IMAGE CREATS DREAM-WORK
IMAGE CREATS DREAM-WORK
Tang Bing
Goldsmiths University GMTC Autumn Term
Professor Marianne Franklin
November 14, 2013
(words: 2,260)
Introduction
“It is the images we see in ads which give them significance, which transfer their significance to the product. This is why advertising is so uncontrollable, because whatever restrictions are made in terms of their verbal content or
‘false claims’, there is no way of getting at their use of images and symbols. ...
[It] is images and not words which ultimately provide the currency in ads.”
(Williamson 1978: 175)
Life in the consumer society provides consumers with more options in helping them to shape their lives, not only guiding them to fit in with the right colony, but more likely creating the ‘alreadyness’ of ‘facts’ about themselves as individualsi. It breaks down the fences of class, erases consumers’ backgrounds, ignores their color by focusing on making a
‘better life’ with the exchange system, gives each individual a reachable chance to change (achieving social mobility? maybe you could include this phrase) or just simply helps them to forget about the miseries and confusions in their lives.
In the book Decoding Advertisement by Judith Williamson, using advertisement’s ability of reflecting people’s daily lives, she jumps into the ‘black hole’ behind advertising: where the puzzles, codes, signs are; where our sense of reality is being swallowed; where the galaxy of dazzling dream-worksii came from.
2
By following Saussurean’s semiotic terminology
(sign/signifier/signified/referent forms)iii, Williamson regards images in advertisements as signs, and pointed out:
‘It is the images we see in ads which give them significance, which
transfer their significance to the product. This is why advertising is so uncontrollable, because whatever restrictions are made in terms of their verbal content or ‘false claims’, there is no way of getting at
Tang Bing
Goldsmiths University GMTC Autumn Term
Professor Marianne Franklin
November 14, 2013
(words: 2,260)
Introduction
“It is the images we see in ads which give them significance, which transfer their significance to the product. This is why advertising is so uncontrollable, because whatever restrictions are made in terms of their verbal content or
‘false claims’, there is no way of getting at their use of images and symbols. ...
[It] is images and not words which ultimately provide the currency in ads.”
(Williamson 1978: 175)
Life in the consumer society provides consumers with more options in helping them to shape their lives, not only guiding them to fit in with the right colony, but more likely creating the ‘alreadyness’ of ‘facts’ about themselves as individualsi. It breaks down the fences of class, erases consumers’ backgrounds, ignores their color by focusing on making a
‘better life’ with the exchange system, gives each individual a reachable chance to change (achieving social mobility? maybe you could include this phrase) or just simply helps them to forget about the miseries and confusions in their lives.
In the book Decoding Advertisement by Judith Williamson, using advertisement’s ability of reflecting people’s daily lives, she jumps into the ‘black hole’ behind advertising: where the puzzles, codes, signs are; where our sense of reality is being swallowed; where the galaxy of dazzling dream-worksii came from.
2
By following Saussurean’s semiotic terminology
(sign/signifier/signified/referent forms)iii, Williamson regards images in advertisements as signs, and pointed out:
‘It is the images we see in ads which give them significance, which
transfer their significance to the product. This is why advertising is so uncontrollable, because whatever restrictions are made in terms of their verbal content or ‘false claims’, there is no way of getting at
References: i Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (Great Britain: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, 1978). ii Ibid.15 iiiChandler, Daniel (1994): Semiotics for Beginners http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/S4B/sem02.html [Accessed October 29, 2013] vi Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (Great Britain: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, 1978) vii Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) Encoding/Decoding viii “Inside Chanel” accessed November 6, 2013, http://inside.chanel.com/en/no5/advertising. [Accessed November 6, 2013] ix Meenakshi Gigi Durham & Douglas Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)