plausible, it is important to understand what Barthes means by the term

‘depoliticized speech’. Here Barthes speaks of political in its deeper, Aristotelian meaning, “as

describing the whole of human relations in their real, social structure, in their power of making the

world.” And in his use of the prefix de-, Barthes views it as an active defaulting, a removal of the

fabricated quality of the political. In this sense, the world is “without contradictions because it is

without depth” [1972, p117]. Here myth, as speech which has been depoliticized, gives things eter-

nal and unquestionable justification. In many ways irony too gives things a natural justification.

But it does this not necessarily in the same way that myth does. When I characterize irony as an

exaggeration of depoliticized speech, I am making use of political not only in the same way that

Barthes employed the term. I am also making use of the more conventional, contemporary under-

standing of the political. Here it refers to speech which has both actively flattened out its social

and historical context, but which has also been irreparably removed from the politics of its cre-

ation. In essence, irony is speech that within itself subsumes any possibility for real political resist-

ance. It too works by creating a world without depth, but it goes the step further by creating a self-

awareness of the world’s own shallowness. This world is without contradictions because all of its

37

possible contradictions have already been taken account of and made visible. That is how post-

modern irony works. What follows is an explanation of how it came to work that way.

Resistance: Is it futile?

Whatever happened to modern political resistance? If, as countless critics contend, the metanarra-

tivity of Marxist politics no longer obtains during postmodernity, what is left? Surely with the

increase in individual audience agency that postindustrialism wrought, the opportunity for bona

fide resistance should now be greater than ever. Dick Hebdige, foremost among many, has pointed

to the numerous ways that postmodern actors are able to make use of the objects and channels

available to them to offer a resistance to the dominant ideologies surrounding them. In his work on

subcultures, Hebdige illustrates how members of disempowered groups are able to co-opt the signs

and symbols of late industrial culture and re-appropriate them, effectively using these symbols

against the system [1979]. It is through this process of polysemic negotiation of meaning that mar-

ginal groups are able to gain a voice in the overcrowded cacophony of postmodernity. Other

Birmingham cultural studies theorists have gone on to celebrate this power of resistance in the face

of late industrialism. From the veneration of the advent of the punks and their Dadaist destruction

of culture, to the reverence for cyberfreaks and their quest to hack into mainframes of mainstream

ideology, the Birmingham School has shown itself as the champion of the underdog.

But as we’ve gotten further into the information age, cracks have started to appear in the optimism

of these resistance celebrants. Whereas the Mods may have been parodying the clean-cut image of

suburban British youth, and the Teddy Boys may have been making a pastiche of the high-culture

aspirations of Edwardian style and class, it became increasingly apparent that these forms of resist-

ance were in the end little more than mediated acts of consumption. The old bugbear of Gramscian

hegemony began to rear its head again as it looked like the only way these subcultures could resist

the values and politics of the dominant culture was through purchasing the products of that culture.

In order for one to show disapproval of the policies of Thatcherite or Reagonian economics, one

had little choice other than to engage in that very system of economic activity. Granted, this

engagement was more or less on their own terms, but it doesn’t escape the fact that for many wish-

38

ing to criticize consumer culture, dissent could only be achieved through resistant consumption of

that culture.

Many have gone on to point out that the hegemonic forces of postindustrialism didn’t end there.

As the commercial forces that increasingly saw their products being consumed and co-opted by

these oppositional cultures began to take notice of the potential of this new market segment, whole

new product ranges were deployed to meet that demand. As Hebdige, Thomas Frank, and others

have illustrated, style itself was soon being marketed to any group that wanted to go against the

mainstream. In this extreme exaggeration of consumer culture, an individual no longer had to con-

struct his/her own polysemic assembly of material signs and symbols. Now the consumer could

buy ready-packaged combinations of music and accessories, pre-assembled outfits of clothing that

came with anti-bourgeois insignias already stitched on. As Frank has pointed out in numerous

books from the Conquest of Cool to One Market Under God , cultural producers were increasingly

“commodifying the dissent” of these oppositional groups. And, as many have also shown, advertis-

ing agencies were playing a large part in this commodification.

Stuart Ewen, who brought to light the effects of the early industrial ‘captains of consciousness’ has

also noticed this more recent trend. He discusses how the advertising industry has appropriated the

lingo and styles of various resistance movements. Touching on postmodern themes of an increased

flow of goods and information, he notes that, “while advertising of the twenties spoke against the

deprivations of scarcity, an increasing amount of today’s advertising and product imagery speak to

the deprivations of what has been called ‘abundance’. Within advertising, the social realm of

resistance is reinterpreted, at times colonized, for corporate benefit” [1976, p218]. Even Hebdige,

in his later work, realizes the extent to which he once underestimated the power of commercial

culture. Ten years after the original publication of Subculture, he revisits previously explored areas

to explain how what appeared to be the organic beginnings of such oppositional cultures as the

punk movement were almost immediately hegemonized and expanded upon by a variety of mar-

keting forces [1988, p17]. As it turns out, in the face of postindustrial audience segmentation, the

advertising industry has had to revamp its approach to marketing. One distinguishing effect of the

postmodern decentralization of culture is the emergence of diverse and varied niche cultures, each

39

with its own profit potential. As these markets continued to multiply, advertisers scrambled to

catch up – and communicate – with them.

Tracking down the consumer

Despite the individual agent’s limitation of action within the world of capitalist consumption, that

world has continued to grow ever more convoluted in the conditions of postindustrial postmoderni-

ty. It may only be one world, but within it there is much room to move. Whereas the goal of the

1920s advertisers was to create the modern consumer, the goal of contemporary advertisers is to

find and communicate with the postmodern consumer. In order to come to grips with this state of

complex postmodernity, many advertising agencies have begun to adopt the practices of those dis-

ciplines that first sought to theorize postmodernity.

Postmodern sociologist Michel Maffesoli has invoked classical anthropology to describe the phe-

nomenon of what he sees as like-minded ‘tribes’ of media consumers coming together to help

make sense of the world [1996]. Following from this, a number of prominent advertising agencies

have developed what they call ‘account planning’ divisions, using pseudo-anthropological tech-

niques to get at the heart of what brings people together and what compels them to consume what

they do. Again, Thomas Frank explores the rise in prominence of this semi-academic field, in

which recent postgrads from the social sciences (without major objections to capitalism) are

recruited by specialized agencies to perform ethnographic research into the nature of consumption.

Discussing the presumed benefits of this kind of study, Frank claims that “anthropology allows

advertising to do what it does in the democratic language of sensitivity and empowerment. To

understand production and consumption as ‘rituals’ is to remove them entirely from the great

sweep of history and enlightenment, to place them beyond criticism. To understand demographic

groups as ‘tribes’, and admen as sympathetic observers, is both to celebrate the relationship and to

ensure that any resulting exchange takes place in a rigorously circumscribed context” [1999, p78].

The consumption of goods is thereby given a sort of pre- and postpolitical naturalness by equating

it with other givens in social life, like the need for food and shelter. And the advertising agency is

afforded some credibility by its invocation of established academic disciplines.

40

But account planning isn’t the only field of advertising that has been influenced by academia. In a

piece for a collection of writings on advertising and consumption, Celia Lury and Alan Warde

explore further the impact that cultural studies has had on the contemporary ad industry.

Remarking on the interdependent nature of academics and consumerism in recent years, they cite

an article in the New Statesmen and Society in which the rapid expansion of the agency Semiotic

Solutions is described. Semiotic Solutions is a British market research consultancy founded by for-

mer students of Terry Eagleton that “specializes in a research methodology explicitly derived from

Barthes and Lévi-Strauss” [1997, p88]. Sarah Thornton, a cultural studies specialist in youth- and

subcultures, has also recently published an article on her defection from the world of academics to

advertising [1999]. These articles all talk of the ad agencies’ techniques, such as the use of ‘cool

hunters’, who scour the halls of high schools, the floors of dance clubs, and the corners of inner-

city streets, in search of the elusive and authentic key with which to commune with consumers.

When advertising agencies make use of the terminology and techniques of academia, they share

postmodern cultural studies’ incredulity toward metanarratives, its championing of the “marginal-

ized, its reverence for the wisdom of everyday people, and its claim to hear the revolutionary voice

of the subaltern behind virtually any bit of pop-cultural detritus” [Frank:1999, p75]. But they only

do this because they are all looking for an extra edge. The agencies employ focus groups, hire aca-

demic consultants, maintain detailed demographic databases, all in an effort to come to grips with

the complexity of a postindustrial culturescape, where there are more products than ever compet-

ing for the same market, and where the consumer has just enough agency to be hard to locate and

talk to.

