The Circulation & Effects of American Advertising

 My final video project discusses the effects of American advertising and how the medium of advertising has circulated throughout the history of media. I also discuss how our society, by the advancement of technology, is in a high stimulate of advertisements. For instance, advertising circulates in nearly all forms of media (television, internet, radio, etc.). Therefore, we constantly have to process advertisements when we use these forms media; whether we want to or not.  As we saw in The Shock of The New, directed by Robert Hughes, advertisements circulate most in urban environments. In response to watching that film, I used a first-person point of view video of an individual walking through New York City to show and express how signs/advertisements are constantly shown throughout the video. In other words, advertisements are unavoidable in urban environments and advertisements will impact our methods of consumerism and even our actions or behaviors. Therefore, I claim the argument that advertisements are one of the most remarkable mediums over the last century.
        Advertisements, as does media, changes as technology changes. Brooke Gladstone, in The Influencing Machine, discusses the process individuals experience when they are involved in media. Advertisements has intersected itself in all forms of media and Gladstone discusses how the media imprisons our mind. “You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television or when you go to work. It is a world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth” (Gladstone 117). As Gladstone describes, our eyes, our line of vision, and our mind is built by media. In other words, the advancement of technology has made media entrap our individuality. “Like everyone else you were born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison of your mind” (Gladstone 117). What Gladstone is alluding to is that our mind’s actions, beliefs, and rationality are constructed in ways that we never knew we had or understood them to become. Gladstone would therefore support my argument that advertisements have the capability of controlling our actions and behaviors. Gladstone’s argument represents the power media has on impacting an individual’s choices, behaviors, and actions.
        McLuhan’s, The Medium is The Massage, discusses how the circulation and media information has had dramatic impacts in our society. And argues, at the end of the novel, that media has made us incapable of creating our own individual identity. “Were the Great Blackout of 1965… there would be no doubt how electric technology shapes, works over, every instant of our lives. (McLuhan 150). Similar to Gladstone, McLuhan makes the argument that the dramatic effect media has had on our society, has altered our behaviors so much that we no longer know or understand our perception and senses when we act or behave a certain way. “By altering the environment… The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act and the way we perceive the world” (McLuhan 148).
Both McLuhan’s and Gladstone’s arguments on the media affecting our behaviors, represents how advertising, a form of discipline for the mind, has imprisoned our mind toward consumerism. In other words, the constant circulation in seeing, witnessing, and experiencing different forms of advertisements has transitioned us to becoming a consumer society. “As we observe the advertising environment, we can only understand what advertisements mean by finding out how they mean, and analyzing the way in which they work” (Williamson 17). We identify ourselves through product branding, certain brands have certain meaning. And the meaning of the brand is created by the company itself.
The Bladerunner clip, we watched in class, is another representation of how director Ridley Scott portrays the future of the advertising medium. The film itself constantly portrays signs and methods of disciplining society. The final clip of Roy speaking to Deckard, has a  bright advertising sign stating TDE in the background. The color lighting of the TDE sign (white & pink) is a warm color that comforts our vision in combination with Roy’s hair reflecting along with it. In other words, advertisements use specific colors to incline us to look at them. Scott uses the eye as a constant theme of analyzing either the emotion or reaction of characters in the film. The TDE advertising sign, and advertisements throughout the film, are always present throughout the film. The signs and the visual culture of Bladerunner is a spectacle to watch and is an interesting analysis on how the advertising medium will circulate in a future dystopian society.
Understanding Comics written by Scott McCloud, discusses how identities are conceptualized and how our ideas circulate as the world revolves around us. “Our identities belong permanently to the conceptual world…” (McCloud 40). Although McCloud isn’t specifically discussing conceptual advertisements formulating our identity, he is arguing ideas, such as brands, formulating our identity. Brands are ideas that are constructed in the advertising medium. Brands circulate within the medium of media as well and consequently they have become a conceptualized social constructionist method of formulating a group or individual’s identity. The visual image of advertisements are conceptualized. They are tasted, smelled, touched, and listened to. In other words, advertisements are merely ideas that both circulate in the conceptual world and sensual world. Advertisements are outside of us. They revolve in all of our senses and are capable of dictating our behaviors or actions. Our nervous system makes us aware of the sounds and sights we experience. The constant sound and sight of advertisements, across all medias, eventually influences our behaviors; especially in our modes of consumerism. Slogans themselves are descriptive meanings of identity. For instance, Nike’s slogan“just do it”,  is both inclining the consumer to purchase their product and that wearing their brand will allow them to identify themselves as an athlete, or identify in relation to elite athletes. The deciphering process of advertisements is difficult. As the meaning of an advertisement is created by the ones who create the advertisement themselves. In other words, the meaning of the advertisement is established by the advertisers who are trying to discipline our behaviors toward their portrayed image, video, or narration. 
Our class constantly analyzed the historical implications media has had in our society. Semiotics and 
visual culture are the primary platforms we used in analyzing the circulation of media. The McCluhan reading, contributed to our conversations about how media has circulated in the past compared to the present. We spoke in depth about how smartphones are controlling our behaviors and forcing us to become followers of social media. Although the advertising medium was not one of the primary topics of our conversations in class, the advertising medium has relation to our discussions regarding how media impacts our behavior. The advertising medium is one of the most remarkable mediums of our age. The medium is growing unsustainably and is circulates across all forms of media. Therefore, advertisements impose us to decipher it and force us to subscribe ourselves to what the advertisement claims to be. Consequently, the advertising medium, and other forms of media, has transitioned us to becoming a consumer society.  

       
       
References
Fiore, Q., McLuhan, M. (1967). “The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.” Gingko
Press.
Neufeld, Josh. Gladstone, Brooke. (2011). “The Influencing Machine.” W. W. Norton.
Williamson, Judith. (2002). “Decoding Advertisements Ideology and Meaning in Advertising.”
Marion Boyars. 6 Dec. 2017.
Baudrillard, Jean. (1998). “The Consumer Society Myths and Structures.” Sage. 6 Dec. 2017.