I haven’t been blogging for a bit, now; I’ve been working on passing my Qualifying Exams. But I’m back for a while and will be presenting to you what are some hopefully thought-provoking posts! I won’t explain this post too much, now, (I’ll save that for a follow up post), but it’s connected to my dissertation. My dissertation is on authenticity and God, and the idea of authenticity is intimately bound up with the notion of identity-formation, which I’d like to explore with you in this post and some posts to come.
In this particular post, I want to ask a few simple questions: what does it mean to be authentic?, can a consumer product make you truly authentic?, how do advertisers use a desire to become authentic to create effective, even visually beautiful, advertisments? I’ve given three examples below and would love it if you could post some commercials with similar explanations in the comments section.
This first commercial is my personal favorite. It is a Miracle Whip commercial. By means of an extremely fun looking hipster party and lines like “don’t be so mayo,” Miracle Whip makes the case that its sandwich spread can summon and articulate the true you. As an aside, Stephen Colbert had a lot of fun toying with this commercial on the Colbert Report.
Ipod Nano
Using a quite catchy and appropriately titled song called “Bourgeois Shangri-la,” the second commercial advertises the new video-recording capability of the ipod nano. Especially notable are the dancers, each of whom are trendily dressed in colors similar to the ipods recording them and are dancing with distinctly free-spirited moves. The theme in this commercial is the same as the last: by buying the ipod with which you most closely identify, you will be able to express an important and “original” aspect of your identity.
Seasonique
While the first commercial is still my favorite, in many ways, the third commercial is the most interesting. The commercial is selling a birth-control pill that allows a woman to (cleverly) “re-punctuate” her life and menstruate only four times per year. The commercial evokes a very postmodern theme, namely, that identity is a social construction and that menstruation is too. The commercial is driven by the theme, “who says…,” the connotation of which is that you need not be anything that you do not want to be. Instead, be whom you are: someone who identifies less with your menstrual cycle.
With these commercials in mind, fire away! I’d love to find some more of these.
OK… here goes for my first comment/post… The first thing that popped into my head when I read through this post a second time is Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. Videos can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46Uand here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6JvK0W60I. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, but I find it most interesting that a beauty-product company (Dove) is trying to deconstruct traditional images of beauty. Nowhere in the video (or the other ads for the campaign, which show women of all sizes) do they use the “young, hipster vibe” where it is assumed that “if you use XYZ product, you will have a happier, healthier, more fulfilling life. Interesting reverse psychology – I assume that Dove believes that women who want to be more “real” (aka authentic) will use their products as a way to stick it to the rest of the beauty industry.
Hmm… well, I don’t really see how any of these relate to God or religion yet, but I’m trusting you on that one.
I’m not sure if I’m giving you what you want, but my reactions to these commercials were somewhat different from your readings.
#1 – seemed unintentionally ironic to me. It’s all about standing out, but it shows people fitting in. Be unique…so that you get to join the party. They all dance the same and everything. The bland one, the mayo, is actually the one who stands (or, rather, sits) out. Also, unrelated…but I don’t actually know what Miracle Whip is. Is it…a type of mayo? Terrible commercial then, if I still don’t understand what the product is.
#2 – you said “buy the iPod with which you most closely identify,” but I read it is as “the Ipod that most closely identifies with YOU.” Not sure if that’s a real distinction, but that was what I felt.
#3 – “who says?” – I think there is something else going on here that you’re missing, and it has a LOT to do with the predominantly male medical establishment. When the pill was first introduced, they knew right off the bat that it would allow women to skip periods altogether. But they were afraid that they wouldn’t be able to sell as many of them because it might be perceived as “unnatural” if women didn’t have periods. iSo they implemented the false periods as part of the package. There is no medical reason to have the period, (unless you’re using it to know you’re not pregnant, I guess), and yet there it is. They sold women on the pill by telling them that it was “natural” – I mean, you still get a period once a month, right? never mind the fact that the hormones in the early pills were crazy high and damaging to women in lots of other ways.
so I’m not sure the message is “you can be anything you want to be.” I think it might be more along the lines of “be informed – you have a right to have a say in your own health, you don’t have to just blindly accept what one doctor tells you / or what the outdated medical establishment says”
Curiously, ANY pill taken without placebos can allow a woman to skip periods, but some are especially formulated for that purpose.
Also curious to me is the situations they choose to show – I don’t see how having my period would get in the way of me DJing. If they really wanted to sell women on this, they should show all the things you could do if your period didn’t get in the way….ahem…. swimming, sex, white clothes.
More detail than you wanted to know, but you asked!
Very nice! I like your style Laura. Great insights; thanks a ton!
Just a quick comment on the first advert and then back to some studies. The commercial overtly calls one into a way of existing that is bold, untamed, wild, noticeable – like miracle whip apparently. It doesn’t, at least ostensibly, call one into being one’s self, but rather being a certain way. If the subtext is “be yourself” the implication is “you are not actually the opposite of these values…” However, what if one’s way of being really was not-bold, tamed, not-wild, and not very noticeable? This is circumvented by the “cool” factor of the other M.O.
These are all great thoughts; please keep’em coming. I’ll try to justify my post more next time.