Advertising and popular culture

Critics have lamented the "... replacement of high art and authentic folk culture by tasteless industrialised artefacts produced on a mass scale in order to satisfy the lowest common denominator." This "mass culture emerged after the Second World War and have led to the concentration of mass-culture power in ever larger global media conglomerates." The popular press decreased the amount of news or information and replaced it with entertainment or titillation that reinforces "... fears, prejudice, scapegoating processes, paranoia, and aggression."

Critics of television and film have argued that the quality of TV output has been diluted as stations relentlessly pursue "populism and ratings" by focusing on the "glitzy, the superficial, and the popular." In film, "Hollywood culture and values" are increasingly dominating film production in other countries. Hollywood films have changed from creating formulaic films which emphasize "...shock-value and superficial thrill[s]" and special effects, with themes that focus on the "...basic instincts of aggression, revenge, violence, [and] greed." The plots "...often seem simplistic, a standardised template taken from the shelf, and dialogue is minimal." The "characters are shallow and unconvincing, the dialogue is also simple, unreal, and badly constructed." Gloria Steinem, 'Outs of pop culture', LIFE magazine, 20 August 1965, p. 73

Folklore

Folklore provides a second and very different source of popular culture. In pre-industrial times, mass culture equaled folk culture. This earlier layer of culture still persists today, sometimes in the form of jokes or slang jargon, which spread through the population by word of mouth and via the Internet. By providing a new channel for transmission, cyberspace has renewed the strength of this element of popular culture.

Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, the public has its own tastes and it may not embrace every cultural item sold. Moreover, beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture (for example: "My favorite character is SpongeBob SquarePants") spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process in the same manner that folklore evolves.

Owing to the pervasive and increasingly interconnected nature of popular culture, especially its intermingling of complementary distribution sources, some cultural anthropologists literary and cultural critics have identified a large amount of intertextuality in popular culture's portrayals of itself. One commentator has suggested this self-referentiality reflects the advancing encroachment of popular culture into every realm of collective experience. "Instead of referring to the real world, much media output devotes itself to referring to other images, other narratives; self-referentiality is all-embracing, although it is rarely taken account of." Van den Haag, in Rosenberg and White, Mass Culture, p. 529.

Many cultural critics have dismissed this as merely a symptom or side-effect of mass consumerism, however alternate explanations and critique have also been offered. One critic asserts that it reflects a fundamental paradox: the increase in technological and cultural sophistication, combined with an increase in superficiality and dehumanization. On the Ambiguity of the Three Wise Monkeys A. W. Smith Folklore, Vol. 104, No. 1/2 (1993), pp. 144-150

Examples from American television

According to television studies scholars specializing in quality television, such as Kristin Thompson, self-referentiality in mainstream American television (especially comedy) reflects and exemplifies the type of progression characterized previously. Thompson McRobbie, Angela (1994). Postmodernism and Popular Culture. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-07712-5. Cultural anthropologist and feminist discourse on cultural studies. argues shows such as The Simpsons use a "...flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show." Extreme examples approach a kind of thematic infinite regress wherein distinctions between art and life, commerce and critique, ridicule and homage become intractably blurred.

Long-running television series The Simpsons routinely alludes to mainstream media properties, as well as the commercial content of the show itself. In one episode, Bart complains about the crass commercialism of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while watching television. When he turns his head away from the television, he is shown floating by as an oversized inflatable balloon. The show also invokes liberal reference to contemporary issues as depicted in the mainstream, and often merges such references with unconventional and even esoteric associations to classical and postmodernist works of literature, entertainment and art.

Advertising in Literature, Art, Film, and Popular Culture

What is advertising? Advertising is a means of conveying information to consumers about a product or service that exists in many different media. Advertising serves to persuade and inform a consumer base in order to influence them and their purchasing power. http://www.learnthat.com/define/view.asp?id=162 No matter the channel by which the advertising is communicated, be it in print, video, or sound-all advertising seeks to accomplish the same goal.

Is advertising a direct affect Popular Culture, or is it a direct effect of Popular Culture? Through the exploration of advertising history in the 20th century, brand identities and their development, along with the examination of Popular Culture, and historical events occurring during the same time frame, we can hope to find an answer to both of these questions.

Lowering of prices and the beginning of mass production made products more widely available to the public, and thus carrying with it, the need to bring their attention to the new items on the market. With the creation and development of the transcontinental railroad, a national market for products opened.