The cynical consumer

Of course, finding these consumers is only half the battle. While postmodernity makes it difficult

to locate likely consumers, it makes it next to impossible to speak to them with some degree of

trust and authenticity. Gaining the audience’s trust hadn’t always been a goal of producers of mate-

rial goods, though. As advertising found its feet during modern industrialism, producers of goods

made a number of unfounded claims about the merits of their own products. Sometimes these

41

claims wouldn’t be just a case of stretching the truth, but an example of bald-faced lying. So noto-

rious were the messages of some producers (see the patent medicine salesmen of Chapter One),

that the very practice of advertising became synonymous with dishonesty. Well aware of the

checkered past of commercial communications, postmodern audiences were naturally cynical

toward any form of advertisement. But this cynical response wasn’t limited to advertising; the

postmodern subject increasingly exhibited cynicism toward a growing assortment of forms of com-

munication — both commercial and not.

One of the major effects of postindustrialism’s rapid expansion of the quantity of information

flowing through increased distribution channels is that the typical audience member begins to feel

inundated by knowledge from every direction. By the late twentieth century, the average individual

had access to more means of communication than ever before in history. Every new message that

the individual gained access to constituted a new bit of information to assimilate, to accept, or to

reject. And as the communication channels became more and more decentralized, the disparity of

this information grew. Faced with information from a variety of sources that was often contradicto-

ry, the audience member began to doubt the validity of the messages. No longer knowing who or

what to believe, the postmodern subject adopted a strong attitude of cynicism.

Critics as diverse as Peter Sloterdijk and Jedidiah Purdy have remarked on this current condition of

cynicism. Both approach cynicism from different angles, but in the end they reach the same con-

clusion that cynicism is very much a plague of the postmodern era. To Sloterdijk, cynicism can be

defined as “enlightened false consciousness” [1988, p5]. By this, the cynic is seen as someone who

bought the idea of modernist enlightenment, but who sees it as an impossible ideal. The cynic

believes in the good life, but also in the impossibility of attaining it. This Sloterdijkian cynicism

too is postpolitical: “Well-off and miserable at the same time, this consciousness no longer feels

affected by any critique of ideology; its falseness is already reflexively buffered” [1988, p5]. To

Sloterdijk, this ‘cynical reason’ almost always “takes cover behind irony” [1988, pxxi]. Jedediah

Purdy, for his part, distinguishes further between cynicism and postmodern depoliticized irony. In

his formulation, the ironic consumer, unlike the cynic, recognizes his/her own false consciousness,

and then uses this recognition as his/her fundamental basis for interacting with the world. Irony

42

here entails a cynicism not only toward believing in the good life, but also toward refusing to take

part in the idea of the good life. His ironist “practices a style of speech and behavior that avoids all

appearance of naiveté — of naive devotion, belief, or hope” [1999, pxi]. This ironist too avoids the

naive disavowal of the idea of modern enlightenment. Wary and mistrusting of almost all messages

received by him/her the postmodern ironist doesn’t cynically retreat from the world of communica-

tion, but engages in it, wearing the badge of cynicism on his/her sleeve.

The ironic consumer

In Alan Wilde’s summary of White’s work on the trope of irony, he sees it providing “a linguistic

paradigm of a mode of thought which is radically self-critical with respect to not only a given

characterization of the world of experience but also to the very effort to capture adequately the

truth of things in language” [1981, p5]. Jean Baudrillard agrees in part with this criticism of

speech’s inefficacy to validate. Like the audience members he studies, he recognizes the absurdity

of taking an ideological stand within the conditions of postmodernity. These conditions are so

complex that traditional modes of signification fall by the wayside. In this system, language can

have no permanent meaning because signs have no fixed referent. “Any object can, in principle,

take on any meaning. Rather than representing some signifier, the sign is all that is left”

[Mackay:1997, p5]. Within this endless procession of floating signs, resistance becomes meaning-

less without the possibility of an anchor. Baudrillard’s approach, according to McGuigan, is there-

fore not one of critical or cynical reason, but of ironic reason, since resistance itself is absurd

[1999].

So how do postmodern actors consume in the face of an absurd world, in which they have no real

hope of making a change? A number of theorists have pointed to the act of ironic consumption,

whether of actual goods or of cultural products, as one of the only modes of communication within

the confines of postmodernity. What is left for Baudrillard is to take enjoyment in playful con-

sumption, “to rediscover a certain pleasure in the irony of things” [quoted in Kellner:1988, p238].

As irony is the expression of something opposite to its implied meaning, to consume ironically is

to consume objects for reasons other than their intended uses. We have already discussed the sub-

43

culturists’ acts of ironic consumption when they co-opt the goods — and thereby the signs and

symbols — of mainstream culture and use them to their own ends of self-identification. When a

punk wears a tartan, it is not necessarily to express his/her Scottish heritage. But the consumer

need not be a member of a subcultural group to engage in ironic consumption. When the pomo

urban hipster goes to the all-American diner to get a slice of apple pie, it is not necessarily to sup-

port the kinds of values that such institutions of the 1950s represent. It may be quite the opposite:

To denigrate those values by instilling them with a sort of camp quality, thereby weakening the

link between the institution, the act of consumption, and the values they represent. In her work on

television soap operas and the ideology of mass culture, Ien Ang discusses the difference between

ironically and really watching the show Dallas. It is her contention that claims of ironic consump-

tion by viewers serve to create a certain distance between the purposes of the individual viewers

themselves and those of the show’s producers. In her research, some of Ang’s correspondents used

language that seemed to suggest an actual involvement with the program, but this was almost

always tempered with an ironic discursive strategy that attempted to undermine the extent to which

they actually enjoy the show and all it represents [1985, p272]. In this way, irony can be said to be

a mask for pleasure, especially when that pleasure is viewed as analogous to mass ideological

complicity. This ironic consumption can therefore be considered a cover for postmodern jouis -

sance, in which consumers, to again use Baudrillard’s phrase, gain enjoyment from playing with

the pieces of mass culture.

Arguably no other thinker has more fully theorized irony’s relationship to the postmodern more

than Linda Hutcheon. Following on the ideas of Wilde, and countering some of the ideas of

Baudrillard, Hutcheon describes the intricate interrelations of irony, politics, and critique within

postmodernity. In a statement that offers a succinct summary of her ideas, she makes the claim that

“postmodern irony is the structural recognition that discourse today cannot avoid acknowledging

its situation in the world it represents: irony’s critique, in other words, will always be at least

somewhat complicitous with the dominants it contests but within which it cannot help existing”

[1996, p36]. To put it another way, postmodern irony “is not the radical, utopian oppositionality of

the modernist avant garde. Instead, it questions the very act — and authority — of taking a posi-

tion, any position, even an oppositional one that assumes a discursive situation exterior to that

44

which is being opposed” [1996, p37]. It is this very lack of exteriority, Hutcheon goes on to claim,

that actually grants postmodern irony its critical edge. Refusing to acknowledge that irony com-

pletely denies the possibility of critique, Hutcheon proceeds to explicate the numerous ways in

which postmodern cultural producers use irony to effectively lodge an attack against the conditions

that went into the making of postmodernity itself. Postmodernist products always use “the reappro-

priated forms of the past to speak to a society from within the values and history of that society,

while still questioning it. It is in this way that its historical representations, however parodic, get

politicized” [1989, p12]. By ironizing modernity, postmodern producers are essentially mounting a

critique of modern industrialism and all the consumerist capitalism that goes with it.

Ironic producers

Some theorists have already studied this use of irony in postmodernist products. In the supply and

demand curves of postmodern culture, ironic producers have risen to meet the demands of ironic

consumers. This has happened all throughout the postmodern culturescape, from art, film, and tele-

vision, to music, fiction, and architecture. And often the same people who produce ironic postmod-

ern culture are the same ones who theorize its production. Postmodern architect Charles Jencks

was one of the first theorists to really define what it was to be a piece of postmodern culture as

early as 1975. Not limiting his inquest to the field of architecture, Jencks went on to describe some

of the key characteristics of postmodernism in a variety of other fields. He theorized on the

Situationist’s work in France in the late 1960s and on the writings of Umberto Eco, Colin Rowe,

and Charles Moore, all of which constituted a departure from high modernism [1996, p29]. In

addition to this, he also continued his practice of architecture, joining contemporaries like Ralph

Erskine, Robert Venturi, Lucien Kroll, and the Krier brothers in not only defining postmodernism

but developing an understanding of it. In his essays on television viewership, postmodern novelist

David Foster Wallace, too, remarks on what it means to produce and consume culture in a condi-

tion of postmodernity [1997]. Going on to discuss the use of irony in TV programming, he claims

that the possibility of ‘creativity’ in any medium has been forever changed by our own overexpo-

sure to all media. TV production has become a part of our — and his — interior, and all cultural

production must reflect this. Of course, Wallace is also an author, and the impossibility of writing

45

a novel without reference to other cultural forms like TV is one of the primary pitfalls of post-

modernity. This he shares with coevals Barthelme, Delillo, and Eggers, all of whom must appraise

their relationship to the idea of postmodernity while at the same time creating products of post-

modern culture. The result is often a knowing wink, an ironic nod, an acknowledgment of their

own situation, that pervades the work of many of these postmodern cultural producers.

