Every day when you turn on your television you are overwhelmed with the number of advertisements you see flipping through the channels. On a daily basis, we see about six-thousand advertisements. While we’re walking down the street or grabbing a cup of coffee we see a new advertisement appears. In John Berger's book Ways of Seeing, Chapter 7 he talks about glamour and envy, the promise that advertisements give, dreams of the consumers, and the distraction from everything going on in our society. We are surrounded by advertisements every day and we continue to try and fulfill our dreams by buying the products in the advertisement. John Berger writes about how advertisements continue to promise fulfillment of our dreams but they never do, but
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According to John Berger, “ Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour”(131). What publicity tries to show us is that the people that buy a certain product have a better life based off of that purchase, and for us to have an equivalent life we have to purchase that product. Hence, it adds an envious function in advertisements and publicity by showing us they’re living a better life because they bought the product and if we want their life we have to buy the product. With that said, ‘envy is glamour’. Publicity offers “happiness” to the buyer. This “happiness” is that people will envy you if you buy the product, hence being envied by others makes you glamorous. The buyer sees a “better version” of themselves with this product, so when they buy this product they gain more confidence and receive that “better version” of themselves. The buyer envied their future self with this product and to be their future self they buy that product, which comes to show that ‘envy is glamour’ and publicity sells glamour. This goes along with my thesis because people see glamour and happiness as a more enticing reality instead of seeing what is actually going on around …show more content…
Advertisements hide us from what is going on around us by using glamour and envy. As John Berger states, “ Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world” (149). Publicity is used to hide what is going on in our society. I agree with Berger that publicity helps “compensate for all that is undemocratic within society” because people in our society care more about how they look towards other people in the society. No one has a sense of democracy anymore, and no one seems to care about what is happening in our world. That is what publicity and advertisements push on us, they push us to forget about what is happening around us and to focus on what to buy to make ourselves “better”. People would rather make a choice on what to buy instead of making a choice of which candidate they should vote for. In other words, publicity has taken our democracy from us and left us with only our economic
According to John Berger, “ Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour”(131). What publicity tries to show us is that the people that buy a certain product have a better life based off of that purchase, and for us to have an equivalent life we have to purchase that product. Hence, it adds an envious function in advertisements and publicity by showing us they’re living a better life because they bought the product and if we want their life we have to buy the product. With that said, ‘envy is glamour’. Publicity offers “happiness” to the buyer. This “happiness” is that people will envy you if you buy the product, hence being envied by others makes you glamorous. The buyer sees a “better version” of themselves with this product, so when they buy this product they gain more confidence and receive that “better version” of themselves. The buyer envied their future self with this product and to be their future self they buy that product, which comes to show that ‘envy is glamour’ and publicity sells glamour. This goes along with my thesis because people see glamour and happiness as a more enticing reality instead of seeing what is actually going on around …show more content…
Advertisements hide us from what is going on around us by using glamour and envy. As John Berger states, “ Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world” (149). Publicity is used to hide what is going on in our society. I agree with Berger that publicity helps “compensate for all that is undemocratic within society” because people in our society care more about how they look towards other people in the society. No one has a sense of democracy anymore, and no one seems to care about what is happening in our world. That is what publicity and advertisements push on us, they push us to forget about what is happening around us and to focus on what to buy to make ourselves “better”. People would rather make a choice on what to buy instead of making a choice of which candidate they should vote for. In other words, publicity has taken our democracy from us and left us with only our economic