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Sociological analysis of advertising
The way asians are portrayed in media
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Shalini Shankar’s Advertising Diversity presents an astute ethnographic study of the construction and production of Asian American identities by the American advertising industry. The book encompasses a detailed structured analysis of the processes involved in the creation of advertising content targeted at Asian American consumers, from the initial idea – the pitch to planning and creative direction to the essential act of production and circulation in media. Through participant observation and interviews with advertising professionals in niche/multicultural as well as general market agencies in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, Shankar attempts to chart the rising significance of ethnic and racial representation – ‘diversity’ in the …show more content…
The first chapter on ‘Account Planning’ deals with issues of racialization and biopolitics that have historically informed representations of Asian Americans in advertisements. With changing social and economic conditions, it navigates the emergence of ‘Asian American’ from being a census category to cultural and linguistic representations that are iterated through multicultural advertising. The category of Asian American is presented through historical examples and textual analysis of advertisements. Further, this chapter not only reflects on the historical naturalization of race for the community when projected as excellent consumers but also for such a broad term enveloping several nationalities and differing ethnicities, it underscores how Asian American advertising attempts to construct such representations separately from other racial and ethnic communities, like African American and Latino consumers, within the United …show more content…
The requirement for a particular look and sound that is in conjunction with the white, upwardly mobile consumer base of corporate America, is pitted as a significant attempt at creating ‘new normals’ by mainstream mass media. In the process of casting diversity, aspects of constructing minorities and ethnicities as normal are brought to the foreground, with several instances pinpointing towards issues of ethnic stereotyping, miscegenation and racial naturalization. Even with increasing visibility of Asian Americans as consumers, talent and corporate professionals, their scope and representation, both linguistic and visual, are deeply coded by what would be understood as natural by economically mobile, middle class, white American standards. The concluding section of the book reflects upon the significance of sites of advertisement placements from broadcast media to digital and social media platforms, factoring in issues of audience testing and reactions, to indicate the shifting dynamics of creative power and knowledge production between Asian American and general market
Kellner, Douglas. “Television, Advertising, and the Construction of Postmodern Identities.” Media Culture (1995): 231-260. Print.
Lee, Robert G. 1999. Orientals: Asian American in Popular Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Thomas Frank’s book entitled The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism takes a poignant look at the advertising world of the 1950’s and 1960’s, exploring how advertising played a role in shaping the next generation of consumers. Frank points out that he believes many misunderstand how important the key industries of fashion and advertising were to the shaping of our consumer culture, especially in getting Americans to rethink who they were. The industry of advertising was not conforming to the upcoming generation, instead the new consumer generation was conforming to the ideals of the advertising industry. Frank believes that the advertising and fashion industries were changing, but not to conform to the new generation, instead to shape a new generation of consumers.
Advertising is so prominent in American culture, and even the world at large, that this media form becomes reflective of the values and expectations of the nation’s society at large.
"Race and Ethnicity in Entertainment." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies.
Abstract My research focused on the coverage of Asian Americans in contemporary mass media. The following types of media were researched. Music Television Films Magazines I gave several examples where Asian Americans used to play very simple characters. These roles were defined by stereotypes that exist in America.
Americans have long since depended on a falsified ideology of idealized life referred to as the American dream. The construct of this dream has become more elusive with the emergence of popular cultural advertisements that sell items promoting a highly gendered goal of achieving perfection. In “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon states that ads are creating a “symbolic association between their products and what is most coveted by the consumer” to draw on the consumer’s desire to outwardly express high social standing (544). The American dream has sold the idea of equality between genders, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds, but advertisements have manipulated this concept entirely through representations
This research focuses on how corporations use Mainstream agencies (General Markets) to target African American consumers. Mainstream and General markets are defined as ad-speak for "White" as in general market agencies (Brandweek, 12/06/99). Also defined in Brandweek (12/06/99) is the word targeted which is ad-speak for "Ethnic/Urban" examples being Blacks, Latinos, and Asians. A majority of corporations have two main problems when targeting the African American community. First, most corporations use Mainstream agencies instead of hiring African American-owned agencies or hiring people who specialize in African American marketing. The African-American market is served by its own specialized media, and national studeis have shown that black consumers are more suscep...