This is one of the key attributes of postmodernity: that consumers, producers, theorists, and critics

of postmodern culture are often one and the same, and that they know it. This holds for architects

as well as for writers. But perhaps more so it holds for creators of contemporary advertising. As

one of the defining characteristics of the postmodern is its conflation of commerce and culture,

perhaps no one group represents this scenario as well as the copywriters and art directors that work

in creative advertising. Themselves having grown up in a modernist world of mass media and glo-

rified consumption, advertisers are audience members first, and cultural producers second. They

have been exposed to the same — if not more — commercial messages as everybody else, and

they too have benefited from an increase in audience agency with the advent of postmodernity.

They are, perhaps, the quintessential postmodern agents: Like everyone else, they have the vast

expanse of modernist culture from which to cull their own creative recombinations. But for them,

this production through consumption isn’t just a mode of resistance, it is their job. And they are

not only cultural producers, but they are also under the employ of capitalist forces that have creat-

ed the conditions of postmodernity in which they live. Their cultural productions therefore, in the

form of the ads they create, must serve not only their employers’ needs of increased consumption,

but also their own needs of political critique and ideological resistance. Like other postmodern

consumers and producers before them, though, they have found irony to be a uniquely effective

tool for accomplishing all their aims. And like their colleagues in other fields, they possess a

hyperself-awareness that allows them to theorize their own situations. But unlike many contempo-

raries, their theories also have practical business applications.

46

47

Chapter Four: Ironic Advertisements

The advertiser

The postmodern advertising creative is not so distinct from the people with whom he/she seeks to commu-

nicate. They have both grown up in an increasingly media- and consumption-saturated environment. Sur-

rounded on all sides by the cultural trappings of modernism, advertising creatives as individuals are deeply

enmeshed in the conditions of modernity. But like their fellow audience members, their agency has been

amplified by the transformations into postindustrial society. As the formerly reigning myths of modernist

ideology became more enveloped into a postmodern culturescape of diversified media, decentralized

communications channels, and expanded consumer choice, they became increasingly transparent. Nobody

had to buy the naturalized myths of modern industrialism any more; there were too many other possibilities

to choose from. The people who went into advertising knew this, and they knew the rest of the audience

knew as well. We have already seen the extent to which advertisers borrowed from the academic disci-

plines in an attempt to communicate to the postmodern consumer, but perhaps all the advertiser really

needed to do was to look inward. As the advertising creative was just as much a member of the audience

as the consumers he/she was trying to communicate with, the older prohibitions within advertising against

identifying with the populace were erased. Increasingly the advertising professional began to look inward

for his/her own reactions to consumerism within postmodernity. Their skepticism toward older advertising

forms was just as pronounced as that of their audience. Eventually they realized that they would have to

work hard to regain the trust of the public. Their tactic was to acknowledge their shared mistrust: They

attempted to relate to the rest of the audience by exposing the already debunked myths of modernity for

what they really were. Gone were the days of the hard sell; the postmodern advertiser sold softly through

an effort to ironize the mythology of modernist consumption in order to show allegiance with the rest of the

cynical crowd.

The ads

There was a pivotal point in the history of advertising that occurred at the beginning of the 1960s. At the

absolute height of high modernity, and predating the various antiwar, civil and women�s rights, and

48

countercultural movements of that decade, what has become known as the �creative revolution� in advertis-

ing occurred in 1960 at the New York agency Doyle Dane Bernbach [Berger:2001, p45; Bond &

Kirshenbaum:1998, p10; Sullivan:1998]. Toward the front of the February issue of Life magazine was a

full-page, black-and-white advertisement for the Volkswagen Beetle that announced to its readers, in

deprecatory tones and understated imagery, that the pictured car was in fact a �Lemon.� This simple

advertisement, in contrast to the colorful and self-congratulatory ads in the same magazine, was one of the

first of its kind to use an early and simple strategy of irony to get its message across: While advertisements

were widely expected to make exaggerated claims in order to persuade potential consumers of a product�s

benefits, this Volkswagen ad was doing the exact opposite. And it was the first in a long and successful

series of DDB ads to work the same way.

Two years later, in an ad that followed

almost exactly the same formula, the

headline admonished its readers to

�Think small.� This technique still

worked because it continued to surprise

the reader in an atmosphere where

almost all the other ads were screaming

�Think big!� Eventually, though, this

creative revolution that started in one

New York agency began to spread itself

out to the rest of the advertising industry.

That this era corresponded with what

many theorists � including Hassan,

Jencks, and Lyotard � consider the

birth of postmodernity is something less

than a coincidence.

As more and more advertisers began to adopt this creative approach, the organization of agencies them-

selves began to change. Gone were the exclusively white, Ivy League educated �admen� of the 1920s. The

49

cultural make-up of advertising agencies began to reflect the increasing diversity of the population as a

whole. Gone too were the highly structured organizational stratifications within the agencies. The base unit

of labor ceased to be the individual, and was replaced by the copywriter and art director working as a

collaborative team. The advertising professional was no longer in the realm of the business man but of the

artist. The suits and ties came off as offices became more casual. The nine-to-five work day gave way to a

more flexible time schedule. New York, Chicago, and London ended their complete domination of the

industry, as advertising shops in more marginal cities like Portland, Minneapolis, Tokyo, Singapore, and

Sydney gained prominence [Berger:2001, p81]. All these changes reflected the broader transformations

that were occurring generally in the wake of postindustrialism. And as the information age advanced apace,

with its constituent acceleration of consumption and media production, there was not only more goods and

services to advertise, but more channels in which to do so [Castells:2000]. Even the advertising industry

itself had its own specialized media, from magazines with insider news about the industry, to awards books

and annuals in which the �best� of a year�s advertising were declared. As niche markets sprang up, with

their niche magazines and niche goods, so too did niche advertising agencies to make ads for them.

Eventually, what started as the creative revolution metamorphosed into a full-on postmodern revolution for

some agencies. By the mid-1980s, advertising had pulled the old dynamic of reference inside-out. As

David Foster Wallace remarks, no longer is it only postmodernism embracing consumer culture. It has now

become advertising �that takes elements of the postmodern � the involution, the absurdity, the sardonic

fatigue, the iconoclasm and rebellion � and bends them to the ends of spectation and consumption�

[1997, p64]. What creative advertisers once recognized as attributes of postmodernism, they began to use

in the ads themselves. In the confines of this postmodern revolution, one particular attribute � irony �

began to assume prominence. As ironic ads multiplied and flooded the pages of certain of these niche

magazines, a number of distinct and recognizable forms of irony became apparent. These were ironies

which self-consciously made direct reference to the modes, forms, themes, and myths of modern

advertising�s past. Sometimes the postmodern ads parodied the modern ads, not just using their conven-

tions, but drawing them to their absurd conclusions: What was overstated in modern ads became ludi-

crously hyperbolic in postmodern ads. And sometimes postmodern ads were everything that modern ads

weren�t: Whereas modern ads were self-important or boastful or highly stylized or progressive,

postmodern ads were purposefully self-deprecating and understated and ugly and regressive. By and large,

50

postmodern ads ironized their modern precursors by behaving in ways that traditional ads had never done

before.

Damn the future

However they chose to react to the ads of the past,

postmodern advertising creatives were already going

against the grain of modernity by looking to the present

for cultural inspiration instead of toward the future. Just

as postmodern architecture denied the sparse futurism of

modernist buildings [Jencks:1996, p17], postmodern

ads used irony to challenge the modern�s vision of an

ideal tomorrow. This was one of the over-riding themes

of modern advertising: its wholehearted faith in the idea

of progress. Images such as the one here in the Chicago

Pneumatic Tool advertisement showed how American industry was contributing toward a brighter � and

more quickly attained � future for all. The body copy explains how the modern mechanic can build struc-

tures much more wondrous than the ancient palaces using pneumatic tools rather than a magic lamp.

By contrast, postmodern ads like this here for Miller

Genuine Draft beer show man, not as he contemplates the

future that he makes for himself, but as he absorbs himself

in the hedonistic present. Even the man here is not neces-

sarily male, nor the strong, self-reliant figure that signifies

modern masculinity. Instead the protagonists represented

in these postmodern ads are intended to be seen as real people, men and women, not contributing to

progress nor taking on the world, but engaging in pursuits entirely dedicated to the present. Gone is the

flattery with which older ads treated consumers, painting them in the idealized vision of modern living. This

ad ironically thumbs its nose at the idea of progressive modernity and embraces the postmodern pleasure in

consumption.

