An artistic movement based around "found objects" spilled over into advertising itself. The now familiar Michelin Man (1898) emerged from Edouard Michelin's observation that a stack of tires might resemble a man with the simple addition of arms. It was in such moments, where art and life come together, that many great advertising ideas of the 20th century were born. Another example is the RCA dog inspired by a real pet and an actual incident.
The influence between advertising and art moved the other way as well. Picasso, in his Landscape with Posters (1912) and Au Bon Marche (1913), and many Dada avant-garde artists incorporated images of ads or actual parts of advertisements into their productions. In the 1920s, Fernand Leger modeled his painting The Siphon (1924) on an ad that appeared in the French newspaper Le Matin. Examples such as these abound in 20th-century art.
The social theorist Michael Schudson has termed American advertising "capitalist realism" in order to indicate the similarity of advertising art in the 1930s to the propagandistic art forms that grew up in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at that same time. According to Schudson, each of these states celebrated the different local ideas of heroism (communist, national socialist, or capitalist) in styles that were "reassuringly legible and impervious to ambiguity."
After World War II, artists like Andy Warhol commented on modern life through references to advertisements. Warhol painted cans of Campbell's soup repetitively to comment on modern life--a world in which endless copies of mechanically produced products are available and serve to homogenize experience. (Ironically, Andy Warhol was later commissioned by Absolut Vodka to produce an image of its famous bottle in the Warhol style as an actual advertisement.) Artistic commentaries on the nature of capitalism, consumption, and a world populated with advertising imagery are mainstays in contemporary art.
The omnipresence of advertising imagery in contemporary society is surely one of the hallmarks of this period in history. When future generations look back on 20th- and 21st-century life, they will surely marvel at how little care we took to preserve the popular art of advertising--most of which disappears quickly. TV commercials are intended to evaporate, billboards to come down, and magazines and newspapers to be recycled. Yet, the mutual influence of high art and popular culture is one of the most salient characteristics of contemporary expressive culture.
Advertising and Film
Since the end of World War II, first Hollywood films and later TV scripts have frequently included advertising as one of their themes. The Hucksters (1947) and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) tell stories about the lives of men who work in advertising, but the stories they tell are not flattering. In fact, they constitute the beginning of a long tradition in Hollywood to use advertising (often as a backdrop to a story rather than its central focus) in a highly stereotyped manner. The establishment of this screen version of advertising and its perpetuation even into the present has provided for members of the public--most of whom have never been inside an advertising agency and do not know anyone who works in one--their primary source of information about the inner workings of advertising. It is no different really from how the mass media has constructed images of lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, airline pilots, movie stars, and a host of other professions. Although these representations develop mythologies through repetition and are usually secondary to the main themes of stories, they nonetheless leave after-images that linger in our minds about what we have seen.
How does Hollywood represent advertising? For the purposes of this unit, a list of several films that deal with advertising in some way was developed. Then about half of these films were studied in detail for how they represent advertising. On the basis of this analysis, recurrent themes about advertising in the films were identified.
The themes that will be discussed in detail are the Hollywood representation of: (1) advertising as a profession, (2) the impact of advertising on society, and (3) the characteristics of people who work in advertising.
By setting a film in an advertising agency and/or featuring people who work in advertising, the film describes (albeit inadvertently) the profession of advertising. Films typically make advertising appear to be easy work. Creative ideas are not depicted in relation to strategy and research, but rather ideas seem to emerge while throwing pencils like darts at the ceiling or in a moment of serendipity. For example, a creative team in Nothing in Common (1986) invents skits and songs by acting out an idea for a commercial. The scene conveys a convivial, friendly, and fun atmosphere at work. Ray Liotta's character comes up with the perfect jingle in Corrina, Corrina (1994) while banging out notes in a piano duo with his housekeeper, played by Whoopi Goldberg. Many scenes show the fun aspects of his job as a writer for commercials for Jell-O and Mr. Potato Head. In the clip, the creative solution "just happens." In How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003), Matthew McConaughey's character is engaged in a conversation with Kate Hudson's, who uses the word "frosting" to describe diamonds. He recognizes the originality and power of the description and develops the tag line, "Frost yourself," for a diamond company.
None of these representations portray the lengthy process that goes into making an advertisement nor the strategy that lies behind it. Rather, the most photogenic aspects of the creative process are selected and edited into the story about advertising that gets told through movies.