Although the first advertising agency was developed in 1841 by Volney B. Palmer, it wasn't until the 20th century that advertising agencies began to offer a full spectrum of services ranging from branding and logo design, to concepts, and implementation of the campaign. Originally, the agency served to secure the ad space in a newspaper. By the time the 20th century began there were several agencies for companies to choose from. Experts started coming out of the woodwork left and right to share their thoughts on advertising and the best methods to use, writing book after book on the subject. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snpmech4.htm

Literature and Advertising

Scholars and literary critics differ over what constitutes literature. The once revered canon of texts (such as The Canterbury Tales, The Merchant of Venice, and Wuthering Heights) has given way to the study of a much broader range of texts (including popular romances, soap operas, and advertisements) and voices (especially kinds of voices that had not been included among canonical texts such as African-, Asian-, and Latin-American writers). Some definitions of literature specify criteria that a text must have in order to qualify as literature whereas others emphasize acceptance by a reading community as the primary marker. The following two definitions of literature represent these differing approaches:

In antiquity and in the Renaissance, literature or letters were understood to include all writing of quality with any pretense to permanence. [focuses on textual criteria] Rene Welek, "What is Literature?" in What is Literature?, Paul Harnadi, ed., 16-23 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 20; quoted in Jim Meyer, "What is Literature?: a definition based on prototypes," in Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session 41(1997), 2, from http://www.und.edu/dept/linguistics/wp/1997Meyer.PDF on April 8, 2006.

... literature is a canon which consists of those works in language by which a community defines itself throughout the course of its history. It includes works primarily artistic and also those whose aesthetic qualities are only secondary. The self-defining activity of the community is conducted in the light of the works, as its members have come to read them (or concretize them). [focuses on community acceptance] George McFadden, "'Literature': a many-sided process," in What is Literature?, Paul Harnadi, ed., 49-61 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 56; quoted in Jim Meyer, "What is Literature?: a definition based on prototypes," in Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session 41(1997), 2, from http://www.und.edu/dept/linguistics/wp/1997Meyer.PDF on April 8, 2006.

Whether one of these or yet another definition of literature is preferred, there is a widely shared sense that literature stands apart from more ordinary texts such as telephone books, shopping lists, operating instructions, and advertisements. A practical approach to understanding literature might enumerate some widely shared characteristics:

- Literature consists of written texts.

- Literature is marked by careful use of language, including features such as creative metaphors, well-turned phrases, elegant syntax, rhyme, meter.

- Literature is written in a literary genre (poetry, prose fiction, or drama).

- Literature is intended by its authors to be read aesthetically.

- Literature is deliberately somewhat open in interpretation. Jim Meyer, "What is Literature?: a definition based on prototypes," in Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session 41(1997), 3-4, from http://www.und.edu/dept/linguistics/wp/1997Meyer.PDF on April 8, 2006.

Are advertisements "writings of quality with pretenses to permanence"? Are advertisements widely understood to be a form of literature? Are they careful in their use of language, written in a recognizable literary genre, intended to be and actually read aesthetically, and deliberately open in interpretation? In fact, advertisements fail by any of these definitions to qualify as literature. It is this difference that gives rise to the sense that literature is a part of "high" culture while advertisements are something else and belong to "low," or mass, culture.

However, this binary division does not reflect the real relationship of literature and advertising either in the present or the past. The literary theorist Jennifer Wicke argues that neither the novel as a literary genre nor the advertisement as a text can be properly understood alone but rather share a long and intimate history. She notes that prior to Gutenberg, scribal manuscripts contained advertisements (or notices) that explained the circumstances of the copying. For example, a notice that copying had been done during holy days would signify that the text was not to be sold. At first, such notices appeared at the end of manuscripts. Later, after the printing press was invented, printers began placing them as prefatory material before the main texts. The content of these notices expanded to announce, describe, and indicate ownership of the texts that followed. Thus, the very technology of printing spurred the development of advertisements of printed texts.

Elizabeth Eisenstein, investigating this historic relationship of the book and the ad, writes: "In the course of exploiting new publicity techniques, few authors failed to give high priority to publicizing themselves. The art of puffery, the writing of blurbs and other familiar promotional devices were also exploited by early printers who worked aggressively to obtain public recognition for the authors and artists whose products they hoped to sell." Elizabeth Eisenstein, The printing press as an agent of change: communications and cultural transformations in early modern Europe (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 228-29; quoted in Jennifer Wicke, Advertising Fictions: literature, advertisement, and social reading (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 5.

This promotion of printed works by printers also led to the significant identification of texts with authors. The crediting of the author had not always occurred previously when oral stories were written down. These new techniques established books as intellectual property and made many authors into celebrities.

These early advertisements eventually became separated from the texts themselves. "By the late seventeenth century... [these] publicity techniques called 'advertising' had slipped out from the covers of literary works and helped to create the newspaper--The Advertiser became a generic name for journalistic offerings." At this point, advertisements as we know them today began to develop separately from books, appearing not only in newspapers but in public spaces as signs and posters as well.