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This pleasure, according to theorists like Michel de Certeau and John Fiske is what gives people identity in

the face of postmodernity. The modern subjects in these early ads used their commitment to building the

future as their marker of citizenship, but as Hugh Mackay suggests, the pleasurable consumption of these

agents embracing the here-and-now is �the principal means whereby [they] participate in the polity� [1997,

p2]. In his work on consumption and everyday life, de Certeau talks of the lignes d�eere (wandering lines)

drawn by normal consumers, or what he refers to as �secondary producers�. These wandering lines are

created as people engage in their own trajectories and tactics of shopping, walking, cooking, and even

drinking beer, tracing their own way across the space of culture and the market. It is through these singular

acts of consumption, de Certeau argues, that individual consumers become a self-constituted group � a

�silent majority� [1984, p488].

Lowering the bar

Not only are the subjects of postmodern ads no longer depicted as mythic founders of tomorrow, they can

often be shown as not very desirable people. Ironically taking on the pretense that all consumers in modern

ads had impeccable taste and unfaultable manners, ads like that for Miller address the fact that postmodern

consumers are sometimes quite the opposite. A striking case of this is in two advertisements for Camel

cigarettes.

�To the manner born,� reads the headline in the old Camel

ad from 1921, while two Gatsby-esque characters display

their culturedness while smoking a cigarette. The body copy

goes on to explain how one can sense instantly, while

glimpsing through a doorway �hung with apricot velvet,� that

some people have a genuine, authentic, and indefinable

quality that is shared with Camel cigarettes. These figures

are clearly the height of style and grace, all the more so

because they smoke Camels.

52

In this contemporary ad for

Camel, on the other hand,

no pretense is made to

equate the brand with

connoisseurship. Tongue-

in-cheekedly declaring that

Camel is the choice of

those with �mighty tasty

lifestyles,� the postmodern

advertisement is using irony

to belittle the haughty attitude of advertising�s past. Whether the creative team responsible for this ad was

reacting specifically against older ads like the one here from Camel, or whether it was a more general

reaction is largely immaterial. What is happening here is that the advertising creative is explicitly changing

teams. No longer taking sides with the client that wants to paint an exaggerated picture of the merits of his/

her product, the contemporary advertiser is exhibiting complicity with the consumer who has grown in-

credulous toward the unwarranted claims of advertisements. When the postmodern ad for Camel shows

people smoking in gaudy outfits and insincere neck braces � as opposed to cummerbunds and dinner

jackets � it is acknowledging that consumers will choose to equate products

with any values they wish, even poor taste. Terry Lovell acknowledges this

leveling effect of postmodernity, claiming that producers no longer have the

power to produce their ideal consumer. Instead they must give the public

what it wants, regardless of whether the public�s tastes do or don�t �neces-

sarily sit square upon bourgeois ideology� [1983, p480].

And poor taste is something that a number of postmodern ads not only

acknowledge, but celebrate. No longer interested in presenting their products

as the exclusive choice of those aspiring to high class, postmodern advertisers

are increasingly pandering to the lowest common denominator. Whereas this

ad for Eaton�s Linen writing paper warns consumers that using any other

brand of writing paper might send the message to others of bad taste, this ad

53

for Belgian beer Stella Artois wants to confirm that being

held in good taste is not among their consumers� primary

interests. Ironically juxtaposing imagery of toothless

peasants enjoying their beer with a tagline that makes

reference to the beer�s sophistication, the advertisers

responsible for this Stella Artois campaign are promoting

a more proletarian appeal for their beer. Of course the

beer maker doesn�t actually want to give up its cosmo-

politan consumption for that of second-world proles �

yuppies typically have more money to spend on im-

ported beer than peasants � but they do want to

remove themselves from other companies that wear their

tastefulness like a tasteless badge on their sleeve.

I explained earlier how modern advertisements flatter us into thinking we are the special people addressed

by their discourse, and thereby interpellate us as subjects. In the case of these ironic ads we are again

flattered. Only now they flatter us, as Wallace explains, �for �seeing through� the pretentiousness and

hypocrisy of outdated values� such as sophistication and social grace, and instill in us a feeling of �canny

superiority� [1997, p63]. This sort of approach runs distinctly counter to modern advertisements� overt

appeal to the higher aspirations of their consumers. But it

also goes one more: Aside from not showing their products

in the most favorable light, these ads also refuse to tradition-

ally show their consumers in the most favorable light.

While this strategy is not entirely unique to postmodern

advertising, it is used to a different effect here. In the first

chapter, I illustrated a number of the scare tactics used by

modern ads in order to induce social conformity. In ads like

the one here promoting the cleanly use of soap and water,

consumers were shown in less-than-favorable settings in

54

order to make examples of them. The idea was to demonize these unsavory characters so as to canonize

the consumers who behaved contrary to their bad manners. But postmodern advertisements often ironically

make fun of this past tradition of promoting social conformity. As has been seen in the Miller and Stella

Artois ads, a product�s consumer need not be a model citizen to enjoy the benefits of the product. And

neither need the benefits of the product improve the consumer�s social standing.

In this ad for the German beer maker Astra, a distinctly working-

class couple is seen sitting at a table, not drinking Astra and

clearly not enjoying themselves. The headline translates to �No

Astra, No Fun,� and the ironic intention of the ad might be lost

altogether were it not paid off by the tagline, which reads �Astra.

Was dagegen?� Translating literally as �Astra. Anything against

it?�, this colloquial use of a question with a slightly defiant, aggres-

sive tone highlights the fact that the advertisement�s headline

message is not a sincere proclamation of the product�s benefits,

but an ironic mockery of such advertising claims from the past.

But as essayist Lewis Hyde points out, this sort of ironic self-

mocking is almost always a form of sincerity itself � it is �sincerity, with a motive� [quoted in

Wallace:1997, p63]. The motive, in this case, is to appeal to the ironic, savvy consumer through ironic,

savvy advertisements. Blatant selling messages are understood by both to contain a false sincerity; at least

these ironic selling messages are sincere in that they deride blatancy.

This approach is not unique among postmodern ad campaigns. Sprite used it to show how its soft drink

had absolutely no performance-enhancing attributes for all the high-profile athletes that were paid millions

of dollars to promote it. They were not only making fun of advertising�s past, but of the techniques used by

others in their industry, when they made their proclamation: �Image is nothing. Thirst is everything.� How-

ever, it is another Coca-Cola product that took this idea and brought it back down to the personal level. In

these ads for Mezzo Mix (premixed Coke and orange drink), the consumers are again seen as low-class

and imperfect, drinking the product in hopes that they will change their social standing, but this time the ads�

mode of address is the second person. The ads for Mezzo Mix are not saying that some consumers are

55

ugly and vain and gullible, they are pointing the finger and

declaring that �you� are all these things. This is taking the

aggressive tone of the Astra ad to its full conclusion, moving on

to making insults toward the singular consumer in ways that

would have made modern advertisers cringe in horror. Mezzo

Mix insults �your�

complexion,

�your� clothes,

and �your� attrac-

tiveness, and they

ironically suggest

that when you

drink Mezzo Mix �everything will be cool.� Using the literary

strategy of reductio ad absurdum, these ads expose the claim

that the consumption of certain products can improve one�s

social standing for the ludicrous notion that it is.

Improving health

Product advertisements did not only claim social benefits for their

consumption, though. As illustrated earlier with the case of

Listerine and other patent medicines, products often advertised

on the basis of their health benefits. Like the Quaker Oats ads

before it, this ad for Campell�s Soup promotes the nutritional

properties of modern, mass-produced food. This can of soup

wasn�t just for anyone; it was for the working man with the

�success-habit� who wanted from its �rich, tonic goodness� a

�sparkle and zest, which tell in the day�s work.� By the late

twentieth century, this kind of imagery and rhetoric had grown

56

tired. Postmodern consumers weren�t convinced of the benefits of packaged foods and were incurably

skeptical of the dubious claims made by their ads. In response to this, some postmodern advertisers called

the consumers� bluff � they stepped out from behind their curtains and laid their cards on the table. In

these ads for widely-accepted junk food product Moon Pie, not

only are claims not made as to the food�s nutritional benefits, such

claims are preemptively denied. In this case, the advertisers of

Moon Pie have acknowledged the purpose of their product�s

existence. They know that consumers of Moon Pies don�t always

�eat wisely and well,� and they have chosen not to lie about it, but

instead to ironically invoke the history of advertising�s dishonesty. Judith Williamson remarks on this, claim-

ing that �the use of our belief in advertising�s dishonesty in order to give an aura of honesty to an ad is a

supreme example of the denial of the actual content of any struc-

ture of thought � of reference replacing knowledge.� This endless

string of self-reference is a well-regarded attribute of

postmodernism. The effect is such that ads no longer try to make

claims, they now only try to deny previous claims, so that, as

Williamson writes, �advertising can incorporate its mythic status

(as a lie) into itself with very little trouble.� In this way, �advertisements will always recuperate by using

criticisms of themselves as frames of reference which will finally enhance, rather than destroy, their �real�

status� [1978, p174].