U.S. media history has been plagued with limited representations of Asians and Asian Americans. Specifically Asian American female roles have been limited to stereotypes such as the Lotus Blossom/Madame Butterfly and the dragon lady. The Lotus Blossom and the Madame Butterfly stereotypes are seen as being sexually attractive, alluring, passive and obedient. On the other hand the Dragon Lady is seen as sexualized, sinister and conniving. These stereotypical representations of Asian females are what Darrel Hamamoto refers to as “controlling images”. The repetition of these loaded representations within contemporary media has created a limited perspective of Asian American images. According to Hamamoto in “Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV”, controlling images involve the process of objectification, subordination, and justification. These images are used to create a hierarchy of gender, race, and class; this hierarchy can also be understood as media racial hegemony. In their book “Asian Americans and the Media” Kent Ono and Vincent Pham articulate media racial hegemony as the way people think about how race is represented through media and how media representations help guide and regulate beliefs and actions of those within society in indirect ways.
Advertising in American culture has taken on the very interesting character of representing our culture as a whole. Take this Calvin Klein ad for example. It shows the sexualization of not only the Calvin Klein clothing, but the female gender overall. It displays the socially constructed body, or the ideal body for women and girls in America. Using celebrities in the upper class to sell clothing, this advertisement makes owning a product an indication of your class in the American class system. In addition to this, feminism, and how that impacts potential consumer’s perception of the product, is also implicated. Advertisements are powerful things that can convey specific messages without using words or printed text, and can be conveyed in the split-second that it takes to see the image. In this way, the public underestimates how much they are influenced by what they see on television, in magazines, or online.
One of the greatest exports of American culture is American media. American media is one of the most widely distributed and consumed cultural forms from the United States. This means that not only do Americans consume large quantities of their own media, but many other countries in the world consume American media, too. People in other countries will not interpret or understand the media in precisely the same ways that Americans will and do, nonetheless, many aspects of American culture and American reality are communicated to numerous viewers as part of the content in the media. The media is an important tool in the discussion of race, class, and gender in America. It takes a savvy viewer to discriminate between and understand what media accurately represents reality, what media does not, or which aspects of experience are fictionalized, and which elements ...
In the essay “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” author and philosopher Susan Bordo discusses the history and current state of male representation in advertisements. While using her feminist background, Bordo compares and contrasts the aspects of how men and women are portrayed in the public eye. She claims that there has been a paradigm shift the media with the theory that not just women are being objectified in the public eye, but also men too. Since the mid-1970s, with the introduction of Calvin Klein commercials, men have started to become more dehumanized and regarded as sex symbols. In a similar fashion to how Bordo describes gender, race plays a similar role in the media. People of all different ethnicities and cultures are being categorized into an oversimplified and usually unfair image by the media over basic characteristics.
We, the audience, are entertained and interested by the interviews, the balls and the featured persons. bell hooks sees audience enjoyment as exploitative and says, "...It is this current trend in producing colorful ethnicity for the white consumer appet...
The influence of present day mass media over the perception of beauty is increasing with the expanding industry of facial cosmetic production and the advancement in medical beauty enhancement. However, mass media advertisements appear to be predominantly dictated by "Western beauty" as they promote the desire for fair skin and "Occidental" facial features worldwide. In this paper, I will explore the consequential effects on Asian women as mass media continues to globally perpetuate the communities ' culturally and racially established perceptions of beauty.
Cohan overall leaves a strong impression on the reader that change in women’s advertising is very important and necessary. He effectively shows that women’s advertising is often unethical and ultimately needs to stop degrading women and move to more positive ways of advertising. Although, upon digging deeper in to Cohan’s specific claims on idealized imagery advertising, a gap emerges. Cohan calls the women in the ads who have been idealized “perfect” “ideal”, women that the “average women” will never be able to look like/be (327), but in all actuality, how can advertisements, or anyone for that matter, define what is “perfect”, “average”, “pretty”, “ugly”? Cohan overlooks this phenomenon, of the ever evolving, never definable term: beauty, therefore creating a need for deeper analysis.