In the 19th century, the novel emerged as the most important literary genre and remained so until film, radio, and television challenged its popularity it in the 20th century. After advertisements became separate and independent texts in their own right, the relationship between literature and advertising did not cease. Rather, it assumed complex new forms, as Wicke shows in her masterful analysis of three classic novelists--Charles Dickens, Henry James, and James Joyce.

In several of the novels by Charles Dickens (Sketches by Boz, Pickwick, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend), advertising figures prominently. In Sketches by Boz he wrote: "...all London is a circus of poster and trade bill, a receptacle for the writings of Pears and Warren's until we can barely see ourselves underneath. Read this! Read that!"

Dickens knew intimately of what he wrote. Before establishing himself as a novelist, he worked in Warren's blacking factory where shoe polish was manufactured. It seems that he sometimes helped write the copy for advertisements and that for a while he was placed in a window polishing shoes as a form of advertising. Later, when he wrote his novels, the power and presence of factory work and the promotion of goods played significant roles.

In addition, Dickens engaged with advertising yet another way by taking great interest in the advertising of his own novels--choosing or writing ads for them. The great popularity of his stories led to the incorporation of many of his characters into a broad range of advertisements in ways that are familiar today. Player's cigarettes issued in 1912 a set of trade cards (one inserted in each pack of cigarettes) for Dickens's characters. Various commercial products mimicked the style or used the name of one or more of his characters--from Dolly Vardon aprons to chintz fabrics emboldened with Dickensiana. This trend continues even today as various brands make reference to "A Christmas Carol" or ask "Oliver Twist."

The American author Henry James similarly engaged advertising in his novels. The American stage for spectacle, exaggeration, and outrageous claims was set earlier in the 19th century by P.T. Barnum and his extravagant and outlandish publicity for his traveling shows, circus, and museum. An America that succumbed to Barnum and unchecked advertising claims of every sort fascinated James. This fascination is reflected in his novels. According to Wicke, James's own style of fiction "bears a confessed kinship to the melodramatics of advertising." His late work The American Scene (1907) takes up the subject of the consumer society.

His book commemorates the trip he took in 1904, after returning from twenty years in Europe, a "pilgrim" come to see his own native land. The patchwork of places and sights--St. Augustine, Newport, the Waldorf-Astoria, Hoboken--may seem impressionistic renderings of his journey, but above all the text explores the phenomenon of a capitalist culture that has come into its own since his departure. Henry James, The American Scene; quoted in Wicke, 113.

Irish author James Joyce, like Dickens before him, wrote advertisements at an early stage of his career. (He ran a film theatre and often wrote the ads for it.) It is his masterful Ulysses (1922) that directly conjoins literature and advertising. Leopold Bloom, the central character in the novel, works as an advertising canvasser thus occasioning many references to advertisements in the novel. More profoundly, "the constantly unfurling 'stream of consciousness' that is Bloom's narrative style is largely made up of his 'mind' wending its way through the eddies, currents, and shorelines of advertising or advertised goods."

Many literary theorists have recently noted connections like those above between literature and the culture of consumption for which advertising is the mouthpiece. The James Joyce Quarterly asserts that advertising influenced the writer at least as much as Thomas Aquinas, Dante, or Shakespeare did. Garry Leonard, "Joyce and Advertising: Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce's Fiction," James Joyce Quarterly 33.4/34.1 (1993): 573-92. Other writers like George Eliot and Sherwood Anderson have been studied for their connections to advertising discourse as well. Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-2) contains passages reflective of Bloom's interior monologues about consumer goods in Ulysses. William Deresiewicz, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 38, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 723-740; taken from note 23, page 740. Anderson himself had a long career in advertising before writing his many observations about its practices.

Thus, what all these connections between literature and advertising show is the impossibility of maintaining any strict division between the "high" culture of literature and the mass culture of advertising. Some writers of great literature were also authors of many advertisements to which and from which they took their style of writing. More importantly, many influential writers have brought advertising into their stories in order to analyze the role of advertising in society. Finally, the study of literature has opened itself to the examination of many kinds of non-canonical texts such as advertisements in order to understand the culture that generates them.

Advertising and Art

The relationship between advertising and art is even more intimate than that with literature. Over the centuries, artists have been hired to paint signboards, shop walls, and other kinds of images in the service of commercial promotion. However, it was in the 19th century that a much closer relationship between advertising and art developed.

In London, the well-known illustrator Cruikshank was commissioned in 1820 by Warren's blacking company (the same company that Dickens worked for as a boy) to illustrate an ad. The drawing he produced--a cat frightened by its own reflected image in the sheen of a highly polished boot--clearly added spark to the long-copy advertisement it accompanied. Such relationships were typical 19th-century interactions between the art world and advertising.

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