Parody

Such an invocation is a common retreat of postmodernism. Whether it be in art, architecture, or advertis-

ing, one of the major qualities of postmodernism is its focus on the self, often in the form of auto-parody.

Works of postmodern art are often characterized by an incorporation of their own histories and reputa-

tions. As Hutcheon influentially points out, this isn�t just an innocent infatuation with itself, but an effective

form of distancing the present from the past.

57

Postmodernist parody is a value-problematizing, de-naturalizing form of acknowledging the history(and through irony, the politics) of representations. Postmodern parody does not disregard the contextof the past representations it cites, but uses irony to acknowledge the fact that we are inevitablyseparated from that past today � by time and by the subsequent history of those representations.[1989, p94]

To parody something is to satirically lampoon it, but usually in such a distorted way as to make it ridiculous.

This is why parody makes such an effective tool of postmodernism: While it invokes the past, historically

quoting its modes and forms, it serves as what Hutcheon calls a �critical re-working,� and not a �nostalgic

return� [1993, p245]. When postmodern advertising parodies the ads of modernity, its attempts at imitation

are often too poor or too perfect. These distortions from the original serve to ironically highlight the

original�s absurdity. In the case of parodic ads, the butt of the joke is the older advertisement and its

dupable audience, but it is an inside joke. As David Foster Wallace illustrates in his discussion of

postmodern reception, the postmodern parody �invites a complicity between its own witty irony and [the]

veteran viewer�s cynical, nobody�s-fool appreciation of that irony� [1997, p61]. When a contemporary

advertisement makes a parody of an ad from the past, it invites consumers to be a part of the in-joke,

congratulating them for transcending naive consumption.

One of the most recognizable forms of modern advertising is the propaganda poster. While Michael

Schudson has discussed the importance of social realist art, it could be said that the socialist propaganda

poster � by picturing �reality as it should be� � was one of the greatest instillers of myth during the

modern era [1984, p215]. In parodying socialist propaganda, advertisers not only make reference to the

grand pronouncements of such language and imagery in the past, but by equating them with mere consumer

goods, they serve to both belittle the ideology of the politics and

the ideology of consumption. In postmodernity, such ideologies

have fallen out of favor, and to ridicule them in the form of an ad

parody is to debase the idea that such metanarratives as socialism

and the consumption ethos obtain any more.

In this series of ads for Mexican beer company Dos Equis and

athletic-shoe maker Nike, modernist ideas of industry, liberation,

and labor are linked to the consumption of alcoholic beverages and

58

the spectation of football,

thereby lowering the

former�s significance, while

raising that of the latter. It

is in this silly juxtaposition

that the opposing ideals of

hard work and recreation

are equilibrated, thus

critically and playfully

casting the values of both

ideals into doubt.

A similar technique is used here in ads for the California Pizza Kitchen. Appearing in alternative magazines

and arts and entertainment newspapers, these ads take the form of low-budget, grass-roots announce-

ments, rallying the pubic into action. In this case, the action is against unusual

ingredients on pizzas. Borrowing visuals and language

from genuine political movements, these ads actually

exhort their audience to boycott the California Pizza

Kitchen, the worst abusers of ingredient impurity. Warning

about �LIBERAL amounts of MULTICULTURAL pizza

toppings� threatening �the AMERICAN WAY,� one ad

takes the voice of conservative, right-wing politics. An-

other, speaking of �unspeakable acts of cruelty� toward

eggplants, adopts the bleeding-heart pleas of left-leaning

animal-rights movements. But each of the ads, while

parodying fringe politics and ironically crucifying the California Pizza Kitchen, are

again pointing to the ridiculousness of ideology in a postmodern world. And by calling for the consumer

adherents of such ridiculous ideologies to avoid the California Pizza Kitchen, the advertiser itself congratu-

lates the audience members who don�t fall prey to such silly political notions.

59

While these ads appeared in such periodicals as the Village Voice, the newspaper itself was using similar

tactics in its campaign to increase sub- scriptions. Again taking the form of a

rant against the advertiser, this ad invokes the sentiments of antiglobalism in its

effort to distinguish its target audience. Parodying protests against multinational

corporations, this ad rallies against the facelessness of the subscription system.

These protests might be real concerns of some Village Voice readers, but by

belittling them the advertiser is showing complicity with most of its audience.

Pierre Bourdieu is famous for declaring that �taste classifies, and classifies the

classifier� [1984, p1]. In the context of these parodies, the advertiser only

wishes to gain the confidence of the audi- ence. By exhibiting a taste for the ironic,

the advertiser is hoping that ironic con- sumers will classify the former as one of

their own. When the Village Voice or the California Pizza Kitchen ironically make

fun of political movements, they are hop- ing that their highly cynical audience

recognizes their shared lack of false sincerity and reward them for it by consuming their products.

However, not all postmodern advertising parodies take the form of

fake political resistance. In fact, the vast majority of postmodern

parody takes the form of simple playful acts of unlikely recombinations.

Instead of poking fun at the false sincerity of politics, these ad parodies

poke fun at the inflated image of advertising�s past. Borrowing from

older advertising images of modern couples engaged in leisure, these

advertisements for Banff Ice vodka invoke an aura of nostalgia. It�s a

false nostalgia, though, as the paro-

dies illustrate that the time they hear-

ken back to was never as rosy as it

was made out to be. In a similar way,

this ad for BSM Driving School

makes fun of the exaggerated claims

60

of laundry detergent ads from the past. Comparing �Driving School X� (which produces nervousness and

its constituent armpit stains) to BSM (where the clients and instructors are confident and sweat free), the

ad plays with the imagery of 1980s-era laundry ads. These are all examples of what Cook refers to as

intradiscoursal allusion [1992], noting �how ads often assume knowledge of other ads or discourse types�

[quoted in O�Donohue:1997, p259].

When Vance Packard published his highly influential book The

Hidden Persuaders in 1957, he had the whole world con-

vinced, however briefly, that modern ads were rife with pow-

erful hidden symbolism. This ad plays on the idea that sublimi-

nal messages could be used to alter consumers� behavior.

Here Absolut Vodka makes use of its familiar two-word

headline and prominent product shot, but this time the sugges-

tion that there may be subliminal messages hidden in the ice

cubes serves to belittle previous claims as to similar ads� use of

such advertising techniques. Seagram�s Gin also resurrected

the idea that ads contain hidden selling messages in a series of

ads that appeared in the mid-1990s. Whereas it was up to the viewer�s imagination as to whether the

Absolut ad in fact contained any subliminal imagery, this time the ads clearly did have images embedded in

the drinking glasses. Seagram�s even went so far as to caption the voices of the characters hiding in the ice

cubes, making the formerly covert now expressly overt.

This ad for a South African big-and-tall men�s

store cites the more recent history of advertising

as it plays with the conventions of the well-

known ads for fashion label Calvin Klein. In

Afrikaans, klein means small, whereas groot

means large. By ironically showing a large black

man in a setting more commonly home to a lean

white man, this advertisement reassembles

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consumerist imagery that resides in the collective consciousness and transforms it into an advertisement that

is both derivative and critical.

Self-deprecation

We have already seen

how modern advertising

preferred to flatter its

audience into believing

that they were crucial

components in society�s

march toward advance-

ment. But these same ads

also engaged in a kind of

self-aggrandizement that left regular consumer flattery looking pale in comparison. Ads like these for

Chrysler and Hoover showed the products in an almost holy light � nobody could fault them, they were

so �extraordinary� and �triumphant.� Over time, modern consumers were so beaten down by this self-

aggrandizement that postmodern advertisers took the opposite tack. No longer did ads proclaim their own

importance; they now engaged in ritual acts of self-

flagellation. Again the Village Voice provides an ex-

ample, as this ad shows a copy of the paper literally

being beaten.

Another ad later

went on to

denegrate the paper

further, mocking it

as a periodical

appealing to only

the most marginal of

characters.

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How this movement really started was in understatement.

The Volkswagen ads of the 1960s and 70s utilized a sort

of subtle truth-in-advertising approach that proved to be a

fresh concept at the time. Later, this technique was further

refined, as in the case of this more current Volkswagen ad

that continues to borrow from the sparse imagery and

typography of its predecessor.

