Essay research

After the feedback session I was given a few idea's on what to watch, and read up on in order to write the essay.

J.Berger 'Ways of seeing' was a series of a television program. I watched the final episode which focused on advertising on youtube, to gain an understanding of John's thoery and idea.

Here I quote some of what he had to say about the topic.

'We are surrounded by images of an alternative way of life...For a moment they stimulate our imagination either by way of memory or anticipation.'

'Its a language of words and image which calls out to us wherever we go whatever we read, wherever we are...we take them away in our minds and seem them in our dreams'

I partiually like this quote. It really depicts the idea that advertising gives us the want to have an idealised life, for perfection, for our dreams to become reality. That what is seen within an advertisement is what everybody wants, but can only ever be, just a dream. As he states later on in the program, he basically says that publicity pursuades us in this consumerist society, that if we change ourselves or our lives, by buying something more. This more will will make us richer in some sense. Even though we will become poorer, as we have had to spend our money. So, we have bought something to become 'richer', and set to live 'the dream' as such, but have only made ourselves poorer by buying into this.

Within advertisements, he talks about how, by showing us people who have apparently been transformed, become enviable. This in itself becomes a new glamour. Glamour is for people who find they, can not aford not to be glamorous. Now the model has taken the place of the goddess.

Glamour never used to exist, as your place in society depended on birth. Personal envy did not exist. Without social envy, glamour can not exist.
Glamour is new, society has changed.


Watching, and making notes from this program has really given me a deeper and more knowledgeable understanding of the effects of advertsing on society, and with some of John Bergers quote, I feel I can back up my own and his opinions in order to evaluate my chosen essay question.