The Situation
Jack Solomon’s essay titled Masters of Desire: The culture of American Advertising was written in 1988. This piece is currently in the book Signs of Life in the USA which was edited by Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. This book was published in 2015 by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Jack Solomon is an English Professor at California State University, Northridge. In this essay Solomon examines the effect advertisement and advisors have on the American Dream. He started off with the paradox of The American Dream. He stated, “For behind America’s mythic promise of equal opportunity, there is a desire for unequal social rewards, and a ferocious competition for privilege and distinction.” (167) Solomon also showed the impact an advertisement placed on a society. He tried to make consumers more aware of the tricks and signs.
He pulls together different ways that the advertisements affect the American Dream. The contradiction is between “the simultaneous desire for social …show more content…
He used Alexis de Tocqueville as an example to the paradox for equality and freedom. Solomon started off by stating his view points on what the American dream was really like. “Yet walking quick and cleaving a way is precisely what Americans dream of. We Americans dream of rising above the crowd, of attaining a social summit beyond the reach of ordinary citizens” (167) Solomon wanted to show how we cannot be equal and superior to one another. Solomon goes about using examples on how advertisement manipulates people into believe we need something and that’s what we have to have. He tries to make consumers aware of what these advertisements are really doing. "Appealing to our subconscious emotions rather than to our conscious intellects, advertisements are designed to exploit the discontentment’s fostered by the American dream, the constant desire for social success and the material rewards that accompany it" (Solomon
Jack Solomon’s essay titled Masters of Desire: The culture of American Advertising was written in 1988. This piece is currently in the book Signs of Life in the USA which was edited by Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. This book was published in 2015 by Bedford/St. Martin’s. Jack Solomon is an English Professor at California State University, Northridge. In this essay Solomon examines the effect advertisement and advisors have on the American Dream. He started off with the paradox of The American Dream. He stated, “For behind America’s mythic promise of equal opportunity, there is a desire for unequal social rewards, and a ferocious competition for privilege and distinction.” (167) Solomon also showed the impact an advertisement placed on a society. He tried to make consumers more aware of the tricks and signs.
He pulls together different ways that the advertisements affect the American Dream. The contradiction is between “the simultaneous desire for social …show more content…
He used Alexis de Tocqueville as an example to the paradox for equality and freedom. Solomon started off by stating his view points on what the American dream was really like. “Yet walking quick and cleaving a way is precisely what Americans dream of. We Americans dream of rising above the crowd, of attaining a social summit beyond the reach of ordinary citizens” (167) Solomon wanted to show how we cannot be equal and superior to one another. Solomon goes about using examples on how advertisement manipulates people into believe we need something and that’s what we have to have. He tries to make consumers aware of what these advertisements are really doing. "Appealing to our subconscious emotions rather than to our conscious intellects, advertisements are designed to exploit the discontentment’s fostered by the American dream, the constant desire for social success and the material rewards that accompany it" (Solomon