Taking understatement to the extreme, this

ad for the No Frills Funeral Service shows

how death is the one thing no one can

escape. Claims to the contrary, like inflated

advertising claims, don�t amount to anything

at the moment of truth.

Eventually this understated tone began to give way to one more

self-deprecatory. In this ad for the restaurant Horn & Hardart,

the No Frills campaign is taken a step further. Doing away with

unnecessary adornments, the ad, like the restaurant itself,

63

focuses on the core content. The tagline � �It�s not

fancy. But it�s good.� � could apply to the ad and

the restaurant equally. Emphasizing a similar focus on

food over atmosphere, this ad for San Francisco

restaurant Stickity Jim�s not only understates its

attributes, it degrades some of them. And whereas

the ad for Horn & Hardart reflects the simplicity of

the restaurant�s décor, this ad for Stickity Jim�s is

rough and ugly, just like the neighborhood in which it

can be found.

This ad for the budget Hans Brinker Hotel in

Amsterdam, in contrast, features a luxurious suite to

illustrate everything that it does not have. Never

before in the self-congratulatory history of advertising

had ads so willingly pointed

out the faults of their own

products.

In the modern ads for

Listerine mouthwash,

mention was never made as

to its difficult-to-bear taste.

Makers and advertisers of

sore throat medicine TCP were not only aware of the

rinse�s reputation for foul taste, they knew that the public

knew as well. When they advise the audience to �wince

and gargle,� they are admitting to their own faults.

64

This kind of self-deprecation implies a self-awareness that

is unique to postmodernity. Theorists from Jameson to

Purdy have remarked on this (sometimes stifling) self-

aware nature of postmodernism. In this case the ads get

away from endless self-reflection by essentially admitting to

the ugliness of the reflected likeness. While previously,

modern ads would try to hide all but the best of their

product�s reputations, the creators of these postmodern

ads realize they can�t manage all the impressions of their

products so they ironically pre-empt criticism by bringing to

the fore anything that can be used against them. These ads for The Den Coffee House play with the stereo-

type of coffee-house customers and employees, thereby allaying themselves of blame should any of the

stereotypes prove true.

Art as artifice

In addition to airing their faults, postmodern

ads like never before also display the contriv-

ances of their own creation. Famous adman

David Ogilvy once admonished aspiring

copywriters that �it is the professional duty of

the advertising agent to conceal his artifice�

[1963, p90]. This advice is not well heeded in

contemporary print ads. For some creators of

postmodern advertising, the solution to the

problem of self-reference is not in the denial

of the attractiveness of the reflection but in the

eradication of the reflection itself. Wilde sums

up Sukenick and his Thirteen Digressions by discussing the fate of Narcissus to drown in his own reflec-

tion. For him, �the way out of the dilemma of Narcissus lies in the work of art as artifice. As artifice the

65

work of art is a conscious tautology in which there

is always an implicit (and sometimes explicit)

reference to its own nature as artifact � self-

reflexive, not self-reflective� [1981, p137]. As

these ads for Nike and Simple shoes show, not

only are postmodern advertisements allowed to be

ugly, unprofessional, and self-deprecating, they are

now also allowed to present themselves as ads.

The Simple ad speaks for itself. In the Nike ad though, the copywriter actually explains what the �whole

idea� of the ad is supposed to be, afterward apoligizing for not being able to draw birds.

This 1926 promotional piece for the Phila-

delphia agency N.W. Ayer & Son was a

rare example at the time of an advertisement

acknowledging its own status as such. But

even as it did this, it still adhered to the

modern practices of self-aggrandizement,

proclaiming that the Ayer agency was

uniquely poised to foresee how the future

would turn out. Nearly 75 years later, this ad

for a Vancouver ad agency tactlessly said

what everyone else was already thinking. Not only was this a

taboo ad about ads, but it was an ad about the evils of advertis-

ing. They didn�t sugarcoat the point of their existence, instead

they sought to relate to the cynical postmodern public by ironi-

cally admitting to their position in the dominant superstructure.

66

67

Going one step further toward uncovering its own artifice, the Dick campaign for Miller Lite beer intro-

duced a fictional man-on-the-street-cum-ad-creative to explain how the brewing company created its

successful ads. This campaign too was ugly and unprofessional, and it was uniquely postmodern in that it

was an ad about ads about ads.

Hyperbole

The declaration of the (sometimes unjust) power of advertising was not only a form self-deprecation for

PalmerJarvis, it was also an example of one of the other major techniques of postmodern irony in ads:

hyperbole. While a number of contemporary ads have concentrated on knocking themselves down, an-

other class of advertising has concerned itself with exploring the other end of the spectrum. Instead of

denying the boastful claims of advertising by undermining and acting counter to them, these ads have

enlisted gross overstatement to ironize the self-importance modern ads. Again, if postmodernity is the

radical exaggeration of modernity, then these postmodern hyperbolic ads are the exaggerated ads of

modernism drawn out to their absurd conclusions.

There was a time in Ireland when Guinness was

sold as a general cure-all for any ailment. Now

that it is recognized as just another intoxicating

beverage, the advertisers responsible for this

series of ads were interested in ironically refer-

encing the history of Guinness�s supposed

strength-giving powers. In these ads the pro-

tagonist, assumingly after drinking a pint of

Guinness, has the strength to tow a pyramid of

water-skiers behind a rowing shell and to push a

carriage of ten toddlers, whom, it is presumed,

he has also sired.

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These ads for Pepsi don�t comment on the drink�s curative properties, but instead focus on the degree to

which Pepsi is indeed �the choice of a new generation�. In the first ad, the carpeting on the floor in front of

the Pepsi vending machine is warn clear through to the floorboard beneath, clearly indicating that the drink

is far more popu- lar than its rival,

whose vending machine has seen

little use just next door. In the

second ad, ice cubes, seemingly

knowing that their fate would

involve a drawn- out death in a

glass of Pepsi, have frozen into

the shape of hands raised, volunteering to render their cooling services. Clearly the popularity of Pepsi over

Coke isn�t strong enough to warrant this kind of heavy-handed approach. Instead, the advertisers here are

using hyperbole to make fun of previous campaigns in which Pepsi was said to be the preferred cola.

The advertisers for Gold�s Gym similarly overstate

the degree to which their service can benefit

consumers. In this simple image, the exit is much

wider than the entrance, implying that one goes in

skinny and then comes out bulging with muscles.

But of course the degree of change is absurdly

overstated. The same can be said for this ad for

69

Doritos, whose loud crunch was

apparently responsible for the col-

lapse of this building.

Playing on recurrent modern themes

of speed and power, the Lexus in

these ads is so fast that it can appar-

ently alter the trajectory of falling

objects as it zooms by them. Of

course, in reality, the car would have to be capable of unreasonable speeds to produce this effect, and it is

that sort of ironic hyperbole that the advertisers here are playing with.

But these ads just barely qualify as hyperbolic. The

tagline does declare that the 300-horsepower GS

400 is fast. And certainly Lexus doesn�t want the

consumer to think that they are slow, just like

Guinness and Gold�s Gym don�t want people to think

they�ll make them weak, and Pepsi doesn�t want to

be considered unpopular. The truth is that there is a

fine line between postmodern hyperbole and modern exaggeration. As indeed there is a fine line between

parody and reverence, self-

deprecation and managing

expectations, appealing to

the low-brow and expanding

one�s market segment. John

Sinclair has noted the degree

to which people expect ads

to make exaggerated claims

[1987, p60]. Leo Spitzer

has also discussed the extent

70

to which �popular convention permitted advertisers to exaggerate, as if all their statements were placed

within qualifying �quotation marks�.�

These invisible quotes � tacitly understood to exist by both advertiser and reader � said, in effect:We both know that the nature of advertising requires this statement to be exaggerated beyond allreasonable measure; therefore we both recognize that it must be discounted to some degree, and thatthe words and images glorifying the product are not to be taken quite at face value. [quoted inMarchand:1985, p264]

At the end of the day, irony may be all that separates reacting to modern advertising from improving upon

modern advertising. For a number of advertising critics, the irony eludes them altogether. For others still,

the irony � in both the consumption and production of culture � is but a thinly veiled coping mechanism.

To some, the postmodern irony contained within these ads grew up as both a result of, and a reaction to, a

media-saturated environment.

