One of my classes this semester is on visual rhetoric, and one of the basic premises we've been talking about is how, as a society, we're much more visual than we used to be, thanks in part to movies, but more so, the Internet. Images flash by us constantly, and news sites, more often than not, provide video links for their stories. Music videos,
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I would suggest that being educated and discerning used to be viewed as a fairly significant marker of social standing . . it still is to some degree, but a.) a much, much larger percentage of the population is functionally literate, and b.) ads have lost any credibility they ever had as sources of information, thus any attempt on the part of an ad to make a reasoned argument for their product is probably a waste of space. On the other hand, the freedom to be financially impulsive - to buy something because you want it - is still a significant marker of wealth, and IMO viewed far more favorably than it might have been 50 years ago. Someone who goes out and buys that red sports car because it's just so damned cool is - provided they can afford it - spontaneous and fun. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that the present generation of high-earning, low-responsibility young adults right now were children in the 80s - in the 50s, those same people grew up in the 30s and 40s (they also had families and a boatload of responsibility much younger than most people do now). So if the ticket to getting someone to make a purchase isn't so much to make it seem sensible as to make it seem fun, flashy images and appealing to a sense of whimsy makes all manner of sense.
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