Another aspect of advertising's appearance in film is the glamorous lifestyle that surrounds the field. The collage of images in Figures 31-34 below shows advertising professionals dressing stylishly, working in beautiful offices, attending elegant parties, and living in extraordinary apartments and houses. For example, Ben Affleck in Bounce (2000) has a home whose large glass windows give a spectacular view of Venice Beach and the waves of the Pacific beyond it. Keanu Reeves in Sweet November (2001) lives in a high-ceiling refurbished loft in San Francisco. This early morning scene shows the elegant furnishings that include 12 flat-screen TVs. Mel Gibson in What Women Want (2000) lives in a Chicago high-rise apartment with a large balcony, elegant furnishings, and a killer view of the cityscape.
Offices are at least as impressive as homes in Hollywood's version of the lifestyles of advertising professionals. Offices are lively, colorful, interesting places to work. For example, Mel Gibson's office in What Women Want is filled with award trophies, leather chairs, and advertisements. Its dark woods and colors signify masculinity. By contrast, Helen Hunt's office in the same film is brighter and has lots of flowers and a more feminine feel. Her large office has not only a very big desk but plenty of other furniture and memorabilia of her career. The interior shots of the agency in the film show a large open space with many workstations where mid-level employees work. The architecture of the old building, complete with mezzanine and old ironwork, exudes style and good taste.
Advertising people attend lots of parties in the movies. Meg Ryan is shown below in a still from Kate & Leopold (2001). The setting is a business dinner where everyone is well dressed, all the tables have beautiful flowers, and the room itself is lovely. In a second clip from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the party is a gala evening black-tie affair; the occasion is the celebration of an ad campaign for diamonds, plenty of which sparkle in the room. In Picture Perfect (1997), guests attend a lavish dinner where canapes pass on trays and two models dressed as the product celebrate Gulden's Mustard.
Not to be outdone by their surroundings, advertising people dress exceedingly well in the movies. Doris Day's character in Lover Come Back (1961) steps out of a convertible only to be covered by a canopy leading to the door of a fashionable New York building. She wears a matching dress and jacket outfit that is complete with a fur collar. Cuba Gooding, Jr., in The Fighting Temptations (2003) is smartly dressed in a well-tailored, fashionable suit as he addresses attendees at a board meeting. Meg Ryan in Kate & Leopold wears an expensive crushed velvet riding jacket to a business lunch in an uptown restaurant.
On top of the glitz and glamour that is advertising in film is a darker image that is repeated again and again. This is the notion that advertising is filled with lies and manipulation. The following clips from films are typical. Each of them conveys this idea rather directly. In The Fighting Temptations, Cuba Gooding, Jr., says in a conversation with his boss that deception is company policy in advertising. In Picture Perfect, Illeana Douglas's character, speaking with Jennifer Aniston's, remarks, "I didn't lie, I sold." Even more pointedly in Crazy People (1990), Dudley Moore describes advertising work by saying, "We lie for a living."
This notion dates back at least to the age of P.T. Barnum, whose exaggerated and frequently false claims, as mentioned earlier, gave the public a bad taste for advertising. It was not helped by traveling salesmen who drifted in and out of town in 19th-century America nor by the unrestricted claims about the benefits of patent medicines that were common well into the 20th century. When Hollywood began to depict advertising, all this plus Vance Packard's expose about motivational research had alerted the public to the idea of deceit in advertising. This is the image of advertisers that was laid down on film, and these stereotypes have remained largely unchanged though there has been little if any effort to offer evidence for them.
A second theme about advertising in films concerns its impact on society. The idea is that advertising generally causes people to buy things they do not need. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House features Cary Grant as an advertising executive who wants to move from New York City to the country. It is his success in advertising that provides the means to make this decision, but the work Mr. Blandings does is not respected by his children. In a particularly pointed statement, one of his daughters speaks of the social evils associated with advertising. In The Fighting Temptations, another indictment of advertising's social policy in the willingness of Cuba Gooding's character to exploit the public for gain and his condescending attitude toward them.
A third idea in the Hollywood depiction of advertising is that there is a certain kind of person who does well in advertising. This is someone who is willing to do almost anything asked of him or her, to put job before family and personal life, and to sell things that they might not believe in themselves.
An additional theme in some of the films is discrepancy between men's and women's jobs in advertising. For example, in Lover Come Back, Doris Day and Rock Hudson both work in advertising. However, she works while he plays. In What Women Want, Mel Gibson gets all the credit for Helen Hunt's ideas.
Advertising and Popular Culture: The Super Bowl
Each January advertising moves onto center stage in American popular culture. The occasion is the Super Bowl--itself one of the country's most watched TV programs. In the weeks and days leading up to the actual event, media hype about the game and the commercials predicts game outcome, celebrates fans, and promises ever more spectacular ads.
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