Conclusion

The ineffectuality of mainstream criticism

In the first chapter I referenced the exhaustive work of the many thinkers who theorized advertis-

ing’s role in the advent of industrialism and modernity. In the second chapter I highlighted a num-

ber of social and economic shifts that occurred over the past two decades, resulting in a condition

best understood as postindustrial postmodernity. Too often contemporary ad critics don’t take into

consideration the ramifications of these fundamental transformations. Their criticisms of advertis-

ing sound the same as these did 60 years ago:

“Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.” —J.K.Galbraith

“Advertising is the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” —StephenLeacock”

“Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.” —George Orwell

“Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the twentieth century than any other single factor.” —ClareBoothe Luce [quoted in Twitchell:1996, p12]

“Advertising’s contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Advertising blasts everything that is good and beautiful in this land with a horrid spreading mildew.” —HermanWouk

“Advertising is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.” —Sinclair Lewis [quoted inTwitchell:1996, p235]

In order to criticize postmodern advertisements, a much more nuanced approach must be taken —

one that balances the influence of corporations with the agency of individuals. As Richard Ohmann

explains it, “any supple account of historical processes needs to hold two principles in tension with

each other: The decisive power of economic forces and of those actors best located to harness

them; and the equally crucial, if less decisive, agency of many others seeking their own ends with

smaller means” [1996, p340]. If the conditions of postindustrialism have indeed seen the agency of

individuals expand, then advertising should no longer be considered, as John Sinclair puts it, an

“omnipotent and irresistible influence upon social consciousness” [1987, p183]. The ‘magic sys-

tem’ once described by Raymond Williams loses some of its power to work transparently, beyond

71

the understanding of the masses. When the technique of advertising myths is no longer all-power-

ful, the technique of criticizing mythology loses relevance. Instead, as postmodernity wore on, the

very pervasion of media and information that gave rise to audience agency also resulted in a condi-

tion of almost complete advertising saturation. As TV, the internet, and magazines contributed to

an information-rich environment for all, they relied on corporate sponsorship for circulation. The

result was a culturescape in the late 1900s in which advertising had become nearly endemic.

Critics and proponents alike have recognized the triumph of what Andrew Wernick has called this

‘promotional culture’ [1992; Klein:2000]. In the end, critics like Kalle Lasn have found it easier, in

the face of this advertising ubiquity — and in the knowledge of a balance of power between con-

sumer and producer — to combat not the mythical ideology behind promotional messages, but to

use as a critical device the same kind of irony as that increas-

ingly employed by the advertising professionals themselves

[1999].

Postmodern criticism

In the second chapter I discussed new possibilities for con-

sumers in interpreting cultural messages to their own ends.

Recombining messages from a variety of sources, this produc-

tion-through-consumption has proven a readily available form

of critique during postmodernity. In relation to advertising, it has taken the form of the anti-ad, or

the ‘culture jam’. Just as professionals under the employ of advertising agencies were creating

their own forms of ad parodies, these culture jammers were doing likewise, only to opposite ends.

Adbusters, a Canadian magazine promoting nonconsumption, embodied this trend, filling its pages

with realistic-looking fake ads, mocking real-life products. Ads like this one here, parodying

designer Calvin Klein, point to the superficiality of

fashion.

Tobacco and alcohol producers were also frequent

targets of Adbusters’ anti-advertising campaigns. In a

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series of ads borrowing from the Joe Camel cam-

paign of RJ Reynolds, they show Joe Chemo in a

variety of unfortunate situations brought about by

smoking cigarettes. This idea of advertising for

nonconsumption may be the quintessential form of

postmodern criticism, as the magazine also produced and marketed hats and T-shirts emblazoned

with the logo for International Buy Nothing Day. Eventually, even the state government of

California was getting in on the ad parody act with its

own antismoking campaign, this time usurping the

iconography of Philip Morris’s long-running Marlboro

Man campaign.

Of course, Calvin Klein had been parodied before. As we saw in the last chapter, even smaller

retailers were borrowing from the prestige of the fashion label in order to garner themselves a bit

of borrowed clout. Like these parodies that are actual ads, these anti-ads function in a similar way.

Hutcheon defines this form of parody as a “double process of installing and ironizing,” going on to

explain that “parody signals how present representations come

from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from

both continuity and difference” [1989, p93]. In this case, even

though they are attempting to subvert the dominant messages of

capitalism, they continue to do so within a medium of com-

merce. Producing an ad decrying the insidiousness of advertis-

ing might be a form of criticism, but because it installs as much

as it ironizes, its effectiveness might be questionable. In addi-

tion, when a company like Camel cigarettes or Absolut vodka

(here mimicked by Adbusters) has already pre-empted parody

by sending up itself — as I illustrated in earlier chapters — the efficacy of that mode of critique is

further cast into doubt.

73

Another approach used by individuals looking to overcome the downsides of parody and without

the skill and money of a large state government or consumer media-watch organization is to attack

advertising from outside the channels in which ads typically flow. Instead of producing high-quali-

ty anti-ads to run in specialist magazines or on purchased bill-

board space, these critics-cum-activists alter advertisements

as they already exist in the public domain. From acts as sim-

ple as scribbling anticorporate messages in permanent ink

over the top of posters and public transport placards, to elabo-

rate alterations of large billboards and neon signs, these ‘subvertisers’ (as they like to be known)

use a more guerrilla approach to getting their critical messages across [Klein:2000; Lasn:1999].

This obvious alteration of an Apple billboard targets the computer company, whose series of ads

pictured a number of iconoclasts throughout history, urging consumers to ‘Think Different’ by

buying their products. But as with the producers of glossy anti-ads, their tactics and messages are

always susceptible to co-optation by the advertisers themselves.

This ad for Captain Morgan’s Rum uses

the defacement technique of subvertising

to give it the appearance of an ad that

has been tampered with, just as this

poster for a modeling agency has been

scribbled over in much the same way as

other, noncommercial graffiti. In these

instances, the advertisers have literally

taken the tools of resistance away from the ad critics by using them first.

Hegemony comes to town

In the third chapter I discussed how so many countercultural movements of the late 20th century

were subject to appropriation and assimilation by the advertising industry. This hegemonic usurpa-

tion of the modes of resistance was a simple quest for increased market share. For the most part

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these earlier acts of resistance were movements against intolerance and inequality. These various

feminist, civil rights, and antidiscrimination movements were aimed at promoting fair and equal

treatment for everyone under the law. For the producers of consumer goods, they looked at the

resistance movements as a chance to treat everyone (and their money) fairly and equally in the

market: Their co-optation of the resistance was an attempt to make new consumers out of those

formerly discriminated against. Now, however, the resistance and co-optation take a different for-

mat. In postmodernity the market is well and truly saturated — there are few market segments left

to be tapped. Newer forms of resistance are not so much combating discrimination as the market

saturation itself. When contemporary advertisers hegemonically absorb the modes of present-day

resistance, as with the ad for Captain Morgan’s, they are co-opting the methods of the anti-adver-

tising movement itself. As Paul Willis notes, modern capitalism may have been built on the puritan

work ethic, but postmodern capitalism is parasitic “upon its own instability, even its subversion”

[1990, p551]. The result is a cyclical — and cynical — succession of resistance and assimilation,

self-nourishing, and done with ever-diminishing levels of effectiveness and creativity.

The cynical and schizophrenic cultural intermediary

It is in this space that Fredric Jameson’s postmodern schizophrenic, Pierre Bourdieu’s new cultural

intermediary, and Peter Sloterdijk’s reasonable cynic all come together. The similarities between

the postmodern advertiser and his/her audience has long been noted: They share a mutual history

of exposure to the products of modernity and modern culture. They have eaten the same breakfast

cereals, watched the same TV shows, and hummed the same jingles. They even share the same

combination of ambivalence — even mistrust — toward advertising and the (sometimes guilty)

pleasure of indulgent consumption. But for all these things the advertiser has in common with

his/her audience, including the hard-won agency of postmodern reception, there is yet another

group of people with whom the contemporary advertiser shares even more affinity: the contempo-

rary advertising critic. As Annie Finnegan, an ad executive who has taught a guerrilla-advertising

course at the Atlanta ad school Creative Circus points out, culture jammers and today’s ad creators

are “both products of the same culture, with the same sensibilities — they just went in opposite

directions” [quoted in Berger:2001, p458]. Thus are most contemporary ads — anti- or otherwise

75

— born out of “the simple desire,” as E.B. White once said, “of people who write and draw to

write and draw” [quoted in Dee:1999, p72]. These people who write and draw aspire to the status

of artist, and as such, both advertisers and their critics share a common fate as artists within post-

modern society.

Mike Featherstone discusses how the aestheticization of life of the 1960s generation has led to a

“celebration of the artist as hero and the stylization of life into a work of art.” This, in turn, “found

resonances in a larger audience beyond intellectual and artistic circles through the expansion of

particular occupational groups specializing in symbolic goods who acted as both producers/dis-

seminators and consumers/audiences for cultural goods” [Featherstone:1991, p35]. Bourdieu’s cul-

tural intermediary is someone who works in the culture industry, often responsible for influencing

popular tastes and opinion through strokes of his/her pen or brush. These cultural intermediaries

choose from their available resources to produce works for public consumption. What they create

are, in the most postmodern sense, works of art. As artists, they are concerned with the things that

have always been the bane of artistic existence: inspiration, innovation, and patronage.

