Fashion and Reflexive Advertising

Ads are ubiquitous. Contemporary media-literate audiences know that one-third of a half-hour sitcom will be commercials, that magazines will contain more ads than articles, and that they will be bombarded with advertisements on the internet. The pervasiveness of ads has created spectators who are: "increasingly media-literate, cynical, and alienated...and because the number of ads continues to increase (clutter), advertising has undermined its own effectiveness by unintentionally negating the ability and the desire of viewers to respond" (Goldman and Papson, 83).

Advertisers have appropriated this post-modern discourse of alienation, giving it a sign value that they can attach to their product. Alienation consequently becomes a means through which advertisers can differentiate their product; consumers can claim to distance themselves from consumer culture and individuate themselves by purchasing the product so advertised (87). It is ironic that spectators who distrust the simulacrum of advertising are offered a discourse about the world of ads as a substitute for the authenticity (101) that would arguably end their alienation. The print ads examined in this essay reflexively acknowledge and foreground the shallowness of the fashion industry and the commodity culture of which it is an integral part, thereby excusing the product's appeal on the grounds of its fashionability. Judith Williamson states one "can only understand what advertisements mean by finding out how they mean" (Williamson, 42). In other words, one must understand the process of signification through which an ad transfers signs from cultural systems of meaning onto its product. According to semiologist Roland Barthes, this process of signification involves three...

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... increasing advertising clutter, consumers have become jaded and alienated. Advertisers have appropriated this widespread cynical media-literacy, employing discourses of alienation from consumer culture and advertising to differentiate their products. Advertisers offer a reflexive discourse about the world of ads and commodity culture as a substitute for the authenticity that would end consumer alienation. The advertisements discussed in this essay reflexively acknowledge and highlight the frivolity and triviality of the fashion industry, its marketing techniques, and the consumer culture of which it is an integral part in order to excuse and endorse their product's appeal on the grounds of its style. Ironically, this reflexive advertising moves consumers farther and farther away from any sense of authenticity and only increases feelings of alienation and cynicism.