Every artist needs a patron

Just as artists have always desired the inspiration to innovate, they have always required patronage

to make their art. Michelangelo couldn’t have painted the Sistine Chapel without the gold of the

Catholic Church and Frank Lloyd Wright could not have created his architectural masterpieces

were they not subsidized by wealthy Midwest corporations. Likewise the artists that make ads and

ad critiques have had to seek out funding in order to pursue their craft. But perhaps more accurate-

ly, they have opened themselves up to the idea of commissioned work.

These people who like to write and draw needed money in order to exercise their talents. In a

postindustrial economy, in which there are more products of culture being commercially produced

than ever before, there is much scope for creative employment. For those that chose the field of

advertising as their creative outlet, the ads they create can be considered commissioned works of

commercial art. Like other commissioned work, the subject matter of their art is largely dictated

76

by the person with the checkbook, leaving decisions regarding execution up to artist. At the end of

the day, though, they are still accountable to the people writing the checks. For those that sought

out noncommercial avenues for their artistic expression, they were more reliant on nonprofit and

government backing for patronage of their work. Either way, the bigger the backer, the bigger the

budget for their artistic projects. Within postmodernity there is more money to be found in corpo-

rate coffers than anywhere else, and the vast majority of advertising creatives are on the payroll of

the capitalist giants. As Warren Berger points out, even some artists who started exploring their

own creative interests found themselves being lured over to the other side. Musicians and painters

have long been accused of selling out when they supply a soundtrack for a TV spot or a painting

for a print ad, but in postmodernity even the artists outside the mainstream are getting in on the

act, as “one team of New York graffiti artists signed on to produce street murals for Coca-Cola and

others” [Berger:2001, p461].

The quest for inspiration and innovation

All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the earfilled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; andthere is nothing new under the sun.

—Ecclesiastes I:8–9

There is possibly even one requirement older than the artist’s need for financial patronage: It has

always been one of the primary aspirations of artists to create something entirely new. Throughout

history, this goal has proved difficult to attain, but perhaps now more so than ever before has it

been more true that there is nothing new under the sun. For the cultural intermediary, innovation

and inspiration are almost entirely elusive, particularly in the face of the conditions of postmoder-

nity.

Fredric Jameson, among others, has pointed to this conundrum of the postmodern. There is a very

real sense, he claims, “in which the writers and artists of the present day will no longer be able to

invent new styles and worlds — they’ve already been invented; only a limited number of combina-

tions are possible; the most unique ones have been thought of already” [1983, p115]. What is left

to do is to ‘imitate dead styles’, or as Pierre Bourdieu maintains, to change the way in which art is

77

to be considered. He claims that this exhaustion of new styles constitutes a major shift, a “shift

from an art which imitates nature to an art which imitates art.” This new form is an art that does

not refer to an external referent, or designated ‘reality’, “but to the universe of past and present

works of art” [1984, p3]. In this way advertisers as well as ad critics are left with no possibility to

be truly innovative. The products of postmodern culture they create can be nothing other than new

combinations of older modern culture. Thus is their artists’ goal of innovation taken away from

them, as indeed is much of their inspiration.

To innovate is one thing, but to be inspired is another. Artists of the past have found inspiration in

the stories and images of what can only be described as the grand narratives of history. Whether a

temple was built in the name of the sun, a painting made in honor of Christ, a poster printed to

promote socialism, or an ad created to celebrate progress, artists of the past had ample inspiration

for their work. As has been noted time and again, in the face of postmodernity these metanarratives

don’t obtain any more. Art can no longer be done as a sincere panegyric for anything outside itself.

Instead, art is now made in order to highlight the falseness of being overly sincere in relation to

the external world. This is a transition, as David Foster Wallace notes, “from art’s being a creative

instantiation of real values to art’s being a creative rejection of bogus values” [1997, p59]. In other

words, the only avenue left to the artist is no longer to positively celebrate real inspiration but to

negatively denounce fake inspiration. Add this to the impossibility for innovation, and postmodern

art ceases to be a constructive force. Instead it is an act, at best, of uninspired assemblage; at

worst, of destructive disavowal.

The cynical producer

Thus we return to the concept of cynicism. In the third chapter I noted how an overexposure to the

false claims of advertising’s past had created a cynical consumer. Wary of naive devotion, the cyni-

cal consumer faces the world with a wry irony. In contrast, the cynical producer is not shackled

only by his/her limited mode of reception, but by the impossibility of satisfying their aspirations

without selling out to the capitalist patrons. Without inspiration and unable to innovate, cynical

producers turn to irony, not only (as I explained before) to communicate with cynical consumers,

78

but also because they have no other choice. Their efforts at fulfilling their artistic ambitions have

been frustrated. For the postmodern artist aspiring to creativity, irony is the only way out. But it is

also a dead-end. Their options might be exhausted, but irony itself, as Twitchell notes, “carries not

only the seeds of discontent but the symptoms of exhaustion” [1996, p234].

The crutch of irony

Linda Hutcheon has discussed Alan Wilde’s appreciation of irony as “a positive and defining char-

acteristic of the postmodern” [1989, p18]. She has herself made great progress toward explaining

how irony can be used as both a tool of creativity and criticism — two things of primary impor-

tance to ad creators and culture jammers. However she has also effectively illustrated that irony

does not only criticize, but also installs, the dominant ideology that is often its subject. As critical

a technique as it is, irony is always going to be simultaneously complicitous with that which it

criticizes.

Perhaps more than that, though, irony grows tired almost as soon as it is used. But is also addic-

tive. “Like any art,” Jonathan Dee comments, advertising “follows the internal logic of its own his-

torical development; and the problem confronting it, at the apex of its effectiveness, is the same

problem that confronts literature, painting, music; is there no such thing as a terminal point for

irony?” [1999, p72] This seems to suggest that for artists it is too easy to fall back on postmodern

irony, just as it is impossible to envision a future without it. Art can no longer strive to change the

future or even represent the grand narratives of history, instead it must satisfy itself with making a

mockery of such notions. For advertisers, myth was problematic, but clever irony is not any more

helpful. This cleverness can be incredibly creative and engaging: As Wallace explains, “irony and

ridicule are entertaining and effective,” but “at the same time they are agents of a great despair and

stasis in US culture” [1997, p49]. Or, as one writer for Adbusters magazine writes, summing up his

own fate as a cultural intermediary, “irony is to culture what candy is to kids — it makes you sick,

but you just can’t stop eating it” [Niedsvecki:1998, p2].

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So what is left? In the end, the same problems exist for those that wish to criticize irony as those

that wish to criticize — or create — advertising: It is possible to point out the problems of contem-

porary postmodern culture, but the very conditions of that culture make it difficult to offer any real

solutions for positive change. The solution for cynical consumers is ironic consumption. The solu-

tion for frustrated artists is ironic production. The solution for those wishing to surpass irony is yet

to be found. In the end all these people are one in the same: The conditions of information society

which gave rise to postmodernity have led to the conflation of commerce and culture, consumption

and production, art and critique; and the same people that have fallen into the trap of irony are the

ones that recognize just how ensnaring irony can be. They know full well what has happened to

them. As Dee says, “the smirk of ironic disengagement exchanged between artist and audience

now refers to nothing but itself, like two mirrors held face to face” [1999, p72]. This is a situation

they have gotten themselves into, and as disappointed as the advertisers and critics are at their own

predicament, there are no signs to indicate that they are able to do anything about it. In the end it

is as essayist Lewis Hyde has noted: “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the

voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage” [quoted in Wallace:1997, p57].

Thus perhaps Marx foresaw the advent of postmodernity many years ago. Writing in — and react-

ing against — a time of modern industrialism, he explained how historic events always occur

twice: “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce” [quoted in Purdy:1999, p11]. In this case the

historic event is the triumph of capitalism. It happened the first time during the height of moderni-

ty, and was tragic because it was built on the backs of a public which was largely powerless to

resist. The second time it happened was at the birth of postmodernity. This time it is a farce

because the public is no longer so powerless, but instead is only afforded the power of an ineffec-

tual and inescapable irony. Jameson periodized postmodernity as the cultural logic of late capital-

ism, and in that he might be near the mark if indeed capitalism has triumphed again. Lash and

Urry might be close as well when they characterize postmodernity as the radical exaggeration of

modernity. But perhaps they are missing something that Marx hinted at long before: Perhaps post-

modernity is, in fact, the farcical exaggeration of modernity, of which ironic advertising is its per-

fect manifestation.

80

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